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

  He didn't have to think hard to know who that had been.

  It made him gloomy. Even when Arik came over to give him a companionable shoulder-bump and a curious look, he just grunted and kept working. The wolfman's very normalcy here pained him.

  "Well I'll tell you," said Enkhaelen finally, sounding peevish. "We're in the—"

  "Spirit realm. I know."

  "How do you—"

  "I hosted the pikin' Guardian, I can see the fire and Ravager in you, and I've been here before. Those things out there're echoes, right? Memories?"

  Enkhaelen was silent a moment, then said, "Yes. Imprints of...times before. There hasn't been much life here since then. Nothing to wear them away."

  "From back when you lived here?"

  "Yes."

  Cob made a noncommittal sound and set the last oddment back on the desk, then moved to rummage through the food crate. There were things he didn't want to know and had to avoid in case Enkhaelen tried to tell him anyway. "Purple light out there—that's the nightmare god?"

  "I would imagine so. A place where his realm intersects with this one. Why he's decided to camp out in my yard, though..." Enkhaelen gave a reedy sigh. "Starfallen idiot must be working with Caernahon, but I can't fathom why. They've always hated each other. I thought the Emperor and the Nightmare were the ones allied, but with Aradys gone..."

  Cob spared a glance for him and found him slumped among the cushions, staring into space. "Y'mean after all this time, you don't know your enemies' game?"

  Enkhaelen shot him a sour look through the bands that crossed his face. "I was busy trying to assassinate myself. It would have fixed all my problems, but no, you just couldn't go through with it."

  "Wouldn'ta fixed the sun."

  "Well how was I to know that? Anyway, I wouldn't need the sun if I was dead."

  "Can fix that for you now," Cob muttered under his breath. Then, aloud, said, "Still woulda been my problem. And your daughter's."

  "Yes," said Enkhaelen acidly, "why do you think I haven't cut my own throat yet?"

  They matched glares for a moment, dirt brown to electric blue, then Enkhaelen glanced away. "That was her, awakening the portal," he said with a peculiar lack of inflection. "I'd rather not deal with it yet."

  "With...your daughter? The one you ruined the pikin' world for?"

  "Not yet!" Enkhaelen snapped. "Not until all of this has been swept up. The Seals and Caernahon and Daenivar and Rackmar and anyone else who thinks they can get a piece of me. Until you're out of my hair and I can just..." He trailed off with an exhale, flapping one hand in his vague way. "Until everything else is done."

  Cob eyed him. He'd had a few emotional breakdowns himself recently, but the last thing he wanted was to be stranded in the spirit realm with a depressive ex-enemy. He couldn't muster the needed sympathy. Hoisting his bundle of jars and food-packets, he moved back to the desk-area, plunked himself down in arm's reach of Enkhaelen, and held out a bottle.

  "More lamp oil," he said. "Drink up; we need to get movin' on this."

  Enkhaelen made an aggravated sound but snatched it from his hand, popping the cork out with a sharp motion. "I blew another few days' worth of energy in shifting us here, and I've barely started on my legs."

  "So we'll carry you."

  "You don't want that."

  "I don't want any of this, but it's necessary."

  Enkhaelen rolled his fiery eyes. “Cry some more. Anyway, it will take me at least another day to gather the energy to pierce the realms. Returning this place to the physical world would be easier, but I felt wraith-magic in my daughter's work, and those pikers are accursedly persistent. The moment my portal-frame is back on that side, they'll activate it again."

  "Y'can't stop them?"

  "I did. I popped out the stabilizer. But unless you want to walk from here to the Khaeleokiels, we need it. I may be able to open a portal between realms, but I am not crossing one that's unstable.”

  Cob frowned, trying to orient himself by the few maps he'd seen. Right now, they were in the Garnet Mountains on the far eastern edge of the Empire, while the Khaeleokiels were on the other side of Daecia Swamp. That meant they would have to go the same way he and his friends had gone to assault the Palace—just much, much further.

  "So a month's walk," he mumbled.

  "At best. In constant darkness and cold. With me unconscious. I'm not exaggerating. If I go out there, I won't be able to stay awake; I need something to draw on, and I can't draw from you without eventually killing you. Heat, light, ambient magic, or life energy. No other options."

