by J. F. Lewis
ALSO BY J. F. LEWIS
Grudgebearer
Oathkeeper
Published 2017 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
Worldshaker. Copyright © 2017 by J. F. Lewis. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover illustration © Grzegorz Rutkowski
Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke
Cover design © Prometheus Books
This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lewis, J. F. (Jeremy F.), author.
Title: Worldshaker / J.F. Lewis.
Description: Amherst, New York : Prometheus Books, 2017. | Series: The Grudgebearer trilogy ; book 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2016047508 (print) | LCCN 2016055240 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781633881853 (softcover : acid-free paper) |
ISBN 9781633881860 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. | Occult fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3612.E9648 W67 2017 (print) | LCC PS3612.E9648 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047508
Printed in the United States of America
To all the dads out there . . . but I’ll be honest, this one was mostly for me.
CONTENTS
PART ONE: AN END TO WAR
Chapter 1: The End of a Beginning
Chapter 2: Tunnels and Terrors
Chapter 3: Designs of the Dead
Chapter 4: Last of One Hundred
Chapter 5: The Closing of Loopholes
Chapter 6: Reunions
Chapter 7: A Few Ideas
Chapter 8: Keep Your Eye on the Endgame
Chapter 9: Tunnel Trauma
Chapter 10: Flamefang and Far Flame
Chapter 11: The Flame-Haired Goddess
PART TWO: A DRAGON RISEN
Chapter 12: Run From the Hills
Chapter 13: Permanent Temporary Solutions
Chapter 14: The Decision to Take Root
Chapter 15: Looking for Trouble
Chapter 16: Lines of Communication
Chapter 17: Scales in the Game
Chapter 18: Setting Down Roots
Chapter 19: Armored
Chapter 20: Sometimes You Die
Chapter 21: How to Greet a Dragon
PART THREE: THE PORT GATE DILEMMA
Chapter 22: The Forgotten General: Borderlands of the Never Dark
Chapter 23: Conjunction
Chapter 24: The Princess and the Ghost
Chapter 25: We All Have Scars
Chapter 26: Reinforcements All Around
Chapter 27: Port Gate Problems
Chapter 28: Root Rot Rebellion
Chapter 29: Game Changers
Chapter 30: Untangled Magic
Chapter 31: Tsan’Zaur
PART FOUR: A FATHER SLAIN
Chapter 32: Betrayer
Chapter 33: Betrayed
Chapter 34: The Mad Elf
Chapter 35: For the Bones...
Chapter 36: Betwixt
Chapter 37: Overwatch
Chapter 38: Missed Contingency
Chapter 39: Queen of the Vael
Chapter 40: First, Last, and Always
Chapter 41: Debriefings
Chapter 42: Thirteen Years Later: The Scarsguardian Empire
Epilogue: Red Eyes, Black Wings
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PART ONE
AN END TO WAR
“When King Rivvek stepped through the Port Gate with his volunteers, the Unforgiven, the Eldrennaic remainder, those unfortunate elves the Aern would not accept. . . . It was easy to believe they would share a fate similar to that which befell the Lost Command for which they vainly sought: to be relegated to the murky mists of mythological speculation, lost forever to infinite unknown and unsatisfying ends.
General Kyland, a Soldier and Elemancer whose might and legend among his people would be surpassed only by the fame of Wylant, his daughter, had stepped forth into history as a noble sacrifice. Who could imagine otherwise for King Rivvek, the scarred, the hated, the only elf I ever called friend? How could any survive the Demon Realm of the Never Dark for a day, much less many centuries?
We should have had more faith in both of them.
It is never wise to underestimate one’s foes. Why then do we so often make the same mistake with regard to our allies?”
From Dimensional Exiles: The Triumphant Returns by Sargus
CHAPTER 1
THE END OF A BEGINNING
Child tucked firmly against his chest, Striappa ran, his sharp black talons gouging furrows in the tile floor. Chaos erupted about them in a tortured reflection of the battles raging in the Guild Cities, outside the walls of the Long Speaker’s tower. The manitou’s fur-covered ears rang with the clamorous din within and without, raised voices combining to form another voice, a meaningless babble of aggression and fear . . . the dying, the injured, and the aggressors all becoming one cry. Music, he imagined, to the war god’s ears.
Clutching Caius Vindalius, the winged little son of the crystal-twisted young woman Kholster had entrusted to the Long Speakers’ care, even more tightly to his feathered and furred chest, Striappa shivered both at the tickling touch of the babe’s tiny hands on that warm band of thick fur where breast feathers met belly feathers and at the recalled sharing of his grandmatron. His surroundings, the sound of them, drew out remembered tales of the great wars before most manitou left the lands of the shape-locked and founded the Gathering Isles, far off to the west in the grand expanses of the Cerrullic Ocean, away from the violence of those melded sounds.
Noona shared the vibrations of this third voice, taught the clutches of her family and those who nested with them to recognize it, and, when they heard it, to migrate home. “The voice of war is one the manitou no longer wish to hear,” she’d told Striappa and his siblings as they’d curled near the fire pit, snatching at the flames with their claws to harden them and to learn the strength of the fire, how to resist it, how to let it move through them, how to feel the way it changed and flowed and perhaps apply that to their shapeshifting, if they could.
