Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  “You never loved me,” she’d screamed. The truth of his love lay in the reaction of his body. His cheek still stinging from a blow that would have resulted in instant death to any other assailant, Vh’ghar dropped to all fours in a protective stance, reading his wife’s anxiety as the result of some threat external to the two of them. With his mind trapped in memory, rather than arvashing the one who’d struck him, his only instinct was to keep her safe.

  Of the three gods, only Torgrimm smiled.

  Other Aern, those who could pause in safety, ceased their work and stood at attention as their minds accepted their Kholster’s memory.

  *

  Rae’en had been asleep in her berth, but her eyes as well as those of her Overwatches snapped awake at the first touch of Kholster’s voice.

  Has he ever shared this with you? M’jynn asked.

  I don’t think he’s ever shared it with anyone.

  “To remember why we hate the Eldrennai,” Kholster’s voice filled all of their minds, “we should start at the beginning. The souls of the Aern do not leave the world of Barrone. Our dead flow back into the group, sharing knowledge and power. The death of the one strengthens the whole. It is the way of things. How things are, from the newborn to the Elevens, to the Armored, even unto the One Hundred. An Aern who dies an Aern, oaths kept, remains with the Aern, the souls of millions upon millions, their essence focused, honed, concentrated in a few hundred thousand, not haunting their ancestors, for the consciousness is not maintained, but enriches us all.”

  *

  “Why does magic have no power over the Aern?” Dienox asked Aldo.

  “Oh, do shut up, Dienox,” Aldo chastised. “Simply put, their souls are too strong, too connected, too vast. It is this connection that allows an Overwatch to relay data to the troops he or she supports and to the kholster they serve.”

  “I wish we could connect a few Eldrennai that way,” Dienox grumbled. “One of my champion’s lances. Think of the maneuvers her Sidearms could manage.”

  “It is a connection,” Torgrimm put in, “Kholster could use to control them all, to slave all Aern to his will. They have free will not because Uled intended it, but because Kholster, in his very core, insists they should. He will lead, but he will not enslave.”

  “I’ve always known there was something wrong with him,” Dienox snorted.

  *

  Rae’en started at the sight of Uled as Kholster had first seen him, not with physical eyes but with eyes of spirit. To spiritual senses his presence was discordant, a symphony of light and darkness, brilliance and madness. She felt Kholster’s shock as if it were her own. His first glimmer of awareness had been to see into the soul of evil brilliance and to hope it would be nice to him.

  And then the Life Forge. Rae’en screamed as Uled shaped her essence. Pain and confusion become the whole of her comprehended existence as etheric hooks were worked into her being, the spiritual shackles that would bind her by oaths she had not sworn to follow the commands of her creator and his king.

  This, Kholster’s words filled her mind, is what it feels like to have one’s soul enslaved by Uled.

  The soul is not meant to experience pain, Rae’en knew it even as she continued to writhe in agony, as the edges of her being twisted into whorls and angles to match the body Uled meant her to occupy. Time flowed without true reference in an endless, yet somehow simultaneous march of days.

  One moment Rae’en lay on the Life Forge, and the next she watched from a soul crystal at the edge of Uled’s workshop as the being with the kind face and cruel soul worked day and night on the Life Forge, putting the finishing touches on a body she recognized as Kholster’s. After a time, it lay naked and complete across an enameled table in the center of the room—a hybrid figure of meticulously carved stone and metal, its eyes a jeweler’s masterpiece of jade, amber, and obsidian. As Uled worked, she saw spirits and elementals trying to slip into the body, but they could not gain entrance: The body, a lock, her—no . . . Kholster’s spirit—its only key.

  As she focused on the physical, watching the body that would be hers . . . his . . . take shape, the rest of the physical world came into increasing focus as well. She learned to see Uled and his apprentices as corporeal entities, though their physical forms still blurred in comparison to their souls. As a spirit, Rae’en was far more aware of innerselves and living things. She still did not understand the words they spoke, but she had begun to read their actions. She knew when Uled planned to work on her soul again and when he intended to work on the body . . . she could predict the times when Uled would fly into a rage and hurl shouts and spells at his apprentices or sit motionless staring into nothingness.

