Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  “Your face, Harvester, and if I acted far enough outside the rules, I suppose nothing could save me from you. If I’d committed such a crime, you wouldn’t be talking to me now. I would already have gone to . . . where do gods go when they die, Torgrimm?”

  “To the Artificer.” Torgrimm rammed his bone helm into Dienox’s forehead, but the war god only laughed.

  “Tell me what’s really bothering you, Torgrimm. You can’t be worried about three souls. Is it Minapsis? I counseled you against marrying Kilke’s sister. I’ve always thought Shidarva more your type . . . or a perhaps a mortal lady? Is that it? You fancy one of these?”

  Dienox gestured at the prisoners.

  “Take one,” Dienox laughed. “Take them both. Have your fun. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “You disgust me,” Torgrimm spat. “That’s the problem with all of you. You spend so much time in pursuit of your own needs, your own entertainments, you’ve forgotten how to be gods. You act just like mortals!” He pointed at the captives.

  “By me, not this again!” Dienox let go of the warpick and shoved it away. “I know that you’re close to them, Harvester. But you must stop this. You need perspective.”

  “I’m not the one who had a portion of his powers stolen by one of them,” Torgrimm muttered.

  “True,” Dienox picked up the pieces of his shield, fitting them back together, metal flowing into metal until the shield was whole again. “She was worth it though.”

  Between them both, two forms appeared.

  “We’re in trouble now,” Dienox said in mock fright.

  Aldo and Shidarva stared at the two gods. “What is the meaning of this?” Shidarva asked.

  “Just because you’re the new ruler of the gods, Shidarva, doesn’t mean you have to get a nit up your nethers over every little thing.” Dienox pushed Aldo out of his way and stood directly before the goddess of justice and retribution. “Torgrimm and I had a . . . disagreement. It’s nothing to worry your regalness about.”

  “Is this true, Soul Warden?” Shidarva asked Torgrimm.

  “Ask Aldo,” Torgrimm snarled.

  “I have heard from Aldo, but I would prefer to hear the truth from your lips as well.”

  Torgrimm’s body vanished, replaced by a radiant symbol of infinity. “That is the problem that faces us, lady.” His voice was deeper and more resonant, less emotional. “Gods should not have lips. In the past when we appeared to mortals, we put on mortal seemings at Kilke’s suggestion. He said that it would put them more at ease. That it did, but now it has gone too far.”

  “Now we occupy ourselves with mundane enjoyments. We eat and drink and make merry as they do. We squabble like the mortals placed in our care. Dienox can no longer assume his true form. Neither can Gromma, Xalistan, or even Aldo.”

  Shidarva transformed as well, from a beautiful but sad female Eldrennai in long, blue robes . . . into a stylized balance with a dagger suspended from the left side and a shield from the right. “That is not true of all of us.”

  “But it was true during the last game,” Torgrimm countered. “In the last round, when you were on the verge of defeat, I recall how distraught you were when you could not resume your divine aspect.”

  “And I regained my center . . .”

  “Yes, and so should we all,” Torgrimm intoned. “Even now, can you see the web of destiny if you look? Can you observe the tatters these games have wrought?”

  “None who played have been able to do that since the first game, Torgrimm,” Shidarva answered.

  “It is in tatters!” Torgrimm shouted. “You do not hear the cries of those souls that should have been delivered and were not because of your games! I can. I do.”

  “That’s a lie,” Dienox roared. “You’re being melodramatic.”

  “Am I?” Torgrimm asked, resuming his mortal seeming. “Ask Aldo if I lie. Or can even he see that far beyond the games you play? Do any of you have room left for the laws of reality?”

  Aldo, in his gnome-like aspect, gazed at the ground with empty sockets. Reaching into the folds of his robes, he withdrew his box of eyes, selected two glowing gold ones and inserted them into his sockets. When he was done, he cleared his throat and stared up at his fellow gods. He looked Shidarva in the eye but could not meet Torgrimm’s gaze. “I . . . It is true that my knowledge has narrowed considerably, but I feel that this is a natural thing, the will of the Artificer.”

