The Mother Matriarch led them through the crusted snow toward a low stone wall that divided one field from another. She was garbed formally yet still quite plainly in the brown dress that seemed to be the Brigyddians’ vestments; no bells hemmed her sleeves like Aglavyn, but she wore a stole under her weather-cloak, heavily embroidered with stylized flames. Sogan ambled beside her, dark eyes constantly scanning their surroundings, but the whiteness stretched unbroken all around them. There was no place to hide.
Vriene paused at the wall and Cob halted at her heels, waiting for her to climb over. Instead, she turned to him and reached up to draw a medallion from around her neck.
“This is the barrier,” she said, offering it to him. “Would that we could accompany you, but we have our duties here.”
His brows crinkled, and he eyed the wall. It was barely knee-high and cut across the landscape at a slight curve, a few berry-brambles growing wild along this side. The other side was bare, and when he squinted at the hills beyond it, somehow his gaze slid away. Stepping closer, he reached out cautiously. The empty air turned his hand aside so gently that he might not have noticed had he not been staring at it.
“A veil as well as a ward,” said Ilshenrir. “It must require a tremendous amount of energy.”
Cob looked back to the medallion, having second thoughts. It was a simple bronze oblong etched and lacquered with the image of a blooming red rose, and for a moment he saw the scene at the shore—the wraith bound to the sand, the Ravager’s spear in its chest as it devolved into thorny vines.
He grimaced and beckoned for it. When Vriene pressed it into his palm, a strange warm tingle ran through him.
“I guess this is it,” he said, looking around at the others. Fiora stood ready; Lark gave him an encouraging smile; off to the side, Ilshenrir inclined his head reverently. Arik loomed in the background, pale eyes mournful; Cob supposed he wanted to get no closer to the barrier.
Something moved beyond them, and he peered past to see Dasira stalking up their trail, hands jammed in the pockets of her borrowed coat. His stomach roiled and his mouth went dry as everything he wanted to say flooded his mind.
Abruptly she halted, her attention snapping to the woods. A pause, then she turned that way and broke into a run.
“Hoi!” he called after her, but she never looked back. In moments she had vanished among the trees.
He stared after her, baffled, and started to follow. Lark snagged his sleeve before he could pass. “You should probably give her some time,” she said.
Cob glared at Lark, and realized from her apologetic expression that she knew. Of course she did; she and Darilan had been together on the plan to rescue him from the Golds, and evidently their alliance had continued even after Darilan’s death.
He wanted to grab her by the throat and shake the answers from her. Why? How? Have you always known? He saw her gulp, and knew she could read that urge on his face.
So he closed his eyes, pushed the anger down. It took effort, and even when he felt capable of looking at her again without hurting her, his hands still shook slightly. The edge of the medallion dug into his palm.
“Fine,” he said in a low voice. “She has ‘til we get back. You better keep her outta trouble.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry,” said Lark, and patted his shoulder cautiously. He jerked away and she winced.
The others were watching them quizzically—except for Ilshenrir, who had half-turned to stare into the woods where Dasira had gone. Cob met their gazes with a stiff smile and a shrug. “So, we ready?” he asked Fiora.
The Trifolder girl shifted her rucksack across her shoulders and nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“All right, then we—“
His air cut off as Arik crushed him in a hug. He patted the skinchanger awkwardly with the hand that had not been pinned, and for a moment Arik pushed back to stare down at him, strong face crumpled with worry. Then those brawny arms wrapped around again and nearly squished him to death.
“Arik!” he wheezed. “Arik, pike it, this won’t work if y’break my ribs!”
“That’s right, give him ideas,” said Lark.
The skinchanger sniffled, then released him. “You take good care,” he said solemnly. “And remember what I taught you about trousers.”
Fiora rolled her eyes.
“Uh…right,” Cob said, straightening his gear. “So. Vriene, anythin’ you want me to tell the folks in there?”
“No, thank you,” said the Mother Matriarch, shaking her head. “But if you permit, I will bless you for the trip.”
