by J. F. Lewis
One clever one, Kholster thought.
Try this pattern next, Vander sent.
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“No answer?” Kholster asked. “Then let me show you something.”
Exploding into motion, Kholster reversed his warpick’s head, then hurled Reaper over his shoulder, its tip piercing one quadrupedal Zaur’s skull, bursting through its jaw to pin the corpse to the ground.
Well, Vander thought, that’s one way to make your point.
There are others? Kholster teased.
I am sure you noticed, Vander thought, but you’ve thrown your warpick away.
I intend to cheat. Kholster did as he’d done after he’d first fought Torgrimm, when Kilke’s little living shadow had found him. He allowed his body to revert to the steel and bone-steel construction he had been before Uled had awakened him, and once again the remembered shape of that iconic self forced his body to return to its desired uninjured state and rendered him immune to the sharp Skreel blades as they cut at him now.
That is definitely cheating, Vander thought.
I am a god now, Kholster replied, we’re good at it. Which is a big part of the problem.
That one is still pretty smart, though. Vander indicated the solitary Zaur who had not charged. Black-scaled with amber-colored eyes, it sat still, eyeing the Zaur Kholster had slain. Its left Skreel knife twitched high at the ready to ward off any blow that might come from Kholster, but the rest of its body language told Kholster a different story. Eyes wide, gray forked tongue flicking in an out in the direction of its fallen companion.
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“Coward!” one of the others, its scales mottled brown and gray, shouted at the black-scaled Zaur.
“It would be cowardly not to fight General Bloodmane if he sought to fight us,” the black-scaled Zaur snapped. “But this scarback is not interested in killing us. It questions. We are all of equal rank.” He aimed his next sentence directly to Kholster. “We decided the one who killed you would rank highest and command the others. By this method, none of us will rank higher than the others.”
I recognize this one, Kholster. Vander showed him the memory Teru and Whaar had shared. It’s the one smart enough not to fight two Armored Aern, Bone Finders or not.
“Kreej,” Kholster said, his skin still metal, but moving as skin. “You returned the ring I gave my daughter. I know you.”
“Coward!” The brown-and-gray Zaur hissed again, then choked as Kholster punched it in the throat.
“It is not cowardice to listen to the demands of the strong when your orders do not disallow it,” Kreej snorted. “We have no orders; the echo tubes are silent and the ground does not quiver with the secret languages of tail or tongue. His Secret Purpose is obscure for now.”
That is, without error, the most reasonable Zaur I’ve ever heard of, much less met, Kholster thought.
I wonder if he knows that you’re—, Vander thought.
“Kholster Bloodmane.” Kreej bowed so low, his belly touched the brittle grass. “First of the scarbacks, we are no match for you, but we will fight and die if we must. No Zaur fears a good death, to fall to a superior foe, especially in service to His Secret Purpose—”
Kholster turned, still listening, and strode to the writhing reptile he’d slain, seizing Reaper’s haft. He waited for the death throes to cease, then, stepping on the Zaur’s neck with one boot to hold it in place, he jerked the head of his warpick free, trailing a spray of blood, which still hung in the air when he rammed the warpick with a crunch down on the thing’s pelvis, splaying its hind legs wide, its hips dislocated.
“I perceive you are trying to make us understand something.” Kreej did not flinch at the sight of Kholster kneeling to grasp the splayed Zaur by both forearms, letting his warpick fall to the side. “But I am unsure what you—” Kholster tore the right arm free and threw it to the south. He hurled the left arm after it when he’d wrenched it free as well.
“Watch.” Taking the extra time needed to shatter the bones in the dead Zaur’s legs above the knee, Kholster stepped back, grabbing up his warpick as he moved.
“I have no interest in standing here while a scarback mutilates our fallen in front of me,” one of the other Zaur growled.
“Just keep watching.” Kholster eyed the Zaur who had spoken, sizing him up and finding him unimpressive in the half glance before their eyes met.
