Cob nodded toward where the shape had moved. “Somethin’ out there.”
Squinting, the skinchanger sniffed at the mist, then shook his head with a look of unease. “Nothing,” he said. “There is nothing. I barely scent you.”
Cob cursed under his breath. His grip on Fiora kept pulling him along, but suddenly trusting Lark and her mysterious companions seemed like a bad idea. Was that really Lark? he wondered. Is this just a wraith trick? But then, she knew about Rian…
I’m in so much trouble.
The more he searched the mist, the more it shifted. Where once it had been utter blankness, he started catching the outlines of structures—corners, thin buttresses, gate-bars, empty doorways, all swimming in the endless grey. Further away than the invisible people he clung to, yet beckoning.
And beyond them, faint swirls of motion, as if others had recently passed.
In the breathless silence, he found himself straining to catch any sound. His own footfalls could not reach him, but something tickled at the edge of his hearing. Distant, unfathomably distant, and soft like the whisper of wind through leaves. Sing-song…
A face loomed up beside him and he flinched back, swallowing a scream. Through the thin screen of mist, Fiora squinted at him, then said, “You all right?”
“Fine.”
“Lark says Ilshenrir says stop encouraging them.”
“What? Who?”
“Ilshenrir. The leader. I think he’s a wraith.”
“No, I mean—‘them’?”
“She didn’t say. But we’re nearly there.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Well, that’s a pikin’ relief.”
Fiora snorted, then turned forward again.
Annoyed and uneasy, Cob squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pretend that he was marching down a normal road, under a normal sun, with normal people. He had no idea how the others could stay so calm in here.
If some Light-cursed thing lurches out of the Light-cursed mist and eats us all, it’s their fault for not taking this seriously.
But nothing touched him, and when the neutral ground roughened to grass and dirt beneath him, he opened his eyes to see the mist thinning into a clearing. Ahead, Fiora held Lark’s hand, who held the hand of a short blonde woman, who held the hand of a tall, thin individual in a mottled green cloak. Cob looked back, and naked Arik smiled broadly at him, a pack-strap slung across one shoulder—Fiora’s.
Then the skinchanger glanced past Cob, and the smile withered from his face.
“Can we let go now?” said Fiora.
“It is safe,” said the green-cloaked individual softly as the last wisps of mist retracted into the trees. “We have exited the Grey.”
Hands fell. Cob looked around for what had troubled Arik, frowning.
Winter had not yet touched this place. No snow lay underfoot, only yellow grass and moss and small ground-clinging shrubs, and the trees that encircled the clearing arched inward to spread their branches like a red-amber roof. At the very center stood a pair of trees intertwined around a cerulean-blue crystal pillar; the trees themselves were heavy with autumn leaves and fruit. Tiny birds of all colors—red needlewings, green ribbonchasers, blue revanons and others Cob did not know—peeped and fluttered among the leaves and over the roots.
His skin tingled. Inside, the Guardian swelled until it felt on the verge of manifesting, its essence wary, threatened though there was nothing about the clearing that spoke of danger. The three women looked untroubled—awed, even—but at his back he felt Arik’s tension as keenly as his own.
“What is this place?” he said, eyeing the green-cloaked man.
“A waystation, Guardian.” The man inclined his hooded head. “I apologize. I should not have brought you here, but I had no choice.”
“No choice?” Cob stepped into the clearing, and it felt like crossing a threshold; the tingle became a warmth, not strong but peculiar, as if he had leaned toward an unnatural fire. When it did not increase, he warily approached the man. The women parted from his path, Lark with brows furrowed, Fiora crossing her arms dubiously. “What d’you mean?”
The man smiled slightly beneath the shadow of his hood, then bowed his head again. “You were endangered, Guardian. It was my duty to rescue you from your aggressors. However, my ability to breach the Grey is limited, so it was necessary to bring you to the closest waystation. We are approximately a hundred miles south and east of your previous position, perhaps a day’s walk from the border of the Mist Forest.”
Cob stared around at the forest that ringed them. Autumn-reddened trees stretched in every direction. “We’re where?”
