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

among the Shadow Folk.  She had no desire to put herself in pointless danger.
    Defying a wraith would be just that.
    She fumbled at her collar, trying to find the cord among the mess of straps and shirts and vests she wore.  “Why…why do you want it?” she said to buy time.
    “That is not your concern.”
    “ No, of course not.  But—  It’s a tracer?  Like to find someone?”
    The wraith said nothing.  Lark stared up at it, still feeling around for the cord.  “The abomination’s dead,” she said.  “The one who had this.”
    Still nothing.  She found the right cord and started to draw it out when suddenly a thought struck: Not Darilan, but—
    Cob.
    She saw his face for a moment, thin and tired and angry.  Stubborn, like when she had met him in the tavern.  She barely knew him, had been willing to go along with Darilan’s plan to kill him, but that had been with the Corvish at her back and the promise that the Great Spirit inside him would go free.
    Her hand shook.
    “You’re gonna kill it.  The Guardian,” she whispered.  “I can’t give this to you.”
    The wraith’s head tilted marginally.  “You are misinformed.”
    “Then what do you want from it?”
    “ That is not your—“
    “ Yes it is,” she said.  Somehow her voice did not quaver.  Her insides were a knot of fear, but she knew that if she aided in the Guardian’s destruction, her people would never take her back.  Even the Corvish would reject her.  The arrowhead hung like a lump of ice between her breasts, presaging her doom.
    For a long moment, the wraith stared down at her, statue-still, expressionless, unblinking.  Then it lifted its head to stare into the misty distance, narrow form going stiff.  Lark glanced that way but saw nothing—no earth, no sky, just grey.
    “They approach,” it said.  “Give me the tracer now.”
    Lark shifted backward, feeling with her knife-hand for the cliff’s edge behind her.  It was gone.  “Who approaches?”
    “The haelhene.”
    “ The—  You’re not haelhene?” she said, surprised.  She only knew of the wraiths from stories, but with its pallor and threatening demeanor, she had been sure this was a white wraith.  A haelhene, an Imperial servitor.
    “ I am of the airahene,” it said.  “The folk of the Mists.  One would think that was obvious.”
    For a moment she just stared, hardly believing she had been sassed by a wraith.  Then its words registered and she looked into the mist again.  “They’re approaching us here?  Or in the…the actual world?”
    “The living world.”
    “ The li—  My friends, the Corvish, they’ll—“
    “ They have fled,” said the wraith.  “You are alone.”
    The words were like a shank to the gut.  In her head, a little voice said, Don’t be surprised.  The Shadow Folk have abandoned you.  Why would a bunch of skinchangers be any different?
    Even your mother did it.
    Lark gritted her teeth.  “What will you do?”
    “ I will leave.  I can not fight so many.  Give me the tracer.”
    “ Take me with you.”
    “ Why?”
    Lark’s hand tightened around the obsidian knife, but she pulled the arrowhead from hiding at last.  “Because the Guardian doesn’t like your kind, but I know its vessel.  I can help you.”  And Rian might be there too.
    The wraith stared at her, then into the mist.  Squinting, she just made out five dark diamond-shapes, undulating faintly in the all-consuming grey.
    “Very well,” said the wraith, tension in its soft voice.  “Take my hand.”
    Lark obeyed.  The wraith pulled her to her feet with surprising strength and snapped the arrowhead from around her neck before she could react.  She thought to stab it, but it did not let go; whatever it planned, she was going with it.
    Through the mist now she heard a sound like the beating of large wings, slow and muffled as if through many layers of cloth.  The dark diamonds grew in the sky, clarifying, their stingray tails