The tower doors slammed shut, stranding two men outside. Each took off in a different direction, and Morshoc cracked the whip at the nearer of them, taking him down in a smoldering heap. Then he released the whip upward, and it unraveled into shimmering strands which spiraled around his left arm. With a flick of his wrist he sent one of those strands like an arrow through the back of the other runner.
Each death hit Cob like a knife in the gut, but he could not move to intercede. His legs refused. Dimly he sensed that Morshoc’s destructive influence had spread close; the ground under the horse and the cart’s front wheels was rapidly desiccating, the downed soldier starting to spasm and foam. The soldier who had tried to play medic made a sound of alarm and stood quickly, and at his movement Morshoc turned and sent a strand of energy through his head.
Light and searing heat bloomed from the impact, and Cob flinched away, feeling sparks spatter across his cheek. His own skull twanged in sympathy. A moment later, another death echoed from the opposite side of the cart—the crossbowman—and then another right in front of him. When Cob’s vision cleared, he saw the would-be medic lying blackened across the faceless corpse of the wounded man.
A crossbow bolt from the tower caught Morshoc’s shoulder and his attention. As he looked away, Paol yanked from Cob’s grip and dashed for the forest.
No! Cob tried to shout, and something in him insisted that he could reach across the span of moss and stone to catch Paol, cage him, shelter him. But the white net scarred his vision and cinched his mouth shut, and he could only watch as Morshoc’s head turned. As his hand rose.
As Paol ran full-out, his arms pumping, steps precarious on the slick carpet of moss.
Then the world went white again.
He felt Paol’s heart stop like a spear through his own chest. The incandescent bolt faded, leaving the jittering body to crash down not even halfway to safety. Unhesitating, Morshoc turned to the towers and unleashed all the remaining energy-strands, and they flew to the windows as sinuous as snakes and disappeared inside. In moments Cob felt the cluster of lives in each tower go out.
The clench in his skull relaxed, and Cob dropped to his knees, shaking fitfully. As Morshoc turned, he registered that the only living presence he felt now was Rian still clinging to his back. Not the horse, and certainly not the man in the center of the dead zone.
“Well, get up,” said Morshoc calmly.
Cob bared his teeth and snarled, “Murderer.” He still felt the dark presence lurking in him—hiding behind his eyes—and silently cursed it for its cowardice. “You didn’t have to—“
“Did you want your little goblin friend alive?”
“That was— That was the only way you could think t’do it?”
“Suck it up, Cobrin. I’m not here to play nice; I don’t have time.”
Morshoc held his gloveless hand out. Cob just stared at him. The midnight energy was dissipating, allowing daylight to reclaim the cliff-top, and in its strong shine he saw clearly the five crossbow bolts protruding from Morshoc’s clothes. One hung loosely, probably stuck in the folds, but the others were obviously sunk in flesh. There was no blood, no indication of pain on the sorcerer’s face, only a faint exasperated smile.
As if the fight had been no more than brushing an obstruction from their path.
“Come along now, Cob.”
Rage curdling his stomach, Cob said, “No. Get away from me.”
Morshoc sighed, the bolts bobbing grotesquely with the movement of his chest. “I knew this was a bad idea. Letting you bring that goblin— No, bothering to drag you around mundanely at all. I should have done this from the start.”
He grabbed Cob by the arm, and the burning cold of his bare hand lanced in along with a horrible sense of dislocation. Cob’s senses swam. He tried to fight from Morshoc’s grip but it was like the sorcerer had frozen his bones in place. The world around them blurred and the goblin squealed in fright, digging fingers hard into Cob’s back.
Something rose from the depths then—a dim memory of orange-red light shredding beneath his hands. Cob focused on it and felt the dark presence grate inside him, sending pain like an avalanche through his skull but forcing Morshoc’s frost from his flesh.
The distortion popped like a bubble.
Morshoc blinked at him, startled. “I’m doing this for you,” he said, and the dislocation swam in again. And again Cob fixed his will on denying the spell, and though fine lines of light slashed across his vision, the arcane sensation popped.
