Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  Fisher was squatting on his haunches beside the open rear door of his car. The nun sat quietly inside. Her eyes kept darting around, but it didn’t look like anything was actually registering. She moved one hand absently, and he could hear the sound of little chains rattling within the folds of her habit. Without breaking eye contact, he reached back to where he knew the custody officer was waiting, and he made a turning motion with his hands. A moment later, he felt a ring of keys press into his hand. Fisher reached out with them toward the nun.

  “I’m sorry, Sister. I didn’t realize they’d cuffed you. Here, let me get those off.” He fiddled for a moment before he was able to get the cuffs clear of the black cloth, but then they unlocked easily and he handed the cuffs and key back behind him.

  “Is that better?”

  The woman rubbed at her wrists and then looked at him. There seemed to be a little more in her eyes this time.

  “Sister? Your name?”

  She opened her mouth. “Diaph…? Sister Di…” Then her eyes seemed to clear a little, as though she had just wakened from a long and troubling dream. “No…” she said, slowly. “Not Diaphana. French?” It was barely more than a whisper. As though she was feeling her way through a room she hadn’t visited in decades. Then her eyes widened suddenly, and she turned to look at him with clear, intelligent eyes.

  “Captain Fisher, my name is Regina Finch. And I’d like to report a felony.”

  Chapter 28

  Eliza raced through the trees and broke out into the clearing, then stopped fast in her tracks. The entire glade was a blackened mess, lit by the hundred tiny fires that smoldered everywhere, as remains of the Gnomes’ watch fire still rained down on the dry grass. The guttering little fires illuminated tendrils of smoke that drifted above the grass, seeming to writhe in the flickering light. Of the original watch fire itself, nothing remained. It was completely gone. There didn’t appear to be so much as a log or even a coal left on the island. There were no guards.

  Nor any sign of Scraw and Mardu either.

  Eliza reached out over their link. Mardu! Scraw! Where are you?

  Silence.

  Slowly, Eliza moved through the smoldering carnage in front of her, but her gaze remained firmly fixed on the ground as she peered into every shadow and clump for signs of the crow. Smoke stung the back of her throat and her eyes watered as a dreadful certainty grew within her. That she would eventually find her friends. In flaming pieces.

  She wasn’t sure whether to be scared or relieved when she reached the brook without any sign of them. The Gnomes, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. Eliza looked down into the water and had to fight to control her stomach as three blackened, smoldering bodies bobbed face down in the water. Like compass needles, each one pointing directly away from the blast zone.

  But no crow.

  Mardu? Scraw?

  Mehklok came up beside her, his eyes as wide as her own, as he gaped around at the scene. Then he looked up at her. Eliza could only pantomime a bird-shape on her shoulder, and then she threw her arms wide at the devastation, asking the question with her expression. Where is my friend? Help me find my friend.

  The little Gnome nodded and immediately began moving about the area, inspecting everything that looked big enough. Eliza watched him for a helpless moment, and then turned to continue her own search in the other direction. Scraw?

  She found him at the base of a tree, on the outermost edge of the clearing. She wouldn’t have found him at all, if it hadn’t been for a pair of black feathers caught in the bark, halfway up the trunk. With an involuntary cry, Eliza darted forward, searching the scorched grass around the tree with her fingers. What little light she had was useless, obscured by tears. She knew what she was going to find, but still she patted gently at the grass, hoping against all odds to find him whole. A hand patted at her back, and Eliza whirled in a rage.

  “Get away from me, you disgusting little creep! Get lost!”

  Then she shoved the startled Gnome as hard as she could and spun back to her search, sobbing, and prodding at the grass frantically. Please, oh please, oh please. I didn’t mean to hurt him. He’s just a bird. He never hurt anyone…

  Her hand squished into a damp mat of feathers.

  Oh no! Eliza’s head drooped down to chest and tears spilled down her cheeks. She eased her hand into the grass beneath him and gently scooped him up to where she could see. He was so light! But even in the scant glow of the fires that flickered behind her, she could see she was too late. One wing was bent backward and his head flopped to the side. Mardu? Scraw? Are you in there? But it was useless. The house was empty.

