Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  (smell horrible place-here statement) (iron-stump number-many place-here statement) ((negation creature place-here statement) intensify)

  Elicand brought his hand up to wipe away the gravel that seemed to be stuck to his face, but he immediately regretted the move. His hand was covered in a tar-like, gluey mess and all he succeeded in doing was getting the gravel stuck to the goo on his hand and smearing it all on his face.

  With a gentle tug on his clean hand, Shondu guided Elicand forward.

  (water-hole rushing-speed hand-clean place-here suggestion) (movement speed-slow caution suggestion)

  The hand tugging at him pulled him down into a crouch, and then Elicand felt the cold rushing of the river envelope his hand.

  And suddenly, he could see.

  * * *

  The image that swam before Elicand’s blurry, burning eyes was the strangest thing. Another Wasketchin hung in the air, staring down at him in disbelief. The face was close enough to touch, too close, and as he reached out to push the stranger away, the stranger made a lunge toward him. Elicand cried out in the deafening silence and jerked himself away.

  Blackness enveloped him once more.

  “Where did he go? Where is he? Did you see who it was?”

  (negation person-other here-place time-now statement) (puzzlement statement)

  “But I saw him,” Elicand said. “Another Wasketchin. He was right in front of me. He tried to kill me.”

  (laughter statement) (understanding statement)

  “What’s so funny?” Elicand demanded, but Shondu’s calmness, his certainty that he knew what had happened, helped to calm the frightened story uncle, and eventually Shondu managed to explain what had happened. (soul-blending statement) Apparently, the river was more than just a convenient flow of water for the Brownies. It was the entire reason they lived down here—to be near it. Because when two people placed their hands in its current, their minds became one, allowing them to hear, taste, feel and think as one. They could see as one too, which is what had happened. Elicand hadn’t seen another Wasketchin looming over him. He had seen himself, looming over Shondu, but through Shondu’s eyes.

  At first, Elicand hadn’t believed, but eventually Shondu convinced him to come back to the hole in the floor where the river peeked through and they had plunged their hands back into its powerful flow. This time, Elicand was prepared for what he saw, and it did not frighten him. But it was still a very disquieting thing. To see himself as Shondu saw him. Impossibly large and threatening, looming over him and blocking his view of the world. But there was humor there too. And kindness. Trust. What Elicand saw was not limited to the content of Shondu’s vision—it was a blending of all that Shondu saw and felt about him, laid together on top of what he saw. Soul-blending.

  It was the most powerful experience Elicand had ever had.

  When at last the wonder of that experience had receded, and the stench of whatever it was that lived in this cavern reasserted itself upon him, Elicand allowed Shondu to hurry him along. He paused briefly to scrub as much of the filth off his face and hands as he could manage—which had been Shondu’s original purpose in leading him to the crack in the floor that exposed the river coursing beneath the rock under their feet.

  What he had seen through Shondu’s eyes had been as perplexing as the smell itself. More than a dozen cylinders lay scattered about the cramped cavern. Like the sky-tubes that bore Seekers in the Wagon of Tears, but not as long. Those standing on end came as high as Elicand’s chest. Each had a hole on its upper face, and each had several raised ridges running around the circumference of the cylinder, like bond-rings around the arm of a Djin. Had they brought these things here? But the stench of the containers, and its assault on his eyes would not allow him to linger, and since he couldn’t examine them without taking his hands from the water and plunging himself back into darkness, there wasn’t much more he could learn about them. Elicand allowed Shondu to take his hand and lead him onward again, away from that strange place.

  Two moss meals later, and after walking an unknowable distance, but one that should surely have been enough, Elicand was disappointed that the stench still hounded him. He had done what he could, rinsing and scrubbing at his hand and even plunging his face into the river water, but he had not been able to completely remove the traces of whatever it was that he had stuck his hand into, and the smell lingered there with it. By this time, Elicand was exhausted. He had no way of knowing how much time had passed since he had awakened on that little jut of rock, but it felt like ages upon ages, and the more he thought about it, the less enthusiasm he could muster for standing up and pressing on into the dark. So Elicand wrapped himself more tightly in his kirfa, and leaned back against the papery moss that they had been eating, and which grew along the base of the tunnel wall here where they had stopped to do so. Shondu seemed to approve of this new course of action.

  (sleep-ours place-here time-now statement) (happy statement)

  Soon, the two of them were cuddled together against the cold and damp, dreaming fitful dreams, and neither of them stirred for the longest time, until Elicand reached up to scratch his chest and then awoke with a frightened cry.

  He could not move his fingers.

  * * *

  Once more, Elicand strained to flex them, and once more, they refused to bend. The sticky mess that had coated his left hand the day before had now hardened into a shell of sorts, like a tight-fitting glove of stone—one that was virtually impossible to bend or close. He felt around blindly in the darkness until he found a small round rock, about the size of a fist. Then he pressed the center of his palm flat down on top of it, pushing hard as he tried to close the hand into a grip around the stone. But nothing moved. In frustration, he slammed the hand down on the rock, but the armor held, absorbing the shock of what should have been a very painful blow, and distributing its force around his entire hand. It took a dozen repeated slams of his palm down onto the rock before he finally felt a slight give in the shell. Huzzah! He could now, with great effort, fold his thumb very slightly toward his fingers. At this rate, he would have to smash the bones of his hand entirely into dust before he’d be able to flex it enough to do anything useful. Elicand sighed and slumped back down.

