by J. F. Lewis
“Each time he comes, you get this way, Wylant. Every hundred years, as regular as the suns.” Grivek would smile at her in that patronizing way he didn’t even know he had, reach out to pat her on the shoulder and catch himself before he actually completed the error. Would he pat his other Lancers on the shoulder? On the head? Then best not touch her in such a fashion until it was clear the king had decided to treat the men that way as well. At least he tried. “I know why you feel this way. I miss him too. Why not ride to North Guard,” he would say, “in fact, I order you to North Guard. You’ll only be a day’s ride away.”
Which is why she was heading to North Guard. Might as well avoid the conversation and the king’s condescension altogether. Why did they always have to assume her life revolved around the Aern she’d once wed? Gods, but it angered her. No one missed Kholster more than she did. Of course she missed him. Of course she wished things had worked out differently . . . better . . . but they hadn’t, and to spend the rest of her life pining for a male, any male . . . there was more to her than that. It wasn’t in Wylant’s bones to be so dependent. And then they all had to make it worse with the way they brought him up over and over again or crept around the subject when they feared she might be sensitive. Did his fellow Aern do the same to him?
She laughed at the idea of Vander suggesting Kholster shirk his duties because Kholster missed her. A sea hawk cried in the distance, striking at a fish or a waterfox.
“Too alike for our own good,” she whispered.
As the first sun began to rise, Wylant dressed and donned her armor, far heavier than the light crystal plate armor of the prince’s precious Crystal Knights. Wylant insisted her Sidearms wear steel, weighty well-made metal which could turn a blade without the benefit of magic, and she did the same.
“Crystal Knights,” she murmured under her breath, “why the king allows his army to continue wearing armor that’s completely useless against the Zaur and the Aern, I have no idea at all.”
That was a lie. She did know. King Grivek allowed the practice to instill a sense of pride. He did it because the sight of a Crystal Knight riding on horseback upon a wave of Aeromancy made the people feel safe even though they could never be safe again. Never mind the elemental foci that now marked and slowly consumed the bodies of those who used the old style of elemental magic. The Sundering had killed the Eldrennai surely as it had been the salvation of the Vael and the Aern. If it hadn’t, then Dolvek’s cursed museum display had.
“You’re on your way, aren’t you, Kholster,” she said flatly. “Even now. Will you kill Dolvek before or after the Conjunction? Which would fulfill all oaths?” She spat at the thought of the impudent young prince but stopped herself from spewing more treachery aloud. Wylant held out her hand, and Vax, coiled and ready, sprang into it, resuming his sword shape as she sheathed him in the scabbard at her side.
Vax would make a better king than that boy, she thought.
The tears surprised her as they always did.
A knock at the door broke her reverie and signaled the arrival of her first lieutenant. If any signs of her grief remained by the time she reached the door, it could have only been in a slight redness around the eyes that could easily be explained away by her allergies. Wylant threw the door open, already giving orders. “I assume you’re here to tell me my Lance is ready to ride?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Then get moving!” she shouted. “We might press on to Albren Pass if I don’t like the smell of things.”
She smiled at the sound of a diplomatic parcel hitting the ground, a smile that drew even wider when her lieutenant was already out of sight by the time she’d crossed the threshold. He was a good soldier. There was a twinkle in her steely gray eyes as she broke the royal seal and scratched absentmindedly at the tip of one pointed ear.
“Another all’s well report,” she sniffed, “from Prince Dolvek himself, no less.” That, in and of itself, was almost enough to make Wylant pressgang the capital and raise the reserve guard. But she couldn’t do that, not without staging a coup. Her blood went cold at the thought. If she killed the king and seized the kingdom, declared all of the people Aiannai under her rule, would that save them from Kholster’s oath? Her vision swam for a moment, and she shook her head.
“No,” she muttered, “but I bet it would make him smile.” She sneezed again and spat. “Kholster would have had his Aern out walking the whole kingdom in grids until they found the Zaur and killed them. Dienox’s bloody cloud of war would not have stopped the Aern.”
