“You’re welcome to sit here,” said Farcry, gesturing to the empty seat at her end of the crescent.
“In the corner? I don’t think so. Salandry, you—“
“Sit down and stop whining,” said the Artificer Archmagus gruffly.
Enkhaelen gave her a dirty look, then sat at the very edge of the seat by Salandry. Though high up in the Emperor’s hierarchy and bearing the titles of both Evoker Archmagus and Inquisitor Archmagus, here Enkhaelen was just another member of the Council, and by his tightly crossed arms, that did not sit well with him.
Beside him, the Summoner Archmagus smiled a thin, cold smile and toyed idly with his rings.
“Where is Snowfoot?” said Enkhaelen.
Exhaling a sigh, Warder Farcry sat up from her comfortable lounge and laced her hands together at the edge of the table. “A pertinent question. Scryer Archmagus Snowfoot is in Cantorin, trying to salvage energy signatures from the watchtower that exploded this afternoon. Also, several of her Master Scryers are combing the site of a battlefield in southern Amandon where an entire Gold company and twelve mages disappeared. They’ve found bodies and portal traces but none that go to anywhere but the watchtowers and here. And there are signs of necromancy.”
Geraad’s eyes widened. Necromancy and its practitioners had long been the bogeymen of the Silent Circle: little-understood but widely rumored, said to possess power over life and death and the soul itself. For centuries, there had been a bounty on anyone who practiced such magics, but though accusations cropped up regularly, it was common knowledge that all real necromancers had been exterminated in the first years of the Risen Phoenix Empire.
Of course, Geraad knew better.
The Archmagi all sat up, stricken by the word. “Necromancy?” said the Artificer Archmagus incredulously. “That must be a mistake.”
“Evidently not,” said Warder Farcry, and gestured to Geraad. “I called Warder Iskaen in because he recently witnessed a necromantic event in Wyndon. The Hawk’s Pride hushed it up, but Iskaen dictated his report to me upon his escape, and I do not doubt his assessment. And with this new attack...”
“Why were you informed first?” said Enkhaelen hotly. “I’m the Inquisition commander. If there’s been an incident, I should be out there, not Snowfoot.”
Warder Farcry shrugged, which did distracting things to her cleavage. “Enkhaelen, this is not an Inquisition matter. There is no one to interrogate. And as I hear it, you were away from your scry at the time of the blast.”
“I was occupied. You should have sent a servitor.”
“You should have told us of the necromancer immediately,” said Artificer Varrol.
“If we convened to discuss every necromantic rumor, we would never leave this room,” said Farcry. “The Hawk’s Pride has put nothing on the public Psycher Weave about the first incident, so all I’ve had to work with is Iskaen’s report. This new one, though…” She looked to Geraad. “There are troubling similarities between the two. Qisvar?”
Uneasy, Geraad looked to the Psycher Archmagus as he sat forward. “I have my back-doors into the Gold Weave,” Qisvar said, his voice burred with a harsh serpent-lands accent despite his decades in the north. “The Gold Army has threaded two reports about the situation—one on the disaster you mentioned, and another about an earlier mission to the north. Both were attempts to capture a man named Cobrin. He appears to be a former Crimson slave and some sort of spirit vessel, and via a third report it seems that he was imprisoned in the Thynbell Palace before escaping in another disastrous military maneuver.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” said Salandry.
“This ‘Cobrin’ was captured by the Golds after being incapacitated by the destruction of the necromancer whom Iskaen encountered.”
“And Cobrin then broke Iskaen’s bonds when they met in Gold confinement, allowing him to return here,” said Farcry.
All eyes turned to Geraad.
Sweat beaded on Geraad’s forehead, and his hands broke into sudden tingling pains. This past month had been the most terrifying of his life, but now he saw that it was far from over; the kindness that strange young man had shown him had now come back to haunt him. If the Gold Army was concerned enough to hide their reports from the general Psycher Weave and only communicate through their private sub-Weave, then some grim plot was unfolding. Through his meager knowledge, Geraad had just been thrust into the midst of it.
