Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  “They don’t grow back?” Near-constant teething was a part of any Aern’s life. She’d been informed it got better with age, but the thought of not having teeth at all, of those teeth not replacing themselves . . .

  “Not anymore.”

  Parli grimaced at that, too, but stood next to his father staring straight ahead, his face as blank as he could make it. After all, every Aern knew the story of Parl’s foreswearing. Parli had believed his wife to be innocent. His father had paid the price of his error. It saddened her, but it was a lesson, too, a cautionary tale about ill-thought oaths.

  “Vegetables don’t make me sick now, though. Not like when I was an . . . Oath . . . keeper.”

  Parl sucked in his lips and looked down, his eyes tearing up. He did not cry, but it took several long breaths before he could meet her stare again. She walked around him, appalled to see a grown warrior in leather armor like a child. His Incarna’s bone-steel mail seemed like plate armor by comparison. The warpick at Parli’s back was a right and good tool, but Parl’s . . .

  “Where is your . . . weapon?”

  “There.” He nodded to a wooden spear which leaned against the edge of the stone wall bordering the lookout position. “It had a tip carved of animal bone, but it was a mockery. This does not pretend to be anything it isn’t.”

  “May I?” She walked to the weapon, arm outstretched.

  “Of course.”

  She hefted the long, smooth shaft of wood. More javelin than spear, Rae’en reckoned. It had been made by a conflicted craftsman, equal parts pride and disdain. Well balanced and with a wood finish she did not immediately recognize, the weapon had no artistic embellishment, a weapon only—no art. And truly a weapon, not a tool, Rae’en realized. Parl may have been a weapon himself once, but he could no longer be considered one.

  She walked back around to him, the wind blowing an errant hair across her eyes. Parl shivered and sniffed as mucus ran from his nostrils. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, stifling a deep cough as best he could.

  “You’re ill?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Like a human?”

  “Yes.” He stared straight at her again. “It’s called a cold.”

  “Your eyes,” she asked. “Do they still see in the dark?”

  “Better than a human’s, but not like they used to. I—”

  The deathblow came with only a fraction of awareness attached to it. On the one hand, Rae’en thought it possible she should have let him finish his sentence, but so great was his suffering, so wrong that the Fifty-Third of One Hundred should spend a candlemark as Parl had, much less the years he had endured, that Rae’en could not but act. Death was the only kindness for Parl, even if it meant a complete death, a death without the hope of his spirit flowing back into and strengthening the whole of her people.

  Red blood, rather than the proper Aernese orange to which Rae’en was accustomed, poured from the wound in his chest when she withdrew Parl’s javelin. One blow. Straight to the heart. His eyes blinked, but death came quickly.

  “Burn that,” Rae’en scowled, not sure why her eyes were watering. “I don’t think it’s safe to eat.” She tossed the spear-javelin to Parli. “Do you want this?”

  Parli caught the weapon as Kholster’s thoughts rang out. All know. Parli, now Fifty-Third of One Hundred, is excused from military duty until the tenth day. His loss is great, but no greater than some. In addition, from this day forth all Foresworn are to be killed on sight. To let them live is no kindness.

  Evidently Kholster agreed, Rae’en thought as her Overwatches congratulated her on having made the only possible correct decision. She watched as a pair of Bone Finders descended on the scene as if from nowhere and began pouring oil on the body of the being which had once been an Aern. Each of them nodded in turn to Rae’en, as did Parli, who, casting the javelin down upon the remains, stepped forward onto the northern stair and did not look back.

  CHAPTER 14

  OLD WYRM’S ADVICE

  Later that evening, deep in the recesses of South Number Nine, Kholster stood alone at the edge of a large mezzanine of steel reinforced granite. Orange light from the lava pools below, in which newborn Jun beasts moved and swam, lent a bronze cast to his bone-steel armor. Kholster still did not fully understand the Jun beasts. Though full-grown Jun beasts bore some vague resemblance to miniature dragons, they were not dragons. The young ones looked like strange stone tadpoles, some with legs, others without, but none possessing what Kholster could, in good conscience, call heads.

