by J. F. Lewis
“She doesn’t like this place. This stone. It looks like obsidian, but no one knows what it really is. Grudge doesn’t like it, because she can’t cut through it.”
“She?” Yavi asked.
“You’re a Vael. I know you can see her,” Kholster explained. “I’ve only seen Grudge once. When the metal cooled, as I finished wrapping her haft, she flew out of me, a beautiful, angry hawk, and sank into the weapon. Then I knew she was complete. When my mind is quiet, I can feel her. When I fight, I sometimes hear her battle cry.”
Yavi ran her hand along the smooth surface of the obelisk as she listened. It rose up into the sky and out along the ground, a seamless mass of black. Fifteen hands wide and ninety hands high, the obelisk was ringed with inscriptions in every language. Careful golden letters and runes, not carved but floating just below the surface, spoke cryptically to its purpose: “Welcome to Oot.”
Yavi followed the Aern from the base of the obelisk out along the pier. “She’s beautiful,” Yavi said softly as she closed with Kholster. She felt self-conscious standing next to him, resisted the urge to lean against him. Vael were made for the Aern. Yavi had heard that over and over growing up, but she’d never felt it, not before meeting one.
“Thank you, daughter of Kari.” Kholster pointed to the sun, setting in the distance, and walked back to the obelisk. His hand touched its black surface above the Aernese translation. “I, Kholster, First of One Hundred, of the Exiled Army, once slave, now free, greet you in good faith.”
“What?” she asked. Her eyes widened, and she joined him at the obelisk. It was the ceremony! She looked at Dolvek’s prone form. Kholster was starting the ceremony early. Could he do that?
“I . . . I am Yavi, daughter of Kari, princess of The Parliament of Ages and Guardian of the Rule of Leaf. Your ancestral home awaits you should you wish to return to it. You and all your kind are welcome here. You have long been missed.”
Kholster removed his smoked-glass lenses, revealing eyes that were black where they might otherwise have been white, just as Yavi’s mother had said. His irises were pale jade in color, his pupils amber, a startling contrast to the blackness surrounding them. “I speak for the Aern. We will gladly return to the forest with you to dwell together with the Vael, to teach and be taught. We do, however, have one condition.”
“And what might that be?” Yavi asked sadly. She had been warned Kholster always responded the same way.
“Do the Oathbreakers yet live? Have their towers tumbled? Has their lifeblood poured out upon their beloved plains?”
“The Eldrennai dwindle, but they live. Their borders shrink, but their towers stand tall,” Yavi said softly.
Kholster’s eyes flicked to the left as if he saw something she didn’t and was enraged or heartbroken, she couldn’t tell which, only that behind it loomed a wall of hatred and slaughter so great she could not encompass it all. “Then the Grudge we bear is borne still, and we regret that we cannot return. We, most of us, will dwell upon the blue forest of the sea and in the lush caverns far to the south with our brothers, the Dwarves. The Vael may visit us whenever they will, and we will make for them a welcome place at our table.”
Kholster cast a hate-filled glance at Dolvek. The injured prince’s chest rose and fell slightly as though he barely drew breath. There was no way he could answer.
“You can’t expect him to go through the ritual,” Yavi protested. “He’s been injured.”
“His oath to break,” Kholster said dismissively.
“No, it was the Zaur’s fault,” she argued.
“I’ve never seen a battle involving an Eldrennai that was not the fault of an Eldrennai, but if you tell me it is not so . . . that you were ambushed . . .”
“Are you quite finished?” Dolvek coughed weakly.
Yavi thought she spied a look of admiration cross Kholster’s face, but it quickly vanished.
“The ritual, you high-born, stump-eared maggot,” Kholster chided. “Invite us to your lands.”
“Will you . . . come . . . in peace to the El . . . to the Eldren Plains?” Dolvek gasped through a fit of coughing.
Kholster waited until Dolvek caught his breath before responding. “No, only to destroy them.”
Dolvek opened his mouth to reply, erupting instead into an even more painful-sounding hacking cough. Yavi felt Kholster press a waterskin into her hand. She gave him a perilous look of anger but took it and helped Dolvek swallow a few sips. The water seemed to help.