At Cob’s nod, she reached up to press two fingers to his brow. An aura of vitality flowed from her, so different from that of the dying Mother Matriarch of Cantorin. “Blessings be upon you, Cobrin, bearer of the Guardian,” she said. “In the name of Brigydde Ecaeline. Uvadha ahranxanat.”
Warmth spread through him from ear-tips to toes, banishing the chill of the air. With it came a soothing feeling—hearth-fire and sunlight and wind, the vista from the cave-mouth of his childhood.
He blinked rapidly, the remnants of his anger falling away. The Mother Matriarch’s touch trailed down his cheek, then left him, and he heard her murmur a similar benediction over Fiora.
Once more he looked to the woods where Dasira had vanished, then to the medallion in his hand. The barrier stood ahead, and beyond it the unknown future.
With a last nod to the others, he clasped Fiora’s hand and stepped forward, over the wall.
*****
Dasira had planned to be there. All night she had wandered the streets of Turo, teeth chattering, only avoiding frostbite by the agitation the Trifold aura caused in her. By dawn, she had run through the arguments a thousand times, and she was sure she could face him. Face her fate, whatever it might be.
But then had come the voice in her ear.
‘Vedaceirra.’
When it first spoke, she was halfway up their trail, the aura of the Trifold warding finally behind her. Already her heart was racing; just seeing them gathered together, allies and spiritual enemies, made her nerves sing with tension. The words swarmed in her head, so many she feared they would spill from her lips even at this distance.
Then the voice. That horrible anchor on her soul.
She stopped in her tracks and looked away, knowing that he could see through her eyes if he so chose. “Stop calling me that,” she murmured.
‘Not likely. Where are you? You’ve been out of contact for days.’
The Trifold ward. For the first time, she felt grateful for that awful thing.
“Nowhere,” she said.
‘I don’t have the patience for games today.’
“Too bad.” The scrubby woods lay ahead, and without thought she ran for it. A voice called out behind her but she pretended not to hear. She felt the muscles in the right side of her neck tense, as if the ear-stud was expanding its influence, but when it made her head turn, it turned the wrong way. She nearly ran into a tree and cursed under her breath.
‘Stop resisting,’ said Enkhaelen.
“Pike you.”
‘You think you can hide from me?’
She gritted her teeth as a spasm rolled down her right side and froze her leg. Stumbling, she clipped another tree with her shoulder and just caught herself from sprawling into the briars. Her right hand grasped the bark, her right side started to turn her.
With her left hand, she slid Serindas from his sheath.
“Stop, or I’ll make it stop,” she hissed.
‘I’m already in you. Removing the stud won’t help.’
“Not the stud,” she growled, and lifted Serindas’ tip toward her eye.
Her right arm shot up to grip her left, but she grinned viciously as her threads moved against Enkhaelen’s efforts. The blade’s tip hovered before her, burning crimson, and she knew that at the slightest contact, Serindas’ hunger would drive him into her even without her help.
‘Vedaceirra,’ said Enkhaelen, exa
sperated, ‘I’m not trying to harm him. Believe me, this is for his own good.’
“Like converting me was for my own good?”
‘You’ve lived this long because I—‘
“Forty-five years of servitude isn’t a life,” she snarled. “I watched my family age and die—my parents, my brothers—and you try to pretend this was a gift?”
‘I didn’t say that.’
“If you think I’ll let you hunt the only friend I have left—“
‘He’s your charge, not your friend. You’re his keeper and that’s all you’ve ever been. I sent you to watch him, to guard him. Now where is he?’
“Dead in a spire.”
A sigh. ‘Vedaceirra, please. I’m not a fool. There are strong caiohene emanations around you but no resonance—not a spire. Some kind of deific aura nearby, probably Trifold. Some spirit interference. It’s familiar… Just tell me where and we can consider this conversation closed.’
She said nothing. The akarriden blade shivered in her hand.
‘Or stand there like a martyr. Fine by me.’
