The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Read online

  Up, up, enough to see the city splayed out like a froth of bubbles, dark watery gaps visible between the stronger strands of fiber. Tiny people moved down there, half-toward and half-away from the great punctured dome of the Palace; she wondered if they were courtiers who had fled it when her father came, or soldiers, or simply worshipers. Master Caernahon had told her the humans considered the Emperor a god.

  And those running away—were they enemies? Conspirators escaping the wreckage?

  She resolved to ask. If she was to hunt her father through the human lands, she should know such things.

  At last, the stone pillar peaked, and she and the haelhene alighted on the semi-circular ledge just below the apex. Immediately she sensed arcane residue in the air: a buzz on the nerves coupled with a phantom scent. Lightning, wet rock, fur...?

  “Take care,” said her Master, gesturing to the sigils wrought into the rock. “This is a Seal, one of the bonds that keep my people trapped on this world. We dare not touch it, and I think you should not either. Not until you have claimed the Ravager from him.”

  She squinted at it, but despite the residue she couldn't see any magic at work. “Yes, Master, but...are you sure? There doesn't seem to be anything there.”

  Turning his eye-spots to her, Master Caernahon intoned, “This is why it endangers us. It is beyond both our sight and our reach. Not magic, not spiritist work, but a change in the world itself, meant specifically to harm us. Our reviled cousin Kuthrallan Vanyaris designed it while hosting the Ravager.”

  Mariss made a face. She'd heard her Master curse Kuthrallan only slightly less than he railed about the so-called god Daenivar. They, along with the Thorn of Haaraka, were his great triumvirate of enemies—one long-dead, one plotting against all caiohene, one bound within its own borders yet still dangerous.

  Why he didn't include her father in that group, she didn't know. She could only assume it was out of contempt.

  “You still believe I can stand up to the Ravager, Master?” she said, glancing again at the Seal. “If I can't even see this...”

  “The Ravager is the only one who can see the Seal when inactive. The only one who can open it. All its other creators are dead, their knowledge lost to time, but as long as that one's memories remain, we can some day be set free.” He turned to look at her, slit-mouth curving faintly in a smile. “All our hopes rest with you.”

  “They won't be in vain, but... Can't we just smash this?” She gestured around at the stone pillar. “Destroy the Seal? If it's attached to these etchings...”

  Caernahon shook his head. “It is bound to the world, not this rock. Destroying it will only displace it. We have tried.”

  Of course they have, she scolded herself. Obvious, obvious! If he says the Ravager is the only solution, then so it is.

  Still, the thought of holding the Ravager inside her, of being in contact with her father's memories, disgusted her. She remembered little about the events surrounding her mother's death, but according to Master Caernahon, her mother had been her father's sacrifice to the Ravager, to bring it to him and gain its power. Mariss herself had been meant as a demonstration of his fleshcrafting skills—a proof of concept, and one that the Ravager would have devoured too if not for Uncle Orrith.

  Wresting the Ravager from her father would mean absorbing all its past experiences, including his. For her Master's sake, she would do it, but then she would shred that wretched spirit.

  Thinking about such things always filled her with bitterness. To force her mind from it, she looked over to the other haelhene and found them trying to reconstruct a portal. So far it was just half of a shimmering arch.

  Skirting the Seal, she headed that way, eyes sliding again into the arcane spectrum. The problem was immediately clear: two overlapping portal-impressions, neither rooted and one of them frayed to unintelligibility. Though the undamaged one was newer, the frayed one was stronger, and their residual energies had intertwined like smoke.

  One of the workers hummed a low note, which Master Caernahon returned sharply. After a moment, the wraith said, “My apologies, young mistress. We are attempting to extract the destination, but it is obscure. It might have been at a temporary anchor—portal stakes—in which case we may not succeed.”

  “I can help,” she offered, then looked to her Master. “If I have permission?”

