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

  Withdrawing, Cob looked around at the crates. He and Arik had done a lot of digging but he couldn't remember seeing oil jugs anywhere. For that matter, he didn't see any oil lamps in the chamber. But Arik moved unerringly to a cabinet that had been shoved against a side-wall and started pulling out bottles.

  “Isn't that wine?” Cob said doubtfully.

  Arik sniffed, then shook his head. “Oil.” He deftly removed a stopper with a claw then returned to the necromancer's side, tugging the struggling man into a sitting position then depositing the bottle into his hands. Enkhaelen took a swig, then let out a haggard sigh.

  “Fire-blood, huh?” said Cob, trying to keep the nerves from his voice.

  Enkhaelen gave him a long, unblinking look as he drank. In the candlelight, his face only vaguely resembled his corpse-body's visage. The blade-like nose and cold eyes were similar, but his cheeks were sharper, his skin darker, the brow-scar not a slice but a divot that trailed away into his hairline. He looked almost feral, a far cry from his mussed but masterful former self.

  As the silence lengthened to intolerability, Cob broke the stare. Arik had withdrawn from the necromancer's side to stand midway between them, looking back and forth with ears cocked and tail low; Cob knew better than to expect him to interject. There was a tension in the air, an odd feeling as if this was their first proper meeting—which he supposed was true.

  “So,” he said awkwardly.

  Enkhaelen lowered the bottle, wiped his mouth, then echoed, “So.”

  “You're gonna make me do this, huh?”

  Enkhaelen's mismatched brows arched questioningly.

  Cob exhaled through his teeth, then said, “You know who I am. Cobrin son of Dernyel—or Ko Vrin, I s'pose. Who are you really?”

  The necromancer set the bottle aside, smiling faintly. “Shaidaxi Ranir't Enkhaelen. Just Shaidaxi—or Shai, if you like. I wanted to die under my original name, not a pseudonym, so I went back to it.” Then he looked to Arik.

  The wolfman bowed his head. “Arik Volkarn.”

  Cob blinked, shocked. “You have a surname?”

  “You never asked?” said Enkhaelen.

  Staring at Arik, Cob opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. He'd always meant to ask more, talk more, but Arik had been most often in wolf-form, and for a while there had been others around them—Fiora, Lark, Dasira, Ilshenrir—who made it difficult for conversations to be private. And he had been distracted, and Arik had never seemed to want to talk, and...and...

  Excuses. It had just been easier to think of Arik as a wolf, mute and comforting.

  “No,” he admitted.

  The necromancer regarded him blandly, then said, “You've had a lot on your mind. But I think most of that has been dismissed, hm? Tell me...is it still dark out?”

  More than happy to break his gaze, Cob stepped away to the door to pull back the curtain. Past the shield of stacked crates, trampled snow stretched away into the ruins with their faint blue ward-runes. Above, the sky was black, filled end-to-end with stars.

  Returning, dry-mouthed, he said, “Yes.”

  “Pikery.” Enkhaelen waved them both to sit. “We've got a lot to handle now. I suppose I'm glad I'm not dead.”

  Arik sank immediately onto his haunches, while Cob dragged the brazier and a cushion over. He couldn't shake the surreal nature of this meeting: sitting just in arm's reach of a man he'd planned to murder only a day ago. It made him think that if he closed his eyes, he'd open them to a whole new scene.

  “Most major problem,” said Enkhaelen, “is the apparent lack of a sun. I have no piking idea what we do about that.”

  “But you're old. You lived through the Long Darkness...”

  “I was stuck in a wall at the time. I know no more about it than anyone.” He frowned slightly. “Greymark might, but I doubt it. He's not magically inclined.”

  “Greymark, that's—”

  “Jasper, to you. Gwydren Greymark, presumptuous pain in my ass.”

  Staring at him, Cob thought of all the old questions he'd had, back when the necromancer had first shown up as Morshoc and taken him on a teeth-jarring tour of northern Illane and the Rift. How do you know Jasper? Why do you hate each other? What in pike's name is going on?

  He still didn't know the answers.

