Oathkeeper (13 page)

“No.” Kholster's response came without hesitation, his voice firm and unyielding. Even though something about him gave Grivek the impression that Kholster regretted the answer, the necessity of it. Was that a hint of sadness in the eyes of death? “Anything else?”

His heart, or what felt like his heart given that he knew he no longer possessed a physical one, ached at that denial. His breath caught, but he choked out the next words. “To the hells, then?”

“No.” Kholster shook his head, and then it was the death god's turn to sigh. “There will be no afterlife for the Eldrennai. No judgment. No punishment. No reward. I will not allow it. Call it a compromise. If I let you go on to some reward, not all of you would deserve it. If I consigned you all, with the Bone Queen's aid, to the various hells, not all of you will deserve that either.”

“But then. What? Will you destroy us utterly? Eat our very souls?”

Grivek blanched at the fierce intensity of the emotion that bloomed in those orbs of jade, amber, and obsidian.

“I would like to, but you all go back,” Kholster said after a long moment. “And it has to be all of you or it isn't quite fair.”

“Back?”

Kholster nodded, pointing with one bone gauntlet at the world below. “Back.”

“But?” Grivek stammered, relieved. “But how?”

“Reincarnation. It works for gnomes. Besides,” Kholster's voice broke, and he wiped his eye, “just because I can't forgive this Grivek doesn't mean I can't forgive the next one. All oaths are redeemed in death, and if the new you doesn't remember his crimes and lives in a body, thinks with a brain that never committed them . . . perhaps I could come to forgive that being. Maybe you'll even make me proud. Do better this time, Leash Holder.

“When confronted with something you know to be evil, stand your ground. Speak your mind. Don't just sit there and feel sorry. Act on your beliefs.” Kholster pulled the king's soul close, compressing him. “A real king is willing to die for his people. I hope you didn't delay too long to spare yours.”

All things fell away, all the old memories, the joys, the sorrows. Nothing left, but a primal understanding of the lessons he had learned. “You chose the right son, by the way. He just might save his people yet.”

And then new hands held him, cradled like an infant. A kind god. A loving god. “Shhh,” cooed Torgrimm, “he's not as bad as he seems. How about a nice new body? Hmmm? Would you like that? How about a human this time? Or a Cavair? Would you like to fly on leather wings across the sea at night? Live high in seaside caves? Be at peace with the Aern for once?”

He liked that idea very much.

“Very well,” Torgrimm told him, “Let's see what we can find.”

*

“That was nice.” Petite, shapely, and wearing her stolen flaming hair in glorious waist-length locks, Nomi trailed flowing silks as she walked down from the edge of the Outwork, where hung the stars and suns that formed the night sky. Beautiful as she was, she was not Wylant or even Yavi or Helg. Nor did Kholster consider the way he had acted to be nice.

“No,” Kholster answered. “Nice would have been for me to hand him over to Minapsis and allow her to deliver him to the White Towers of his ancestors, were they not already empty.”

“Empty?” Nomi asked. “I don't pretend to keep track of everything Minapsis does, but when did she decide—?”

“Her husband convinced her, before I took part of his job.” Kholster cleared his throat. “As he feared, it did not take me long to decide to seek out Uled, to see if I agreed with the punishment he must surely be receiving, but he was already gone, reincarnated, as were all Eldrennai.”

“And you didn't decide to take it out on Grivek?” Nomi pursed her lips. “Impressive restraint.”

“Not really. He was a good elf, as Oathbreakers go, and he had learned at the last what he needed to know. This should have been his end, but—”

“Then why send him back?” Nomi steepled her fingers, gazing at him with an inscrutable smile on her face.

“Because I hate him.” Kholster shrugged. “I shouldn't, but I do.”

“It's okay to hate a few mortals,” Nomi said. “A few immortals, too.”

“No.” Kholster studied the goddess. The way she moved spoke of dances he had never seen and combat stances that had died out years before he'd been created.

“‘No' isn't exactly an argument.” Nomi winked.