“But fighting is glorious, right, Noona?” Striappa had asked.
Noona’s face had morphed from the friendly beaked and feathered visage that had spat scrumptiously softened foods into his maw when he had been too young to hunt for himself to a spiny face of leathery skin, a mouth of sharp fangs. Great curling horns had erupted from her brow, as tusks had sprouted from her morphing muzzle. The bands of alternating fur and feathers of her body had flattened into bony plates of armor, jutting spikes rising up from the ones she chose. Talons had become claws and seized him, forcing him down, head close to the flames. Solid black eyes like those of a shark had glared at him from a face no longer warm or comforting, making him ill inside.
“Am I glorious or terrifying?” Noona had growled, in the harsh tones of a non-avian throat.
“Both,” he’d answered squawkily.
“Where are you going, Noona?” Clohi, one of Striappa’s sisters had asked, but Striappa had known, even before Noona had spoken the words.
“To hunt, my lovelies.” The barb at the end of her long tail caught the light as she flew. “All change has its price, and most amount to blood in the end. I’ll be back soon.”
*
“Run, Striappa,” a grizzled voice snapped in his ears, “or fly or whatever it is you manitou do the quickest.”
“I am running, Master Sedric,” the manitou squawked back at the hazy smoke-formed image of the Elder Long Speaker. Sedric might know everything there was to know about Long Speaking—Striappa certainly could not send his mind out across hundreds of miles as a being of smoke—but he knew more about shapeshifting than Sedric ever would, and it was hard to move quickly and change at the same time. Sedric was right, though; if Striappa was going to get Caius to safety, he knew he was going to need his wing-arms free at some point, so he was trying to create a belly pouch to hold him. “Pouches are hard.”
“You weren’t thinking about pouches, child.” Sedric’s smoky lips pursed. “You were brain-fogged by tales your Noona told you as a cub.”
“Hatchling,” Striappa corrected, before he could stop himself. He darted for the open doorway through which Sedric’s smoky sending had emerged, but Sedric waved him off toward the far stairway.
“Too much fighting that way; you’ll need to fly out of here.” Sedric groaned, then vanished, eyes ablaze with inner light, a ball of burning, crackling red manifesting at the center of his brow. He reappeared when Striappa paused halfway up the stairwell to get the pouch right. It had to be easier for girls, or surely they would never bother. Striappa kept losing the opening or making something more mouth-like, into which one would not want to place any infant one wanted to keep.
“Oh for Torgrimm’s sake, Streep. Why are you stopping now?”
Streep. Striappa’s hackles rose at the barb. Even a single-shaped human as enlightened as Master Sedric thought it was okay to drop in a nickname, despite how insulting that was to—
“I know exactly how insulting it is,” Sedric said with a sigh. “You keep stopping, and I can’t guide you much longer. The fighting at Castleguard is getting worse, and Cassandra and I—”
“Then shut your changeless maw, ’dric, and let me finish!” Striappa growled, beak giving way to fang-filled muzzle. The anger, the desire to prove Sedric wrong, gave Striappa the extra bit of inner energy needed to complete the change, and he slid the quiet, almost contemplative, baby into his belly pouch. The weight took a brief adjustment to muscles and bones, so he wouldn’t be off balance when he flew or, Gromma and Xalistan both forbid, if he needed to fight. He let the start of a barbed tail begin to sprout . . . just in case.
“Master Sedric,” Striappa began.
“Yes, yes.” Sedric waved away his comments with hands of wispy smoke. “We’re both sorry for insulting each other. Well, you regret insulting me in any case. Now move!”
At the top of the stair, the manitou looked out into the hallway. Near the top of the spire now, close to the Apex Chamber, there were supposed to be guards: at least one Far Flame and a Long Fist, plus a Master Long Speaker. Striappa was none of those things, just a Long Speaker, and a weak one by human standards, though quite strong when compared to the scant gifts most manitou Long Speakers possessed.
Two screams rang out, preceding a female Long Speaker in master’s robes, who poked her head down into the stairwell that opened up in the center of the chamber above.
“Striappa?” She ran down to meet him. Her face was wide and strong and well-fed. “I’m Arin. Master Sedric said I was to allow you access to the Overview.”
She held her hand out, calloused palm up so he could scent her if he wanted. Or was he meant to take it? He did, impressed by the strength of the muscles coiled beneath her skin. Exceptional for a human.
“What happened to the other guards?” Striappa asked, as he followed Arin up the stair and out into the Overview. From inside the walls of the vaulted chamber a thinly applied layer of mirror-smooth Aldite crystal allowed initiates of the Guild a panoramic view of the city below and granted them the option, if necessary, to focus and amplify their abilities . . . a secret the leaders of the surrounding cities had, in the opinion of the Long Speaker’s Guild Leadership, no need to know . . . and exactly the reason why no Long Speaker (or Far Flame, in particular) was allowed unaccompanied access to the Apex.
