The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle)

by H. Anthe Davis

  All Silent Circle neophytes were required to take courses on the history of the Circle, from its founding during the Great War of Empires to the destruction of the Citadel at Darakus and the rise of the Citadel at Valent. The Citadel at Darakus had fallen from the sky in the year 81 IR, its thirty-six flight-cores sabotaged by unknown agents, and on impact it had shattered like an egg, all the wealth of wards that held it together detonating to pulverize the towns that had flourished in its shadow and leave a ten-mile-wide crater of melted bedrock and arcane debris. Until then, it had been the height of arcane technology: a flying city of magic overseeing all the northern lands and peoples. An arrogant undertaking, in retrospect.

  Five years later, the Citadel at Valent had been raised as an artificial volcano—a vast Artificing, Summoning and Warding project led by the Artificer Archmagus Morshoc Rivent, who had planned and choreographed the entire working. From a single mage-made magma pocket, the workers had uplifted a new mountain on the plains of northeast Trivestes, then cooled and carved it into the black towers in which the Silent Circle dwelt to this day.

  Geraad flipped to the indicated pages, astounded that Archmagus Rivent could have any connection to necromancy. The name had to be coincidence; it was not common, but certainly not unique among Heartlanders, and Archmagus Rivent had been dead for seventy-eight years.

  Page 113, in the bone reinforcement section: ‘…including Morshoc Rivent’s recent study on infused silver implantation within the distal phalanges of the damaged hand to return channeling capabilities…’

  Page 123, in the crystal grains section: ‘…fierce objection by Morshoc Rivent, due to acknowledged similarities with human experimentation by haelhene slavers…’

  Page 216, in the leech section: ‘Current studies include those of Allaron Arganthus on the properties of Nazazcar breeds, and those of Morshoc Rivent on their potential in preparing subjects for bioartificing experimentation.’

  Flipping to the front, Geraad checked the date of the book. 77 IR, several years before Rivent’s rise to the Archmagus chair.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. I can’t possibly accuse one of the most honored Archmagi in the Circle’s history of being a necromancer—especially when he’s dead. It was just a different time, with different studies permitted. Anyway, what kind of lunatic would use the same name twice?

  But the idea of a necromantic mole within the Circle disturbed him—even more so because Warder Farcry had admitted the possibility. “Artificer Archmagus Morshoc Rivent,” he told the cloud-serpent, which glimmered acknowledgment then flew off into the stacks.

  Some time later, it returned, followed by a host of its fellows, each carrying a new book. Geraad sighed and started weeding through them.

  What he found did not ease his nerves.

  The vast majority were textbooks—the same books he had slogged through during his introductory courses. A few were compilations of theses or tomes like the Treatise that collected many contemporary works into one volume. But there were no biographies, no memoirs, nothing with more than a basic or academic level of information.

  The last one to float over was one of the large books of portraiture that the Citadel kept of its Council Archmagi. The cloud-serpent helpfully opened it to Rivent’s portrait: a Riddishman with limp brown hair and a hard face, surrounded by constructs and masonry tools, his hands and forearms sheathed in dangerous-looking woven metal gauntlets. It was a portrait Geraad had seen many times, but despite the size of the book, it could not show enough detail to tell Geraad if that was a scar in Rivent’s right brow or just a trick of the eye.

  “Take all of these away,” Geraad said, “and bring back…Citadel at Valent construction records.”

  He leaned back as the cloud-serpents swept away the books, then tried to relax as he awaited their return. Surely it was just paranoia that caused him to question the work of the Citadel’s architect. The only connection between that Artificer and the necromancer was the necromancer’s undoubtedly fake name.

  But when the cloud-serpents returned, all they brought were textbooks.

  Geraad stared at them in frustration. No more information than what he had learned in that introductory class. For a monumental undertaking that had required the skills of all that decade’s great mages, there should be articles, studies, logbooks, treatises—entire theses on the magic involved. Many of the associated mages would have earned their Master rank for their work on the project.

