Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  Drawn in despite himself, Dolvek involuntarily flinched back when Kholster spun around, warpick extended but still bent low, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “Know me, that you know my tale is true. Told with words of one who saw and did, told at the edge of the Arvash’ae,” he said as his amber pupils expanded and lit from within, the jade of his iris all but banishing the black of his sclera, “that no lies can be spoken and memory cannot fail.” He drew a ragged breath and released it from his nostrils. Steam did not flow out with it, but Dolvek had expected that it might.

  “I was there at As You Please, for I am now, have always been, the kholster of my people. Three weeks after we defeated the Zaur at North Watch, drove them back to their mountains, back beneath the rock, that was the day of As You Please. Seven hundred and two sons I lost that day, and daughters three. Each bore their father’s scars.

  “Zillek was angry. Zillek, the Leash Holder king; Zillek, the liar, the betrayer. Pray for him you who hear; pray that the Oathkeeper souls stay world-bound, that we never enter into the place beyond that holds his soul.”

  “Laying it on a bit thick, isn’t he?” Dolvek whispered to Yavi.

  “Hush,” she replied.

  Dolvek walked back to the balcony doors. This was all really just a sham, wasn’t it? Kholster was just doing what all Aern did, playing up “legendary” misdeeds that happened thousands of years ago. Why was his father buying into this Grudgebearer nonsense? If the Zaur were really attacking, then Dolvek and Grivek should both be reviewing defense plans, not listening to overblown fireside chants. His father was acting as if, in the face of the Grudgebearer’s overly dramatic declaration outside, a Zaur invasion was the least of their worries.

  “In those days each great victory won a tribute from the king. Zillek, the king, the Leash Holder king, his highness pronounced it upon us, a gift, a boon, not of our choosing: more Vaelsilyn sent to the soldiers’ beds, new quarters for sleeping, better grounds for training or practice. We were spell-sworn in those days, bound to obey, bound to answer, enslaved souls, but free of mind. The king offered a boon of my own devising, a gift, my own to name. The Leash Holder king had guests from afar; he’d impress with magnanimous grace. The boon that I asked angered Zillek the king, and he gave us the Battle of As You Please.”

  “See,” Dolvek called from the doorway. “He admits that whatever happened they brought it on themselves.” The others hissed at him to be quiet, and he complied. It had been a halfhearted protest in any event. His real problem with Kholster’s tale was that it didn’t ring false. That troubled him.

  “I might have asked for freedom, but that concept—freedom—lay yet beyond my understanding. I asked that we be allowed to choose our own mates, to breed only when we wished to do so. Oh, the anger I saw in his eyes when he said just three words: As You Please. It was clear in his bearing, the set of his jaw as his guests laughed and jeered at his plight . . . King Zillek, the king, the Leash Holder king would a reckoning devise to punish my crime.

  “The histories tell of As You Please as a day when great heroes were born, sacrifices made, the kingdom preserved in the end. The Oathbreakers say the Aern fought that day humans in costume, disguised as Aern. But hear now the truth of As You Please, the words of a slave now freed, how the Oathbreaker king, just to punish his slaves, brought his entire army to its knees. The king, he divided us up for a game, half to watch and the others to play. We divided again at the Leash Holder’s whim, putting eldest and youngest at bay.”

  Yavi flinched and looked questioningly at Dolvek, who shook his head. “It’s a lie. I mean, it’s so obviously a lie. Who would do that? Zillek was a great king, not some petty lunatic! Father, tell her!” His father did not answer, and Yavi rose from the couch, putting distance between herself and the king.

  “I pled with the king and begged him pronounce some other way to atone.” Kholster’s gaze went back and forth between the three listeners—Yavi, Dolvek, and Grivek—as he continued, making eye contact with each in turn, contact that was broken only by the movements of his dance. Even so, Dolvek felt that the Aern was staring only at him, accusing him of acts that had happened before he’d even been conceived. “He laughed in my face, did the Eldrennai king, and commanded me lead the attack. ‘Your pleasure you’ve had,’ he spat with a laugh, ‘but the pleasure had here will be mine.’

