Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  One of the few stalwart pilgrims milling about the garden with them opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and waited for Kholster to pass before reaching down to clear the pellet away.

  “Don’t touch it,” Kholster snapped as he stopped before Sedvinia, the weeping goddess of sadness and joy. Trembling with indecision, the wrinkled pilgrim looked to Rae’en, but she shook her head.

  “Just leave it until we go,” she advised.

  Not watching to see what the pilgrim decided, Rae’en moved ahead to join her father as he passed the Bone Queen’s statue. Kilke’s mono-headed sister (the only goddess with horns) stood with regal bearing, her beauty both wonderful and terrible. She wore corsetry the same way Dienox wore his plate mail, as armor, and seemed lost in conversation with Jun, who stood to her right and past Jun to Gromma, goddess of growth and decay, her hair filled with brambles, her clothing a collection of furs and pelts sewn together with barbaric pride.

  “Again?!” Rae’en put her hand to her mouth in mock dismay as her father moved on to Dienox and yarped a second, larger pellet on his feet. “You all empty now?”

  “I was saving it up.” Kholster chuckled.

  Dienox’s statue was frozen in mid-argument with the Harvester. The god of war’s lips curled back, and his accusing finger pointed at Torgrimm’s bone plate.

  To Torgrimm, Kholster bowed low.

  “Find one you like?” Rae’en quipped around a yawn.

  “Yes,” Kholster sat down on the statue’s foot, resting his back against the deity’s shins. “I liked him better before he felt the need to wear the plate armor.”

  “Why?” Rae’en settled down next to her father.

  “Because I don’t understand why he needs it and it scares me a little to think he might.”

  *

  Somewhere between pondering his remark and opening her mouth to ask about her present, Rae’en fell asleep slumping against Kholster’s shoulder.

  She’s tired, Bloodmane and Vander sent in unison.

  This is one of those moments, Kholster thought back at them both, his eyes watering, where I have to wonder: will this ever happen again?

  Probably not, Vander thought back. Enjoy it.

  I don’t understand, Bloodmane intoned.

  Kholster tried to open his senses more completely to his warsuit, but nothing happened. Bloodmane could see through his eyes, relay his orders, even share other sensory data with Kholster, but not the other way around. Kholster closed his eyes, and for the first time in centuries, he closed them to what Bloodmane saw and stared instead at the inside of his own eyelids, the way the light shone through them as a vague orange haze.

  He stayed that way until his tears stopped, wiping them carefully away with his hands before opening his eyes again, first his inner eyes, which saw what Bloodmane saw—the cursed exhibition hall, and secondly, his physical eyes. He wrapped his arms around Rae’en, held her, and slept.

  The Changing of the Gods did not wake them.

  CHAPTER 40

  A PARTING OF WAYS

  “I can’t believe you won.” Rae’en smiled down at her ring. Kholster had forged it perfectly. She held it out by the silvered bone-steel chain her father had crafted to go with it and marveled at the way the inscription caught the light. On the outer ring, Kholster had wrought a stylized representation of his scars, but on the inside, he had engraved: Daughter, of you I am proud.

  “I can’t believe we slept through the Changing of the Gods,” Kholster countered. “We’d best not wait until midnight.”

  “I know. I know.” The sun didn’t shine so bright in Castleguard, but Kholster was wearing the smoked-glass lenses she’d bought him, their circular lenses held in place by wire frames the color of silver, so she hoped he liked her gift. Rae’en waited for him to ask to take her Testament away and hand her his Grudge, but Kholster never asked for her weapon again.

  “You can do this.” He pushed the smoked lenses back up on his nose, smiling like an Eleven at first kill, so pleased with the way she looked at him when he wore them. She didn’t have the heart to tell him he looked silly, especially since it was only partially true. The truth was he looked different and dangerous in a way she couldn’t explain. His whole attitude changed, not toward her but toward the space around him. It reminded her of the way Irka moved when he showed a female around his gallery—confident and masculine—but was not the way a daughter imagined her father.

  “I kept you too close on the trip, but you didn’t need it. I apologize.”

