by J. F. Lewis
Break! His heartbeat rang in his ears, the only sound penetrating the high-pitched whine of near deafness. Vision faded, then returned, brief instants of unconsciousness or blindness. He could not know which. His nostrils filled with the pork-crackling smell of his own flesh burning. Break!
“I am Rivvek,” he whispered through parched and cracking lips, his tongue a thing of leather, “son of Grivvek, and I sat on a throne I did not want, to rule a kingdom I did not need, to save a people I must save, and you will break.”
His breath became steam. He felt his hair ignite.
Break!
“King Rivvek,” Kyland shouted, his voice carrying the hint that he had been shouting for a long time. But it was hard to hear, hard to make out the words over the sounds of someone screaming as if he was being torn apart. With a sense of mild disinterest, Rivvek discerned that he was one screaming. It would, he imagined, have been nice to know what Kyland was trying to tell him, but he would have needed to stop screaming to do that . . . Rivvek could not spare the effort of will that would have been required to stop his own cries.
Instead, he let the purple flames do to him what they would, so long as they also removed this one final barrier between the elves who had followed him in the depths of the Never Dark and the home they had left behind.
BREAK!
A crack, like the sound of an axe biting the wood of an ancient and long-forgotten door rang out, and Rivvek felt the world of his birth open up before him. Two Port Gates surrendered and one failed, its explosion echoing along the open portal, sending shrapnel into the Never Dark where it bounced harmlessly off armor or was caught up short by the geomagnetic shields his elemancers had at the ready.
Energy hit him, bringing with it a dark and insane intellect, which screeched at him, but could not touch his soul. To do so, it would have had to brave the Ghaiattric flame, and it fled before him, before his conflagration, connected, yet distant.
First the Gate. He saw the burst of interdimensional energy, caught and grabbed it as easily as he worked the flame. So similar, but one cool, the other hot. He gathered it to him as the gates collapsed, surrendering his hold on the flame, letting the soothing flow of the Port Gate’s magic reach out to his army, to the Aern, to the precious cargo of bone metal they brought with them; and as the failed gate burned away and closed, another door opened within him.
He could have gone anywhere. As energies of the shattered gate coursed through him, he saw the whole of his home world, the icy wastes and what lay beneath them, the ruins of Port Ammond, the Dwarven mines, Bridgeland, and many places and people he had heard of but never seen.
He saw Kholster standing over the Proto-Aern, saw the Overwatches battling the thing Uled had become, saw the newly rooted Vael prince and his Root Wife who had saved Fort Sunder, and his mind expanded to encompass the whole of what he saw. He understood, for one shining moment, the whole of the Last World, why the Ghaiattri called it that, and where the dragons had gone.
At the apex, he balanced on the edge of a blade. He could not hold it; to do so would rip him apart. Even if he had been Vander or Kazan, it would have been too much. Perhaps Hasimak or Aldo, but they were not here. He would have to use the energy, deplete it . . . or let it go.
Narrowing his focus, he sought the perfect place to send those with him. He considered Uled, and when he did, for the briefest of instants in the tenuous connection between them, linked by the destruction of Uled’s gate and the forcing open of Hasimak’s, Rivvek saw the terrible design of Uled’s contingencies.
There was hate there and madness, but Rivvek’s mind touched Uled’s at their most common point: Uled’s dizzying lattice of calculated plans.
He saw the ten thousand contingencies the mad elf had set in place to ensure his return from beyond the grave. As the contact broke, Rivvek seized the remaining vestiges of his complete understanding to see which contingencies would be the natural course for the horrific thing to take. He marked the obvious way in which Uled’s pathways to life had been restricted, an unknown agent forcing him along a set route where his plans dwindled to a point of failure, trapped or destroyed, and then, as his clarity failed, he saw the flaw in the effort, one point they had overlooked or simply not discovered.
Click. Rivvek smiled, feeling the edges of himself fray as he placed a single trignom tile and knocked the metaphorical tile over, his final calculation using the Great Destiny Machine completed and executing.
CHAPTER 35
FOR THE BONES...