  Caernahon considered, then inclined his head slowly. “I must warn my associates from the court. It is possible that your father has gone after them—or that he will, when he has time. If we cannot reopen this portal, or if its destination is unhelpful, we shall have to guard my associates and the other Seals.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Six in total. From here, the closest is the Seal of Fire.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Considering what she knew of her father's bloodline, that didn't bode well. “I want to be there,” she said. “If this doesn't work, I'll go immediately.”

  The light behind Caernahon's eyes compressed, becoming brighter and sterner. “We shall discuss it.”

  “I want to—“

  “Make your attempt at the portal. I must see to my business.”

  With that, Caernahon turned and floated off the ledge, to fall like a star to Hlacaasteia. Mariss glared after him, then eyed the others. “Do any of you know where the Seal of Fire is?”

  They ignored her.

  Take a deep breath and focus on the magic, she told herself. They're just doing their jobs, so you do yours too.

  Sometimes it was so difficult to not punch things.

  *****

  Dark eyes watched the Crimson Army camp's main infirmary from a dugout beneath the steps of the barrack opposite. It wasn't a comfortable spot, low and cramped and rank with grig-droppings, but the watcher had no better options.

  With a twisted, feather-flecked hand, he adjusted the cloth that covered his nose and mouth. It kept the stink tolerable and reduced his exposure—not that he thought anyone would shine a precious light down here. Another bandana covered him from eyebrows up, leaving just a grime-darkened slice of flesh visible.

  Three days ago, he had answered to the name of Weshker. Since his literal flight from the Palace, he'd decided to change that. He was Vesha Geiri now, Sharp Tooth: the name he'd been given at birth. No more an Imperial wannabe, no longer a slave. No: a freedom-fighter.

  But there were problems. The crow-spirits his rite of adulthood had called into him were free to roam his skin again, but so was the black contagion from the Palace—that horrific fleshy darkness he had drawn into himself in desperation during his brief stint as the Guardian. With the Great Spirit gone, he couldn't control it, could only pray that the crows would keep it in check.

  So far, they had—and were in fact mending him with it. Feathery patches of blackness covered his torso beneath layers of stolen uniforms, marking the spots where blades had taken him, and claws, and hound-teeth. Since escaping the mage-dome, he'd been in a frenzy of fight and flight, the camp's defenders pursuing him whenever they spotted him and himself ambushing solitary guards in order to re-equip. His disintegration into crows had left behind all his clothes and gear, which was fine; he'd been taken to the Palace as a prisoner anyway, weaponless and ready to die. Now he had knives and warm layers and bits of useful armor—but no good boots, only oversized clompy ones he couldn't wear without three pairs of socks. Soldiers just did not come as small as him.

  It made subterfuge difficult, but he was used to that. Even before the crows, he'd been a distinctive figure here: the rare Corvishman who hadn't killed himself in captivity. He'd thought of his survival as a failing, a mark of cowardice, for what did a Corvishman have to fear from death? It was just a return to the spirits.

  But he'd seen things, here in camp and in Bahlaer with Blaze Company, and ultimately in the Palace itself, that even his parent spirits hadn't imagined. He felt the crows' excitement under his skin, and their frustration; they couldn't inform the Old Crow from within the camp wards.
/>   He sympathized, but he couldn't leave yet. He had a hunt to complete.

  Field Marshal Argus Rackmar was in the infirmary across from him, recuperating from the crippling wounds he'd inflicted during their fight at the Palace. He could still taste the man's blood in his mouth. To fall upon him in his bed and tear out his throat, his tongue, his remaining eye... The crows clamoured for that, their wings shifting under his skin at the very thought.

  But there were wards on the infirmary, and guards permanently attending the entrance. No one not in mage robes or White Flame armor was admitted in, which would have stymied him even if he hadn't been half-covered in feathers. His coloration was too distinct to let him fake being a proper Imperial; likely he was the only male redhead in the army.

  As for the only female redhead...

  Grimacing, he told himself not to think of her. She was here somewhere—Sanava en-Verosh—if she hadn't been consigned to the Palace like so many others. He hadn't dared look for her, sure that his former keepers would be expecting that, and equally sure that she wanted nothing to do with him.

