Oathkeeper (3 page)

Asvrin
, Tsan thought,
I am so proud of your rise to power . . . though I am no longer your mother. You, even more than Dryga, are one to keep an eye on, if not a claw in
.

Tsan turned away from his guard, dropping to all fours and peering up at his army's current objective. The stone, far colder than the air around it, hurt the joints of his forepaws, a sign that his gender switch was soon approaching. The switch, he did not doubt, was responsible for turning his mind to children from his previous clutches . . . those he could still recall.

Tsan preferred being female; he felt more agile, more lithe, and even his scales were smoother, more supple. But the timing . . . taking the time to mother another brood at all, much less in wartime, was unthinkable. He'd had to take too many new names, stop and restart his career too many times to make that sacrifice again. Heresy or not. Anger ripped through him, speeding his heartbeat, diminishing his air reserves, and Tsan reined the line of thought in. Resisting the gender switch enflamed emotions, wreaking havoc with impulse control. Letting it happen meant peace and steadiness, but it would have to wait.

Filling his mind with an inferno, scourging his mind of all distraction beyond his current purpose, Tsan deliberately slowed his heartbeat. Eyes half-lidded and lazy, he channeled the confidence he'd felt at Na'Shie when he had successfully cut off all hope of aid to the Eldrennai from the human kingdoms beyond the Sri'Zauran Mountains. One last step and the way would be prepared.

But first the flames. He stretched his jaws wide, pops of temporary dislocation music to his auditory receptors.

<> Tsan tapped, lingering on his Prime Flamefang's name. He'd done as he'd promised the alchemists back home, had given their Zaur firelighter and his accompanying device a chance. He was unsurprised that they had failed. Still, there were numerous ways to start a fire—a few extra for Sri'Zaur such as Brazz.
I may need his help with more delicate matters before the week is out . . . but first we burn the Vael.
Wedged head angling up like a hound sniffing the air, Tsan crept in closer to the mass of tree roots exposed by his Zaur's tunneling. Digging a foreclaw into the wood, he chuffed as the tiny root hairs wriggled away from him in a futile attempt at escape. The Vael Root Tree was as weak as a human in its way.

Tsan's humor died when the sap welling up from beneath his black claw was a honeyed amber color. The youngest Root Tree, yes, but transmuted enough, even at this early stage in his root taking, to have a different sap from the rest of its race, the Vael.

It would have so much easier to get the warlord's Vael blood sample before the battle even started
, Tsan mused.
Alas
.

What Warlord Xastix wanted with samples from the Weeds, scarbacks, and stump ears, Tsan did not know. He did not need to know. His place was merely to deliver the blood and, if possible, a treaty with the Weeds. None of that, of course, erased his desire to know.

<> General Tsan snapped his claws in the vague direction of the three guards nearest him. After a brief bit of shuffling, an older Sri'Zaur with yellow scales marked by zigzagged lines of fiery orange padded near.

<> the Sri'Zaur clicked softly, rising up to stand, bipedal, when he reached his commanding officer. <>

Move aside?
Tsan's anger flared, accompanied by a sharp abdominal pain.
How dare that old—

Ah. Eagerness
. Tsan recognized the gleam in Brazz's eyes and released his ill humor, his battle calm reasserting control of his emotions. Fire was the barren old reptile's life, his only love; why not let him do his job and admire him for his dedication? Had he not burned Na'Shie? <>

Brazz withdrew a flask from one of the pouch-like pockets lining the leather vest that hugged his chest tightly, matching the lines of his form. Sulfur and citrus odors bit the air as Brazz uncapped the flask. He wafted the elixir beneath his nostrils, savoring its acrid aroma before downing its contents in one long pull.

Tsan resisted the urge to demand one of the alchemical flasks then and there.

Patience
, he chided himself,
or they must all reveal your heresy or share the guilt
. Tsan knew commanders who would, but no . . . it was enough that his soldiers overlooked the ruddy red of his once-black scales and what that color change meant. He would approach Brazz about an alchemical remediation on the old Flamefang's sleep cycle. Tsan peered over the assembled Zaur and Sri'Zaur, entertaining a premature notion about commandeering a flask from one of his newer Flamefangs. But . . . no, best to go to Brazz directly. Dragonvenom was useful for its effect on a Flamefang, true, but it had other, less well-known uses. . . . Uses with which he knew Brazz to be well acquainted. And Brazz wouldn't ask any questions or wag tongue or tail about it.

