Grudgebearer Page 13

  “In thirteen years’ time, the next Grand Conjunction will occur. I have also sworn that I or my representative will be present. So it shall be, but when that oath has been fulfilled, I do not intend to make another pledge to meet in peace with the Eldrennai. They have broken the peace. They are Oathbreakers. We are . . . we must be . . . Oathkeepers. Until the Eldrennai are Eldrennai no longer, we are at war.”

  *

  In Aldo’s study, the furnishings rematerialized as the god returned his atten­tion to the here and now. Torgrimm and Dienox argued over what they had seen, but Aldo’s focus was elsewhere. He peered across the surface of Barrone like a falcon, his prey a puzzle piece that didn’t fit . . . a bit of knowledge he did not have. He sensed a secret to be had, and though Kilke was the god of secrets and shadows, not Aldo, he craved context to his knowledge. Context gave shape and meaning to data. He had felt the connection between Kholster and his Aern, sensed their reactions to the memory Kholster shared, but someone important hadn’t reacted. Several someones, in fact. Aldo turned his gaze to the Eldren Plains, to Port Ammond, to a museum exhibit in progress and . . . knew.

  CHAPTER 16

  AIANNAI

  Standing motionless, covered in canvas, Bloodmane waited. Around him the sounds of human work crews assembling displays provided limited information about his surroundings, but he had learned great patience over the centuries. Strong emotion rippled along the network of the Armored.

  Did you feel that? he thought at Eyes of Vengeance.

  Yes. What happened? They feel so angry now.

  Kholster shared a memory. You heard the All Know afterward.

  Yes. I wish one of us were worn, Eyes of Vengeance thought, and so could have distributed the memory among all of us. Did Kholster feel angry to you?

  No, Bloodmane answered. Sad. Frustrated. Resigned. Not angry.

  Vander is enraged. Eyes of Vengeance let the conversation end there.

  Bloodmane often wondered if he should be more talkative. Kholster and Vander chatted so often with one another that it made the warsuit question the silent bond he shared with his fellow warsuits, Eyes of Vengeance in particular. Finding that, as usual, he had nothing more to say, Bloodmane listened to the rhythm of hammers and boards, of humans grunting as they shifted wood and stone.

  Hours later, during the night shift, a guard came in and ordered the workmen from the room. A candlemark after that, Bloodmane heard the footfalls of two Eldrennai, one wearing boots that clacked on the stones, the other wearing slippers of some sort. The slipper-clad person shuffled his feet when he walked, lending his gait a peculiar susurrant quality.

  “Why are they covered with tarpaulins?” asked a reticent voice almost too quiet for Bloodmane to hear.

  “The workmen are superstitious,” came Prince Dolvek’s reply.

  “Ah,” the second voice answered, the word more exhalation than pronouncement.

  “I want,” the tarpaulin was whisked off of Bloodmane, revealing Prince Dolvek in what Bloodmane took to be the royal equivalent of casual garb: a light tunic and breeches, beneath a daycloak and riding boots, which looked hastily thrown on, “to see if there is anything you can learn from these, Sargus.”

  An Eldrennai only a few fingers shorter than Kholster stood next to the prince, his height deemphasized by a hunched stature and a tendency to gaze at the floor. The utilitarian brown robe he wore further intensified the effect. His black short-clipped hair drew an arc across the front of his pale, balding scalp. His skull bulged unevenly large on one side, the effect grotesque.

  “As you please, my prince,” Sargus told the ground. “It may take some time?”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” Dolvek snapped. “Yes. Yes. Take the whole night if you like. The new carpeting I’ve ordered won’t be in for a few days, so we won’t run behind schedule.”

  “As you please, my prince,” Sargus repeated. Dolvek stood there, clearly waiting for Sargus to do something, but Sargus stood motionless.

  “Well?” Dolvek asked after a moment or two.

  “Well, my prince?”

  “Aren’t you going to get started?”

  “Yes, my prince.”

  The two Eldrennai stood there waiting.

  “When?”

  “When, my prince?”