  “Even you have been corrupted.” Torgrimm knelt, touching Aldo’s cheek and looking into his eyes. “I’m planning something. Something to put an end to these games you all play with mortals. I know you know that, but do you know what it is I plan?”

  “I . . . have my theories.” Aldo looked away.

  “The god of knowledge with whom I stood side by side at the dawn of this creation would have known.” Torgrimm stood, taking a step back. “When I put his soul inside the embodiment the Artificer fashioned for him, he shone with divinity, with a knowledge and intelligence so keen that I had seen its like only in the presence of the Artificer alone. Now, when I look upon you, I see a gnome playing god.”

  “Now see here, Torgrimm!” Aldo’s face flushed red with anger. “I will not have you address me in such a . . .”

  “I’m entering the game,” Torgrimm interrupted.

  “You can’t,” Dienox objected.

  “Torgrimm,” Shidarva began tactfully. “I know how hard it is to watch and not be able to play, but you know that the rules forbid . . .”

  Aldo remained silent, the light of his eyes shifting from gold to silver, brows furrowed.

  “There is a way,” Torgrimm said softly. “Aldo knows there is. It’s merely unthinkable to most of you.”

  “How is it possible, Aldo?” Dienox grabbed the other deity by his robe, shaking him violently.

  “I cannot say,” Aldo answered as understanding dawned. “Or perhaps ‘am not required to reveal’ would be a more apt choice of words.”

  “You know the identity of the champion I am allowed?” Torgrimm asked, ignoring the other gods’ protests.

  “I do,” nodded Aldo, “but not how you plan to get him on the board.”

  “That’s not fair!” Dienox bellowed. “He could reap the souls of the other champions before their time and . . .”

  Aldo touched Torgrimm’s breastplate nervously. “If you fail . . .”

  “Then it will be the end of everything.”

  “If you succeed . . .”

  “It will be the end of everything as it is now.”

  “That person is not yet eligible.”

  “If you could see the web of destiny,” Torgrimm chided, “then you would know he soon will be. The battle will come. Many will die, a hero will fall, and then what is fair enough for Kilke and Dienox will be fair enough for me.”

  “Be careful, my friend,” Aldo began.

  “I want Dienox punished.”

  “You what?” Dienox bellowed. He brandished his sword, stepping toward the Harvester, but Shidarva stepped between them, two scimitars limned in a cerulean blaze appearing in each hand. “He tells tales against me, Shidarva!”

  “You have never before—” Aldo began.

  “He has done enough.” Torgrimm’s voice was calm but firm, a whisper that roared. “I wish to mulct him in a tangible fashion . . . I demand an amercement paid not to me but to the mortals he has offended.”

  “Torgrimm—” Shidarva frowned.

  “I demand it under the rules of your own game,” Torgrimm’s voice dropped even lower, “or are you not the goddess of justice and retribution? Do you no longer obey rules?”

  Blue-edged blades whipped about, ahead of the goddess herself, they shattered when they touched Torgrimm’s bone plate armor, and Shidarva cried out in pain.

  “What?” she hissed.

  “I am the Sower and the Reaper, and my course is completely right and good and just. When those conditions are met—”

  “No one may oppose you,” she completed. �
�You are correct. I apologize. What fine . . . what amercement do you suggest?”

  “As a former champion, Wylant was to be free of his influence. He has controlled her three times I know about in the last decade alone and has admitted to more.”

  “She was going to kill herself,” Dienox objected.

  “As would have been her right,” Torgrimm sighed. “Though had you never interfered with her at all, I doubt she would have found herself with such feelings of guilt and loss and hopelessness.”

  “I gave her glory!”

  “No.” Torgrimm seemed to grow larger, even as his shoulders turned in and his head drooped down. “She gave you victory. You gave her nothing but blonde hair and a runny nose in exchange.”

  “What do you want from me?” Dienox growled. “To set her free and slay her captors, to—”

  “I revere mortals, foolish god. I want no such thing—”

  “Leave her alone,” Aldo coughed. “He wants you to withdraw your . . . ahem . . . blessings . . . all of them . . . and then to leave her alone forever.” He took out one of his eyes, rubbed it on his robes, and popped it back in. “Right?”

