Oathkeeper (9 page)

“Thank you, Mighty Coal.” Jolsit flew clear to deliver the information. Of the assembled Eldrennai, fifteen of them flew off over the forest, the remaining twenty holding ranks in the air. In his youth, Coal would have vomited lava on the ground beneath their formation to put a little fear into them, but after having ignited a mage earlier, he contented himself with resting on the embers beneath him, soaking up the heat to fuel himself for the upcoming exertions. He realized abruptly that he did not actually need the rest, but a youthful body could not so quickly undo the instincts of an elder wyrm.

Lulled into a light doze by the crackle and roar of the forest burning about him, Coal laid his head down amid the embers, blowing black smoke through his nostrils. Spires of ashes billowed into the sky. Wood smoke smelled so much nicer than sulfur. A half-seen figure moved near him in the haze, whispering.

“Burn it,” the low voice insisted. “Burn it all! The rage will spur on the Eldrennai and harden the Vael. That is what would be the greatest help to the Aern.”

Feigning sleep, Coal listened to the voice, letting his left eye slide open a bit so that he could barely see the armor-clad Eldrennai and its . . . crystal battle-axe? Accompanying the words, a low pressure set up in Coal's sinuses.
Dienox! Who else would try to force his will upon a dragon?

“If you give me a headache,” the dragon whipped its head up and around to face the god of war, “I will burn the skin from your back. No. No. Worse than that, I will pray to Jun.”

“You wouldn't!” Dienox threw down his axe.

“I would,” Coal snorted. “As I recall, it has been quite a long time since you were banned from influencing dragonkind, bald one.”

How that idiot of a war god had let a mortal steal his one redeeming attribute, Coal could not fathom. Then again Nomi was a female and thus so much brighter and more useful than the males of her species . . . Coal caught himself looking around hopefully, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Pity. I should have much preferred to speak to her. She could have told me how Kholster is getting on as a new deity. Ah well.

The dragon turned his attention back to Dienox, who was still prattling on about something.

“—and it's been so long since I saw a dragon,” Dienox protested.

“I know.” Coal flashed a mouth filled with row after row of jagged obsidian teeth. “Do not think I haven't missed the attention, the incessant begging. It is flattering (in small doses), I assure you, but my tolerance for it has diminished. Soon, I think I shall join my brethren. No more than a century or so. I suppose it would have been sad to leave this place without one last encounter.”

“You will join the others?” Dienox asked eagerly, touching the dragon's muzzle with his gauntlet. “Will you tell me where they've gone?”

They? As if they had all gone to the same place or told me where they intended to go.
Coal focused his energy, circulating more and more heat through his scales until the god jerked back his hand with a curse. Then the dragon got an idea.

“I will,” Coal answered gravely. It was just too easy to get under Dienox's armor.

“Yes?” Dienox still shook his injured hand, blowing at the steam rising from it.

Few mortal beings can harm a deity, little god, unless Shidarva condones it, but you would do well to remember that I am one of them.

“Yes, but you must promise never to tell anyone, not even the other gods, and you must promise to go there directly.”

“Of course. You have my word!”

“Very well.” Coal's voice was softer than a baby's cry, a whisper for a dragon.

Dienox leaned forward with each word until sweat ran down his face, his cheek reddening with heat and the painful effort of enduring it.

“Well?” Dienox hissed.

“Well what?” the dragon cooed.

“Where did they go?”

“Who?”

“The dragons!” Dienox shouted.

Coal pulled himself up to his full height, stretching out his wings until the god of war was eclipsed in the shade of him. He paused for a long moment, eyes glittering, before he finally answered: “Away.”

“Away?!” Dienox stomped his foot. “I know they went away, but where did they go away to? No one will tell me and I cannot see them!”

Coal settled back down, nestling out a more comfortable spot for himself with his nose. “Your promise, Lord Dienox,” the dragon reminded him sleepily. “Go away.” Chuckling gently, small trails of magma trickling over his teeth and drooling onto the cracked earth, Coal drifted off to sleep and dreamed of planets roasting in an endless sky of fire.

CHAPTER 7

IN THE SHADOW OF KHOLSTER

Kholster growled. “Did that bald idiot just try to influence Coal?”

