Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  Another burst of energy flowed from Kam as he enhanced the image, allowing it to grow to full size. “An unscored dental ridge,” he tapped the image, “shows no desire to appease the Eldrennai with her appearance. A well-used and maintained heartbow slung over her shoulder. The Vael is obviously capable of taking care of herself in a fight. And there’s something in her eyes. They are pretty, and compassionate, but also . . . clever.”

  “And?”

  “I would think all those things would be important.”

  “You’d be correct.”

  “General?”

  “Yes, Kam?”

  “Permission to speak freely?”

  “Of course.”

  “She looks a great deal like . . . you?”

  Wylant’s laugh was a rough bark. “That’s not why I picked her out, but Kholster has a . . . a few specific types. She and I are one of those.”

  “You always pick them out?”

  “No . . .” Just when your prince has doomed his people. She trailed off, took a sip of wine and started over. “In the past I’ve rejected two representatives and sent them back. One male and one female. He was too gentle, too doe-eyed. The other was a pretty enough girl, but she was vapid. She’d have run off with Kholster at the drop of a hat and agreed to anything he wanted, including your destruction.”

  “So . . . you’ve been sizing them up, doing a strategic assessment.” Kam seemed impressed. “This isn’t—”

  “Some strange jealous ex-wife control issue?” she interrupted. “No, it isn’t.”

  Wylant breathed a shallow sigh. Kam had good instincts. If Kholster didn’t kill him, she might even be able to train him to lead a squad in another decade or so.

  Wylant stood up.

  “Tell the Lance to mount up,” she said. If I’m going to look as if I’ve taken leave of my senses, she thought, might as well drool on my tunic and foul my breeches, too. “We’re riding to Albren Pass. Now.”

  *

  Wylant reined in her horse. The Sidearms reined in as well, the hoofbeats of their horses muffled by horseshoes the elderly mage Sargus had prepared using some sort of Artificer magic with which Wylant was wholly unfamiliar.

  “If it helps,” Sargus had said, having tried and failed to explain the intricacies of the Artifact Creation to her, “I don’t understand your elemancy either.”

  And—in a way—it had helped. That hunchbacked mage might be Uled’s get, but thank Aldo for the acolyte whose blood spared Sargus his father’s madness.

  Wylant removed her helmet and sniffed the chill air, hesitantly at first, then with increasing urgency, like a hound on the scent of its prey. Light from the noonday sun glared off her shaven head where the bone-steel studs in her ears (a wedding gift from Zhan) caught the light but did not flash in its gaze.

  From their vantage point atop Hunter’s Hill, Wylant expected to see the hustle and bustle of the watch city below. Instead, a massive oblong chasm yawned where the watchtower had once been, the city itself lay ruined at the bottom, and the only sound was that of the waves crashing against the cliffs beyond. A foul stench issued forth from the depths of the oblong trench, heavy and reptilian. Wylant sneezed, and her horse tossed its head but did not whinny.

  Now I wish I’d been wrong about all of this, Wylant thought.

  Peering into the hole from this distance revealed almost no detail, but the lack of bodies disturbed her. Wylant grunted softly. We have to go in.

  “Sir,” Kam asked in hushed tones. “Where is the town?”

  “The Zaur tunneled under and collapsed it,” Wylant replied, patting her horse’s withers absently. “Can’t you smell them?”

  She drummed her gauntleted fingers on her saddle horn while she thought. “Ride back and report this to the king. Show yourself to no one. Even if you see someone in need of aid, ignore them. It could be a trap.” Wylant raised a hand to her forehead. She couldn’t help but feel that she was forgetting something. “If you are compromised, send up green lightning, as long a burst as you can, straight into the air. Go.”

  Kam gave a quick salute then galloped back along the way they’d ridden. Good soldier, Wylant thought. She watched him go and waited for a hundred count, scanning the horizon. Quiet, but not deathly so, the land lied to her and she resented it. The birds still twittered merrily, and farther away an irkanth yowled. It can smell them, too.