  “Master Artificer, Warder and Summoner journals circa 86 IR,” he told the cloud-serpents.

  They glimmered in thought, but did not move.

  He frowned. “Magus Artificer, Warder and Summoner journals circa 86 IR,” he tried, going down a rank. Again, they glimmered but stayed. “Adept Artificer, Warder and Summoner journals circa 86 IR? Journeyman journals circa 86 IR? Apprentice journals circa 86 IR?”

  Their fins and frills wafted delicately in an unfelt breeze, but the serpents made no move.

  “Loss log for Master journal collection.”

  One cloud-serpent zipped off, returning shortly with one of the library’s many logbooks. At Geraad’s prompting, it flipped the pages to a long list of names and dates—Masters’ journals, their year of cataloging and their year and method of loss.

  Every Master’s journal for the Citadel-raising time-period had disappeared or been destroyed between 93 and 95 IR—the two years after Rivent’s death in office. When Geraad investigated the other ranks, the story was the same.

  Looking further, he found that the majority of losses between 93 and 103 IR had been from the Citadel-raising collection, despite all safeguards put upon it. All of the original blueprints had vanished in 93, all of the copies between 93 and 96, and all of the subsequent and painstaking tower-remapping efforts throughout the next century had vanished within two to three years of their archiving. If they existed in any mages’ personal collections, the loss log did not say.

  He rechecked the loss logs for the necromancy tomes. There was no pre-Valent information due to the utter destruction of the Citadel at Darakus, and he did not know how much of Darakus’ collection had survived to be imported. However, almost no necromancy books made it onto Valent’s shelves, and the ones that did vanished during the same time-frame as the Citadel journals.

  A chill ran down Geraad’s back. Someone had cleaned up after Rivent, and kept cleaning up for nearly a hundred years.

  The most recent attempt to map the towers had been a year ago, and rather to his surprise, the cloud-serpents found the blueprints. When they unfurled them, though, the painstaking floor-by-floor drawings sent a new fear through him.

  They were as complete as they could be; he did not doubt that. Every hall, every suite, every staircase was documented. But the walls were thick and uneven, and only thickened the further down the towers one went, until in places they took up as much space as the rooms did.

  Just practical architecture, he told himself. Buildings need to be stable or they won’t stay up.

  But in those thick walls, he imagined hollow spaces. Staircases, chambers, hidden halls. Passageways from one place to another, sealed behind black rock that radiated so much ambient magic that most scryers could only bear to work their art in the heights, where the emanations grew thin.

  He requested the maps of the Sea Tower and spread them on the desk with the heels of his hands, fingers twitching slightly as he sought his suite among them. It was mid-tower, the walls around it thick, and he stared at them, wondering if the minds he felt flutter by from day to day were really in the hall outside and the other suites around him, or secretly behind him.

  In the walls.

  Waiting.

  Paranoia, Geraad. Just paranoia. Take a deep breath. Fold up the map. Bring it to the Council if you feel you must, but know that they will laugh at you. This is all coincidence. There is nothing wrong.

  “Warder Geraad Iskaen?” said a voice behind him.

  He flinched and half-turned in his seat to
see a tall, fair man at his shoulder, with three more behind him in nondescript robes but all with the distinct long features of Wynds. His heart leapt in his throat, and he opened his mouth to protest or scream, but the closest man flicked a hand at his face, releasing a puff of powder.

  Geraad tried to recoil but could not help but inhale some, swallow some, and recognized the taste. Samarlit, powdered and concentrated. Immediately the world smeared with dreamy colors. His bones became water, and as he slid down in sudden weariness he heard a hiss, then a man's yelp.

  “Get the— Pike it, there it goes,” said a voice. “Well, it's not essential. We have what the boss wants.”

  Hands gripped him, and he felt himself hoisted like a drunkard, but there was nothing he could do but hang between the men. As they started to move, he heard a shivering sound of question from the library cloud-serpent, then felt someone tug on the summoner ring he wore. He tried to speak, to command it—the only tool left at his disposal—but his body would not obey his mind.