  "Y'can't just eat like a normal person?"

  Enkhaelen leveled a burning glare at him over the oil bottle. "Am I a normal person?"

  "Well...no..."

  "My fire-blood gives me advantages, yes. It also comes with a few big flaws, like cold- and dark-induced narcolepsy, a punishingly high metabolism, and summer psychosis. Be glad it's not high summer, because I am. Light and shadow, I really am."

  For a moment, Cob just stared at him. Then he said, "I already knew you were crazy.”

  "I'm not crazy. It's an imbalance. My entire lineage had it. And there's a part of me that likes it—until I come down from it and realize what I've done. When I had some stability in my life, I knew how to deal with it. Control it. But it's like a kite in a strong wind; there's only so much you can do. My uncle took up dalurvykhe necromancy to find balance for us, but I didn't learn enough before he died. And I was in the wall...too long, far too long. I've lost all my old safeguards and this isn't the season to start tinkering. When this is over..."

  There was a glaze to his eyes that bothered Cob. "But you'll jus' be sleepy now?" he prompted. "No screamin' fits or...or..."

  "Whatever else crazy people do?" Enkhaelen smiled wryly. "Yes, just sleepy. And rather useless. I'll— Oh, I should dredge up my old artificing gear. Heavily enchanted, that stuff. I can leach from it in case of emergency."

  "Is it in these crates?"

  "No, it—" Enkhaelen's face fell, and he cast a glare at the deactivated portal frame. "It's in one of my labs. I can't reach them from here without spending all my strength. Better just to move on. The closest coordinates I have to Aekhaelesgeria are..." He stared off into the distance a moment. "Cantorin Watchtower, except I blew that up."

  "You what? —Wait, Cantorin?"

  "I blow up lots of things. It's how I work."

  "Can y'still go there?"

  Enkhaelen gave him a puzzled look. "To the wreckage? I suppose. The portal will probably open in midair, but it will be there. I wish I had something to scry closer with. I honestly hadn't expected to be doing this."

  "So we go t' Cantorin. Then up the Khaeleokiels from there?"

  "Yes, we can do that."

  "And on the way...we visit the Cantorin temple."

  For a moment, all was silent. Then Enkhaelen said, "Absolutely not."

  "Look, I know you and Trifolders've—"

  "Absolutely not!"

  "—had your differences, but—"

  "I will not enter a Trifold temple!"

  "—my girlfriend should be there. She said she was goin' back. And I—" Pain struck him suddenly: the realization that not only did he not know if Fiora made it home, but that he didn't know what had happened to Lark, or Ammala Cray, or anyone else who had been dragged into the Palace along with him. "I need to know she's all right," he continued. "And it should be warm there. You'll be fine."

  Enkhaelen's eyes sparked in the dim violet light, his teeth like white razors. "I will not enter a Trifold temple."

  "They won't like it any more than you, but right now you all need t' shove your anger. Jasper—Gwydren, he's a Trifolder, right? And he's not entirely your enemy. The two of you, I know it's somethin' more complex, so don't lie. If you contacted him—"

  "No."

  "—he could get you in, I'm sure. Make them help you. Make them fix your legs."

  "They can't fix—" Enkhaelen cut himself o
ff, then grudgingly corrected, "They can fix atrophy, given time. But I won't beg of them. I refuse."

  "Why, because they took your daughter? I think it's kinda obvious they didn't."

  Enkhaelen opened his mouth, then halted, a parade of emotions crossing his fiery face. Anger, confusion, queasy shock, then dawning horror.

  "They didn't," he echoed faintly. "Caernahon did. And I…"

  Words failed him. Cob watched uneasily as his eyes went distant, flickering here and there in rapid thought. With each passing moment, his look of distress worsened, as if something was eating away his heart.

  “I went after the Trifold,” he whispered finally, “because they were the ones who'd come with Orrith. Because when I searched my home, she wasn't there, my daughter, so they had to have taken her.

  “But they knew I'd do that—Caernahon, Aradys. They knew what I was like. So they...what? Stole her from the Trifolders? Pushed Orrith into this? And Aradys… He spoke to me. Offered his power and his guidance, to find her—or to destroy everything, if they'd killed her. End this wretched world.