  She loved him for that, more than she’d ever thought possible, responding with a hug made only slightly awkward by their clinking mail shirts. As his arms enfolded her, she could not imagine a safer place in all reality. Those arms, she imagined, would be safe even if they’d been standing in the midst of a cataclysmic battle instead of the road leading down out of the mountains.

  “With the ring, you can reach out to me if you want and I will hear you. The connection will only be one way, but I doubt you’ll need it unless you want to send me details about the Conjunction.”

  “You aren’t coming with me?” she asked his shoulder.

  “You kholster it. Do you need reinforcements?”

  “I get to pick?” She stepped back and eyed him quizzically, head tilted, ears askance.

  “I don’t see why not.” He looked off into the heart of the forest. She was sure he saw something in the distance amongst the pines and firs with evergreen leaves and the blood oaks which, unlike other broad-leafed trees, refused to surrender their red leaves even during the end of autumn. It, whatever had his attention, wasn’t in the forest, and he didn’t see it with his eyes. Was it a memory? It didn’t seem to be Vander. When Vander thought to Kholster, the corners of her father’s lips tilted up in a phantom smile. Nor was it Bloodmane; these days his communications pulled her father’s cheeks tight and furrowed his brow. “One day you will make all of the decisions.”

  He looked . . . wistful?

  “Once this war is over.” Kholster looked back at her, and she suddenly wished he would take off the smoked lenses. “When you’re ready, the One Hundred and I feel it is time for a Freeborn to kholster the Aern.”

  “But surely one of the more experienced.” Rae’en took an involuntary step back. “One of the Armored.”

  “They want a Freeborn, one of my children. You could,” he looked back at something trammeled by the path they had taken or back to the past itself—which, Rae’en could not know, “wake one of the others, my unawakened, perhaps but . . .”

  “Unawakened?” She threw up her hands. “Children? How many unawakened do you have?”

  “Ask Zhan when you’re First.”

  “Why didn’t you—”

  “They were born before As You Please.”

  “Oh.”

  “Someday, they must be awakened, but you have another sibling I must see to first.”

  “An Unawakened?”

  “Mostly.” He looked down at his gloved hands.

  “Mostly?”

  “Yes.” A tear rolled down his cheek, and she was suddenly glad for the smoked glass which stood between her and her father’s crying eyes. “So. I asked you a question.” He sniffed once and his demeanor changed, hardened. “Do you want me to come with you to Oot, to be your Overwatch, or would you prefer to kholster this alone?”

  “Where will you go?” She tucked the ring, together with its chain, into her left saddlebag.

  “If you don’t need me?” He looked off into the forest, gazing northwest. Again a sad smile touched his lips. “I might like to see Kari again, to see where Irka grew up.”

  “Go.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I can kholster this. It’s just three days and nights camping.”

  “You’ve only five days to get there.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe I’d better get going then.”

  He let her go.

  *

  Rae’en unslung her warpick, spinning it ove
rhead in a tight orbit. Light sparkled along the weapon’s crystal head, tossing rainbows overhead even though, at an hour before dawn, the forest was still dark.

  Rae’en remembered well the day she’d completed the warpick and had brought it before her father.

  “My warpick, Kholster.”

  Kholster had taken the warpick, given it a few test swings, and then frowned as he examined the haft.

  “It is a fine weapon, Rae’en, but it has no spirit. You are not one with it.”

  “I know . . .” Rae’en had frowned. “It’s stubborn. I can feel part of myself reaching out, touching the weapon, but it won’t take root.”

  “I remember before the Sundering,” Kholster had said, running his thumb along the central blade, giving a satisfied smile as the blade bit into his flesh, “when Crimmar was still among us. He made a bow with which he wanted to become one. He worked on it for days, tried everything he could to make Flitter take in his spirit. It was the same way with his warsuit and with his first warpick.”

  “Did it work?” Rae’en had asked.

  “In the end. All it needed was encouragement!” As Kholster had spoken the final word, he’d swung Testament over his head and down toward the cavern floor.

