by J. F. Lewis
I did not think you were, but if you wanted to explain . . .
Not at this time, Vax thought.
Leave it be, Kholster instructed. If Wylant is moving forward with her side of things, how about mine? Is it where Vax thought it would be?
Vax’s actions don’t—? Vander said.
No, Kholster interrupted. They do not. He is my son, Vander. I trust him.
Very well, Vander thought. As for the Proto-Aern. Yes, it was in the vicinity. Once I knew where to look it was easily found. Would you like to see?
Show me, but please don’t let me miss Wylant’s fight.
Paying attention to a separate thread of information, Vander allowed his gaze to linger on the unusual pair of mortals he’d been tracking in case they became useful: a Vael princess named Yavi and her apparently intimate companion, one of the last remaining Eldrennai, Prince Dolvek. He traced their progress backward to the Sri’Zauran Mountains and their rather impressive escape from Uled, leaving a mental note to himself on a scrap of bone-steel he’d forged from a molar, the first ring of a new mail shirt, imprinting the information in the same way he and his fellow Overwatches marked the bits of bone-steel embedded in the steps back at South Number Nine. Vander allowed his attention to shift from the two and their flight in the wrong direction.
Letting his gaze slide over the mountains and across the plains, Vander plunged it through the ruin of Port Ammond and down to the source of Kholster’s question, shuddering, and relayed the image without comment. The cursed thing made him want to yarp.
Do gods yarp? he mused. Had Kholster done so?
I have not felt the need to eat, drink, or yarp, Kholster answered. But we can, if we so desire. All of the deities I encountered, even those who ate and drank, did not see fit to carry such tasks through to their less palatable conclusions.
Will you? Vander asked.
Given the stance I will soon be taking regarding gods playing at being mortal, I believe I will need to set an example. Kholster paused, a sliver of bemusement coming through. Then again, I’ve often felt the Aernese process of waste elimination to be much tidier than that practiced by the other sentient races.
Now that he observed as much as he did, Vander had to agree with him there. Even a wet yarp was still just a pellet. It didn’t have the excessive odor or disease component associated with human or elven waste. Still thinking about that, and marveling at the sheer volume of information now available to him on the subject, Vander routed the requested view to a display in the corner of Kholster’s vision.
Alone in the dark, breathing, but not moving, the soulless body lay, not where the warsuits or even Sargus had left it, but in a hidden offshoot of Uled’s long-sealed labs beneath the ruin of Port Ammond. Liquid-bearing tubes ran from both of its oversized arms, a third disappearing into the thing’s left nostril. Recumbent on a stone table similar to that upon which Kholster remembered first awakening, the creature’s torso and head were propped up at a forty degree angle; the table’s sides were bounded by tarnished metal railings that had been inexpertly assembled despite the obvious care taken in its design. Standing, it would have towered twice the height of Kholster.
Dust and detritus covered the floor in the adjoining rooms, broken only by trails left behind by the chamber’s recent visitors. Two of them appeared to have been Sri’Zaur, based on the central tail tracks. Their claw marks were precise. Another set of tracks was uneven and smudged, as if the creature had been having trouble walking.
I don’t like looking at it, Vander thought. Any clue as to why Uled would have the dead Zaur do that?
Do you not know because you would need to research the matter, Kholster asked, or because it is a deliberate secret?
Secret. Which meant that Kilke would know; but the god of secrets and shadow did not surrender his treasures without a compelling reason, secrets being a quite literal currency for the two-headed deity.
I’m trying to convince myself the Proto-Aern is only a backup plan, but I wonder . . . Kholster shook his head as, in the physical worlds, Rae’en led him around—Scarsguard? Kholster thought to him. Truly?—her city and its fortifications.
Vander noted everything she said in case Kholster missed something important, but he wondered if even Kholster noticed the way he’d begun reflexively answering Rae’en’s opinion questions about patrol routes and defense strategy with his own idle thoughts about extending the fortress perimeter and increasing the fortifications.
