by J. F. Lewis
And then he was back in the moment, a woman, a crystal twist with tricolored hair hovering before him, a figure in the thin smoke rising from Ari’s bark.
“I’m not all that good at this yet,” she said. “Master Sedric never taught me how he did it, but I needed to reach you. You can’t beat that other Tree Guy on your own, and if you don’t dispense with him quickly, you can’t help the elves stop the dead.”
Then help me, he thought at her.
“I’m not a plant, idiot, just a Long Speaker.” Her image was fading, smoke blowing out of shape. “You must take advantage of the help you’re ignoring.”
What help? he thought, but the smoke had become formless and she was gone.
Help, Arri mouthed again. Or was that right? Her spirit’s hands were splayed out toward him, but not in supplication. An offer? He concentrated on her lips. I’ll help. He read this time.
Oh.
Hashan and Warrune were so powerful not just because they were joined but because they were one with Queen Kari, their Root Wife, who helped to ground them in the physical world, serving as their conduit. The three together were stronger and more capable than the three unjoined.
Arri? He looked into her eyes even as his spirit reached for hers. As their spirits touched, he could hear her. She had seen what the crystal twist had seen without the benefit of Long Speaking, not in the same exact way, but she still she knew what needed to be done. But Malli—
They need our help, Arri thought at him. Not mine. Not yours. Ours.
A memory hit him, not from his point of view, but from Arri’s:
“From this day . . .” Arri looked up at him, seeing in him the strength growing, the first signs of a true Root Tree and marveling at it. She took his grip and rose, in that moment wanting more, but pushing that thought aside. He needs me to help him, not to bed him, she thought. “I am your Root Guard, Kholburran. I pledge myself to the service of the new Root Tree you will become until the day the Harvester takes my spirit, Gromma reclaims my body, and Xalistan sees fit that I hunt no more.”
Back in the present moment, a thousand different arguments and objections ran rampant through Kholburran’s mind, and they were all correct. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the romantic overture he’d imagined. But had it been that for Queen Kari? She’d tied herself to Hashan and Warrune not because she wanted to but because it was required so that Warrune would Take Root and do his duty to his people.
You don’t have to do this alone, Snapdragon, Arri thought, their minds already close, close enough for him to feel the edge of her sense of duty, her love for her people, her own willingness not just to die, but to live for her people, whichever they needed. Whichever he needed. He experienced the discomfort of Warrune’s touch, the way it plagued and had plagued Arri for every moment since the Root Tree had spliced a portion of his wood onto her own. And she had never complained, never uttered a word about Warrune’s mad whispers. She had endured. Much as Kholburran realized his mother must endure . . . all for the good of her people.
Kholburran looked into the mad rot of his father and knew that his own sacrifice was a pittance in comparison to Arri’s and Kari’s. Being tied to Arri was far from a punishment. They could work well together. They had done so all along, and though he did not love her, he trusted her.
And she was right.
One moment of mutual acceptance was all it took. Arri sank into his trunk, foreign wood falling from her body, burning, falling to ash. Arri’s Heartbow crumbled, but Kholburran’s warpick flew into her outstretched hand like an old friend.
I’ve got my hand on your warpick, she thought at him lewdly.
Just like a girl-type person to make jokes about mating at a time like this, but he felt the intent behind the words. She wanted him at ease, was trying to comfort him with her humor, and that made it okay.
Feel free to kill a few people with it, Kholburran thought.
Did you have anyone in mind?
Two spirits joined and turned their essence against the dark.
We can hunt down that trail in a moment, Kholburran thought. First, my father. That was all it took.
Warrune screamed, the sound of it retreating across the distant horizon. Arri stepped free of Kholburran’s trunk. His wood had replaced Warrune’s and his scars, the scars matching Kholster’s, the scars with which Kholburran had been born, were on her bark. A warm, golden light pulsed from her eyes. As one, they reached out to work in the soil, the air, the water, to heal this most sacred of places, their new home.