  Despite their abnormal appearance, Coal, the great dragon, seemed to enjoy their company in the absence of his own kind. Kholster watched as the dragon shimmied in through a reinforced thermal vent and plopped down into the lava pool among the young creatures. Coal’s gray skin blazed in bright reds and oranges as the heat warmed him, giving Kholster a rough glimpse of the dragon as he might have appeared in his youth.

  “What is it, Angry One?” Coal asked as the immature Jun beasts crowded against him. “You never come down to bask in my inspiring glow, such as it is. We always speak on the mountaintops or in the fields.”

  “I come with a question.”

  “Said question, I assume, comes with a requested favor buried deep inside—a baited hook, as it were?”

  “Yes.”

  Coal submerged his bulk as far beneath the lava as he could, peering up at Kholster with nostrils and eyes scarcely inches above the surface of the molten rock.

  “Ask,” the dragon’s voice burbled, muffled by the lava.

  “Would you like to see the Sri’Zauran Mountains one last time?”

  Laughter filled the cavern, sending the Jun beasts scurrying clear of the dragon. Coal rose up, fiery rivulets draining from his features, and his massive neck stretched out to place him eye to eye with Kholster.

  “So what if I would? I cannot make that journey by wing anymore. I, who am ancient beyond even your long life and experience, have grown infirm.”

  Kholster blanched. “Surely you exaggerate . . .”

  “No!” Coal growled, shaking the cavern with a thunderous roar. “I do not! I tell you truly that there are human babes born this very day who will yet draw breath when I do not.”

  “Ah.” Kholster nodded, turning to leave.

  “My answer, therefore, is yes.”

  Kholster turned back.

  “You have chosen to kill the Eldrennai, yes? You will make good on your ill-conceived oath and destroy them all. You will become a thing of rage once more, awaken your hate from its quiescence and feast upon the flesh of your creator’s race. Will you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like the advice of an old wyrm, Kholster, first of Uled’s Aern, First of One Hundred?”

  “I would.”

  “Have your warsuits rise up this very night and kill the Eldrennai.” The dragon’s eye flickered with inner light as he spoke. “Have them steal your victory like thieves in the shadows. Arrive for the Grand Conjunction in thirteen years’ time knowing that only the Vael will join you. So long as you still arrive, you will not be Foresworn.”

  Kholster shook his head, crimson reflected in his black eyes. “I will not.”

  “Foolish creature!” Coal rose up farther, forcing Kholster to step aside to avoid a spatter of lava. “You could take most of their Elementalists by surprise.”

  “I know.”

  “It would be the quickest road to victory.”

  “It would.”

  “Then why not take it?” Coal’s foreclaw broke the surface of the magma. Sparks and smoke hissed as the great dragon’s claws snapped at the air as if seizing some imaginary goal.

  “‘Must we attack them now?’” Kholster quoted.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what Bloodmane asked when the idiot prince took irrevocable action and shattered his people’s truce with me.”

  “Must,” the dragon whispered, “not ‘can’ or �
�do’ or ‘should’ . . . ‘must.’ I see your dilemma.”

  “I will not enslave that which I have created. If our skins are no longer of one will with our souls, we, their rightful occupants . . . I will not force them to do that which they do not wish to do.”

  “So you’ve directed them to what? Remain vigilant?” the dragon snapped its claws, liquid rock spattering Kholster’s boots. “You could task them with the reclamation of Fort Sunder. They could do that in secret, and surely it is a task they would welcome.”

  “I did. They do.”

  “If the warsuits are not with you, one dragon will not be enough. You will need an equalizer.”

  “Yes,” Kholster flicked the hardening stone off of his boots. “And as I am unwilling to employ gnomes as warmages or humans as mind warriors, the only option which remains is distasteful to me.”

  “You must ask the Dwarves for Jun cannon and junpowder.”

  “Guns. Rifles.”

  When the dragon seemed perplexed by that, Kholster explained.

  “They are no longer holy weapons when used by one who is not a Dwarf. Years ago when I asked to fire one, Glinfolgo stored the weapon in a different place and called it a gun. It lost the right to bear Jun’s name when used for a purpose other than the defense of his holy work.”

