Oathkeeper (50 page)

“My brother and others like him . . .” Dolvek walked forward with a different gait than before. The arrogance had gone out of his movements, replaced by . . . and then she recognized it. Where once there had been swaggering confidence, there was now only resoluteness and acceptance . . . an alteration with which Tsan could not help but identify. “These Eldrennai turned Aiannai, who understand the wrongs my people have committed, have been accepted as a new people by the Aern. In the past, have you not made peace with one set of humans who call themselves by one name, while despoiling humans who . . . taste and . . . smell the same but call themselves by another name?”

“We have,” Tsan allowed with a nod. “We war with the people of Zaliz but know peace with the Holsvenians. Both nations are predominantly human.”

“Then—” Prince Dolvek kneeled, “—if it is acceptable to the people of Queen Kari and those clans united by Warlord Xastix, allow me to do well what I once did poorly. Allow me to represent my people, my new people, and secure a peace or . . . at the very least a territorial arrangement between us.” He hesitated on the final word. Whether by design or emotion, Tsan could not know. “Please.”

Well, well, well
, Tsan thought as she agreed,
as the saying goes, once the tunnel is dug one never knows what manner of creatures will try to crawl into it.

“I can promise neither your safety, nor that you will be heard, Prince.” Tsan dropped low, neck arched to look up at the Eldrennai from a lower vantage, a striking vantage. “But if you want to try, I welcome the attempt, if for no other reason than I may desire company when I am executed.”

CHAPTER 36

FIRST BREATH

“Not that I'm trying to hurt your feelings here, Magic Sam.” Tyree leaned over Kazan in the warm, steady light of Dwarven lanterns doing their best to push away the cavernous dark of the Zaur tunnel. Framed by locks of black hair, Tyree's face almost glowed in the lantern's light, his conspicuously white teeth and minty breath leaving Kazan wondering what this man knew that other humans didn't about taking care of his teeth. “But what did you just do?”

“Magic Sam?” Kazan wiped motes of sleep from his eyes.

“A traveling performer I know.” Tyree put an ear to Kazan's chest, and the young Overwatch wondered when his chain shirt had been taken off. “He used to fake all kinds of injuries only to ‘alchemically' heal them with a special potion he would then conveniently sell to any and all who were interested. Some of them would be ghastly in appearance, but they all healed.”

My apologies for the discomfort,
Eyes of Vengeance thought.
I had never tried it that way before, therefore the results were uncertain.

Discomfort?
Clearing his mind, Kazan felt the familiar contact of his fellow Overwatches as his mental map filled in. They were in a tunnel. He scrolled back along their path, grabbing information from the memories of M'jynn, Arbokk, and Joose for the time he'd been unconscious.

Blood.

He remembered blood.

A cow.

The blood raining down over Eyes of Vengeance as it opened wide to accept the flood.

A variation on a strip and dip,
Eyes of Vengeance told him.
It never occurred to us pre-Sundering because of our lack of independence. Given the circumstances, however, and the lack of real risk . . . the possibility became obvious. If we can breathe for you and burn for you, keep you from getting excessively tired . . .

Then why couldn't you, uh, feed for us and initiate the same kind of regeneration used when an Armored's bones are sealed within you and soaked in blood.
Kazan ran his tongue along his bottom teeth. Everything was there.
All better. I track you there, Eyes. Makes sense. Thanks.

This then was part of what it meant to be Armored and have friends, family, who were not. Kazan's wounds were gone, banished by his warsuit and the others still limped along, needing to down as much protein as they could to speed the healing. He knew he wasn't invincible, but he felt it. Stronger, faster; even his senses felt sharper, his mind more agile, and his link to the other Armored . . . had Vander felt like this?

I do not believe so,
Eyes of Vengeance sent.
You have the benefit of all the wisdom and knowledge it took Vander years to accumulate and an outlook young enough to see alternate approaches more easily.

