Cob glared. He would not be outdone by a little girl.
By the time he reached the slurry of peppers and broth at the bottom of the bow, he was ready to die. He set the spoon down, mopped his face with his bandana and pretended not to see them laughing behind their hands—even Ammala. It was a welcome distraction when bread-crumbs flicked by.
“Children!” said Ammala.
A spoon flew past in retaliation. Is this normal? Cob thought as he ducked a stray piece of bread. A memory floated up like a discordant echo: three figures around a low table, quiet, formal and respectful. It brought a twinge of pain. My father never would have tolerated this.
Ammala dealt with the children by sending them to wash the dishes. They shuffled out with significant sidelong glances at each other, and once the door creaked shut, Cob caught a muffled whoop and the sound of running feet. Ammala sighed and went in search of stray food.
Feeling awkward at the empty children’s table, Cob moved to help her, then stowed the table and the mats at her direction. She gave him a slight smile, then an examining stare.
“You look much better now,” she said, and patted his scraped-clean cheek. He flushed.
“And where will he be sleeping?” said Nana Cray waspishly. “Not near me!”
“Then you won’t mind moving to the children’s side.”
A sly look touched the crone’s face, then she waved dismissively. “Put him in the goat-pen.”
“Nana, he’s a guest.”
“He ain’t a guest, he’s an Imperial and he’s already gotten more than he’s merited.”
Cob grimaced. Truth was truth.
Planting her hands on her sturdy hips, Ammala stared her mother-in-law down. “I am the mistress of this house, and he is working for me. Unless you’d like to patch the roof yourself, kindly go move your things. Now.”
With a scowl, the old woman heaved up from the chair and hobbled through the curtains. A muttered stream of imprecations floated out, followed by rummaging and dragging-sounds and more muffled curses. Ammala shook her head and turned back to the hearth.
“Um. Does that mean I’m sleepin’ with you?” Cob ventured. He told himself that he meant nothing, but all his comrades seemed to lurk in the back of his head, leering.
Ammala gave him a cool once-over, then smiled flatly. “Go fetch my children. And lock up the goats. Go on now!”
No light remained on the western horizon as he scuttled out, though the mother moon had risen over the Rift. Navigating by the sounds of scuffling and laughter, he found the children near the goat-pen, Izelina chucking spoons at her brother as he chased the little sister and growled like a bear.
“Your mother wants you inside,” Cob said. Aedin slid to a halt and flashed a grin, then dashed for the front door with little Jesalle following like a puppy. Caught in the act of flinging a spoon, Izelina froze, then swiftly gathered all the bowls and cutlery and strutted past him, chin high.
Cob watched after her until she vanished around the corner of the house, then sighed and swung over the fence to deal with the goats. Though they were very interested in sniffing him and lipping at his garments, he managed to close them in the shed in short order. The sounds of settling and quiet bleating brought on another surge of nostalgia, so deep and thick it made him feel ill.
Closing his eyes, he focused on an image of the harvest men. Their faces, their hatred. That was what he had to deal with now. Ammala meant well but he knew they would come after him if they could. It was the way of things.
He could not hide behind the witch-woman’s skirts for long.
When he shuffled back inside, the children had already tucked themselves away. Ammala glanced up from her sweeping and gestured to the curtain nearest the door. “Get settled.”
He nodded and brushed through.
On the other side was a small chamber taken up mainly by clothes chests, with a second curtain dividing it from the children’s area. Two pallets had been laid out in the middle with a line of cushions between them.
Cob lay down on a pallet and stared at the ceiling, stomach an anxious knot. The cushions said quite clearly that nothing would happen, but when Ammala parted the curtains and stood there with the last candle in her grip—a handsome woman, the years smoothed away by shadows, the white of her underdress luminous in the dark—he could not help the leap of his pulse. Now was when she would pounce on him with wicked claws, or…
She looked down at him sternly and said, “Roll over.”
Blinking, he set his back to her as she lay down opposite him. The candle was snuffed, and no other word passed between them. Shortly, faintly, she began to snore.
Cob closed his eyes, trying to shake off the weirdness of the day and let sleep come. That last image of Ammala, though, of the fall of white cloth above him, clung to his mind uncomfortably.
Only when nightgown-against-darkness blended into general whiteness did he relax enough to slip under.
*****
The ledge. The hands. The struggle—and then, for the first time, a neck and head and face joining the black-armored shoulder in its exodus from the stone. A man’s face, short-haired and southern-dark, trying to say something, his mouth twisted in an expression of strain.
Cob could not hear him over the keening of the wind. Did not want to. From the boulder above, Lerien shouted his name but could not reach him, and when the black gauntlets hauled him toward the cliff wall, he put his hands up to keep from being brained against the rock.
Instead, they passed through the stone as if it was water, and he fell into darkness.
*****
The tower burned. No flame of nature or magic could have kindled the white walls, but those within it were not so charmed, and the smoulder of flesh and furnishings stained the windows black and drew streaks of greasy soot on the perfect façade.
He watched from the pinnacle of the tower as smoke flowed by. The flat floor here was hot from the fire below, hot through the soles of his hobnailed boots. Behind him, the mages cursed as they singed their fingers while chalking the runes.
