The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3)

by H. Anthe Davis

  The Emperor, as surprised as the others.

  “Well. What now?”

  He blinked, and the steps were empty, the black-robed man lounging on the Throne in the Emperor's place. But he was not in black now. He wore blue, a shade off from the Sapphire's color and with silver trimmings, his scarred right brow arched in mild interest.

  “Who—“ he started, then recognized the man. “Inquisitor Archmagus Enkhaelen.”

  “Mm. Correct.” There was something preternatural about him—not his face or frame but just the sense of his being, as if a great energy lurked within. Despite his formal attire, he was barefoot, his skin almost the color of the Throne. “It's taken you long enough.”

  Sarovy looked around slowly. The throne-room was empty, lifeless. “What is this?”

  “A splinter. And a degrading one, I fear. He did not expect this to go on for twelve years.”

  “He?”

  “Me. External, actual me.”

  “Then you are?”

  “Just a piece. Once we've spoken, I'll be gone.”

  Straightening, Sarovy tried gather his thoughts. What he had just seen and felt, struggled through... “That was a memory. The one the mentalists suppressed.”

  “They did more than that,” said Enkhaelen, “but yes. Your eventful visit to the Palace.”

  “I was... I wasn't a prisoner.” He closed his eyes briefly. Fragments swirled just beneath the surface, bits of memory released along with that singular experience, and he sieved through them, trying to put the past back together. “There was a summons for...staunch loyalists. Ambitious soldiers seeking the next level of service to the Light.”

  The mage nodded. “This was before we perfected the White Flame armor. We were prototyping. It required a certain amount of will on the part of the subjects, a certain strength. Many answered the call, but only a few were selected.”

  “And I...”

  “You were a prime candidate. But you experienced something in the depths—something that unnerved the Emperor himself, though he covered it. I did not want your experience to be lost. So I proposed the sarisigi en-dalur—the body-mimic.”

  “The grey monster.” He thought he should be shaking, but his hands were steady, his voice calm. In his mind's eye he saw Weshker's terrified face, clay-smeared. Saw the nub manifest his own features, as if sculpted by invisible hands.

  “It remembers more clearly than a bodythief. It tried to take you, but...”

  “It failed.”

  Enkhaelen regarded him with an unreadable expression, then rose and descended the steps, blue robe bright against the unrelieved white. “No,” he said gently as he came to a halt at arm's reach. “No, I'm afraid not.”

  Sarovy closed his hand into a fist. It felt real. “Then what?”

  “It killed you. Devoured you, as it was meant to.” His eyes were cold and clear, direct. “But it could not swallow. Even though you were dead, you still fought, and I saw your soul force the sarisigi's essence out and take its place. They wanted to destroy you then, but I thought you were interesting.”

  Sarovy choked on nothing. The chasm, the leap. “I... I called to Senket.”

  “Your people's spirit? Then he favored you, I suppose. I know your sword still claims you.” He gestured down, and Sarovy saw his family's heirloom sword on the floor between them, the eagle's-head pommel staring up at him. “Even though you don't follow him, perhaps he thought you deserved more than to be eaten by a lying god.”

  “The Light is—“

  Enkhaelen held up a hand. “I don't wish to argue. Nor do I have much time. Speak your questions while you can.”

  “What interest do you have in me?”

  Smiling sharply, the mage said, “None, really. You were a curiosity: a soul that ate its killer. But I could not replicate you. It was a matter of will, or Senket, or whatever you saw in the depths. Not something I could orchestrate. So I let you go, as a sort of...long-term stability test. Fixed your form, gave you a voice and some extra autonomy.” He gestured toward Sarovy's chest, where the winged-star pendant hung against his old uniform blues.

  Carefully, almost fearfully, Sarovy reached up to touch it. It felt warm under his fingers. “Then...it did not belong to my mother.”

  “No. We made you believe that, to explain it.”

  “And my family?”

  “They think you dead.”

  “My letters?”

  “Never sent.”

  “Why?”

  Enkhaelen tilted his head slightly. “They couldn't know. You couldn't know. It was for the best. Anyway, you've done well for my purposes, recent losses notwithstanding. Blaze Company will make a fine parting gift when the deed is done.”

