Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  Abeni reached up and placed a hand on the cold, firm stone of the Wagon’s undercarriage. Upon his own waking, he had climbed under it to join the Little Fish in what scant shelter it provided from the raging storm, but he knew they could not remain here much longer. Already, he feared that his young friend’s skin was turning chill and she had taken on a bluish tone. Surely that could not be a sign of vibrant health, although he was not well versed in Wasketchin lore. But try as he might to wake her, she had resisted every trick he knew.

  The terrain around them seemed flat and clear. He had no doubt that he would be able to Ward the Wagon on his own, singing its great bulk up onto the air and driving it forward with the magic of his chant. He would need no assistance from any Way Maker until they reached more encumbered terrain. Yes, he could do this. But not while carrying the Little Fish upon his shoulders as well. Nor could he place her in one of the great cylindrical sky chambers atop the Wagon. She was not dead, and to place a living body within any of its silver shrines would be a desecration. Somehow, he must rouse her so that she could walk of her own accord. Perhaps later he would teach her to Make Way for the Wagon, but nothing could be done until she at least Made Way for herself.

  Abeni looked down at the troubled face of his young friend. At times, she would lash out, resisting the firm grip with which he held her, but his body was the only warmth he could wrap her with, and if it truly was he with whom she struggled, she would just have to endure that fight. Someone had stripped the Wagon of its customary supplies and left him nothing. The great tailbox, which usually held the traveling tent, firewood, blankets, and food, was now empty. Another mystery that Abeni would consider when the current crisis had passed, but for now, he needed to awaken his companion. And until he could devise a way to do that, he would continue to hold her, lest she freeze to death before she woke.

  For just a moment, the wind whistled down to a sigh, and the sigh blew down to a murmur, and the white dusting of ice settled from the air into an unexpected quiet. Abeni seized the slender opportunity to search the world around them with his eyes. To the east and the west and the south, there was nothing, save for flat, featureless fields of white. But to the north, he beheld a grove of stunted trees, near bent to the ground with the weight of whiteness upon their branches.

  And it was that image—brought to him by a chance lulling of the storm—that sounded an echo of memory clearly in his mind. A memory of stories from his boyhood. And in that one, clear moment, he knew they had been more than just stories. He knew where he and the Little Fish now stood, and he knew at last what lay at the heart of her unceasing slumber.

  “Weavers!” Abeni gasped. He lurched awkwardly to his feet and dragged the still-tormented form of his young friend up with him. “We must flee!” he shouted. Then he stumbled to the rear of the Wagon and flung open the tailbox.

  And around them, the winds returned to fill the sky with blindness.

  * * *

  Something shifted in the world, and suddenly, Tayna was no longer three years old, struggling against her captor’s grasp. She floated idly for a moment, as thoughts flickered through her mind. Memories again. But this time, like a slide show on fast forward. Images rippled in her mind, and then the disorienting recollections stopped and another world sprang into being around her. She was in someone else’s arms now, though this time she was bound at ankles and wrists with what looked like skipping ropes. She craned her neck to see who was carrying her, and then hissed in recognition.

  Sister Regalia.

  But the Sister Superior was not carrying her back into the Old Shoe. Instead of the familiar orphanage that had been the only home she’d ever known, the evil old harpy was ducking through a door into an unfamiliar building. Low and squat, with dingy concrete walls and absolutely no charm. But the moment they were inside, Tayna recognized the smell. She’d never come in the back way before, but she’d know that putrid stink anywhere. Gruesome Harvest. Sister Regalia had brought her to the crematorium. The ropes around her arms and legs now filled her with dread.

  With a cry, Tayna lashed out, kicking against her bonds, trying to free herself from the nun’s grasp. If she fell to the floor, maybe she could get up and hop away. But Regalia wasn’t about to drop her, and the old nun clamped down harder with her claw-like grip.

  “You won’t be robbing me of this satisfaction!” Regalia cackled. Then she kicked a pair of iron doors open and strode through. The furnace room.