Only his partner Kuthra spat no curses. Since their entry to the tower—the Pillar of the Sea—Kuthra’s laughter had quieted. That mocking laughter he had thought could survive any horror.
Foot planted in a crenel, he looked down upon the besieging horde. Through the veil of smoke, they glittered like a blanket of crystal over the land below. Iridescent wings, polished carapaces, arthropoid bodies bearing the torsos of beautiful women or regal men—their mouths pedipalped, their eyes mad—they had long overrun the town around the Pillar, the great flat beetles that were their infantry piled three-deep in the streets. Woman-faced mantises screamed from roofs and steeples.
Too recently he had been forced to run among them, hobnails screeching on carapace, scissor-sharp appendages lashing at him from all sides. Kuthra had danced ahead, light as a ghost, the fringes of his robe flecked with ash and ichor, but there were too many monsters to fight—and guiltily he was glad that they had been sent too late, that they had not been here to witness the taking of the town or the betrayals that had caused the burning of the Pillar.
For all their power, he knew they could not have prevented either.
But now the Sealing ritual was nearly done. Already the sky was red, the stormclouds boiling up from the glassy sea beyond the cliffs. A white hawk circled far above as if lost. Here atop the grand height of the Pillar, he could just see the light of the Gate on the northern horizon, the mass of insects—stellar locusts, Kuthra called them—all but blocking it yet it doing nothing to impede its radiance. When he closed his eyes, its afterimage was of something pushing through. Some shining larva being birthed into this world.
Lines of light lanced suddenly across the sky, above the cloud layer. He shaded his eyes with a gauntleted hand. They drew themselves into forms, shapes—words in the script of magic, illegible to him. At his back, Kuthra and the mages began their chant. A thread of excitement unspooled in his ches
t, worming its way through the weariness and horror. Perhaps this would succeed.
Perhaps they would be heroes after all.
His part was done: he had brought Kuthra here. Now he watched the lines twist across the tormented sky as if the gods themselves had set pens to the red parchment of the air. From three points in the north and from the east and southeast, the runes flowed toward them: the other five sacred sites still secure despite sabotage and siege. The circle was complete. As long as—
A mage screamed, high and agonized. He whipped around, unslinging his stone khopesh by instinct.
There had been two mages left alive in the Pillar when they arrived, both cornered in well-warded spaces, terrified. One now stood above the other, pulling her dagger from her comrade’s back. Her eyes had lost their meekness and shone now with mad zealotry. Her side of the runic circle had smeared, the power cascading up from it in unstable jags.
Kuthra was fully engaged by the spell, his spirit manifesting to help handle the power. This was his purpose: to create the final anchor, to hold it until the sorcerer-priests at the other sacred sites could shape the Seal. His wings unfurled in great arches of bone, two pair, with feathers like ivory spears. Energy gathered in his hands and made his long white hair shine with phantom light, his ichor-hemmed robe shivering with it.
And this is my purpose, thought the man who had once been a soldier, as the other eyes opened in the back of his mind and the black armor flowed down over his rough scaled shirt, changing him. As he stepped forward, his boots became reptilian claws rendered in night-black stone.
The zealot’s face went pale, her leer of triumph turning sickly. I should have expected this, he thought as he swept the khopesh up. I should have known better than to trust.
What can not be salvaged must be destroyed.
*****
Cob snapped awake, wet with sweat and still tasting the greasy odor of the smoke. That final thought rang in his head like a death knell, over and over to the thunder of his heart.
Never before had the Dark entity taken him. Never before had that cliff-climbing, Light-seeking dream change to something else. And what it had become…
It felt real. Like there had been someone else in his head, remembering something he had never seen. And that black armor, so like the black hands that had grabbed him… Those unfamiliar thoughts, that face emerging from the cliff-stone…
I have to go back, he thought. Not for Weshker or Fendil, not for Darilan. For myself. He could feel the emptiness in his chest unfurling like a black flower, consuming him, and though he had run this far in a blind panic, he now saw that it was folly. He had to give himself up and let the Army do what it must. It was his duty as a follower of the Imperial Light—and his duty to himself, to his own blasted soul.
But he was afraid.
*****
Far to the east, another awakened. Shallow blue eyes opened in a deathly pale face, and for a moment they too held the memory of the white tower and the blood-red sky.
Then they narrowed. It was time.
Chapter 4 – The Penitent
It was still dark when Ammala stirred. Cob had not managed to sleep, too troubled by the dream, and he rose when she beckoned.
Outside, a faint pale haze lit the edge of the Rift though the rest of the sky was black. Sunrise in the Empire. The air held a crispness that would burn off as soon as real dawn came, so he savored it for a few breaths before cramming his feet in his boots and taking up the two-bucket yoke Ammala gave him. That settled, he headed for the river.
The grasses along the trail brushed his sides with dew. Whickertails, waxwrens and sunder larks flitted among the scrub, their morning songs echoing in the still air, and by the time he crossed the cart-road to the river, the sky had paled, the water reflecting like silvered glass. Two wild gartos, far taller and more lizardlike than Ammala’s domesticated dwarfs, stared at him from across it then shook their bright-feathered heads and continued to drink.
