The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle)
Page 22
“No,” said Dasira sharply.
Her three companions turned to look at her, Fiora in puzzlement, Lark worried, Ilshenrir with brows slightly raised. Annoyed by her own outburst, Dasira picked her words carefully. “We can’t think of it that way, guessing at their motives. If you don’t have any insight, Ilshenrir, then we have to consider what we can actually accomplish. Hlacaasteia…”
The wraith nodded. “Hlacaasteia is a flagship. Its defenses are nigh impregnable. Should they travel there, we will have only the most fleeting chance to intercept them.”
And if they plan to bargain with the Palace, Enkhaelen will involve himself, thought Dasira. I have to trust him with that. Monster though he is, he doesn’t seem to want Cob dead or in custody.
“As for Akarridi,” the wraith continued, “we would have no chance. You are correct. Considered in that light, our only option is Erestoia.”
“But what if we’re wrong?” said Fiora. “If we go to the wrong place and end up just standing around while who-knows-what happens to him…”
Slanting a look to her, Dasira said, “If we assault Hlacaasteia or Akarridi, we die. If we lurk around their border and accidentally trip their wards, we die. If we attack the flyers within message range, guess what? We die. Your goddess might have saved you from a bunch of soldiers, but her power doesn’t mean shit to the haelhene.”
Fiora’s face went red, and she took a step toward Dasira, hands fisted at her sides. “My goddess stands strong in the face of all adversaries.”
A sneer curled Dasira’s lip. Under her hand, Serindas pulsed with hunger. “Your goddess is a little girl who wanted to play at soldiering and got herself killed for it. See the parallels?”
“We can’t just guess at this. There has to be some way to be sure.”
“Oh yes, because certainty is central to life. There’s always an answer. Nothing happens just because the world decides to crap on you.”
“Have you already lost heart?” said the girl, moving closer. Her eyes held a hard fire, her voice tempering from childish bluster to challenge. “Or were you only along for the ride? We are here to see the Guardian freed from its chains no matter the cost, because if it dies, the world becomes that much more broken. I’m not afraid to follow in my goddess’s footsteps if it means I’ve done a service to the world.”
She was close enough to slap now, close enough to stab, and the desire to do both was so strong that Dasira had to force her hand from Serindas lest she act. “So you understand the stakes,” she said through her teeth, “yet you still want to throw your life—all our lives away. Which would you propose we choose? The flagship, so you can die in idiot glory and tell your goddess you took on the biggest threat in the field?”
Fiora glared at her. “I’m saying we should find out for sure—“
“Morgwi’s balls, can we not do this?” said Lark. “I know you’re all crazy but this isn’t the time to tear each other apart.” Dasira shot her a look, and she held up her hands defensively but did not back off. “You’re both serious about rescuing him, all right? So can we work on making that possible?”
With a curt nod, Fiora turned away. It took all of Dasira’s strength to let her go. Lark gave her a ‘what the pike is wrong with you’ stare which she ignored, and as if by mental accord, each woman retreated to her own corner of the clearing to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
What magics Ilshenrir did, Dasira could not tell. He spoke quietly to himself in his own language, sometimes looking into the mirrored glass and sometimes into space, and though the four stakes glimmered beside him, he never moved to place them into portal position. The sun shifted slowly beyond the ceiling of ice, casting soft shadows and faint rainbows on the snow, and at some point both Lark and Fiora gave up their sentinel stances and cleared their own spaces to sit.
Dasira did not. The tension in her shoulders would ebb no more than the tension in her mind. She kept seeing flickers of the future, the past—wraith spires, blood, dark eyes empty of life—and hated the girls for their ability to rest.
She was so deep in those visions that the first crunch of snow barely registered. But then came the snarl, and her eyes flew wide from their half-lidded state. Through the trees, a great shaggy form bore down on them, tongue dangling in exhaustion between bared white teeth. Its pale eyes were not fixed on her or the other girls but on the wraith at their center.
“Arik!” she shouted.