  “A clan raid wouldn’t have been this organized. It’s a warlord,” she whispered to herself, “but of which clan?” Wylant scratched at the slight point of her ear.

  “Gzimoch Clan has dug ambush pits before,” Mazik said, his voice unearthly and metallic, “but nothing this big.”

  “Xira Clan hired a mage to cast illusions for them once,” Hira said peering down into the destruction; the red crystal where his elemental focus had replaced his left eye caught the light, reminding Wylant of a warsuit. “But,” he said after a moment’s study, “this is no illusion.”

  Roc dismounted, the wind tussling his curly hair as his bare metal feet settled onto the ground. “This,” he said, wriggling his toes, “feels like a big tunnel. Really big. So long I can’t feel the end of it. This is bad.”

  “I agree.” Wylant trusted her instincts, and her gut told her that this was what Dienox had been hiding from her. Now that he was done toying with her senses, it was time to see how bad it was. She cursed the god of war under her breath.

  “Sir?” asked Hira.

  Wylant raised an eyebrow in his direction.

  “Did you say something, sir? I thought . . .”

  Wylant put her helmet back on and looked at her Sidearms. “We’re going into that trench, Lancers, and then we’re going into the Zaur tunnel that must be down there. We’re going to find out where it goes, what it’s hiding, and we are going to report back to the king in time for the army to respond to it.” She drew Vax, currently a double-edged sword, utilitarian and nondescript except for an uneven blue tint to the steel.

  Her soldiers were worried; Wylant could feel it. It had been too long since many of them had seen real action, and Frip and Frindo—only a hundred years or so older than Kam—had only fought in skirmishes against a few odd human raiders. Going into a Zaur tunnel, they knew they might not come out alive.

  Isn’t that always the way of it, though? Wylant held Vax overhead and willed it to change. The blade caught the sun, elongating into a heavy lance. Wylant pulled at her reins as the king’s Lancers stared at Vax, Roc struggling to remount as quickly as possible.

  Hira and Griv frowned at the weapon, making Wylant wonder what they, with their artifact eyes, saw when they looked at him.

  “You know me; I am not one for speeches.” Her voice was flat, sword-edged. “Success or death.” She met their gazes, each in turn, and willed them to be the brave, strong knights she had trained them to be. “I’ve taught you everything I could. If you die, don’t come whining to me about it.” That drew a grim chuckle from them. They were good soldiers. “Now ride!”

  As one they charged down Hunter’s Hill toward the massive hole, raising a cloud of dust in their wake. There was no longer a need for stealth. The Zaur would feel the vibrations of eleven riders long before they heard them, even with Sargus’s magical horseshoes.

  The edge of the pit loomed before them, and they rushed past it without pause. At Wylant’s signal she, Mazik, and Ponnod called on the element of air, hardening it beneath the hooves of their horses. Each mount accepted this without surprise. Roc’s mount rode a few inches below the others, but Wylant chalked that up to being an Aeromancer short in Kam’s absence . . . and Roc’s geomancy talent was strong enough that it seemed the ground didn’t like him to be too far from it.

  The knights rode along a gently descending arc. Much of the rubble from the town had been pressed deep into the sides and bottom of the pit, giving it an almost intentional-seeming tiled appearance. Broad trenches curved along the pit’s floor in what might have been a sinuous pattern. Near the bottom on t
he southeastern wall was a tunnel tall enough for three soldiers to stand on each other’s shoulders and wide enough for her knights to ride four abreast. Remains of the watch town littered the base of the massive pit, but there were no signs of the Eldrennai and human townfolk who had lived there.

  A sneezing fit came over Wylant, and her eyes began to water. She came to a stop near the fragmented base of the town’s ruined central tower, pulled off her gauntlet, and reached into her saddlebag for a pouch of jallek root. She bit off a piece of the bitter black medicine and let it rest under her tongue. Wylant returned the pouch to her saddlebag, slid her gauntlet back on, and waited for the herb to take effect, angrily fighting back sneezes.

