Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  And so here he was now, Qhirmaghen, Fallen Contender and Overcaptain of Minor Works, cramped into the end of a tunnel like a common Grunter, lying in wait under the King’s private chambers, hoping to overhear something of consequence.

  All he needed now was the King.

  For almost an hour, Qhirmaghen sat quietly, his ear pressed up against the thin dirt cap that stood between him and the King’s chambers. He had chosen his route carefully, and knew that he was below the corner of the room—a location none would ever stand upon—so he had been able to scratch his tunnel to within a very slender breadth of breaking through the hard-packed ground without fear of being discovered by a misplaced foot.

  After a lengthy wait, he heard shuffling from above. The King? Qhirmaghen tensed up in anticipation, but the voices spoke in quiet tones and he relaxed. Servants of some description. Qhirmaghen suspected they were talking about their Overcaptain, given how poorly they spoke of him. But what they said was of little concern. It was just the idle grousing of minor folk. What did matter was how hard it was for him to make out their snide whispers as they moved around the room. What if Angiron were to reveal some crucial piece of information in just such a quiet tone?

  When the attendants had completed their tasks and departed, Qhirmaghen pulled a small pouch of tools from inside his jerkin and withdrew a slender length of bone from the collection inside. It was longer than his longest finger, but only a fraction of a finger wide, and pointed at the tip. A pin bone from a large fish, stiff, but with some flex to it. When he was certain that the servants were gone, Qhirmaghen worked the slender bone carefully up into the soil above his ear, until he felt it poke out into the room above him. Crumbs of dirt rained down on his face and nose as he worked the bone around a little, creating an open air channel that connected him more fully to the King’s chamber.

  A sound hole.

  Qhirmaghen placed his ear against the dirt once more and confirmed. Yes. He could hear the hush of the room now. As he listened to this more voluminous silence, several more crumbs and pellets of soil bounced from his cheek. Had he weakened the floor too much? He didn’t think so, but still, he would have to take care. No more poking and prodding. He would make do with what he now had.

  It was perhaps another twenty minutes before the King and his “Queen” entered the chamber, followed by another pair of servants, but Angiron ordered them to leave. Qhirmaghen held his breath and listened.

  “You overstep yourself,” Angiron said, as soon as he and his bride were alone.

  “Do I? I thought you wanted a queen. That’s what queens do.”

  “Wrong!” Angiron barked. “Queens do exactly what their kings tell them to do, and this king is telling you to mind your place.” Then his tone softened into an oily purr. “Or I’m sure one of your sisters can be convinced to play the role more to my liking.”

  There was a slight pause as Qhirmaghen imagined the two of them glaring at each other.

  Then, “Yes, my Lord.”

  “That’s better,” Angiron replied. Somebody moved and more grains of grit sprinkled into Qhirmaghen’s ear and tickled at the side of his nose. He flicked it away.

  “Speaking of your sisters, where are they?”

  “They’re vacating the last of the children,” the fake Queen said. “They’ll join us once it’s done.”

  “You’re sure you’ve got them under control this time? I’m tired of having to chase after your little sprats whenever I need one. They’re not even close to broken.”

  “If we’d broken them, they’d have been useless to us. Can’t wring much misery from a simpleton. But now that we’re home…” The woman’s voice trailed off dreamily. “So much prey here,” she said. “So rich. We had forgotten what it was like.”

  “Feed all you want. The miserable Ketch are yours. Just leave those children for me.”

  “Gladly!” the Regalia woman replied. “And you should have no trouble with them now, my Lord. Your magic has left them as docile as rag dolls. Do with them as you like.”

  Children? Being dragged into the Angiron’s war? Qhirmaghen did not like the sounds of this. Were even the weakest of beings mere tools to this mad king?

  The Overcaptain of Minor Works risked a quick breath and prepared himself to hear the worst.

  * * *

  “Your magic has left them as docile as rag dolls,” Regalia said. “Do with them as you like.” She stood in the center of a small, underground room. The King’s private receiving room, richly appointed in the Gnome fashion, with soft benches of muck along one wall for seating, as well as a trove of bones, sinews, fleshes and the like. Anything a King might want.