  “No!” Rae’en had reached for the weapon to snatch it from her father’s grasp, to protect it. Now she suspected he’d had no intention of smashing it, but then, it had been so clear he meant to break it. A low rumble, deep within Rae’en’s chest, had risen up and out. Time had slowed, and an irkanth of pure spirit had torn free of her body, lunging into the weapon. Mortal irkanths have light-brown fur, but this one had been the color of spring grass. Her father had shortened his blow, swinging Testament in an arc a mere hairsbreadth from the stone below and tossing it up and over to Rae’en.

  “Yours is a reluctant spirit,” Kholster had told her. “Like Crimmar’s, it was loath to make such a strong connection, but once made . . .”

  “It is unbreakable,” Rae’en whispered to herself.

  She had seen the spirit within Testament that one time, but now, running through The Parliament of Ages, whipping it through the air, she felt it and wished she could hear him roar. Grudge cried out like a hawk in battle from time to time, but Testament remained silent, reluctant. Kholster had said if she ever faced the Zaur, it—

  Testament roared inside her mind, bringing her to a quick stop, Testament at the ready.

  Um . . .

  Rae’en crept through the forest in the half-light of dawn. Around her, birds woke and the forest prepared for a new day. The dew dampened her boots, but she spared it no thought.

  Is that? Guys, I think I feel something. A vibration.

  Rae’en pushed her hand gently into the cool soil, eyes closed in concentration.

  I swear, she thought at her absent Overwatches, I’m not imagining . . .

  Did she hear something at the edge of her mind, too? A muffled shout? Or did she miss them so much she was imagining voices in her head?

  Kazan? M’jynn?

  Ignoring the inner thrill at receiving even such a distant mental murmur, focusing on the vibrations, Rae’en lay her head against the sod.

  There it is, she sent. Skritch-scratch. Thum. Brum. Thum. Brum. Testament roared, and in the silence after I heard . . .

  Rae’en stood up sharply, arms akimbo, long red braid dangling over her right shoulder. The real question is whether that is digging or someone traveling through an underground tunnel.

  Rae’en chased the phantom vibration, darting from tree to tree, treading as lightly and quickly as she could. This would be so much easier if Uncle Glin were here. She tried not just to bring back all the things her uncle had ever taught her about danger signs in a mine but also to apply them to the current situation. Back home, huge steam-driven fans endlessly turned, forcing fresh air throughout the deepest of tunnels. She still knew how to recognize black damp (air that was too bad to breathe) and ways to safely test for fire damp (air that was dangerously flammable), but she hadn’t needed to ever really use the counter-insurgency training in how to detect an enemy tunneling into her territory before, not since the Mining Kingdoms all joined together under one democratically elected Foreman. That was before her dad’s time, before the Underminer Wars were ended by the arrival of the Aern . . . she didn’t even know if there were any Rock Dogs left in the world, but if there were, they stayed away from the Dwarven-Aernese Collective.

  Unslinging Testament from her back, she began to alternately pound the ground and scan the terrain for any spot that might naturally conceal a hole or air vent or . . .

  Whud. Whud. Whud.

  There’s definitely a big hollow space under here. Somewhere, but kind of deep down. I—

  Rae’en spied a lump of banded gneiss. It wasn’t that such a rock couldn’t be found in the middle of a forest, but there was something “placed” about it. It wasn’t poking out of the ground, it . . .

  She walked a wide arc until she could see the way it abutted a large tree. A dead tree.

  “It’s an air vent,” she whispered smugly as she approached it at a crouch. “But who could be tunneling under The Parliament of Ages? The Vael would have shaped the earth, not dug into it . . .”

  The rough, banded surface—a sequence of grays and browns—would have spoken volumes to Uncle Glinfolgo. She pictured him licking the rock and making some deeply insightful pronouncement like: “They live in the mountains, born of foreign stone.” He would close his eyes and point far off toward the Sri’Zauran Mountains, his face blank and motionless as if hewn from the rock the Dwarves so loved. “The foreign stone,” he would say, “is that way, miles and miles of it, mountains that Jun has long since abandoned.”

  Bird squirt! She’d just been joking, but . . . there couldn’t be Zaur here, could there?

  *

  Kholster smelled Zaur in the forest. A salty, lizard scent—like fish and Oathbreaker mingled together—lingered low, clinging to the short, broad blades of violet-tinted myr grass. His muscles tightened, body taut, eyes closed, senses straining.