Aldo frowned. “Your lack of focus is disrupting my mirror. Who cares what Dienox tries to convince the old wyrm to do? Not even one of
us
can force a dragon's will.”

“Then what are you trying to show me?” Kholster eyed Aldo impatiently. “Rivvek has a plan. Coal arrived to help with a plan that won't work, because they have the scale of the invasion wrong. What am I missing?”

“Not the dragon,” Aldo answered, “Oot.”

“Rivvek was at Oot. So?”

I believe he is making reference to the occasion, sir.

What occasion?

It is the last day of the last Grand Conjunction.

“Rae'en?” Kholster whispered. He had tried so hard to stay out of her way, to avoid looking in on her, thus preempting any temptation to interfere. . . .

“I thought you might be curious,” Aldo said. “You have been there for all the others . . . and you were going to have to show up in person at the end of this one in any case.”

“She's decided then,” Kholster's voice was cold.

“Look and see,” Aldo said.

Kholster peered deeper into the mirror, saw the encampment of Aiannai leading back in a ragtag line from Oot. Frustrated with the limited view of Aldo's mirror, the death god took a single step.

*

Two lithe figures flew over an array of statues cast in midnight. They caught a chill wind as it blew in off of the Bay of Balsiph, flowing with the current even as it sent them wending amid the representations of divinity. Arranged in two semicircles, the effigies of the gods faced each other: six on one side and six on the other—opposing pieces in a cosmic game with two gods standing aloof . . . players picking sides.

A seahawk joined the two in flight long enough to take their measure, unleashing a shrill cry of protest when one of the two waggled her ears at it. Clad in formfitting doeskin leathers, the top heavily beaded and exposing the silvery skin-like bark of her midriff, the Vael laughed, letting the air spin her around, casting her long yellow head petals out around her head.

The slightest of frowns touched the edge of her lips. She opened her mouth to speak, exposing unscored dental ridges instead of teeth. With a shake of her head, she banished the thought.

“Careful, Yavi,” her flying companion snorted, “wouldn't want you falling out of the sky because your thoughts are too heavy.”

“Yours are heavy enough for both of us,” Yavi laughed, continuing her spin, arms outstretched. “Thanks for letting me go flying with you, Wylant. I was going crazy down there with those two. Mother should have sent Kholburran in my place. I can't keep Rae'en civil. Far from the usual calming effect my people have on Aern, it's as if my being here makes her even angrier.”

Below them, Wylant looked pityingly upon King Grivek, who sat wrapped in furs over his heavy robes, trying to stay warm while the young female Aern across from him wore clothing more appropriate for a summer tryst than for sitting out on a pier at the edge of winter. Long red hair tied back in a ponytail, arms crossed as she loomed over the seated elder elf, Rae'en bared her teeth in thinly veiled contempt, exposing the doubled upper and lower canines that were an Aern's birthright every bit as much as bone-steel and those disturbing jade-rimmed amber-on-black eyes.

Of course you anger her, Yavi
, Wylant thought.
To Rae'en you are a Flower Girl. She doesn't know what went on between you and her father . . . only that he obviously made a strong enough impression to strand you in a state of false Spring.
Aloud she said only, “Help me get a new count of them.”

The line of refugees, some in ramshackle tents or wooden caravans, others with only bedrolls or the clothes on their backs, was still growing. On the day after Kholster's death—
Was it really death if you became a god?
Wylant mused—they had begun to arrive. First as a trickle, in ones and twos, and then in a flood of tens and dozens, they had come, crowding the forest approach to the Place of Conjunction, not daring to set foot upon the dark marble of . . . Oot itself.

Oot. The name still amused and saddened Wylant in equal measure: glad the artist had succeeded in signing his creation and disappointed her people had forced his hand . . . or talon . . . claw? Would a name like Divine Shadows Wrought in Stone truly have been so bad?

“Won't they be in danger this close to Rae'en when the war breaks out?” Yavi shouted as she met Wylant at the end of the camp.

“Unlikely. What was your count?” Some of the people below waved at Wylant, but she did not wave back.

“Around three hundred.”

