Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  So instead, they had a spirited debate about the best way to proceed from here. Abeni wanted to travel in the usual manner, with himself serving as both Way Finder and Way Chanter, and with Tayna filling in as Way Maker. It would be difficult, he admitted. Tayna had no whip, so she would have to be nimble, darting ahead quickly to clear their path by hand, and perhaps this would cause her to get in his way from time to time, but if they took their time, and coordinated their efforts, he didn’t think it would be too bad—provided the Wagon would allow her to help at all, of course, since she was not of the Djin nor had she been properly bonded to its service. And even if the Wagon would let her help, she would of course have to stop helping when they reached the Anvil, for fear of offending any of the more traditional Djin they might encounter on the steep mountain paths. And true, climbing a mountain with an untrained Warder would present challenges as well, Abeni acknowledged, but if Sarqi and Zimu could come down the mountain while in a great hurry, Abeni saw no reason why he should not be able to manage the upward trek, so long as they held to a cautious pace and the forces of randomness chose to be kind.

  Tayna wanted to fly.

  In the end, they settled on a compromise. Abeni was forced to admit that floating the Wagon above the trees would eliminate almost all of the twisting and turning that usually made Way Chanting such a demanding task. With no obstacles to navigate the Wagon’s bulk around, his job would become almost easy, except for the matter of seeing where his feet were going while he kept his wary eyes on that bajillion-ton granite death threat hovering over their heads.

  The other problem was how the two of them could maintain skin contact throughout the journey. Several quick experiments suggested that Abeni’s sudden ability to fire Wagons into the sun had something to do with the two of them actually touching one another. He was still able to raise the Wagon much higher than normal if they merely stood near one another, but his power wavered unpredictably, as their natural movements shuffled them apart or brought them closer together. Under these conditions, it was almost impossible for Abeni to maintain control. And if there was more than a few yards separating them, then he might just as well have been Chanting on his own. They needed to find a way to stay in physical contact as they marched.

  Tayna solved both issue in one step. “With you looking up at the sky all the time, you’re pretty much blind,” she said. “So I’ll just have to be your seeing-eye fish.”

  It worked beautifully. Tayna stood in front, while Abeni laid one enormous hand across the back of her neck. This way, she could guide him by simply walking, and it allowed Abeni to steer her too, as necessary, with nothing more than a gentle turn of his hand. Their essential communication could be completely silent.

  Once they had worked all of this out and practiced it to Abeni’s satisfaction, there was nothing left to do but loft the Wagon up into the air and get moving.

  So they did.

  Chapter 9

  The Flame Gang, as Eliza now thought of herself and her two-companions-in-one, walked on for a little while—just far enough to discourage any of the boys from coming to find the Flame of the Dragon. She wasn’t ready to talk to them yet. And besides, she and Mardu needed time to figure out their next step. And if she was lucky, maybe some down time would give her the chance to find out what the hell was going on.

  After a ten minute hike, more or less following the stream, Eliza still wasn’t sure they’d gone far enough, but the shadows were now joining hands into actual darkness, and Mardu urged her to find somewhere to sleep. A tree would be best, but we won’t be able to find one in full darkness.

  Sleep in a tree? What, so I can fall out and kill myself? Then what will happen to your Dragon’s Peace?

  You will not fall if you choose the proper tree, Mardu replied. I will show you.

  And to Eliza’s surprise, she did. Sooner than she’d thought possible, Scraw had found her a tree with two adjacent branches that spread apart above a third, creating a secure bed pocket with a solid floor and walls and everything. After a short, easy climb, Eliza nestled herself down into the cozy little nook, hardly able to believe that she was ten or fifteen feet above the forest floor. It wasn’t as comfortable as an actual mattress, of course, but she was young, and where an older person’s bones might have felt pressed and uncomfortable, Eliza found that she conformed rather easily into the contours of her makeshift bed, and so she did her best to arrange her stupid blanket robe thing around her. Tomorrow she definitely had to find some clothes that she did not have to hold tightly with both hands to stay decent.

  Once she was settled, Scraw flitted up higher into the tree, seeking the shelter of leaves, hiding himself from whatever it was that crows feared, and of course, Mardu went with him. Eliza closed her eyes, but even though she was tired, a troubling memory bubbled just behind her consciousness, and it held her up, not letting her drift down into sleep. After a few minutes of trying, and failing, she gave up.

  Mardu? What you said earlier, before things got crazy back there… Did you really volunteer as a sacrifice?

  For a moment, there was no answer, but then Mardu replied. Her mind-voice was quiet, halting. As though the memory disturbed her.

  Long ago, yes. I was one of three. Sacrificed to enjoin the Oath. My father was Notawhey, King of the Wasketchin.

  So you were, like, an actual princess? And you just volunteered to be his scape-girl?

  No! Eliza could feel a wave of outrage flowing back through their connection. You know nothing of the time I come from! My father was a great and just man. He did not manipulate me like some goat being led to slaughter. The choice was mine!

