The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Read Free Page A

it was hard to see the mother moon from in the Mist Forest so he had lost track of its phase, and with it the date.
    Which was fine.  He was not in a hurry even though he had a plan.  In fact, if not for his need to be rid of the Guardian, he would have run back into the woods and never come out.
    First stage of the plan: Find the Trifolders and beg for help .  Second: Kill Morshoc .
    He cursed the night that Morshoc had arrived and driven off Jasper, the kindly carter and secret Trifold priest.  If he had stayed with Jasper, he could have prevented more deaths than he cared to think about, and the fact that it had not been his choice—the fact that Morshoc had some power over the old man—did not alleviate the feeling of failure.
    But Jasper had offered the Trifold’s support, in an oblique manner, and now that Cob knew more about the trouble he was facing with the Guardian and the Empire, he was prepared to accept it.  The Trifolders were heretics, which still mattered to him, but he had resolved to set that aside.  He followed the Imperial Light but as long as no one tried to convert him, he would not have to punch them.  He would keep his tongue in check, his opinions to himself, and let them do what they could.
    He stepped onto the slate-paved road as they drew near the open gate, the wolf paralleling him through the snow.  At the guard-post, the two soldiers straightened and broke off their conversation.  They wore tan-and-purple livery over chainmail, with a badge on one shoulder of yellow crenelations surrounding a sheaf of grain.  Not Gold Army; probably kingdom militia.  They both had pikes and shields, but one wore a satchel slung across his body.  As Cob halted before them, he realized that their eyes were level with his chin though their bell-shaped helms made them look taller.  He felt suddenly conspicuous.
    “Mountain folk, is it?” said the satchel-man.
    Cob pulled down his scarf, wondering how they could tell.  “Yeah,” he said as the wolf drifted to his side.  “I’m on the pilgrimage, but I don’t have papers…”
    “They never have papers,” muttered the pikeman.  Cob looked at him askance.
    The satchel-man sighed, but rather than raise his weapon as Cob had half-expected, he just unsnapped the clasp of the satchel and pulled out a logbook and charcoal.  “Name.”
    “Uh, what for?” Cob said.
    The man looked up from under the bill of his helm, weathered face showing plainly that he considered Cob an idiot.  “For our records.  I know you Darronwayn don’t trouble yourselves with the likes of reading and writing and record-keeping, but down here in the civilized world we have this thing called ‘the law’.  You can buy yourself some papers at your embassy but I need your name and origin before we can let you in.”
    Darronwayn? Cob thought.  “Uh…”
    “ Name,” the man prompted sternly.
    “ Aloyan Erosei.”  It was not exactly a lie.  He had used the name before, and Aloyan Erosei the Younger was living in his head with the rest of the Guardian vessels.  Using his own name seemed more dangerous than using that of an ancient Kerrindrixi hero, since Cob was on the Crimson Army’s listing as a slave.
    “ How do you spell that?”
    “ I dunno.”
    The pikeman snorted, but the other just shook his head and mouthed the name silently as he noted it down on a clean page.  “Place of origin?” he said.
    “What?”
    “ The last place you were in that had an actual name,” said the man with studied patience.
    Cob furrowed his brows and wracked his brain for the name of somewhere in Darronwy.  It was the protectorate just north of Amandon, he knew, sandwiched between the bandit-riddled Khaeleokiel Mountains and the lowland swamps of Daecia.  But he had never met anyone from there and beside a vague impression of woods and mountains and bears, he knew nothing about it.  He was from Kerrindryr far in the west, not from Darronwy, and though evidently he