“I know nothing more than I have told you, Warder Archmagus,” he said, too aware of the tremor in his voice. “My contact with the necromancer was at a distance. All I saw were the ghostly wings, all I felt was the threatening aura. As for Cob—or Cobrin—I knew him for perhaps a quarter-mark. I could not observe his actions properly due to the arcane dampening, so I do not know what he was, or how he did what he did.”
“Your goblin was his companion, though,” said Farcry.
Geraad could not conceal his wince. Though he had gained permission to keep Rian as a pet, he had been trying to keep knowledge of the situation to a minimum. He had not been able to keep his neighbors out, nor could he lie to the Warder Archmagus, but the fewer who knew of Rian, the safer the goblin was. “Are you requesting that I turn him over for interrogation?”
“I would not call it a request,” said Enkhaelen.
"Respectfully, I—"
“Geraad,” interrupted Warder Farcry, though her expression was gentle, “this is not up for discussion. I permitted you to keep that creature because of its potential as an information source. With as much as they loathe magic, I am surprised it decided to stay with you, but we must now use that loyalty to our benefit. I am sorry, but the goblin must be turned over to the Inquisitors.”
Geraad’s gaze slipped to Evoker Enkhaelen, who looked insufferably smug. The thought of Rian in his hands—the man who had once recommended paralyzing shock as a method of Circle discipline, as well as refined the Inquisitors into a ruthless mob of flagrant mindwashers—made him sick to his stomach. The man had no capacity to understand what a deep mental probe would do to any mind, let alone a young, fragile one like the goblin’s.
And despite his attempts to distance himself from the creature, Geraad could not help but feel protective. Rian had no one else in the world right now, no one to stand up for him. Yielding him to the Inquisition would be a greater betrayal than the Golds’ treatment of Geraad himself.
He opened his mouth to proclaim such, cringing inside at the inevitable backlash, but then had a thought. The five Archmagi stared at him in varying shades of concern, indifference and contempt as he marshaled his thoughts.
“Respectfully, Evoker Archmagus, Warder Archmagus, I must propose an alternate plan,” he said quietly. “I know the goblin well enough to predict that he would do injury to himself and to others were he to be taken from my suite, and I can not in good conscience deliver him to you. However, I understand the importance of this information, and as a mentalist—though not a trained Inquisitor—I offer a compromise. Allow me to investigate the goblin’s memories by myself and find out all I can about this Cobrin. I will deliver these memories to you, whole and unedited, to do as you wish. Please.”
“Not good enough,” said Enkhaelen, sitting forward. “What you can discover, the Golds can discover, and we can not permit them to pace us in knowledge, not when their behavior has taken such a turn.”
“Then you propose to mindwash the goblin after it is interrogated?” said Psycher Qisvar.
“Mindwash? Why waste the energy? It’s a goblin. Just dispose of it.”
Geraad opened his mouth, but Warder Farcry held up her hand to forestall him, frowning. “I can not permit that, Enkhaelen. When Geraad gave his report to me, I promised that he and his…companion would be safe from harm. I will not go back on my word. We are already dedicated toward keeping Geraad out of the Gold Army’s hands. Adding his goblin to it is no hardship.”
“We can protect your little Warder because he knows nothing,” snapped E
nkhaelen. “There is no loss to us should they take him back, and he makes good bait. The goblin, if it is taken—“
“The Golds have had this Cobrin in custody at least once. The goblin is not likely to add to their knowledge.”
“How can we know that? If he’s really sheltering some kind of spirit, surely it would conceal itself from mages more than it would from one of its own creatures.”
“Oh, I see,” said Salandry slyly. “It’s your bleeding-heart spiritist leanings coming to the fore again. Making sure the only report, the only evidence is in your hands…”
“I am not a spiritist, you festering—“
“Stop!” said Farcry, and to Geraad’s amazement, the Evoker Archmagus’ mouth snapped shut. “You two,” she went on, pointing to him and the Summoner Archmagus, “I can’t believe how continually impossible you are! This is not about your personal grudges, it’s about discovering what the Gold Army has been hiding from us. The spirit, the necromancer, the reports hidden on their Weave. The mages who died or vanished were our people too, and we do them a disservice by bickering. I suggest that we do as Geraad proposes, then leave him and his creature be.”
