The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (104 page)

“This is the word of your god,” said Messenger Cortine.

Sarovy cast him a sidelong look.  He had expected the priest to be more vocal before this, but Cortine seemed to defer to the colonel in this matter.  Perhaps Wreth was higher in whatever secret hierarchy these people had.  His face, as usual, was placid, but there was a slight down-turn to his lips.

“Is it?” said Sarovy.  “I thought he wished redemption for us.  I do not feel redeemed.”

“You are a miserable, self-absorbed heretic,” Colonel Wreth snarled, “and a tool in the hand of the greatest of all traitors, that bastard Enkhaelen.  Like him, you were granted all the favor of the Light, and like him, you have squandered it.  You have bent your knee to the Darkness and believed what you saw in its depths.”

Sarovy recalled his vision: the star in chains, imprisoned deep below the Palace.  Then a shiver ran through his mind—the mentalist groping at the memory, trying to catch it, analyze it—and he forced himself to think of the Dark maw that had opened beneath him, and the tunnels under the Shadowland.  Forced himself to feel that terror and revulsion again.

The mentalist's grip failed.

“I saw nothing in the Dark,” he said softly.  “Nothing in the Shadow but blood and wreckage.  I have not turned from the Light: I have faced it, and it is not what I want it to be.”

“Who are you to make demands of our god?”

“I make none.”

“You cannot have what you want—“

“I know.”

Bafflement crossed Wreth's face, and Sarovy felt a moment's cold satisfaction.  Here was a man who could not handle uncertainty, who could not fathom doubt.  Who could not accept questions.  Things either were, or they were not, and those that fell in between made no sense.

Then Wreth's expression twisted, and he braced himself to meet another fist.

Messenger Cortine caught the colonel's arm.

“Sir,” he said, “we have strayed from our task.  It is not our place to punish the captain; only the judgment of the Light will suffice.  Until then...”  He turned his blank gaze on Sarovy, his smile almost apologetic.  “The Palace does not allow access via portal during the Midwinter Rites.  Your man Vyslin was the last we could put through.  It will be five days before access returns, so during that time, you will be under my command.”

“Yours?” said Sarovy.  “Not the colonel's?”

“Yes.  After reviewing the memories of your men, we have decided that Blaze Company is no longer fit to serve the Imperial Armies.  You will all be taken to the Palace for purification, and those of you who do not submit will be decommissioned.  The men who fled your side were wise, captain.  I am only sad that so few managed to escape your corruptive influence.”

He wanted to deny that, but he had allowed the foreigners to dally with the Shadow Cult, had allowed his men to be treated by the Trifold witch...

No.  I did what was best for them.  What was right.

“They are not to blame,” he said.  “I am the one who—“

“It matters not, captain.  You have tainted these men.  Your fate is theirs.”

The rage came then, hot and fierce, and he lunged for the priest.  Not enough that he had volunteered, that he had sacrificed his old life—that he had died!  Not enough that he had done his best to steer Blaze Company through the rocks, that he had clung to his own faith as the world came down around him.  No—now he would be punished for his confusion and the internal scuffles of his superiors?  Now his men would die because they were his?

The colonel moved to block his way.  White Flames strode in to grab him.

But it was the Messenger who stopped him.

One hand contacted his brow, one his throat, and all went molten.  The world shook.  His thoughts dissolved into the roiling light, the heat, the
presence
of his god in all its scathing glory.  Cortine's blazing eyes held him transfixed, and beneath the sudden shouting voices he caught the sound of metal hitting the ground.  His gauntlets.

Then there was nothing but a babble of pleas and shrieks, the tormented exhalations of a thousand captive lives.  Their faces burned in his vision, familiar from his fevered sketches.  He felt his body jerk, contort, change—his spine unweaving, bones losing coherence—and wished he could weep, for in only moments he was nothing but that malleable clay struggling to mold itself into shape.

