by J. F. Lewis
*
“You just may get that flogging,” Wylant snarled at Mazik, who had stayed behind to, she supposed, rescue her. Her mind was clearing, but the head wound pulsed painfully in time with her heartbeat. “Try a lightning bolt.”
He chanted softly, drawing a circle in the air with his sword, invoking Dienox and the goddess Gromma. Sparks arced along his blade as the spell’s power grew. It might not have any effect, but Wylant had to know. Frip’s unconscious form vanished between the serpent’s jaws, and Wylant wondered how much the thing could possibly eat. Its gullet looked big enough to swallow a horse.
“It’s just an animal,” she whispered to herself. Mazik completed his spell and spat a bolt of blue lightning coursing along his blade to strike the giant serpent in the face. It hissed and shook its head from side to side, steam rising off its scaly hide, but it barely paused in its advance.
*
You won’t drown. I still hold Testament. In the same way Bloodmane took the heat of Cadence’s Long Fire, I can breathe for you. Kill the shark.
Kholster took in a deep breath of air, enough for two.
I can’t see her, Kholster thought at Vander. What’s happening?
*
“Any other ideas, General?” Mazik asked.
“You run while I go for the eyes.” Wylant managed enough of a flight spell to hurl herself at the serpent, losing sight of Mazik as she pierced the monster’s eye. Vax struck home as a long knife and Wylant willed him to lengthen, to grow, like a spike toward the brain. Vax had been forged like an Aernese weapon, his abilities proof against the spell-disrupting capabilities of the Zaur. The blade functioned just as well against whatever magic resistance this giant serpent might possess.
“You’re just an animal,” Wylant shouted. “Die already!”
*
Kholster spat a long stream of seawater out onto the floor of the arena, breathing in deep, breathing for two.
Do you need me to assist you? Bloodmane’s voice echoed in Kholster’s mind. I can breathe for you while you breathe for her . . .
*
The few remaining Zaur mounts scattered before the serpent as it hissed in pain, thrashing from floor to ceiling, desperate to rid itself of the stinging, stabbing elf who clung to its head. Wylant felt her shoulder blade crack, as well as a few ribs, pain lancing up her arm and across her chest, but she held on, willing Vax to grow longer, into a spear, a lance. Finally, Vax pierced the brain. Victory washed over her as she felt the serpent’s throes go from a struggle for survival to a death rattle, and then she fell, striking the ground hard as consciousness gave way to darkness.
*
If you can’t do it, Kholster thought at his daughter, any other way, use the Arvash’ae. Your body knows how to do this. Your mind is getting in the way.
Teru says it looks like she’s fighting the Arvash’ae. She—
I’m sorry, Kholster thought at Rae’en, then to all Aern, he thought: All Recall.
As it did each time, the sharing of a memory stopped Aern in their tracks the world over. Those who were in danger, certainly one in the midst of a battle with a shark, gave over immediately to the Arvash’ae. He hoped Rae’en would come to forgive him for robbing her of such a hard-won victory.
The memory Kholster shared was a simple one, one that was very much on his mind . . . the one Vander had mentioned earlier, when the gods had sent storms against them. He, Vander, and the other Armored on the mission had drowned. The warsuits had walked them back to shore where the Bone Finders had stripped their bones, killed animals to fill the warsuits with enough blood to cover the bones, brought them back according to the agreement he’d made with Torgrimm so very long ago.
He hoped the Armored found the memory reassuring, but he also knew two Overwatches, three Bone Finders, and a certain young kholster knew the real reason he’d shared the memory at that very moment.
The crowd had gone wild when the first shark carcass had flown up onto the staging area. When Rae’en had followed it, still dragging a live shark behind her, they’d risen to their feet. Now that the memory was over, the Arvash’ae faded. She was safe.
Kholster ended the memory with perfunctory All Know words about the coming storm on the water, about how the fleet would make it through one way or another. Only when he was done did he finally turn to face his daughter. In her eyes he saw not the anger he’d expected, but gratitude and shame.