That was one of many things she missed about Kholster; the way he took her instincts as valid intel, respected her hunches just as if they’d been his own or those of one of his brother or sister Aern. Wylant banished the memory with a shake of her head. Maybe I should stop using myr grass and blood oak sap as lotion when I shave, she thought. It smells like him. It’s making me sentimental.
Wylant took one last glance at the documents before incinerating them with a blast of hissed sparks. All is well? Did the warsuits not kill your guards, my liege? Did they not stare down at you amid the shattered crystal cases and gushing blood? Did they fail to demonstrate their power? You are dead. The only question is who kills you first: Kholster or the Zaur?
When she reached the stables, The Sidearms were mounted and ready.
“Is all—” Mazik began in his metallic voice.
“All is not well.” She mounted her waiting steed. “I can smell it.”
CHAPTER 29
XASTIX
The Zaur warlord pensively ran a foreclaw over the mottled red scales between his eye ridges. An itch between his shoulder blades was the true source of his discomfort, but to scratch beneath his scales where a small blue stone had been pressed into the hide would have been a sign of disrespect, both to his Ghaiattri patron and to Him.
To have been born shard-slotted and to have been gifted with a tiny shard of the World Crystal to fill the slot . . . Xastix interpreted both as a mark of favor from the dark god Kilke. An immense blessing, true, yet even so the constant itch drove the warlord to maddening distraction. Standing two hands higher than the rest of his kin, Xastix looked an impressive foe, dressed in blue-tinted armor made from the scales of the Great Dragon Serphyn, when he was not frantically clawing at his own scales.
Long quartz tables lined two of the walls, displaying war plunder and artifacts of previous ages. Xastix liked to surround himself with objects of the warlords before him, items that had been gathered from the clans after he had united them. Each one had a history. His reptilian brothers thought of them as badges of honor, but Xastix knew that each item actually represented failure, a feat for which Xastix refused to be remembered. His would be a legacy of which a warlord could be proud.
A distant vibration, measured and distinct, caused Xastix to stretch himself out along the floor, tongue flicking out to better catch the message.
<
Before the Joining of Ways, most of Xastix’s subjects would have disdainfully called him a SriZaur, one of the Fang People, but with the help of his god, Xastix had brought peace, war, and purpose to both races. The SriZaur lacked numbers, the Zaur lacked a proper understanding of scale, patience, and planning, but together . . . they had conquered or exterminated the other underdwellers. No more fungoid barbarians, whatever it was they’d called themselves—Xastix never had managed to understand a word they’d said—and no more chitinous Issic-Gnoss of whom only the beetle-like shock troops were fit for eating.
Xastix slapped the floor of his throne room with vigor. Eyes turning to the throne itself, he bowed. Dropping low on all fours, belly touchi
ng the ground, he averted his eyes. Soon I will be worthy.
On the seat of the Throne of Scale, carved from the bones of conquered foes and covered with the scales of defeated warlords, the throne from which Warlord Ryyk had once ruled, Kilke’s disembodied head now rested. Two crimson ram horns sprang from the skin of its golden brow. Xastix found its facial features disturbingly human, but the reptilian eyes, dark and fathomless, reassured him.
Cautiously, he peered into the eyes of his deity, hoping for some sign, but there was none forthcoming. So it had been since Kilke’s initial proclamation, when he had ordered the Zaur to unite and punish the races of his fellow gods who had betrayed him, dethroned him, and cast his center head down to Barrone.
“I have united them, Lord Kilke,” Xastix told the head. “All the breeds, all the clans, in all guises and all shapes! The cold blood of your people is united! It cries out for vengeance!” Hand outstretched, Xastix caressed the cheek of his god and howled in pain as the small blue stone in his back grew larger, stronger.