  As soon as she could speak properly again, Wylant addressed her Lance, “Reminders. The Zaur may be resistant to your magic, but their surroundings aren’t. Don’t hit a Zaur with ice, hit the ground at its feet. Use magic to control the battlefield, to mold it to your advantage. Don’t think about what you can’t do. Concentrate on what you can do.”

  “Ikai,” Wylant urged her horse slowly forward into the tunnel. Zaur stench, which had been bearable in the pit, grew stronger beneath the ground, forcing her knights to struggle against nausea. Even Wylant had never experienced such a strong concentration of the reptilian musk.

  “Mazik.” Wylant mimed waving away an odor.

  Behind her, the knight chanted an incantation and made fluid gestures in the air. The stink lessened, replaced somewhat by the smell of the royal gardens.

  “Good job, Mazik,” heckled Roc. “Now it smells like lizards and roses.”

  “I’d like to see you do better, Lieutenant,” Mazik growled. “Not all of us can be as humble as you and ride the air a few inches low . . . out of respect.”

  “That’s enough,” Wylant ordered, glad they couldn’t see the look of amusement beneath her helm. She gave another command and each of her Lancers summoned a magic lantern, little wisps of flame hovering above them in the dark of the tunnel to light their way.

  At her signal, they rode forward in search of Zaur. If all goes well, we’ll get a look at part of the Zaur force, kill a few, take their measure, and then make it out alive. If not . . .

  PART THREE

  CALL TO WAR

  “The Vaelsilyn, or Vael, as they now prefer, were created as little more than a breeding aid in my father’s eyes. He used the Royal Hedge Rose as a base partially because those were at hand and also because he noticed that Aern universally appeared to enjoy the odor of those hardy orange blooms. No examples of the altered Vaelsilyn Rose Bush exist. According to the official records in the royal archive, this is due to the draining effect of producing Vael infants. Each plant bloomed only once, producing an average of eight viable offspring before wilting.

  “Uled’s private notes tell a different story. Each successive generation of blooms produced a proportionately larger number of Vael with the potential for what my grandfather called ‘prodigious and alarming spiritual abilities.’ By the fourth generation, the Vaelsilyn Rose ceased blooming at all, the leaves turning blue and the root structure altering to resemble a large tree rather than a bush.

  “Alarmed by the transformed plant’s similarity to the notorious Genna Tree, Uled states that he began poisoning the bushes after their first yield, not wishing to repeat something he described as his ‘reptilian error.’”

  An excerpt from The Bloom of Life—A Study of the Vael by Sargus

  CHAPTER 33

  BLOOD-RED MOON

  Under a blood-red moon, the four Overwatches moved at a fast jog, their boots slapping like pounding hammers beating out a steady rhythm on the stone of the Guild Commerce Highway. Summer was fading fast, and each of the four young Aern had fun trying to render the mental map they held in their minds between them with the most accurate details. Rae’en might never notice the difference, but Kazan had taken the detail of the map Malmung had shown them as a challenge.

  Rae’en? Kazan sent out. He’d expected to get back within range faster than this.

  Any of you able to reach her yet? Joose thought. Three tokens, one representing each of the other three Overwatches, went gray, a visual “No” they’d learned early on but had started using again after one of Kholster Malmung’s Overwatches, Lena, had reintroduced the topic.

  “A kholster needs to be able to pay attention to what his own senses are telling him, too.” Lena had explained. “Malmung doesn’t mind a little conversation, but the reason he doesn’t send his auditory input, the reason Kholster doesn’t typically share his, is sound can be more confusing than visual information.

  “A kholster or a soldier can have a map in the corner of her vision and know it isn’t really there. It might cost them a small portion of their field of vision, but it expands their overall knowledge.”

  “Put phantom sounds in their ears,” Joose had spoken up, “and you just confuse them.”

  “Or endanger them.” Lena had granted Joose one of her rare smiles, revealing an upper canine only partially regrown next to its neighbor. “A twig snap heard on your end could make them turn the wrong way and react to it unnecessarily, or if you’re close enough to hear it, too, they might react in the wrong direction or hear it from both sides and not know how to respond.”

  Don’t you think we should have been back in range by now? Joose thought.

