by J. F. Lewis
MISSED CONTINGENCY
Redirected sunslight warm on her bark, Yavi blinked herself awake. She rubbed hardened sap from the corners of her eyes. It felt like seasons had changed six or more times, but Hasimak had assured her only a scattered handful of days had passed in the Last World.
Yavi thought she had never heard anyone refer to her home by that name before, but it sounded right on her tongue and in her mind.
The Last World, she thought. Which, then, was the First World?
Invisible fingers brushed the soil from her breasts and torso as she sat up. Her bark, smooth and silky from the hours of ideal conditions, felt a rush of cool air at the touch of her unseen caretaker. Gentle hands helped her to her feet. So nice to have two of them again.
Even though they were hands of spirit, Yavi felt the trace of familiar knuckles and the backs of hands against her bark, no grasping, no restrictive touches. Dolvek did not always remember his own name, but he knew how to treat a Vael, how to comfort her, and make her feel safe.
“How are you feeling this morning, Dolvek?” Yavi squinted so she could see him better, catching the rippling detail as Dolvek, sensing her focus, brought himself into better clarity. Unless he concentrated, Dolvek appeared like a shadowy cloak, his facial features a watercolor pastiche of the elf he had once been, the rest of his body a gray impression of form.
Trick question? He looked like his old self, wrought in a pale palette, but clear and fully featured. His crystal breastplate sparkled, his cloak a cape with the emblem of three towers on it. All of it shifted as he moved, becoming his hybrid demi-cuirass in one step, formal robes in the second, and lounging apparel in the next.
“Is that a trick question,” she corrected. “No, I know you’re still dead, but you’re more . . . together than usual.”
You look fabtacular today, Dolvek said, his lips curved as if he thought using one of her favorite adjectives was especially clever.
A deflection. Yavi struggled not to frown. He had three phrases he used when he did not know what else to say.
Can I get you anything? His smile faltered, seeing through her careful expression.
So hard to fool a being who sees your spirit more easily than your body, she thought.
“Some water, maybe?” Yavi said, more out of pity and to give Dolvek something to do than out of any real thirst.
I love you, he said, his form going fuzzy around the edges as he used his magic, summoning a crystalline goblet out of thin air, filling it the same way. Geomancy or Aeromancy carried the goblet to her open hand.
His magic was coming back so much more easily than his personality. There was a core essence of him, still there, but if Hasimak was correct, though he would become more complex in time, the more she worked with him, he would never be his old self. Dolvek had sacrificed that, let Uled destroy a large chunk of what made him Dolvek to preserve Yavi’s spirit.
“I love you, too,” she said warmly.
Bathe now? he asked as she drank the ice-cold water.
“Would you like me to bathe you?” Yavi corrected. “Or would you like a shower?”
You look fabtacular today. He smiled hopefully, eyebrows knitting together earnestly.
“Please try to ask it properly, Dolvek.”
He glanced to the side, as if momentarily unsure to whom she was speaking, then asked the question a different way. Shall I bathe you? Wash clothes, too, maybe?
“Yes, please,” Yavi said, genuinely thrilled to hear him string things together rather than echoing what she had said back to her. Partway through the shower, in the midst of hydromantic streams of pyromanticly water warm, he kissed her, a hesitant peck on the cheek.
I love you, Yavi, he whispered, a hunger in his voice that spoke of desire and longing, a question and purpose all in one. His eyes blazed with intelligence and self.
She placed her hand on the back of his neck, pulling him to her and kissing him deeply.
“I love you, too, Dolvek,” she whispered back, and then they spoke to each other in more primal ways for a languid span.
*
Once she was dressed, Yavi walked to the small house on the little floating island to which Hasimak fled when he needed to sleep or when he thought Yavi and Dolvek needed privacy. Changes in the house marked the apparent passage of time on the isle, if not in the world beyond the Betwixt. A dome of stone stood where Yavi had seen a pyramid, a ramshackle shed, a floating orb, even an open-air domicile with lazy hammocks for beds.