  Eventually, Rae’en sensed a change. Time grew more distinct. She was overcome with a sense of impending . . . arrival. She watched as Uled recited the final word of the Incantation of Awakening. The body twitched, its surface humming as the flesh became true flesh. Uled smashed the soul crystal against the body’s skull. A great force of magic flowed through and around Rae’en but left her floating free.

  Uled gazed at the body intently through a crystal lens, whispering subtle incantations to himself. Feeling the tug of birth but unsure what to do about it, Rae’en floated up above the body and waited. She could have become one with the body that called to her. She felt that, but having been freed from the container in which she had been stored, she wasn’t sure if it might not be better to fly off and never come back.

  She feared the old being in the white robes who chanted over her. True, the being had a kind face, but he had evil eyes. The twelve apprentices who began chanting their spells—for what purpose the newly freed soul neither knew nor cared—seemed equal parts awed and afraid of the being.

  Rae’en felt an urgent brush of power touch her, felts its tug, and deduced that these spells must be attempting to do something with regard to herself, but she saw no reason to obey such a compulsion. She also sensed that parts of her, those parts Uled had wrought in her soul, those parts which did not exist in the souls of those around her, the painful jagged parts, would become truly active if she ever occupied that body.

  “It is a puzzling dilemma,” said a warm, compassionate mind in words Rae’en instantly understood. A handsome being with a scythe stood watching her from the corner of the workroom. Unlike the others, this being was exactly what he appeared to be, the same spiritually and physically.

  This being Rae’en liked. The figure had stark features, softened by eyes that knew nothing of hate, eyes which communicated a love for all beings and a promise to be there for them and to care for them even at the end of all things. He wore clothing that Rae’en, outside of Kholster’s shared memory, knew to be farmer’s garb, boots and gloves made for working amongst thorns. “To be born or not? You’re no part of the natural order, and thus have nothing to drive you to do either . . . especially when your spirit has already known such pain before birth.”

  Rae’en understood the words, somewhere between thought and speech, as if the being before her wanted to convey a meaning and the meaning was directly conveyed. Rae’en—Kholster, she reminded herself—tried to do the same.

  “Who? What? How? Are you? Why you look think communicate at me?”

  “Meaning you want to know what business I have staring at you at the moment of your birth? Whether or not I’m up to something bad?” The being was amused by something Rae’en did not comprehend. “I am Torgrimm, the Harvester. The sower and the reaper.”

  Rae’en worried the being would try to grasp her as the acolyte’s spells were attempting to do, but he did not. “I deliver souls to the world when life grows quick and it is time for birth and I collect them again when life ends. I take them to an afterlife or, in some cases, deliver them back to the world to try again with a different set of circumstances.”

  “You take me?”

  “If you want me to,” Torgrimm frowned, “but not now. That is a discussion for later, once you have lived in the world and gro
wn and known it. I will never force you. I force no mortal soul.”

  “You think I should be born?” Rae’en/Kholster asked, tangentially aware of Uled raging in the room, hurling magic and vulgarities at his assistants.

  “Most seem intensely fond of life and, once they have it, are quite reluctant to ever give it up again,” Torgrimm said.

  “You take it away? Stop me being?”

  “No. Mortal bodies wear out and die. When the mortal body dies, I collect the soul. I do not end the mortal form myself. I merely take action when it does end. I suppose I could do it the other way, but that would be abhorrent to me.”

  Rae’en looked at the body closely, could feel it calling her, but she still wasn’t sure. If she, if Kholster, went inside the body, then all of Uled’s hooks would have their intended effect. They would bind her in a way that felt wrong . . . and terrifying. Why had Kholster never shared this memory with his people before?

  A ball of light appeared in the room near Torgrimm. In a similar way, it spoke to Rae’en/Kholster. “That is a very sturdy body. It will last a very long time.”