  I’m sorry, Eliza replied. But I just don’t get it. Why would you volunteer for something like that? Didn’t you want to live? Eliza worried that maybe she had offended her new companion, but then she heard—or rather felt—a sigh in her mind, and the anger seemed to leak away with it.

  The world was not as you see it now, Mardu said. Today it is peaceful and green… In the time of my walking, every day was a day of war and hardship. The Miseratu preyed upon our people, feeding themselves from our fears. The water sprites, with their tricks and illusions, owned the low, damp places. Kalupliks stole our children along the banks of the rivers, and the enormous xiucatl serpents would swallow entire families, whole.

  And always, there were the Dragons. To carry the bone of such a one was a prize beyond measuring. With such magic, one could stand against a hundred sprites or a thousand ‘pliks, and suffer not a scratch. But even a Dragon’s magic does not survive long after its body dies, and so always our hunters quested for another. Each clan contested with the other, and Peoples fought against Peoples, seeking the nesting ground or feeding pasture of another of the great beasts, so that they could bring back more bones or scales of another Dragon, and thus live in quiet once again, sheltered from the constant battling for a time. But the Dragons did not die willingly for our moments of calm. They fought us in every corner, wreaking havoc and destruction upon the Peoples at every turn. All was hardship and grief.

  Then, upon one unexpected summer, the last remaining two turned upon each other. For days they fought until, in the end, the Dragon Grimorl fled the land, and only a single member of his kind remained. His brother, the Dragon Methilien. The largest and greatest of them all. Should Methilien ever die, there would be no other. No more scales or bones. No tooth or spine plate. No dragon-vim anywhere with which to stave off the predations of the other kinds.

  It was my father who summoned the kings together to devise a plan. They must unite, he told them, and find some way to preserve this last Dragon, or all the Peoples might perish before the spring. But the other kings mocked my father. They thought him a fool, and they would take no part in his soft ploys, believing he meant to trick them from this greatest prize of all. So my father went alone into the forest, and put his question to the trees. Would Methilien come to parlay, that they might find a solution to the ever-turning wheel of battle, d
eath, and vengeance?

  To his astonishment, the Dragon came.

  When my father returned from the forest, he was ablaze with his new purpose, for he and the Dragon had fashioned a plan. And what a plan it was! The Dragon no more wished to fight or to die than did my father, or any other. Together they had agreed that the Wasketchin would hunt him no more, nor permit others to do so. In return, the Dragon would cease his offenses against the Wasketchin, and against any other Peoples who would join their pledge.

  And more, the Dragon would employ his magic to create for them all a realm of peace, where any Peoples who would take the Oath might dwell in comfort, as brother races. But to work this magic, the Dragon would have to spend all the vim within him. For a time after, he would be as weak as a babe. So he required three conditions of my father. First, that it was not enough for the Peoples to simply promise to walk the paths of peace. He required that they must be enjoined to that promise, by the very magic that created their new realm, and that with the crowning of each new king, the pledge must be renewed by all. Second, that all creatures who did not take up the Oath with them must be banished from the realm, never to return. And third, that there be none remaining who were not enjoined. To do this, the Dragon required that the blood of each royal house be spilled in sacrifice, binding each and every person to the Oath through the vows they had already sworn to their kings.

  In addition to the peace so established, the Dragon further pledged that in time, when his vim had returned to him, he would spread it upon the waters and the rivers of the new realm, gifting it to the Peoples, so that with it they might hasten the creation of their new world of peace, and that, for so long as he yet lived, they might all enjoy the uses his magic might bring them.

  So tell me, friend Eliza. I was oldest of my siblings, fated to be queen in my time. But a queen of what? Of hardship? Of scarcity and predation? In a world so filled with death and strife, how long might I have lived? A year? A decade? You simply cannot know, but to be offered such a chance, so simple a path for peace and happiness, with so much good to be gained and so much ill to be lost? How could a queen—how could I—do anything other than step forward? It was my duty, and I gave my blood—and my life—willingly.

  Tears ran down Eliza’s face as she lay there in the darkness. She hadn’t just heard the words. She had seen them. Somehow, Mardu’s memories of the horrors her world had faced had come through the link they shared, and for a few moments, Eliza had been there. She had seen the broken warriors dragged home by their defeated brothers. She had felt the cavernous grief of a mother whose child had been taken in the night. And then she had shared in Mardu’s relief too. After so much pain, to be able to actually do something about it. She’d felt the fierce pride—the honor—of those final words. “How could I do anything other than step forward?” The simple humanity of those words, and the feelings that had accompanied them, left Eliza in awe.

  I’m sorry, she sent. I had no idea.

  But now some viper of a Gnome f’znat digs his fetid claws into my Dragon Lord and threatens to return our realm to those very horrors that were only narrowly averted? He seeks to gorge himself on the corpse of the peace I purchased with my very life’s blood? I don’t think so, sister!

  As impressed as she was by the righteous anger of a queen whose people had been threatened, Eliza couldn’t help but giggle just the same. ‘I don’t think so, sister?’ How can you sound like a raging queen and an outraged chica, all at the same time?

  Because I am both? Mardu suggested.