  Angiron whirled away from the door where he’d been pacing, and faced his “wife.” “Of course I’ll do as I like, you stupid brain-parasite! Have you found either of your other girls yet? My real wife? Or her ridiculous friend?”

  “Not yet, my Lord, but we will. Their scent is quite—”

  But the room lurched and cut off her reply. Without warning, the floor and walls rumbled and shook and a great cry rose up from the very soil around them. It was a cry of agony and despair, as though the world itself were lamenting its own impending demise.

  The Gnome King threw himself to a low, earthen bench and clutched at it for support, as Regalia staggered into the corner of the room, fleeing the open center where the ceiling above them bounced and rattled, raining clumps of moist dirt onto the floor.

  “Oh… What is that?” she cooed, as the sorrow behind the wailing of infinity washed through her. It was enormous. Limitless misery. As though she fed upon the despair of a god. The Miseratu Princess felt herself fill, restored and rejuvenated, as though her long exile from the world and the Prey had never been. “Oh sisters, do you feel it?”

  Regalia spread her arms in ecstasy and took a step out from the corner, her eyes closed and her head thrown back, as the pain of the world filled a space within her that she had forgotten. It was more than misery. More than pain, or fear. It was all of these, and more. A feeling that perhaps only the gods felt, and not being such a one, she had no word to describe it.

  Other than “delicious.”

  “Yes!” she cried. “Fill me! Power beyond all power! For the first time, I am alive!”

  And then the floor beneath her collapsed. As she fell, a squeak of terror caught at her expanded senses, and in a flash, her hands shot down into the soil, questing. She groped through the filth and dirt until she snagged a squirming bundle of fear.

  “It would seem your underlings are truly beneath you, my ‘King.’” Scorn dripped from Regalia’s tone as she flung the creature into the room and stepped easily up out of the hole to follow him.

  “You!” Angiron shouted, his eyes bulging with rage. Qhirmaghen lay in the center of the room as the shaking subsided. The Gnome King advanced, one hand already raised, ready to beat his traitorous Aide into pulp.

  “Leave him!” Regalia snarled. “I want to play.”

  Angiron flung her a glance of purest disdain. “He’s mine, you ignorant fear-cow!” Then he reached out and to grab the Fallen Contender by the throat.

  Behind him, Regalia threw back her head in delight. “Oh, but you mistake me, little worm. It is not your contemptible wretch that I mean to play with.” Then she cuffed Angiron in the side of the head with a casual swing of her arm, hurtling the King across the room, where he hit the wall with a wet thud and slid slowly down toward the floor.

  “I want you. And I have quite a lot to teach you. About pain.”

  Then she pushed up the sleeves of her robes and moved in to begin the lesson.

  Chapter 40

  With the wracking sobs finally under control, Eliza rolled over. It may have sounded like laughter, but there had been no hint of merriment about it, and the feeling that remained in her gut had the somber aftertaste of despair. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and was not entirely surprised to find herself lying on the ground. Sometimes, the little things could completel
y undo you.

  Like the time five or six years ago, when Sister Manipula had rushed Rhonda to see a doctor. Eliza could easily remember how furious she’d been about the whole thing. Not because the girl had received prompt medical attention, or because Rhonda had escaped from Goody chores for three whole days in the hospital. Eliza had been furious with jealousy, because when Rhonda came back, she’d had a souvenir of her adventure, visible as Sister Manipula had marched her back into the Old Shoe. A little slip of paper sticking out of her fist. A bus ticket. Having never been on a bus before, that ticket could only have meant one thing to Eliza’s child mind: a chariot ride to adventure.

  She could remember the rage that had stampeded through her then. She’d wanted to hit Rhonda with something heavy, to jump up and down, and scream. To break things. But her body had rebelled then, just as it had now, and she’d sat down. Laughing. Suddenly and uncontrollably. Right in the middle of the hallway, forcing all the other kids to walk around her as they made their way to the basement for lunch.