Why staving off the gender switch remained heresy, Tsan understood up to a point, but he refused to let such foolish convention keep him from seeing this war to its end. Why forbid females to fight, especially since his venom was so much more deliciously toxic when he was female? It had made sense when they had first fled into the depths to recoup their strength and even in the years between wars when repopulation was vital, but during the war, when the ranks already brimmed with eager soldiers thirsty for Eldrennai blood?

Tsan watched hungrily as Brazz returned the empty flask to his belly pack. The Sri'Zaur's eyes lit from within as the dragonvenom worked its magic, blue flame spreading from his slit pupils to his orange markings, filling the corridor with light. How Tsan envied such—

Later
, Tsan told himself.
You still have time. First, burn the Weeds. Focus!

<> General Tsan repeated.

“Not long,” Brazz cackled, wasting breath in a series of grating hisses as he reached into a separate pouch belted to his abdomen and began withdrawing pawfuls of dark powdered metal, which he tossed onto the roots, letting it coat them as much as possible. “Not long. Just a little seasoning to kindle our hate. Help it bite. Help it spread. The Zaurruk will breach the surface when I signal?”

<> General Tsan tapped harder than he'd intended.

Brazz opened his mouth to say or ask something but clamped it shut as if thinking the better of it. He offered the general a respectful throat baring in its stead.

<> General Tsan turned away back to his troops. <> Tsan tapped as he left Brazz to his work, <>

And then it will be me who is gifted with a shard as a sign of the warlord's trust, not Dryga
.

Dryga, I should have crushed your egg. I wonder if I will regret not having crushed Asvrin's, in the end
. . .

A hundred enthusiastic vibrations washed over him, banishing the thoughts. His forked gray tongue tasted the air with relish.

<> some of the Zaur were tapping.

General Tsan chuffed, surrendering to their enthusiasm by tapping out the same message. It was so nice when Kilke's plans aligned with his own. Tsan had wanted to burn a Root Tree ever since he'd discovered the Weeds could grow them, and now he had orders to burn several, if needed. No ill-timed quirk of biology would stand in his way. He refused to allow it.

*

Sleeping soundly on a bed of moss, Prince Kholburran stirred. He reached out for Malli, possessed of a distinct notion she had gotten up to patrol. His lips twitched up at the corners in a reassured smile when his fingertips found her shoulder, the warmth of her smooth bark reassuring at first, but then not so much. If Malli was still in bed, then what was that noise?

Sensing motion as Kholburran rolled off the bed, the lichen-covered ceiling responded with a soft glow of mixed blues and yellows, casting an uneven green illumination over the sparsely appointed room. Running a hand through his spiky red head petals, Kholburran yawned, widely exposing the thorny protrusions from his unpruned dental ridge that had earned him his most hated nickname.

“Come back to bed, Snapdragon,” Malli purred, still half-asleep.

Kholburran snorted, amused by the giddy pardons love granted so lightly. The rotted nickname did not sound bad in the slightest when Malli used it. As a sproutling, he had wondered whether pruning and scoring his dental ridges like some Vael did would put an end to the nickname, but it seemed too painful and vain. He knew back in the slave days Uled had required it, considering the undifferentiated ridges to be a flaw, but Kholburran liked his mouth better without any useless carving.

“Do you hear that?” Kholburran whispered.
Was hear even the right word?

Malli came awake in an instant, rolling out of bed and seizing her heartbow in one swift motion. One of the many things he loved about her was how she paid attention to his instincts even though he was a boy-type person. She understood he wasn't some fragile thing to be protected and hidden away until he was old enough to Take Root. She—

“Take Root.” Kholburran surveyed his surroundings in the increasing illumination, his jade eyes, seemingly without iris or pupil, taking in everything. At first he'd thought it was a sound that had awoken him, but now that he was paying full attention, it felt more like a vibration . . . as if he were trembling all the way down to his core wood, not violently, but enough to notice.