  “Second most major,” Enkhaelen continued, “I suppose the Seals. Aekhaelesgeria, Varaku, Howling Spire, Du'i Oensha and the miserable, accursed, salt-scoured death-trap of the Pillar of the Sea. Once we get that far, you might as well just kill me.”

  “What—“

  “Third, fixing Ninke Raunagi, provided it stops being an aggravating asshole. Fourth, finding my daughter.” Those cold blue eyes pinned him as Enkhaelen said, firmly and clearly, “You'd best not have been lying about her.”

  Cob shook his head. “I'm not. She pikin' stabbed me, tryin' to get the sword. She wants t' kill you.”

  Enkhaelen took a moment to absorb that, then shrugged. “That's what it's made for.”

  “I thought you said you enchanted it.”

  “Yes.”

  “To kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Enkhaelen's thin face pinched even tighter with annoyance. “Because it was my wife Jessamyn's, and I didn't trust myself. I had already done things I regretted, and I had less control than I do now. I knew there would come a time when I would be a danger to her. I wanted her to survive me.”

  “So you...”

  “I never told her I'd done it. I just assumed that when the worst happened, she would draw her sword on me, and it would protect her.”

  In his mind's eye, Cob saw the nightmare—the memory—again, armored knights on all sides, the brother-in-law accusing. The fist impacting his skull. The power in his hands, boiling out with all the strength of his rage.

  And her, stepping between them. Her back to him.

  Defending him with that sword.

  He swallowed thickly. Even if he'd had anything to say, he knew better than to do so under that cold, flat gaze. There was no grief in Enkhaelen's tone, no cry for sympathy—just an old anger awaiting a new victim.

  The silence stretched, then finally broke as Enkhaelen sighed. Slumping back into his cushions, he made a dismissive motion and said, “You'll carry the sword. We can do that portal trick a few more times, but for most of the Seals, we'll have to walk. Or sail, gods help us.”

  “Y'don't think we should leave it here?”

  Enkhaelen cocked his head.

  Forced to elaborate, Cob hedged, “We're at your place, right? Up the cliff? I could jus' put it back where I found it. I promised I would.”

  “Do you trust me, Cob?”

  Mild tone. Faint knife-edged smile. The combination made Cob want to run off screaming into the night. “Uh, no,” he said bluntly.

  “Then you know me better than Jessamyn did.”

  Shocked silent again, Cob just stared until the necromancer finally flapped a ragged hand. “Hold onto it,” he said. “The wards here won't hold once we go, and my enemy might be camped on my doorstep again. I doubt you can handle a second run at the Nightmare Lord.”

  Cob made a face. Considering his recent entanglement with the Dark and his parents' deaths, he had no desire to tempt nightmares. “You're willin' to leave your daughter for last?” he said instead, cautiously. This was the man who had rampaged across half a continent looking for her, destroying temples and murdering Trifolders the entire way.

  Enkhaelen's gaze turned distant, mouth drawing flat. “Tell me about her.”

  “Uh. She's grown up. Tallish, 'bout this high on me.” He raised his hand to the level of his top lip. “Kinda Kerrindrixi-lookin', 'cept for the eyes. Light eyes, maybe...green? Silver under her skin, seemed to move where she wanted it to. Fierce. Kinda scary. Also rude.”

  “Magic?”

  “Yeah, saw her use some. And a sword.”

  “And she was at Hlacaasteia?”

  Cob frowned. He hadn't m
entioned that before. “Yeah.”

  The necromancer squeezed his eyes shut and ran a hand across his face. “I knew Caernahon was hiding something from me,” he muttered, “but her? And how? Did I see her and just not notice...?”

  “You were there,” Cob said, remembering. “At the fight. Y'got Rian killed.”

  Enkhaelen slanted him a look. “And?”

  “Ilshenrir gave himself up t' them because of that. Lark tried to leave us and got caught.”

  “Your point?”

  I still want you dead was the point, but he couldn't say that. He couldn't even plan for it, not with the Seals as they were. Entrusting the silver sword to him felt like mockery on Enkhaelen's part—not a method of self-defense but a taunt. 'See what you can't do?'

  “Out with it,” said the necromancer.

  “I'm not happy t'be doin' this.”