  As the ring slid free, he lapsed into darkness.

  *****

  Shivering on the metal lattice above the Great Library's lowest balcony, Rian watched the men bundle Geraad into a multi-seat palanquin, then give their orders to the bearer constructs. The students and servants at the teashop that shared the balcony glanced over in curiosity but seemed to write it off as nothing strange. The kidnappers had evaded Geraad's Council-appointed guards by coming down several levels within the library, and as the palanquin moved out, the goblin whimpered. He did not want to descend among the frightening people, did not want to chase the huge constructs or the bad men.

  But they had his friend.

  He pulled himself one bar forward, then stopped. Another bar, then stopped. The constructs were slowly but inexorably moving away, leaving him alone, but he could not make himself go faster.

  Then a dark bird landed beside him.

  He shied away, registering its empty eye-socket, its missing left claw. It cocked its head at him—a trellingil, white-banded and dainty for a raptor—and gaped its beak wide.

  "White King," came the necromancer's hollow voice.

  Blinding wings unfurled inside Rian, jerking him forward. He whimpered and wrapped all his digits around the bars, but his left hand disobeyed him, reaching out to touch the breast of the trellingil. For a moment, energy sizzled between goblin and bird, making the trellingil's feathers puff and filling Rian's head with whispers.

  Then the force released him and he sat back on his haunches, dazed, fingers tingling.

  The trellingil blinked its one eye, shook its wings and opened its beak again. "Interesting. We shall see how well they hide."

  With that, it took to the air to pursue the kidnappers' palanquin.

  Still shivering, Rian watched it go, then resumed his creep down the lattice—slowly at first, but soon quicker, then wild, dropping from bar to bar with hardly a pause. He hit the balcony floor and sprang forward, a chorus of startled voices following him as he bounded down the ribbon-like path after the palanquin.

  Bad men were one thing, but he would not let Bad Morshoc get Geraad.

  Chapter 12 – Turo

  Lark held the lantern up, unnerved by the way its light reflected off the huge wolf’s eyes. “Arik, it’s me,” she said as she approached cautiously. “I have your dinner, if you’re hungry…”

  The wolf stared at her for a long moment, then lowered his head to Cob’s shoulder. They lay at the rear of the Mother Matriarch’s basement, on the packed earth among the barrels and kegs; though the Mother Matriarch had offered a pallet, the wolf had growled his disapproval, and by the look of the roots growing up through the floor to touch Cob, Lark supposed he was right. The Guardian needed a connection with its elements to mend.

  Not that Cob looked much better. A full day had passed since they brought him through the shadows to Turo, and he had not yet woken, his face still pallid beneath its tan. The smears of blood were gone, but Lark attributed that to the wolf, who had licked Cob’s hair into bizarre stiff shapes and seemed determined to let no one else tend him. Even as she drew close with the new plate of ham, his fur bristled and a low growl rolled from his throat.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said, crouching and swiftly exchanging the new plate for the old. His pale eyes stayed on her as she retreated up the steps, back into the kitchen.

  “How did he look?” said Fiora at the door, holding out a hand for the plate.

  Lark passed it over and blew out the lantern. The kitchen was already warmly lit, the clean white walls and bronzeware reflecting the hearth-glow, and the others watched her expectantly as she set the lantern on the sideboard and eased the door half-shut. “The same,” she said. “More roots, but…”

  “He has had a terrible injury. Not even the Guardian can be expected to mend itself so swiftly,” said Vriene Damiel, the Mother Matriarch. Fiora brought her the plate and she slid it into the washbasin she was tending.

  Lark pulled out a chair at the long table and slumped down, glancing to Dasira, but the bodythief’s expression was as flat and distant as it had been since their arrival. With a sigh, she propped her elbows on the table and sank her chin into her palms. “So what do we do?”

