The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Read Online Free PDF

Arik.
    The skinchanger did not look happy.  In the irregular light his chiseled features and heavy brows made him seem cruel, his shaggy grey hair wild, his slanted eyes reflecting like blue steel, but when he met Cob’s gaze he smiled a weak close-mouthed smile and sidled over to bump shoulders with him reassuringly.
    Swallowing his trepidation, Cob gave Arik a nod and led the way after the guard-captain.  The women and children withdrew from his path, whispering behind their hands; he tried not to notice that and instead focused on his surroundings.  The first chamber was plain and square, built of fitted stone and crammed with baskets and cushions and looms, but the hall beyond was lined with semicircular cubbies holding bronze-footed caskets and lit by votive lamps and candles, as were the walls of the next chamber, and the next.  Etched into each casket was one of three symbols: sword, torch or hammer.
    A crypt , he thought, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.  The floors were swept, the plaques polished, and the rooms they passed through were filled with life—a chamber lined with red and brown couches on which knitting women chatted together, a dining room full of children and their minders, a glimpse of a busy kitchen down one hall and a playroom down another—but the caskets were everywhere.  The dead were everywhere, and no one seemed bothered.
    In Kerrindryr, with its limited arable land, the practice was sky burial.  In the Crimson Army it was the barrow mounds.  The idea of living among the dead unnerved Cob thoroughly.
    Another chamber, another hallway, and the guard-captain’s brisk steps finally slowed.  Cob closed the distance as a new room opened ahead of them, square like the others but larger, with no other entrances and no caskets.  A low dais edged the far wall, with a stone slab draped in broad swaths of red, brown and grey cloth as its center-point.  Archaic swords, censers, hammers, hauberks and helms hung from hooks driven into the wall behind it, encircled by viney coils of red paint, but it was no armory; many of the objects were gouged and broken, and each had a small bronze plaque nailed beneath.  Candles and lamps festooned the chamber, casting glints on the broken relics and picking out metallic threads in the cloth on the altar.
    Three large cushions lay on the floor before the dais, with woven mats carpeting the rest of the room.  On the central cushion, a dark-haired woman sat cross-legged, her face upturned and her eyes closed as if meditating.  She was of middle years and painfully thin, the skin tight across her cheeks and the blade of her nose, and her drab brown dress draped loose on her, its sleeves and hem trimmed with tiny bronze bells.
    “Mother Matriarch,” said the stern woman, moving to kneel before her.
    The Mother Matriarch opened her eyes, and Cob sucked in an involuntary breath.  They were milky white, so heavily cataracted that they almost looked blank, as if irises and pupils had simply not been included.  His mind went to his first glimpse of the shadowbloods in Bahlaer, their eyes utterly black.  “Yes, Sister Talla?” she said, her voice slow and serene, dreamy.
    “We have visitors, Mother.  Two outsiders, men named Cob and Arik.  They say they know Jasper, and seek aid and guidance.”
    The blind woman’s placid face brightened and she smiled, her blank gaze somehow seeking out Cob’s.  “Oh, how is the old lion?  He hasn’t visited in quite a while.  Off in the west, I think.”
    “He seemed fine, ma’am,” said Cob cautiously.  Sister Talla shot him a reproving look, which he met with furrowed brows before he clued in.  “Uh…Mother.”  The title felt strange on his lips.
    “ I’m sure he is.  He always is,” said the Mother Matriarch warmly.  She gestured to the mats before her, the bells on her sleeve chiming softly.  “Do make yourselves comfortable.”
    Cob glanced to Arik, who nodded slightly, then looked