  “Guns,” the dragon repeated. “Yes, the weapons of Jun would do the trick. If I were younger, or if you had a whole flight of dragons, you could make do without. As it stands, I don’t see any other path to success, unless you unleash your entire population against the Eldrennai.”

  “No,” Kholster shook his head. “I will take the Armored and the Bone Finders, who must protect the bones of the fallen. And one other—an Eleven. Freeborn.”

  “Your daughter?” Coal loomed close, his snout within a handspan of Kholster’s nose. “The one who killed Parl?”

  Kholster nodded. “Who else?”

  “You have plans for her.”

  “I have plans for all Aern, but yes, I have plans for her. One day, she will lead in my place.”

  “When you die?”

  Kholster laughed. “I’m Armored. How would I die? I can’t imagine a set of circumstances where surrendering my spirit and knowledge to the army would be more useful to them than my presence would be.”

  “I can.” Coal snorted derisively, hunkering down lower in the magma once more. “But, putting aside your failure of imagination, what would be your intent? Retire? Grow old on a mountainside with some Dwarf?”

  “I . . . just know, that I have kholstered them too long. My name is a verb, for Torgrimm’s sake. They don’t even say ‘lead’ anymore. I will always be there to advise them, to fight at their side, but . . .”

  “They need a leader who will make wiser oaths?”

  “Yes.”

  “I agree.” The dragon yawned, gargling molten rock as it seeped into his maw. “What about your other problem?”

  “What other problem?”

  “You don’t hate the Eldrennai anymore.” The dragon belched flame, and a fist-sized chunk of cooling rock flew past Kholster’s head. “You won’t win if your heart isn’t in it. Old friend, yours isn’t.”

  “I have thirteen years to rekindle that hate,” Kholster said softly, his voice almost lost amid the geological turmoil of the dragon’s lair, “and no shortage of memories to share.”

  “Memories,” the dragon’s eye lit from within, the glow ebbing from drooping lids. “But which ones will you—”

  “I’ll start at the beginning.” Kholster looked away.

  “And winning is worth that?”

  “I made an oath and my people are bound by it.” Kholster locked eyes with the dragon. “We will not be Foresworn.”

  CHAPTER 15

  ALL KNOW

  Aldo frowned. The diminutive god paced the confines of his modest study, creature comforts falling away with his shifting attention. Lack of focus banished the room’s furnishings one by one. Plushly upholstered chairs, the polished oaken desk, even the rows of books and scrolls and the shelves upon which they sat evaporated, reducing the room to a carpeted cube of stone.

  “What is he doing?” Aldo’s frown deepened. Unlike the other gods, Aldo’s moment-to-moment appearance bore very little resemblance to his statues at Castleguard and Oot. He did pause and resume the old form long enough for the “Changing of the Gods” as the humans called the cosmic synching that took place at midnight and noon. It was worth the effort to ensure that his statues reflected the image he chose to show the world.

  In person, in private, he was not the lofty scion of Eldrennai appearance, with flowing robes and eyes of light, though there was a resemblance. Over the eons, his features had drifted with his interests. His facial features were still reminiscent of an Eldrennai, the slight point to the ears and refined features but molded onto a form more in keeping with a gnomish height while possessing a human’s lithe musculature. Most different from his sculptured appearances were the eyes.

  On his statues, the eyes of Aldo glowed with the light of knowledge. In truth, his eyes had grown hollow and cavernous, the ocular orbits distended and outsized from accommodating many different lenses and crystals. Aldo had once known everything. He remembered that serenity and craved it, though he doubted it would ever again be his. Over time, as the world grew and its inhabitants multiplied beyond the scope of his attention span, the completeness of his knowledge had become overstretched.

  “Show me,” Aldo hissed. From within the folds of his robes, a swarm of lenses, crystalline orbs, mirrors, and reflective surfaces erupted, displaying a writhing mass of diverse images. The lenses varied in size and shape (some concave, others convex, a few even more like prisms than proper lenses) and even in substance, casting and absorbing myriad spectra of light and darkness upon the loose-fitting silk robes he wore. While he did not know everything in the way he had when the world of Barrone was young, he saw most things, and he could know anything if he knew that he needed to know it. What had once been instantaneous now took time, but he consoled himself that it did not take long. Seconds, really.