“Listen, we have to go,” said Morshoc.
Skull pulsing dully, Cob growled, “Not with you.”
“Yes, with me!” the sorcerer snapped. “The haelhene will have sensed this. So will the Golds. They’ll be on our trail soon, and with your stalker still at our heels, we need to get out.”
“Whose pikin’ fault is that?”
“If you won’t let me recall us to sanctuary, then get in the cart.”
“I can’t—“
“Get in or your little friend is dead.”
Cob narrowed his eyes. Tiny fingers clung even tighter to his back. Nearly face-to-face with the sorcerer, he reached up and clamped his hand around Morshoc’s neck, but the sorcerer did not flinch. The dead flesh tingled with a strange electricity that seemed to draw from Cob rather than spark to him.
“If you even touch him…” Cob growled.
Morshoc smirked. “I don’t have to.”
Hate curled around Cob like a fist. He wanted to crush that cold throat, slam his aching forehead into that smirk, but he could not pretend he did not feel the energy being sapped from him. Whatever Morshoc had done to the officer—that roiling radiance he had drawn from the man’s body--
It was the same. Morshoc was a leech, a life-thief, a spiritual cannibal. Not a sorcerer at all, but something far, far darker.
“Necromancer,” he hissed through his teeth. “You’re the one from Bahlaer.”
Morshoc patted his cheek patronizingly, black eyes agleam. “Smart boy. Now let’s go.”
He pulled from Cob’s numbed grip and gestured toward the cart. As if awakened, the hose raised its heavy head; it had shied not one inch during the whole battle.
Dry-mouthed, Cob wobbled to his feet and felt the goblin’s tail curl tightly around his waist. They could run, but there was nowhere to go.
The dark presence faded back into the depths, and with it, his headache.
Slowly, Cob moved to the cart, his gaze on Morshoc the whole way. He felt the blinders threatening to snap on, to downplay what had just happened. To make things easy on him again by rationalizing that this was necessary to attain his freedom.
Instead, he watched Morshoc swing onto the driver’s bench and imagined driving a sword through his heart.
*****
Far to the east, above the misty forest, a cluster of dark specks wheeled in the sky. From the ground they might have been birds if not for the long stingray-tail extending from each. Swiftly, as if swimming through air, they turned themselves toward the Rift.
*****
From much closer and much lower to the ground, a pair of pale eyes snapped open. A long muzzle wrinkled, catching the scent of ancient authority.
Ears perking forward, the wolf rose from the depths of its borrowed den and ghosted toward the road.
*****
As the Riftwatch towers vanished behind constricting trees, Cob considered his options. The cart rattled its ungainly way along the slate paving, the slow eastward slant of the Imperial Road apparent in the tilt of the cart-bed. The sky behind him, initially thick with thunderheads from the Rift’s edge, cleared swiftly until the pale pearl tint of winter and the dark outlines of trees were all he could see.
Rian lay curled in his lap, shivering. The wound in his side was less terrible than Cob had thought—just a slice, already clotted up—but Cob let him stay where he was. The goblin’s presence seemed the only thing keeping him rooted to the waking world, as the intensity of Morshoc’s
chill pushed him ever closer toward hibernation.
Eyelids heavy, thoughts slow, he recognized that this was how things had been for a while. Morshoc had kept him tired through some controlled leech-work, like what he had done to the Riftwatch captain in miniature.
Perhaps Morshoc had suppressed the Guardian in the same way.
In any other situation, he would have approved. Morshoc’s relationship with the Imperial Light was irrelevant if he had a true, practicable way of suppressing the Dark. That it feared him and strained uselessly against those white lines was obvious; Cob only regretted that he had been forced to contact it to keep Morshoc from spiriting him away.
Still, Dark-suppressing or not, what Morshoc had done was evil.