They are getting slower to rise, Kholster thought at Vander. Maybe—
It died, Vander thought.
Am I out of—
You aren’t out of range, Vander cut him off. I can sense only the rough edges of Uled’s influence because much of its effects lies within Kilke’s realm, but its hold is weakening over the newly dead. That one appears to have stayed dead because you killed it.
So reuniting birth and death did not stop them, Kholster thought, but it does appear to have weakened the new ones.
You could always go kill them all yourself, Vander teased.
Don’t tempt me.
“Do you need another Zaur to demonstrate upon?” Kreej asked. “I sense this display did not convey what you wished. May I suggest—” He indicated the mottled Zaur who had been so vocal. “—Leng.”
Kholster slowed his breath but did not stop it and halt the flow of time.
Are they all rising more slowly now? He wanted Vander’s input on this one, not Harvester’s.
It was a secret, but easily checked, Vander thought back. It is a universal change. As far as I can see, each returns a few heartbeats more slowly than the last.
“I wonder,” he muttered. Who could confirm whether this was spiraling down to zero or—? Vander would know unless it was a secret, which so much of it clearly was, so who, other than Kilke, could tell him whether all of the dead were walking or rotting?
Rot.
Gromma’s less-pleasant aspect as the goddess of growth and decay. She would know if no other deity did, but did he really want to seek her out?
Where is Gromma, now?
Everywhere anything is rotting, in theory. Vander’s concentration bled across their link. The bulk of her attention, however, her—deific locus is apparently the correct word for the concentration of deity’s attention in a specific area without the actual creation of a physical avatar—is at Port Ammond.
Is that what this body is? Kholster frowned down at his hands, gripping his warpick firmly. An avatar?
No, Vander thought. You resumed the habitation of your physical form, having only temporarily surrendered it.
But I am still a god, yes? Kholster’s eyes narrowed to slits, his gaze shifting up along the length of the warpick to lock with Kreej’s slit-pupiled stare.
You are become both, Aern and god, Vander thought back. Mortal to the extent you ever were, yet divine. Dead, but returned to life. A first. Even Nomi, when she stole Dienox’s flaming hair did not die; she ascended directly without passing into Torgrimm’s hands.
First again, eh? Kholster smiled, baring his upper and lower doubled canines in a way he felt certain the reptile would misinterpret as threatening. “I have to go. Other matters require my attention more urgently than you.”
Where is Kilke? Kholster asked.
Vander’s surprise hit Kholster in advance of the images filling the left half of his field of vision. One showed a two-h
eaded deity observing Yavi and Dolvek from the shadows. The other showed a disembodied Kilke head in the clutches of a . . .
Is that dragon headed for Fort Sunder?
She certainly seems to be, Vander thought. If you want, I could warn them.
Kholster’s gorge rose, chest pounding, and he resisted the urge to stop time. Given enough of it, he felt certain he could talk himself into ignoring what was right and going to her aid. Rae’en can handle a dragon.
Vander tried to cover his doubt, but the edges of it hit Kholster hard.
Kholster, even you never—
Can you see my daughter’s back from here? Kholster asked, even through her armor?
Yes, but—
Whose scars are on it? Kholster cut Vander off before he could tempt him into doing what he wanted, as Rae’en’s father, to do more than anything: to charge back to Fort Sunder and wipe away the army approaching her kingdom like so much blood from his warpick at the end of a battle. But as the Aern who had kholstered her all of her life, he knew he could not do it. It was either her world or his, and he’d already done things his way. Her turn now.
Kreej and the other Zaur still stared at him expectantly.
“When you kill Leng,” Kholster told the most rational Zaur he’d ever met, “he will rise again as a thing both dead and active.” The words lingered in the air between them, the gaze of the young Zaur shifting from Kholster to the lifeless ruin that had recently been its comrade. “Precautions would be an excellent idea.”