  Eliza sent a grin of companionable sisterhood back across the link. This was getting weird, and complicated, but for the first time since awaking in this strange afterlife, she wondered if maybe her problems weren’t the biggest ones on the block. With that thought to guide her, Eliza wriggled one last time to get comfortable, and drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  It was some hours later when the sounds of shuffling and muttering in the darkness awakened her. The boys. How stupid did they think she was? No doubt they were rooting around in the darkness, searching for her with a bag full of questions that simply wouldn’t keep until morning. Well, maybe she didn’t have any answers for them yet, and since she was pretty sure they couldn’t see her in her hidey-hole from down below, she decided to just let them keep looking, so she lay there, silent in her tree-loft bed as they passed by right below her, never even thinking to look up.

  Boys! Could they get any dimmer?

  When the sounds of their shuffling moved on, back toward their camp, Eliza smiled to herself in satisfaction and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  Mehklok hid beneath a log and whimpered. All around him, the forest was making noises. Each was no doubt a creature waiting to kill him.

  He’d been tracking the witch woman for days, and though he hadn’t caught an actual glimpse of her, he knew the trail was hers. He could still taste the otherly tang of tiny decay that she left on the rocks and branches as she brushed past them. It’s what drew him on, this certitude that he had not yet lost her, that there was still hope of getting her corpse back to where he had found it before its owner learned of his involvement.

  Each morning he arose before the sun, drained and exhausted, to resume his search. And each evening, he pressed on as late into the darkness as his imagination would allow. But inevitably, the light would fail once more, and with it, the crackles and snaps, the chirrups and twitters, the burbles and croaks of the forest grew louder and louder in his mind, until each of them was a crouching… something, lying in wait behind the very next tree—and the tree behind him, too—freezing him in terror to the spot on which he stood, leaving him no choice but to sink to his haunches on the disgusting, dry soil and cover his head with his arms, quaking in fear against the night.

  So this was how she had brought low the Chaplain of Garnok’s Rage. This was how she forced him to spend the restful hours of his nights. Not nestled deep in a damp hole, as he should be, surrounded by his familiar comforts, but out here in the night air of a foreign land, eyes wide with fear, throat closed with terror, crouching under whatever bugless shrub or life-starved log happened to be nearest when the sounds of the forest overwhelmed him. Unable to sleep. Unable to go home. Waiting for the snarl and the teeth that would end his journey.

  What was that?

  * * *

  Eliza came awake in alarm. A short, sharp cry in her dream had awakened her. At least, she thought it had been in her dream, but it had been so brief that she couldn’t be sure, so she lay there, listening intently for any echos that might tell her if the cry had come from her dream world, or from this nightmare world she actually seemed to be living in.

  But there was nothing. It had been just a dream sound after all. She was just drifting back to sleep when her alerted ears caught a different noise. Eliza groaned. Singing? Really? At this time of night? What is wrong with these guys? Don’t they have like, jobs in the morning? More huts to fix, or something?

  She tried to shut their stupid antics out of her ears and thoughts, but everything else in this world was stupid, so why should their music be any different? The song had some strange, unfamiliar melody. Alien. As though they didn’t even use the same sounds as real music. She couldn’t make the words out at all, not that she’d have understood them, even if she could, but the chant’s awkward, staggering rhythm tugged at her awareness, teasing her back from the edge of sleep each time she neared it.

  To make things worse, she couldn’t help but notice how badly voiced it was too. Full of screeching and barking, like a chorus of bats and wolves fraying at the tatters of night. Then she realized what was happening. They were actually baiting her. They’d searched for her earlier and when they hadn’t found her, they’d decided to annoy her awake. Make her angry so that she’d come back sooner than she’d said. And it was working. Frustration building, Eliza squirmed herself into a sitting position.

  This was totally bogus! Were they really that selfi
sh? Hadn’t they seen how tired she was? What is it with boys? Why can’t they just accept when they lose a battle of wits and let it be? Eliza swore under her breath and rolled out of the tree, lowering herself down to the ground in silence. The singing stopped soon after she let go of the branch. No doubt they planned to deny that there had been any singing at all, but it was too late. Hardly adults, these were clearly still little boys, and they were going to hear a thing or two about proper behavior, whether they wanted to hear it or not.

  We’re returning now? Mardu asked over their link.

  I’ll be back in a minute. Just some juveniles who need a good yelling at, Eliza replied.

  Then perhaps your yelling parts should come with you, Mardu said, as she and Scraw flapped out of the tree tops and descended to their place on Eliza’s shoulder.

  “Good point,” Eliza muttered, as she stormed through the trees, her temper rising rapidly as she marched back to the boys’ camp. She knew where it was, and went directly toward it, through the trees, rather than going back to follow the stream.

  And that’s what saved her.

  She was almost on top of the Gnome sentry before she even knew he was there. Had she been following the stream, she’d have been spotted easily, out on its open, mossy bank. But in the shadows of the trees, Eliza was nearly invisible as she drew herself to a sudden halt and held her breath when the sentry appeared suddenly in the darkness ahead of her.