  “What deed?“

  “I can't discuss—“ He looked away suddenly, and Sarovy followed his gaze to see the walls of the throne-room darkening, patches unraveling to show a great emptiness beyond. The sight—so like the holes that had opened under him and his men—made him recoil.

  “I'm fraying. No more questions, just answers,” said the mage. “Wreth is your enemy, as is Field Marshal Rackmar. In defiance of him, I filled your Specialist Platoon with the most stable and least damaged of the converts; you can trust them as much as you trust anyone.

  “And I have agents with you. Voorkei reports directly to the real me, but I cannot be counted on to answer his scrys; I have my own troubles right now. Presh is also mine, and I do not think he is dead. Try to retrieve him. As for your scryer, Kelturin trusted her, but he has terrible taste in women. Alas, with her fingers in your head I suppose you'd best trust her as well.

  “No one in white should be allowed into your inner circle. In particular, kill Cortine. He carries the touch of the Palace and can control you or any specialist.”

  The walls had given up. The floor around them darkened as its deeper layers subsided into the psychic void. Enkhaelen's robes shredded at the cuffs, threads unwinding from the fabric to show the skin beneath doing the same. “I meant you for Prince Kelturin's hand,” the mage said, gaze gone fixed, “but you can make your own choices. I'm not the Emperor and I won't force you to my will. What he did to my work—I can't condone it. I can't abide it. And I will fix it, no matter the cost. You can be with me, against me, I don't care. Your life is my gift to you, if only for that moment of spitting in his face.

  “I wish you the best.”

  Then he unraveled thoroughly, and there was only darkness.

  *****

  Sarovy opened his eyes and flinched. Houndmaster-Lieutenant Vrallek, mere inches from his face, flinched as well. “Captain?” he said slowly. His mangled features, stitched with white sutures along the cheeks and lips, showed both apprehension and hope.

  For a long moment, Sarovy could only blink in the mage-light, breathe through his alien lungs, stare at the faces gathered around him. Ruengriin and bodythief, lagalaina and mage, now perhaps the only ones he could trust.

  He turned his gaze back to the Houndmaster, who had withdrawn a step, visibly nervous.

  “Vrallek,” he said. “Explain this.”

  “Yessir. Er, though I gotta say, I'm surprised you can talk.”

  “Why would I not?”

  “Well, see, your...your, uh, type...they never talk...”

  It was strange to see such unease on Vrallek's face—such fear, directed at him. He frowned slightly and noted how the Houndmaster shifted on his feet, as if ready to run. “My type.”

  “Yessir. Uh, y'see, you...er...”

  “Sarisigi en-dalur.”

  A murmur went through the gathered specialists, and Vrallek's black eyebrows went up. “You know, sir?”

  “I have been made aware.”

  “And you're...feeling all right, sir?”

  He looked down at himself. Thin bands of orange energy bound him to the chair—Magus Voorkei's work. The armor on his right leg was still indented unnaturally, but he felt no pain, and the rest of him looked normal. Fingers moved properly within t
he cover of gauntlets, toes within boots. He shifted his shoulders, trying to attain a more comfortable position, but his bonds were too restrictive.

  “I am feeling...myself,” he said. “For whatever that's worth.”

  Vrallek grimaced. “Problem is, sir, we've never had this kinda thing happen. We don't know if you're safe.”

  “You do not work with sarisigi?”

  “No one does,” said Specialist Ilia from Vrallek's left. Her arms were crossed tightly, her skin mildly radiant despite her human illusion. Agitation, he suspected. “They're too dangerous. Our higher-ups send them after skilled targets—fighters, craftsfolk, mages sometimes—and they get assigned with us briefly to use their mimicked skills or memories, but otherwise... They're not sane, sir. Maybe they were once, but they need mentalist handlers to keep them from eating everyone they encounter, and the ones that have escaped into the wild...” She shuddered.

  “And they don't talk,” said Vrallek. “I don't know if they can't or just won't, but all the ones I've seen have been utterly silent.”

  Sarovy looked down again, to where his winged-light pendant hung atop his breastplate. “Enkhaelen said that he gave me a voice.”