Should I tell him? Vander considered. Pointing it out to Kholster would doubtless stem the ebb and flow of data between daughter and parent though, so Vander monitored the exchange closely in case Kholster’s ideas began to supplant Rae’en’s, but Kholster’s end of things was restricted to refinements and leading questions: the sort of guidance that seemed in the past to have fallen within the tricky area of restricted interference Kholster allowed himself when giving advice to his daughter. In a few millennia he would be able to converse with Rae’en more freely, but she was new to being First of One Hundred, and it would have been very easy for Kholster to let his counsel stunt the development of her own style of kholstering.
“How long,” Vander whispered to himself, “before we have a new batch of Elevens who question that word ‘kholstering’ and begin to forget it is also a name?”
What? Kholster asked, as if part of Vander’s thought had bled through unintentionally. But then . . . No, if Kholster had meant Vander’s thought, he’d have specified: Tell me what? Not a blanket question. Which meant Kholster was letting his own thoughts bleed over into his conversation with Vander.
Two choices then: Let him continue on uninterrupted or prompt him to finish the thought. Vander starting counting to one hundred. If Kholster was going to continue, he rarely took longer than a hundred count—
Exactly what makes one First Forged, Kholster thought at Vander. Not a question. A statement. That’s what’s been bothering me.
But you’re—
First Forged of the Aern, Kholster agreed. But if properly awakened and inhabited by a soul, what is he? Torgrimm once told me that, as First Forged, my body and soul would have eventually healed from the Ghaiattri flame I endured at the Final Conjunction.
He said, Vander quoted, “You were made first. Even without the warsuit, your body will heal eventually, if you choose to live.”
Is the same true of the Proto-Aern? Kholster asked.
Secret, Vander responded after a brief search.
Torgrimm told me my strength came from the effect being First Forged had when combined with the nature of Aernese spirits, the way we strengthen the whole even in death— Kholster thought.
That you, Vander quoted again, “. . . have the strength of all the Aern to empower your spirit should you call upon them.”
Could he have been forged in a manner sufficiently similar to mine as to allow him to exercise the same link?
Frowning, Vander let his mind turn inward, into that part of him that was the power belonging to the god of fact and fiction, only to find a blank space where the knowledge would normally lie.
“More and more,” Vander whispered into his hands, “I am coming to despise secrets.”
CHAPTER 9
TUNNEL TRAUMA
Kazan followed along the low-ceilinged tunnel, eyes scanning for any sign of egress. He wondered about the dead Zaur (Sri’Zaur?), Kuort, as it called itself. Why had it saved them? Behind him, the others carried the two humans as best they could. Weight wasn’t the problem, merely the cumbersome nature of unconscious adults in the restrictive space of the smaller tunnel. A stretcher or two would not have gone amiss.
They still breathing? Kazan asked.
She is. Barely, Joose answered, as the others turned their tokens black to indicate a negative. I think the male died a little while ago.
We might want to wait to eat him until we find out whether he is going to get up and walk around like the dead Zaur, M’jynn thought.
Leaving him
here would make it easier on those of us who are actually having to carry people, Arbokk groused.
My leg hasn’t grown back yet. M’jynn’s thoughts were barbed with a sense of disbelief. You want me to put him over one shoulder and hop?
I can take another turn, Kazan put in. And yes, we wait to eat him until the woman, Cadence, has her say. I think they were getting ready to become mates or something.
I wasn’t suggesting we break the bones and suck the marrow, Joose put in. We’d polish the bones for her, but M’jynn could use the liver at the very least.
No. Finally! Up ahead Kazan spotted the adit for which they had been looking. From this side of the horizontal mine entrance he could see the back of the mixture of clay, rock, and scales the Zaur had used to camouflage it. Nostrils twitching as he caught a scent other than smoke, Zaur, blood, and rot, Kazan reached out to Eyes of Vengeance for assistance.
I am better at enhancing vision than I am at picking out scents, the warsuit replied, but, yes, there is something . . . horse perhaps?
Better not be more Harvest Knights, Kazan thought, sharing the message and the whiff of equine odor with the others.
