by J. F. Lewis
“How many squadrons of Crystal Knights have you formed? Was it four?” Grivek stepped away from the large doors. “Tell me it was more than that.”
“Six, your Majesty. Seven if we count your royal guard.”
“Do they still have metal armor?” Grivek asked.
“They do, Majesty,” the captain admitted, “but they wear it in exercises only as punishment. Though Wylant and her Lance always wear metal.”
“Is she still in North Guard?”
“She has taken her Lance to Albren Pass, but I know she intends to press on to Stone Guard . . .”
“Excellent.” King Grivek laughed bitterly as he left the museum. He walked quickly, nearly running. It would normally have amused him, watching his guards trying to maintain decorum while matching his pace, but this was no time for frivolity. “Ready them all, my royal guard included. They are to pack their crystal armor but wear their plate and mail. Each troop is to head to the watch towers. We are going to physically check our borders. Gods, what I wouldn’t give for a handful of Long Speakers right now.”
“Of course, sire, but may I ask . . .”
“You may not; there is no time!” Grivek insisted. The king looked mad in the moonlight; with his crown abandoned at Bloodmane’s feet, his ebony locks were in disarray. “Muster our forces. Ready every human and every elf who can wield a weapon. Send a runner to the Tower of Elementals and wake the High Elementalist. Tell Hasimak I want his best students, except Sargus, practicing all the spells they know that have worked on the Zaur in the past.”
“The Zaur, sire?” Jolsit gasped.
“Bloodmane says we are being invaded by the Zaur, and I have no reason to doubt it.” Grivek paused and looked up at his mighty castle. “Tell Sargus to meet me in my study. I have a research project that cannot wait.”
He fought back the urge to vomit and closed his eyes. Sargus would be pleased to do research, even though Grivek could hardly spare such a talented Artificer now, deformed and twisted though he was. Wylant would feel vindicated, but he couldn’t imagine that she would be happy. She would be more likely to share his concern. If he could not find a way to make peace with Kholster, none of it would matter. They could win the fight with the Zaur and still be crushed by the Aern.
PART FOUR
TRUE CONJUNCTION
“Breeding and Bloodline. It may one day be said that those two concepts, or the pursuit of them, were the final downfall of the Eldrennai. Is there a living being who can claim otherwise? Why, other than a need to control and shape bloodlines, would King Zillek have ordered the creation of a new species of slave for the Aern to breed with instead of granting permission to pursue the actualization of female Aern? A breeding between a male and a female Aern would have (and did when female Aern eventually came into existence) allowed the creation of new bloodlines.
“One wonders how Uled controlled the births of the Aern and the Vael to prevent female Aern and male Vael from coming into being for as long as he did. I have searched his notes thoroughly, and while numerous diary entries pertain to his worry of losing control over the breeding program, he is mute on the subject of attaining this control.
“Many have supposed that Uled realized early on that an Eldrennai female, having once carried an Aernese offspring, would become barren, but my research does not support such a claim. Did he consider such things unimportant, or did Uled, in his characteristic desire to place experimentation over research, simply not care?”
An excerpt from Uled: Savior or Destroyer by Sargus
CHAPTER 46
CHAINS OF THE ZAUR
Xasti’Kaur, Wylant thought, the Shadow Road. Well, at least I know what they call it.
She hung on a wall of cold, damp stone clad in her bloodied arming coat and trousers; the many ties which secured her plate mail to the arming coat had been thoughtlessly slashed rather than properly untied, which meant even if she could get free and find her armor, it would be of limited utility. Wylant pulled at the steel manacles which held her wrists, arms spread, high above her head with similar restraints binding her at the ankles, waist, and neck. Most annoying of all was the leather bit they’d forced into her mouth and secured to the wall behind her with some sort of ring apparatus she couldn’t see very well. From the way its touch burned, the leather had to be Zaur hide, which meant her magic wouldn’t pierce it.
Zaur don’t keep prisoners. She blinked away the useless thought and focused on the things she could control, the problems she might be able to solve. Zaur have never dug tunnels this far or this quietly either. Something has changed, something vital.
Along the side of the massive chamber, to her right, three Zaur workers had just finished bolting an identical set of restraints to the wall and were moving on to add a third. Wylant wondered what the space had originally been intended for: a barracks, a mess hall?
Certainly not a prison.
She narrowed her eyes, examining the ceiling. A large central vent dominated it with smaller vents at the five corners of the room. They’re holding me in a kitchen? The implication was not pleasant.
Twenty ruddy-scaled Zaur crouched on all fours around their commander, Skreel blades at the ready.
Sri’Zaur, she thought. That’s part of the change, this new species of Zaur.
Their commander, a massive Sri’Zaur named Dryga, paced in front of the prisoner, examining her first from a quadrupedal stance, then rising up on his hind legs for the second pass. A sinuous pattern of transverse blue and black scales covered his body, arcing dramatically over the creature’s piercing yellow eyes. Wylant remembered him from the tunnel.