  “He constructed a box overlooking the field, a seat for each royal and guest. Then on that day he commanded his slaves, Oathbound with no choice but obey: ‘Each side will to the death fight the other, but the rules of the battle will change as you go. When one from the box shall call out a rule, his voice you must obey. Each new rule ends the former, but yet you will fight. You’ll shout “As You Please,” and quick as a wink, you’ll apply each new rule to each other.’”

  Dolvek’s attendant stood open-mouthed, but the prince ignored him. He needed fresh air. The atmosphere even at the entrance to his suite from the balcony was unbelievably oppressive. Even if it is all true, it doesn’t mean anything, Dolvek fumed. It’s ancient history. Half those elves are dead now. The Aern give us no credit for freeing the Vaelsilyn or for ceding three-fourths of the kingdom to them as reparation for any crimes, real or imagined.

  Unceasing, the tempo of the song never varied, and Kholster continued tirelessly, dancing erratically in a series of moves reminiscent of Aernese fighting techniques.

  “On one foot we slaughtered our sons and our daughters, hoping in vain it would cease, but the Leash Holder king who’d imagined this thing had no intention of early relief. They took turns in the box shouting ‘dance,’ ‘sing,’ or ‘swear’ and lower commands at their beasts. We fought out that way for most of a day, and at last we had won—and lost too. Ten thousand Aern fought that battle of pride, and one-tenth of that number survived. It was then that I knew a day would come, soon or perhaps far away, when the Leash Holder king or his brat of a prince would ask my choice of a boon for my Aern. On Freedom Day, As You Please would seem but a brawl, and I’d deprive the good king of his head first of all.” Kholster ended with one final smack of his warpick against the floor.

  Inside, someone sobbed bitterly. A Vaelsilyn couldn’t be expected to hear such things without being overwhelmed, Dolvek told himself. He wasted no time heading in to comfort her, but she was dry-eyed, helping Kholster with his shirt.

  “What?” he asked aloud. “Father, you weren’t even there, you can’t help what Grandfather did.”

  The king looked away; he could not bear to look at him.

  “Act only forward,” Kholster sighed.

  “What?” Dolvek demanded.

  “It’s the command your father gave as I tried to save my eldest daughter.” Kholster’s voice fell cold and hard on Dolvek’s ears, but his eyes remained locked with the Vael’s. “She was behind me. I couldn’t save her, and I couldn’t let my other children kill me because I’d been ordered to fight as hard as I could, to fight to the death.” Kholster’s eyes cut toward the Eldrennai and blazed with feeling.

  “Of my sons that died at As You Please, I killed three hundred and ­seventy-six with my own warpick. Of the daughters I lost that day, two of the three died at my hand. I tore Jhilla’s throat out with my own teeth because we’d been ordered to fight like literal animals when she came against me in battle.”

  Dolvek opened his mouth to deny it, but the words dried up in his throat.

  “Bloodmane,” Kholster continued, “can forgive your crimes. It doesn’t feel the things fleshly beings feel. It does not yearn for a lover or mourn for a child. It does not know what it is like to be used as a stud to produce more brave fighting Aern. It is alive, and it should be no one’s slave, but it cannot burn as we do. It cannot hate.” His gaze softened as it returned to Yavi, and his hand came up to gently stroke her cheek. “Or love—as fiercely.”

  “All right . . . all right,” Dolvek agreed. “But what do you expect us to do? We can’t bring back the people you lost or undo wh
at our ancestors did. How could we begin to make it up to you, even if we wanted to?”

  “Kill every Eldrennai who was alive then,” Kholster answered flatly. He fastened the belt around his waist and shrugged his mail into place. “Kill them all, let the survivors, those who never held the leash swear allegiance to the Vael and the Aern, and I will come to their aid.

  Divide the survivors into groups. Let them ask to bear our scars, and those we accept will become Aiannai. The Eldrennai will be dead, and my oath will be fulfilled.”

  “The people would never agree to it,” Dolvek protested. “Some, apologists like Rivvek and his crowd, yes, but the rest . . . Father could possibly convince them to relocate, to cede all our remaining lands to the Vaelsilyn, but what you’re asking . . . it isn’t going to happen.”

