“Well you can skive off, but I’m going,” said Fiora. “Anything I can do to give the Guardian the upper hand, even if it’s just serving as a distraction—“
“That’s the problem! You’ll distract the Guardian, not the necromancer! Don’t you read stories in the Trifold? Nasty villain, honorable hero, captured girlfriend—“
“We tell better stories than that.”
“It doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Look, either we stay out here in safety or we make a plan, and I can’t think of anything that could even give him a tickle. So unless you can—”
“The arrow,” said Ilshenrir faintly.
“It’s just one arrow!”
“It is spirit-marked. You called upon the crows in Erestoia.”
“I don’t see what crows are gonna—“
“You have not seen them kill raptors?” When she just blinked, Ilshenrir continued slowly, “We have long observed the Crow, and it is no friend to the Ravager. When its children see birds of prey, they mob them. Tear them apart.”
At Arik’s solemn nodding, Lark said, “That’s great and all, but I only have one arrow, and he has magic wards. Can’t put much faith in a single shot.”
“Here,” said Fiora, reaching down the collar of her chainmail tunic to pull out a small sword-emblazoned pouch on a cord. She tugged it open and removed a familiar arrowhead, then pressed it into Lark's hand. "Use this."
Lark looked from the unnaturally cold crystalline arrowhead to the girl, brows furrowed. It was the one Cob had worn, the one she had stolen from Darilan’s body, the one that had gone missing in Erestoia, and when she opened her mouth to voice the question, Fiora turned away and started into the maze.
She traded baffled looks with Arik and Ilshenrir—at least, she guessed the wraith was baffled—then eyed the arrowhead.
Well crap. Maybe Das isn’t completely paranoid.
“So, I should just replace the old arrowhead with this and poof, it will kill Enkhaelen?” she said.
Ilshenrir reached out to touch it, and citrine energy surged down his arm to pour into the silvery crystal, making it hum in Lark’s hand. The light at his throat guttered and shrank.
“It will break through,” he whispered, then slumped in Arik’s grip.
The skinchanger tried to haul him to his feet, but he was like an unstrung puppet, so finally Arik just laid him down gently. When he turned worried eyes to Lark, she grimaced and clutched the humming arrowhead, then drew her last arrow from the quiver. She only hoped her shaking fingers could do the work quickly enough.
*****
Cob had expected Enkhaelen to fly after him. After all, he had wings. So when he sensed the Ravager’s footsteps through the roots and stones of the hedge-maze, he was both relieved and concerned. Relieved because it meant he could get his plan underway sooner; concerned because it made no sense for Enkhaelen to walk.
That suspicion made him wait several turns of the maze before he acted. Dimly he sensed the others at the outskirts, and once raised a new hedge just to keep Fiora from getting involved, but the bulk of his attention was on Enkhaelen. On the controlled, calm way the necromancer strolled the path.
Finally Cob just reached out with a hedge to bind him.
It worked initially, the branches all wrapping around their victim and crushing through several wards. His second act was to sweep up a mass of stone and ice to further engulf the necromancer, but with that wave on its way, he suddenly lost contact with the plants and earth in the area, as if an Akarridi-esque dead spot had spontaneously formed at that point. No sound, no lightning, no fire, just death.
Unnerved, he moved deeper into the maze and waited.
Soon he felt Enkhaelen’s footsteps leave the dead spot, still walking calmly. He let the necromancer pass another bend in the maze then tried again, with the same result. Worried now, Cob retreated the full distance to the manor courtyard, where the snow and ice lay thicker, thinking that even if Enkhaelen could kill the plants and the soil, he might still have a shot at trapping him in a massive wall of ice.
With that in mind, he planted the silver blade point-down in a weed-strewn flowerbed, then dredged up ice and snow from all corners to coat the sword and the ground around it.
When he looked back, Enkhaelen stood at the courtyard’s entry, staring up at the manor house with an unreadable expression.
Cob did not wait for the necromancer to focus on him. He reached out to the hedges and snowdrifts that surrounded Enkhaelen and compressed them toward him, watching the branches crackle and grow as the snow surged like seafoam up the necromancer’s legs.