  Faced with such overwhelmingly conflicted emotions, laughing on the floor had just seemed to be the most appropriate response. What else do you do when nothing makes sense? It was unfair how the Goodies treated everyone, how they picked favorites. And un-favorites. It was unfair how some girls got to be sick and have adventures while other girls did not. But most of all, Eliza had been angry with herself—angry at how badly she’d wanted to hit Rhonda, for doing nothing more than getting sick and being miserable. Overwhelmed by her own inability to make sense of those conflicting angers, Eliza had just plopped herself down on the floor. Her emotions had gone on strike, and laughter had been put temporarily in charge.

  Like now.

  Seeing Mehklok pop Scraw into his mouth, Eliza’s first instinct had been to punch him, and she might have done it too, if she’d been able to move. But she’d seen his face in that moment before he’d turned away. She’d seen his sudden realization that, once again, he had done something wrong. He had no idea what, but she had seen that betrayal clearly registered. He’d been doing something that seemed totally natural to him, and had then been brought up short by her unexpected judgment.

  It was in that moment that Eliza first saw herself through his eyes, his alien, Gnomileshi eyes. And what she saw there was more horrifying to her than anything she had ever seen before. Because the look that had scampered across his face had been uncomfortably familiar. She had seen it before. On the faces of her friends.

  When their souls were being crushed by one of the Goodies.

  One of the good things about gut-wrenching laughter—no matter why you’re doing it—is that, when you’re done, you feel clean. You feel as though the entire world has been reset, and you could handle anything again.

  Eliza got slowly to her feet. Her knees were a bit rubbery, as though even they had taken an active part in the laughing fit. Was it a bad sign when even your knees were laughing at you? But as she stood, she heard a sound, coming from a little ways off through the trees. Opposite from the direction Mehklok had run.

  At first it had sounded like an echo of her own laughter, but when it rose again, it was more of a warbling trill, like a dove in a trap. She really ought to go find her strange little companion—the only companion she had left now, she reminded herself—but the cooing sound called through the trees once more.

  And it sounded a little more frantic. A little more desperate.

  Deciding that she would just have to trust Mehklok for a few minutes longer, Eliza turned toward the strange animal cry and set off to investigate.

  * * *

  Eventually, Eliza tracked the sound. It was coming from a dense cluster of trees. They formed a ring at their base, and looked like a traveler’s dehn that had been allowed to grow wild. The trill was coming from inside the ring.

  “Hello?” Eliza called as she approached. The trunks were pressed tightly together, all the way around the circle, and as high up as several yards above her head before they thinned enough to show gaps between them.

  The trilling continued, although the pitch had lowered some in response to Eliza’s call. It was now more of a whimper of unhappiness than a cry for help.

  If Scraw was here, he’d be able to— Eliza felt a pang of sadness then, as she realized that Scraw was not going to come suddenly bursting out of the trees to help her. She would have to solve this problem herself.

  Walking around the column of trees, Eliza found a small chink in the armored palisade. A twist in one of the trunks that left a gap between it and its neighbor. Not a gap that went all the way through, but one that was deep enough that she could get her toes jammed into it, and after a bit of grunting and pulling, she had climbed high enough to see in through the gaps above.

  It was the Gnome squad’s Yeren. The creature was tied up inside the tree ring, obviously in distress. The rope they’d tied her with wasn’t even long enough to let the poor creature stand, and she was hunkered down, pressed back against the tree wall, trembling. And still trilling her fear. How long she had been there was anybody’s guess, but that didn’t really matter. At least this gave Eliza something to think about. Another distraction to help her while away the eternity of death.

  At her first approach, the creature had flinched back even further, as though trying to press herself into the tiny crevices between the tree trunks that were her cage. Her enormous eyes glittered in fear. But when Eliza dropped lightly to the ground, clearly not a Gnome, the wideness of those eyes relaxed, and the tension in her bearing seemed to melt a little.

