Oathkeeper (26 page)

“We can lure Torgrimm here and once we have him, we need only to syphon from him a portion of his—”

“Uled!” Wylant snapped the word, amplifying it with a hint of her Thunder Speaker addressing-the-troops voice. “You are out of time. The Aern are at the gates. Hells, they man this fortress. Will destroying the Life Forge stop the Aern or not?”

“The Aern? Yes.” Uled yawned. “I'm unsure about the warsuits.” He chewed his lower lip, tearing off a small chunk without noticing. “The beast was quite clever there. I've often wondered how he derived the process and tricked Zillek into allowing their creation. I made him too clever, I suppose. It's hard to quantify a reasonable level of intelligence when everyone is so inferior to me. But would King Zillek allow me to vivisect him and find out? No!” Uled threw out his hand, the rank smell of him hitting her full blast.

“He was too pleased with my second race, and Kholster in particular, to allow anything to happen.” Uled leered. “I'm astonished he let you share the beast's bed when it was so clear he wanted that . . . privilege . . . for himself. But I am smarter than the beast, smarter than all of you. I have found a way to—”

“Uled!” Wylant's heart pounded in her chest as if it were trying to match the beat of the Aern outside. “How do I destroy the Life Forge?”

“You?” Uled looked down his nose at her, erupting into another burst of choking laughter. “You?! Destroy my Life Forge? You can destroy nothing! We, perhaps, or I, but you? Ha! My bones and blood would be needed . . . plus my beast's bone metal.” Uled's eyes unfocused, peering far away as if he kept an unseen list hovering in the air for easy reference. “Perhaps one of his offspring would work . . . not a grandchild . . . an unawakened spawn would work reliably, but a femur from the beast himself would be best. I would forge it into a weapon on the Life Forge itself, slake it with a quenchant oil composed of my own blood, powdered bone, and fats.”

“Not something I could do quickly and survive. Give me . . .” Uled clucked his tongue, running it frantically across his teeth, each tooth previously belonging to Kholster. His head bobbed from side to side as if he were weighing options and, watching him, Wylant wanted to tear her husband's teeth out of the old elf's gums, even though Kholster did not miss them, had long since grown them back and shed and regrown thousands to replace them. “Give me three years
and
return my assistants . . . then I—”

“We don't have that much time!” Wylant grabbed the wretched Eldrennai's shoulders and shook him. Arcs of mystic blue flowed up her arms like minute lighting strikes.
A ward?
Each strike stung like a wasp had struck her, but she didn't see how Uled thought such a ward would stop anyone. Light flared from the crown patch on her shoulder. “What?”

Mouth falling open, eyes wide with fear, Uled struggled to pull free of her.

“No,” he screeched. “No! No! No! Zillek chose you? A female?! I gave him immunity to my wards and he transferred it to a female!”

“I suppose he did.” Wylant peered down at her shoulder. When Zillek had promoted her to General, established her as subordinate only to him, he had pressed a token against her shoulder. She remembered the burning warmth as it had seemed to dissolve on her skin. . . .

“Krio'Khan!” Uled screamed. “Defend!” Launching from the shadows, a crystalline golem two kholsters tall charged Wylant's position. “Malkarnius, attack!”

Buzzing madly, a cloud of prismatic wasps made of translucent jade erupted from the ornate floor tiles. Putting Uled between herself and her enemies, Wylant summoned as much elemental air as she could—

“Sargus override,” said a small quavering voice. “All guardians, suspend attack. Return to your positions and be still.”

Hunched and cloaked in brown robes etched in silver-threaded symbols, the figure stepped not from the shadows but forward from a spot near a scarred and acid-etched worktop. Color seeped in like drops of ink into a glass of water, filling in first the base color then the shading in finer details. His face filled in only after the robes were fully rendered—and what a face! Grotesquely distorted around the orbit of his right eye and the top quarter of that quadrant of his skull, the overlarge orb glinted with an incarnadine light.