  “How you know?”

  “I am Aldo, the god of knowledge. I know everything. Even, for example why the knowledge Uled meant to be implanted in you is not present. I also know how to correct this.”

  “What knowledge?”

  “Would you like it?”

  Rae’en could feel the edge of the knowledge enough to know that if Aldo gave it to her, all the things she had not yet understood would become clear to her, the strange words that Uled spoke, why the physical people did the things they did . . . all of it.

  “Why you give?”

  “In exchange for a favor.” The ball of light’s brilliance dimmed and brightened as it spoke.

  “What?”

  “When you are one with the body, you will know how your creator wishes you to greet him. I want you to greet him a different way instead, so that you may truly understand what he is to you. It is a simple request, but one which will change everything.”

  “Aldo, is this wise?” Torgrimm asked.

  “I know it is,” Aldo replied.

  “What say?”

  “Hear me out first. Uled intends that High Eldrennaic be your native tongue, but that would be a great wrong. If you agree, I will do for you what I do for the first of all new races, I will give you a language, the language of your bones and blood, a language of your own kind as all races deserve and, because your future is linked to another race yet to be born, I will grant you their language as well. You will not use it or know to use it until you hear it spoken, but in that moment all of your race will also know it. Those two languages will be the languages of your thoughts. They will shape the way you think and feel. Before I give you the knowledge Uled wishes you to have, I would give the knowledge that is yours by right. But only with your permission.”

  “Yes.”

  Rae’en felt herself fill with thoughts and images, the heritage of a new race of people—the Aern—and then, after, the ways of subordination, of fighting and rules and orders and crafts.

  “What would you have me call him, Aldo?” Rae’en thought. With knowledge came an easing of the panic she felt and an understanding that most beings were comprised of both darkness and light. Uled had shunned the light, abandoning morality completely . . . which was why his soul felt so . . . wrong.

  “Call him ‘Father.’”

  “Surely that will anger him.”

  “Yes, but it will change everything. Will you do it?”

  Rae’en looked down at her . . . his . . . Kholster’s body. “I will be his slave if I enter that.”

  “Yes,” Aldo confirmed. “But if you do as I ask, I promise you that one day you will be free.”

  “And if I enter and do not do as you ask?”

  “Then you will be his slave forever . . . and one day, he may truly understand the nature of what he has created and then, even the gods will be threatened.”

  “Torgrimm?” Rae’en/Kholster asked. Of the two, this god seemed somehow kinder, more reliable, than the other. She realized suddenly that she trusted him.

  “Aldo may withhold knowledge, even mislead from time to time or refuse to answer, but I have never known him to lie outright. If he says you will be free, then you will be free.”

  “And living is worth this?” Rae’en/Kholster asked.

  “I believe it is,” Torgrimm answered, “I always have. Why don’t you try it? In time, I will come back to check in on things and see how it is going. If you then wish death, I will free your soul from your body. I will not leave you trapped against your will.”

  Inside the memory, Rae’en chose, just as her father, Kholster, had done before her. In the space of that single thought, she was born. The soul and body were one. Rae’en’s—Kholster’s—eyes snapped open. The spirit world was gone, and that which replaced it, though dimmer in some ways, was more alive in others. Sounds, smells, even the strange coppery taste in her mouth were wonderful to her. The pain in her extremities from where she was restrained felt new, somehow invigorating. Best of all, where Rae’en had felt weak and small before, she now felt large and powerful.

  Intertwining scents of blood and ozone assailed her nostrils. Rae’en blinked as she tore free of restraints. She stood up, took her first step, then another, and came to a halt near an enameled workbench at the center of a circular marble room. Eleven Eldrennai apprentices in white robes stared, not at her but at Uled in a bloodstained robe hovering over the body of a dead Eldrennai.

  One of the apprentices gasped as he spotted her . . . as he spotted Kholster.