Yavi smirked, remembering how quickly the open-air house had been replaced once she’d started feeling better enough to enjoy a few amorous endeavors with Dolvek.
Despite Hasimak’s many years, or perhaps because of them, the elf did not seem to be able to adapt to the lack of modesty typical of Vael . . . the girl-type-persons, at least. Yavi’s nose crinkled at the thought of how fussy Kholburran could be about such things.
Boys were silly that way. So were most races except Aern and Vael. She could not think of Aern now without the image of Kholster and the child that could have been theirs rising up in her mind’s eye. When it did, a warm glow filled her chest, and she knew the child would never be. She was surprised at how fine with that she was.
“Going to tease my old teacher?” Dolvek’s voice was stronger, more himself, an actual spoken thing rather than a whispering against her mind. It usually was after they had spent a little time being intimate. Hasimak said it had to do with the way Vael were in touch with the spirit realm. He’d been too embarrassed to elaborate, but Yavi thought she understood. Her spirit knew Dolvek better than her mind ever could. When spirit touched spirit, hers guided his, reminding Dolvek what he was supposed to be like through the mere act of expecting it . . . shaping him into a resemblance, an elemental core, of what he had once been.
It was fun, too.
“I’m going to ask him to show us how to get back home,” Yavi told him.
“We don’t live here?” the shade asked.
“We’re only visiting,” she said. “Healing.”
“Fort Ammond?” Dolvek asked.
“Port Ammond,” she corrected. “And no, you’re going to come live with me, in the Parliament of Ages.”
“Live?” Dolvek laughed. “I suspect one of us will be, at best, abiding.”
He grimaced, a little of the focus going out of him at the thought of his own nebulous state. Dead, but not departed.
“I have not been hunting.” Hasimak met them at the door to his dome, his robes clean and freshly pressed. “There are, however, fish in the pond. It’s a doorway for them.”
The pond had been constructed once Yavi had been well enough to start asking questions about the origin of some of the meat Hasimak had been providing for her meals.
“A Port Gate?” she asked. “I thought—”
“No.” Hasimak walked past to indicate the pond. “Nothing so dramatic. A simple slip way. It’s much easier to construct something through which only non-sentient animals may pass. No chance of an incursion from the Never Dark . . . or the Faltering Light, I suppose I should call it now, either. A simple connection through the plane of elemental water is all that is needed. Similar in concept to your ever-filling bed of earth.”
“You’ve been very kind,” Yavi said.
“But you need to go home,” Hasimak finished for her. He nodded, his long, white hair bobbing with the motion of his head. She saw him then, saw how ancient he truly was, and how alone he must be.
“We could stay a little longer, if . . .”
“No. No.” Hasimak waved the words away. “You are more right than you know. The two of you are my final touch of meddling in the Last World for the foreseeable future. When you leave, I will rest, close my eyes to what was once my home, and check in on it again when all the people and places I remember are long gone.”
He touched her cheek. Dolvek’s eyes darkened in response, lightning and fire whirling behind his ghostly eyes.
Can I get you anyt
hing? he thought menacingly.
“I’m fine, Dolvek,” Yavi whispered.
“My apologies,” Hasimak said, backing away. “I meant only to say that I shall remember you fondly when you are gone and that I hope, despite the perils to which I return you, that you are well.”
“So you’ll send us back?” Yavi waggled her ears at him. “I’d thought we might have to use more nefarious tactics to convince you.”
“Not today.” A portal of smoke and light opened in the air by a wave from Hasimak, its edges rimmed with purple. “Step through together and it will take you both to where Yavi should be.”
“Where I should be, but not Dolvek?”
“He should be in one of the Hells,” Hasimak told her with a sigh. “One heroic act does not often atone for all in the eyes of the Bone Queen.”
I love you, Dolvek thought, once more a billowing cloak with the impression of his face.
“I know,” she whispered back to him. “I know.”
Taking his hand, the Vael and her ghost stepped through the portal and into . . .
