Before he could speak, Dernyel said, “I am sorry.”
It hit like a punch to the gut, knocking Cob breathless. He grappled for coherence, and after a moment spat out, “Sorry? Sorry? That’s all you can say?”
“I did not wish for you to be involved.”
“You committed treason! What’d you think would happen!”
Dernyel sighed and tapped a gauntleted knuckle on the table. “Sit. We will speak.”
“No.”
“Ko Vrin—“
“No! I’m not a child anymore. You saw to that. I won’t do as you say!”
“I am not here to fight with you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come at all!” Cob gestured around the cave-home, snarling. “You should’ve kept all this to yourself! I don’t want to be here!”
“They seek you. I am the last who can give you shelter.”
“I don’t want it!” Cob snapped, and barely stopped himself from kicking the table. Inhaling a sharp breath, he glared down at it, trying to wrestle his rage under control. Polished stones dotted its hatch-marked, hand-carved surface—the pieces for turnabout, his father’s High Country strategy game—and a sick feeling struck him as he looked at them.
Dernyel had been teaching him that night. Him with the black stones, Cob with the white.
“I don’t want to be here,” Cob repeated.
“I am sorry. But I will do what I must, to keep them from taking you.”
Cob wrenched his gaze from the table with a low, bitter laugh. “They’ve already taken me,” he said, touching the brand on his shoulder through his shirt. “They’re seeking for my mind right now because they already have my body. They’ve had it since you left us.”
“I know.”
“So what’s the use? Why should I be on your side?” He locked stares with his father again, aware of the water in his eyes but fighting it, not willing to give in to the emotions that surged under the veneer of anger. He wanted so badly to fling himself across the table, to clamp his hands around the throat of the man who had ruined his life. The man who had not been content to simply destroy their family, but also Cob’s place in the Empire and all peace of mind. “Why should I care?”
Dernyel’s lips tightened. Cob saw a muscle jump in his jaw, and felt a moment of satisfaction. “The others have shown you the past,” he said. “What has happened before is now happening again. This does not move you?”
“No. Why should it?” In his gut, Cob knew that he was lying. What he had seen troubled him. But the vitriol demanded to be spat. “I don’t care about empires, or Seals, or whatever you pikin’ think you can involve me in. I don’t care about the Ravager or that bastard Morshoc. I never did. I wanted things to be how they were, to just be pikin’ left alone, and you! You had to come snatch me into this! Why? You couldn’t stand to see me be an Imperial? You couldn’t stand it that I’d come to grips with the hand you dealt me? You had to come in and pike it all up anew?”
“I came to save your life.”
“Then why didn’t you come save Mother’s?”
The words hung between them. Viciously, Cob wanted to scream them again, over and over--to stab them like knives at the cold, dead man across from him. It took effort to hold them in.
Dernyel flattened his armored hands on the table. “I could do nothing,” he said. “She chose her own path.”
“No. You did that to her.”
“I did not hand her the noose, Ko Vrin. No more than you did.”
Cob’s sharp answer died on his lips. Involuntarily he took a step back, his father’s last words striking deep. “I didn’t,” he rasped.
“I did not say you—“
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why you saved me. To punish me for turning to the Light.”
His mind whirled as Dernyel stared at him with blank incomprehension. The anger cracked. Underneath it, the tenebrous fear, the doubt, the hate--everything that had been stirred up by those wretched dreams--finally rose like corpses long-submerged, their faces pallid and accusing.
He saw the quarry. The whips, the soldiers. The older men—traitors, criminals. The grinning one. The rock in his own hand, hefted by a strength he had not known he possessed, a strength of outrage and shame.
Then the blood. The guilt, confusion. The quarry’s priest, speaking of a Light that burned away all crime, all pain--a Light of absolution.
Her face when he told her his decision. Her whisper: ‘You are old enough to choose, my son. You must do as your heart commands.’ The strange fear he had felt when she straightened, smoothed her rough prisoner’s dress, and turned away. Something had emptied from her in that moment.