  Both the Flame and the Voice of the Dragon were gone.

  * * *

  Mehklok trembled as he huddled himself down into the damp soil of the stream bank, seeking comfort from the dance of decay that played out among its tiny grains. But there was little to be found, and he deserved even less. The death goddess had rejected him. Why shouldn’t the soil as well?

  The slowly dissolving remnants of death that were usually held in mud’s holy matrix had been incinerated here into vapor and ash. By the flash fire. The melodious song of vim within was all but mute, and it left Mehklok feeling more isolated and disconnected than he could ever remember feeling. Even being lost in the forest had been better by comparison. And when the body of one of the guards bumped against his foot, not even that lucky omen could rouse Mehklok from his despair.

  Death had rejected him utterly.

  She had called out her grief song to him when she’d found the corpse of her familiar, summoning him, no doubt for his services as a chaplain of the Gnomileshi, and perhaps for his earlier experience as a harvester. This was only proper. She would want to free the vim still trapped within her little companion, that he might live on in some last charm of service to her. But when he had arrived, she had turned on him. Cursing him forever with a shriek uttered in some fearsome tongue of power. What had she done to him? Would his tongue turn to dust? Would his nose shrivel? Would his eyes begin to bleed? The longer he lay there in the wet dirt, the more vivid his fears became. Once again, he was alone in the forest. For a time, he had clung to the strength that flowed to him from his new-found goddess, but that strength had now been withdrawn, leaving Mehklok to sink once more into his deep and convulsing terror.

  He should never have left Gash-Garnok. He should not have gone into Yechnarg to the market. He should have stayed out of that alley. He should have left the body where he’d found it. Every step in his last week of days had been a continuous march of mistakes, and now he had nothing to show for his troubles but troubles.

  In the distance, he could hear her weeping. She had, of course, withheld the treasure of her emotions from him, spending them alone in the dark, rather than let even the most paltry flicker of it fall to him. Did she think him that callous? Did she not know that any gleam of sorrow she might share with him would be immediately offered up and given voice, so that it might echo with her own? He was no grief bandit. He was the Chaplain of Garnok’s Rage, a church of the first rank. And one such as he knew better.

  But still, why was she grieving? Even Mehklok had been able to see that life had still beat within the blackened little beast. So why cry now, before he had passed? Was she so soft that she needed him dead, but grieved over the waiting? Then why not end the wait and be done? It just didn’t make any sense. And then his eyes widened.

  Unless she did not know the bird yet lived. Was it possible? Mehklok had always thought the tears of sky-dwellers were a weakness. At just the time when their emotions spewed from them in fountains of wealth, tempting their fellows and blinding their reason, they chose to blind their eyes as well. It made them doubly vulnerable to those who would take advantage. Could it be that even the death queen was victim to this blinding deluge of eye-water?

  And if she wept, then did this not mean she would prefer that the bird live?

  Oh what to do, what to do? She had already shrieke
d her curse upon him. What might she do now if he guessed wrong? But on the other finger, how might she smile upon him if he guessed right?

  Mehklok whimpered his fear quietly down into his throat and then stood up, squelching himself out of the dripping mud. It was his duty. And though it might get him killed, he at least had a chance now to redeem himself.

  So with a quiver of hope trembling through him, Mehklok scuttled off to do what he hoped was right.

  * * *

  Ever since she’d opened her eyes in Mehklok’s creepy lair, Eliza had been sure she was dead. It was the only explanation that made any sense. She’d made the mistake of trusting Sister Anthrax, following her up the stairs toward some last-minute change of plans… And then, nothing. Blackness and oblivion. Until she’d opened her eyes to see that terror leaning over her in the dim underground light.