“
Give me a moment
,” Kazan thought and said at the same time. Clicking together like tiles of the mind, Kazan let his connections to the other Aern restore themselves. Splitting the task amongst his local Overwatches, as well as Rae'en's inherited core, by the time he could have counted to one thousand, the world made sense again. Absently directing an imperiled Aern on the road to Fort Sunder to duck and roll, thus avoiding a crossbow bolt, and apologizing to the Aern's Overwatch for stepping in on her behalf, Kazan found the other data he needed about his local status.

They'd gone down an air vent into a Zaur tunnel, hoping to avoid any further Knightly encounters. Reptilian patrols were marked on the map where they had opted to avoid them. Apparently there was a large force with the giant serpents the Zaur called Zaurruks and Sri'Zaur of more types than the Aern had ever seen, moving aboveground toward Silver Leaf. Tyree and Cadence had opted to avoid them too, despite M'jynn's suggestion that they speed up their pace and try to make it to the human settlement in time to warn them.

Taking the safer route was a plan to which Kazan did not think he would have agreed had he been conscious at the time, but it was underway now. Arbokk and M'jynn were taking turns ranging ahead and behind to avoid any surprises. Tyree kept having to calm the horses, but for the first time since the Knights had begun chasing them at Castleguard, Kazan felt calm and safe . . . in a snake hole.

“Fake injuries healed?” Kazan asked, remembering what Tyree had been saying about a cohort of his named Magic Sam.

“Oh, it isn't all that unusual for a few of the world's more devious beings,” Captain Tyree began, “to take advantage of the less creative or intelligent. Not that I approve, of course, but . . .”

“Oh, you approve.” Cadence sat, legs crossed, hovering above the cavern floor. The lantern's light picked out the varying colors in her hair and eyes. He'd never met a crystal twist before, but if they were all like her, it was no wonder humans disliked them so much.

Why would people pay for a potion that didn't work?
he asked Eyes of Vengeance.

He is talking about a confidence game, Overwatch Kazan,
the deep echoing voice boomed in his mind.
Having never been injured, the human wiped away the false wounds as if by the magic of his elixir: often some combination of urine and an inexpensive pigment. He then sold the concoction at what appeared to his victims to be a low price and moved on to the next town with some urgency, hoping to be far out of reach of the local guards or angry customers by the time his deception was detected.

Often the dishonest individual (or individuals) rotate through more than one of these types of deceit, not performing the same crime in towns too close to one another.

You okay to walk now?
Joose thought.
Or do I need to carry you some more? You started shifting around, which is why we stopped.

I'm fine
, Kazan sent.
Thanks for the assist.

You're not all that heavy
, Joose sent back,
just unwieldy.

We have a lot of bodies up ahead
, Arbokk sent.
As best I can tell, we're close to where they were holding Rae'en and Wylant when Tyree helped them escape. The human took us a bit out of our way, but my guess is he was trying to get his bearings, not deliberately throw us off.

But it's passable?
Kazan stood and began to pull off his blood-stained clothes, washing the muck away with water from his Dwarven canteen. He discarded the jeans, washed the bone-steel mail, and donned his spare pants (blue as opposed to black). One of the others had rescued his boots, so he donned them, too.

Of course. It stinks, but it's not like kholster Wylant is with us. Are either of the humans allergic?

“You scarbacks really don't have any problem with nudity, do you?” Cadence was chuckling to herself while Tyree shook his head.

“Are either of you allergic to Zaur?” Kazan asked, assuming Cadence's query to be rhetorical.

“No,” Tyree answered. “I'd have noticed.”

“It stinks like a snake pit in here—” Cadence wrinkled her nose, “—but I'm not throwing up.”

Up and about?
Rae'en thought at Kazan.

Yes, kholster.
Her viewpoint (almost always running at one size or another in his view space) showed her on a nondescript section of the White Road en route to Fort Sunder. Working with the other Armored, he assembled an updated map with the location of all the Armored and their warsuits. Having been taken by surprise once when the Sri'Zaur assassins claimed the life of an Aern or a warsuit, Kazan intended that the Aernese army should never again be caught off guard by such an attack.
Sorry about the off-duty time. We should be able to pick up the pace now, but we're in a tunnel system and the others are not completely recovered yet.