“Will you sit in peace at our table?” Dolvek gasped out.
“Only in celebration of your doom,” Kholster answered.
“We understand of old the ill will you bear us. We created your people and the Vaelsilyn as slaves, forgetting the most basic tenet of our people, that life is sacred and that no thinking being can be owned by another. If there is some reparation we could make, some way we can make amends, please tell me and I will carry it back to the Council of Elements.” Dolvek uttered his memorized words as quickly as possible and then grabbed for the waterskin.
Kholster waited patiently for him to finish drinking and then took the empty skin from Yavi. “There is.”
Yavi gasped. This was not the usual response. Kholster continued, “Seven times I have come here.” He pounded his fist against his chest. “I, who still remember the touch of the Eldrennai lash, have come here to this place each and every time my presence has been requested.” He shook his head. “For centuries I have had to look into the face of an Eldrennai, a so-called noble prince, each of whom seemed to feel the Aern should still be in the thrall of their former masters.”
“Let it go,” Dolvek sneered.
Kholster snorted. “My words are like seeds sown on salted earth. You reject my offer before it is even made. So be it. You should have listened to Wylant, you are all of you doomed.”
“What?”
Kholster closed his eyes tiredly, replacing his smoked-glass lenses, and turned to Yavi. “You are the most beautiful female I have ever seen, and I have walked the face of Barrone for more than seven thousand years. You know that the Aern do not lie. So, with whatever great ill comes to pass from the breaking of this pact, know that your people have but to call and we will come in force to help you. Should you need to flee your forest, come to the sea or to our caves and we will make you welcome. Life to you and yours,” Kholster turned on his leather-booted heel and strode toward the water.
“Good riddance,” croaked Dolvek through gritted teeth.
Sighing, Yavi rubbed her eyes. It was exactly as her grandmother had said it would be. “The Eldrennai never fail to argue with the Aern,” her gran had told her. “It will be up to you to keep the peace. There has yet to be a peaceful resolution to anything between those two that the Vael didn’t carefully nurture and bring to pass.”
Remembering her gran, Yavi held up her hands and shouted, “Wait!”
Kholster stopped, listening, but did not turn.
“You must stay,” she said gently. “All three of us are needed here. Three, one of each race, for three days. That is all that is required to keep the trust.”
“Forget the trust,” Kholster told her, tossing the words back over his shoulder. “Think instead about the Zaur on your borders. I killed more of them in the forest; scouts, just like the ones you fought here. There is a new warlord. His name is Xastix.”
Dolvek let his head fall back to the ground, but Yavi simply stared. “How do you know that?” she questioned, following him out onto the pier.
“I interrogated one of the scouts.” Kholster folded his arms, still presenting his back to both Yavi and Dolvek. “Xastix wanted to stop the Grand Conjunction, to keep it from taking place. Then, I think he plans to attack.”
Yavi touched his shoulder with the back of her hand, a uniquely Vaelsilyn touch, intended to calm but not to restrain. “Do you know when?”
“He’ll likely give his scouts two or three days to report back,” Kholster said thoughtfully, turning to g
aze past her toward the sinking sun. “Then he’ll take another day or so to rally his troops, get them moving. I worried about the number of Zaur here, though. There should have been more.”
“And a Named one,” she agreed.
He looked down at her again, pointing with such precision as he spoke that Yavi was certain he knew instinctively where the cities lay, despite his long absence. “He’ll probably hit Stone Watch or Albren. They’ll attack the Eldrennai first, giving the Vael time to prepare a defense or . . .” He stroked Yavi’s cheek along the edge of her samir gently with his fingertips, his voice dropping to a more intimate level, too quiet for Dolvek to hear. “The Vael can come with me, retreat south toward Castleguard. It would not take long for reinforcements to arrive.”
“No,” Yavi told him. “We couldn’t.”