  He had betrayed her trust. Become a soldier, been seduced by the Field Marshal's aides, and then been used by them in a purification rite meant to cage his crows and use his nascent spirit-sight to aid their depredations.

  Worst, they'd forced him on that little girl, Jesalle.

  He'd tried to kill Jesalle later, and also himself. It hadn't worked. Now she was trapped in Rackmar's cabin, out of reach and no doubt suffering. At least she wasn't with the man himself. If Vesha had anything to be proud about, it was mangling Rackmar badly enough to keep him away from her.

  At the moment, it seemed he could do nothing more. He'd sworn to himself in the Palace that he'd never be a coward again, but he couldn't muster the courage to attack the infirmary—not with all its wards and guards. A part of him insisted that he was just being sensible, but the need to redeem himself was so fierce that he couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't think of anything beside battering himself against those walls like a horde of black moths.

  If he backed off to rest, he knew he'd do nothing but curl up and cry. It all hurt too much to be mended by anything but murder.

  And after he'd killed Rackmar, and after he'd freed Jesalle...would Sanava take him back?

  She had another mate back in Corvia. Children too. But it wasn't unusual for his people to live and love in clusters, and raise the children together. He wouldn't mind that. At this point, he'd take any care he could get.

  If only she would—

  Something moved at the periphery of his view. He snapped from his rumination and shimmied forward, trying to see better. Perhaps it was a delivery to the Field Marshal, or a changing of the guards. Something he could take advantage of...

  White robes. White armor. A floating light within a glassy figure.

  The breath caught in his throat. He'd only glimpsed one before, but he knew what it was: a wraith. The Guardian had raked him through its memories, and he recalled fire falling in streaks from the sky, great crystals piercing the earth. Flat black flying things, grey mist, glassy chains.

  The guards drew up in alarm at the wraith's approach, but made no move to block it, and it flung the infirmary doors open and disappeared within. More soldiers followed, and mages—and more wraiths, some wearing a facsimile of skin but most like storm-lamps, their internal radiance scintillating out through their translucent bodies.

  Pike me, he thought as two paused outside the door, their radiant gazes sweeping the street like lighthouse beams. If anything could spot him in his hiding place, it was them.

  Slowly, carefully, he edged deeper into his hole. It extended backward some distance before flattening into a side-exit, but he dared not slither free; that would put him in direct sight of the wraiths. The crows had mended him from teeth and claws and sword-blows, but he didn't want to test them against magic.

  So he hunkered low, kept his breathing slow and his eyes hooded, and watched.

  *****

  From his convalescent bed, Field Marshal Argus Rackmar glared at the white-robed mage. "Say that again."

  The mage swallowed, fingers tightening around the inactive scrying mirror he held. "There is no one to contact, sir. We've tried—I have personally attempted it almost every mark since the Palace—"

  "How can there be no one? Where is Lynned? Demathry?"

  "General Lynned has been reported dead, sir," said one of his White Flame guards. Like the rest, his face looked wasted, the armor coating him in a thin sheath rather than its proper healthy bulk. Rackmar's own armor had done the same, even abandoning his legs to concentrate its coverage on his mangled arm and lost eye.

  "By who?" he snarled, out of patience for any of this. Bed, guards, injuries—the trappings of failure. Unacceptable and utterly maddening.

  "A rovagi, sir, while you were asleep. Said it ran all the way from Thynbell to report in. Had papers with your insignia, sir."

  Rackmar grunted. He had agents in all of the armies and many of the cities, and that they'd started to check in mollified him, if only slightly. "Well then, how did Lynned die?"

  "Collapsed, sir, same as the rest, when the—"

  "Don't say it," he snapped. He knew what had happened. He'd been there, the white walls shredding around him, the Light draining. He would not accept it—would not let himself despair. The Long Darkness had been ended once, and would be so again. All he needed was faith, and to keep control of what belonged to the Light. "So he was weak. I'm not surprised. And his troops?"