The necromancer did not look away from the manor, and made no gesture, but suddenly the life fled the hedges and they withered to black stubs. The snow climbed his body, solidifying around legs and torso and limbs, but then his blazing wings cut forward and the snow sizzled into steam.
Cob ground his teeth as the necromancer finally turned to look at him, pale eyes like sparks even from this distance.
“You are trespassing,” he said.
“I was invited.”
“By my splinter? I had wondered what he was planning. This is certainly…unusual.” His gaze went past Cob to the sword in the flowerbed and his expression twisted. “And you’ve added grave-robbing to your crimes.”
“I saw your wife.”
“Obviously.”
“No, I mean I saw her while she was alive.”
A spasm crossed the necromancer’s face, some unidentifiable emotion. When he spoke again, his voice was rigid and cold. “Did you now.”
“What happened?”
“Here?” He gave a brittle laugh. “She got between me and her brother.”
“And you killed her?”
“I killed everyone. That should not surprise you.”
“It doesn’t. But it bothered your splinter.” Again Cob recalled those bursts of wild emotion—the love, the hate—and could not reconcile them with the man before him. “Why doesn’t it bother you?”
The necromancer’s mouth curled into a parody of a smile. “Why Cob, were you trying to play mind-games with me? That’s adorable. You fooled Daenivar by hiding beneath a cloak of my aura, but that does not mean you know me.”
Son of a crap, Cob thought. Maybe that splinter was the only part of him that cared, and I just killed it. Now what do I do?
Still lingering by the maze entry, Enkhaelen said, “White King, I need to have a chat with you.” When nothing happened, his eyes narrowed. “So. You managed to kill him.”
“Wasn’t hard.”
“And now you think you can kill me? In my own home?”
Another echo of the nightmare, incongruously calm. Cob bit down on the bad feeling and said, "Looked abandoned t' me."
“Like that cave in Kerrindryr?”
The taunt hit him in the gut, and he bared his teeth and swept a mass of ice at Enkhaelen. The necromancer did not try to avoid it, his wings clasping around him to burn a simple hole through the wave. Cob thought he saw the wings dim as they did so, but a moment later they were back to full glare.
“Exactly,” Enkhaelen went on, finally taking a step into the courtyard. Then another. “You project your pain onto me, Cob. How much did it hurt to revisit the place where your family died, even in dreams? How long have you stayed away from Kerrindryr, from your childhood and those memories?”
“You’re the one who killed them,” Cob snarled.
Enkhaelen spread his hands, still approaching at a casual pace. “Your parents? No. I was trying to speak with your father, but the situation turned combative, and I had nothing to do with your mother’s fate.”
“Combative? You came there with the Imperials!”
“I followed the Imperials, yes.”
“You threw him off the mountain!”
“Cob, what do you think happens when a Guardian hits the ground?”
Cob stared at him, uncomprehending, and saw him exhale a sigh that left no plume of frost in the icy air
. His stomach sank. Another corpse-body.
"We don't have to do this, Cob," said Enkhaelen. "We can still work together. In essence, we have the same goal. Vengeance. You against me, though you should aim yourself against the Empire, and me against..."
"The Trifolders? The Muriae?" Cob said, but though the nightmare had seemed to support those options, they did not make sense. The Empire oppressed the Trifold, but it oppressed all the other non-Imperial Light faiths the same, and even allowed enclaves of Trifolders to persist in its territory. And Kerrindryr had long been an Imperial protectorate, its back turned on the Muriae and its roads open to any Imperial force that wished to traverse them. If Enkhaelen had wanted either group destroyed...
But Enkhaelen just smiled and kept advancing. "Give me the sword."
Cob shook his head. The sword did not belong in the necromancer’s hands. The fact that he had not simply summoned it to himself like all the metal shrapnel in Haaraka indicated that there was something different about it.
Enkhaelen’s lip curled, then he charged.
Having expected magic, Cob hesitated for a moment. The necromancer’s black boots struck sparks from thin air as he came on, wings unfurling, feet three inches off the ground, and as Cob shook away the surprise and sent a surge of snow at him, he ran over it on that envelope of air. Swift as a bird, he closed the distance, blue light radiating from his gloved hands.