Wylant counted three hundred and eleven.
I had no idea Kholster had spared so many.
Then again, it wasn't as if she'd checked each of their backs for patrimonial scars. Were they all Aiannai, or had the slow trickle of those who had been spared by the Aern caused an exodus of those who wanted to be anywhere but Port Ammond when the Aern came to destroy the Eldrennai?

“I am sure some of them are Aiannai,” Wylant called back. “Dubbed Oathkeepers.”
Like me. And Rivvek . . . but no sign of the prince today.
“Those will be fine. Anyone who just followed the tiny exodus, though . . . I wouldn't want to be them. Have you seen Rivvek?”

“The scarred prince?” Yavi dropped a few feet in the air, before resuming her habitual eupeptic mien. “Not since the first day. His tent went up before the rest, but he sure has been coming and going a lot. Maybe he has a girlfriend back at the castle.”

“I doubt that very much.” Wylant followed her gaze to the spot where Prince Rivvek's tent stood unoccupied at the head of the others. Two royal guards, both Aiannai like their prince, manned the entrance as if Rivvek were still in residence, but where had the prince gone? Perhaps there was no requirement that he be present for the end of the Grand Conjunction, but given what was likely to happen to his father, Wylant had assumed he'd want to . . . say good-bye . . . or bear witness . . . show his king that he . . .

“Then again maybe he doesn't—”

Maybe he couldn't bear it.

“Huh?” Yavi asked, but Wylant ignored her.

Wylant had never known her own father. Kyland had perished in the Second Great Demon War, volunteering to march through a Port Gate with the Lost Command. Did his bones decorate the same macabre resting place as those lost Armored? Did their statues watch over him? Had he thought of her at the end? She and her father had shared the same air for a hundred years, but he had so rarely been granted leave to come home. . . .

Wylant shook her head to clear the thought. It hardly mattered. As a ward of the realm, she'd risen higher in the military than she'd ever have been allowed if her father had lived. There were other women in the Eldrennai military, but few were allowed to fight. She had hoped to change that, in time, but now time had decided to resolve it a different way. Wylant wished she'd been born a Dwarf or an Aern or even a Vael. Each race still had its gender politics, but theirs were so far beyond her people's. Maybe Rivvek would help her to enact that change for those who survived, if there were enough survivors for it to matter.

As the wind rose, a familiar presence fell in beside her, a spirit she felt she knew, better than she knew herself. Death was imminent, not hers, but—she assumed—the king's. Letting herself drift to the ground, she sensed the presence follow her partway down before flowing away toward the pier.

“Are you okay?” Yavi asked, joining her.

“Someone is about to die,” Wylant answered.

“Someone is always about to die.”

“Here.” Wylant stared back at the statues. “There.”

“How do you know?” Yavi asked.

“Because Kholster is here,” Wylant said.

“And how do you know that?!”

“I was married to him.” A sad smile traced Wylant's lips before giving way to a grimace as her fingers clasped the pommel of Vax, the shapeshifting weapon, currently a sword, she'd forged in a blur at the time of the Sundering. She would always carry guilt about Vax's creation due to the source of the bone metal she'd used to forge him. She didn't like to think about it, could not, in fact, clearly remember having done it, though she knew she had. “How could I not?”

“I'd better get over there then,” Yavi said. “Fly with you later,” the Vael called over her shoulder as she ran toward the deific statuary. Toward Oot.

*

Wylant watched her go, considered following her for a moment, but then headed to her tent. One more witness wouldn't change what was going to happen out on that pier, and as much as she enjoyed the feel of Kholster's presence, Wylant couldn't face him, couldn't stand beneath those jade and amber eyes. And speaking of eyes . . .

Wylant felt the weight of someone's gaze on her.

Caz, clad in Silencer, his warsuit, stood aloof from the non-Aern in the shadow of an ancient blood oak growing at the edge of Oot, its roots waging a losing battle against the black material of which Oot was made.

Silencer's skull-like helm completely obscured the Bone Finder's features, but Wylant knew his attention was on her. Worse, she could sense him focusing on Vax, her . . . Weapon. Each time her hand strayed to the hilt and Vax responded, the force of Caz's attention caused the small hairs on the back of Wylant's neck to stand up. Running a hand across her scalp, the black stubble of new growth rough against her palm, Wylant frowned.