  “Are you going to get started,” Dolvek snapped. He gestured at the warsuits, at the room. Bloodmane could see how it was all shaping up. Each warsuit would be displayed with its maker’s soul weapon next to it in a custom case or rack. An additional display sat unfinished in the room’s center. Tapestry brackets were set into the stone walls, and the first of a set of crystal lights had been installed at the entryway.

  “As soon as I am alone, my prince.”

  “Oh?” Dolvek frowned. “Why alone?”

  “I am nervous in the presence of your greatness, my prince.”

  Dolvek snorted at that. “Are you sure you aren’t merely trying to hide your Artificer’s ways from me, Sargus?”

  “Not merely, my prince.”

  “Very well.” With a laugh, Prince Dolvek departed, closing the doors behind him.

  Sargus remained stationary for several minutes as if he were waiting to be sure he was truly alone, then he sighed, uncurling to his full height. His eyes sparkled brightly in the magical light of the hall. Reaching up to his right temple, he tapped it twice with his index finger and once with his thumb. The illusion faded, revealing the overlarge portion of his skull to be a construct of brass and leather with a glass lens inset over the eye.

  “Please let me be mistaken,” Sargus whispered to himself. He stared at the warsuit through the lens, which he twisted and turned as if adjusting his vision.

  “By Aldo,” Sargus gasped. “You! I . . . I . . . What the fool has done to us!”

  Bloodmane started, though very slightly, when Sargus suddenly whipped off the device revealing his apparent deformity to be a complete illusion. His head was normally shaped for an Eldrennai . . . in fact, he looked neither old nor infirm.

  Sargus dropped to his knees before Bloodmane. “Please. Mighty Bloodmane created by Kholster. Please. I have been betrayed by my prince’s foolishness. He broke the accord between us without my knowledge. The only solution I can see is to throw myself at your mercy. I renounce my status as Eldrennai and offer all my knowledge, skill, and anything I possess to strengthen the Aern. Let me be known as Aiannai, like Wylant. Place upon my back the scars of Kholster, Vander, or Zhan if he will have me. Let me wear them as a sign that I have kept the oaths of my people. I am neither Leash Holder nor Oathbreaker. I have never ordered an Aern to do anything. I never would unless . . . perhaps if I were commanded by a rightful Aernese authority to do so, or if I were using the imperative voice when attempting to protect an Aern from harm or misstep . . . and only then.”

  Sargus knelt lower still, his forehead touching the stones.

  Bloodmane watched him for a long time before the warsuit’s eyes flickered as he relayed what he had seen to his maker. Kholster’s response surprised him.

  “Tell me your name in the Aernese fashion,” Bloodmane intoned aloud.

  “I am Sargus, by Uled out of . . . of . . . unknown apprentice.”

  “Kholster cannot take the get of Uled. Vander will not take you either.”

  A sob wracked the Eldrennai, but he said nothing.

  “The Bone Finder, Zhan, says he will claim you.”

  Sargus’s head shot up with a snap, his eyes blazing. “What must I do?”

  Bloodmane took up his maker’s warpick, Hunger, and gestured for Sargus to rise. The soon-to-be Aiannai rose. With deliberate purpose, Bloodmane drew a small horizontal circle in the air with his forefinger.

  “Ah,” Sargus coughed. “Of course. Turn around.” He pulled his robes off over his head and turned his back to the warsuit. As Bloodmane began to carve Zhan’s scars into the Aiannai’s back, he could not tell whether the shuddering sobs that wracked the being’s body were born of pain, r
elief, or a strange mixture of the two.

  When it was done, Sargus lay still until the blood had clotted and his wounds had begun to scab. Bloodmane wiped the blood from Hunger off onto Sargus’s robes before returning it to its previous position propped against the stone wall.

  “Thank you,” Sargus said, his voice shaking. “May I tell my people?”

  Sargus watched eagerly as the eyes of Bloodmane flashed and dimmed, the only outward sign of the telepathic conversation he had with his creator. “Yes,” Bloodmane answered, “but not the Eldrennai. Kholster says that any who truly understand what it is to be Aiannai will comprehend how to formalize that which they already are.”

