Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  With nowhere to go and nowhere to hide, Tayna turned and bolted toward the protective bulk of the Wagon, where gravity still pressed its nose against the great wall. Between it and her, Abeni turned to confront the unwelcome Gnome, his eyes wide with rage.

  “The First Prince has no honor,” Abeni snarled. “To attack a child is a cowardly thing! Swing your dragon leg at Abeni, if you dare! Abeni will prove the cowardice of princes!” With those words, the big Djin launched himself across the snow, his great legs driving him forward with his shoulders lowered, braced for impact. But Angiron barked out a short laugh.

  And then he began to sing.

  The effect was instantaneous. In one blink, Abeni was charging across the snow, narrowing the gap between himself and the Angiron-shaped sack of Gnome-meat, ready to dismember it. In the next blink, every muscle in the Djin’s body froze. No longer able to move his legs, momentum hurtled him face-first into the snow, where he rolled over onto his side, still locked in the pose of his murderous charge.

  Angiron’s song caught Tayna too, just as she had reached the front of the Wagon. She’d been intending to slip under its bulk, hoping to put more… anything between herself and her crazed husband. But whatever the song had done to Abeni it had done to her as well, and Tayna froze in mid-crouch, bracing herself with one hand on the bubble of nothingness and the other on the Wagon in front of her. She couldn’t even see what was happening from this position. All she could do was listen to the scene playing out behind her.

  Angiron paused his song, long enough to speak. “What made you think you could beat me this time?” he taunted. “You Djin are like salmon to my bear, with all your talk of honor and duty. Pah! I toss you aside. All of you. Any of you. Whenever I like, and as easily as I like. And like a salmon, my tossing does you injury each and every time.” Tayna heard a Gnomish grunt of effort and a dull thud that told her he had landed a vicious blow of some kind, but Abeni made no sound. Abeni! Tayna boiled inside. She couldn’t stand that he was being savaged by that monstrous little creep. It was all her fault and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Her right hand slipped slowly down the cold stone face of the Wagon, and Tayna realized that she was regaining the ability to move.

  “No, let’s have none of that now,” Angiron called out, and then he immediately resumed his whiny, grating song, immobilizing Tayna’s arm once more.

  Had he seen her move, or had Abeni moved? How could she do anything if everything happened behind her? Apparently the effect of his song didn’t last for very long, and he’d have to keep singing to keep the charm powered. Like Abeni’s Wagon chant. Could she use that information somehow?

  “So my dear, we meet again.” Icicles of dread slid down Tayna’s back as that sickening voice came closer. Snow crunched under his feet as he approached. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t take more time with you back on the Arch. I’m afraid I was a little busy at the time. Although I did send you here. To keep you… safe.”

  Tayna shuddered as she felt his hand touch lightly against her back. “But I have so much more time for you now,” he added. The hand moved up from her kirfa to paw at her hair. She still couldn’t see him, but he was close enough now that she could hear his breathing. She could even smell him—a revolting blend of coffee, cologne and decaying vegetables. He leaned in closer, and she could feel the hot dampness of his breath on the back of her ear. “I’m the King now. Have you heard? Everything is working out just as I planned,” he whispered, “and with you at my side—”

  It was his nose that changed everything.

  The first time Tayna had seen him, weeks ago, back at the Old Shoe in Grimorl, Angiron’s face had looked like that of a normal human man. Short, but normal. It was a trick, she’d later realized—a charm he worked whenever he traveled to Grimorl, to disguise his true Gnomileshi features. No Gnome could pass for human. They were just too… misshapen. Especially the almost comically large hotdog-bun of a nose they had, hanging in the middle of their face. But even though he must have some kind of charm to hide all that, Angiron didn’t need it here, of course. So that left his bulbous schnoz just floating there, filling the air between them. She could see it in the corner of her eye as he leaned in beside her, and then the damp, fleshy tip of it brushed against Tayna’s ear.

  And time stopped.