  Eliza couldn’t be sure, but she’d already decided this was a she-Yeren. There was something about the soft roundness of her face, and the slenderness of her arms that suggested girlishness. Gorilla girlishness maybe, but there was a definite femininity there.

  Eliza quickly squatted down, to make herself look less threatening. “Are you okay?” she said, in English, holding out a hand as though she was approaching an unfamiliar dog. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The poor thing didn’t likely understand her words, but she seemed to respond to Eliza’s tone. Her hands were bound together with a silvery cord, and the other end was tied to a thin branch overhead. Too high for the Yeren to reach, and with her hands tied, too high for her to climb, too.

  Eliza stared up at the end of the rope for a moment, trying to figure out how she could climb up there to untie it, when she suddenly realized that she didn’t have to. She reached out slowly and gave a gentle tug on the middle of the rope. The Yeren reached out with her bound hands and Eliza moved cautiously forward. More scared of frightening the creature than of any danger to herself.

  When she got close enough, she could see that the knot wasn’t particularly complicated, and she began working at it with her fingers. The Yeren seemed to relax a little more, and the pitch of her trilling dropped even lower. Almost to a purr, but not quite low enough for that. Nor calm enough either.

  The rope was thin and the knot had been tied tightly, making it hard for Eliza to get at it without pulling. Beneath the circle of rope, the creature’s skin was exposed in an angry ring of redness. The fur there had been rubbed away by her struggles, and the fur immediately surrounding the area was matted into sticky clumps of dirt and dried blood.

  As she worked, Eliza made shushing noises at the poor thing and stroked the fur of her arms, trying to appear friendly and helpful, and saying nonthreatening things. “I’m trying to help. I won’t hurt you. Stay calm.”

  It took several long minutes of working at it before the knot finally began to unravel, but eventually it did, and as she unwrapped the rope from around the creature’s wounded wrists, Eliza tensed herself a little, fully expecting a violent shove as the freed captive made her escape and bolted away into the forest. But the shove never came.

  Instead, with her hands at last freed from those painful bonds, the creature gestured for Eliza to move back and then stood, slowly unfolding her cramped limbs and standing, and unfolding,
and then standing some more, until she was fully upright. Eliza’s eyes widened.

  “You don’t play basketball by any chance, do you?”

  The creature was at least seven feet tall. Maybe eight. But instead of fleeing, this gentle giantess moved into a slow, sinuous dance, stretching herself in a fluid kind of yoga ballet. Utterly calm, she exuded a profound grace, an elegance that seemed to mark her in Eliza’s eyes as a sort of Zen Buddhist priestess of dance, if there was such a thing. There was little sign of recently freed slave creature about her. Even the full-body fur coat she had going seemed part of her magic, and Eliza was entranced. It was like watching a private moment of some famous Russian ballerina maybe, after she’d first climbed out of bed. The kind of dancer who performed for kings and queens and only ever ate oranges and salads. Eliza could easily imagine that between performances, she spent her days working as a professional artist’s muse, and that by night she appeared in the dreams of little girls, teaching them to be princesses.

  When the stretching was over, the white-furred dancer bowed gracefully before Eliza, bringing her forehead down to touch delicately against Eliza’s. She held herself there for a moment, and then looked up, meeting Eliza’s curious gaze with her great, brown eyes. There was a question there, Eliza thought, and then a sadness, a disappointment perhaps. And intelligence. Definitely intelligence. This was not some dull-witted she-beast, but a wise and thoughtful creature.

  When the little ritual of thanks was over, the wise and thoughtful fur woman stood up once more. And then she walked away, reaching up with her long arms and lifting herself gracefully up to the gap between the trees. Then a moment later, she lowered herself beyond them and was gone.

  “Wow,” Eliza said. “That was intense.”

  She had a moment of panic, wondering how she was going to get out of the tree-ring, but then she noticed the rope, now just laying there. A few grumbles and scrambles later, she had untied the other end and used it to climb up high enough to squeeze through the gap, and she too was free once more. But of the graceful Yeren woman, she could find no trace. Eliza sighed.