Glayne swung at the next rune, ignoring his creator’s panicked attempts at dissuasion. Uled hurled artifice and invectives in equal measure, pulling out a few of the more desperate physical countermeasures. A swarm of wasps wrought of stone and magic vomited forth from a hole Uled opened in the air, buzzing and stinging at the bone-steel of Hunter’s sturdy plates.
They will not make it through, Hunter intoned.
I was unconcerned, Glayne thought back, irked by the suddenness of the encounter and Long Fang’s unsuitability to the fight. Wielding shards of the Life Forge, as efficient as they may have been, did not carry with it the satisfaction of whirling Long Fang, his dagger and chain, in constant revolutions of death, simultaneously increasing his sphere of awareness. He consoled himself with the view Hindsight, the bone-steel garrote which hung behind him, showed him, using it keep watch on Amber’s progress protecting his flank.
It was at the edge of his thoughts to warn her she was about to be overwhelmed, when she told him herself.
I’m going over, Amber thought to him. You have as much of a bulwark as I could give you . . .
You did better than I would have. Four sight lines filled his field of vision. Water to his left and right, Amber behind him and the Port Gate before him. Overlaying all of them, a map of the Port Gate, the location of each rune, numbered. Those he’d destroyed were a dull gray, his current target golden, his next target blue, the remaining runes a shimmering silver.
Amber, finally overcome by the horde of dead, was carried over the side of the pier and into the water.
Keep going, Amber thought at him. He can’t throw too much against you or he risks knocking the Port Gate over with you.
Glayne signaled his acknowledgement via a token in her mind. It would be close, but he thought he had time. She had erected a barrier of stilled dead between him and the unquiet ones. Doing so bought him time but made her vulnerable.
She drowned in the harbor’s dark water, her warsuit unable to breathe for her beneath the waves because it, too, was beneath them. Fighting on, riding her warsuit rather than the lifeless meat within it, she struggled to regain her place on the pier, to purchase every moment she could for Glayne to succeed.
He signaled his approval again, intent on showing her, once they were finished, the earlier point at which he would have lost the pier. With ten runes left, Glayne heard a scream echoing in the middle distance from the pulsing gate before him. Its shimmering portal changed to a purple he knew too well.
Ghaiattri fire, Hunter cursed. Panic stained the warsuit’s thoughts; it tried to make him withdraw. Glayne relived the moment when he’d lost his eyes, the fire, the laughter, the death of the offending demons. He wrapped it in a shroud of will and set it aside. He could feel the terror later, if he failed.
We stay on mission, he chided Hunter.
But— Hunter’s argument vanished, caught and covered by the explosion of the Port Gate. Green and red mineral seams flared, the stone coming apart, huge chunks of it flying off in all directions. Several of the sharpest, heaviest pieces struck Glayne point-blank.
Pain announced injuries to his chest, his lungs, hands, and head, and he was flung backward through the wall of dead. Hunter’s words changed to a babble of pain. Glayne had clenched the two shards of the Life Forge he’d been wielding tightly in his gauntlets, but that had not been enough to stop him from stabbing himself in the shoulder with one of them.
He jerked it free, but the wound hurt
worse than any demon fire.
Glayne! Amber shouted in his head. What in Kholster’s name?! I’m coming! Stay put!
Glayne laughed, the sound hollow, coming from his warsuit and not his own lips. He plunged his shards of the Life Forge hard into the wood of the pier. They sank deep and solid, so deep he felt certain the dead could not quickly remove them. Hands free, he grabbed the edges of the largest piece of Port Gate, trying to shift it off of him. It pinned him to the pier, as unmovable as the shards he’d buried in them. Either it was too heavy or—
“It is too late, Sixth.” Uled drifted into view, hovering over him, a twisted sneer on the twitching, scaled face. “I have too many of my dead through the gate and they have claimed so many more recruits. You have lost.”
“Unlikely,” Glayne Hunter said. “Even if Fort Sunder falls, the Aern will win in the end. I will see the victory with Hunter’s eyes.”