Leng leapt at Kreej, the sun on his scales like the dark water over which many Aern had sailed in ships of both Dwarven and Aern construction. Eyebrow raised at the alacrity possessed by Kreej, Kholster knew immediately who the victor would be. Stronger, but less skilled, Leng exuded overconfidence. Kreej’s stance betrayed nothing of emotion, a simple approach to the world Kholster had seen kholster Malmung teach many Elevens.
Whether or not they knew it, it was one of the reasons so many Aern found Glayne disconcerting to be around. Kholster fought with intelligence and skill, but his emotions lay atop his armor, plain for all to see. Neither method was by its nature superior to the other, but the emotional fighter always had to temper that emotion with skill to compensate for the cold, hard calculus of the more restrained style.
He’s not bad, Vander thought.
Not a coward, Kholster agreed, merely unwilling to take up a losing fight if he has no need to do so.
Understanding dawned too slowly in Lieutenant Leng, and he lay with Kreej at his back, a Skreel blade severing the nerves at the point where spine became tail, his forearms pinioned at his back, and Kreej’s forepaw gripping his neck to keep it from biting.
“You give me a secret, then?” Kreej had not even begun breathing hard.
“So it would seem,” Kholster answered. “Be careful with it. The risen dead are very difficult to stop. I have other things which require my attentions.”
“Do you know where General Tsan may be found?” Kreej asked. “Does the General live?”
Does she? Kholster asked.
Remember that dragon you saw? Vander thought, indicating the direction.
“Yes,” Kholster said. “Tsan is that way, and she is now the leader of your people.”
“Thank you.” Kreej prostrated himself. “May we depart in peace?”
“You may.”
Well, Vander’s thoughts filled with mirth, I think they’ve decided who is in charge now. He watched Kholster head for Port Ammond for a little while before turning his gaze in three directions at once.
CHAPTER 17
SCALES IN THE GAME
In a great mass of bodies, the Zaur and Sri’Zaur lay huddled to preserve warmth. Tsan found repugnant their superficial resemblance to lesser evolved serpents gathered together as if in some perverse open air hibernaculum, no matter how necessary it was, with the scarcity of prey outside of their tunnels, to let their metabolisms slow while they rested briefly. Crouched at the center of her assembled kingdom, with the bodies of her subjects spread out around her as far as the eye could see, she resisted the urge to scream, focusing her mind on the raw mathematics of her realm’s reduced population.
Scarcely a quarter of a million . . .
Others, she was sure, had escaped, fled the risen dead—but they would have headed to the northern side of the Sri’Zauran Mountains, to the lands of the humans. Would there be war when the humans realized the Zaur were on the run? Knowing that answer was a luxury Tsan did not possess.
A little pain slipped through, breaking her concentration. It took a supreme effort of will not to snatch up a nearby Zaur and bite down to muffle the discomfort and feed her growing hunger. But no. Such weakness was for warmbloods and scarbacks.
Tsan’s muscles burned, pulsing with the changes Kilke’s gift was working within her. Jun’s fire was a tempestuous itinerant, and where it settled, she felt stronger than she had ever been. The term Tsan’Zaur had been heard among her people. . . . An attempt, she had no doubt, at explaining what their Warleader was becoming. Not Sri’Zaur or Zaur, but a species unique unto herself: Tsan’Zaur.
She would have to think up a better term, but it would serve for now. Her scales, already a bright crimson from her long-term use of Dragon Venom to stave off her gender switch, lit from within like the flickering light of a festival lantern in Na’shie. Tsan blazed with the inner fire, steam, kettle-like hissing from her nostrils in bursts that stank of blood and sizzling fat.
You will make a magnificent dragon, Kilke, his decapitated head still in the magical sack clutched in her foreclaws, whispered in her mind. With your might, your army, your nation may even have a chance at destroying Uled.
Poor Kilke, she mused. He has failed to reassess.
Destroy Uled? Tsan focused her thoughts at the god, chortling softly at the deity’s naiveté. Why would I march the remnant of my people against the abomination that struck such fear into even your . . . deific heart?