  She felt it then. A completeness. A wholeness. As though all of her life had been a dream, waiting for this one single moment of waking clarity. She could feel it. Or them. Three different magics, like three different currents, pulling at different parts of her body. The unliving Djin magic of the Wagon, cold and weighty, seeping from the stone beneath her hand. The oily death magic of her leering husband that slimed against her ear. And between both of those, herself, filled with Wasketchin life magic. The magic of her own people.

  Terrified as much by the thought of using it as not using it, Tayna reached out from within herself and took hold of the power.

  * * *

  When time unfroze, everything changed. No doubt, Angiron had been expecting to continue his sick little tête-à-tête with his child bride, secure in his complete and total domination of the situation. So it was probably something of a surprise when the frightened girl cowering before him in the snow whirled suddenly and buried her elbow into the small of his throat, knocking him backward, gasping and choking into the snow, struggling for breath. At least, she hoped it was a surprise.

  Tayna darted past Garbage-Breath and hurried over to Abeni’s side. Now was the time to find out if her instincts were right. She knelt in the snow beside him and put a hand on his arm. Then she pulled, sort of. In her head. She could feel the knotted vim of Angiron’s charm song coiled inside Abeni, like a snake of stone under his skin, locking his muscles tight. So she drew it out, pulling it into herself, and undoing the knots as she went. Abeni’s rigor melted away and he rolled onto his hands and knees in the snow. There was a large red welt over his right eye, and he moved sluggishly, but he did make it to his feet.

  “Come on, Big Whale. Get moving.” Tayna took him by the arm in exactly the same way a toddler might do with a telephone pole, and urged him toward the Wagon. Angiron had recovered his breath, more surprised by her blow than injured by it, sadly, and was now hunting through the snow for his staff. Abeni stumbled over a golden gleam at his feet, and the lid of Angiron’s fallen urn popped free as Abeni staggered forward. Whatever had been in it spilled out into the snow with a hiss, but Tayna paid it no mind, and hurried to catch up with her still-woozy friend.

  Angiron cursed when he saw the empty container roll away from Tayna’s feet, and he renewed his struggle to stand up on the snowy slope. But he had not just spent three days tramping through the treacherous stuff, and his feet skittered and slipped, sending him to his knees several times.

  Tayna looked quickly from Abeni to the Wagon. When she’d first drawn power from it, she had felt a response from the milky bubble wall as well. A sort of ringing. Like when you run your finger around the rim of a water glass. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she was flying on instincts here, playing hunches like sure things. It’s all she had time for. She’d wanted to save both Abeni and the Wagon, but with Angiron about to rally, she could only take time for the living. So she grabbed Abeni by the elbow and turned him straight toward the Wall. “Change of plans,” she murmured. It took only three disoriented steps for him to reach the wall, and his nose was in imminent danger of being flattened by it, but instead of stopping him, Tayna took a deep breath and placed a hand firmly at the base of his back, where his bare skin peeked out from between his all-weather Djin vest and his belt. Then she shoved him forward.

  And Abeni vanished.

  “Water leeches and gormless fathers!” Angiron spat. “You will stop interfering in my plans, woman!”

  “Bite me!” Tayna yelled, then she turned back to face him and dropped into a fighting crouch, bouncing on the balls of her feet, waiting to see what he would do next. She was taller than
he was, but that didn’t count for much. He was probably heavier, and very certainly meaner. Plus, she was pretty sure her brief moment of power was over. She’d felt it drain away when she’d pushed Abeni through the wall. Still, she was through with running. If she could find a way to hurt him, maybe he would back off for a while. Even if she managed to break his freaking arm, she didn’t kid herself that it would keep him away forever. But she was tired of him popping in for these surprise visits like he owned her, and something had to be done.

  Angiron looked at her and cackled with self-righteous delight as he advanced, raising the white bone staff above his head. He slipped sideways just a little on the slippery downward slope, but he didn’t even blink. Tayna saw it, though. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to remind her that she still had that one small advantage—she could move better on the snow than he could.