*
Kholster, Harvester said in the Aern deity’s mind, Torgrimm asks if you are sure that we should not—
Him, too? Kholster stood in the shadow of a maned beast of a god. Xalistan had chosen a humanoid torso terminating at the waist with the body of a horse-sized wolf, bushy tail bedecked with the bones of past prey. He loomed over Kholster, clawed hands hanging in a loose but threatening position. An irkanth’s head topped his neck, the eyes sharp and angry, its mane the ebony of a shadebeast’s.
“No wings?” Kholster asked.
I think it was a mistake for Xalistan to go through all of the trouble to weave bones into his tail, Vander thought to Kholster, then skip decorating his mane.
“This fight of yours encroaches on the territory sacred to me.” Xalistan growled the words, spittle flying from the edges of his mouth.
“I did not make Uled.” Kholster unslung Reaper, letting the weapon rest in a casual position, parallel to the broken ground of Port Ammond, gripped firmly in both hands. He did not bother to brush away the spittle from his cheek.
“Do not quibble with me,” Xalistan roared. “You will—”
“You love her, don’t you?” Kholster asked.
“What?” Xalistan asked.
“Surely you mean, ‘Who?’” Kholster snorted. “I will give you a secret about wives—or, to be honest, I don’t know if you and Gromma have gone that far, or—”
“My relationship with Gromma is none of your concern!”
“Wife then.” Kholster nodded. That felt right. “I have had many of them. I have loved them all, but even so, it took me centuries of being married to Wylant to wrap my head around the idea that she wanted me to only be married to her and her alone, not just her alone among elves.”
“Because it is unnatural,” Xalistan began.
“This is not the time for you to talk,” Kholster shushed the other god. “Gromma does not need your help. She is handling things even now and—”
“Do you realize what I do to those who dare lecture me, Kholster?”
Kholster’s jade irises expanded to fill half the area of his eyes. He smiled his famous smile, baring all eight canines.
“I deny you permission to fight with me at this time.” Kholster turned his gaze back to the rolling waves below to watch a sea hawk cry and dive. “When the mortal realm is no longer in peril, we can fight, if you like, but important things are happening now, and I do not have time to humor petulant beings who have failed to preserve those placed in their care.”
“I am the Lord of Hunter and Hunted!” Xalistan bellowed the words directly in Kholster’s face, his black-blue lips a hair from the Aern’s nose. “You will—”
“I am the arbiter, the birth and death of gods.” Kholster’s voice was gentle, was firm, and came from all directions. “My family, my people, and those I have freed from tyranny you and yours allowed to exist are seeing to the matter. We can discuss it later, if you wish, but either leave me be, ask what you can do to help, or— There aren’t any Vael deities yet, are there? Or would you prefer your replacement to be a manitou?”
Xalistan vanished with a roar.
Well spoken, Harvester said. Even so, Torgrimm wonders if you might—
Hold, Kholster thought to him. The mortals have this under control for the moment. I will fight my father soon enough.
But, sir . . .
Hold.
*
Kholburran’s mind spread across the plains again, Arri moving at the edge of his thoughts; at times easier to hear than others, but ever a part of him. She gave him news and he reacted in ways he hoped she felt and recognized, but with the battle about him winding down, regarding it with concern became increasingly difficult in the face of the unbalance the Sundering, the demon wars, and Uled’s magicks had wrought into the Eldren Plains.
To the Northeast, the ground had been frozen and burned where a live dragon fought a dead one and the Aern had silenced the dead. Their need clear, he guided a herd of escaped cattle toward them. There would not yet be enough grass, and the winter would not have been kind to them, so Kholburran sent them to their deaths. Slaughter would remove the animals, remove a portion of the instability, and lessen the impact of such a large number of Aern needing to be stripped and dipped to restore them to their proper, fleshy selves distinct from their warsuits.
Eastern currents carried the aftermath of the fall of Port Ammond, environmental echoes of the battle between Hasimak’s apprentices and Coal, to Kholburran, provoking from him a series of small tweaks to repair. He diverted the residual dimensional magic from the destroyed or out-of-alignment Port Gates, trapping and isolating little patches of frightening sorcery seeping up from ruined underground chambers that stank of experimentation and artifice gone awry.