Shaking, Cob thrust himself away from the memory of the rope and the shadow, the guard saying, ‘He doesn’t need to see this.’ It was gone, gone, five years gone. It was never his fault.
Gauntleted hands clasped his shoulders.
He raised his head—only slightly, for his father was shorter than him. Night-dark eyes commanded his gaze. “This is why you hate me?” Dernyel said, his tone barely a question.
Cob tried to look away, but a hand caught his jaw and turned him back. He knew his cheeks were wet, but the embarrassment of being caught crying again was overwhelmed by the shame. Breathing thickly, he struggled to pack all the emotions back in, to crush them down into the tight confines where he had held them for so long.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Dernyel sighed slowly and released his chin. The other hand stayed on his shoulder like a stone. “Son…My son,” he said, and there was water in his voice too. “Come. Sit. I am not your punishment. I am here to beg for your aid.”
Surprised and wrung-out, Cob let his father steer him to the table. The hand left his shoulder and he folded slowly down to the mat, staring at the white stones in their hatch-marks as Dernyel moved to sit across from him. The game was less than half-played, only a few ‘taken’ stones set apart from either side, off the board.
“We need you,” said Dernyel, leaning forward. “You are the vessel now, and they have bound our spirit to you. They have indoctrinated you into the dreams of the Light, hoping that you would carry us to our doom. But this is not a war between the Light and Dark, Ko Vrin. It is between our world and the Outside, the things that would devour us all.”
“Why do you people keep callin’ me that? ‘Ko Vrin’?”
“It is your name.”
“My name’s Cob.”
Dernyel shook his head, smiling sadly. “When you were born, I named you Ko Vrin. In the old tongue, it means ’hidden truth’. The Imperials do not speak the tongue, and changed your name to suit their ears.”
“So the other Guardians got it from you.”
“Yes. We share our knowledge, though sometimes we dispute over whose views are correct. We are from all times, all places—you have met only those with the strongest voices, those most capable of piercing the veil to reach you.”
“To convince me, you mean. To tell me to turn my back on the Light.”
“You have already done that.”
Cob shot a glare at his father, who returned the look calmly. “You have,” said Dernyel. “If you were faithful to your Imperial Light, you would not have fled it. You would have submitted to its punishment and been taken to the Palace to be destroyed, as they have been trying to do since Haurah’s time.”
“You made me run.”
“No. We have influenced you, but we are buried deep. You ran on your own.”
Cob looked down at his hands. Knotted together in his lap, they were covered in scars and calluses: all he had earned in the Empire’s service. “I didn’t want to,” he said, stubborn. “You taught me that disloyalty only reaps punishment. If Darilan hadn’t started this…”
“I know.”
“And I would’ve gone back! I still want to. It was easy there. Jus’ do what you’re told and keep out of trouble… I don’t understand this. You Guardians’ve been tryin�
� to convince me that the world should be fallin’ down, but it’s not. And you can’t even say why.”
Dernyel shook his head. “We understand it no more than you. By all measures, the world should be teeming with Outsiders, yet we see their taint only in fragments. The abominations such as your comrade…”
“Darilan? Darilan’s an Outsider?”
“No. This is what I mean. He is of the world, but the taint of the Outside runs through his veins like his own blood, more subtle and thus more dangerous than the locusts of Jeronek’s age. The truth of him is hidden from all eyes but the spirits'.”
Cob shook his head slowly. He did not want to talk about this—to be drawn into his father’s conspiracy—but he was trapped here, so he might as well figure out what the Guardian wanted. “You think there’s a gate open again. In the Imperial Palace?”
“Perhaps.”
“But Haurah didn’t see anythin’. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it’s just—“ He scowled, fishing blindly for another option. “Maybe it’s somethin’ else.”
Across the table, his father gave him a flat look.
Defensive, Cob felt his temper flare again. He slapped his hands on the table, making the stones jump. “You said it yourself—nothing’s happened. So maybe you’re wrong. Maybe Darilan’s type has always been here. Maybe they’re like the wraiths. They’re Outsiders too, right?”