“No.” Uled’s grin overstripped the edges of nature, showing tendons and ligaments black with rot. Descending upon Glayne’s prone form, the dead seized his (Hunter’s) arms, unfolding them with combined effort, leaving him exposed, arms splayed before his creator.
Slowly, tenderly, savoring the moment, Uled drew a shard of the Life Forge from his robes. He stabbed the spike into Glayne’s left knee, then his right. “You will not see the morrow, nor even the next hour.”
Uled rested his weight on the unresponsive lower extremities, and Glayne felt another stab. Leaning close, but just out of arm’s reach, Uled bared his bone metal teeth in a grin far too similar to a normal Aernese one for Glayne’s comfort. More dead piled on the Aern and his warsuit until some hung suspended over the edge of their pier, rotted tatterdemalion legs dangling above the water.
“Now, where shall I lance you next, you traitorous automaton?” Uled took the shard firmly in both hands. “I think I know a good spot.”
He raised his arms, then jerked, once, twice, three times, each jerk punctuated by the stabbing sound of a blade piercing flesh all the way to the hilt and being jerked free again. Shunk! Shunk! Shunk!
Uled gaped, hands dropping to his sides, as the tiny pointed end of a shard of the Life Forge sprouted from his forehead.
Amber? Glayne asked.
Uled’s head ripped free of his misshapen shoulders, gripped by bone-steel gauntlets worked in a skeletal likeness.
Silence’s skull-like helm peered down at Glayne as the warsuit rotated Uled’s head toward itself and began to unceremoniously jerk the teeth from its jaws.
“Caz?” Glayne Hunter asked, still startled. “Where? How?”
Helm cocked to the left, like a wolf puzzling over new prey, Caz the Silent said five words in a hoarse whisper, as if they were all the explanation anyone would ever need:
“I come for the bones.”
*
Not as simple as that, Uled’s soul shrieked. It plunged through the air, drawn by the inexorable pull of Uled’s nearest contingency. Never as simple as that.
*
He’s heading your way, Vander thought.
Acknowledgement in the form of a gold token blinked once, but timing was important on this one, and Wylant did not want to foul it up. If Vax was right, there were very few dead-end pathways in Uled’s web of contingencies. The idea of stopping him, putting him out of her husband’s path for all time appealed to her.
. . . Clemency transmitted something, or rather started to send it, then stopped.
What? Wylant asked.
. . . A long pause stretched into minutes, and Wylant let it. Nothing, ma’am.
Clad in her son’s warsuit, an array of Dienox’s weapons at her disposal, the unseen arsenal ringing her, unseen by all, save her, unless she wanted it seen.
Is Vax—? Wylant started.
He is well, Clemency said quickly. It is not that. I cannot comment further.
But you’d like to? As they spoke, Wylant selected a spiked shield and a utilitarian sword that matched Vax’s most common sword-form to within an ounce of weight, its blade a match in length and sharpness.
I would.
Both items shifted from translucent blue to the dark, well-used hue many of Dienox’s implements possessed. Hefting the blade, getting the feel of the subtle differences, Wylant took a deep breath, held it, then forced it out.
Maybe Jun could make a similar replacement, Vax thought. He is the Builder, isn’t he?
“It would be a mere shadow,” Wylant murmured. Invisible to mortal eyes, the goddess of resolution paced along the ancient road, her bait mere paces ahead, unseeing, but not necessarily unaware of her presence.
Stooped and with a shuffling walk, the elf went before her. His manner and mode told anyone who saw him he was malformed . . . hunchbacked, one haffet of his skull loomed large and distended.
All lies.
Sargus scratched at his travel robes, stopping to pick an occasional herb growing by the side of the highway, where a few spots of green had survived the passage of the great exodus from Port Ammond.
Vander painted the trail of the approaching spirit for Wylant, complementing it with a precise countdown at the lower left corner of her eye.
Wylant wished she could have told Sargus what was about to happen, but the consensus among her Aern was that doing so might set off some inner and unknown treachery worked deep into Sargus, a countermeasure activated only in the event of Uled’s death and in such case as Sargus became aware of the potential for his body to be possessed by his monstrous sire.