The massive wolf’s charge did not falter. He slammed into Ilshenrir, sparking and obliterating a sphere of wards and burying the wraith beneath him. The stakes scattered, the mirror flipping away as snow flew in all directions.
Blood like ice, Dasira rushed forward to pull Ilshenrir away from the tumbled wolf. The wraith came along with a hiss of pain, three lines of pearly blood welling from deep gashes on his cheek, and when the wolf took a bristling step after, Fiora stepped between them.
“It’s all right,” the girl said soothingly. “Ilshenrir’s on our side, remember? We’re making a portal to go get Cob. It’ll be ready very soon.”
The wolf growled harshly, but the words seemed to get through and after a moment his ears lifted from their skull-tight tuck, his lips lowering over his teeth. He backed up a few paces and stood, head ducked, gaze still locked on them as his flanks heaved.
“Did that break the spell?” Dasira mumbled to the wraith as she righted him.
“No. Not entirely,” he said, then shrugged off her aid to limp back to his tools. The cuts on his face had been sealed by the pearly blood, and he sat down with the stakes and accepted the mirror from Lark as if nothing had happened.
Dasira nodded and stepped back, glancing to Arik again. Fur still bristled, the wolf breathed heavily and quivered on his feet, pale gaze flicking among them with almost mindless animosity. She could not blame him.
As the wraith resumed his quiet monologue, she closed her eyes and reviewed all that she knew about the haelhene and how to kill them.
*****
Cob was roused from a dream of white wings by a battering of dark ones. He opened his eyes and raised his head marginally, and the motion sent sick waves through his body. Against his breastbone, the arrowhead burned with cold fire.
All around whirled a tornado of predatory birds—trellingils and ringhawks, vornicks and songkillers, eastern kestrels and a single black eagle, their feathered bodies spinning by in a great thunder of wings but no cries, no raptor-screams. Pale light flashed and sizzled, and the birds fell from the sky in sheets, but still they kept coming.
He could not see well, could not move. Cold wind burned at him but there was a curious warm downdraft from above, like a giant breathing. His arms were nearly numb in their upraised position, his fingers hooked through the links of some slick, cold chain. More chains enwrapped him from shoulders down. Beneath his feet was nothing but air and swirling feathers.
He took a breath, but it hitched in his throat as his lungs convulsed in webs of bright agony. Blood bubbled from his lips. Closing his eyes, he sensed for the Guardian and found it like a black rock in his chest, too fixated on sustaining his life to respond.
A sizzle filled the air and the storm of birds quieted. He slitted his eyes open to see a few still circling him but most falling, wings burning, some reduced to feathery rags. One trellingil flitted close by, and he realized with a vague sort of horror that it was dead—a great gash in its chest and frost on its tiny eyes—yet still flying. It darted up, then came back down in two pieces.
Above, his captors hissed to each other in the caiohene tongue.
Is this it? he thought dimly. Is this my death?
For the first time, he was too tired to muster anger.
With the birds all fallen, his gaze caught the ground below. The snowy hills had given way to scrub and sand and grey, glassy water, and some strange tide moved there, dark bodies heaving across the shore. Ahead stretched ruins—stone walls and broken ship-hulls, old subsided bu
ildings, storm-ravaged streets—and the wave of beasts broke around them, streaming in all directions to merge again on the other side. He could hear nothing beneath the rush of the wind, feel nothing, yet knew that their eyes were fixed on him.
But he could not return their gaze. His eyelids sank slowly; already the patterns of light and shadow had begun to smear into grey darkness, and the haelhene flew on.
*****
Ilshenrir’s portal opened into a gully between tall sand-dunes, a trickle of meltwater running down the middle. Dasira stepped through first, gaze darting over the landscape, but there was nothing to see beside the scrubgrass-clad slopes and a slice of green water.
“Clear,” she said.
Arik came next, still in wolf-form, his ears laid flat to his heavy skull. He prowled a few steps seaward then lay down in the sand, watching the gap in the dunes.