  “That is what you want?” Shidarva asked.

  “It is all I ever want,” Torgrimm said, holding up his palms, “for all mortals to live their lives as they choose to live them, to do their best, and that when we do help them, it is because they ask and even then . . . sparingly.”

  “Done,” Dienox pouted. He held out his hand, and a sliver of divine essence slid free of Wylant’s soul. The only outward signs were a subtle darkening of her eyebrows and easing of her breath.

  “Thank you.” Torgrimm faded from the Shadow Road, reappearing where the web of destiny, as clear to him as the day he was forged, shone around him. Human souls flared briefly within the weblike strands, bright but fleeting. The souls of the Dwarves burned with less intensity, a steady flame, rarely changing, slow to start and slow to blink out. More dazzling were the souls of the elves, burning erratically—in one instant scarcely an ember, a raging inferno the next—but ceaselessly. Wisps of webbing blew free at the corners.

  In the center yawned one ragged tear, chasm-like. Souls poured into it and vanished, others flared into existence where they were destined to arrive, then sparked out in the absence of the strands that should have sustained them. Torgrimm sent his essence out along that part of the web like a spider, mending it as best he could, catching the fading souls and storing them in caches of cocoon-like divinity until he could find a place to slip them back in, find them a place where their presence would not disrupt the flow of birth and death.

  “Once,” Torgrimm bemoaned, “all of us worked together and the web was always whole.” Now, most of his fellow gods appeared only at the periphery of the web, striking blindly, spewing webbing without care, heedless of the pattern they could no longer perceive.

  There was only one other presence which moved with intent across the web, a presence Torgrimm knew well. It cut strands that should have been preserved, working to widen the holes. Torgrimm peered across the web at Kilke, god of secrets and shadow, and snarled.

  Leaving the web of destiny, he returned to the realm of the gods, shifting beyond that to the realm of souls. He stood at the bone gates, gazing on the one hand into paradise and the other into punishment.

  “Husband?” Minapsis appeared moments later, clad in red silk. Torgrimm knew he loved her more than she loved him, but that was only because to be what she was, the goddess of reward and punishment, required a certain detachment. Her eyebrows furrowed. The gauzy film of a shredded soul hung from one of her crown-like horns. “I was in the middle of—”

  “May I ask a favor?” Torgrimm looked into her eyes and hoped she would agree. If his plan was to go forward, there was one last preparation which needed to be made.

  CHAPTER 48

  CAPTIVE

  “What did I do to get chained up with an Oathbreaker?” Rae’en asked, spitting out the remains of her gag. Her mouth tasted like a lizard had relieved itself, or perhaps a small animal had died in there.

  She narrowed her eyes at her fellow captive. “I am Rae’en, by Kholster out of Helg.”

  I think that’s Wylant, she thought at Kazan, trying to send him the image. She looks like bird squirt.

  Rae’en examined the woman’s bonds, the Zaur-leather bit in her mouth and nodded. Thunder Speaker; that would fit.

  “You’re Wylant, aren’t you?”

  The Eldrennai . . . no, Aiannai, Rae’en corrected herself, nodded.

  Rae’en glared at the twenty Zaur guards. Surely Wylant and she could take twenty of the cursed lizards if they worked together.

  “I’ll tell you when,” Rae’en blurted in Aernese, incrementally increasing the pressure she was exerting against her manacles. Disguising it as an angry attempt to grab at Wylant.

  Did they know she was Aiannai, not Eldrennai? Or did they expect Rae’en to occupy herself trying to kill her? Rae’en pulled again, taking the measure of the chain binding her to the wall. It felt strong, but there was enough give to the bolt to convince her she could break free if she had sufficient time—and if there weren’t twenty Zaur soldiers staring at her from across the room.

  “Stop talking,” one of the guards ordered sternly.

  “Or what?” Rae’en snarled. “You’ll kill me? Beat me unconscious? I’m an Aernese warrior, you belly-crawling reptile!”

  “I’ll use acid to flay the scars from your back.”