Cob threw up an arm in defense as he leapt. It was all that kept the necromancer’s claw-like fingers from taking out his eyes.
Boots impacted on his armored chest, striking more sparks. They barely swayed him, but from above came another claw-like hand for his face, and instinctively Cob ducked his head to slam the necromancer’s forearm and shoulder with his antlers, diverting the strike. A weird heat poured off Enkhaelen from close range, like being slapped with a branding iron, but mere inches away the air was glacial.
He felt the necromancer’s boot turn into a talon, saw through the gap in his arms as whiteness flowed up Enkhaelen’s leg in a pattern of scales and feathers and raw, exposed bone. Ravager manifestation.
Then Cob shoved outward, hitting the necromancer square in the chest. Pain streaked him as the talons tore from his stone armor. He looked up as the Ravager flitted back and saw chunks of black crumbling in its grip, felt ice and soil flowing up his body to repair the damage.
Enkhaelen had changed only halfway, his legs encased in white up to the thigh and his arms to the elbow but his torso, shoulders and face still human. His ethereal energy-wings had solidified into the three sets Cob had seen in the garret—eagle, owl and unknown skeleton—and they beat slowly as he hovered in midair, mouth set in a sour line.
“Is this all you can do when unleashed?” he said doubtfully. “I know that you’ve lost your way over these past centuries, Guardian, but I hadn’t thought you’d become weak. You’re no use to me if you’re weak. Perhaps I should—“
A glint of light sped from the courtyard entry, hit the necromancer in the back and exploded into a mob of shrieking crows. Ice swept over his wings, freezing them stiff and weighing him down, and he crashed to the snow with a look of shock only to be immediately attacked by the swarm. White and black feathers flew.
Cob’s mouth fell open, and he looked to the edge of the maze where three timid figures hung back among the hedges. Then he steadied himself and reached into the earth to bring up a great surge of soil, roots and ice around his thrashing enemy.
It closed over the tumult of Ravager and crows, and for a long moment all was still, the sphere of dark elements solid around its prisoner. Cob saw one of the three figures step forward from the maze and recognized Fiora with her sword and shield. His heart lifted slightly; he had worried for her, for all of them, and the fact that only three of the five were here brought a sick, dull anger to the fore. He waved her back and concentrated on the sphere, on piling more earth and snow onto it. Crushing it inward.
The thrashing sensation at its center slowed, then stopped.
“Did we get him?” Fiora said, and Cob glanced up, annoyed that she had come closer.
Then his sense of the sphere’s interior went dead.
“Get b—“ was all he managed before molten light pulsed through the sphere, evaporating the ice in the instant before it exploded into thick, half-liquid shards of slag glass. Fiora went down under several of them; more hit Cob, and though he had planted his hooves firmly enough to stay up, they splashed over him and hardened into shackles. He struggled to crack them, swearing as the ground beneath his feet and under Fiora went dead in a debilitating wave.
From the cracked glass egg rose the Ravager in full form.
It was an awful thing, made of luminous bone and scale and sinew, its cheeks hollowed from starvation, its eyes blue fire in sunken sockets. Crests of feathers both fine and stiff rose from its scalp like hair, undulating in a phantom wind, and its lower face was malformed—more a maw than a mouth, full of tearing teeth. Ribs showed beneath the white flesh of its emaciated torso, a few actually poking through the flesh.
Unlike the Ravager in the tower, it was not rotting. Every inch looked malevolently alive, and as it spread its wings and focused on Cob, he felt the hairs on his arms lift despite his Guardian armor.
He had only an instant to thrust a shield of ice and roots around his friends before lightning crashed down in sheets throughout the courtyard. But the strike did not seem targeted; instead, electricity splashed out in a crawling web that scorched earth and vaporized water, leaving bone-dry dirt behind. Cob fell back as another bolt leapt from the Ravager's hand to spark off his armor. Behind him he sensed ice still clinging to the sword, but it was the last in the yard.