  "Much the same, sir. There were a lot of ruengriin in the Gold, especially the Border Corps. The rovagi thinks their number has probably been quartered. And if the Corvish notice..."

  "Wretched vermin," he grumbled. He'd done all he could to exterminate those spiritist parasites back when he'd led the Golden Wing, but his successors had let the work lapse over the past few years. Always there had been excuses: the winters too rough, the constant conscription a drain on Wyndon, that petty king up in arms over it—and the conversions, oh, Lynned had complained about the conversion-rate almost as much as Prince Kelturin. Complained that soon nothing would be left of the protectorate but women and elders.

  Even though he was a senvraka, Lynned had never seemed to realize that was the point. Cleanse the men in their god's great light, breed the women, and raise a new generation—a purer one, less tainted by the darkness native to mortal flesh. Then do it again, and again, until even the women had been cleansed.

  Had he not seen success in the comfort-villages of Daecia? Though they had been established long before his arrival, he had expanded them and made them thrive, their crops of purified children almost ready to be trained—or to serve, like his little Jesalle.

  But better. Not subject to the inevitable bleeding and hollowing that heralded a woman's fall to the Dark.

  Jesalle was in Nerice and Pendriel's care now, those two having rejoined him during the exodus from the Palace. He hadn't seen her yet, but that was for the best; he shouldn't get too attached. She would have made a splendid lagalaina if not for the damage done to the conversion hive, but unless they found some way to mend it without Enkhaelen, she and all the other little priestesses would have to go the way of all women.

  "And Demathry?" he prompted. "Has he withdrawn into his fortress again?"

  The mage winced. "It is impossible to say, sir. I have tried all my Sapphire Army contacts but none will respond. The Sapphire Weave is down, and the Citadel at Valent is—"

  Rackmar growled, and the mage's mouth snapped shut. "Enkhaelen, that piece of filth. He planned this, he brought down the Hawk's Pride and Valent all at once, then dared face us— I should have killed him there! Ripped him from the wall myself and—" With effort, he swallowed his rage, feeling it settle like a heat-stone in his gut. Enkhaelen would want him to work himself into a froth, so he could not permit it.

  Exhaling slowly, he forced himself to focus on the situation. Senvayl Demathry, long-time
General of the Sapphire Army, was either out of contact...or avoiding it.

  Interesting. According to the reports from the mages who had fled to his banner, the Citadel at Valent had not been destroyed; much of its upper half remained untouched, and the city as well. Which was suspicious, considering both Enkhaelen's penchant for mass destruction and Demathry's cold and calculating nature. Rackmar wouldn't put it past him to destroy a part of his own stronghold to hide a change in allegiance.

  He had always been a difficult associate. Not as vocal in his complaints as Lynned, but far more steely, and miserly when it came to sending in prospective converts. With good reason, yes—Trivesteans had a terrible rate of conversion, even worse than the one-in-ten average—but still irritating and potentially treasonous.

  And now he was out of contact.

  I should have dragged him to the Palace with me, he thought. Dragged Lynned too. For a bare moment last week, he'd had both Generals in his camp, standing outside the mages' dome with their honor-guard. He'd warned them against interfering with his plans: to kill Enkhaelen; to liquidate Corvia, the Garnets and every territory under Crimson control; and to confront treacherous Gejara and its allies in the north. Neither had objected—perhaps smarting from Enkhaelen's assaults, perhaps indifferent to the disposition of other lands.

  Neither man had shown his face for the Midwinter Rites.

  He could have excused that, given the threat of conflict, but for his Generals to cut off communications now... Lynned had an excuse, being dead, but Demathry had always been a thorn in his side. An old campaigner, a king as well as a general—too independent by far.

  He would have to amend that.

  A twinge of pain went through his gashed cheek and eye-socket, and he realized he was grinning. The path forward looked grim, but he appreciated the challenge—and the opportunity to enact reforms he'd long desired. Starting with Lynned's replacement and Demathry's punishment, he would build a better Empire—one worthy of their god. And when they broke Enkhaelen's spell and brought back the Light, the purifications would begin again.