“Thank you,” she mouthed. The remaining opponents held up their hands, backing at least one step away, signaling their surrender. The announcer called an end to the match and declared them the victors, but victory was hollow.
Kholster watched the way Rae’en eyed the water warily and dropped into it himself to retrieve Grudge. As he emerged at the staging area and returned Testament, Vander told him what he already knew.
You should have given her more time, she would have gotten it.
Well done, thought Bloodmane. You saved her.
She didn’t need saving, Kholster thought back to Bloodmane. Now she thinks she did. To Vander, he thought only: I know.
CHAPTER 35
GUILD CITY GOOD-BYE
At seven hundred and one jun long, seven jun wide, the Great Junland Bridge stood as the largest construction in the entire world. Connecting the continents of Northern and Southern Barrone, the bridge had been there longer than Rae’en’s father had been alive. Maybe Coal, the great gray dragon, remembered a time when the bridge hadn’t been there. Maybe he had even seen it built, but to a young kholster who’d never traveled north of Khalvad before setting out for the Grand Conjunction, even after seeing all the Grand Bazaar and the grand highway, the Dwarf-made continent seemed impossible.
Nevertheless, there it stood and beyond it, past the South Gate, MidGate, and North Gate . . . Rae’en would set foot on the Northern continent at Castleguard. She would travel on to The Parliament of Ages and the Eldren Plains and finally Oot, the Place of Conjunction where she would see statues of the gods, statues that changed to match their current forms. She’d meet an Oathbreaker and a Vael. Even after all she’d already seen, it was hard to imagine.
“What kind of a name is Oot?” Rae’en had asked her father when he first said the name.
“You’d have to ask the sculptor’s parents,” he’d answered.
“What?”
“You’ll see when you get there,” Kholster had answered. “The Oathbreakers contracted the manitou artist, Oot, to create the statues of the gods there. He was supposed to get to name the work and that name was to be posted in grand fashion. They didn’t like the name he chose and tried to bar him from the site, so he . . . signed his work rather prominently.” Then Kholster had laughed. Rae’en loved the sound of her father’s laughter, and she didn’t hear it very often.
He looked so . . . sullen . . . now. Defeated.
My fault. I let him down. She shook off the thought and tried to focus on the journey.
Oot.
If all went well, she would spend the three days and three nights required by her father’s promise then signal the beginning of the end of the Oathbreakers by killing and arvashing Prince Dolvek. She hoped Oathbreakers didn’t taste like weasel. Rae’en let out a long sigh at the responsibility of it all, to be the first Aern other than Kholster to represent her people at the Conjunction. To be the last Aern to ever do so. Six hundred years of tradition would end with her.
And after her failure at the Arena. . . . She touched her chest, but the wounds were gone, leaving only faint yellowed bruises in their place. Rae’en closed her eyes and felt the water covering her face all over again, rushing into her lungs, the pressure of the shark’s jaws and then—she snapped her eyes open and shook the memory away.
Around her, on the Barrony side of the South Gate, taverns, inns, and vendors of all types lined the roads, built up as close to the wall as the Dwarves would allow. South Gate loomed. High up, if she squinted, she could make out the line of cannon which rimmed the walls
of the structure. Where the Dwarves at home in South Number Nine liked to carve and decorate their creations, mostly with images of Jun the Builder, the Junland Bridge’s walls were smooth and seamless. The familiar visage of the Dwarven god loomed only at the gates. Staring at it sent a rush of fear through Rae’en, as if the walls were going to come tumbling down on her at any moment.
The massive great gate was up and open, a solid wedge of metal, ready to crash down and reduce any intruder to meat paste. In the past, when she’d heard others speak of the gate being a quarter jun deep, Rae’en had assumed they were exaggerating, but now . . .
It’s going to eat me. She reached back to touch the haft of her warpick, heart fluttering in mild panic before she could recall that her Overwatches were very likely fine, just too far away to hear her. I guess almost dying has me a little jumpy. She left her hand on Testament for a moment, feeling the warmth of the weapon, and adjusted it slightly as if doing so had been the only reason she’d grabbed the hilt.