Don’t just stand there, he told himself, attack it! But when he moved to aim a punch at the Ravager, it surged into the air higher than he could reach, then dropped another cascading bolt of lightning on his head. He stumbled back, feeling the electricity crackle wildly through his antlers and down his spine. His armor absorbed the shocks but not the pain.
“Get down here and fight!” he shouted.
Before the words had left his mouth, the Ravager stooped upon him. He threw up one arm in time to keep its talons from his face, but both clawed feet and both hands clamped on him and wrenched him from the earth. Desperately he sent a vine from his own armor downward, connecting to the ground before his grip on the Guardian could fail, and as he made contact he grabbed the Ravager by one ankle and pulled the earth up to meet him.
It felt like pulling a bag of gravel through a small hole, the earth’s inertia resisting more the harder he yanked, but enough reached him to arrest his flight. Staring up into the Ravager’s seething eyes, he forced vines from his armor to lash around its leg and started reeling himself back down toward the ground, resisting the furious beat of the white wings.
The Ravager snarled, gripped an antler in each hand, then bent double to bite at his face.
Its awful, jagged teeth scraped his forehead and drew deep grooves beside his nose as he struggled to avoid it. Its breath was frost and fire, its radiance so piercing that he had to shut his eyes against it. His vines kept wrapping its thigh but though he wrenched at it with them, he could not seem to throw the Ravager off-balance; those monstrous wings kept it on an even keel despite its attempts to scalp him with its teeth.
Focusing, he drew lightning-glassed rock up from the ground into a protective helm, and the world dimmed. Teeth struck sparks against his brow. With a sound of disgust, the Ravager released him.
He fell like a stone, the vine searing from the Ravager’s flesh like straw in a bonfire, and hit the ground awkwardly but felt no pain. Strength filled him as he pushed to one knee, regaining his bearings. Fiora was a few yards away, struggling from the vine cocoon he had made for her; Arik and Lark had withdrawn into the maze.
A sudden force struck him on the back of the neck, shoving him face-first into the dirt with such power that it would have shattered his spine if not for the Guard
ian’s presence. Talons clamped around his throat, and another foot planted between his antlers, yanking his head back so that sharp fingers could scrape for his eyes. But it had driven him down too far; planting his hands, he brought earth over his shoulders, up the back of his neck to break the Ravager’s grip, up his scalp again to replace what the talons tore. Wrenching upward, he caught after its feet as it took flight.
It evaded, too swift for his heavy limbs, then was on him again from the front, clawing, slashing, striking, screaming, full of such piercing light that his translucent faceplate flaked away before its glare. Every time he thought he had caught it, it twisted away somehow, leaving his nerves stinging and his hands full of electric feathers.
Again and again, it pounded at him, and though he found he could weather the assaults through constant reinforcement, he could make no headway. He saw his frustration mirrored in the Ravager’s face, its uncompromising fury becoming wilder and wilder, its wings arcing greater and greater streams of energy into him that did nothing but dissipate down his armor into the ground.
Deadlock.
Can’t keep doing this, Cob thought as the claws tore at his faceplate then evaded his hands yet again. Anything he tried, the Ravager countered, but for all the Ravager’s power, it could not break his armor completely—yet it was only a matter of time before the Ravager realized there were still vulnerable targets in the area. There has to be some way...
Another burst of energy trickled down his armor to disappear into the earth, and he felt the breath of the Hungry Dark.
No, he thought, then stopped.
Considered it.
All his life, he had feared it. In Thynbell he had opened himself somehow and been drawn into it, and in Cantorin he had fallen again, sinking into its cold embrace and nearly taking the entire temple with him. Only the goddesses’ power had brought him back from the brink. Even the Guardian, a Dark spirit, had told him to stay away.
But it was beneath him now, lurking in subterranean blackness like an empty reservoir. Like a leech, lured by the taste of vibrant energy.
Through his hooves, he felt the tingle in the baked earth; it had become saturated by the electricity he had grounded from Enkhaelen, and soon would hold no more. And what would happen when the necromancer's strikes had nowhere to go? Would they jump back to him, or lance out at the others, or just keep gathering until Cob's defenses finally blew to bits?
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 73