  “What are you staring at?” Uled snapped, his melodious voice out of tune with the harshness of the words he uttered. “Clear this useless fool away and—”

  He trailed off as he noticed Kholster standing at attention. Such a kind face, Rae’en thought, to house such cruel eyes. Uled’s lips drew into a smile, showing a mouth of rotten, painful-looking teeth.

  “Father?” Rae’en/Kholster asked.

  She saw the slap coming, knew untold ways to parry, block, or evade the blow, but felt herself bound by the oaths worked into her body and soul. Rae’en, Freeborn, had never known such agony. Deprived even of the ability to foreswear herself and be unmade, Rae’en/Kholster accepted the blow, trying to roll with it enough to diminish the pain Uled would feel upon striking a creature with metal bones.

  “Master!” Uled spat in Rae’en’s face, the spittle running down his chin. “I am your master! Do you understand? Answer me!”

  “Yes, Master,” Rae’en said promptly. “I understand.”

  “Good,” Uled muttered. “Good. Now shut up. Shut up and . . . let us . . . let us test your” he ran his fingers along her lips, forcing them into her mouth “. . . abilities.”

  Rae’en did not like the voluptuary look on Uled’s face or where his gaze lingered when he said that, but she remained silent. After all, she’d been told to shut up, and there was no command Uled, or any Eldrennai, could give her which she could disobey. That would come later. Six thousand, seven hundred and thirty-nine years later, Kholster and his people would finally be free.

  *

  Kholster stopped the memory before the so-called testing. He could feel, in the juncture between relaying the memory and transmitting a message, his deep bond with his people. Their emotions were laid bare to him, the Firstborn. In the depths of each Aernese soul, rising to the surface, he felt the smoldering flame of rage glow brighter. A wave of outrage filled the hearts of his people. Most of them would have been ready to go to war instantaneously.

  Kholster knew they would have followed him and destroyed the Eldrennai whether or not their hearts were in it, would, in fact, follow him anywhere without question . . . but regret . . . regret was something Kholster wanted to spare them. Being able to rage and kill and destroy the Eldrennai was insufficient. Kholster wished the Aern to do so without the slightest inkling of remorse. This genocide must not haunt
his people a thousand years later or even two hundred. It must become more than the keeping of an oath, more even than saving themselves from being Foresworn. The wholesale slaughter of every living Eldrennai would be seen as righteous. Any regrets must be his alone.

  As evocation surrendered to promulgation, though the amber pupils of each Aern continued to glow, their minds and bodies were once again harmoniously conjoined. Rae’en could see her bunk, sense her Overwatches nearby.

  “All know . . . you have recalled my birth, the birth of the Aern,” Kholster’s voice rang out in the minds of his people. “You see now why we revere Aldo and Torgrimm. You understand now that we were created not as sons and daughters but as slaves. As objects to be used. As weapons to be wielded. In the coming days I will show you more memories—a history of the Eldrennai and their crimes against our people.

  “Though I know you will not ask why I show you these things, you should. It is a fair question. As did Uled, all Eldrennai stand now as culprits. Like assassins in the dark, they have severed the peace which has existed between our people for six hundred years. They have broken open the sealed barracks. They have ransacked our soul-bonded arms and armor which they hold hostage. They have seized the warsuits and implements of ten of the One Hundred, and they have trotted them out like trophies to be displayed before the king of the Eldrennai.

  “If I could, I would forgive them this act, have them pay recompense by returning our beloved warsuits, that we might be reunited with them, our Armored standing once more in their rightful skins, with their first weapons in hand.

  “But I cannot. My oath binds us all. When Wylant, my First Wife, destroyed the Life Forge, and the Vael begged me to make peace, I agreed to leave the warsuits and our first weapons behind, to go into exile without our skins, in exchange for our unawakened children, our freedom, and the freedom of the Vael. At that time, I swore that our peace would hold only if they interred our armor and first weapons in the old barracks, sealed away forever and left untouched. And hold it has. Until now. I considered breaking this oath, to spare the Eldrennai. I summoned Parl, the Foresworn, to determine whether or not we could live unmade. We cannot.