Fiora followed him, then Lark. Finally Ilshenrir stepped through and turned, crouching to reach back through the portal and pull up the two stakes on that side. The portal shivered as he withdrew, then collapsed entirely when he pulled up the two stakes here.
“Now we are committed,” he said quietly, tucking the stakes away into the silvery folds of his cloak.
Dasira nodded and gestured for the others to stay, then scrambled up the dune carefully, keeping low. The sandy ground beneath her fingers was cool but not cold, the air tepid, thick with brine.
Scrubgrass grew heavily at the top of the dune, giving her enough cover to crouch among it unseen. Tiny translucent crabs scuttled from her path and a few nesting gartos raised their heads warily, but nothing else stirred. She peered through the blades to see the green water only a dozen yards away, shifting and glinting in slow waves. No snow had fallen here, the land shielded by the lingering warmth of the Atharenix—the Sunlit Sea. She wistfully remembered when fishing boats had prowled this coast.
Ahead, rising from a sandbar just offshore, was one of the reasons they had vanished: a hexagonal spire of sunset-pink crystal, not quite as tall as the towers of the Hawk’s Pride but still impressive. The late light made shifting halos around it, and the sky and sea seemed darkened by its radiance, as if it had leached all the brightness from the world.
Not a single flaw marked its surface. Not even a door.
Frowning, Dasira beckoned, and heard the others start up the sand toward her. “What do you think?” she murmured as Ilshenrir reached her side. “Have they arrived yet?”
The wraith turned glassy eyes toward the structure, then shook his head. “I do not think so. It is resonating normally, which it would not, were the Guardian within.”
“What do you mean?” said Fiora from Dasira’s other side.
The wraith sighed. “What you see is not the entirety of the structure. Much of its physical aspect is subterranean, but even that is merely the first finger of an unseen hand. The rest of its substance is extended elsewhere, some parts in the Grey and others in realms that humans have no capacity to detect or traverse. However, as a higher structure meant for a lighter realm, any contact with a heavy presence like that of the Guardian will force it into a simpler form, its folds compressed, its dimensions restricted. Its resonance would dampen to something more ‘native’.”
“So he’s not here,” Fiora said flatly.
“Correct. Yet I sense one occupant, and…” Ilshenrir tilted his head slightly, regarding the spire. “There is a portal. Dormant, but I see the dimensional creases.”
“Like they’re waiting for someone?” said Dasira.
“Perhaps.”
“Can we sneak in?” said Fiora.
“It is not…formed properly for such an incursion. There is no physical path. The folds touch each other at many angles, some of them imperceptible to the heavy senses, and following the angles is the only way to move through the spire. Like passing through myriad co-located bubbles as they merge and separate, each one a chamber. If that makes sense.”
“Not a piking bit,” said Dasira. “But if we can’t get in, we’ll have to snag Cob from the outside.”
Ilshenrir looked out to sea. “Not practical. They are flying. If we are fortunate enough that they approach over land, we have only myself and Lark with the reach to assault them—and arrows will hardly harm my kind. While I can distract two or perhaps all three, I can not disable them before they do so to me, which would then leave you helpless. And they can evade us entirely if they fly further over the water.”
Dasira scowled but could not gainsay his argument. Certainly none of them knew how to fly. She fixed her glare on the spire, that horrible shining thing, as if she could burn a hole in it with her hate.
Then she blinked, a thought occurring to her. “So…Cob’s presence would make it ‘simpler’? Does that mean it becomes more physical, more like a normal tower? Solid?”
“Somewhat.”
“How would they get him in, then?”
Ilshenrir tilted his head, fine brows furrowed. “An interesting question,” he said after a moment. “We can assume that the flyers will be trapped in heavy-realm physicality, as there is no way to stop the Guardian from restricting their personal dimensions. In addition, they will have to shape a stable chamber near the apex of the spire to minimize the interference to their portal, as well as make possible a physical or phasing breach between the outer surface and the chamber. Once inside, they will be forced to maintain their physical forms and that of the chamber due to the weight of the Guardian’s presence. However, the rest of the spire’s structure is likely to crystallize, leaving no path between ground and chamber.”