Thoughts of the tunnel and the fight within brought visions of the dead to her eyes, hardening her heart into a lump of impotent rage. Struggling to control her emotions, she clamped down hard on the leather bit in her mouth and reminded herself of the useful data. There was no sign of Mazik. He might have escaped. Roc and Hira seemed to have escaped. All was not lost. The king would be warned.
Would he have enough intelligence to understand the scope of this Zaur incursion? Yes, she thought, even if only Kam had reached him. . . . Sargus could likely deduce what the king needed to know, just from what happened at North Watch.
Ever defiant, she raised her shaven head and sneered. Even if I die, she thought, they’ll be ready for you now.
Dryga gestured to a length of mottled blue-black metal wrapped around her right arm from her armpit to where the shackles covered her wrist. “Your weapon refuses to be removed,” he said in unaccented Eldrennai. His voice was surprisingly cultured, similar to the scholars in the Tower of Elementals. Hearing it from reptilian lips filled Wylant with revulsion.
<
<
“Your accent is interesting, your cadence hard to follow, but I can understand most of it. Perhaps if you would allow yourself to be disarmed I could make you more comfortable,” Dryga gestured to a heavy metal door being fitted into the room’s single entrance. “Once the door has been properly secured I would happily allow you greater freedom to move about. Your mouth would still need to be bound to prevent magical attempts at escape, but . . .”
<
“I have no doubt that you would, but to fight, even injured, a female that single-handedly slew a Zaurruk would be quite foolish.” He spoke in Eldrennaic, while tapp
ing simultaneously in Zaurtol. What kind of mind could do so . . . so easily?
<> Wylant ran her tongue experimentally across her teeth as best she could. Her left back molar ached but seemed to be intact. <
“Likely your freedom, I should think,” the Sri’Zaur answered, “but you will not be provided with the opportunity.”
<
“You are used to dealing with our less pragmatic kin, kholster Wylant.” Dryga laughed—a series of cough-like barks. “Your opinion of me is of no consequence. I will be judged by He Who Plots in Darkness, not by any warmblood, however valiant she may be.”
<
“The warlord requires blood from each of the three races involved in the Conjunction,” the Zaur captain answered. “In your condition, you may or may not have noticed the new cut on your thigh. Beyond that, he wants you alive, so alive you shall remain. Your capture was divine providence. For both of us. Now we lack only the blood of one of the flower girls.”
“And an Aern.” Wylant managed a defiant sneer. “Good luck catching Kholster, lizard. He’s the only Aern you’ll find anywhere near the Eldren Plains.”
“Capturing Kholster Bloodmane,” Dryga said, walking casually to the doorway behind the waiting Zaur warriors, “might indeed have proved too great a task for my scouts. I would send no less than a hundred Sri’Zaur to capture such an infamous warrior.” His tail slapped the ground, and four new guards carried a bound and gagged Aernese female into the room. “He Who Plots in Darkness has provided us with another option.”
The Aern’s clothes were in blood-spattered tatters, and her mail had been stripped from her, leaving her clad only in torn jeans and the abbreviated top female Aern wore to accommodate the nudity taboos of other races. The garment covered her breasts, clinging to her skin only by small bits of sewn-in bone-steel, so the pattern of patrimonial scars lay revealed on her back. Wylant’s eyes widened at that design. They were the same scars she wore on her own back and had hand-stitched to the back of all her clothing.
Kholster’s daughter? I have to get her out of here. He can’t lose another one; I won’t have it.
Wylant masked her surprise but felt certain Dryga noticed something. <
“The daughter of Bloodmane,” he responded. “Surely you recognize her scars as easily as did I.” The guard fastened the young Aern into a set of the newly installed restraints.
Why would Kholster bring his daughter to the Grand Conjunction? Wylant asked herself. To learn something? To show by example? To show her what? The face of her enemy?
No, no, he could accomplish that anywhere north of the Great Bridge. To prepare her to take his place in the Grand Conjunction? Maybe . . . maybe more than that. What would Kholster plan for his life after the destruction of the Eldrennai? Was this daughter to take his place as First? Was that why he’d chosen her, a Freeborn daughter, to come with him?
Reining in her emotions, she focused on the present. Maybe if she could keep Kholster’s daughter alive, she could bargain with him, at least buy the Eldrennai more time . . . roll their destruction back . . .
<
“After the warlord has the blood he needs, we will trade her to the scarbacks in return for their non-interference in the war.”
Okay, they were already planning on letting her live. A rescue then. She wouldn’t ransom Kholster’s daughter to him; she couldn’t do that again, but he’d be more willing to negotiate after his daughter was safe.
A guard sidled up to Dryga and hissed something low.
Dryga’s tail slapped the floor in a complex pattern that wasn’t Zaurtol before his attention returned to Wylant. He ran his tongue along the floor, nodded as if he’d gotten the information he wanted, and then rose up on his hind legs. “Our high cavern brothers do not comprehend the value of captives,” he said. “But that is neither tongue nor tail, is it? We were discussing the removal of your weapon. My soldiers say that it changes shape on command, a marvelous gift for Warlord Xastix. I would prefer not to be forced to remove your arm to obtain it for him.”