  So she’d fled. But the further she’d run, the more certain she’d become of her own demise. Statues made of bone and rotting meat… a cloud of flies thick enough to choke on… heat, humidity… and all of it set in some great, circular pit. She was dead. Fine. She could accept that, but there was one final thought she had been avoiding, as though by refusing to think it, she could make it not be true. But it was.

  This was Hell.

  One of the other Goodies, or maybe that Captain Angry One guy, must have snuck up behind her and caved in her skull or something. Although, waking up in Hell seemed kind of a harsh punishment for an orphan who had actually been dancing for joy at the time of her murder. Maybe Hell is for people who don’t like nuns—even the evil kind.

  Things had improved a bit once she’d climbed up out of that Throat place, but being lost in the Crayola Forest wasn’t as much fun as it sounded. You can’t eat colorful trees. In fact, when you don’t know what can kill you, you have to assume everything can, even if it’s pretty. Maybe especially when it’s pretty. So although the scenery had improved, Eliza had been getting progressively more miserable.

  Until Mardu had found her—or Scraw had—and that’s when everything changed. Suddenly, she wasn’t a lonely ghost missing her best friend anymore. She had someone to talk with. Someone to plot with. Someone to fill in some of the gaps. And it turned out that Mardu was in more or less the same boat, so helping each other out had seemed the thing to do. And Mardu already knew she was dead. She’d volunteered for it.

  So all the getting to know you, becoming buddies stuff had turned out to just be more of the Welcome To Hell Committee’s after-life torture program. Get the new girl to think she’s really still alive, that she’s got friends, and a purpose, then jerk the rug out from under her again. Ha, ha, ha! Look how scared she looks! Hasn’t figured out that you never come back! Dead never goes away and it never gets better!

  As she moped around inside her stupid, dead brain, Eliza had stopped paying attention to where she was going, and paid no attention when her feet carried her beyond the charred remains of the clearing, and began wandering among the trees, looking for something. Her mind was too busy wallowing itself in her misery. She looked down at her hands, at the tiny weight of feathers and stilled laughter in her hands. Scraw. That’s right. She was still looking for somewhere less… bombed-out looking, to bury her friend.

  Mardu?

  Still silence. Make that, bury her friends.

  Eliza was still staring down at the sad bundle in her hands, when the shrubs behind her burst apart and Mehklok came hurtling from them, arms outstretched. She turned slowly and could only watch in distant, sloth-like confusion as he snatched the dead crow from her hands and stuffed it into his mouth, and then turned and dashed back into the trees.

  It was so unexpected, so totally beyond sanity, that all she could think to do was laugh. So with the last tatters of her mind threatening to flee into the Forest around her, Eliza sank to the ground, convulsing with great bellows and shrieks of laughter.

  The kind of laughter that could break your heart.

  Chapter 29

  “Hey, Whale Boy! Hold up!” Tayna stuck her foot out to the side, feeling carefully for the knob of rock that he’d told her was there, but there weren’t any knobs she could find. A smooth hump or two, maybe. But actual knobs? Nope. Not a one, as far as she could tell. There was a mountain pressed against her face, and a little further down, just beyond her reach, there was a nice juicy crack. But with her left leg folded tightly beneath her and bearing most of her weight, there was no way she could extend her other leg far enough to reach it. Not without pulling her left foot from its secure real-estate and flinging herself down the mountain face in the process.

  She looked across the exposed slope of rock, but Abeni had already moved past the jut and had vanished from sight. She called out to him again. “Um, little help?” But it was useless. He wouldn’t hear her now unless she shouted, and they were still too close to the great Djin city to risk drawing attention.

  Tayna sighed and then took a deep breath. He’d made this look so easy. Slowly, she edged the toe of her right boot over to the biggest wannabe-knob she could see, then she then shifted her weight carefully toward it. Her fingers were starting to sweat and she could feel them squelching and mashing against each other within the crack she’d found to jam them into, up above her head. But this wasn’t about fingers. It was about toes. Trusting that her fingers would stay where she’d put them for a while, Tayna shifted a little more weight off her left leg and put it onto her boot-tip, testing its grip against the smooth stone.