*
Blood ran freely from a busted lip where Bhaeshal’s face had struck the bone-steel plating despite the blast of wind she’d spoken to break her fall. Vision blurry, she reached out to the elemental air and felt a lightning bolt on her tongue. Speaking it at a nearby group of the dead, she found another waiting and another. Her connection to the magic was suddenly as strong as she had ever felt it.
Her ears rang, and the tiny hairs on her arm stood up. Her elemental focus was suffused with warmth in way it had not been for years. She had gotten used to the chill of the silver mask on her skin.
Time to suss out the eccentricities of my focus later.
Dead advanced toward her, and she took to the air; not just flying, soaring. Her elves were panicking. Hydromancers no longer worked in concert with Pyromancers and Geomancers, having been diverted to preventing fires from spreading rather than helping to delay and control the movement of the dead with walls of ice.
Shouting with the voice of command at Thunder Speaker volume, she called out instructions to soldiers, calling each by name.
“Queen Bhaeshal,” a nearby warsuit shouted. “Kazan requests you reinforce the Vael encampment by the new pond. He says the prince has taken root and is correcting the flow of this place. Your magic will become increasingly stable, but—”
“—only if the prince himself is safe.”
“Mazik!” Queen Bhaeshal shouted. “Have the Royal Lance protect the Vael and their new Root Tree at all costs. This new mystic stability is his doing.”
“What about the Port Gate?” Bhaeshal turned back to the warsuit who had spoken.
“We are working on it now,” the warsuit said. “You may have our oath on it. The gate will close.”
CHAPTER 31
TSAN’ZAUR
Frost crept over Bloodmane’s surface as Warleader Tsan prepared to Breathe. Within him, Rae’en showed no sign of fear, and her trust thrilled the warsuit. Relaying target intelligence as best he could, Bloodmane watched as Eyes of Vengeance established a best guess at the location where the dragon intended to breathe fire. A red circle appeared atop his image of the ground, painted by the Overwatches to delineate a very substantial swath of the landscape where they suggested any Armored who did not wish to be melted into slag make themselves not be.
Rae’en. In Rae’en’s mind’s eye, Bloodmane enhanced the information she was being given with flashing white auras, outlining the Bone Finders and warsuits who were within or close to the danger zone.
Thanks, she thought at him, then, “Tsan, I still have about fifteen Bone Finders in your targeted area, can you . . . please . . . try to—” Bloodmane filtered out the sudden glare as quickly as possible, but the blaze of red from the dragon’s ruby scales blinded her anyway, forcing her to close her physical eyes and see only with Bloodmane’s. “—focus mainly on the other dragon?”
White and too bright to look at with mortal eyes, the newly minted dragon’s fire became a column of death, a beam that evaporated the flesh it touched, converting muscle, bone, even metal to a gaseous state. An eternity of inferno stretched, destruction writ in a bold italic hand scorching, melting, and hardening the earth as it passed. One breath reduced the thousands of the dead by a full third.
Rae’en’s shock and awe echoed the warsuit’s own. He had seen Coal breathe fire before, even a first breath, but either Tsan was far more powerful or a younger dragon’s flame burned brighter, hotter . . .
Then they were falling.
“Tsan!” Rae’en shouted. “What are you doing?!”
Wings limply flapping, shifted by the rush of air, but through no effort of the dragon’s, Tsan plummeted. Bloodmane, and thus Rae’en, gripped Tsan’s neck, holding on as the ground grew closer by the heartbeat.
Bloodmane, Rae’en thought. What hit Tsan?
Nothing I could discern, Bloodmane answered.
Then what happened?
Perhaps a breath weapon is more taxing on younger dragons?
Jump free of the dragon., Keeper, Zhan’s warsuit, thought at Bloodmane, as he flashed in Bloodmane’s personal viewpoint his own position below, among the intact and still-fighting dead. Aim for us.
But—!
There is no time! Now or not at all, Bloodmane!
Trusting his fellow warsuit, time too short to ask permission or discuss it even with Rae’en, Bloodmane stood up, overrode Rae’en’s instinctive attempts to keep clinging to the dragon’s neck, and jumped.