  “Enkhaelen? Inquisitor Archmagus Enkhaelen?”

  “Yes.”

  Vrallek hissed through his teeth and looked to the crowd. His corporals were all there: the ruengriin Grimalta and Kelfar, Renkurr and Tankei, Robellan and Herrick, and the scouts Avran and Coyle. Sergeant Korr and Lieutenant Rallant were there too, in the background as if deferring to the Specialist Platoon. A lot of the lesser specialists were in attendance as well: almost all of the scouts, all the lagalaina, and ruengriin in various states of repair, their heavy features crimped by the same white sutures as Vrallek's.

  A few nodded as if giving permission, and with another sigh, Vrallek said, “Enkhaelen. Well, that explains a bit. And I guess if he cleared you...”

  “Who is he to you?”

  “The Maker,” said one of the other lagalaina, Miralda Carver. “The one who made it possible for us to be reborn.”

  “Reborn—in the Palace? The—“ Sarovy remembered the floor unraveling, the tendrils drawing him down. The figures in the cells, dreaming or dead. “We were changed. Remade.”

  “Redeemed,” intoned Vrallek, expression going distant. “Stripped of our Darkness and—“

  “Stop. No philosophizing, just the facts. We were changed by the Palace, not Enkhaelen. What place does he have in this?”

  Furrowing heavy brows, Vrallek focused on him and said, “Were you not listening? He made it possible. He... I do not know the specifics, I am no mage, but he is the one who taught the Palace how to make us, and who sometimes tells it what we should be. He is the designer—the architect—of what we are.”

  So this is his fault, thought Sarovy.

  “He is like our father,” Vrallek continued, “but the Palace, the Light, the Emperor—they are our mother. He contributed, but it is their flesh that reshaped us, their glorious blood in our veins. Their presence still pervades us. It is what resonates in us when the priests give their blessings, and when they stitch our wounds.” He brushed two fingers along the sutures in his cheek and shuddered slightly, eyes glazing.

  Sarovy's skin crawled. Part of him was surprised that it could crawl, but the rest was angry about the visible influence of those threads. The manipulation. He had not appreciated being brought to his knees when he thought it was the true touch of the Light, but to see Cortine's work and know it was the cause...

  “Did you know what I was?” he said.

  Vrallek grunted and let his hand fall, heavy shoulders rising in a shrug. “We knew you were something—and that you weren't aware of it. We thought you were maybe a prototype. The Maker is always trying new things. Sarisigi don't have a definite scent like the rest of us, so you could've been anything.”

  “Maybe just a man,” said Specialist Ilia. “We debated it a bit. I thought I'd try you out but you didn't want to play.”

  He remembered Ilia lounging on his bed, a finger hooked in the cleft of her half-unbuttoned uniform jacket. “Ah.”

  “The way you resisted my dominance and her lure, though,” said Vrallek, “we knew you had to be one of us. But no, we couldn't say what.”

  “Why was this done to us? What do they gain?”

  “Gain?”

  Sarovy gestured vaguely. “The Emperor. Enkhaelen. The Light itself. What do they gain by this? Why would they—“

  “Are you questioning the will of the Light, captain?”

  That was a dangerous tone, but Sarovy narrowed his eyes in response, undaunted. “Yes. I am. I see the value in your—in...our...talents, but I also saw the dead.” Those honeycomb walls, stretching out to infinity...

  “Few can bear the full gaze of the Light, captain.”

  “Then why—“ His mouth went dry. All the prisoners he had sent on to the Palace... “It seems wasteful. If so many cannot bear it—“

  “It takes sacrifices to make champions,” Vrallek growled.

  Shaking his head, Sarovy tried to find the words to explain the sick feeling in his chest, but Ilia spoke first. “We're not champions,” she sneered. “The hounds and the ahergriin—“

  “My hounds are champions,” said Vrallek defensively.

  She rolled her faceted eyes. “Your hounds are rejects. That's the point of the hounds! Strong enough to survive but too weak of will to transcend. Needing a master, needing constant supervision, unable to speak or think on their own.”

  “The hounds are people?” interjected Sarovy.