He quieted himself slowly, his tail thumping rhythmically against the polished marble floor of the throne room. This time he would not fail. This time he would be strong. Under the torture of the god, frost poured from his lips and fire coursed along his back.
<> His tail pounded out on the marble. <>
“In time, perhaps,” the dismembered head whispered. Kilke’s smile was cruel and superior. “But you are still weak. Come back to me when you have tasted the blood of all three races who seek conjunction. Kiss my cheek then and I will grant you power, but until that time I will not suffer your touch!”
Lightning erupted from Kilke’s eyes, hurling Xastix into the polished bronze wall, where he lay in the reflected light of the throne room’s four fires. Complex ventilation systems carried the smoke of the fires and the smell of his own burnt reptilian flesh up and out of the mountain. A human would have found the heat oppressive, the light blinding, but the Zaur loved warmth and light. They lived underground predominantly to pay homage to Kilke, their dark god, lord of secrets and shadows . . . and power.
Xastix rolled slowly onto his belly and tried to raise himself to all fours. The head of Kilke was motionless, but the expression had changed. It was now a mocking smile, a challenge. The warlord forced himself up onto his forelegs and gathered his hind legs beneath him, still shaking.
“In secret and in shadow.” His breath still came in ragged lurches, each intake generating a sharp pain between his shoulders. “I serve.”
He let his head rest on the long trophy table and eyed the Axe of Brrsti: Brrsti, who had almost slain the Eldrennai king Zillek. Xastix admitted that Brrsti had been brave. He had fought his way through to Zillek’s chambers, though his army had been defeated, and would have killed the king if Kholster Bloodmane, that accursed scarback, had not split his skull. In Xastix’s opinion, it was the unremembered Zaur who had successfully retrieved his warlord’s body, weapons, and armor for the clan who should have been celebrated and thrice-named.
Xastix ran his long gray tongue across the trophies, trying to ignore the agony emanating from the stone in his back. Stories of supposed bravery and accomplishment ran through his mind. His had been a race in denial, a culture of lunatics. There were over two million Zaur in the Sri’Zauran Mountains, numbers growing in the secret shadows, and if his guess was correct there were only half as many Eldrennai in all their beloved cities combined. His pain lessened as his outrage blossomed. He snatched the skull of an Eldrennai, one which sported a full set of Aernese teeth, and held it aloft triumphantly.
“Your people are weak now, Maker,” Xastix hissed.
Even better, a full quarter of his own people were trained as warriors. If the data his human agent had been paid to procure proved his hypothesis . . .
You will slaughter them, said a quiet voice in his mind. We serve the will of Kilke, dark father of us all. All that we have done has been in secret. All of our plans have been made in shadow. They who cast Him down have no power in His majestic night.
“Yes!” roared Xastix aloud, full of religious fervor. “We will!”
Human footfalls and the click of claws on marble snapped Xastix back to the present. A nameless lieutenant, a black-scaled Zaur, stood next to a pale human. “I present Captain Tyree,” the lieutenant announced.
Xastix liked the way the underling averted his gaze to show respect. Many of the Zaur still had a little trouble accepting a SriZaur as their leader. This male did not appear to let such slow-mindedness pull at his thoughts.
The human, on the other claw, looked the warlord directly in the eye. His words echoed in Xastix’s mind like slithering whispers as he spoke. “The pleasure’s all mine, your hissness.” Tyree bowed briefly, scarcely a nod by Zaur standards.
“Identify yourself,” barked Xastix, ignoring the human and indicating the lieutenant with a flick of his tongue.
“I am the seventh hatchling of the eighth brood of Yat, Warlord,” the lieutenant responded quickly.
“You have looked at it, the human’s census data?”
The lieutenant nodded. “I have.”
“And what does it say?” Xastix pressed his tail into the floor as hard as he could to distract himself from the newfound torture Kilke had inflicted upon him. He would not be able to concentrate sufficiently to read the data until later in the evening, and he wanted to know what it said now.