Cob had killed once before. In a fit of pain and terror, he had taken a rock to a man’s skull because there had seemed no other way. He regretted it—not least because of the consequences—but now he could feel that rock in his hand again. It would be easy to give in to the enervating cold, to fall asleep and let Morshoc drive him to his fate. To pretend that the Light’s tenet of purification through sacrifice excused the deaths of those soldiers, of Paol Cray, in the interest of seeing this Dark Guardian removed.
But he knew better, and so he curled his hand around that guilty memory, trying to summon up the rage that had made him keep swinging the rock after the first panicked strike. After the crack of bone and the pained, querulous cry.
Morshoc had to die.
Is it even possible? whispered the voice of reason. He’s as cold as a corpse, and those crossbow bolts did nothing. If the stories about necromancers are true, this might not even be his real body; he certainly doesn’t act like a Corvish merchant. What could attacking him accomplish?
He grimaced and pressed fingers to his brow at those two spots where the Guardian-related headache tended to focus. Calm analysis was not one of his strengths. Every instinct told him to run but he did not doubt that Morshoc could catch him, and though he had no true attachment to Rian, he did not want the goblin added to his conscience. That left ‘fight’ as his only option, and if it could not be done…
There has to be a way. This monster can’t be allowed to roam the Empire.
And the Guardian would be no help. Even if Cob wanted its assistance, the best it seemed capable of was canceling out Morshoc’s spells. No small feat, but the weird icy enervation did not seem to count, and Cob had no doubt that extended exposure would kill him as surely as any lightning-whip.
Nor could he ambush Morshoc. He had already tried twice, and both those attempts had ended with a mere touch of Morshoc’s hand.
What did that leave for him? Almost from the start, he had known his pilgrimage was being hijacked. Now he could not help but feel like a hostage, trapped between Darilan’s frenzy and Morshoc’s malevolence. Choosing either of them would mean the death of his soul, if not his body.
So that’s the answer, he thought grimly. Embrace the threat of physical death, so my soul can fly free…
“I hear you brooding back there,” said Morshoc.
Cob’s heart thudded against his ribs. It took him a moment to get his panic under control, to remind himself that Morshoc was no mentalist, just an invasive jerk. “Don’t talk to me,” he managed.
“Look, I know you’re unhappy. And perhaps I overreacted, though I really dislike leaving witnesses. I’m willing to say ‘my fault’ and write this off as a learning experience—no disciplinary action for you or the goblin, just an understanding that we should figure out how to work together. Because we’ll need to, Cob. This is just the first step—“
“In what?” Cob snapped, unable to hold it in. “Learning experience, disciplinary action—who do you think you are?”
A soft laugh was the necromancer’s only answer.
Cob swallowed the rest of his anger and clenched his hands on his knees. In his lap, the goblin mewled faintly, big eyes flicking from him to the necromancer’s presence over his shoulder. Goosebumps stippled the creature’s grey skin, and Cob regretted not having a blanket or something to offer.
This is my punishment for running from the Army, he thought. I pledged myself to the Light and I should never have tried to escape it.
“Maybe you just need some sleep, Cob. Why don’t you lay down and-- Oh, blast it.”
The change in tone made Cob glance over the bench. The road ahead unfurled in a mild slope through ever-thickening woodland, only clustered threads of smoke visible to indicate human habitation. Approaching from a side-trail half-hidden by trees was a squad of riders, and for a moment Cob hallucinated their tabards as crimson, with Darilan in the lead.
Then he realized the red was maroon, the lead rider a man in heavy armor. A local Wyndish patrol, not even Gold Army—probably from a town just up the side-road.
Morshoc rose on the bench, not bothering to hold the reins as the unliving horse plowed forward. Around him, the chill deepened; Rian groaned and thrashed in Cob’s lap, struggling to get away.
He’s gonna kill these ones too, Cob thought, sickened.
Then thought, Opportunity.
He had no weapon, no plan, but at the moment that seemed irrelevant. Catching Rian up, he murmured, “Into the woods. And hide.” The small creature blinked, then hissed assent and scuttled to the edge of the cart to spring like a cricket into the passing trees.