“At the outer defenses of Syllastria, Guardian. Again, I apologize.”
For a long moment, Cob just looked at the man, who stood with hands folded together in perfect calm. Then Lark sidled between them cautiously. “Maybe I should introduce you two. Cob, this is Ilshenrir. He came to me, trying to find you. He’s here to help.”
Cob gave Lark a wary look. She had some sort of face-paint on: streaks of red across her eyelids and arcs of black down her cheeks, adding a feralness to her dark features. In her layers of garments and unkempt braids, she seemed far removed from the woman he had met in the Shadow Folk tavern, but the way her eyes hardened as she returned his stare was the same.
“How did y’ find me?” Cob said.
“We—“
“With this, Guardian. It belongs to you, by blood and pain.” The man stepped past Lark and held out his hand. Beneath the green cloak, Cob glimpsed some sort of dull scale armor or layered grey leather contoured precisely to the narrow build beneath. In the palm of the man's grey glove sat a silvery crystalline arrowhead on a thong. “I return it to you. You must keep it safe.”
Cob took it without enthusiasm. He had been shot with it, then had worn it for a long time after as a token of survival, but knowing that the Guardian had saved him rather than any strength on his part gave it markedly less meaning.
“Take your hood off,” he told the man.
Ilshenrir did not hesitate, brushing the hood back to reveal a fine-boned face with pale, slanted eyes and fair hair bound in a loose tail—not what Cob had expected. Behind him, he felt as much as heard Arik’s rumbling growl.
“You’re a wraith,” Cob said, not completely sure.
The man smiled wryly and inclined his head once more. “Yes, Guardian. I had not intended to approach you in such an obviously airahene way, but I suppose a lack of subterfuge can be a blessing.”
“Airahene.”
“The grey wraiths, as you call us. We of the Forest of Mists.”
“And how d’you think you can help me? Beside pullin’ me a hundred miles off-track.”
“Again, I apologize.”
“Oh come on, Cob,” Fiora interjected from the sidelines, “you know we had no way off the river. We were caught. No matter where we’ve ended up, he saved our lives.”
Cob glowered at her, not wanting to hear that. She lifted her chin pugnaciously and added, “We’re here now, so let’s just figure out what to do.”
“Fine.” Cob looked back to Arik, whose hackles were still up—visibly, his hair puffed from his scalp in a way that would be comical if not for the snarl he wore. He met Cob’s eyes briefly, then dropped his gaze and closed his lips over his teeth, but fear and anger still showed in the tremor of his muscular shoulders. When Cob set a hand on his arm, a rush of mad energy jumped through the connection, and the skinchanger swayed and sat down hard in the moss.
“Pikes, you all right?” Cob said, alarmed. He started to pull away but Arik grabbed his hand and held it in place, head still down, panting.
“What’s wrong with that man, and why is he naked?” said Lark.
Cob crouched beside the skinchanger, ignoring Lark’s questions. Though they had known each other for barely two weeks, he had already come to rely on Arik’s bluff good cheer. Now the skinchanger was wet with sweat as well
as blood—others’ blood, it seemed, for he had no visible wounds—and would not look up.
“Hoi,” said Cob softly, well aware of their spectators. “What happened?”
Arik shook his head, quills rattling in his thick hair, and just clutched harder over Cob’s hand. Grimacing, Cob reached back to pull at the cords of his rucksack, which had stayed reliably in place despite the turmoil of the fight. Arik’s chiton was at the top, and he shook it out one-handed and draped it across the skinchanger’s lap, then glanced to the others.
Fiora stood closest, almost like a guard, her arms crossed and concern etched on her round face. Behind her, Lark and the blonde woman exchanged significant looks. Ilshenrir had retreated a few steps toward the trees but seemed placid, hands folded, though his gaze never strayed from the skinchanger.
“I believe he is having an adverse reaction to my company,” the wraith said calmly. “His kind and mine have not been good neighbors.”
“If by ‘adverse reaction’ you mean he wants to rip you apart,” said the blonde woman.