  “We allow him to rest,” said the Mother Matriarch. She was a slender woman in her late forties, Darronwayn, with long black hair pulled back from her refined face and wide, tea-colored eyes. In a plain brown house-dress, with sleeves rolled up as she scrubbed the dinner dishes, she could have been any wife or mother. Only the red braided cord around her neck gave away her affiliation.

  At her side as always was her husband Sogan, who had leaned against the whitewashed cabinets to watch her work, his normally dour expression somewhat softened. He was a broad-cheeked, barrel-chested man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed as plainly as his wife, and though he seemed stolid and graceless next to her, he gave Lark no uneasy feelings. His vocabulary ran toward grunts and monosyllables and his folded arms looked as thick as Lark’s thighs, but she got the sense that he would rather cut one off than let harm come to anyone in the house.

  Fiora pulled out another chair and plunked down beside Lark, then retrieved her teacup. The table had chairs enough for six, the house around them fairly roomy—two stories of old whitewashed wood plus a basement, the upper floor dedicated to three cozy bedrooms and the lower to the kitchen, washroom, gathering room and shrine—but Vriene and Sogan were its only occupants. As guests, Lark and the others had been set up in the spare rooms, and by the abundance of old toys and clothes, shoes, books and papers and souvenirs, Lark knew that the Damiels had sons. She wondered where they had gone

  She had questions about many things, actually, but she had never been certain how to approach Trifolders. They were valuable allies to the Kheri, but the intense motherliness of Brigyddians had always put her off, and the other two sects were not as common. Fiora was nice enough but not very informational, and with Cob still sleeping, information-gathering was the only thing they could do.

  Having spent most of the day asleep herself, Lark could not blame him. But now she was up and alert—and washed, and fed, and clad in borrowed clothes—and with Dasira oppressed by the Trifold aura, the onus was on her to get things done.

  “So, is there anything you can tell us about Haaraka, Vriene?” she said, knowing she had to start somewhere.

  Vriene glanced up briefly and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with a soapy finger. “I hold the medallion you will need to cross the barrier, but I have never visited. It is rare that we have contact with them—only three times in my tenure as the Mother Matriarch.”

  “How long has that been?”

  “Twenty-three years. Since the murder of the previous Mother Matriarch.”

  Sogan made a low sound, almost a growl.

  Lark grimaced. “Murder? I thought even the Empire respected Brigyddians. I mean, not that you have a temple here. Obviously they don’t respect you that much. But I’d heard
that they use your services.”

  “They do now,” said Vriene calmly. “The Gold Army has a small garrison in town, and when the young men get themselves injured, they come by for tea and sympathy and a bit of off-the-record healing. They’re local boys mostly, and we don’t mind them saying foolish things as long as they realize how inappropriate it would be to act on them. The previous Mother Matriarch… I do not know much about her death, but it was a different time. My husband and I were sent here to fill the void.”

  “From Darronwy? That’s a long way.”

  Vriene smiled slightly and glanced sidelong to her husband. “We were considered best suited to the situation.”

  Sogan smirked.

  Lark tilted her head thoughtfully. She knew little about the history of the Imperial Heartlands, but figured their arrival must have been after the disastrous fire-season Fiora had mentioned—though how long after, she was not sure. From what she had seen of the town during their approach, she could tell this place was older than that. One of the few places that had been spared.

  By virtue of the Trifolders’ influence over fire, no doubt. A good motive for the Empire to kill off a powerful Mother Matriarch.

  “Have you been threatened much?”

  “A time or two. No trouble has come of it,” said Vriene. “As you noted, we have no temple; we feel no need to rub our faith in the faces of the Imperials, whether home-grown or visiting. It staves off conflict. But let me see, what do I know of Haaraka.” She extracted a dish from the basin and handed it to her husband, who dried it with a rag as she stared into space. “It may be called the Accursed Thornland, but it is peaceful and perpetually warm. The people are human enough, polite, and can not go far from their borders without falling deathly ill. Many of them have wraith souls, but not all. They ask nothing of us, but in times of famine they have offered food which, though peculiar, did no harm to anyone. They are good neighbors no matter what strange things they do behind their barrier.”