Screeching over the rise, a blot of terror tainted the cold air. Sargus seemed to notice something, then let loose an “urk” sound and fell, muscles taut, to the ground, muttering unintelligible noises through locked jaws. The tips of Sargus’s fingers began to twitch.
“You were prepared for me when I was mortal,” Uled shouted, “but now I am—”
Wylant smashed the incoming spirit in the side with her shield, its spike piercing center mass. Recoiling with a pained wail, Uled fled up and to the West, and Wylant followed.
Clemency did not slow her flight at all. If anything, the warsuit lent her strength to the endeavor, allowing turns and maneuvers Wylant would have been hard-pressed to manage solo.
Each time Uled tried to slip past her to reach Sargus, Wylant met him with shield or blade.
“The beast’s bride,” Uled growled. “Then you know.” He twirled and dodged, no longer attempting reach Sargus. “And if you know, then you think . . .” He looked in the rough direction of Port Ammond. “Or do you?”
“Come and be ended, Uled,” Wylant tried to goad him. “I am the goddess of resolution. Come and be resolved.”
“Stole Nomi’s hair, did you?” Uled croaked an awful laugh. “It was impressive when Nomi did it. First is inspiration, second mere duplication.”
The mass of dark energy coalesced into a more lifelike representation of the elf, but wrought all in black. Wylant could almost see the ideas turning behind Uled’s eyes. He was weighing her and considering.
“No . . .” Uled laughed. “No, I don’t think you do know, but as a matter of precaution . . .”
He zoomed off, and Wylant let him go in accordance with the plan, landing at Sargus’s side. On the stone of the White Road, blood trailed along the pale surface of the stone, picking out tiny irregularities and web-like cracks.
“He’s headed your way, Kholster.” Wylant knelt next to Sargus, coming free of Clemency as she did. Two fingers to his throat revealed his pounding heart.
“Why does a lone elf deserve a goddess’s direct intervention?” Sargus whispered, through jaws that appeared to be coming back under his control by degrees.
“You helped me kill him once.” Wylant continued her exam, checking his pupils, his breath—a skilled Aeromancer could deduce a lot from such intimate air. Scowling, she applied pressure to the bridge of his nose to stop the bleeding, while checking his teeth for signs of cracking behind the bloodied lip.
“Vander says Uled is not headed for Port A
mmond,” Clemency said.
“Where?” Sargus barked.
Wylant nodded for Clemency to answer.
“The Parliament of Ages,” the warsuit said. “And there is something else.”
*
“All of them?” Kholster whispered, quickly repeating the question to Vander in his mind. He stood still as a statue, at the center of what had once been the Lane of Review. The bay was clearly visible from this vantage point now, and he found it hard to reconcile the new view with a lifetime of memories.
Vander repeated the news, transmitted the image, and despite the alarming update about Uled’s unexpected course change, Kholster grinned from ear to ear.
*
Rae’en Bloodmane drudged her way out from under the layers of ash, dirt, and dragon that covered her. She had not known a warsuit could lose consciousness, however briefly, but then no one else had ever smashed their way to the center of a dragon’s brain, then barely avoided being melted by dragon fire.
Patting herself to make sure she was all there, Rae’en was astonished to find the detailing on Bloodmane’s right side had run like candle wax.
We can fix that, right? she asked.
In time, but— Bloodmane froze, the awe in his thoughts hitting her moments ahead of the relayed message.
Ordamar by Ordam out of Lilly, the unfamiliar Aern’s voice spoke in her mind, current kholster of the Lost Command, previously under General Kyland’s kholstering, reporting for duty, First of One Hundred. All Aern accounted for, though a few of us will need a good strip and dip, before—
Did you say all Aern? Rae’en choked. The whole of the Lost Command?
And about twenty seven thousand elves who say they don’t want to be called Oathbreakers anymore, kholster Rae’en, Ordamar thought. I suppose that is appropriate given that we are now more aptly called the Found Command.