“What are you doing?!” Rae’en thought and shouted simultaneously.
Do you think, Keeper asked, you will hit with a thud, a crack, or a bounce—
*
Aly, Bone Harvest thought at Alysaundra. Aly, are you there?
Don’t call me Aly, Harv. Alysaundra tried to blink and failed. Her fingers flexed when she ordered them to close, but the motion lacked . . . substance. Her skin felt as it should, as it always did when inside her warsuit, but . . .
Oh. Flesh peeling. Eyes boiling in their sockets as her organs burst. Not a memory I’m going to be calling up on purpose very often.
Aern aren’t supposed to burn, Bone Harvest told her.
We’re only immune to most extremes of heat and cold, Harv. Alysaundra knew her body had been reduced to a lifeless mass of charred flesh and bones, no use to anyone until she had time to strip the meat off the bones and fill her warsuit with blood, but body death was no excuse for one of the Armored to stop fighting.
On one level, riding a warsuit entailed the same sorts of interactions as wearing one, only even when worn, Bone Harvest was in touch with himself, able to make decisions, override her movements for her own protection, make subtle alterations to his form to accommodate combat maneuvers or provide greater protection as the situation required: turtling to defend against ranged weapons, a stampede, or a mob-like army of corpses. They worked seamlessly together, the line between control and controller unimportant.
When housing Alysaundra’s spirit such actions became a total hand off; either she was completely in control and Bone Harvest was a passenger in his own bone metal, or she was. She winced mentally at the casualties she saw in Bone Harvest’s field of vision, denoted by shades of red (body dead, but warsuit functional), white (warsuit forced to turtle to protect its wearer), purple (warsuit damaged, body dead, movement impaired, repair achievable), blue (warsuit damaged, but body alive, movement impaired), and gray (warsuit and occupant both dead).
Gray! She replayed each death in rapid succession, letting Bone Harvest handle the fighting, wielding Sally one handed and using his left gauntlet to batter the dead, grab them and send them flying, or—
Some of the deceased Armored had been slain by corpses wielding shards of the Life Forge. These were two types of undead Sri’Zaur: one with mottled scales that helped camouflage it and the other with scales a shade of black so dark that focusing on it made her head hurt.
All of this processing passed in a mere moments.
Can you send these images out, please? Alysaundra thought to her warsuit. We need to target these two kinds of Zaur and weed them out of the rank and file, then—
A shadow fell over the warsuit. Alysaundra watched and Bone Harvest looked up, running as fast as he could, bulling through lines of the dead in an effort to get clear of the most beautiful dragon either of them had ever seen. Scales like liquid rubies flashed with inner light as the creature fell . . . right toward them.
Make sure to get all that sent out before the dragon crushes us. Okay, Harv?
PART FOUR
A FATHER SLAIN
My Prince,
Incalculable are the times I have been tempted to reveal one of the many secrets I have gleaned from the work of my father and from my own delvings into secrets esoteric and forbidden. I have gazed into the discoveries of Uled and comprehended them. Worse, I have deduced the cure for death for which he sought so long.
Immortality, however, is not for elves or men, dear Rivvek . . . though I have met one human who acquired the trait somewhat accidentally. I write this letter because the idea of withholding knowledge, even dangerous knowledge, from you is repugnant to me. It feels a lie. You will not find the secret to eternal life in the missive, only my confession that, having discovered it, I have not used it for my own ends or yours, but rather have destroyed all my notes. I have also altered my existing texts to mislead all who may use them to seek what I have found.
With apologies,
Sargus
An unsent letter
CHAPTER 32
BETRAYER
“How inconvenient.” Uled strutted and cursed, hovering to and fro above the Port Gate. He let one scaled, misshapen hand rest on the stone surface of the gate, tracing a poison-riddled declivity with one nail-less finger. A change was being wrought in the place beyond the Port Gate, one Uled had not expected, or so Vander gathered from the abomination’s ranting. The god of knowledge kept losing the trail of thought, so he could have missed a thread or two; Uled’s babbling covered many topics. Vander’s attention was drawn over and over again to Uled’s double-pupiled eye.