Wylant thought one arm of the robe had been slow in appearing, only to realize as the arm itself was shading into full detail that the sleeve of the robe had been hacked away, exposing a ragged gash running the length of his forearm. Clamped to the severed artery a thin tube ran to a fountain pen with a bone-steel and gold alloy nib. Holding the pen in his left hand, a wicked-looking Ghaiattri horn dagger in his right, blood still wet on its edge, Sargus trailed blood from the narrow hooked beak nib of the pen, each drop forming arcane symbols on the tile in thick, precise, italic strokes. A pattern formed in his wake and all around him, growing with each step.

“Sargus!” Uled growled. “What do you think you are doing?!”

“Aiding and abetting in your death, sir.” With more context, Wylant recognized that the trembling in the young artificer's voice had been—not fear—but barely reined-in rage.

“How?” Uled gasped.

Not “why,” Wylant noted. Obviously Uled knew quite well why his son would want him dead.

“I am my father's son.” It came as whisper, the words echoed in blood on the tiles. “And a subtler monster.

“Your supposition that I can assist you is quite correct, General Wylant.” Sargus straightened as the cloud of jade wasps named Malkarnius sank back into the tiles and the golem Krio'Khan returned to his cleverly concealed closet within the shadowed corner of the laboratory. A pack of leather and brass took shape, revealing his hunch to be illusion.

“But I broke you,” Uled breathed.

“And what you broke I repaired.” Sargus's lips quivered into a sneer. His facial deformity washed away to reveal a leather cap with various lenses ready to be dropped into the brass loupe covering his right eye. “Everything you have done, I will cleanse. Your every misdeed I shall expose and ameliorate. You tried to ensure my passivity. Instead, you have wrought in me the eventual absolution for your misdeeds. I am not so smart as you, sir, but nor am I so lost to madness.”

“You're certain you can help me destroy the Life Forge?” Wylant asked.

“Yes.” Sargus lowered his left hand, and the flow of blood stopped. Spiderlike metallic limbs of various shapes and alloys reached out of his pack and carefully put away his dagger and pen, while other arms tended his wound with flesh knitters and laughing salve. “I lacked the tools, but I found Father's secret journals and broke his private decryptions long ago. I would kill him for you, but I lack your immunity to his wards. I believe I have constructed a workaround, but I would rather not test it needlessly.”

“A moment,” Uled said. As he spoke, it was as if he summoned sanity from some scant reserve, tick lessening, voice steady, eyes clear. “Grant me one concession and I will assist you willingly even unto my own death.”

“Grant him nothing,” Sargus cautioned, pale from the loss of the blood drying into a ruddy brown behind him on the floor. “Kill him before he even tells you what he wants.”

“Surely you can grant me a final request.” Uled smiled at his son. “It's something you can do after you destroy the Life Forge. It won't delay you.”

“What is it?” Wylant understood Uled's reputation but refused to be intimidated by an addled male who had been effectively neutered by his own son.

“No,” Sargus begged. “There is no limit to the evil of which my father is capable. There has never been another mind like his, and we have his full attention now.”

“You think he has a plan that involves his own death?” Wylant gave Sargus an incredulous look.

“No,” Sargus answered, the strength going out of him a bit as he spoke. “Not involving. I think he has no less than a dozen plans in the event of his physical death. At least one of which involves Torgrimm becoming lessened or altered in some way.”

Uled frowned, sucking in his cheeks.

“What is the favor?” Wylant asked.

Sargus sighed, settling down on a collapsible stool that emerged from his pack and was set in place by the brass armature.

“Keep my skull intact. Don't let the Aern crush it into powder or break it. Throw it into Kevari Pass or somewhere remote. I wish at least the part of me that housed my brain to be safe from my creations.”

“Sargus?” Wylant looked at him questioningly.

“Do what you will.” Sargus closed his eyes, breathing in deep, even pulls of air. “I have no idea want he really wants, but we'll most likely do it now. His mind is nothing but gears within gears. Either he wants us to smash his skull or he wants it preserved, or maybe there is some event he knows will take place if it lies undisturbed.” He gave his father a look of bitterly grudging admiration. “Uled may have contingencies involving all three. My default would have been to ask your opinion. Barring that, I would have asked Kholster's advice.” He peered at the entryway. The door swung open on an empty hallway, but he watched it warily. “He, however, might be disinclined to assist us in our current endeavor. You know best, General.”