“I second that,” said Artificer Varrol. “Let us resolve this issue now, so that we can turn our attention to the other news. Like that tidbit about the necromancer’s trail ending here.”
“A trail,” said Farcry. “Not necessarily the necromancer’s. All I’ve been told is that at least one of the portal traces led from the battleground to Valent.”
“Even though we were not involved,” said Summoner Salandry thoughtfully. “But none of our students could be necromancers. Between the Inquisition, the psychers and my sentinel elementals, we would have noticed such work long ago. Even the blasted library books on necromancy have been gone for a century. No way to learn, no way to hide…”
“Do you know exactly where in Valent the trail led?” said Evoker Enkhaelen.
Warder Farcry shook her head. “Snowfoot did the trace, but as I said, she’s in Cantorin picking up the pieces of the watchtower. She didn’t give me specifics.”
“So it’s likely a false alarm,” said Salandry. “We know the Golds have agents here in the Citadel. One of them probably went to join the fight.”
“We’ll know better when Snowfoot is back, but we were taking a vote on the goblin issue. Salandry, what say you?”
The Summoner Archmagus shrugged. “I don’t care one whit about the goblin, but since Enkhaelen wants it dead, I’m happy to have it alive. I third the motion.”
Enkhaelen snarled. Farcry looked to Psycher Qisvar, who skimmed his fellows with a thoughtful gaze before sighing. “I must agree with Enkhaelen, though not on all parts. Warder Iskaen is neither a trained Inquisitor nor a Master Psycher, and thus has not been taught the more delicate techniques in our arsenal. Nothing he extracts from the goblin’s mind will be pristine or whole. If we want to be able to examine the memories thoroughly, they must be extracted by a professional.”
“Two against three,” said Enkhaelen. “Since Snowfoot isn’t here, I propose we incarcerate Iskaen and his goblin until this vote can be completed. We wouldn’t want the Warder to feel he can flee us like he fled the Golds.”
“We will not do as they did,” said Farcry sternly. “Protective detail only.”
“With a teleport block. I insist.”
“I agree,” said Varrol. “Civilian mage or not, he is a Wynd like most of the Golds, and he has been privy to too much of this discussion. We can not give him the option of changing sides.”
“Agreed,” said Salandry.
Psycher Qisvar simply nodded.
Her mouth twisted in a bitter line, Warder Farcry looked to Geraad and said, “Four to one. I apologize, but the majority rules. Will you submit to the teleport block willingly?”
Geraad swallowed the lump in his throat and felt it become an iron weight in his gut. No requests or apologies could disguise the fact that he had no choice. His broken hands curled slightly behind his back, shocks of pain moving through them like electric sparks, and for a moment he wondered what would happen if he said no. How far the Silent Circle, his own organization, would go in doing to him what the Golds had done.
But he had felt enough pain already, and with luck, Scryer Snowfoot would side with his proposed plan. There was nothing to be gained by resisting, by running. Numbly, he nodded his acquiescence.
There was more conversation—more bickering between Salandry and Enkhaelen, more motherly interruptions from Farcry and blunt annoyance from Varrol—but it all became static in Geraad’s ears. He felt a wisp of mental energy from Qisvar as the Psycher Archmagus contacted someone outside of the chamber, then the weight of the man’s gaze pressed like a hand against his forehead, and after some unknown stretch of time he sensed the doors open behind him.
When the artificer the Council had summoned clasped the teleport-disrupting collar around Geraad’s neck, all he could see was that dark chamber beneath the Hawk’s Pride, and the chair, and the little silver hammer that had broken his world.
*****
Geraad did not sleep well that night. No mind-ward could keep all nightmares at bay, so by the time the sky outside his window began to lighten, he had already been awake for several marks, just staring at the ceiling. At the edge of his senses he felt Rian dreaming, but as tempting as those flickers of curiosity and glee might be, he would not intrude. He dared not taint the young creature with his gloom.