“Once the reinforcements get here,” he continued in his normal tone, almost ignoring her words, “we can push back into The Parliament of Ages, ensure its safety, and head northeast into the Eldren Plains to drive the Zaur out and reclaim our homeland.”
“What of my people?” scoffed Dolvek, setting off another fit of coughing.
“You’ll be dead by the time we return,” Kholster snarled. “We’ll build a monument to you, of course. It can tell how the Eldrennai redeemed themselves with their final sacrifice . . . how they protected the homeland of the Vael and the Aern with their last breaths,” he continued sarcastically. “Don’t worry, stump ears, I’ll make sure it’s fit for a king.”
CHAPTER 45
UNLIKELY ALLIES
King Grivek entered the Aern exhibit his son had built and dismissed his guards. Bloodstains still marred the rich carpet, and the whole chamber stank of death. The slender crown of crystal and steel he wore upon his brow seemed to press down on him as he walked. His face was young, but his movements revealed his age. It was all so very tiring. Shards of crystal crunched under his boots with each step as he walked across the room and stood before the armor of General Bloodmane.
Phantom voices of advisors, both living and dead, haunted his thoughts. He hadn’t asked anyone’s permission, nor had he asked their opinions. They had been with him so long he knew what many of them would tell him anyway.
“It’s rash and unwise,” Barthus would say.
Ghijik would have asked for money and suggested “a simple but exhaustive oracular analysis of the possible outcomes.”
If Braert had survived the Sundering, then Grivek would have asked for his thoughts on the subject, but like so many good beings on all three sides, Braert had been struck down in fury and hatred, in the chaos of the rebellion. Lastly there was Wylant.
He owed his crown and the lives of all his people to Wylant, but he knew what she would say. She would advise a path of bloodshed. The Sundering had broken something in Wylant . . . since that time, she’d grown harder, colder. She was still a brilliant tactician, but there was an inner glow, a lust for life that had vanished. The only blonde in a dark-haired race, her golden tresses had marked her as blessed by the gods, yet since that time she had shaved her head regularly, letting not even the barest hint of stubble show. Maybe Wylant could come up with another miracle to defeat the Aern, but Grivek thought too much blood had been shed already.
“You’re weak, boy!” He imagined his father’s outraged voice, strong and unwavering, but also quite wrong. “You should have killed them all, the ungrateful savages! How dare they raise their hands against us? We created them! We are their gods!”
In his splendid robes, King Grivek approached the center of the chamber and stared at the homunculus, the unborn Aern. In the remains of their cases, ten warsuits of the surviving first One Hundred Aern glared at him, unmoving but possessed of an intelligence beyond even what he had come to suspect.
He spread his arms in a gesture of peace before addressing the armor. It wouldn’t do to have them strike him down in an attempt to protect a comrade who was in no danger.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” he said in Aernese. “Bloodmane, Falcon’s Claw, Heart Taker, Eyes of Vengeance, all of you . . . I want you to know that.”
He approached Bloodmane and bowed his head, placing the scroll on the floor before him. Grivek removed his crown and set it on the pedestal next to Hunger, General Kholster’s ancient weapon. Words slid from his grasp beneath the armor’s crystalline gaze. What could he say to make them understand what he was trying to do? They were intelligent; Yavi said Bloodmane had spoken to her with eloquence. Their spirits were battered and angry, but they were good spirits with noble minds, not the mindless implements of war his father had thought them to be.
“I . . . I was wrong, and I’m sorry. My father was wrong. We didn’t understand, have never understood. We thought we were gods, but though immortal, we are not divine.” He fumbled with his cloak self-consciously and reached for words with his left hand as if they might succumb to his searching and materialize in his grasp.
“None of the past can be undone, but I can put one thing right.” He gestured to the homunculus, still sleeping, unliving, yet, as Yavi had assured him, with a spirit attached to it for all these thousands of years, waiting to be born.
“Your brother can be awakened.” He met the eyes of each suit as he spoke. Great Aldo, let them see my sincerity, he silently prayed. “I didn’t know enough to know that he had a soul . . . that he was waiting for the words of life. I thought . . . In my ignorance, I thought he was a thing, a physical prototype . . . until the coming of Yavi, daughter of Kari, a princess among the Vael. After much searching, I have found the scroll in the archives amongst Uled’s writings. I don’t want to offend you further by reading it myself.”