  And that gave her options.

  Tayna feinted toward him, making him pause, uncertain what she was doing. The moment he flinched, she turned and ran for the Wagon, dropping and sliding under its bulk just as a flash of heat burned past her hair and buried itself, sizzling and steaming in the snow beyond her. Fireballs? How was that fair?

  But she was committed now, so she didn’t hunker down to wait. As soon as she had cleared the Wagon, she was up again, moving uphill. She passed the end of the Wagon and kept going, heading in the one direction he could not easily follow—up the slope. Maybe if she got some distance on him…

  “You think you can run away?” Angiron yelled, moving toward the end of the Wagon so he could line up an easy shot. “Should I pick you off like I did your little friend? What was her name? Eliza?” Another bolt of smoking hate bit into the snow at her feet, and she stopped, but that wasn’t what stopped her. Tayna turned to glare down at him.

  “What did you do to her?” she said. Her voice was quiet and low. Within herself, she reached out for power.

  “Exactly what I plan to do to you if you keep running. Or if you keep defying me. Now come here!”

  But there was no power there to grab. Tayna’s shoulders slumped. Where had it all gone? What use was magic power if it wasn’t there when you needed to brain your stalker husband? Defeat welled up from her stomach, and slowly, Tayna began to trudge back down the slope. Her head hung low and she loaded her glare with all the hate she could muster, blazing it out at his stupid, smirking face that waited below her.

  Then she smiled.

  It was an unexpected, happy smile, like the one that sneaks up on you when you find a book you thought you had lost. To line up his last energy bolt, Angiron had moved, and he now stood at the end of the Wagon, with his back almost up against it, glaring at her with all the superior smugness of a newly crowned king.

  He was also directly downhill from her.

  When she was still five good strides away, Tayna let out a yell and began her charge. Startled, Angiron backpedaled and slipped in the snow, falling to one knee and jabbing his staff down to try to keep himself from falling over.

  But then Tayna hit him. With her arms crossed in front of herself, she slammed into the Gnome King with all the force she could muster, hurtling him backward to collide with the Wagon, then he bounced off it, twisting, and fell face-up on the snow.

  Tayna dashed past him and grabbed hold of the Wagon with one hand. Then she stooped down low and grabbed at her dazed husband with the other hand, wrenching his nose savagely as she shoved the Wagon with everything she had.

  Once again, she felt the circuit complete, recharging her. Her body hummed, stretched out between the power at each of her two hands, like the negative and positive poles of an enormous battery. She smiled. And once again, she reached out from within herself and gathered the power to her.

  The moment she took hold of it, she flung it back, through the Wagon of Tears and up against the giant wall, which melted into nothing wherever the Wagon touched it, just as it had for Abeni. With no barrier in front to resist it, the Wagon lurched forward, sliding through the wall like a runaway freight train on skis, which is sort of what it was.

  Tayna had thought she’d have time to climb aboard, but it all happened so quickly that she had only an instant to grab hold before it yanked her forward, as it began to disappear into the Wall.

  “Consider this a divorce!” she yelled over her shoulder.

  And then the milky whiteness of the wall sucked her in.

  * * *

  When Tayna and the Wagon had finished passing through the barrier, Angiron picked himself up and batted the snow from his knees, standing easily on the slippery slope. His gaze remained fixed on the point of her departure for a moment, deep in thought, then he nodded curtly and waved his arm in an arc, off to the side. A crackle of yellow light trailed his hand, and when he had closed the circle, the disk of air within it changed color and began to expand.

  “You saw?” Angiron said, turning his head slightly, as though he were talking to the swelling disk of air.

  “I saw.” The voice emanating from the disk was muffled, as though being spoken through the flames of a camp fire. The disk continued to expand.

  “Stupid cow!” Angiron spat, shaking his head in irritation. “I was beginning to doubt your word that she would ever find it.”

  The voice was silent.