“Me?” Wylant was not used to males not in her direct line of command giving her opinions the credence they deserved.

“Well, you
are
General Wylant.”

“And?”

“I'll put it to you this way.” Sargus stood, color coming back into his cheeks. “King Zillek was given two tokens that would grant the bearer immunity to my father's wards. The king came to me and I told him I couldn't duplicate them without my father's knowledge, and that it would actually take both tokens to grant full immunity.” He shook his head to clear it.

“The king came back to me two days later to ask if I could alter the tokens so they would bond with the individual upon whom he bestowed them. Permanently. Once I completed the work, he obviously instilled that immunity in you.”

“Brat!” Uled scowled. “Without your meddling—”

“She'd be dead,” Sargus agreed. “Yes, which is why I am pleased beyond measure that the king recognized—” His eyes widened. “You might want to kill him now to set off the lab's contingencies.”

Gods.
Wylant followed his gaze and saw Bloodmane striding down the corridor.
These males would tear the world in two if I wasn't here to stop them.

“I will shatter the Life Forge, Kholster!” Wylant shouted to her husband. “If you do not stand down. I will do it.” She waited for a reply, but she heard nothing. “You'll all die!” Why couldn't he do something, come up with some loophole to stop this?

Why can't I?
But she knew why. Kholster could not stop his people and remain true to them. Couldn't swallow all that abuse. He had to be stopped or he betrayed the Aern.

“We will merely most of us die.”

“Kholster!” Pain wrenched through her abdomen, and she resisted the urge to place her hand on her belly. “Don't make me do this!”

“Do it.” Kholster halted his advance ten paces from the door. “It's within your power—your only chance to win.”

Sharp and jagged the pain grew. Vax was coming. Too early.

“But I don't want to win; not like this.” She hadn't known it before she spoke the words, but she knew it to be true. She would just as soon let all the Eldrennai die than kill her husband's people. They deserved to be free. Revenge was their right.
The annihilation of the Eldrennai is just
.

“Then you understand, in your darkest hour, what it is like to be me in mine.” On the last syllable, he charged. Wylant snapped Uled's neck. The door slammed shut, and then there was no door. A color shift toward the blue spectrum of light cast everything into altered tones. Even the air tasted stale and strange.

“That was kind,” Sargus told her.

“No.” She let the frail corpse slip from her gasp. “There was no time and I wasn't sure how much blood we would need.” She grunted as the contractions began in earnest. A normal Aernese birth was painless, but when the unawakened Aern came too early . . . it meant the Aern would be fine. More blood in the bucket, more time soaking, but the mother, unless she too was Aern, would have no other children.

I know it hurts
, said the dark, brutal voice,
but you need the bone metal to destroy the Life Forge. A victory over the Aern. Think of the glory!

“No!” she screamed, but the voice would have his way. She remembered then. Dienox's hand on hers, his will supplanting her own. Dienox had forced her to forge Vax into the weapon that shattered the Life Forge. Fury and relief in equal measure tore at her heart. And with those emotions, guilt that she had not been strong enough to stop him . . . and worse, the nagging possibility that she could have stopped him if she wanted but had chosen, in some deep part of herself, to do whatever she needed to do to win.

CHAPTER 19

NEW SCARS

“I've never seen anyone but an Aern do that.” Kholster's voice snapped Wylant back to reality. She was still standing near her husband, her hand on Vax's hilt, but it seemed, for the first few seconds, as if she were in the wrong place at the wrong time. She'd been standing over the Life Forge melting down her unawakened child. Her right hand closed around Kholster's forearm, nails digging in; her left gripped Vax tighter, knuckles white.

“I remembered things.” Wylant checked the corners of her room. Wardrobe. Washbasin. Bed. Balcony. Armor stands. The armor she planned to give Rae'en. . . . “Lost history I could not recall at all before . . . even when it was happening, it was veiled from me.”

Kholster nodded, his lips drawn into a tight line of grim control.

“A nod?” She released his forearm and swatted him in the chest.