  It held.

  Most of her weight was still on her left foot, which was cramped up below her, secure on a flat spur of stone, but there was real weight on that right toe now too. She wiggled her right ankle, and ground the toe into the face of the stone, testing to see if it would slip. It wasn’t exactly a “confidence boosting” sort of grip, but it was a grip. Tayna could feel the tell-tale jitters starting to shake her left thigh. That leg had been bent for too long now, and it was beginning to shudder from the strain. Time to get moving.

  Another quick glance across the rock. Still no Abeni. Oh well. Tayna held her breath and shifted still further right, letting that toe take more weight. She paused, waiting for the slip that would begin the end, but apparently the plunge to her death had been rescheduled. Her left leg began to jerk with fatigue, little sewing machine twitches, as the muscles got loopy from the lack of oxygen or something and began to giggle in distress.

  Before she could panic, Tayna shifted all the way to the right, trusting the toe to hold, then she straightened her left leg out below her and shook it. Carefully. Her thigh tingled as blood raced back into forgotten neighborhoods of leg-meat, but this wasn’t a good time for a block party. Now that her leg was no longer jammed below her, she was able to lower herself further down, and she did so, wedging her toes into that juicy lower crack that had been just out of reach earlier, then she quickly brought her right foot down to join it.

  Great. It was over. One small step for a girl. Next up, one giant plummet for girlkind. When she’d had that leg jammed up under her and no knob to stand on, the flat expanse of stone stretching out before her had seemed a thousand miles wide. Maybe two thousand. But now, with both feet secure and the tingles starting to fade from her thigh, the road ahead seemed almost easy, with knobs and cracks for the whole family.

  Once she got herself going again, her progress was swift, and soon enough she had crossed the entire face. When she pulled herself around the jut, Abeni was just sitting there. On a ledge. Waiting for her. And he was eating.

  “Oh, thanks for waiting,” she said, as she pulled herself up onto the ledge beside him. Abeni held out a small pouch and Tayna stuck her fingers in, pulling out a small, dense twist of the disgusting grimpi. It was sweet and tough, but oily too, and a bit floppy. And it smelled like wet monkey. Abeni assured her it was rich in all sorts of energy and nutrients, but of all the Djin foods she’d tried lately, this was the only one that actually made her gag.

  “It’s worse than those Gnome be
ak-putty snacks,” she said, tearing off a piece and forcing herself to chew. Abeni smiled and pushed another piece past his big, white teeth.

  “So where are we going?” she asked, after she’d managed to get the wad of grimpi unstuck from her teeth and down her throat. “Down to the Forest, of course, but where?”

  Abeni shook his head. “That would be dangerous. Mabundi and Quishek will search there. The trails of the Anvil are too easily watched.”

  “So, what are we doing? Heading for the wild-water route? That’s how you got down so quickly the last time, right?” But her big Djin friend just shook his head again.

  “No canoe.” He glanced significantly around them, as though challenging her to produce one from the pebbles and dust scattered on the ledge between them.

  “Okay then, where are we supposed to meet up with the supplies you organized? Where are they going?”

  “There was no time,” he said, shaking his head sadly.

  “What? You didn’t send them? So now we’re supposed to set up some kind of underground railroad to lead hundreds of Wasketchin refugees to safety, but we don’t have any food? Or blankets? What about the ones who ran away without even boots on their feet? What are we supposed to do for them?”

  Abeni hung his head and shrugged, miserably. “There was no time,” he repeated, as though that made it all better. “We can do nothing now.”

  For a long moment, Tayna could only stare at him in disbelief. Then the disbelief twisted into irritation.

  “Hello? What are you talking about? You swore an oath to Kijamon. And now you’re just going to let this ring—” Tayna reached out to flick the iron bond ring on his arm that signified his newly-sworn duty, but couldn’t seem to find it among the silver and gold bands. “Hey, where did your—?”

  “We must climb,” Abeni said.