  Rae’en worked her tongue at the scale between her canines as she thought that over. Would that even work? She didn’t think so. Maybe Ghaiattri flame would do it, but she was pretty sure if teeth came to bone she could strip the skin from her back and the scars would be whole once it grew back. But did she want the Zaur to think the threat worked? Let him think he could control her with it?

  The scale finally worked free and she spat it on the ground. Low and ready, the Zaur edged toward her, reptilian eyes glaring up at her inscrutably.

  “Well?”

  Rae’en made an open-handed gesture of agreement and nodded curtly.

  Wylant made a rude noise, the cousin of a donkey’s bray and laugh, accentuating the sound with a vulgar Aernese gesture: little finger folded in, her other fingers and thumb waggling. It was a gesture older Aern used to gently tease children and one Rae’en had seen a lot while making her chain mail. Puzzlement gave way to comprehension when Wylant cut her eyes to the guards.

  Rae’en knew it was gentle chiding, almost warm and affectionate, but the Zaur didn’t know that. She lunged at Wylant several times in quick succession, growling like an animal.

  “Stop teasing the Aern,” the guard ordered again. “Or I will cut off one of your paw digits . . . from one of your hind paws. You’d hate that, wouldn’t you, biped? Perhaps I should do that anyway and feed the bits to the Aern.”

  Twisting her head as far left as she could, Rae’en looked on in amusement as Wylant responded with the same defeated gesture and nod Rae’en had used to signify her own acquiescence. Wylant met her gaze imperiously, eliciting a snarl from Rae’en.

  By Torgrimm, was this woman really Wylant? In the paintings Rae’en had seen, Wylant had been blonde. This Eldrennai, or Aiannai, had dark, almost black, eyebrows. Had she shaved her head and dyed her eyebrows black to pass as a rank-and-file Oathbreaker?

  Hours passed, each refusing to be the first to look away, drawing the guards into their staring match, keeping their attention focused away from Rae’en’s subtle movements.

  Rae’en’s neck muscles began to burn, but by then her head was clear and all signs of injury from her battle with the Zaur were gone, healed, thanks to the marvelous physical superiority imbued in the Aern by their creator. Rae’en concentrated on the muscles in her neck, relaxing each one individually. Vander would have been impressed. She rarely found much use for meditation back home in South Number Nine, preferring to spend time with Kholster or her Overwatches learning the daily needs of th
e army.

  They would rise early; the entire army, soldiers and noncombatants alike, would line up in the great hall of the forge masters for the morning workout. Many Dwarves would come to watch them, lining the underground terraces and balconies. Some did their best to keep pace with the Aern, managing it in the beginning but nearly always giving up toward the end of the exercise.

  Officially, every Aern was part of the Aernese Armed Forces, but in truth, in truth . . .

  A spasm went through Wylant’s neck, and she almost looked away. This had to be torture for her, Rae’en realized. As beloved as the Aiannai was by the Aern, she didn’t have their fortitude. The wounds from some recent battle still covered her body. Bruises. Lacerations . . . not all of them looked like Zaur work to Rae’en.

  Realizing she couldn’t keep up anymore, Wylant gave in to the pain, loosing a single bit-muffled scream, letting her body writhe in the agony she surely felt.

  Smiling slightly at Wylant’s past-the-mark performance, Rae’en incrementally increased the tension she was applying to the chains that bound her arms, simultaneously flattening the soles of her feet against the wall behind her. She pushed off the wall, shifting her weight upward, putting pressure against one side of the metal band which bound her waist.

  I have to get her out of here, she thought at her Overwatches. She needs medical attention.

  CHAPTER 49

  NEVER TRUST A PIRATE

  Randall Tyree awoke to what he was sure must be the sounds of battle. The slightly acrid smell of metal filled his nostrils. A great weight pulled his head forward and down. Irrationally, he felt certain that one of the Zaur had put a bucket on his head as some kind of sick prank. Which, if he was honest with himself, would have been an improvement . . . something . . . anything to break the monotony. He’d already found the money he was to be paid, stolen it, and put it back a hundred times or more.

  He’d even been caught twice, but Dryga didn’t seem to care in the least: where did Tyree think he was going to escape to and past how many guards and wasn’t he an ally anyway?