  Where are you?

  Sunlight broke through the boughs of the ancient oaks overhead, playing along his brow, highlighting his close-cropped red hair that had been bleached almost blond during the long trip from South Number Nine to The Parliament of Ages. A familiar wolfish expression spread across his lips, half-grin, half-snarl, revealing not only the doubled upper and lower canines but the slightly enlarged, almost saw-like, first molar.

  There are Zaur here, he thought at Vander, scratching absently at the flaking skin at his pointed ear tips. It took a great deal of sun to give an Aern sunburn, but Kholster supposed close to a hundred days above ground traveling all day each day counted.

  A scouting party? Vander asked.

  This far south of the Eldren Plains, it could hardly be more than that.

  Even though a century had passed since he’d last ventured through The Parliament of Ages, the forest belonging to the Vael, Kholster thrilled at its sounds and smells. The myr grass underfoot released an acrid odor as it crushed beneath his boots with a lack of stealth his trainers would have beaten him for when he was still a slave all those millennia ago.

  As much as Kholster wished otherwise, the forest was no longer truly his home. Each time he returned, it took longer for his senses to become used to the primal world from which he had been exiled. He, like all his people, had embraced his new life on the sea and under the ground. As a result, his tread was heavy, not as heavy as when his people had stalked clad in their warsuits, sheathed in their metal skins, their true skins, but heavy enough for the Zaur to feel the vibrations if he wasn’t careful.

  He hadn’t seen a Zaur scouting party in five centuries, not since a chance encounter years before while trading at Port Na’Shie with the humans in northern Zaliz. To discover them now, so close to the Conjunction, was both curious and exhilarating. Since their last warlord’s death, the Zaur had shown little evidence of organized leadershi
p. They stayed close to their tunnels and burrowed deeper into the cracks and crevices of the Sri’Zauran Mountains to the north. They were the humans’ and Oathbreakers’ problems.

  He felt vague pang of guilt that Rae’en hadn’t stumbled across them herself and gotten a chance at them.

  Then why am I tracking them, he asked himself, and why am I so excited?

  Because, Vander laughed, killing Zaur is why we were forged in the first place.

  A flash of memory stained Kholster’s thoughts. In his mind’s eyes, a wizened Oathkeeper, his robes drenched in the bright-orange iron-deficient blood of the Aern, screamed at him. A reptilian creature writhed on a stone table, chained in place. “You! Will! Eat!”

  Kholster had indeed eaten . . . had been compelled to do so. . . . He’d never understood all the screaming, the beatings . . . the other cruelties. Why not simply order him in a calm clear voice?

  Ah, well. To his surprise, the Zaur had tasted good.

  Putting the memory of his creator out of his head, Kholster circled the central oak to where the scent was the strongest and found the still-damp mark where a Zaur—a scout, he assumed—had voided itself. Definitely Zaur.

  Kholster crouched down, outlining the tracks with his fingers. Zaur moved on all fours, and Kholster knew the signs intimately, even though he had grown unaccustomed to tracking prey overland. He eyed the markings in the soil, noting the sign of the hind feet—four front claws and one center back claw on each pad—and the indentation which ran along the middle, made by the belly and the tail bumping the ground as the Zaur ran. The forepaws were set wider, leaving not claw holes but knuckle marks in the dirt. Two thin lines to the outsides proved that his quarry was armed with twin Skreel knives.

  Kholster fancied that he could almost make out the tongue trail. Warpick slung on his back, Kholster ran after the Zaur. He ran silently, careful to break step, letting each footfall land on the softest earth. Within the space of an hour, he spotted them in a clearing.

  Do you see it? Kholster asked Vander.

  I see what you see.

  One of the scouting party flattened itself prone, flicking its tongue along the ground, and Kholster froze. Like snakes, the Zaur weren’t known for their hearing, but they sensed vibrations well enough, especially when they lashed the ground with their dull gray tongues. Kholster waited until the scout’s tongue flicked out over the grass, then he stamped his feet on forest floor and, reversing his grip on his warpick, struck the ground with it in a pattern he hadn’t used since the last war.