  Three gold tokens flashed on the map.

  Lena told me we might have to get closer to reacquire full contact than we were when we lost it, M’jynn thought.

  When were you spending time alone with Lena? Arbokk asked.

  Hey, the mating age is twenty-one, M’jynn thought back.

  What does that have to do with Lena teaching you how to knit? Kazan thought. Because that’s what she told me you two were doing. She even showed me some of your work.

  She did?

  I am your Prime Overwatch and, in your kholster’s absence . . .

  Kholster Rae’en, M’jynn thought as loud as he could, including the others in his broadcast, can you hear me yet?!

  I think she’s already in the Guild Cities, Kazan laughed. Maybe when we hit the halfway mark.

  Are we there yet? M’jynn joked.

  *

  “No,” Lieutenant Kreej hissed at his human charge, “we are not there yet.” Sibilance bounced echoes of the susurrant statement around the stone tunnels through which the two traveled. With the added clack of his fore and hind claws on the stone and the scrape as they gripped the subtle concentric rings which ran the length of the underground passage, Kreej hoped the human would be cowed.

  Maybe if he took the human’s lantern away . . .

  “How can you tell?” Randall Tyree gestured at the walls with the offending lantern, casting shadows down the passage and elongating Kreej’s hunched shadow into a distorted shape Kreej hoped the human would find frightening. “It all looks the same.”

  Kreej’s gray tongue flicked out, tasting the air as he ran along the passageway on all fours. No fear in the air. No hint of even a cold sweat. “I know.”

  It was, perhaps, not strictly within the scope of his orders to try to scare the human, but something about the creature was so off-putting. At first Kreej had liked the human, but after the first day . . . it was as if Tyree was hiding something. The human understood things it shouldn’t, and that made Kreej want to put it off-balance.

  Realizing he’d padded too far ahead, Kreej paused (again) to wait for the human and his slow two-legged gait. Kreej took advantage of the free semiprivate moment to express the musk glands near the base of his tail along the floor of the tunnel. He didn’t know how it would help anyone (where was a Zaur going to get lost in a well-marked tunnel system like this?), but it was standard procedure, so he did as he was expected and added his scent to that of the hundreds of Zaur who had traversed the tunnel ahead of him.

  Would anyone know if he failed to follow procedure? He couldn’t imagine Warlord Xastix or General Tsan checking either, but he’d seen plen
ty of unexpected weather on this assignment. And where had that train of thought come from? Who cared if procedure made sense or not? Kreej just cared about the opportunity for another name . . . a name he would choose for himself.

  “Can you tell me where we are going yet?” Tyree said as his lantern picked out Kreej’s procumbent form.

  “It would be meaningless to you.” Eyes canted up so they would flash in the lantern light. Kreej growled when the human smiled in return.

  “Come on, Dimples.” Tyree breathed heavily as he caught up with Kreej and then jogged past the Zaur. “We’ll never get to wherever we’re going with you dragging your butt.”

  “I was merely expressing my musk,” Kreej snapped.

  “Oh,” Tyree coughed. “There’s no ‘merely’ about your musk. I’m sure it’s quite the hit with all the girls.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.” Tyree laughed again, but Kreej could not tell why.

  “Dryga.” Kreej said after the human stopped to rest some hours later. Why the human insisted on unloading its pack, laying out soft cloth and padding on the floor, and activating the second (and smaller) of the two Dwarven lanterns he carried with him was a mystery to Kreej. It was all so unnecessary.

  “What is Dryga?” Tyree asked as he stripped out of one perfectly good cloth covering and into another. Kreej looked down at the ground and contemplated breaking the smallest of the two lanterns. He had no intention of telling the human about Captain Dryga, wasn’t certain why he’d said the captain’s name at all.

  “There’s a Captain Dryga, isn’t there?” Tyree smiled, the light catching in his pellucid eyes. How did the human keep such white teeth? “You can tell me. I’m supposed to be your ward and ally—a friend of the Zaur . . . right?”

  “You are to advise him at the forward base.” Kreej’s head began to ache.