He made himself get up, pull on a dressing-robe and slippers, and head for the kitchen. His appetite had been near nothing since his escape from Thynbell, but he knew it was foolish to just starve. Logic dictated a routine to follow, something slow and easy, so that even if he found himself at low ebb, he could at least go through the motions. Eat, wash, shave, and not devolve into some unkempt, emaciated recluse.
Usually by mid-morning he felt mostly human and could pull a book off the shelf and read. In the first few days of his return, that had been good solace, even if he sometimes lost track of what he was reading due to the thrum of bad memories beneath his barriers.
Now, though, with the Council’s command echoing in his head and the teleport-collar around his neck, he knew there was no point in touching a book. He would absorb none of it.
As he passed from the bedroom hall into the parlor, he glimpsed a great dark shape by the door, and his heart leapt in his throat. An instant later, he recognized it: the smaller of the two obsidian constructs the Artificer Archmagus had sent to watch over him, its rune-etched head nearly brushing the ceiling. The other construct was stationed outside the door, no doubt unnerving his neighbors.
He clapped a curled hand to his chest, feeling the thunder of his heart. The construct gave no indication that it had noticed him. It was not his to command; the Artificer Archmagus had sent it with preset orders, and though Geraad could tell it to follow or stay, all its other functions—including defending him—were automatic.
He wondered how long it would stand against the Councilors should he decide to defy their orders and barricade himself in the suite. Certainly it could not disobey its maker, but perhaps it would fight the other Archmagi, or whatever minions they sent.
But that was foolish speculation. He was under their protection, not imprisoned. There was nothing to defy. Searching Rian’s memories would be an act of loyalty toward the organization that had trained and sheltered him.
In the kitchen, he detached the kettle from the heating apparatus, filled it from the tap then slotted it back in place. Like most of the suite, the kitchen was distinctly that of an Artificer—more a lab than a place for cooking, with strange tubes and coils of wire and interconnected machinery covering the counters and embedded beneath. Geraad had managed to identify a few cupboards with food—rather than chemicals—and one or two devices he could use without fear of explosions, but the rest he avoided touching.
Rian had no such restraint. On the far counter, another bizarre collection of pipes a
nd bracework lay disassembled, and Geraad sighed, certain that those had been whole before his meeting with the Council. The goblin seemed intent on dissecting every piece of clockwork in the suite—though to be honest, Geraad did not blame him. Staying cooped up here was no life for an energetic, inquisitive young creature like Rian, and at least he was not shredding the books.
Geraad finished with the tea preparations, then stared blankly into the cupboard. His neighbors doted on him, and often brought him tidbits from their shopping: fresh bread, sausages, the little fruit pies from the stall on the third Sky Tower terrace, vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, jars of cider and soup. He accepted them all dutifully, and let them install the stuff in his cupboard or cold-box, only to throw much of it out when it spoiled. Crackers and tea got him through most mornings. Now and then, he managed a decent lunch.
Today, he was not even sure he could eat crackers. His nerves felt jangled, thoughts disordered; flickers of the nightmares kept drifting up. Faces. Laughter.
He shut the cupboard. The teakettle hissed. From the hall he heard the skitter of goblin claws, and braced himself.
A small body impacted his shin, then climbed his dressing robe as if he was a tree, finally surmounting him at the shoulder and leaning out sideways to peer at his face. He tried to muster a smile, but it came out flat and tired.
The goblin blinked huge eyes at him, then patted his cheek with a long extra-jointed hand. “Bad sleep?” he said.
“It’s…. Yes,” Geraad mumbled, looking away. The teakettle’s hiss became a shriek, and he moved to disengage it from the heating coils.
“Still not talk?” said the goblin, riding along with ease. He leaned out to sniff at the steam as Geraad filled the cup, then wrinkled his snub nose. “Dozy tea,” he said reproachfully.
Geraad sighed again. The tea was a mix of samarlit, winterleaf and a few flakes of rashi, a cupful of which should calm his nerves and his stomach before putting him back to sleep with a minimum of dreams. Usually he drank winterleaf for appetite with just a flake of rashi for nerves—any more caused perceptual issues due to Valent’s arcane emanations—but surely the Council would not begrudge him the extra sleep, even if it meant he was putting off the mind-search.
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 30