“The first to come here, yes. Like scouts. They have managed to naturalize. Our mere presence does not hurt them now.” Dernyel did not sound pleased.
“So maybe it’s like that. Some creatures got left behind when the Outside got locked out. Who says there’s anythin’ in the Palace but the Ravager?”
Dernyel frowned, the creases on his weathered face deepening. “You guess wildly. You still do not wish to be an enemy of the Empire.”
“No, I don’t. It’s not—“ Cob sighed heavily and leaned forward to slide the stones back to their old positions, not wanting to meet Dernyel’s stern gaze. “I liked it, bein’ in the Army,” he said, staring at the monochrome pieces on the old wood. “I never really wanted to fight, but it became home, y’know? The Light was…home. The Army was order. Discipline. When I was a kid, you taught me to respect that, remember? Follow your orders, no backtalk, grit my teeth against pain, press on no matter what. Only back then it was to rescue the goats, or hang onto the rock if my feet slipped. Hang on ‘til my fingers bled. Refuse to surrender to death. Well, I’m still hangin’ on.
“Because what am I supposed to do, Father? I lost the life you gave me. It died on the rocks with you. This life in the Light, I made for myself, and it’s been like clingin’ to a sharpened sword but it’s better than fallin’ into the pit. Into the Dark.
“And I don’t care if the Dark’s not what I’ve been told. It scares me. You people—you Guardians took me over. Made me fight when I jus’ wanted to run. And I don’t care if you saved my life, or if you killed people who really needed killin’. You forced me. And now you’re here, askin’ long after the fact, usin’ all your wiles to convince me it was right for you to do that. Tellin’ me I should just believe you and accept everything you’ve shown me.
“It’s not you who saved me from those webs out there. It was Lerien. My real friend. And you Guardians say he’s your enemy.”
“Ko Vrin. He never existed.”
Cob looked up sharply. “What?”
Dernyel lifted a white piece from the board. It looked nearly luminous between his dark fingers. “This is your friend: a game-piece. A phantasm, trying to keep you in the Light.”
“He’s a splinter. The ogress said so. A splinter of a real person.”
“Yes. But not the person you believe.”
“How can you say that? You met him! He was my best friend! We used to climb the cliffs and the path over the Scar!”
Dernyel regarded him levelly and returned the piece to the board. “You did that alone.”
Cob shook his head, incredulous. He had memories of Lerien as clear as yesterday. Them together on the mountainside, half-walking half-climbing through the moss and cliff grasses with their gathering-satchels bouncing against their backs; diving together into the lake in the cleft, the water full of ice and storm-debris, their laughter echoing from the rocks. In the village, Lerien grinning quick and furtive from among the hostile crowd while Cob gripped his father’s hand and wished they could trade places. Wished he could be Low Country instead of High, could belong to that world instead of being reviled by it.
His hands fisted. He opened his mouth to let loose his rage at this phantom of a father for so slandering his friend, but Dernyel abruptly looked away from him--past him, to the door-curtains. Cob followed his gaze, frowning.
Through the patter of the rain came the faint metallic scuff of boots outside.
All the anger that had gathered in his chest clenched into a solid force. He lurched to his feet.
“No! Sit!” Dernyel snapped, also rising.
“This is then, isn’t it? The night you died!” Cob looked from the curtain to his father, trembling with fury. “Is this how it happened? Were you just sitting there, waiting for them?”
“Yes,” said Dernyel bluntly. “I felt the Ravager when he arrived in the valley.”
“You-- Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t we run?” He gestured to the occupied pallet-bed in the back of the chamber, not daring to look at it.
“The storm.”
“Pike the storm! Better if we’d all died on the mountain that night—you, me, Mother. It killed us all anyway!”
“You still live,” said Dernyel. He turned away, moving calmly to the hearth to reach into the bin that held the firewood and the iron pokers.
Cob stared at his black-armored back, seething. “I might as well be dead. I’ve done no good in this world, and I can’t do what you want me to. I won’t fight the Empire!”