At first he thought it a trick of the light, but no, the pupils flowed together and through one another, changing color and properties. The pupils shaded from brown to black to gold, and only the subtle way their focus altered gave him warning that Uled had at last detected his presence.
Smiling, biting, and clawing all as one motion, Uled’s touch fell on empty air, Vander having stepped back, not just away, but to the pocket dimension he thought of as his library. Uled’s image, smaller, and more distant, glared at him through a scrying mirror hovering in front of Vander. Running one hand over his bald head, the newly deific Aern felt the eyes of Uled staring back at him, as if the mad elf thing could actually—
“I see you, Vander,” Uled said. “Why has my beast’s right eye become Aldo’s chosen form? Come back and let me see you more closely.”
With a wave, Vander banished the view of Uled.
Did you see that? Vander asked, sending the memory to Kholster even as he asked the question.
I have seen it now. Kholster stood on the bluff where the royal tower at Port Ammond had once stood. He had bathed in the sea and stood dripping, his jeans sodden, his boots dark with moisture. The dark warpick, Reaper, hung on his back, bone-steel on bronze skin. You forgot you were tracking an irkanth and almost got mauled.
Not mauled, but . . . That maw, full of bone metal teeth from Kholster’s own jaw loomed in memory, and he left the sentence half finished. Are things all prepped down below?
You don’t know?
I could know, but I left it a secret per Vax’s request.
Good. Kholster closed his eyes. Sargus?
Vander found the elf on the road to Fort Sunder, pack disguised as a hump, head seemingly distorted by some ailment of birth, all to hide his true appearance and conceal the resemblance, slight though it was, to his father.
Making good time for an elf without Aeromancy, Vander thought. Are you certain it is wise to send him away? You might need him.
No. Kholster’s lips drew into a pressed line. Wylant will deal with him if he is one of Uled’s contingencies.
You really think—?
No. Kholster sat down, eye
s studying the waves, watching Sea Hawk strike in the distance. But . . .
“With Uled,” Vander whispered, “you can never be too cautious.”
*
Amber and her group of Overwatches scuttled across the bone-steel-plated ceiling of Fort Sunder, dodging the occasional blow from corpses that wielded weapons long enough to reach them. Joose and Arbokk had to hang back, but Glayne still crawled with Amber through the smoke, each letting their warsuits breathe for them. Up ahead and also down below, a Pyromancer, a Geomancer, and a Hydromancer were back to back, attempting to clear a way to the Port Gate. Glayne indicated a dead elf in Aeromancer’s robes, not yet risen, resting among the mass of dead.
The elves moved in step with the Geomancer using a floating chunk of wall to shield their backs, the Hydromancer leaving walls of ice on either side, and the Pyromancer shooting flame from her palms to clear the dead.
Someone had the same idea we did, Amber thought to the others.
Smoke billowing around them, Glayne and Amber had to slow, hanging closer to the ceiling despite the smoke, as the ceilings grew lower down the stairs to the level on which the Port Gate stood. The elves’ progress slowed, then stopped, as it looked like the Pyromancer was running out of steam.
“We’re nearly there,” the Geomancer growled. “Keep going!” But then the Pyro was down and the dead were upon them.
Glayne caught a thin, shard-like dagger as one of the dead hurled it through the air.
Was that—? Amber asked.
A shard of the Life Forge, Glayne agreed. We’re getting close. Be careful.
Even as he said the words, Amber swatted away a thin, needle-like spike the length of a quill, but with the weight of a dagger. It shot away, embedding itself the stone to her right, before she recognized it too was a shard of the Life Forge.
She snatched it free, pausing to slide it safely into her oversized side pouch; Aernese saddlebags, the Dwarves called them. As she packed it away, a trio of Sri’Zaur, their scales torn, camouflage broken by gaps of red flesh or white exposed bone, appeared in the upper quadrant of her display.