Free The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) by H. Anthe Davis Page A

had fallen under the lagalaina’s control at the caravan ambush.  She knew what that meant.  It made things awkward.
    Though to judge by the Corvishwoman’s amused look, it was only awkward for Lark.
    “Thanks, I guess,” she said.
    Radha snorted.
    “Hss!  Ysanix ko !” said someone suddenly, and Radha’s attention snapped to the woods behind them.  Lark, who had yet to get the hang of their language, squinted after her.
    Her heart leapt into her throat.
    Thick mist descended through the evergreens on the slope, swift and silent like a cloudbank falling to earth.  Before anyone could move, it poured in among them.  The world vanished behind a veil of vapor, and Lark held her breath superstitiously, shivering as it touched her face through the scarf.  For a moment Radha was a silhouette beside her, then she was gone.
    Lark reached out in a panic but felt nothing but air.  “Radha?” she said, but her voice fell flat, like she had spoken into a muffle.
    No answer.
    Fear fluttered in her chest.  She swept her hands out only to see them vanish inches away.  Beneath her, the ground felt strange, and when she touched it there was no snow but bare stone—not cold, not warm, just neutral.  Indifferent.  Like there had been something in the land that had felt wintry toward her, but now no longer cared.
    “Hoi?” she whispered.  Her voice went nowhere.
    The mist stirred faintly.  In her mind’s eye she saw phantoms—monsters, abominations, every terrible story she had ever heard—and whimpered low in her throat, drawing her obsidian knife.  There were no shadows here, no way to call to her people, and the Corvish were gone.  She was alone.
    Her other hand, still extended, brushed something smooth and flowing.  Something that had not been there before.
    With a shriek, she lurched backward, falling on her rear where the concealing bushes should have been.  Knife raised, she stared ahead, heart hammering in her chest.
    Slowly, a figure resolved through the fog, tall and hooded, its all-covering grey cloak as featureless as the blank landscape.  Only the lower part of its face showed beneath the hood—a fine jaw, the delicate curve of a white mouth—but though it was humanlike, it was in the way of a porcelain doll or a well-made mask.  A work of art, not of flesh.
    A wraith , she thought.  Her stomach did a terrified flip.
    “ You bear the tracer,” it said in a soft, inflectionless voice.  “Give it to me.”
    She stared uncomprehendingly, the obsidian knife trembling in her hand.
    “The arrowhead,” said the wraith.
    “ The—“  Lark’s other hand lifted toward the collar of her bear-hide coat.  The silvery arrowhead lay beneath, buried between several layers of shirts to keep its chill from her skin.  She had taken it from Darilan’s corpse, thinking to sell it at some point or tie it to a shaft if she ever needed a special arrow.  “What, why?  Who—“
    The wraith extended one grey-gloved hand to her.  It had all five fingers, but they were unusually long and slightly crooked, spidery.  She leaned away, panting softly.  Instinct screamed at her to slice those fingers with the knife but she dared not.  Wraiths were monstrously powerful.  Anything she could do would only annoy it.
    Its fine white mouth thinned slightly.  It stepped closer, the smooth fabric of its cloak rippling against her bent knees like the mist itself, and looked down on her from above.  In the hollow of its hood, its eyes were crystalline slits, pale gold like champagne and holding their own inner light.  There was nothing human about them.
    “ Give it to me,” it said again.
    Lark did not consider herself brave.  She had fantasized about heroism, but those daydreams always dissipated upon contact with reality.  Her few moments of valor—firing on the lagalaina and upon Darilan at the Bahlaer tavern, fighting alongside the Corvish—had been from cover, from a distance, for survival and for rank