  “Well, one thing is certain,” he said. “Being me has become much more interesting since the Wayitam sent me home.”

  (fun-time self-you-feel time-now question) Shondu asked.

  “Oh, yeah agreement,” Elicand replied. “Lots of fun statement.” He reached up with his good hand and rubbed at the spot on his cheek that had stiffened along with his hand. There wasn’t much he could have done with the side of his face, even at the best of times, but the stiffness he felt there bothered him even more than the rigidity of his hand. The skin of his cheek tugged at him incessantly—when he talked, when he swallowed, when he smiled or frowned. Even rolling his eyes at his own predicament came with a slight twinge of tightness. What good is a failed story uncle who can’t even smile without looking like a cripple?

  A moment later, Elicand felt Shondu’s fingers on his good hand and then felt a few clumps of moss pressed into it.

  (food-eat person-you time-now suggestion)

  “Right,” Elicand said. “Do you think I can use this club-hand as a dinner plate question?” He placed a large piece of moss on the up-turned palm of his left hand and brought it up to his mouth. But in the darkness, his little finger bumped against his nose, and he felt the moss hit him on the lip and then bounce away into oblivion. Elicand reached forward and began to pat at the ground with his good hand. The least he could do was refrain from throwing his food around after Shondu had gone to the trouble to fetch it. But this rock-falling, tree-blasting, perpetual blackness of night was getting to be extremely not fun anymore.

  Once again, Elicand sang his charm-song for light. He was no longer trying to make light, of course. It was a song of defiance. It was a song of frustration. It was a song to sing against the forces of everythi
ng that was wrong in the world and declare his complete lack of caring how many victories those forces might take—he was never going to bend to them.

  So of course, this time the charm worked.

  Elicand winced at the sudden brightness of light after so many, many days without it. His eyes watered and tears ran down his face, and even though he could not feel their wetness where they passed over the stiffened part of his cheek, it was still the most wonderful thing he could ever remember doing with his vim.

  He had long ago given up trying to charm light into a rock or stick. For days now, Elicand had been trying to simply bring light to himself, hoping that if the vim didn’t even have to leave his body, then maybe it would more readily do its work there right inside of him, but even that had never produced anything before.

  Curiously though, now that it had chosen to work, it only did so from within the armor casing of his left hand. How odd.

  Elicand waved the hand around him in the air, delighting at the harsh shadows it threw around the tunnel where they had slept. Shondu’s eyes sparkled and blinked in the sudden glare, but he too seemed happy at this new development.

  (fun-play shadow-scare delight statement) Shondu bubbled, turning to face the tunnel wall and then raising his hands like the claws of an attacking bear. The shadow on the wall did indeed look like a great and terrible bear, but the sight of a short-furred Brownie wiggling his behind to make the great bear look threatening was more than Elicand could take and he doubled over in laughter, folding at the waist and holding his stomach as though he might die from the hilarity. With his hand covered by the fold of his body and the fabric of his kirfa, its light vanished—and so did the great and terrifying shadow bear. Shondu turned to look at him, disappointed that the game was over so quickly. With his hand mostly covered, Elicand noticed that there was also a bit of glow coming from somewhere else and he held his non-glowing hand out, moving it closer and closer to this second source of light until he had located it. His face, of course. His cheek did not glow as brightly as his hand, but it too shone with the slightly greenish light of the charm. Something about the armor shell seemed to help magic to work, but why that might be, he had no idea.

  The two of them played with the light for a little while longer, making silly shadows and following them around the tunnel, seeking better walls to throw their shadows at. But soon enough, they tired of the game and resumed their journey. With Elicand’s light, he was now able to see without the need for Shondu to guide him, and so they were able to walk properly, without Elicand half-stooped over to reach his little guide’s hand.

  The only problem they encountered was that, while a brilliantly glowing hand was a good lamp to light Elicand’s way, it also did an excellent job of blinding him. Eventually, he settled on a strategy that seemed to work, by placing his hand on top of his head, where its light could not reach his eyes directly, but could still light the way in front of him. It was odd, but it worked, and their progress from that moment onward was much faster.

  Each time they came to a branching of their path, or entered a chamber with more than one way out, Elicand elected to move upward. He hoped that sooner or later, they might possibly reach a tunnel that connected to a cave that finally emerged somewhere into the world above ground level. There were plenty of blind alleys and dead ends, but Elicand had been happy to learn that they did not need to mark each path with a cairn of stones. Shondu had an unerring ability to recognize the places they had already been, and to steer them to a different, untried path so that they could continue their exploration.