If Morshoc noticed, he gave no sign. Ahead, the armored riders drew their swords. A single robed man rode with them, in green instead of army colors, and raised hands to weave arcane symbols that smeared with his horse’s gallop. The distance shrank.
Morshoc spread his arms—
—then spread his wings. Three pairs unfurled from his back, ghostly and shivering, the lowest almost skeletal, and Cob felt the brush of spirit-feathers on his skin. Felt his strength flow out like blood from a mortal wound, each pulse driving him down toward darkness. The sky pressed on him like the gaze of a predator—a vast, hook-taloned raptor—and he cowered instinctively and heard the horses shriek.
Then pain stabbed through his skull. For an instant he thought the phantom raptor had hit him, and he ducked his head to keep its beak from seeking his eyes. But there was no beak. Black ruins rose against his vision, burned and broken; black hills, scorched of vegetation, heaved like waves on a mineral sea. Black water welled up his throat, bitter with ash and salt, and he choked on it, his hands slapping blindly onto the carter’s bench as he trembled. Far above, the white bird circled and screamed like a woman.
Don’t pull me under, he told the darkness. Push me up. If you can’t stop him, I will.
And the world was there again, the wood-grain of the bench under his fingertips and the panic of the horses ringing in his ears. He lifted his head and saw they were close—too close, the riders clinging frantically to their bucking steeds or already flung, the green-robed mage on his side in the dirt, the cart and lifeless horse bearing down as if to crush them all. Bright electricity coiled in Morshoc’s hands. The world had gone strange and blue-black once more, and at the side of the road, another of those glass-sphere beacons flashed a sudden bright gold.
Against the pain, in furious defiance of fear, Cob planted a foot on the bench and lurched up. The ghostly wings went through him, leaving trails of fire and ice in their wake, but the black ruins soaked them in, dissipated them, quenched their cold flame.
He locked his arms around Morshoc’s neck and yanked the madman back.
They fell together, the lightning in Morshoc’s hands fizzling out as he grappled with Cob’s arms. Sparks danced and sizzled on Cob’s skin but he barely noticed; the wings were thrashing inside him and it was all he could do to keep his grip as Morshoc convulsed like an eel. Short nails tore at his forearms, and a stream of guttural imprecations spilled from the struggling necromancer’s lips without need for breath. Beneath them, the cart slowed to a stop.
He tried to twist, tried to snap Morshoc’s neck, but it was like trying to bend a steel bar by hand. In his head,
white lines ate up the sky and shrouded the reaching fingers of the trees; the pain intensified, squeezing his vision down to a sliver. Morshoc’s eyes blazed up at him, no longer Corvish black but blue like the lightning, blue like glacier ice.
“Treachery,” the necromancer croaked suddenly. “Perhaps you have learned too much from me. Or perhaps I chose badly. I feel them coming, Aesangat. We must not be here when they arrive.
“Give my greetings to your father.”
Then Morshoc’s hands were on him and the cold knifed in, deeper than permafrost, deeper than the black core of the ocean—deep into his heart, which clenched and stuttered in its grasp. The world went away in a foam of white, Cob conscious of his body only as a twig bent near to splintering, strained by the ice forming in his veins. For a moment he was back in Kerrindryr, sprawled out on a rocky slope watching the mountain hawks dance in the upcurrents…
He wrenched his arms, blind and desperate and vicious, and felt Morshoc’s spine snap.
The white vanished. Panting raggedly, he managed to open his eyes. Morshoc hung limp in his arms, neck at a wild angle, eyes empty and once again dark. Even as he stared down, the necromancer’s wan features began to liquefy like paint, sloughing away from the rotting muscle and bone beneath.
Bile surged in his throat and he shoved the corpse away. Dimly, through the ringing in his ears, he heard shouts, but could not tear his gaze from the putrescence consuming his erstwhile mentor. A lurch and thud from ahead told him that the cart-horse had collapsed in its traces.
He felt numb, horribly numb. He looked down at his arms where Morshoc had scratched. Pale lines showed on the flesh, not bad, but as he stared, a spatter of blood fell into his palm.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 35