If only I were Armored, Rae’en thought longingly, none of that would have happened.
Or not the way it had happened. Kholster wouldn’t have had to save her, and she wouldn’t feel so alone in her mind. As one of the Armored, she could have transmitted her thoughts via her warsuit or even had the warsuit establish a direct connection, if not with Kazan and the others, then with Uncle Vander or . . . or any other Armored.
Whose scars are on your back, Rae’en? she chided herself. Just keep tracking along as if everything is normal.
To the east and west, the wall ran as far as she could see. That was too much to take in, so she looked back at the gate, then at the line of merchants and travelers and caravans waiting to have their cargo and papers examined. Sheens of sweat coated the skin of the humans, though some ablated the effects of the summer sun with parasols. What, Rae’en wondered, would it be like to be so affected by extremes of heat or cold for an entire lifetime?
Dwarven customs agents and border guards manned five different entry lanes leading through to the gate itself. Rae’en knew each gate also had one hundred Aern, the symbolic guard Kholster assigned to show that invasions against the protected target would incur the ire of the Aern. Even so, she only spotted twenty.
“Five shifts,” Kholster said, as if reading her mind. “What do you think of the gate itself?”
“It’s like a trip hammer in a giant’s smithy,” she told her father. “Can it really come plummeting down and . . .”
“Faster than any racehorse could gallop through it.” Kholster smiled, baring his doubled upper and lower canines. “I’m told it’s modeled after the trip hammer in Jun’s great forge, but if so, he’s substantially larger than his statue at Oot, and it’s supposed to be to life-size times five already. You’ll see it at Castleguard, in case—” he clipped off the statement and redirected. “But when you see it at Oot, that one is . . . better.”
Rae’en’s grin seemed fit to split her cheeks at the thought of that. I’m still going to represent my father at the Grand Conjunction! She’d worried that after the Arena he wouldn’t want her to take his place. Hearing him say it flooded her with such relief she couldn’t quite put it into words.
She stared at her father, taking in his bone-steel chain armor, then down at her own, which matched his. She rubbed the little finger on her left hand, which had finally grown back. It itched, the nail wasn’t as long as her others, and the skin felt tight, but it was finally whole. Which made her feel complete, too.
She couldn’t tell exactly how the One Hundred felt about her warpick, but they seemed to like the sentiment. She didn’t need to reach back and touch the weapon to feel its weight against her back, but she touched its haft again anyway, feeling the warmth of its nacreous crystal even through the pale leather grip. Kholster caught the motion and waved her hand down subtly. I’m glad to have you uncovered, she thought at the weapon. It didn’t reply, but she felt it heard her at least. Testament had always been a silent weapon, though she knew other Aernese weapons had a voice. Rae’en tried not to let it bother her.
“That’s twice now,” Kholster chided softly. “You’ll make the guardsmen nervous.”
“And we do that enough just by standing here,” she acknowledged. “Yes, sir.”
The thirty armed guards the Unified Guild Masters of Barrony had assigned them after their “performance” in the Arena walked in a rectangle around Rae’en and her father. Rae’en found the stink of their fear mildly repellant but tried to remind herself that not everyone thought the Aernese ability to fight and kill and eat the enemy was a good thing. To them, eating any sentient being was thought of as monstrous . . . therefore she, like her father, with doubled canines and metal bones, with eyes that to humans were completely the wrong color . . . they probably thought she was some sort of monster, too.
“I don’t know why they feel the need to escort us,” Kholster whispered.
“Maybe they want to avoid additional deaths,” Rae’en said with a smirk.
“But what if we get hungry?” Kholster winked at her.
Rae’en snorted. Kholster had warned her of the fickleness of human infatuation with Aern, of times when humans had thrown rotten food at him or hissed, but these humans merely watched in awe at their passing. Wondering how much the Arena fight had to do with that, too, she spotted a young boy standing on a tavern railing to get a better look. Rae’en wondered if she should wave or smile, but settled her gaze back on the huge gate.