On a normal day, the top of the spire served as the point from which the strongest Long Speakers relayed messages from other Long Speaker schools and outposts, acting as hubs of information, collecting, recording, and relaying data as needed. A single door broke the seamless expanse, allowing access to a circular balcony where two more guards should have stood.
Striappa spotted the interior Far Flame and Long Fist guards, his neck feathers ruffling at the sight. They lay dead at the exterior doorway, each with a knitting needle poking out of their skulls. One still twitched, prompting Arin to kneel next to him with a gentle clucking of her tongue as she adjusted the angle of her knitting needle and stilled him forever.
“Poor things,” Arin explained, when she noticed his gaze lingering on the bodies. “I hope whomever is the god of death today is kind to them. They were loyal to the city rather than the Guild . . . and Master Sedric insisted there wasn’t time to argue the point with them.”
Striappa eyed her, still studying her scent, tail barb twitching.
“Come. Come.” She straightened with a limberness better suited to a manitou her size than a human and gestured at the open exterior door.
“Hurry along now.” Arin shooed him. “I can’t take my full attention from the transmission flow, or I’ll miss something and risk a resend.”
“Don’t resends happen all the time?” Striappa asked.
“Not when I’m on duty.” Arin’s eyes sparkled with pride and, perhaps, a trace of gentle madness. Or was that loyalty? It could be hard to tell with humans. “I have a perfect transmission record.”
“Ah.” A movement at Striappa’s belly drew his attention. Baby Caius peered over the pouch edge, looking at the dead men with inhuman blood-red eyes.
“Oh.” Arin beamed, eyes alight with delighted appraisal. “What I wouldn’t give to have an apprentice come to me with a look like that in his eyes.”
“You could take him,” Striappa offered. “You have a Matron Guard’s scent about you. You could—”
“He has no outward reach,” Arin told him. “He has gifts, but he’s thrifty with them, keeps them all directed inward. His body will be his weapon and his mind its architect. Reach out to him. Can you feel his thoughts?”
“No,” Striappa answered. “I thought it was because he was so soon out of the egg and my abilities are not very—”
“I can feel them.” The large woman reached out to the child and cooed at him, but the child’s eyes followed hers, ignoring the hand as if it were of no import. “But give him a few years and a little practice and to those of us with the Long Ways, it will be as if he doesn’t exist.” Her smile did not falter when she added, “We should kill him.”
“But Master Sedric told me—” Striappa bared his claws.
Caius laughed.
“Put your claws away, little manitou.” Arin laughed, too. “I’ll abide by Sedric’s will because I am so sworn. But you mind what I said. That one should have never been brought here. He’s a little sponge and they took him to the center of the Guild Cities where all manner of knowledge could slip into his mind and stick there. What seeds have been planted in that fertile brain amid all of this bloodshed, I shudder to think.”
At a loss for words, Striappa squawked a challenge at her, but Arin made no move to impede him. Fluffing up
his feathers, the manitou walked out onto the scant balcony. The cities of Loom and Lumber were burning. Rioters streamed through Commerce, the central city. The standing guard of Warfare could be seen deploying throughout the conjoined Guild Cities, working in tandem with various members of the Long Speaker’s Guild. Bridgeward, the great Southern Gate stood closed, its walls manned by Dwarves and the Aernese Token Hundred. Even if the Guild Cities fell, the Bridge would stand fast.
Mason, to the southwest, seemed quietest of the embattled metropoles, so Striappa flew in that direction. Once he was clear of the city, he could find a tree or a cave and sleep until dusk. He preferred traveling at night, particularly at the rising and setting of the suns, when he was more comfortable and his sight was better. He wasn’t alone in the sky. Bat-like Cavair swooped from place to place in the city, some assisting the guard, others taking part in the looting. Ignoring them as best he could, Striappa flapped toward the strong stone walls of Mason. As he drew closer, he could see the massive ever-open gates had been secured. Archers manned the arrow-slitted walls, taking shots at any who drew too near.
Turning circles in the sky, Striappa surveyed the flow. He didn’t like the look of those bowmen, and flying too high might endanger the baby. Humans did not do so well at high altitudes. Still . . . A few more revolutions took him higher and higher until he felt certain he was out of bowshot. It would have been stupid to die in the open having already escaped the Long Speaker’s tower and the violent divide that had, in the Guild Cities at least, spread even to those of the Long Talents. Initiate versus initiate in the absence of Master Sedric. How fared Sedric? he wondered. If Master Sedric and Mistress Cassandra fall at Castleguard, what will become of the—?
Bands of multicolored light filled the air, blinding him mere heartbeats ahead of the explosion. The mind lash accompanying it nearly took the thought out of him. Protected by his weakness in Long Speaking, Striappa felt the gift burn out (not for good, he hoped) and fade, rather than experiencing more drastic results. Striappa dropped a double handful of wing-lengths in the air, but flapped, beak bloody, back to a safer altitude soon thereafter, concentrating on the feel of the infant breathing in his pouch to ensure they did not travel high enough to cause him harm.