  “No!” Tayna shrieked. “You can’t! This is murder! The cops’ll be all over you and your stupid Sisters for this! You can’t do it!”

  “The police?” Regalia spat, her voice thick with scorn. “You think we’ve been running that pathetic dump on luck and lawyers all this time? We’ve had the police in our control for years now. And you are not the first problem girl I’ve ever had to deal with either.”

  That shut Tayna up. She’d always wondered why the police or Children’s Services had never come through the doors of the Old Shoe with guns blazing. Or at least with warrants held high. But it had never occurred to her that the nuns might have been paying them off. Could they really have that much power?

  “Not even the Health Department?” Tayna asked, still not willing to believe that all her little fantasies of rescue had been so pitifully pointless. “The Labor Board?”

  “Hah!” Regalia chortled. Then the woman yanked the end off a plain wooden box and shoved Tayna feet-first inside. Her head bounced painfully off the floor of the box when the old woman let go.

  “Hey! That hurt!”

  “Good!” Regalia spat back, and then the lid came back up into view. “No!” Tayna screamed. “You can’t!” She tried to kick against the end of the box, to push herself back out past the closing lid. If Regalia couldn’t get the box to close, maybe she wouldn’t do what came next either. But the box was too deep, and her kick met nothing to push against.

  “Feeling comfy, are we?” Regalia sang in the distance. Her voice echoed thick and muddy within the box, falling away into the distance as the lid settled into position, the bright wedge of light around it narrowing in terrifyingly slow motion. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoy this part,” Regalia said. “And I don’t believe I’ve ever enjoyed it as much as I am doing with you, dear.”

  Then the lid closed firmly into place with a thunk, and silent darkness enveloped her, pounding against her ears. The air in the box was close and heavy, and the sound of her own breathing grew a dozen times louder.

  She was inside a coffin.

  Tayna thrashed her entire body, trying to find anything she could bash with any part of herself, but aside from striking her head against the wooden floor, there was nothing. The box was too big.

  “No! Let me out! Let me out!” she screamed.

  The box shifted and Tayna slid to one side. A loud clunk and another bang against her head told her that she and her box had been dropped onto something metallic. The rollers.

  “No!” she screamed again, her voice ragged, her breath coming in short, frightened gasps. The sounds echoed within the box, almost loudly enough to mask the thunk-thunk-thunk of the box as it slid over the rollers, but she heard it. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the pair of scorched metal doors that awaited her, just beyond her feet. Any moment, there would be another thump and jolt, as the end of the coffin banged them open, and then there would be nothing left between her and the bright, white flames.

  Sobbing out in loud inarticulate syllables of despair, Tayna thrashed herself against the walls of the coffin. Kicking with her legs, heaving with her hips. Anything to fight the inevitable. With a savage cry, she jerked one hand free of the ropes that bound her, and slapped her palm painfully against the lid above her head. It was cold to the touch and heavy. Unmovable. Soon, it would not be cold either.

  Tayna pounded on the lid and screamed her rage. Her terror. Not like this. They did not get to win like this. And then she felt the final thump of the furnace doors, and a moment l
ater the box dropped down onto the hot bricks of the inner chamber, and she knew in her heart that it was over. “I’m sorry,” she said, to everyone who had been depending on her.

  And then a brilliant light flooded into the box.

  * * *

  Despite the cold and the wind, Abeni kept his watery chant splashing in his throat as he pushed on through the strange storm. The whiteness and cold had whipped itself into an impenetrable wall around him when he’d set forth, and now he could see nothing in any direction, except the dark silhouette of the Wagon hanging in the air in front of him, barely visible through the flying ice. But he did not need to see where he was going. The Wagon knew. All he had to do was keep it aloft and follow its unerring sense of direction.

  The winds pulled at his vest and flung needles of ice against his flesh, but still he sang his charm song. Warding the Wagon entirely by himself was easy enough here, and he’d pushed on for a good long way. He wanted to be sure he had come far enough away from the reach of those trees before he stopped, but the sounds coming from within the tailbox shredded his heart, and in the end, it was pity that brought him to a halt. Abeni had no idea what torment the Weavers had placed into his young friend’s dreams, but he could stand her cries no longer.