  As day followed day—or at least, as sleep followed sleep—the pair of explorers wound their way up higher and higher in the system of caves—never freeing themselves of the oppressive sounds of raging, hurtling water, but eventually it dawned on Elicand that he hadn’t actually seen the river in some time. Perhaps as long as a day. They had been making a habit of stopping whenever they’d found an exposed flow, and after taking time to drink, they would often share a moment of soul-blending. It was so much easier to communicate when all you had to do was think your thoughts and they were shared by both thinkers. Ideas did not have to be spelled out in full, or converted into words—they just had to be thought. Conversing with Shondu at such times was as easy as talking to himself inside his head.

  But now, he felt the need to blend with his friend again. Shondu had wandered off ahead to explore a side-tunnel, leaving Elicand with a moment to rest, but he found too many worries percolating in the silence to let him rest. Sooner or later, they were going to have to make some decisions. How long could they continue with nothing to eat but moss? Was it possible that heading down would have been the wiser course? And why could they hear the river still, if it had been so long since they had seen it? How did that make any sense? There were so many questions, and even though Elicand liked the emotional honesty of empathinking, he had to admit that he wasn’t very good at it—certainly not good enough to hold complicated discussions about the practical questions that now pestered him.

  He was still running in mental circles on a half a dozen worries when Shondu’s thoughts broke into his own.

  (Dragon-breath Dragon-blood secret-place excitement statement)

  But what sent a jolt down Elicand’s spine and chilled him to his soul was the voice that followed—not an empathought that tickled inside his mind, but an actual voice that spoke in the air all around him.

  “Come to me, story thief. Come and take my story. If you dare.”

  In that moment, Elicand was certain who that voice belonged to. He had been hearing it in his dreams for his entire life. He had sought it over and over again on the hills outside his own village, and again at the Heart of the Verge with the Wayitam, and always it had eluded him in the waking world.

  It was the voice of the trees.

  It was the voice of the Dragon Methilien.

  And then that voice let loose a roar of agony, and the rocky world around him began to shake.

  Chapter 23

  None may speak against the King, Kijamon knew. To do so would be treason. But any Djin could choose not to speak for him. This was the logic behind the Chorus of Silence, though it was a song that had not been sung in half a thousand years. The old Djin wormed his way down the narrow tunnel, inching forward on his belly, toward the small room that awaited him ahead, set deeply into the stone of the mountain behind the Wind Forge.

  Sometimes called the Dragon’s Sinus, it was a chamber in which those who sought his voice could come to seek it in stillness. But for those who knew the secret, other voices could be summoned there as well, and that’s what he sought now, crawling forward in the darkness, as he had not done for many years. Kijamon paused and lifted the coverlight to shine into the tunnel ahead, peering after it into the darkness. He sighed. Still no sign of the chamber wall ahead. Once more the Master of the Wind Forge cursed himself for having dug this passage so deeply, and pushed the coverlight back into his vests. But curses would shift no gravel, so with his hands free once again, he put them to use and resumed his awkward slither into the gloom.

  When he at last reached his destination and brought out his light again, Kijamon muttered in displeasure. He had forgotten how small the chamber was. All the better to hear, of course. The smaller the sphere, the more precisely it could be shaped to focus the sounds. But even so, he had carved the room large enough so that his own ear would rest at the precise center of the space when he stood upright.

  Although, that had been when he was a young Djin, in the prime of his life. And the prime of his height. The old man grumbled irritably as he looked around and found the thick stone on the floor, which he dragged into the center of the chamber. It’s what it was there for, of course. But he had never imagined having to use it himself.

  Stepping up onto the stone, Kijamon had to bend his knees a trifle, but eventually, his ear was at last centered in the room, and the dim and distant sounds of the Djin city fell away, leaving only the crushi
ng silence of the world beyond. It was the soundless sound that had always filled the center of the chamber, and it waited there, patiently, ready for new sounds to be placed into it by others.

  Kijamon leaned back slightly, bringing his mouth to where he felt his ear had marked the center. Then he puckered his lips and whistled. It was a low, steady note, but not quite right. Working on instinct, he raised the pitch of his whistle slowly, and shifted his weight to the left a bit. In a moment, he was rewarded with a rich, resonant sound, as though the Dragon himself whistled back. Such a thought was nonsense, of course. It was just his own tone reverberating in harmony with the sphere of the room. But such fanciful beliefs were fun to think sometimes, even if they were silly.

  As the tone reverberated through the space and then trailed away, the blue stone of the cavern around him began to glow. The summons had been sent. Soon, the Masters of the other Great Houses would be alerted to a similar glow in their own chambers, and they would rush to find out who it was who had summoned the Chorus.

  And the best part was, since there was only one such chamber in the entire city and he himself was standing in it, Mabundi would have no way of listening in on the discussion that was about to take place.

  Kijamon pushed the cover light back into his vests and then settled himself to await the Chorus.

  * * *

  All the way down the Trail of Sky, Tayna wondered if she would ever get the chance to go back to searching for her family. She wasn’t complaining, exactly. It was awesome that she had been given such an important job, finding old maps to help her people and all that, but she couldn’t help feeling that it was just another distraction keeping her from family yours, home come. And she was close now. They were here, somewhere on the Anvil. She just knew it. But it was Zimu who put it into proper perspective for her when she grumbled about it.