He edged down the bank and filled the buckets. Tiny silver fish whirled in the trapped water, and after a moment’s observation, he scooped them out and let them slip through his fingers, back into the mirrored depths. He wished he could follow them, but returning to the Army would not be as easy as swimming downriver to the camp.
In the middle of balancing the sloshing buckets, he spotted the other man: a dim figure in the weeds, back the way he had come. He settled the yoke and raised a hand in greeting, but the stranger did not respond.
The sun was still below the Rift, leaving the world oddly shadowed, but Cob knew it was not a scarecrow. It was a man, standing just in view.
Trying to be noticed.
A chill went up Cob’s spine, and he immediately checked his surroundings. That rince tree overhanging the road—was that a man’s shape blending with its trunk?
Yes.
And a second man crouched in the shadow?
Yes.
No others—not that he could see. The land was not quite flat, the wild growth more than sufficient to hide someone small or crouching, and twilight would not lift for at least a candlemark. The grass came up to his chest; he had probably been visible from a long way off.
He shifted the yoke across his shoulders, considering its weight. Can’t run with it, and Ammala’d probably kick me out if I broke it across someone’s face. But then, I was planning to leave soon.
They had not moved. They could have come upon him while he was filling the buckets; perhaps they were only there to watch. That little angry flame he had cultivated over years of being trapped with other surly, aggressive men told him, Face them now, or next time they’ll catch you unaware.
But he was not supposed to start fights. Nerves on edge, he knew he’d throw a punch at the first sneer.
He gripped the yoke’s hand-holds and started toward the cottage. Cold energy buzzed through him; he did not see the men move, but the moment he passed beyond sight of them, his hackles went up.
The grasslands fell silent. They were following him.
He had expected this. Expected it from Ammala too, to be honest; her welcome and protection had surprised him.
Did she send them? spoke paranoia in a soft voice.
His hands fisted in the grips. It was possible. She had talked with the harvest men for a while last night before calling him inside. And she had sent him to the river with this burden.
So that the children would not be around when they caught him?
Should deal with her. Deal with all of them.
“I’m not a mad dog,” he muttered under his breath. “I know you’re the Dark in me. Don’t mean I’m gonna listen to you.”
Boots crunched on dry earth behind him. He realized that for a while he had been hearing the swish of grass to either side; now it was gone. They were on the trail. Not yet close enough for him to hear them breathe, so he held his own, thinking about his first move. He might manage one solid blow with the yoke before the men overtook him.
Then he would flee. He was a fast runner; he could stay ahead for a while.
A slithery metal sound—a blade being unsheathed. His heart leapt. It was close enough to—
“Stand down!”
The shout came from ahead, not behind. He looked up and saw Ammala on the trail, the logging axe clenched in her fists.
He was trapped. The distance between him and Ammala was all that kept him from lashing out at her. Fire blazing in his veins, he took one step, another, and only then realized that she was staring past him. Still the urge to strike her knotted his arms and clenched his jaw. He forced himself to stop just out of range.
“What’s goin’ on?” he said through his teeth.
She gave no answer, only glared past him and hefted the axe. He risked a glance back and saw the men—four of them now--halted in a line, the one in front with a long knife held low. They were around his age. Mean-eyed.
“I told Silus to keep a rein on you boys,” said Ammala.
No response. No
chastened looks either; they watched him like hounds near the ends of their tethers. The spot between his shoulder blades itched. That knife had his name on it.
“Go,” said Ammala when it was clear they would not answer. She gestured curtly with the axe. “Get gone. I catch you again and I’ll send you weeping back to your mothers.”
Their expressions did not change, but after a moment the one in the rear stepped into the grass and started away. Two more withdrew a pace, leaving the knife-wielder. A sneer passed over his face, then finally he turned his back on Cob and Ammala and pursued the others through the grass.
Silence stretched as they watched the young men go. Then, with a sound of annoyance, Ammala said, “No one else could walk down to fetch water and come back with assassins.”
Cob eyed her sidelong. “They found me, ma’am.”
She gestured cottage-ward with the axe. “I know. The boy you knocked down, Eston, he’s courting my daughter. He came to tattle about this. You’re lucky I came out.”
“Yeah,” Cob mumbled.
“Now I think you need to go. The problem is where.”
He blinked, then followed her as she moved on ahead, axe slung over her shoulder. “You’re in bad trouble,” she continued. “It’s plain to see. I can’t have that around my children, so I won’t shelter you further, but going south isn’t the answer, Cob. No matter what you’ve done.”
His mouth set in a grim line. You don’t know. How could you, witch?
Out loud, he said, “I have to. I need… I need to be cleansed; I need the Light to burn away my corruption, either at the altar or at the headsman’s block.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “You think you’re corrupted? For what, escaping?”
“It’s more’n that. It’s about redemption. Sacrifice.” Automatically he fell into the mantra, one of the few things he remembered from his conversion: “The Light embraces all who seek it. It burns away the Darkness that clings to us. Through service to the Light we are redeemed of our crimes. Through sacrifice to the Light we are purified of our mortal weaknesses.”
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 9