  He sang his last syllables and stood aside, allowing the Wagon to settle firmly onto the icy plain. By then, the shrieking inside had stopped and Abeni feared that the Little Fish may have done herself some grave harm. As quickly as he could, he pulled the end gate down, and what he saw inside made his heart twist in his chest.

  Her arm was bleeding freely again. Somehow, in her torment, she’d torn the simple bandage away. But worse, the entire hand was swollen and was already beginning to purple with hideous bruises. How had they done this to her? Abeni took her gently by the shoulders and pulled her toward him, sheltering her from the wind as best he could, as he dragged her out to lay on the open gate. Like her arm, her face was a mass of swellings and bruises. Her lip was split, her nose bled, and there was an angry looking welt above one eye.

  “What evil have they done?” he whispered, but still she did not stir. Abeni leaned down low, placing his ear against her chest. He strained there for a moment, fearing the worst, and then finally, he heard the quiet, steady beating of her heart over the wind. Encouraged, but still worried, Abeni scooped up a handful of snow from the ground near his feet and pressed its coldness to the greatest of her wounds. It made no sense. He remembered the stories, but how could they be that strong? To reach past him and beat her unconscious within the tailbox, even as he walked behind it? What weapon had they used? How had they done it? Surely the charms of the Wagon itself would have blocked any of their evil, no matter how great it might have been. But the how of things was of no consequence. Clearly, even after many thousands of years, Wasketchin were still vulnerable to attacks of this kind, and there was no telling how much further harm she might have taken on the inside. In her mind. All Abeni could do was press coldness to her swelling injuries and hope for the best.

  A little while later, as he applied his ices to the bruises on her feet, her eyes fluttered open at last.

  “I’m not on fire!” she said, blinking in the bright afternoon light. But Abeni did not hear what else she might have said.

  His joy had momentarily deafened him.

  * * *

  “The Little Fish has come back.”

  It took Tayna a moment to realize that Abeni was talking to her. With effort, she shrugged the last tatters of dream from her mind and twisted around to face him, blinking against the gray light. They were under the Wagon. The big Djin was leaning back against the runner and had pulled her back against him, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. To keep her warm, she knew. Nothing weird. As soon as she turned, he released his grip, and cold air seeped between them, shivering the slightly damp skin where his arms had been pressed against her.

  Abeni’s face was full of concern. Had he been there the entire time? And where exactly was “here,” anyway? Tayna looked around. They were in the middle of a field of snow. The air around them was crisp and cold and still. The sky was blue and the ground was white. No clouds. No trees. No rocks. No birds. It was like sitting at the center of beach ball. Well, a beach ball with a giant granite and silver hearse parked above your head.

  “It was the Weavers?” Abeni asked, still not certain of her recovery.

  “Weavers? What do you mean?”

  Abeni reached out and tapped her forehead with a meaty finger. “They attacked the Little Fish, in here, did they not? In her dreams?”

  “Well, yeah. I guess. Is that what it was? I thought I was just having nightmares.”

  “The Little Fish has been beaten bloody before? By a bad dream?” He looked at her suspiciously.

  “Well, no,” she said, thickly. Every inch of her was either swollen or sore, and some inches were both. “What did you call them? Weavers?”

  “Yes, the Miseratu. Weavers of Misery. The Little Fish has done battle with the ancient enemy of her people.”

  “Looked like nuns to me,” Tayna said, attempting a smile, but her face was too sore to cooperate. “Who won? Me?” She reached an arm up in a tentative victory salute, but she had to stop half way. The bandage around her wrist pulled tight over painful skin and her shoulder cried out in sympathy. “Call it a tie,” she said, lowering her arm back down to her lap.