  “You’re sure the rest will work?” The Gnome King yanked his gaze away from the milky white wall to face the disk that yawned open beside him. It was now almost as tall as he was.

  “She has felt the completion,” the voice said. “It will call to her. She will answer. It will grow.”

  “It had better,” Angiron muttered. “But I don’t want that kind of power running loose once she has ripened.” Then he walked forward into the disk, where the other figure stepped aside to make way, coming into view as he did. It was the jet black shape of a man, slender, smooth and sleekly muscled, like a panther. The surface of his face was smooth and featureless, save for two stumpy black horns that protruded from the sides instead of ears.

  “I will harvest her before that happens.”

  “Good,” Angiron replied. “See that you do. I want you in position before she starts getting any ideas of her own. Leave now.” The man of darkness nodded.

  Then the disk snapped shut with a muffled clap of air, and nothing remained but the ominous howling of the wind.

  Chapter 4

  “I’m going to die in this place,” Sarqi said to the moss-covered rock that was supposed to be his bed. “Abeni has gone mad, Zimu is safely back at father’s forge, and they’ve all decided to leave me here to rot.”

  The only reply was the sound of the cursed river racing past his quarters. Sarqi hated water in any quantity larger than a mouthful. He always had. He hated buckets of the stuff, and barrels. He hated dew on the rocks and fog in the air. Water was the all-destroyer. It wore even the greatest of mountains down into nothing but dust and then swept it away, never to be seen in the world again. If it hadn’t been for his unfortunate need to actually drink the stuff, he might have wished it banned from all the world. Sarqi hated water. And most of all, he hated rivers.

  So naturally, Angiron had placed him as close to one as possible.

  “A place of honor,” the Gnome King had said, but Sarqi knew the truth. Hard against the edge of the river, and just downstream of the Braggart’s Arch, this “shelter” was a place where all of the Horde would see him easily, as they came across the bridge on their way to the harvest tables nearby. He was just another trophy on display, like the colossal pointing finger of stone that stood on the far bank, a remnant of the Wasketchin King’s Mourning Dove statue that the Gnomes had destroyed during their Contest for the Crown. And here was Sarqi, a matching giant to complete the pair, also toppled for the glorification of the Horde. A proud son of Kijamon, enchained by his own word and set upon a public corner to be seen and mocked.

  And to make it worse, the place was constantly covered in spray.

  Sarqi grumbled to himself as he paced the na
rrow confines of his “cell.” It had been three days since he had last seen the new king of the Gnomes. The strutting little skite had been prancing and preening ever since the coronation, and took no end of delight in shaming the “Official Emissary” representing the Djin Crown. Meaning him. Sarqi. Not that he’d been consulted about taking the position or anything. Angiron was not big on consultation. When the Gnome patrol had shown up to collect him from the sprites who had captured him, Sarqi had been prodded with the tip of a wooden spear until he’d finally agreed to become their “honored guest”—with his hands tied and his back leaking from a dozen little prod-holes. Honored guest? What choice had he had? His elevation to Ambassador had been equally voluntary.

  Unfortunately, Angiron’s court was a traditional Gnomileshi court, which meant it was underground, in some system of caves and tunnels barely high enough to admit a badger, let alone a full-grown Djin. So the wise and benevolent turd-Lord had assigned Sarqi to these luxurious guest quarters. Why, he had his own rock and everything. All the comforts of home. Abeni had always said that their little neighbors simply did not understand the ways of those who lived above ground, but Sarqi knew that they did. This wasn’t ignorance. This was scum-minded spite. It really wasn’t complicated or hard to understand. He was being punished for being a Warder of the Wagon, and for having respect and power in the world above the Throat. For being a Djin.

  Sarqi stood up and went to the door of his embassy to summon his aide. Oh, crack it! They even had him doing it. He went to the gap between the walls of his cell and called out for his jailer. “Ishnee!”

  A moment later, a Gnomish head popped out of a small hole in the ground, just beyond Sarqi’s cell, and blinked in the morning light. “Ambassador?”