“It says that the Eldrennai are one-fourth our number and that our warriors will outnumber theirs fifty to one,” said the young Zaur soldier with pride. “It says that few of them are warriors and most of those rely on magic rather than metal. It says that we will crush them.”
General Tsan promised him a name, if he pleased you, a voice whispered in Xastix’s mind. At first he’d excused it as his own internal thoughts, but now he knew it was some higher power.
“General Tsan promised you a name for this, did he?” Xastix asked casually.
“He did, Warlord,” answered the other Zaur in amazement.
Kreej, the voice whispered.
“Kreej, perhaps?” Xastix offered.
“Yes, Warlord,” said the astonished lieutenant.
“Then I name you Kreej, Lieutenant.” The warlord laughed. “Take the human to Captain Dryga. He and his troops are to continue their mission along the Xasti’Kaur.” He examined the human’s expression. “Soon the other watches will begin to fall and I want the human to be there. Tell Dryga to pay him and release him, if his information is correct. If it is incorrect, Dryga may express his warlord’s displeasure in whatever ways he fancies.”
“In secret and in shadow,” answered Lieutenant Kreej, taking the human by the shoulder and guiding him firmly out of the room.
“In secret and in shadow,” the warlord responded.
To His secret purpose, whispered the voice inside his mind. Xastix looked at the head of his beloved god, lying upon the seat of the Throne of Scale, and clawed madly at the itch in his back. He hoped that he would prove worthy of his god’s blessings.
CHAPTER 30
COLLAPSE
Picturing it in her mind, Rae’en could see the whole of the Guild Cities laid out as on a map. Not literally see, as when M’jynn, Joose, Kazan, and Arbokk were in their positions giving her updates, but she could picture the shape of the thing: a ring of outer cities, bounded and connected by large exterior walls, each city with a name declaring its artisanal focus: Mason, Loom, Larder, Lumber, Warfare, Livestock, and whatever the others were . . . all surrounding the inner city of Commerce, the largest marketplace in all the world.
“Midian is,” bragged Captain Pallos as he and the twelve-guard escort led them through the middle of streets paved with an interlocking pattern of stones representing, Rae’en realized, not just the Guild Cities but which city one was presently in denoted with darker colored stone, “some say, perhaps in the better location . . . the center of the Junland Bridge . . . but we have
the biggest, the best, marketplace anywhere in Barrone, right here.”
With a little bone-steel underneath we could tell where we were without looking down, though, Rae’en thought to Kazan.
Kazan? Gah! Rae’en was sure her Overwatches would tease her no end when she got back to South Number Nine. I have got to stop doing that. She blamed the most recent lapse on the familiar scent of stone permeating Mason. Buildings of stone up to four floors high showcased an array of stoneworks in various stages of completion. On a second-story platform, a bare-chested young man stood in an agonizing pose while a stern-faced woman with beaded hair made sketches of him, constantly referencing a large block of marbled white stone. Her purple quilted long jacket looked too heavy for the weather, but Rae’en couldn’t be sure. Her own integumentary system had mostly sorted itself out, and extremes of temperature were finally becoming less and less noticeable.
She was still aware of added warmth, like the bundled heat of baby Caius (who had finally dozed off) nestled against her chest, a thin blanket from her pack between the infant and her mail, but was indifferent to it. Sweat was something she didn’t miss.
Poor humans.
On a lower level on the other side of the street, a row of sweating men bent low, shaping stones with axes much cruder than those she’d seen the Dwarves of the Duodenary Mountains use. Yet, farther up the street, a gnome in plaid spats and a businessman’s suit with matching highlights was instructing a feathered and furred manitou in the use of a steam-driven lathe much smaller than anything she’d ever seen Glinfolgo work with back home.
Other than the occasional food vendor pushing carts emitting savory smells, nothing was for sale here. All deals, Rae’en imagined, had to be cut in the central bazaar. This was where people worked. Not where they sold their goods.