  Abeni’s face folded into a scowl. “It is strange,” he said, as he pressed a handful of snow over her throbbing wrist. “Abeni has heard the stories. Tales of tree-women destroying entire villages of Wasketchin. But to see it. To see such hurts made with nothing but a dream…”

  “No dream,” Tayna said, shaking her head. She had to choose her words carefully, forcing them one by one through the battered meat of her face. “Was real.” She shuddered at the memory of the fears that their “dream” had unleashed in her. “Felt real, anyway.” She could still feel the heat of the flames licking at her feet.

  “But even the most real dreams do not hurt the body,” Abeni said, as his fingers probed a particularly nasty bruise on her upper arm. Tayna winced and pulled away.

  “Nope. Had help. Showed something… scary. Did the rest m’self. Trying get away.”

  “And what was this scary thing that caused the Little Fish such fright?”

  A cold shiver shook Tayna from head to ankles. “Furnace,” she said, quietly. “Put me n’a box. Shoved me in. To burn.”

  Behind her, Abeni went rigid. “A box?” The tone of his voice told her everything.

  “Yes,” she said. “Like the tailbox. Used what was going on around me. Made dreams more real.” Abeni’s face darkened with self-loathing as she spoke. “But not your fault,” she added quickly. She wanted to say more, to tell him that if she’d been sleeping in her bed, they’d have shown her a dream of strangling in the sheets, but it was too many words. All she could do was pat his hand to reassure him. And even that hurt.

  Abeni was quiet for a while. Then he shuddered. “Abeni believed that the magic of the Wagon would protect the Little Fish from their evil…”

  Tayna nodded, thinking back over the details of the dream. “Think it did. Mostly.” After the box had closed, she couldn’t remember hearing anything from dream-Regalia at all. Maybe that’s why they had picked that burning-in-a-box dream. If they’d known Abeni was putting her into the Wagon, and that it would shut them out when it closed… All they’d had to do was paint a picture of what kind of box it was, and then they could just let her brain provide all the horrifying visuals from then on. “Rest was me.”

  Abeni shook his head. “Abeni should have known. He should have stopped sooner. He should have done more.” Her big friend looked at her sadly. There was shame etched across his face. Tayna felt bad for him, but she hurt too much to frown. She wanted to tell him it was okay, that he’d done the only useful thing in the entire sorry misadventure, and that he’d probably saved her life along with it, but she was too sore for spee
ches, and that all sounded like so many words.

  “No big,” she said. Close enough.

  Abeni nodded half-heartedly, but Tayna could tell by the haunted look in his eyes that, for him, it was big. Time to change the topic. “So. Misery, huh?”

  The youngest son of Kijamon raised his eyes. “It is how they feed,” he said, his tone still glum. “To create evil visions that terrify. It is said that they use the memories and fears of their victims against them, building great misery and sadness. Such feelings in others are power to them. As the Djin draw vim from the unliving stones and ores of the Anvil, and as the Wasketchin take magic from the living Forest, so the Miseratu draw their vim from misery.”

  “But didn’t attack you?”

  Abeni shrugged. “It is said in the old stories that the Weavers hunted only among the Wasketchin. Perhaps they must have life-vim.”

  So what, they got religion? They don’t do that anymore? Now they just eat toast? But all she said was, “Old stories?”

  “There have been no Weavers since before the Forging of the Oath,” he said. “When the Dragon Methilien and the Great Kings met upon the Anvil to create the Dragon’s Peace, the races that would not so swear were sent away, beyond the Forest. The Weavers were such a race.”

  That made sense. Who would swear to give up their only source of food or power or whatever it was? “But why not feeding now?”

  “We have come far,” Abeni said. “They must be nearby to feed.”

  Tayna tried to scoff, but the necessary movement of her stomach muscles made her ribs hurt. “Far? In two minutes?”

  “Two minutes?” Abeni said. “The sun was low in the sky when the Little Fish began her battle.” Tayna looked up. That sun now stood high above them. Noonish.

  Great. They steal time too. Tayna sat then for a while, applying handfuls of snow to the places that hurt most, only to pull them away when the pain of cold began to outshriek the pain of the injuries themselves.