  “He started it. He played me. Him and Caernahon together. He used my daughter to trick me into letting him back in! He let me murder thousands of people when his haelhene had her! They've had her all along! Four hundred years!”

  The switch to frantic shouting frightened Cob, as did the surge of flame beneath the bands. As Enkhaelen ran out of words, he started raking his hands through his molten-feather hair and down his face, claws cutting bright lines through the opalescent layer. The breath came sharply through his teeth, too fast, his whole body flickering with power.

  Instinct screamed at Cob to flee, but he couldn't. The necromancer was in bad enough shape already. Letting him have a breakdown might have been fine if he was just a man, but there was no way to tell what would happen here in the spirit realm.

  So he reached through furnace air and grabbed the necromancer's wrists. Enkhaelen resisted immediately, teeth bared, eyes blazing behind the fiery fall of his hair, but with his uncoordinated legs there was only so much kicking and thrashing he could do, and Cob cut it off by pinning him across the legs with one knee. Then he planted the man's wrists against the stone desk and, looming over, said, “Stop.”

  Enkhaelen just snarled, eyes entirely aflame, and as energy crackled up his fingers, Cob realized he had made a mistake. Enkhaelen had never liked to be touched. He should have remembered that.

  Now he was too close to escape. The moment he disengaged, those hands would grab for him, and—

  He registered the stone floor beneath his braced foot.

  I can do it. I know how.

  Sucking in a breath, he lurched up enough to slide his pinning leg off of Enkhaelen and plant that foot on the floor too. A knee hit him in the gut, but not hard, not well-directed, and then he was releasing the necromancer's wrists and grabbing his shoulders instead, hauling him up on the cushions so they were more at eye-level.

  Enkhaelen's hands clamped hard on his wrists, claws biting at his skin. Instantly hot lightning leapt to him, but he didn't fight it, just let the pain dance along his nerves then down his back, to his legs and feet and into the floor. Grounding it, as he'd done with many a spell as the Guardian.

  The blind malevolence fractured, and for a moment Enkhaelen just stared at him, face frozen in a look of confusion. Then the necromancer jerked his head backward into the stone desk, once, twice, and Cob cursed and slid a hand in between in time to get mashed by the third.

  “Stop it,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “This isn't doin' any good.”

  “Pike you, get off of me.”

  “I'm not on you. Look, I've been there. You foxed things up so bad that you wanna hurt yourself—I know. But it won't help. We got too many other people we should be hurtin' for you to spend your rage like that.”

  “You have no idea what—“

  “I know enough. And if you wanna talk later when you're less of a menace, then all right. But I spent three months tryin' to feed myself to the Light first, then the Dark, so yeah, I got some idea of it. The fear makes you feel crazy, but it's a liar. You can't let it push you off the ledge.”

  “It's not fear.”

  “It is. Fear of yourself. Fear that what you did, you'll do again, no matter how much you don't want to. Fear that you can't change.” In the depths of his chest, Cob felt something welling up—something that might have been emotion, but felt too dark, too briny to be risked. He swallowed it down, trying to stay cold. “Y'can. Y'haven't burned me alive or sucked all the life outta me yet, so that's different. Think about it.”

  Enkhaelen blinked slowly, expression incredulous. “That has nothing to do with this.”

  “I think it does.”

  “You're a child. You...” He trailed off, still staring, and Cob abruptly realized that they were very close. The electricity had gone from the air, leaving just the feverish aura that had surrounded the necromancer since his release.

  Feeling awkward, Cob withdrew his hands from Enkhaelen's head and shoulder and sat back on his heels. The necromancer seemed to relax slightly as he took his distance, regarding him through rune-lidded eyes. The gouges on his face gleamed moltenly.

  “Sorry about that,” Cob mumbled before the silence could stretch on. “I know y'don't like it, but you were past words.”

  “You've grown into the Guardianship. It shouldn't have left you.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  Enkhaelen managed a wry sliver of a smile. “Granted, I did have a hand in pulling it out of you, but it wanted to go. You frightened it. Perhaps you reminded it too much of how it used to be.”

  “What, when my mother was tryin' to drag me into the Dark?”

  “No, this whole...caring thing.” Enkhaelen waved vaguely. “You're concerned for those you come across—at least, you are now. The Guardian used to be that way. That changed after Jeronek died, and even more once I...became erratic. Perhaps it doesn't like to remember.”