“I wasn't arguing.” Kholster closed his eyes and saw through not just the eyes of Harvester but all the other occurrences of Kholster himself. That was shifting as well. The more he thought about how strange it was for there to be more than one of him at any given moment, the harder it became for him to accept it and the more disturbing it became to experience.

Sir?
Harvester sent.

I'm fine
, Kholster lied. In truth, his head pounded and he felt as if something was missing, but he couldn't get a good hit in to see what color it bled.

Is there anything I can do?

No.

“Maybe it's because you're new to the whole god thing,” Nomi said cheerfully. “You'll get used to it. It took me a long time and I still feel a bit out of my depth. Unconnected.”

“How so?”

“Well.” Nomi took him gently by the elbow, leading them both down to a spot in the center of the ice continent. “I guess . . . you know how the gods tend to have two aspects?”

“Yes,” Kholster answered as he joined her on a snow-swept peak of ice. Beings of a race Kholster did not recognize stood frozen in the snow, halted in the midst of everyday things. They wore garb like Nomi, thin and silky. “You transported me?”

“Gods can move each other around, Kholster.” Nomi blasted away a huge swathe of snow, churning it to steam with her might, revealing intricately painted buildings, small, but lovely, made of mud. “We can do all sorts of things to one another if we aren't careful.” She ran her fingers through her hair for emphasis. “I know you are the Harvester and everything now, but you need to know how . . . um . . . tricky Aldo is. And Gromma is absolutely frightening. I'm friendly enough, but even I scalped a war god to get where I am.”

Maybe you should go ahead and kill her, sir,
Harvester suggested.
By her own admission—

I'll hold off for now, Harvester.

“Does this tie back to the two aspects comment?”

“Indirectly.” Nomi sat down against the wall of the newly revealed hut. “Some of them are dual natured, others aren't. People like us, which is one of the reasons I think Torgrimm wanted me to talk to you . . . well, being singular instead of dual, if you claim your role, it can become all-encompassing. To keep myself as myself, I've had to ignore my deific role in many ways. But you've embraced yours.”

“And you feel it may change me?” Kholster asked.

“It already has.” Nomi leaned her head back against the mud wall. “Just look at Torgrimm. He's already different. Happier, really. Certainly more amorous now that he is the Sower. Take your time. Ease into it.”

“Mortals do not stop dying just because I am, in some ways, having a rough adjustment.”

“You're the god of death,” Nomi laughed. “Reap them on your own schedule. Take things slowly. You need time.”

“Perhaps, but if so, it is a luxury,” Kholster told her, “I cannot justly afford. Death should not hate the living, nor play games with them, nor make them wait. Torgrimm taught me that.

“I am an ending. Done well, my job is the last line of a bard's tale masterfully sung or the final moments before a smith calls his weapon finished. I will not be idle.”

“Yeah.” Nomi sat cross-legged in the air. “Torgrimm said you'd feel that way. He thought you might like to have someone to speak with, to, you know, work things out? So . . . if you need someone.” Nomi stood.

I like her, but you should still reap her, sir,
Harvester thought at him.
She won't expect it. The timing is excellent.

“I will take that under consideration,” Kholster said.

“I think that's wise,” both Nomi and Harvester replied: one in his thoughts, the other aloud.

“Thank you.” Kholster rubbed his chin, feeling the close-cut well-groomed beard. He peered into Nomi and saw she was not like him. She was sad, really: a mortal soul clinging to divinity via a glorified hairpiece like some of the more affluent humans in the Guild Cities were known to wear, though theirs were made of admittedly inferior material.

She had never fully accepted her role, whatever it was supposed to be, and Kholster wouldn't have lasted three soul reapings if he had refused to take on the whole of his new responsibilities, but it was true that he felt . . . changed . . . thinner . . . stretched. . . .

While one Kholster listened to Harvester and spoke to Nomi, others swept across the world below separating souls like wheat from chaff and sending them where 'ere he would. How to explain to one who obviously did not grasp it, how death: seeing it, partaking of it, could change a person . . . even a god. To have seen the death of millions over the course of six thousand years, and then, within the space of a handful of days, to witness the death of more than a quarter million and to then understand that, by Winter's end, if not its arrival, the deaths would total more than you had ever known . . . and that by the end of a year you will have seen more death and reaped more souls than you had a number to name?