Only it was not clay.  Delineated by the cruel radiance, he felt the building-blocks of his substance: compacted char and resin and dust, shards of pulverized teeth and bones, pigment and metal drawn from disintegrated garments, and a dense knot of hair of all colors.  Every speck ready to be repurposed like the pieces of an endless puzzle, scattered and recombined with each new stolen life.  An amalgamation of crematory leavings.  A walking sepulchre of victims.

And within, a lattice of fiery lines that held both form and knowledge: a rough diagram of his own body.  A wirework upon which to fix himself and be bound.

Naught else.  No lungs, no fingers, no heart.  Flashes of panoramic vision: no eyes but skin that sensed light and translated it until he could see through his own back, through his limbs, through every inch in a dizzying wave.  A tremor of sound across that external layer, hard to focus on; the stink of fear in one direction and the hot-metal tang of the priest in another.

No back or front, top or bottom.  All was one.  Cortine's fingers dug into the material that had been his cheeks, and there were threads running out from under his narrow white sleeves, over his knuckles, piercing like needles of fire into Sarovy's fluxing flesh...

“Hush, hush,” murmured the priest as the threads invaded, superseding the lattice of magic that gave him his Sarovy-shape.  “You have been locked into this single form for too long, deprived of your full might and memories as a long-standing servant of our Imperial Light.  We would free you from your torment, your troublesome identity, but we are not certain what we would unleash.  Thus we offer a gift: our dominance.  You will no longer make choices.  You will do as you are bid.  And there will be no consequences.

“I only wish that I could do this for all of you, to salve your tainted souls.  But our great master will cleanse you soon enough.”

No
, he thought. 
No!
  It was too nightmarish, this dissolution of self, this loss of control.  Nothing in it resembled his heart's faith.  He tried to grapple but could not form fingers even with the template's help, tried to pull from Cortine's grip but could not break it.  Tried to fall but could not even do that much, his shapeless legs refusing him.

At his back, he saw Serinel and Garrenson both shocked, white-faced; through his skin he saw the others in the doorways, gaping the same.  He regretted not telling them.  Shame had sewn his mouth shut even more than the fear that his men would turn from him.  They had accepted the other specialists, so why not their captain?

They already seemed to think of him as alien.

But he feared his mirror.  He feared being alone or even closing his eyes, because those voices lived inside him.  Ceaseless, senseless, too long-dead to remember themselves except as flashes in his fragmented mind.  But not whispering now—no, screaming, indifferent to Cortine's words, as if every inch of his flesh was a mouth that needed to speak.

He tried to surge up—to attack again, for his own death had shown him how sarisigi fought.  But Cortine's hands just sank deeper, a weird intimate invasion that sent a gratified frisson through his monstrous self.  The threads massed in his chest, and he saw the white patches on the priest's arms, previously hidden under his sleeves.  White filaments rose from them in profusion, each one sending more of that searing presence into him.

“Perhaps...some assistance,” the priest said, strained.

And then the mentalist itch was there—not at the back of his skull anymore but everywhere, as if he had landed in a colony of ants.  The voices howled all the louder, chorusing then fracturing away in singular screeches, and though he felt a bending pressure upon his will, it was like he had become sand.  The harder he was crushed, the more of him that sifted through those mental fingers.

It was distraction enough that he lost track of his limbs, though, and found them again thoroughly conquered by the strands.  Cortine managed to extricate his hands and took an unsteady step backward.  Beyond, one white-robe stared fixedly at Sarovy, while the others and Tanvolthene drew wards to keep Scryer Mako and Magus Voorkei pinned to the wall.  Mako had a red mark on her cheek like a slap, but a victorious glint in her eye all the same.

“Well,” said Cortine as he smoothed his robe and regained his composure, “that was interesting.  I suppose I should not be surprised.  You have suppressed your nature for thirteen years; you must be quite hungry.  Though I must say that I'm disappointed.  I thought it was your will that kept you so human, yet it seems to be this amulet.”