  Cob frowned. The Guardian had hidden many things from him, one of them being the manner of its vessel Jeronek's death. Jeronek had been close with the Ravager Kuthrallan, the first wraith the predator-spirit had ever possessed—a closeness that had caused a schism between the Guardian and its host, as well as between Guardian and Ravager. The Guardian had abandoned both vessels to die, and never renewed its ties to its partner spirit.

  “Y'think the Guardian was angry with me because I didn't wanna kill you? Except I did. Until the last, I did.”

  “Until you learned the truth about your parents?”

  That they were both abandoned, in their own way. Cob shook his head. “'Til I realized it was either revenge or the world.”

  Enkhaelen smirked. “Ah. The old familiar choice.”

  Cob regarded him flatly. He didn't like comparing himself to the monstrous necromancer—but he was the one who'd started it. They bore similar wounds. It gave him no sense of security; similar or not, they were wildly different in their pasts and their methods, and he would never consider this man trustworthy.

  But that, in a way, was a comfort. He wouldn't have to worry about lowering his guard. Enkhaelen wouldn't let him.

  “You're probably bleedin',” he said, motioning to the still-bright scratches on the necromancer's face. “Y'got a kit somewhere, rags and such?”

  Enkhaelen shook his head. “Medical things are in the medical lab. Don't worry about it. I think I'll just...rest again. But if you find a file anywhere, I'd appreciate it.” He looked down at his claws with disgust; through their opalescence, Cob could just see the ragged, broken nails beneath. “So much to fix.”

  “We'll manage.”

  “Aren't you the optimist.” He looked away, then cursed, and Cob saw that the oil bottle he'd been drinking from earlier had fallen over, pouring its contents onto the floor. “This is what I get for flailing.”

  “I'll—“

  “No, no. I may not be able to handle water, but oil is easy.”
/>   As if to illustrate, he touched the puddle with one bright finger and it immediately blobbed up into an amorphous glowing mass. Bottle in one hand, he coaxed it with the other, and it rose like a snake to pour back in. “See? Fine,” he said, slumping back in the cushions.

  Doubtful, Cob nodded and rose, glancing sidelong to Arik. The wolfman had stayed hunched in his spot the whole time, but now rose in tandem, furry face showing relief.

  “Gonna stretch m' legs,” Cob said, and turned away from the necromancer. Paw-steps followed him, as did the sense of eyes on his back.

  Beyond the displaced crates and chests, the archway stood empty, the weirdness of the spirit realm not yet touching the interior. He hesitated at the threshold, not sure he wanted to go out. It wasn't cold anymore—didn't feel like anything, really, in the same neutral way as the Grey. That comparison did not encourage him.

  A furred hand nudged his shoulder. With a sigh, he stepped out.

  “This way,” Arik gruffed, moving from behind him to head for the east side of the structure. As he started after, Cob realized with surprise that the wolfman had a shadow: darker violet in the strange nightmare-light and not quite matching his motions. Just a little too slow.

  It sent a shiver up his spine. Glancing back, he saw that he had one too.

  “Arik,” he said cautiously, but the wolfman just beckoned. Uneasy, he followed.

  They rounded the corner to stand facing the cliff, the ruined village to their left and the rough tree-clad trail wending away to the right. It felt like a lifetime since they had trod up that stony path, following the white hawk in Cob's mind to the burning mansion above.

  From here, there was no way to see the structure, but the light shaded from bruise-colors to smoky orange in that direction, and the motionless clouds above it were almost black. If imprints of the past really did affect the state of the spirit realm, Cob was glad he'd visited that place in the physical. It had been bad enough as a tangled dream-walk; who knew what dwelt on this side?

  “Are we safe here?” he murmured to the wolfman. “With the Nightmare God up there and the Wolf out for our blood...”

  “Probably, yes,” Arik responded carefully. It was hard to gauge his expression through the fur, but his ears had lifted—each cocked in a different direction—and his tail was no longer tucked tightly down. He didn't look at Cob, but scanned the stony slopes to either side. “They are not friends. Raun will not manifest so close. Speaking and acting through us— Them... Is different. It does not require full presence.”