Hard to believe I feared this, he thought.
“ . . .” Arri was saying words at the base of him, her breath easier to register than her words. The feel of the human, Tyree, distracted him, too. His life force did not flow as it should, did not move through and around him, mixing with his surroundings. Unnatural.
Kholburran wanted to send the human away or fix the flow, but it twisted and turned beneath his gaze, impossible to hold or untangle.
Death distracted him, pulling his attention back out over the plain to where the warsuits walled in the herd, slaughtering them, draining the blood to restore their the makers. What meat they could eat or carry, they did, burying the remains of the cattle. The white muscle of their own former bodies they tore to shreds, grinding it between their teeth to get the desired consistency, spreading it far and wide, mixed with their own blood and saliva, planting the fertilizer shallow with cuts from their bone-steel.
Warsuits marked off areas with cattle bones in signs Kholburran did not understand but the Aern knew well.
Kholburran felt the soil respond, starting the long process of reclaiming the nutrients locked within the Aern meal. How had Uled designed such amazing beings? He could not ask, nor did he think the ancient evil would have answered if he had.
Warsuits too damaged or melted by dragon fire to be fully functional turned to the southwest, making for Fort Sunder and the forges within. Another contingent arrayed themselves around the new dragon as an honor guard. A portion of the meat from the herd made its way back to the dragon, too. They set her broken bones and bound them with woven grass while they tanned their own skin to bind them tightly into place. She would fly again, and soon, but she had torn her wing muscles and they would need time to heal.
Two of the Aern set off together after the slaughter of the cattle, the bloody mane of one’s warsuit blowing in the chill wind as she ran to the southeast and Port Ammond’s desolate grave.
*
She would need to strip the flesh from her left leg and work it on an anvil, possibly amputate the whole limb at the hip to get the dratted thing to grow back straight, but Rae’en did not feel
as if she had the time to spare.
He’s this way? she asked Bloodmane.
According to Bone Harvest, Bloodmane thought.
Having a directional arrow rather than a detailed map showing Kholster’s destination grated on Rae’en’s nerves. Yes, it seemed to indicate her father was at Port Ammond, roughly ninety jun from North Watch, but without even a rough estimate of distance, he could be across the bay somewhere in the wilds of Gromm. An unlikely place to find her father, but who knew where his deific duties might take him? To the suns and beyond, as far as she knew.
Thinking mind to mind with Alysaundra and her warsuit would have made things simpler in some ways, too, but when Kazan had linked them, Rae’en had gotten traces of thoughts unrelated to the laying to rest of Coal’s animated corpse, the way Ossuarians felt about direct connections between anyone, but an Aern and her warsuit among them, so she honored the preference despite its inefficiency.
“Why are we seeking the former First?” Alysaundra asked aloud as they ran side by side.
“I have to see what he’s doing there,” Rae’en told her. “Something is going to happen.”
Kholster’s intuition? Amber asked.
Daughter’s, Rae’en thought back.
“You’re the First,” Alysaundra said as she ran.
The agreement was balm to Rae’en’s concerns. She enjoyed working with Alysaundra. She was glad Zhan was going to recover, but deep down she wished there had been a change of Ossuarians, too.
He might step down if you asked, Bloodmane thought.
I would not ask it even if he would, Bloodmane. No one needs to change the rules for me. I can handle Zhan and anyone else with whom I need to cooperate. Or did you fail to notice our new empire?
I noticed. Bloodmane beamed amusement alongside the words.
CHAPTER 39
QUEEN OF THE VAEL
A snowflake fell within the realm of Hashan and Warrune’s eternal spring. Malli marked its passage as she strode with determination toward the sacred inner sanctum. Her back itched and crawled, bracket fungus scarring her bark with shelves of pink-and-yellow-edged semicircular conchs. The quickening of their spores ebbed with her breath.