Cob nodded. With his hand on Arik, he could feel emotions moving through the skinchanger in waves—pain, fury, over and over, tolerable only because they were escaping through his touch. They seemed to come from beyond him somehow; beneath their thunder he felt the rest of Arik cringing from his lack of control.
“Put your hood back up,” he told the wraith. Ilshenrir complied.
It took a few long, tense moments, but the waves slowly ebbed, leaving Cob feeling nauseated and rather angry himself. Finally the skinchanger released his hand and exhaled a huff, then said raggedly, “It was Raun. Raun saw him through my eyes.”
“The wolf-spirit, the First Hunter?” said Cob. “He’s here?”
“He does not need to be here,” said Ilshenrir. “Skinchangers do not have souls; they are connected directly to their parent spirit. This is what makes them so difficult to kill. So long as the spirit is well, they will recover from all but the worst trauma. But if the spirit is harmed…”
“We are all harmed,” Arik murmured. “We feel what he feels. His joys, his rages.”
Cob shot another look at Ilshenrir. He knew a bit about wraiths. They were Outsiders, invaders from beyond the sky, and they had massacred the skinchangers when they first arrived. They had even killed a few spirits before the Guardian and Ravager had allied to stop them.
As if reading his thoughts, the wraith said, “I am not your enemy, Guardian. The airahene wish to make amends for what we have done to your kind. That is why I was sent—“
“Just kill yourselves, then,” Arik growled. “Make it easy on everyone.”
“I fear that is not possible. We do not die.”
“Yes y’do. The army’s killed wraiths before,” said Cob.
Ilshenrir shook his head. “You broke their physical shells, yes, but my people are not physical. When we lose our shells, our essences flee to our ships to take on new ones, or else wander the Grey until we find the path home."
"The Grey—the mist?"
"Yes. It is the empty place where this world's spiritual and physical realms once met. The spirits tore their realm away from the physical one during our war, to escape our grasp, but it left a gap in between; now anything that falls through is trapped there, particularly my kind when we lose our physical anchor. If we are not close enough to our spires or ships, we are drawn in.
"I am able to navigate the Grey because of my connection to the ship Syllastria. It would not be the same for you. Humans exist in the physical realm only—they have no tether to the spirits and can only be where they are. Your passenger the Guardian could aid you, but it is inhibited. If you were to be lost in the Grey, I think only a wraith or a skinchanger could retrieve you.
"But let us not dwell on caiohene things, lest we ire your wolf.”
“He’s not my wolf,” Cob said automatically. He watched Arik closely as he let him go. The wraith's calm words seemed to have sapped some of the skinchanger's ire, and he shivered, fur rippling over his skin and fading, then finally glanced up to give Cob a tired smile.
“So, is the awkwardness over?” said Lark. “Because now that you've entirely unnerved me, we should probably sit down and figure out what we’re doing. Oh—and this is Dasira. Cob, Dasira. Dasira, Cob.”
Cob glanced to the blonde woman. Though short, she was solid-looking, with a serious face and straight hair pulled back in a tight puff of a tail. Her clothes were the plain, dull colors of a Wynd or an Amand, her eyes cloud-grey, and she gave him a curt nod by way of greeting. He returned it. There was something familiar about her. “Shadow Cult?”
“Bodyguard,” she said over Lark’s indignant noise.
Fiora stuck out her hand at the women in the merchant’s way. “And I’m Fiora, from the Trifold Temple of Shared Light.” Cob watched as Lark returned the clasp amiably, Dasira disdainfully. Ilshenrir only tilted his head when she offered it to him.
After that, Lark settled down on the moss and stretched out, arranging her layers like skirts, and the others followed suit in a rough half-circle facing Cob. The skinchanger stayed where he was, almost hiding, and Cob shrugged his pack off and finally looked down at his tunic. Blood caked his side where the eerie rapier had penetrated, but the pain was gone. Grimacing, he started shucking his coat and ruined shirt.
“Could I get my pack?” said Fiora. Arik handed it to her around Cob, and she smiled then pulled it open to dig through the contents.