He held up the winged-light pendant, its crystal glittering with reflected radiance.  Sarovy stared at it.  Without the priest's interference, he found he could slowly pull himself back into shape—focus on the template within him and bind to it again—but no sound came from his mouth.  He needed his pendant, his anchor, his voice.

The priest frowned.  “Something is wrong with you, captain.  A flaw in your making?  Or have you been one man for too long?”  He sighed.  “Sarisigi are always difficult.”

“They need a strong hand,” said Colonel Wreth.  “Most likely it's his personality.  He was always an insubordinate fool.  Have him eat one of his soldiers; that should break him down a bit.”

Cortine hesitated, giving Sarovy a moment to stare at his commander in horror.  Never in his life would he have expected such words from the mouth of a superior.  The armies were strict but they were supposed to be fair, and while punishing his company for his actions stung, this order was abominable.

You can't make me
, he tried to say, or
Pike you
, or just
No
, but his mouth moved with the precision of a sock puppet's and his voice would not come.  He had no pulse to race or hackles to raise, but he still felt fear—as paralytic to the mind as it would have been to his body.

“Colonel,” said the priest reasonably, “if he devours someone, he may become them, and the Light will lose its chance to cleanse him.”

“I don't care about cleansing.  I want to see him broken.”

“That is inappropriate.”

“You are at my command, priest.  Do it.”

“No.”

The colonel rounded on him, fist raised, but Cortine did not flinch.  “Am I insubordinate now because I obey my Light-given duties rather than your spite?” he said.  “I am not here to punish.  I will not force him.”

“You two-faced little eunuch—“

“Might I remind you that you are merely my temporary commander.  I will report back to my true master soon.”

That stilled Colonel Wreth, though only for a moment.  Red-faced, he turned and gestured violently toward the bunkrooms, shouting, “Bring me a victim!  If none of you pissants will do as you're told, I'll just execute your precious soldiers until you do.”

“Colonel!” the priest chided, but made no move, and as the specialists stepped into the bunkrooms to start hauling out men, Sarovy realized that Wreth had been their master all along.

Of course he had.  He ran the brigade.  But some part of Sarovy had thought their loyalties belonged to the Light, or the priest, or Enkhaelen.  Something beyond the army's hierarchy—something more.

Yet what use was more when it rarely appeared, while the day-to-day masters pressed their boots down ever harder on the company's neck?

I can't let this happen
, he thought as a handful of his soldiers were pulled free, struggling futilely in the grips of the ruengriin.  As they were dragged forward, Colonel Wreth drew his sword, arcane runes lighting up along its steel length.

I can't...

How many would he kill?  By the nasty little smirk he wore as he directed the first man down before him, the answer was obvious: every single one.

The blade rose, shining with razor light.

Sarovy lurched to his feet, half-shaped hands up, trying without voice to show his surrender.

The blade paused.  Colonel Wreth grinned.

“That one,” he said, pointing past Sarovy.  “Kill that one for me, and the rest will live to see the Palace.”

Sarovy did not need to turn his head, for he could see through his non-skin as Serinel behind him—both arms held by White Flames—blanched hard.  Were he flesh, his stomach would have sunk.  He liked Serinel.  The man was a mixed-blood Trivestean, from a border city rather than one of the inner fortresses, but his presence among the lancers had been a comfort to Sarovy for years.  A sign that he wasn't alone here in exile.  They weren't friends, exactly, but Serinel always knew his mind.

Next to him, Garrenson struggled and protested in the White Flames' grips.  Part of Sarovy wished that Wreth had picked him, but the greater and more exhausted side knew that this was best.  The colonel would not be satisfied with a small sacrifice.

When did I become so beaten?

Ponderous in his fluxing flesh, Sarovy turned and reached for his man.  Serinel's lips skinned back from his teeth, and he dug his heels into the floor, trying to shove himself back; his eyes held no recognition, only disgust and defiance.  But he could not break from the White Flames' grips; they stood as if rooted to the floor, their faceless helms uncaring, barely needing to compensate for Serinel's struggles.