  “I understand.”

  Bloodmane was not sure he understood himself, but he was pleased someone did.

  PART TWO

  PART TWO: THIRTEEN YEARS LATER

  “In the beginning, each Aernese soul was hammered on the Life Forge, a crude powerful thing worked by magic, springing from the mind of the greatest, most insidious Eldrennai Artificer ever to walk the Eldren Plains. Forging the soul of the first Aern took him a year and a day, but he learned from it, each soul taking less time, the last fifty taking no more than a day apiece.

  Later refinements demonstrated that new Aern could be grown—Oathbound soul included—within a living womb, the Aern seed beginning the mineralization process immediately upon contact with the womb and drawing necessary mineral deposits from the mother’s bloodstream and internal organs to achieve the initial genesis state, a small mass of metal roughly the size of a baby’s tooth.”

  An excerpt from On the Aern—My Father’s Most Dangerous Creations

  by Sargus

  CHAPTER 17

  TESTING ROUTES

  Rae’en stood on the edge of the mountain path, peering down at a distant bend in the so-called Guild Commerce Highway. Lumber carts hauled huge planks of oak and pine to the Guild Cities. The oxen pulling the carts lowed as the men drove them on at a rate much slower than that she and her father had been managing despite the more direct path the highway provided.

  Even so, Rae’en worried about her pace. She’d heard the Armored could manage one hundred and twenty jun a day for days on end without rest. The twenty-four-year-old hadn’t realized quite what that would be like until she’d set out with Kholster for the “Grand Conjunction.” So far, a journey of close to three thousand jun, which normally took her father twenty-seven days, had already taken twenty-one, and they weren’t quite halfway yet.

  I’m slowing him down.

  The scent of blood hit her before the sound of her father moving back behind the trees. It was animal blood. Rabbit?

  “I don’t have a whole ox for you,” her father said, breaking the tree line, “but I did catch a few of these.” He looked perfectly at home in the woods, with blood on his hands, the pearlescent luster of bone-steel mail enhanced by, but not reflecting, the sun’s rays. A stray tangle of thorns trailed the calf of his denim pants (this pair a dark blue from a new dye batch Uncle Glin had been testing), and Kholster brushed it away before tossing her two small rabbits already skinned and something longer with a more musky smell.

  He’d trussed the animal carcasses together with twine from his pack. Rae’en bit through it easily enough.

  “A weasel,” he explained, and she took a tentative sniff of the longest body. “I’ve eaten them before. They’re fine. Tastes a little like squirrel or otter, maybe a little ratty.”

  “I ate yesterday—” she began.

  Kholster crossed to Rae’en’s bedroll and nodded in approval to see it already rolled up into a thin bundle no thicker around than her arm. It still mildly embarrassed her that he didn’t use one while she did, but no more than the fact that, as far as she could tell, he had yet to sleep at all on this journey.

  “You’ll need to eat more often until that finger has grown back in full.” He sat down on the grass, taking in the same view of the highway.

  Rae’en rubbed unconsciously at the regenerating stub on her left hand, where her little finger was taking Torgrimm’s sweet time growing back. She looked from Kholster’s bone-steel chain shirt to her own and smiled. She knew the Bone Finders would have permitted her to withdraw enough metal from the ossuary to complete her mail with donated bones, but she’d wanted to use her own for the entire shirt, just like Kholster had. She just hadn’t lost teeth fast enough to get sufficient material. Using her own bones had left her with less than an ounce of her own metal stored in the ossuary, but it had been worth it, particularly when she’d seen the looks of approval on the faces of the One Hundred and, more importantly, her father.

  “Will you eat some for Dwarven courtesy?” she asked. “I can’t eat all of this.”

  “Can’t?” He looked over his shoulder, and the light played along the edge of his beard, making it shine an even brighter red.

  “I’d rather not eat alone.”

  “You don’t want to eat the weasel, you mean.” Kholster held out his hand, received the weasel, and dutifully began to eat. “Vander won’t eat it either,” he said between mouthfuls. “It tastes fine to me.”