It’s Alberta, Joose thought. And the dead guy: Kuort.
And a few Vael, maybe? M’jynn thought. We should get up there and let them know not to kill our dead guy.
OUR dead guy? the others thought in unison.
Anyone who saves me from suffocating, I claim.
Cadence is starting to wake up, M’jynn thought.
Well, let’s get her aboveground first and see what she wants us to do with the male.
*
Sound stirred nothing in the mind of Randall Tyree. Smoke-settled lungs that had given up breathing were not moved by the sound of Cadence Vindalius as she shouted at him. He stood next to his body, smiling at the curve of her cheek, appreciating the lines worn deep, not in her skin but in her spirit. Hers was an old soul, quite literally.
“How many times has she been through it all?” he asked the god behind him. Torgrimm had made no sound, but Tyree sensed him as surely as he had felt mutiny in the minds of the men aboard the Wasteless all those years ago when he’d run away from Japesh the first time, only a handful of years after Marcus Conwrath’s death.
“Many times.” The voice, gentle despite the echo of the speaker’s helm, was a voice any man could trust. “Some souls see so much hardship. Even when I think I’m placing them in a safe place—”
Turning his gaze on the warsuit-clad deity, Randall smiled.
“You aren’t Kholster.”
“No.”
“You’re Torgrimm.” Randall rubbed the end of his nose, thinking. “When I fell overboard on the Wasteless . . . you’re the one I met then: Torgrimm.”
“Yes.” Torgrimm’s voice held a welcoming timber, even though it came from behind a warsuit’s helm. “Yes, twice, if the redundancy is of use.”
“Is it time?” Randall asked. “And do I get to fight you like Kholster did or—?”
“No,” The god behind the leonine skull helm said softly. “I have promised not to allow that again if I have any choice on the matter . . . and, in general, I will have complete choice in such cases.”
“Lost your first time out and decided not to play anymore, eh?” Tyree studied the armor, the way the crystal eyes shone.
It looked like Aernese armor, yet something was different.
No warpick.
“You could say that,” Torgrimm answered.
“But it wouldn’t be true, would it?”
At some point in their conversation, the action in the real world had stopped. Cadence bent over him, kneeling in the charred grass next to the adit through which the Aern had dragged them. Kazan and the others were motionless, Kazan frozen in the act of ripping open Tyree’s shirt. Around them the forest was a blackened waste, but, even as dead as it all looked, Tyree saw spirits underneath waiting for the rain to come, waiting to start again. He even spied Alberta and a few Flower Girls looking far more militant than he’d expected.
“Do you want to die, Randall?” Torgrimm reached out for him, the bone-steel of his gauntlet opening and folding back on itself along the forearm. His touch was warm, and there was dirt under his nails.
“I don’t want to die . . . or grow old, if you’re taking requests.”
“No.” Torgrimm pulled his hand away, gauntlet folding itself back into place even as he reached up to remove his helm, tucking it under his arm. “No requests. Not exactly. But you are in a very interesting position.”
“I’ve been passed out on my back with a beautiful woman shouting at me before,” Randall teased. He knew it wasn’t what the god of death meant, but if anyone needed a little gentle ribbing, Tyree figured it was Torgrimm. Who ever joked around with the Harvester? Tyree bet that, while he probably wasn’t the first, joking with the death god put him in a distinct minority. Surely most were morose at best. “Or did you mean something else?”
“Birth and death are once more joined, but while Uled’s abominable state persists, it would be possible—”
“No.” Tyree knelt next the woman with the tricolored hair, watching the way the light fell upon her skin. From there, his gaze shifted to his own body, and the point where it appeared Kazan’s fist would strike. “Send me back or take me on. I’m not scared.”
“If I send you back, your body may react unpredictably. I am not convinced it can sustain you. If I send you on to my wife . . . Well, the Horned Queen would not be pleased to see you; not pleased on your behalf, that is. She is less than fond of scoundrels.”