Her mouth flattened in anger. What did her monstrous maker know of martyrdom, of sacrifice? He was the one at the end of the puppet strings, sending thousands to dance for him, to die for him, all to some unknowable end. Forty-five years since she had lost her original body and been condemned to this bracer, to serving the Emperor and his son but obeying only Enkhaelen.
She was done. Finally, she was done.
She steeled her will to finish it.
‘Stab the bracer if you’re serious,’ said the voice in her ear. ‘But tell me, do you really want to leave Cob to me?’
The blade wavered. That was a good point. She had no power over Enkhaelen, no strikes that could break his shields, but she did have knowledge. Things she should have shared with Cob long ago. If he was to kill ‘Morshoc’, then he needed what she knew. More than anything, she had to make him aware of what he was up against.
She lowered the blade, took a deep breath. Perhaps he was still on this side of the barrier. Perhaps there was time…
'Oh by the Scouring Light,’ said Enkhaelen, interrupting her thoughts. For once there was no mockery in his voice, only incredulous anger. ‘I knew it. You're near Haaraka. What is wrong with you people? You escape the haelhene only to run there? Of all the masochistic plans you could have made, you chose to flee to the place infested with reembodied wraiths? I swear, I am going to come over there and kill you all just to save you from your idiocy!
‘No. I won’t kill you,’ he amended immediately. ‘That would be too good for you. No, no, I’ll haul you out of the fire and we’ll have a nice long chat. Won’t that be lovely. Tea and biscuits and complete piking annihilation.’
An exhale. ‘You are seriously… I’m on my last nerve right now. I have enough to handle without this. And you, Vedaceirra, you should have known better. How could you take him out of one set of wraith hands only to put him in another?’
She kept her mouth shut, though his words needled at her fears.
‘Fine. If this is how you want to play it…fine. I am going to have a screaming fit, and then I’ll come deal with this. You had better thank me when I’m done.’
And with that, the stud went silent.
It took Dasira several tries to sheathe Serindas, her hands shaking so badly she nearly stabbed herself twice. By the time she made her way to the edge of the trees, the group by the wall had broken up. Cob and Fiora were gone.
She wiped cold sweat from her face and turned up the collar of her coat. Most of the others had moved toward the town, but Ilshenrir was drifting toward her, though she knew she was still mostly hidden. She swallowed thickly, but if anyone would understand her problem, it was him.
If anyone could challenge Enkhaelen’s magic, it was him.
*****
The world changed before Cob’s eyes.
Where once had been the icy, indifferent hills, there now stretched a gently rolling plainsland, rich with wild grasses and late summer flowers. The air was sweet and warm. Water trickled from the gaps in the rock wall, forming tiny streamlets that wandered downhill, and trees dotted the landscape in patches of green and gold and red foliage. In the distance the grasses thickened to thorny wilderness.
He looked back at the barrier and saw the others through it as if through a thin skin of water. They appeared faded, their eyes evading him, and he guessed that he had vanished. Fiora, emerging beside him, blinked rapidly in the warm light.
“Oh my,” she said, staring around. “It really is the Summerland.”
“More like the Autumnland,” he murmured. Already the Guardian had gone inert within him, just a dark stone at the bottom of a well, but the warmth was pleasant and as he looked out at the landscape, he found himself relaxing a bit. It was not what he had expected from a land of fallen wraiths.
He admonished himself to be cautious. Just because it was a nice place didn’t mean it was a kind one.
Near the border, the grass had been crimped short by the chill radiating from beyond the wall. He spotted a footpath not far away and moved toward it, drawing Fiora along.
The grasses grew taller swiftly, interwoven with flowering thorn and berry brambles. The sky was thick with clouds but here they felt welcome, like in Illane when they graciously blotted out the searing sun. A mist of tiny raindrops touched him, remnants of the falling snow, and butterflies and fat bees flew up from the flowers as they passed. Creeper roses clung tight to the trunks of trees and laced bushes with their dark red blooms. Their perfume mingled with the smell of warm damp earth and clean water to brush away all his worries.