Dernyel drew a long, cloth-wrapped item from the bin and turned, unwrapping it. “You had better,” he said, his attention on the curtain. “If you want to save your own soul, Ko Vrin, you must fight for it.”
The cloth fell away. From it, Dernyel lifted a silver blur—vaguely sword-shaped, but so distorted that Cob had to look away, wincing. “What is that?” he said, sidetracked.
Dernyel gave him a look of great puzzlement.
The front curtain tore open then, and Dernyel wheeled around just in time to engage the soldier that shoved through. Cob stepped back as blades clashed, his chest tight. Another soldier pushed in, and another. The table fell aside, the game-stones scattering across the rug.
Movement at the back of the chamber caught Cob’s eye and despite himself, he looked.
There, sitting up in the pallet-bed with a blanket clutched to her chest, was a young woman he barely recognized. The years at the quarry-camp had not yet etched her face with bitter sorrow; right now, she was lovely even in her fear, her face a pale oval beneath the dark wreath of her hair. A small boy huddled at her side, all eyes and elbows, watching in amazement as his father fought the soldiers.
And it was amazing. When Cob wrenched his gaze from his mother, he found it drawn to the blurred silver sword. He could not remember ever seeing his father fight—could not remember this night except in flashes, and in stories he told himself about how it had ended—but now he knew that Dernyel had been a master. In the constrained space of the entry, he took the Imperials down in pairs, the blade flowing like an extension of his arms to strike throat, face, belly, then retract into a defensive stance. The men were armored, professional, but when they fell they did not rise.
Four. Six. The blurred blade ran with blood.
Then suddenly fire roared in the hearth, and a wet wind gusted into the chamber. The tattered curtains pasted themselves against the walls, revealing the Ravager at the entry. Lightning coursing through the black clouds beyond him and crackled in the empty sockets of his bird-skull helm.
Beneath the beak, Morshoc’s thin mouth curved in a smile.
&n
bsp; The fury took Cob over. Knew my father? he thought as he stepped forward. Of course you did. He had no weapon and no care for what would happen. Pure murderous rage guided him.
He passed Dernyel, who broke the stare-down with Morshoc and tried to catch him, but the hand skimmed off his shoulder, a feather now instead of a stone. Before him, Morshoc spread his white-clad hands as if in welcome, and wings roared suddenly from his back, filling the entryway--ghostly multitudes of wings, flexing and shivering with sepulchral light.
Cob reached for the beaked helm, snarling, his other hand a fist. To pull that off and hammer his knuckles into the necromantic bastard’s face…
His fingers closed on it and cold fire washed through him. Through the lightning he saw the icy blue eyes. The world rushed and fizzed and burned in violent ecstasy, and as it all went pale—as he felt the tendrils hook around him and drag him toward the light—the white hands cupped his face.
Still smiling that terrible smile, Morshoc thrust him down into darkness.
*****
“Brick-headed idiot,” said the Inquisitor Archmagus.
Drawing back from the body, the Gold mentalist shook his head vigorously and felt the Archmagus’ icy hand leave his shoulder. On the other side of the cot, the second mentalist dabbed at her nosebleed and checked her bodice for spatters.
“Was that directed at me, sir?” the mentalist asked, eyeing the Archmagus. He had a wretched headache now. “Because I’m not the one who attacked him.”
“Attacked?” The Archmagus laughed shortly, pulling his black gloves back on. “I hardly call that attacking.”
“The whole point of this mindwork was to bring him to the surface,” said the mentalist. “Not plunge him deeper. Milady wants him conscious.”
“And I want to be kept apprised of his condition. I’m sure you can manage.”
The Inquisitor Archmagus turned away, and the mentalist thought, Do your own blasted mindwork then. It was satisfying to be able to think daggers at him; unlike the rest of the mentalist’s superiors, the Archmagus was mind-blind. Which unfortunately meant that when he wanted to oversee mindwork, he needed to hook onto a mentalist’s probe.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 47