  “A few would,” answered Kholster, catching up his warpick. “But for the majority, there is no mutually acceptable solution.” His footsteps sounded harshly on the flagstones as he moved to the interior door. Dolvek tensed; the danger in the air suddenly became almost palpable.

  Something had changed in the Aern, and it was not for the Eldrennai’s good. Kholster slammed the spell-seal home, locking the door from within as behind the prince sounds of combat rang out from the courtyard. Dolvek spun, rushing to the balcony to see below him armored figures, forming up in ranks by company, gathering in rows outside the palace. The guards attacked them, but the intruders did not strike back. Each held in its gauntlets an Aernese warpick. The prince’s mouth went dry as he watched them pour into the streets, some covered in dust, others with remnants of storage containers still hanging around their necks. Five-thousand-strong, the Aernese warsuits had risen.

  CHAPTER 54

  PEACEMAKER

  “You have to call them off, Kholster.” The lithe Vael interposed herself between the Aern and the Eldrennai royals. Standing with his back to the door he’d just locked, Kholster leaned down and kissed her, his lips and hers separated only by a bit of kidskin leather. On the edge of recoiling, Yavi surrendered when his arms did not enfold her.

  Hands clasped firmly behind his back, eyes open, not out of distrust but rather complete trust, nose to nose, Kholster let her see his spirit, his intentions, fully. The lids of their eyes closed simultaneously, as they both, heads tilting slightly, continued the kiss, lips pressing together, but apart. Yavi reached up to remove her samir, heart pounding and mind lost in the wanton whirl of a thousand mental images of her and Kholster moving together.

  This was what her mother had warned her about. Vael were made for Aern; the yearning curled her toes and tore the breath from her lungs. A new potential spirit hung between the two of them, a child, a boy child, beautiful and strong, just like his father. The decision not to join with Kholster, not to make that child right now, was actual physical pain.

  “Do you see now?” he asked her when she pulled reluctantly away. “Do you understand?”

  Yavi wasn’t sure of much in that moment, but she did know that the warsuits had forgiven the Eldrennai, wanted to work with them again, and that it was killing Kholster, literally fraying his spirit with internal conflict.

  “Get away from her!” Dolvek’s sword, ripped from the wall, flashed, matching his own anger. A bolt of lightning arced down the blade and struck the side of Kholster’s face.

  The blow that would have killed a Vael knocked Kholster’s head back with the force of a strong right hook. A trickle of bright-orange blood flowed from a small cut on his cheek, and he smiled coldly. “It takes great skill to use just enough magic to create a mundane bolt, one to which I am not completely immune. Well done. You want to play games with me, stump ears? To play the hero?”

  Yavi and Grivek both shouted for the two to stop, Yavi beseeching Kholster and the king imploring his own son.

  “He’s an invader, Father.” Dolvek hurled another bolt, this one directly into Kholster’s chest, evoking dancing sparks across his bone-steel mail.

  “I am not some young pup for whom your magic holds danger. I am First!” Kholster’s fist caught the prince under the chin, tossing him onto his back; blood trailed from a gash in his lower lip, and the sparkling crystal sword tumbled to the floor.

  “The suits aren’t attacking,” Yavi shouted. “They’ve risen to help you.”

  “You lie,” Dolvek snarled, grasping for his sword. His voice cut off mid-word when Kholster lifted him into the air by his throat. Gurgling, the prince thrashed out with an ice spell. Gooseflesh rose on Kholster’s exposed skin, the breath from his lips steaming from the cold.

  “Liar?” The Aern shook him roughly. “Apologize to her now, Oathbreaker! Beg her forgiveness! Beg!”

  Her ears ringing, Yavi closed with the angry Aern. “Kholster, let him go, please.” Yavi placed her knuckles against the small of his back, pressing slightly more firmly than usual to be felt through his mail. The gesture implied gentle restraint. The Eldrennai would not have recognized it, Yavi knew, but Kholster responded instantly, releasing the prince and shoving him away in one fluid motion.

  “As you please.” Amber pupils surrounded by jade irises, within the pools of black that were Kholster’s eyes, contracted as his gaze lingered on the prince, daring the much younger elf to retaliate. Dolvek caught himself with a conjured flight spell, landing gracefully on his feet.