“She’ll warm up to me, Torgrimm.” He winked at the god and laughed. “Everyone does eventually.”
“I will not send you back,” Torgrimm said after a long silence, “or onward without your express consent. This, whatever happens, should be your decision. Just as you always wanted . . . to be judged or not on your own terms. That is what you always hoped, was it not?”
“One question first,” Tyree asked. “Why is the Aern going to hit me in the chest? I’m already dead, and we seemed to be on good enough terms before I died. Is he just tenderizing me or . . . ?”
“They learned it from the Dwarves, though they are only attempting it because Cadence is so distraught.”
“They wanted my liver for One Leg, huh?”
“I believe that figured into it,” Torgrimm answered.
Thinking about what the Aern wanted from him brought to mind the fleeting thoughts of utility he had gotten from the edge of Cadence’s thought.
“You don’t happen to know what that one wants out of me, do you?”
“Ah.” Torgrimm followed his gaze. “Only because it figures into her thoughts about death and unfinished business. She nearly died in the tunnels, too, and it was very clear.”
“Can you tell me?” Tyree caught himself trying to project thoughts of trust at the death god and stopped, offering Torgrimm an almost chastened grin by way of apology. “Please?”
“She has visions of the future in which her son’s life is only a good one if you are in it.”
“Are they accurate?”
“Such is beyond the scope of my function.” Torgrimm answered. “I only know she believes it to be true.”
“But if you send me back, it might not work,” Tyree said, “or things may go unpredictably.”
“Yes,” Torgrimm said, “or I could reincarnate you and ensure your soul arrives in a being in close proximity to the child.”
“Would I remember anything?”
Torgrimm shook his head.
“Send me back down then, I guess.” Tyree laughed. “To my own body, I mean, not some new one I’d have to break in. I’ve always been a fool for pressing my luck.”
“As you wish.” Torgrimm gave Tyree a gentle push, his image telescoping as Tyree fell toward his body for far longer than Tyree thought possible.
“Wait! One last question: Where did they learn something like that—a method to restart a body?�
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“Without the warsuits,” Torgrimm began, his voice growing distant even as his outline began to blur and the real world to fade to black, “unArmored Aern are mortal, so the Dwarves taught them to— Oh. That is unexpected.”
“Oh?” Tyree tried to ask. “Unexpected? What’s unexpected?” The rush of consciousness allowed no time for such an exchange.
*
Did you do that on purpose? Harvester asked its wearer.
“I am uncertain.” Torgrimm eyed the strange assembly surrounding the human, Randall Tyree, and could not decide whether he should smile or frown, so he smiled. “And since it has never happened before, how could I have known?”
What would have happened in the past?
“Upon rare occasions, a soul has not been able to return to the body, and I have had to console the newly dead and apologize.”
Apologize?
“What?” Torgrimm’s smile grew broader as he watched the soul of Randall Tyree bond with his mortal body. It was a different interface, unusual in the way it spread throughout each fiber of the human’s being. The spirit and the physical each in turn changing the other. Becoming something rare. “You don’t think a god should apologize for anything?”
I did not believe you could accept the possibility that you were wrong.
“I wasn’t wrong,” Torgrimm said. “I cannot recall a time when I have been wrong. Doubtful. Full of regret. Disappointed. Ashamed of what I had to do . . . even trepidatious, but apologies are not always about seeking forgiveness.”
No?
“No,” Torgrimm said. “To seek forgiveness and to grant it are sacred acts, but to empathize, to let a soul know you feel, in some small way, the pain they feel, and that you experience sorrow in response to their discomfort, or even because you see obstacles in their path they cannot avoid but must endure. Those are the apologies I offer.”
Interesting . . . sir.
Torgrimm noticed the “sir” and welcomed it, but it wasn’t something he would point out to the warsuit yet. That would come in time. Time, they would all have, thanks in part to his own actions long ago, and more recently. Trusting Kholster had been less risky than he had felt it would be at the time. His only regret was that Aldo, who had seen far in advance the road the First of One Hundred would need to walk, would not see the fruits of his choice.