As he scraped crusted blood from his side and mourned the fact that he was getting used to such things, Cob watched the others. Fiora’s traveling dress was slashed, showing chainmail and padding beneath, but though he saw bloodstains, she did not move like she was hurt. Dasira and Ilshenrir both seemed content to stay quiet, to watch and wait—though in truth he could not tell if Ilshenrir was watching or meditating or alive at all under his cloak. It was like sitting across from a statue. Lark, on the other hand, had made herself comfortable then immediately drawn her weapons into her lap: a rough-looking shortbow and a whole sheaf of arrows.
Cob tried to ignore the threat in her stare. “So. You’re all here t’help me.”
A general murmur of assent.
“Do any of you know necromancy?”
Dasira stiffened; Ilshenrir tilted his head. The first to speak, though, was Lark, her expression horrified. “What? Why would you ask that?”
“It is not permitted,” Ilshenrir added calmly. “We caiohene are capable of manipulating spirits and souls, but the airahene have chosen to disallow such practices.”
“So you can’t do it?” said Cob. “Or you jus’ won’t?”
“I can not.”
“What the pike do you need a necromancer for?” said Dasira.
Grimacing, Cob turned away to dig through his pack. The Trifolders had gifted him with spare clothing, and he shook free a green tunic stitched with coppery firebell flowers and pulled it on, trying to ignore everyone watching him. When he looked up, though, they still were.
“…Because only a necromancer can get the Guardian out of me,” he said reluctantly. “So I’m supposed t’ go to some place called Haaraka to meet one. If we’re off-course now—“
Ilshenrir leaned forward, suddenly intent. “Who told you to seek the Haarakash?”
“The Trifolders. And the Guardian approved it. Why?”
The wraith hesitated, pale eyes searching Cob’s face, then spoke slowly as if choosing its words. “That is curious, for it is a fell place for you, Guardian—but of course you are aware of that. However, for me, it would be suicide. If your intent is to cross the Haarakash barrier, then I can not—“
“Wait,” said Cob. “It’s dangerous to me and deadly to you? What the pike is in there?”
Ilshenrir frowned and glanced past Cob, who looked back to find Arik bristling again, a growl emanating from between his tight-pressed lips though his gaze stayed on the ground. His shoulders were hunched, tense, hands clenched on his ankles as if trying to
keep his limbs from shifting by strength alone. Cob’s skin crawled, and he gritted his teeth against the tickles of anger that seeped from his friend.
Guardian, what didn’t you tell me? he thought into the darkness.
Visions swarmed up behind his eyes—trees afire, crystal spires, unraveling vines, confusion, pain, terror—a flood of fractured memories so intense that he doubled over to clutch at the ground, stomach rolling with nausea. Stop, stop, he thought at it, slow down, I can’t—
It broke off as abruptly as it had come, leaving him with a bitter copper taste in his mouth and thunder in his skull. He lifted his head to stare at the wraith, hardly registering the others, only aware that the entity that faced him was alien, enemy—and afraid, though it had lured him into its own place of power.
“Explain,” he said tightly.
The wraith locked its hands together in its lap, the only outward sign of its tension. Its knuckles looked oddly knobby through its gloves. “You are not aware of your history with our kind?” it said quietly.
“No. Apparently not.”
“This is not neutral ground. I am unsure if—“
“Talk.”
A silvery ripple went through the wraith’s cloak, and for a moment the face beneath the hood seemed paler, finer, as if the force of Cob’s voice had pushed the solidity from it. But Ilshenrir did not move, and after a moment the cloak stabilized at a murky green. “From the beginning, then,” he said.
“My people are aware that we do not belong here. We are refugees from a higher, lighter realm, where we did not have shapes so much as…transdimensional clouds of shining sentience. Our descent into this twilit realm caused us to fold inward, to take on material forms we find cumbersome and unnatural, but we had no choice; we were being pursued by a greater light, a scouring light that would have devoured us all.
“We sought refuge here, thinking that we could hide in the solidity, the opacity of your world. It was sufficiently verdant to provide cover for our ships, with creatures enough that we could camouflage our essences within the ambient life-energy. We did not anticipate that those creatures—or the world itself—would be sentient.”
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 12