  “She tells the truth,” Grivek called from the balcony. Yavi hadn’t noticed him move; he appeared to simply have been standing there all along. “They are lining up in formation along the old Lane of Review.”

  “Stand down at once,” Grivek shouted to his troops below, effortlessly summoning the wind to amplify his words. “The warsuits are offering us their assistance. I repeat, stand down and stand clear of them. Let no one provoke them further.”

  “You could have said something,” Yavi rebuked.

  Kholster’s eyes softened again. “I had no need. You were here.” The knuckle of his middle finger glided with butterfly-like tenderness up her brow from between her eyes to her hairline and back again—another Vael touch. “There is an old saying about the curse of the Vael. It describes your people as all things the Eldrennai desire and all things the Aern need.”

  As they walked out to join the king on the balcony, Kholster’s disdain for Dolvek and his sad hatred for Grivek shone more clearly than ever. To Yavi, it seemed that Kholster pitied the monarch but, despite his own feelings, could not forgive him. Yavi wondered if that lack of forgiveness was a trait built into the Aern and if that one mistake might yet cost all the Eldrennai their lives.

  Grander than she had envisioned, the Aernese warsuits stood in two hundred ranks, twenty-five deep, weapons held at the ready, absolutely silent. “They have decided to help you,” Kholster told the king, “until the Conjunction is completed.”

  “Bloodmane told you this?” Grivek asked.

  “He didn’t have to tell me.”

  “And then?”

  “Then they will . . .”

  “Rejoin their masters and kill us all,” Dolvek croaked, rubbing his throat.

  “Not masters,” Yavi corrected quickly so Kholster need not do so. “They are a part of each other. The hand is not enslaved to the brain; it is a part of the whole.”

  Guards pounded on the door. “Your Majesty?”

  “All is well.” Grivek crossed to the door and threw back the spell-seal to allow them inside.

  “We must travel back to Oot,” Kholster said to the other two, “and complete our time together. I suggest we start again, to ensure that your prophecy is fulfilled and my word is not broken.”

  “Nothing says we have to stay at Oot, Grudgebearer, only meet there,” the prince muttered.

  Kholster opened his mouth, but King Grivek interrupted. “Thank you for your willingness to begin again, Kholster. Perhaps you would stay the night here, inspect the warsuits?”

  “Huhn,” Kholster coughed. “Do not seek to overstretch my patience or my generosity, Oathbreaker king. Very well.” He bit his lo
wer lip, two upper canines peeking out from one side as he stroked his beard with a thumb. “I will stay here tonight, conferring with Bloodmane, and tomorrow, examining your museum and, should you allow it, the old armory. I will depart for Oot with the second dawn and return to my own purposes once your Grand Conjunction is complete. You have the best part of five days to make use of the warsuits’ aid.”

  “Thank you,” Grivek uttered in palpable relief, offering his hand for Kholster to press knuckles.

  Spurning the offered hand, Kholster pushed past the assembled guards. “Kill as many Zaur as you can, Oathbreaker. It will save me the effort of slaying them myself.”

  After Kholster left, Grivek seized the hilt of Dolvek’s crystal blade, surprising both Yavi and the prince when he straightened his arm, the tip of the sword resting above his son’s heart. “He was giving us more time. Open your eyes! It is possible that we can use this reprieve to push back the Zaur and further our cause with the warsuits.”

  “Further our cause with the warsuits? Father, you’re mad. They are just tools.”

  “So I once thought of the Aern, my son. So my father thought. And I’m assured of your intelligence to such a degree that I am confident we both see that way of thinking as the delusion it was.”

  “He’s right.” Yavi flopped down on the couch. “I’ve spoken with them. They are as sentient and reasonable as you or I. Well, a bit more than you, Prince.” She stuck out the tip of her tongue beneath her samir. No one saw it, but it made her feel better.

  “But surely, a flesh-and-blood creature would be more suited to . . .”

  “That’s why I’m placing you as second-in-command,” Grivek interrupted his son.

  Great Aldo, not him, Yavi thought.