Swabbing his brow absentmindedly with the edge of his sleeve, Grivek realized that he was sweating. “No magic should be required. Just the correct words . . . so I was hoping you would read them. Then you would know I’m not . . . not trying to be a god . . . just trying to . . . make things right.”
Crystal eyes inset in the helmet resembling a roaring irkanth lit up from within, and Grivek took two steps backward. He’d managed to get their attention.
“This?” whispered a metallic voice. “The words are on this paper?” Bloodmane stooped to pick up the scroll and held it in front of Grivek.
“Where it says ‘Rite of Creation,’” Grivek answered.
“Are there others?” the voice asked.
“Other scrolls?” asked Grivek.
Bloodmane stepped out of its shattered display, crystal crunching beneath its boots. “Other sleeping ones.”
“No. Or, rather, I think not. I’ll look. No, that’s not the whole truth. Yes, I will look, but we’ll know soonest if I have Sargus look,” Grivek assured the massive metal warsuit. “If there are any other sleeping ones I . . . we . . . will find them and bring them to you.”
For four long minutes that felt like hours, the armor stood and watched him. Grivek’s gaze flitted from warsuit to warsuit as their eyes flickered brightly in no discernable pattern. Were they communicating? Could they somehow speak with one another telepathically?
He remembered seeing the Aern in battle, before the Sundering, their uncanny coordination and wordless combat. Even in the Battle of As You Please, a demonstration he’d been forced to attend as a child, the Aern had moved in a silent ballet of death. That had to be it! But if it were true, great Aldo, what if the armor was still in contact with the Aern? What if Kholster knew that Grivek’s son, whom he’d sent to the Conjunction, had broken the treaty by moving their weapons and armor?
Ten sets of crystalline eyes flickered brightly, and then Bloodmane spoke. “Why are you doing this?” it asked.
“Because someone has to do something,” he answered. “Someone has to step forward and do more than offer empty platitudes once every century. And who else is there, but me? I am the king.” He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “I was there.”
“Yes, I remember,” the armor said softly, then snapped out an order. “Send soldiers to O
ot. Send a physician with them.”
“Why? What has happened?”
“Do not question me, Eldrennai king.”
Eldrennai? Not Oathbreaker? Grivek struggled to hold his tongue.
“Send scouts, real scouts, not mystic constructs, to check the Watches. There are Zaur within your borders. We must know how many there are and how soon they can attack.” The armor rested a cold gauntlet on his shoulder. “We must do this if we are to save your land, Eldrennai king.”
“I will do as you say,” Grivek stammered. “It will be done at once. Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” the empty armor told him. It pointed at the plaque beneath its empty pedestal. “I am Bloodmane, armor of Kholster, but I am not Kholster. I can forgive you. Perhaps it is because I lack blood to boil. Perhaps it is that I have no heart to ache, but I believe you are worth forgiving.”
“But surely,” Grivek said imploringly. “You could speak to them, explain to them.”
“That you have convinced me and my fellow warsuits is useless unless you can convince the core of us, our soldiers, our makers, our rightful occupants. We are tools, the implements of war. What our creators will, we do. An axe has no loyalty to a tree. If an axe is turned by the woodsman against the very tree from which its haft was hewn, will it not cut as deeply? If it feels sympathy for the wood, to whom does it protest? It is merely an axe. So it is for me and mine, Eldrennai king.”
“I understand,” the elf king sighed, then glanced toward the unborn Aern. “I will leave you to perform the ritual in private.”
Once the doors were closed behind him, Grivek and his royal guard stood listening at the entrance. Their hearing was not as good as the Vael’s or the Aern’s. Eldrennai senses were scarcely better than a human’s. Grivek could not make out the words Bloodmane spoke, but the cadence sounded right.
Jolsit, captain of the guards, stared at his king, confusion clear upon his face. “Your Majesty?”