  “And you think I am? Stuck with your gloomy ass for who knows how long, and probably doomed to get shipwrecked by the last Seal and drown?” Enkhaelen made an exasperated sound. “I can barely use my left hand—and I'm left-handed! I could reactivate those wards out there because they were already written, but I won't be making any new ones for weeks, and apparently my legs are quitters. I already miss being a corpse. So don't whine about 'happy'.”

  “If you miss bein' a corpse so much—“

  “Yes?”

  Cob bit his words back, instead looking away in frustration.

  After a moment, the necromancer said, “Cob. I realize this is difficult—and believe me, it will get worse. I won't apologize for it. That's not how I am. But like it or not, this was your idea, and you'd best embrace it and enforce it before I decide to take control. You remember what happened last time I was the leader.”

  Alarmed, Cob stared at him, and Enkhaelen stared back. Even huddled as he was among the cushions, clutching the oil bottle with ragged hands, the necromancer still radiated a sense of threat. His eyes were fixated, and like a snake or a raptor, he didn't blink when focused; meeting that gaze for more than a moment made Cob sweat.

  “Y'mean back when you were Morshoc,” he said warily. “At Riftwatch.”

  “Yes. That's how I operate.”

  “Y'can't—“

  “Why not?”

  There was something childish in his tone that unnerved Cob as much as the stare. “Because that's not the way I operate.”

  “And you'll take the reins now? You won't bend to me?”

  “Why in pike's name would I bend t'you, you murder-crazy spite-monster?”

  Enkhaelen's eyes hooded, a glint of amusement in their cold depths. “I'm going to rest for a few days and hopefully regain some mobility. Try to think of a plan. If you don't, I will.”

  With that, he nestled back into his cushions and pulled his blanket up to block the view.

  Half baffled, half infuriated, Cob looked to Arik for answers, but the wolfman just shrugged heavily and rose to tiptoe away. Cob followed, leaving the brazier where it was despite the cold that seeped through his garments the moment he moved. Enkhaelen probably needed it more than he did.

  “He's messin' with me,” he hissed to Arik once they were out of earshot. “Pretendin' he'll listen to me if I act like the leader.”

  “It is unlikely,” Arik agreed quietly, “but still you must do it. He is the Ravager; he can force my obedience. Even a moment of him playing follower could keep my claws from your neck again.”

  Cob winced and clapped Arik's shoulder lightly. “Wasn't your fault. And the Wolf can't control you now. Is that... Are you all right wi' that?”

  Eyes averting, Arik slowly shook his head. “I spent many years at the fringe of Raun's favor, afraid to be judged unwolfish. But when I stepped into the Wolf Realm, it was not as frightening as I'd thought. Now... Now I am not wolf at all.”

  “Hoi, we'll fix it—the stuff I broke and what Enkhaelen did t'you. I won't let you get punished just because you're friends with me.”

  Gloomily, Arik butted his shaggy head against Cob's shoulder, and Cob dug his fingers into the thick grey ruff. It was strange to do this with a huge wolfman rather than with a wolf, but there was no quick solution. Nothing he could do but be there.

  “We'll make it through,” he said, willing himself to believe it.

  Chapter 2 – Reunion

  The pitch black chamber was ruled by voices. Incoherent, they churned and babbled their gibberish stories, talking over and through each other until they blurred into a horrid cacophony—a storm of confusion that threatened to wear away his will. He couldn't plug his ears because he knew they weren't real, and even if they had been, he feared to touch his own skin. Feared what he would find beneath his fingertips.

  He'd felt along every surface of these prison walls but found no exit, not even a seam. It was all a single surface, not stone or brick but something rough and faintly porous. Some instinct of his physiology had urged him to escape through those tiny holes, but he knew the act would erase everything he was, and so he had resisted thus far.

  The only objects in the chamber were a table in the center and a folding screen in one corner, the shadow of which his captors had used to enter and depart. In the hope of their return, he had been careful not to blindly disturb either, though at times the voices swelled with such fury that he felt only an act of destruction could calm them.

  Instead, he'd planted himself at the base of one wall, numb to his posture—numb to the whole of his body—and tried to sort sense from the chaos.