  “You eat cave snail,” Rae’en teased.

  “What,” Kholster cracked open the weasel’s skull to get at the brain, “is wrong with cave snail?”

  “It smells like . . . like . . . muck.”

  “And?”

  My father will eat anything; you know? she thought to M’jynn. She felt only a dim connection and frowned. So I’ve finally gone far enough my Overwatches can’t hear me. She shook her head.

  “Out of range?” Kholster asked.

  Rae’en nodded. “I could reach them last night, but—”

  “You’re a strong kholster, but even with a warpick properly forged and soul bonded, most of the unArmored can’t reach more than a few hundred jun northwest of Khalvad.”

  “And the Armored?”

  Kholster looked off to the horizon before answering as if he saw a distant object Rae’en could neither perceive nor comprehend. “I’ve found nowhere on this plane of existence where an Armored cannot reach out and commune with his or her true skin.”

  “On this plane of existence?” Her ears flattened a bit at that one.

  “When the Port Gates closed in the last Ghaiattri War,” Kholster said between mouthfuls of meat. “Those trapped on the other side. . . . Their armor could no longer find them.”

  The Lost Command, Rae’en thought to her Overwatches. I hope you can hear this. I’m trying to send it all.

  “Their souls did not rejoin the Aern, so it is possible they still exist out there somewhere, beyond the Port Gate, in the Ghaiattri Lands.”

  “So, there’s hope,” Rae’en chirped.

  “I never lose hope.”

  “That must be nice.”

  “At times.” Kholster patted her on the shoulder. “You should know your Overwatches may still be able to hear you when you think to them for some time. Before I was Armored, the few times Vander and the others were so far away their thoughts could not reach me, we discovered,” a grin swept across his features, “my thoughts could still reach them quite well.”

  “Well, you are All Know,” Rae’en said as she finished the first rabbit.

  Kholster laughed at her use of the name most newborn Aern first called him. Rae’en’s entire being thrilled at the sound. What was it like to be able to speak to every Aern? To know that every Aern spent his or her life hoping to please you? Was it uncomfortable, or did her father take pride in it? She couldn’t know without asking, but Rae’en sensed it was probably the first answer . . . uncomfortable, even after millennia. Her father knew any Aern would do anything he asked, even suggested . . .

  It was hard to wrap her brain around that level of responsibility. Was it any wonder he rarely—if ever—became romantically involved with Aernese women? Any of them would say yes, instantly, so he never asked. She imagined it would take a very direct, patient, and persistent Aern to court her father.
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br />   A blush rose to Rae’en’s ears and forehead. What had turned her thoughts to mating? Thinking of mating brought the image of Kazan’s face into her mind’s eye, and she flushed a deeper bronze. “Enough of that!” she whispered to herself. She waited for her father to comment, but he remained studiously unaware of her inner turmoil.

  “You can finish your rabbit while we walk,” Kholster said as he stood. “Keep your warpick wrapped,” he reminded her for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  “We don’t want the glare to draw attention to ourselves,” she said. “Yes, sir.”

  She reached back, felt the heft of her very own warpick between her shoulders and smiled.

  “And eat the liver,” he said, tossing a weasel organ to her. “That’s where the most metal is.”

  *

  Traveling mostly at a steady trot, the two Aern kept to old mountain roads, animal trails, and hiking paths, many of which were only marked now, if they had ever been, in her father’s memory. Kholster’s path drew them past burned stone shelters and homesteads which had long surrendered to nature. At times Kholster burst into a run with which Rae’en could not quite keep pace.

  What is he doing, guys? Rae’en thought at her Overwatches. They didn’t answer . . . and she’d expected them to, even though she knew they couldn’t. She had grown so accustomed to their presence on the edge of her consciousness. She missed them more like missing an arm than a finger.

  They scrambled up sheer drops. In one place, they stopped to fell a huge oak where the previous log bridge had collapsed or rotted through. In some spots, her father ignored new construction which would have made their path easier, while in other cases, he opted to cross bridges and steps which were obviously too poorly made to support either of their weights, reacting with surprise when they failed beneath him.