“Break formation,” one of the guards shouted, and the front line of guards broke ranks to allow the Aern to move forward without them. A small escort of Dwarven guards in plate armor waited just ahead to receive them. Unlike the Dwarves back home, the Junland Dwarves looked fleshier. Many had long beards and came in shades of tan and light gray rather than the more mineral-like tints to which Rae’en was accustomed.
“Less rock in their diets,” Kholster whispered.
“Oh.”
An Aern in a bone-steel breastplate and helm stood with them, both vestments marking him as an Aern who had earned the right to forge a warsuit but had yet to do so. With the Life Forge destroyed, he would never have the chance.
“Draekar!” Kholster moved forward to greet the Aern, the two of them brushing knuckles and baring their teeth.
“Kholster,” the other Aern nodded. “And this must be Rae’en?” As he turned to her, his smile vanished and his eyes grew cold, waiting. Only with the clash of their weapons would their relative rank be decided.
Rae’en unslung her warpick in one smooth motion, bared her teeth and growled.
Draekar smiled broadly as Rae’en’s warpick caught the light of the sun, refracting the light and rainbow patterns prism-like on the road. He reached over his shoulder, drawing forth his own warpick, its pearlescent surface darkened with a bluing technique Rae’en had seen often in warpicks forged by older Aern. It had fallen out of practice, younger Aern preferring to let the bone-like sheen of their weapons show undimmed or augmenting it with brighter colors for effect. A bronzed look seemed to be the fashion for most of her generation.
Eying Testament’s deceptively fragile appearance, Draekar hesitated.
“Yours will break long before Testament does,” Rae’en said impatiently.
“It looks like glass.”
“The Dwarves call it bone crystal, though bone-steel glass is what it really is.” Rae’en waited three breaths for Draekar to strike the head of his warpick against hers and, when he failed to do so, slammed Testament against Draekar’s weapon—Calamity—instead, with a pealing ring like a crystal bell had been struck.
Draekar’s eyes widened as Rae’en’s mind touched his, the collision of two soul-bound weapons providing a temporary link not unlike that experienced between a kholster and Overwatch. Draekar, by Braekar out of Varriday, his full name came to her. If Draekar had been astonished by her weapon’s fortitude, he was positively amazed to find himself on the kholstered rather than the kholstering en
d of their brief connection.
Reports, guard rotations, and local intelligence flooded her mind and was digested, becoming a part of her knowledge as naturally as water drained from a cup became one with her body. Without needing to think about the information in detail, it felt right to her, and she found herself commending Draekar on his service, until . . .
“Father,” she reached out to touch Kholster’s arm.
Kholster narrowed his gaze and touched Draekar’s warpick with Grudge, at which point Rae’en found herself immediately on the kholstered end of the connection once more. Kholster himself now kholstering both of them, read her concern and Draekar’s chagrin.
“That’s a dangerous oath Ghamud has sworn,” Kholster said finally.
An oath, Rae’en thought to herself. She’d felt a wrongness but could not quite place it, then her father was there in her mind, guiding her along the pathways of Draekar’s connection to his men, through his Overwatches, the Infantry, and on to Ghamud himself.
“He swore to see the Life Forge remade and his kholster’s warsuit forged at last?” Rae’en couldn’t quite believe the other Aern’s foolishness.
“It was a brash oath,” Draekar answered.
“I hope he may live to see his oath redeemed in something other than death,” Rae’en said as Kholster, having pointed her to the cause of her consternation, withdrew, expecting her to proceed.
“As do I, kholster Rae’en,” Draekar answered.
“As do we all,” Kholster put in. “To have his bones crumble and be redeemed by death . . . not every Foresworn has my daughter to redeem his bones as a Testament.”
Rae’en shifted, looking past Draekar at the land beyond South Gate. A breeze swept along the tunnel carrying with it the scent of grass and rich fields; not a smell she associated with Dwarven construction.
“I heard there was some excitement at the Arena?” Draekar asked, following her gaze.
Why ask how something went, when you really mean “May I please see it?” Rae’en thought at her Overwatches.