  To no avail. The more he listened, the more he felt himself change, sliding subtly toward the faces and forms of strangers. When he tried to ignore them, they got louder, angrier; when he tried to confront them, they faded to a background mutter, like a crew on the verge of mutiny. He understood nothing they said.

  He was disintegrating like a cliff into the sea.

  He couldn't even ask why, for he knew all too well the deaths that had created him, as well as the deaths he'd caused. His victims' faces rose from the darkness: civilians, militiamen, cultists, his own fallen comrades. He'd been lied to and used, and this was his punishment.

  Fitting, perhaps. He had always acted in isolation, guided by internal tides. To be worn away to nothing, unseen and unmourned...

  A light flickered in the gloom, sullen ochre. The sound of footsteps chased away the whispers.

  Raising his head, he tried to gather up his sense of self. Without his pendant, he couldn't invoke the template that secured his form, but he refused to be seen as the monster they'd made of him. He wasn't that clay-like grey mass; he had legs, arms, a head, a face, features. He fit properly into this uniform they'd left him, with the sunburst insignia of his company on the front. Never mind that it was tattered and bloodied, or that his army and empire had betrayed him.

  A figure moved out from behind the privacy screen, carrying a lantern and a chair. Tall, Zhangish-dark, female, with close-cropped hair and black eyes that stayed fixed on him as she set the chair behind the table. Another cultist followed—an Illanic man, also carrying a chair, which he placed opposite the other. Then they both stood back as a second woman, scarred, Padrastan, came forth to drop a stack of documents on the table.

  From a pocket of her all-black garb, she drew a familiar pendant, its six wings glinting in the smoky light. “Thanks for your cooperation. I understand you need this to speak.” She pointed with it. “Have a seat.”

  Mustering his dignity, he rose on unsteady legs and took the indicated chair. She mirrored him, then slid the pendant over without fuss. His surprise must have shown, because she said, “We'd rather not be enemies,” before taking up the first document as if to read it.

  He waited a moment, not quite touching the pendant, but her gaze remained on the pages as if affording him some privacy. Feigned of course, with her two aides glaring at him from behind her, but still an unexpected gesture.

  As he picked it up, the template filled him. The greyish pallor fled his hands, featureless tips refining into fi
ngernails; his eyelids delineated and grew lashes, his nostrils and sinuses and throat hollowing away. He inhaled slowly, feeling air flow into his recreated lungs, then raised the cord to slide it over his head. A gleam caught his eye from the middle of the crystal—a crack?—but though fear tried to lock his shoulders, he pushed past it. Settling the wings against his skin beneath his uniform undershirt, he took another long breath, then exhaled it in a sigh.

  “All right?” she said, glancing up.

  “Yes.” His voice was rusty, but it worked.

  “Well then.” She set the document down, then folded her black-nailed hands atop it. “I am Enforcer Ardent of the Shadow Folk, and you are Captain Sarovy—Firkad Sarovy, yes? Of Blaze Company.” Up close, her eyes were like spilled ink, their sclera threaded with darkness, and the scar that split her lips and carved her burnished-bronze cheek gave her a sneering look. From her scorpion-tail braid to her armored jerkin to the batons he'd glimpsed at her hips, she seemed ready to fight.

  “We've been observing you,” she continued. “It's interesting how little you seem affected by a lack of food, water, or air. Your men have some theories about what you are and how you came to be, but it is difficult to judge their veracity. Perhaps you would enlighten us.”

  What might have been a smug joke from someone else produced no change of the Enforcer's expression, no tint in her voice. Sarovy appreciated that; the wound the Light had left felt raw enough without being prodded.

  “My men are well?” he said, ignoring the implied question.

  She regarded him for a moment, then said, “Passably. Some of the afflicted have died. Others have recovered to what measure they can. Mother Shuralla is looking after the humans.”

  “And those you held prisoner?”

  “Released into the general mob. We have no grudge against them, captain. They did as your Empire commanded. Only you stepped beyond that line.”

  He said nothing. He would not debase himself with excuses or apologies.

  Rather than speak into his silence as most people did, she sat back and regarded him coolly. Her gaze was difficult to hold; he couldn't tell where her pupils were, or whether she was actually meeting his gaze.