There it was, a corner of his mind, quickly hidden, but as unmistakable as a foe’s last breath: fear. Such a satisfying aroma.
If you don’t intend to fight him— Kilke growled, covering panic with anger, his thoughts delightfully distrusting and confused. Had he expected her to trust in him forever? Follow his every word and suggestion once he’d proven himself to be weak?
True, he had once been the god of power, and, yes, he had ignited the metamorphosis that was transforming her into a dragon. His knowledge was vast, his cunning impressive, but he had been unable even to carry himself away from his enemies. No, Kilke needed Tsan’Zaur far more than she needed him. Having escaped the tunnels, her path was clear and his usefulness? No longer a requirement.
You’re thinking you don’t need me anymore, Kilke’s thoughts seethed with shock. I can—
Be thrown back into the tunnels? she purred.
I am your god! His protestations were so pitiful to her ears.
Tsan’s laughter rang out into the night. Those nearest her opened their eyes but, seeing she had no commands to give, let them nictate shut, shifting to grant their leader additional space to accommodate her increasing size. A sound like wet sailcloth snapping as it caught the breeze broke the night as her wings burst forth from her back, the pain so exquisite it temporarily robbed Tsan of the gift of speech, rolling her eyes up and generating an uncontrollable spate of spasms from her neck to the tip of her tail.
“Jun’s fire,” she purred to the ram-horned head as she withdrew it carefully from the bag and clutched it to her breast as a warm-blooded child might treat a favored doll, “not Kilke’s. You referred to unusual circumstances having arisen that allowed the birth of a new dragon.”
A gift which I—
I believe, she continued telepathically, we both know that you cannot take this gift back.
Lightning crackled in the god’s eyes, and Tsan rolled hers in response.
We are still allies, Lord Kilke, Tsan chided. I will fight you if I must, but it is a
waste of time, if not effort. My people will always venerate you, as will I, but do not expect me to adhere to a previous relational paradigm that has become outdated.
Allies? Kilke thought. Outdated?
Such things are fluid, Tsan purred, in the absence of binding contracts or treaties, and in the haste to—
I was saving you from Uled!
You provided invaluable aid and assistance, Kilke, but we both know who saved whom. Tsan shivered as her muzzle shifted and stretched.
You still need me!
Well. Tsan rolled her neck, the scales snapping, popping, and flying away to reveal new scales of an even more luminescent shade as her neck elongated, the muscles tight as cords around wet logs, swelling. I still want you, but need . . .
You’re going to need to make contact with the Aern.
A painful thought. Mutual avoidance was unpleasant enough, but if the destruction of this new threat and the eradication of Uled’s race required an alliance of sorts, it was a price Tsan was willing to pay whether or not Warlord Xastix would have condoned her actions. Xastix was dead, undone by Uled, through magic Tsan did not understand and Kilke had not felt the need to explain. She loathed the available choices, but at the very least the scarbacks were an undeniably strong ally. Their role as the only credible, if unnatural, predatory competitor made them very viable assets to the Sri’Zauran cause. Dietary quandaries notwithstanding, of course.
A light rain broke out, spattering Tsan’s scales with brief splashes of water that turned quickly to steam, wreathing her in a layer of personal fog that glowed from within. Her subjects writhed more closely together in response to the cold, a cold she felt, but only in the casual way she might note the color of the grass or the clouds in the sky. In the depths of her, a tear opened somewhere, the pain bright and sharp then dull and at last quiet. She felt the heat of the bodies around her and realized she could take it if she wanted.
She could fill herself up with it. Wanted to do so.
Go ahead, Kilke whispered. They are only mortals. We can—
“They are my mortals.” Tsan drew herself up to her full height, momentarily astonished by the sheer size she had attained in so short a span. Her metamorphosis had seized the armor of Warlord Rykk, melding it to her breast and her claws, a cool burning blue in contrast to the crimson that covered the rest of her. Sliding the tip of one claw into the base of his neck, Tsan drew the disembodied head of one-headed Kilke up to eye level.