  “Show me all of them!” Lenses focused in on scenes of multiple Aern. Aldo calmed. “Good.”

  As Aldo watched, each Aern across Barrone paused, head tilted like a dog pondering the unknown. Each jade iris pulsed with light, once, twice, then faded as it suffused their amber pupils with a faint yet unmistakable glow. Irises expanded, banishing the blacks of each eye, leaving the amber pupils large and dilated. All with two words, not from the lips, but from the mind of Kholster: All Recall.

  Aldo drew a small wooden case from within the folds of his robe, snapping it open hastily, spilling multiple sets of eyes upon the carpet, but not the eyes he sought. They were heavier than the others. The god of knowledge seized two eyes of obsidian, amber, and jade and shoved them into his empty sockets just in time to hear the second syllable of “recall” as Kholster’s voice filled the god’s mind as well.

  He breathed a sigh of relief, then cursed as a massive steel door appeared in the wall of his study and burst open.

  “I’m bored,” announced the large bald intruder, a massively muscled god wearing impossibly ornate plate armor and an expression of irritation so great that it nearly matched Aldo’s own.

  “Not now, Dienox.”

  “But there’s nothing to do. Even the Hulsites aren’t killing anybody interesting.”

  Aldo’s frown stretched beyond the natural confines of his face, but he gestured for one of his multitudinous lenses to grow in size, becoming a floor-length mirror displaying scenes Aldo hoped the lumbering god of conflict would find amusing.

  “What are we watching?” Dienox smiled, adjusting his armor.

  Aldo didn’t see how, in an actual battle, that armor could serve any purpose other than to help the tip of a blade or the point of a warpick slide home and bite through, but he held his tongue. What was the likelihood the war god (technically, he reminded himself, the deity of Conflict AND Re
solution) would actually ever fight a battle himself? He had to bite back a giggle at that last thought. Oh, if Dienox only knew . . .

  “The Aern are living a memory. A rare one. One of Kholster’s, an All Recall. You may remain if you are silent.”

  “So it’s going to be war then?” Dienox punched his fist into his palm. “I love it when the Aern wage war!”

  Aldo knew Dienox would be less than pleased if he knew the mostly likely outcome of this particular deployment, but he kept that thought, like most of his thoughts, firmly to himself.

  As the gods looked on, the entire race waited, minds occupied, bodies ready to take over if danger threatened. Each reflective surface depicted a different Aern. Aldo tried to keep the most interesting few rotating across Dienox’s mirror.

  In the Guild Cities of Barrony, Draekar, one of the Token Hundred stationed in the city was stabbed as the thief he fought mistook the pause for a rare and miraculous opening for attack. Dienox chuckled when the thief drew back neither the blade nor the hand. Around him, the crowd scattered to stay clear of the feasting Aern, lost to the Arvash’ae, and his mewling prey.

  Elsewhere, Jharlin, a Bone Finder seeking an unaccounted-for femur of Hollis by Vander out of Jyan lost during a scouting mission on the coast of Gastony, crawled lower and faster than usual. The target she sought was too close to allow her to pause during the memory Kholster had chosen to share. Her body did not stop. All thoughts of grappling hooks and stealth fell away. As the bone thief rode his horse toward the city gates of the small coastal town in which he had hidden. Jharlin leapt, canines bared.

  Dienox’s laughter rang out again as a horse bolted riderless in the night and Jharlin claimed both the lost bone metal and a well-earned meal.

  “Aldo, what—?” Torgrimm asked, materializing between the other two gods, only to find himself silenced by a gentle hushing sound as Aldo placed a single finger to his lips.

  “Just watch,” the god of knowledge explained, pointing to the mirror display.

  Deep in Khalvad, with its curving towers and desert sand, Vh’ghar was caught by the mental sharing while in the midst of an argument with his human wife. The woman’s cheeks flushed red, her eyes flashed with anger. The resounding slap she’d begun before her husband’s eyes began to glow hung like a death sentence in the air, one for which a stay of execution seemed impossible to expect.