“Except from outside,” said Dasira. “If it’s become physical, can it be damaged?”
“I’ve seen chunks of that crystal-stuff used in houses,” said Lark. “So yes.”
Ilshenrir frowned, but nodded.
“All right then, how about this.” Dasira gestured toward the spire, then patted Serindas in his sheath. “I climb up that blasted thing and chip a hole in the top. Drop in, kill them all while they’re stuck being physical, drag Cob out.”
“You will be sensed the moment you harm the spire,” said Ilshenrir. “Even in crystallized form, it resonates. Any wraith will hear the change in its song.”
“And can you influence this ‘song’?”
Ilshenrir turned his gaze to her, face placid as a mask. “Are you asking me to reveal myself to my kin?”
She smiled thinly, but inside her nerves were knotted tight. Haelhene though he was, she did not distrust him; he had been relatively honest and silent about her entanglements. By the cold light in his inhuman eyes, though, she knew she was pushing his boundaries. She had encountered enough haelhene at the Palace and in Akarridi to know how they relished tearing each other apart—mostly through politics but sometimes physically.
She could not guess what they would do to a defector.
“You want to show your loyalty to the Guardian, don’t you?” she said.
For a moment, light washed the details from his pale eyes and glowed through the bridge of his nose—the true essence of him floating up to stare at her through the translucent holes in its person-shaped shell. Then he blinked, becoming human again, and smiled wryly. “I am here to serve. If this is our best plan, I shall carry out my part without regret.”
Dasira looked toward the spire. “So how about this. We let them arrive, then you use magic to hide me from sight and we go up to the spire and you…resonate at it. I go around the side and climb. At the top, I cut my way in and kill the wraiths there while you lot handle whoever comes to face Ilshenrir. Then we get Cob out and get as far away as possible.”
“You really think you can handle two or three wraiths?” said Fiora dubiously.
“In close quarters they’re not nearly as dangerous as they seem.”
“I don’t know about climbing that stuff,” said Lark. “I touched the crystal blocks I was talking about, and they zapped me every time. If they have that kind of power when they’re cut up…”
Dasira nodded. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” said Fiora. “I can climb the spire too, and by the grace of my goddess, I can help you against the wraith magic.”
Dasira entertained the idea of kicking the Trifolder off the spire a hundred feet up, then shook her head. The girl was a danger to her in more ways than one, and she had no intention of being bogged down by someone who could accidentally kill her.
“No,” she said. “You stay down here. You’re a decent fighter but I don’t plan a toe-to-toe battle, I plan an ambush. You’ll do better against the ones that come out.”
“If any do,” Fiora said doubtfully.
“If any do. If not, you can pray for my soul.”
The girl frowned, then nodded reluctantly. “If that’s what you think is best.”
It occurred to Dasira that, bizarrely, she had become the team leader in Cob’s absence. She did not like it.
“Hoi,” said Lark. “Look, there they are!”
Everyone turned to see the black specks in the air, far to the west but growing swiftly. There was movement on the shore as well. Ilshenrir murmured something in caioleth and a tingle ran across Dasira’s skin, her vision hazing slightly as his concealment spell covered them.
No one spoke as the black flyers drew near, their flat diamond-shaped bodies and white-clad riders becoming visible. Hanging between them was a glittering cocoon, a dark figure encased within. Though she stared hard, Dasira could pick out no sign of life from it.
That was expected. What she had not anticipated was the tide of animal life pursuing the flyers. They covered the landscape from the water’s edge to the tips of the dunes, moving in thunderous cadence: wild hogs, goats, gartos, stocky hedge bears, balsheer cats, hares—and deer, hundreds of deer of at least three different types, vastly outnumbering the rest of the mammals. Beneath their hooves moved a multicolored carpet of scales, thousands upon thousands of snakes and lizards. Even the water churned with bodies as unknown sea-creatures answered the call.