“Well,” Nomi said after a long silence. “If there's nothing right now, I'll check back later.”

“One question.” Kholster realized he was fussing with his beard and stopped. “You rose to godhood after stealing Dienox's flaming hair.”

“That's not a question yet.” Nomi winked. “But yes.”

“You also said you had not fully accepted your role.”

“True, but still not a question.” Nomi wiped snow off the back of her pants and blouse.

“Of what then are you god?” Kholster asked.

“Excuse me?”

“I took a portion of Torgrimm's might,” Kholster said, “creating sower and reaper, but you became . . . ?”

“Resolution,” Nomi answered. “In the beginning Dienox was both Conflict and Resolution. War and Peace, I guess, but that's—no. Don't look at me that way. I've never really taken up the mantle . . . I just wanted to live forever.”

The cycle of War and Peace was broken then, in the same way life and death had become unjoined when he'd fought Torgrimm. Kholster nodded and muttered a “Thank you” as he moved on to the next dead mortal.

It was so much easier when I imagined myself waging war on the gods and reaping them until the games were done
, Kholster thought.

Then why don't you, sir?
Harvester asked.
What prevents you?

My conscience.

Ah,
Harvester thought.
It is my considered opinion such things often cause trouble.

If I am, as Nomi asserted, slowly being changed by my role, you may one day get your wish.

PART TWO

LEGACY OF THE LIFE FORGE

“If only I had understood that my knowledge of the Zaur and Sri'Zaur and their origins was information as uncommon . . . as vital . . . as damning as it was, I would have spread it far and wide, or at least delivered a briefing to the kholster of the Aernese army and the Ossuarian. Despite the scars on my back, through my inaction and lack of foresight, I made myself into my father's unwitting accomplice increasing by one more betrayal (albeit an unwitting one) the debt owed by Uled's blood.

It is, as a direct result of this disastrous oversight, therefore, that I have laid a self-inflicted geas upon myself, my quest to record all that I know of my father's work, the resulting volumes, scrolls, and artifacts to be surrendered completely to the Aern, Vael, and Aiannai leadership that the datum I alone appear to possess may be preserved for their future use, even if I should myself pass into the Harvester's embrace.”

From the introduction to
The Reptilian Error
by Sargus

CHAPTER 11

SNAPDRAGON'S FURY

Kholburran smelled Zaur in the forest. Their scent, a mix of reptilian and Eldrennai (amphibian, too, maybe?) spread through the forest in a miasma of odor undiminished even by the billowing smoke from the flames of burning trees that had been following them for a whole day. At night, the northeastern horizon limned orange. The odor rode the smoky taint of the spreading forest fires begun at Tranduvallu.
Is it heavier than the smoke
, Kholburran wondered,
pushed along by it
?

Overhead, the drying leaves of autumn made for a poor bulwark. Lush green forest awaited nearer the other Root Trees, especially near Hashan and Warrune, but getting there was taking too long. “Nature spirits are hard to control during a disaster,” Malli had explained to him. As a boy-type person, not very good with spirits, he had to take her word. And so, they ran . . . and ran. . . .

Ahead of him, Arri and Lara moved at a relentless pace. If the loss of Arri's right arm was throwing her off at all, she covered it well, compensating with experience gained from all those formal combat lessons (with sparring and drills, and lots of different weapons, not anything like the private lessons Malli had given him) in which boy-type persons (those with the potential to Take Root, in particular) were unwelcome. Arri had always been talented, the most talented in his Root Guard next to Malli. Thinking her name dredged up all the worry as if it were a new thing. Kholburran risked a quick spot check over his shoulder.

“We're not going to drop her,” Faulina hissed, catching the look. “Eyes front, Snapdragon.”

Embarrassing or not, it had been enough of a look to verify Malli was still back there safely (or as safe as a Vael with cracked heartwood was likely to be in a forest full of invading Zaur) suspended in the makeshift moss stretcher Faulina and Seizal carried between them, her torso bound as well as they could manage to help her keep from splitting even further.