<> Wylant told him. Vax snaked up her arm, across her shoulders and beneath her neck manacle, like a harness. Its fear cut into their connection like an ice pick. Though she had sensed the weapon’s feelings on rare occasions before, the thrill of victory, warmth, and contentment when she cleaned or sharpened him, Wylant had never felt anything as palpable as the blade’s current distress.
“Interesting.” Dryga ran a claw-tipped finger over thin red welts Vax had left on her arm and shoulder. His scaly touch brushed the metal harness into which Vax had twisted itself. Like a drowning man clutching his rescuer, Vax constricted about Wylant’s throat, cutting off her air, his edge cutting into her skin.
Stop, Vax, she ordered. Vax did not heed her command until Dryga drew back his hand.
“If the weapon starts to do something useful, kill her,” he ordered the guards. “We can always obtain another Eldrennai.”
Dryga swept out of the makeshift prison, leaving Wylant and her fellow captives with their guards. The cold manacles that bound the Eldrennai general did not interest her; she knew she could not break them. If we’re lucky, Vax, she thought to her blade, I won’t need to.
So this is Rae’en, Wylant squinted at her husband’s (ex-husband’s) daughter thoughtfully. I never thought I’d see you in person, my dear. Please excuse the shackles.
In slumber, Rae’en looked remarkably like her father. Both of them slept like little children, comfortable under all circumstances, with all the hardness of the warrior within cast aside. Congealed blood clinging to her lips, chin, and throat broke the illusion.
The Arvash’ae, Wylant assumed, adding one more note to her mental stash. Did they use it against her or did her youth betray her?
Strong and secure, the chains that bound Wylant would have held any humanoid on Barrone . . . except an Aern. The bolts, set too shallowly in the stone, were too thin to hold an Aern and needed to be counter-sunk.
Wylant sighed; another bit of knowledge she’d gained during the Sundering: if you can’t make peace with an Aern, it’s much easier to kill it than to keep it. Wylant would have bound the girl wrist to wrist and elbow to elbow, hooking the wrist cuffs to a chain so that the Aern’s hands wrapped around her own throat. Once the Aern’s knees and ankles had been bound, Wylant would have buried her up to her neck, “planted,” as the Eldrennai called it. Since one couldn’t rely on magic to bind an Aern, planting was one of the few remaining options if you needed to keep one alive.
So Rae’en is how we’ll get out of these bonds; now, how to escape Xasti’Kaur once we do . . . Wylant shut her eyes, ignoring Rae’en and the twenty Zaur standing guard . . . and plotted.
CHAPTER 47
HARVESTER OF SOULS
“I am not pleased,” Torgrimm’s voice rang out.
Dienox ignored the Harvester. The god of war continued, instead, to kneel in the cold stone tunnels of Xasti’Kaur watching his former champion; unseen.
The clitter-clack of Torgrimm’s bone armor as he approached solicited not so much as a backward glance from the war god. Dienox’s golden armor, dark and unpolished, reflected its wearer’s foul mood.
“Dienox!” Torgrimm unslung his bone warpick. If Dienox noticed the weapon’s similarity to Kholster’s Grudge, he made no mention of it.
“I wish that we could pick the same champion twice.” Dienox pushed himself up to his feet. “Wylant did such a good job.”
“Once was enough to destroy her life.” Torgrimm drew closer. “Your victory, not to mention your direct interferenc
e, cost the woman her child and her husband. An argument could be made that it also cost her soul.”
“I won.” Dienox smiled smugly. “That’s all that matters, though she did look better with hair. Still, it’s pleasing to know she takes her devotion to me so seriously now . . . to shave it all and match me. Too bad it was only a side game. If everyone had been involved, I’d have the dragons back.” Dienox clapped his armored hand on the bony ridge of Torgrimm’s chest plate. Dienox’s lips curved into a frown as he noticed the warpick. “Why are you armed?”
“You touched two of their minds,” Torgrimm said, avoiding the question. “You made Wylant toss her helmet aside, and then you pushed Rae’en into the Arvash’ae early. Neither is your Justicar.”
“And more times than that. What of it?” Dienox straightened. A battered iron shield forged to resemble a snarling dragon appeared in the war god’s left hand. In his right hand, an iron greatsword manifested, its fuller resembling a dragon as well. “You might as well know I ‘influenced’ the human captain as well. Minor infractions. At worst it will cost them their lives. Call for an accounting; I’ll pay the penalty Aldo demands, but it’s not enough to get me ejected from the game. As far as I know, no one has laid claim to them. They aren’t anyone’s chosen champions.”
Torgrimm swung his warpick. “You disgust me!”
Dienox took the blow on his shield, rolling back in obvious surprise as the bone blade sheered through the metal, cleaving the shield in twain.
“Have you lost your mind, Harvester?” Dienox crouched low on the balls of his feet. “I am the essence of combat! You can’t defeat me.”
“No. You are merely war. You have allowed yourself to sink lower than any other deity, abandoning your dual nature. I am eldest, Dienox. When you think back to your earliest memory, whose face do you see?” Torgrimm’s warpick cut toward the war god. Dienox sprung over the weapon, seizing it by the haft with both hands.