Kholburran paced the room, toes squinching in the moist mossy carpet. He stopped, closing his eyes. Turning slowly in place, reaching out, senses open, he quested for some inkling of what disturbed him.

Uncle Tran was getting better at being a Root Tree, but he was still learning. The rooms within him tended to feel sparse. His beds clung low to the ground more like drier raised extensions of the soft mossy carpeting than mattresses and sheets. He finally had proper doors, serviceable utilitarian things with no locks, but they worked. The shelving, what there was of it, ran more along the lines of conveniently placed and proportioned bumps-on-a-log than the elaborate craftsmanship of the Twin Root Trees Hashan and Warrune where Kholburran had grown up.

Kholburran counted to seven before opening his eyes. Had anything changed?

A thin line of sap ran down from the edges of the room along the join between ceiling and wall. Sap? What was Uncle Tran trying to do? Grow windows? Kholburran ran his thumb and forefingers together, his own sap-like sweat slick beneath them, the piney scent filling his nostrils.

“No,” Kholburran hissed under his breath. “No no no no.”

Trees in The Parliament of Ages cry out when they burn, passing the news of the fire ahead of the flame.

Having never traveled beyond his homeland, Kholburran didn't know whether all trees reacted to flame in this way or if the local trees had learned it through proximity to Root Trees and Vael over the years. Kholburran had felt this sensation, so different that he felt it in his chest as a pang of general anxiety rather than actual noise, before, and it was very close to what he sensed now.

“You too hot, Snapdragon?” Malli asked. “Are you sick or something? You're sweating.”

“I'm sapping defensively.” Kholburran dashed to the wall where his wooden warpick was propped. Boy-type persons were not permitted proper heartbows, but Kholburran had tried anyway, beseeching his uncle for a gift of living wood. Instead of a limb suitable for shaping into a heartbow, as Kholburran had hoped against hope, Uncle Tran had given him a branch obviously meant to become a melee weapon. Kholburran had tried to convince the wood to grow into a sword or an axe. Either would have been fine, but the weapon flatly refused to thrive in any form other than a warpick. As result, he'd named it Resolute (Mr. Stubborn when he was aggravated) and done his best to learn how to use it.

Sweeping Resolute up and onto his back where it hung in place despite their combined lack of bone-steel or Aern blood, Kholburran placed one donkey-like ear against the wall, splaying his hands on either side of his head. The vibration shook his dental ridges.

“Great Xalistan,” he mouthed. The cry of burning tree was coming from Uncle Tranduvallu.

CHAPTER 3

THE FALL OF TRANDUVALLU

Zaurruk burst through the ground, the inrush of oxygen fueling the blaze that engulfed Tranduvallu's roots with explosive intensity. Plumes of smoke and fire rose around the bodies of the massive serpents as rank after rank of Zaur poured out of the underground tunnel system wreathed in the scent of wood smoke.

<> General Tsan pounded on the ground, his words amplified by the tails of his personal guard as they echoed the same message one beat behind his. <>

His infantry, comprised mostly of unnamed Zaur, poured out after the Zaurruk, the first rank shielding Brazz and a dozen other Flamefangs, each clad in leather multi-pocketed vests and belly pouches identical to Brazz's. Zigzag bands glowing blue fire marked their yellow scales with the infusion of dragonvenom and pyrotechnic potential.

A Named Zaur approached, leading Tsan's deep walker. Its rock hide grated against the ground as it moved. Waiting for four unnamed Zaur to likewise bring his personal guard their mounts, the general laughed at the first screams of Vael in pain: an enemy's agony ever the delight.

Once all five beasts were in place, Tsan and his guard mounted in unison, springing onto the backs of their deep walkers and slapping themselves into the chain harnesses with practiced synchronicity. Twenty other riders rode up into position. The rock hide of their eyeless mounts looked deadly enough in shades of granite, the hardened protrusions along their shoulders, knees, and sides lending them an air of invulnerability—juggernauts of the deep. Tsan and his guards' mounts served as more threatening examples of the breed than those ridden by lesser Sri'Zaur, each with skin like obsidian, the front of their deep walkers shorn clean of hair where other mounts sported lengths of braid from the smooth surface where, on some other animal, a head might be.