Despite everything, the peace felt natural. Through their shrouds of leaves, all the trees hung heavy with fruit, and small birds flitted among them, livening the air with their calls. Animals moved through the underbrush lazily, without the furtive or fearful sounds of predator and prey.
I could live here, he thought.
“Cob, you can let go now.”
He blinked and looked back at Fiora. She nodded pointedly to his hand, still clasped on hers over the medallion.
Immediately he let go, blushing, and turned forward with a muttered apology. Somehow his fingers still felt the press of hers, and he focused on hooking the medallion over his head and tucking it down his tunic. It hung where the arrowhead used to be, making him wonder where that had gone.
She paced him briskly, her strides shorter but determined. “It’s all right, you know. I didn’t mind. Just saying you don’t need to drag me around.”
“No, I jus’ wasn’t payin’ attention,” he said, fixing his gaze on a tree far ahead. There seemed no sign of civilization in this place: no fields interrupting the sprawl of grass and briar, no pruning on the wild apple trees they passed, no regimented stands of orchard in the distance. No houses, no gardens or vineyards, no rutted roads for carts. The path itself was little more than a deer-track.
But then, they had just entered the realm. He had not thought there would be wraiths awaiting them, but certainly there should have been some sign that this place was populated. As it was, he could almost believe they were alone here. Two travelers lost in a warm wilderness.
He tried not to think about that. Arik’s prodding notwithstanding, he barely knew Fiora, and the idea of having to spend a night—or several—alone with her on the road made him uncomfortable. Certainly she seemed nice, and they were alike in a lot of ways, but from their arguments back in the Cantorin temple he knew that there were some things they could never agree on. It had been difficult for him to make friends with the Crimson slaves for just that reason, and he did not want to put his foot in his mouth with her any more than he already had.
Beside that, he had to focus on the plan. First breaking the Guardian’s bonds, then killing Morshoc. Everything else in his life was subordinate to those two tasks.
“So what do you think: are all the animals trapped in here or can they go through the barrier without magic?”
said Fiora, striding purposefully at his side. “If they could get through, you’d think there would be millions of birds wintering here. But if they can’t, is that cruel?”
He blinked. It was a good question. “Dunno. Guess it depends on how big this place is.”
She looked up at him curiously. “You can’t sense it?”
“No. The Guardian’s sleepin’. Ilshenrir said this place has a spirit of its own, and I guess we don’t wanna disturb it. So while we’re in here, I’m just me.”
“Oh. That’s worrying,” she said, looking forward again. “Does that mean you can’t use the crystal to contact the others?”
Cob shrugged. That weird chunk of crystal was in his rucksack, since it made him feel strange when he wore it—not like the cold aura of the arrowhead but like he was wearing something subtly alive. “Maybe. Maybe not. The Guardian’s just nappin’, I think. If it wanted to, it could act, but it knows better. Or it should, after messin’ with me in the woods.”
“When you tried to hurt Ilshenrir?”
He grunted.
“Did it take over? Or…what did it do?”
“Made me see things in the dark. I dunno. I thought he was…” Cob sighed and shook his head. “I saw he was a wraith but I thought I was dreamin’. Still sparrin’ in my mind. They tricked me. They don’t like wraiths or wolves or godfollowers, I guess, so they tried t’ make me get rid of one.”
“They?”
“The former Guardians. They…talk to me.” He grimaced, knowing how crazy that sounded.
If she agreed, Fiora gave no sign. “I guess that makes sense, given that it’s the spirit of prey, but you’d think it could get over that for the common good. It’s not like any of us are against you.”
“I know that, and I’ve told ‘em that, but they don’t agree. Suppose I’ll have to keep my guard up in case they try that again.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun…having to mind your own mind.”
Cob gave her a slight smile. It was nice to get some sympathy. “Hopefully it won’t be a problem here. Don’t wanna start trouble with the necromancers. I need them.”
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 39