  “Were people. Just hounds now. And the ahergriin—they're made up of spare parts, big fleshy conglomerates. Everyone who dies in conversion gets squeezed into one. And there are tons of them. I used to serve on the northern front, against Krovichanka, and they're all deployed there. Thousands upon thousands.”

  “I fought them,” rumbled Vrallek, still bristling but somewhat subdued. “Before I was captured, converted, I fought the Empire alongside my kin. Such horrors I had never seen before nor since, but I know them now as splendors, because the Light created them—“

  “The Palace horked them out like hairballs, Vrallek. Don't fool yourself.”

  The Houndmaster bared his teeth at the lagalaina, who stood unmoved. Behind them, the other specialists shifted on their feet, murmuring uneasily; at his back, Sarovy could sense Scryer Mako's tension, hear Magus Voorkei's grinding teeth.

  He didn't know how to feel about this. Didn't want to feel. It was too new, too great, too nightmarish. He wanted to pull denial over himself like a blanket, or have the Scryer erase it all.

  But he had duties. Obligations.

  Strangely enough, this clarified a few.

  “Lieutenant Vrallek, will you still follow me?” he said.

  Vrallek looked to him, blinking. “Of course. You're the captain.”

  “No matter where I lead?”

  “I have already submitted to you. You need not ask again.”

  “And the rest of you?” he said, scanning the gathered specialists.

  Ilia shrugged, but it seemed more of a 'why not?' than a sign of indifference, and the other lagalaina followed suit. The scouts looked at each other, some nodding, some apparently reserving judgment. The great mass of ruengriin looked to Vrallek, who chuckled and said, “These are my pack as much as any hounds could be. Where I go, they will follow.”

  The two senvraka made no motion.

  Sarovy noted that, but filed it away for later. “Then if you would unbind me, Magus, Scryer, we should all get back to work. There is—“

  The darkness under the horses. The screaming men. He had forgotten. How could he have forgotten?

  “—there is— Pikes, let me up, have we retrieved everyone? Do we know who's missing? Where is Lieutenant Benson? Linciard? Magus, take these bonds off immediately, I need to hear the full reports. And Colonel Wreth, where has he gone?”

  A faint feminine snort came from behi
nd, then Scryer Mako said, “Yep. That's him. Might as well unleash him on the world.”

  The bonds snapped away.

  He lurched up from the chair immediately and almost fell, his right leg bent by its battered armor. Not looking, he yanked at the buckles and kicked off the dented plates, then stood straight. The specialists divided before him.

  “We'll speak more later,” he told Vrallek and Ilia curtly, “but for now we have the cult to handle. All else can wait.”

  “Yessir,” they said.

  And he stalked out, with his team at his heels.

  *****

  'Interesting,' said the colonel's voice in his head. 'Keep following him, watching him. The High Templar wants to know anything he says about Archmagus Enkhaelen. Anything he does.'

  Rallant did not respond, but obeyed.

  *****

  “Sergeant. Sergeant, I need you with me.”

  Linciard looked up from Vyslin's face—chalk-white—to Lieutenant Benson in the doorway, and shook his head mutely. He couldn't move from that bedside, not when blood continued to seep into the thick pad of bandages that swaddled Vyslin's truncated leg, not when his eyes wouldn't open...

  “Just a moment, lieutenant,” said Medic Shuralla as she bustled up on Vyslin's other side. Looking across him at Linciard, she said, “Sit him up just a bit, thank you,” and he did, his arm around the man's waist, shoulder against his back. Shuralla had a cup and a spoon in hand, and used them to dribble a little bit of liquid into Vyslin's slack mouth.

  He seemed to swallow. Linciard wanted to be heartened.

  All around them, the beds were full, with extra cots pulled out of storage and crammed into the limited space. Linciard couldn't tear his eyes from Vyslin; if he did, and saw all the other injured lancers, he would scream. Only this little task helped.

  Vyslin had lost his right leg from mid-thigh down. It had taken two tourniquets to dam the blood-loss, and even now Medic Shuralla refused to say if he would survive. He'd been unconscious since he was hoisted onto the back of a horse—Stormfollower's, Linciard had heard—and there were so many others who needed help...