Prime
, Glayne thought.
Do you recall what Twin Beak reported about Coal?

The dragon?
Kazan felt along the network of minds looking for Twin Beak and found him running toward Fort Sunder. The memory was recent enough, easy to find despite the guilt Twin Beak's behavior should have generated. He forwarded a quick note to Carst's kholster about it, leaving a little blinking icon in the corner of the kholster's map.

It's a note
, Kazan explained in response to the near-immediate inquiry he got from Carst's kholster.
You read it and decide whether to take any action regarding Twin Beak's cowardice. You're his kholster, not me.
Then to Glayne:
I do now. Why?

You'll want to see this.

Kazan flipped through Glayne's inputs before finding the one Glayne had left behind at Port Ammond. It was the point of view with the dragon in it.

Rae'en
, Kazan sent,
you'll want to see this.

Show me.

*

The first sign of a dragon attack is often the cold. Captain Dryga had heard those words before, whispered from the lips of his Matron when he was just a little biter, having managed to kill one of his brothers. As he'd chewed on sixth hatchling's heart, his mother cooed instructions to all the survivors, her pheromones quelling the need to fight, leaving them a mass of paranoid hatchlings eyeing each other, suspicious of the truce the presence of their Matron enforced.

Dragon tales had been his favorites of the stories his Matron told. Other lessons had application in reality, the here and now: tales of alliance now that they had reached the stalemate of being worthy enough to train. Rules of duels and how they were no longer allowed to eat one another unless in a formal combat, and even then only if she agreed the loser was no longer suitable for instruction. The winner instead typically took the loser's tail as his dinner (since it would grow back), and the loser had to endure the embarrassment of taillessness and limited Zaurtol while it regenerated over the next few months.

But as his breath blew white and sudden cold bit his scales, Dryga realized for the first time that all of his Matron's dragon stories had been education, too.

<> was all he managed to tap before the cold shut down his thoughts, his blood spreading sugars through his body in reaction as his limbs froze.

*

Hasimak and his students had created a routine. As they meditated to restore their concentration, they did so in pairs. With the evacuees away, Kholster suspected the Elemental Nobles would be following suit. If so, they said nothing. Kholster stared at the ancient Elementalist, watching his meditations, and felt he understood the elf for the first time. In six thousand years, it had never occurred to him Hasimak might have also been a victim, a prisoner of Uled's magic. He'd known of Hasimak's link to Kyland, Wylant's father. He'd even known that the old elf had taken Kyland in as an orphan with high magical potential and raised him, just as he had Uled and countless others.

It had been considered a great honor. Kholster knew this in the osmotic way he knew many things about Oathbreaker politics and practices. Some he witnessed, and in the earliest of days, when he and his brother One Hundred were treated as little more than trained hounds, waiting at table for scraps or performing whatever tricks or amusements the elves devised, he recalled a discussion where one of the Elemental Nobles of the time had asked Hasimak to take his niece under his wing, to train her and let her stay with him as Hasimak had done in the past.

Hasimak had agreed to train Bhaeshal, to personally tutor her as he did many, but he had refused to name her his ward.

Standing in their midst, in the high chamber of the Tower of Elementals, with its meditation mats, pillows, and scrolls, Kholster could not help but notice how tired the nobles were. Zerris and Hollis took one watch, Klerris and Lord Stone (how strange that each Stone Lord surrendered his proper name when the other nobles did not) taking the other, while Hasimak meditated through both watches, sustaining even in his quietude the field of energy that now wrapped around the tower, effectively sealing it against the Sri'Zaur attack.

“Coal.” Hasimak's eyes snapped open as the cold came. Blazing with violet light, the entire tower vanished, leaving Kholster standing in empty space for a hundred count as frost flowed over the city. Windows cracked. Everything froze as the dragon stole its heat to power his fire. The worst damage came not with the cold but with heat's return. Soil, heaved upward by the expansion of the water turned ice within it, crumbled inward by the rapid temperature change at the onset of Coal's draconic fire.