Oathkeeper (5 page)

Kholburran frowned at that, but Arri wasn't looking, already crawling out the door, and the others were trying not to laugh.

All in good fun
, Kholburran tried to remind himself as he followed her lead.
She doesn't mean anything by it
.

The seven Vael walked behind Arri through off-kilter hallways, Zaur showing up with greater frequency as they neared an exit. When they reached the kitchens, Kholburran stepped over the body of Hildi, one of his other Root Guards. Three of the cooks were clustered in an unmoving stack against a central island. Dead. One of the cooks seemed to have been killed by Tranduvallu's fall, her head crushed by impact. Hildi, however, was festooned with crossbow bolts. Had she been trying to reach him even after receiving such terrible wounds?

Kholburran guessed he would never know.

Hope I'm worth it, Hildi. I'll do my best to be
.

“We're not taking her, too, Snapdragon,” Arri hissed, misunderstanding his look.

“We're in luck,” Seizal whispered as they clambered over the cluster of cabinets and cooking equipment that blocked the exterior door. “All we have to do is clear this and we should be able to make a run for it.”

As if in response, a blast of liquid fire hit the wooden obstacles from outside, and it burst into flames.

“You were saying?” Arri snapped.

Gods, help us
, Kholburran prayed.

CHAPTER 4

A DEATH GOD'S TEETH

Cadence Vindalius knelt on her grass meditation mat sweltering in a heat she knew was somewhere else. Warmth bloomed across her cheek as if she leaned too close to a bonfire. Black hair shot through with red and orange streaks clung to her sweaty neck, the ends slowly turning purple (a little more each day) even though she'd cut more than half of it off. She looked up and saw moonlight rather than the cracked stone ceiling of her small dorm cell.

Treetops and fire
.

“What are you seeing, Cadence?” The rough voice of Sedric, the dean of the Long Speaker's College, called from only two feet away, but the sound faded as it reached her. She looked back and could barely see him. In his place appeared wavering images of Vael in some sort of armor carrying a wounded Vael between them. As her concentration increased, the stink of roses and pine mixed with suffocating smoke hit her nostrils.

Sedric, with his hawkish features, salt-and-pepper beard, and ornate Long Speaker robes, telescoped away from her, growing more distant with each heartbeat. He walked around in front of her, soft brown eyes peering into her violet-specked gray ones, squinting. “I see flames reflected in your eyes. Where are you?”

Flames?
She gritted her teeth, grinding them as if she were crunching god rock. Heat rose up around her, this time of her own making.

That's right, you useless idiot
, Hap's voice spat in her head.
Burn him and get out of there. Find me and I'll get you what you need. You belong to me and you know it. Who cares the others are dead? Less of a split that way. Leaves more for us
.

She knew it wasn't really Hap, just her idea of the man who had been her kidnapper, her master, and (eventually) the father of her son haunting her thoughts. Dean Sedric explained (at times repeatedly) it was a sort of sickness that happened from time to time in Long Speakers who possessed more than one talent of the mind.

“Cadence!” Sedric said more sternly, and she drew the flame back, letting it go quietly like coals burned down, almost out, but still glowing and dangerous under the ash. “Can you tell me what you are seeing?”

She couldn't. It wasn't long sight as it had been described to her, more like she was riding in the back of someone else's mind, not understanding or clearly interpreting the information flooding into her. Was that even possible?

“It's gone upside down or sideways,” Cadence muttered. “The furniture has all fallen up against the door and it's burning. He's going to risk it anyway.”

“Risk what, Cadence?” Sedric pleaded. “Who?”

“I don't know,” she growled. “It's all out of focus.”

*

“Okay.” Arri knelt awkwardly over a broken water jug, trying to dampen herself as much as possible, before—

This is dumb
, Kholburran thought to himself,
I'm hardier than she is. Slower to burn or wilt. I'm already dripping with sap. I should be the one to bust through the wreckage. She's only got one arm!

Billowing clouds of black poured from the flaming mass of broken furniture blocking their exit. Heat and smoke choked his lungs (air bladders, really), so he shut them down, but that wouldn't help him breathe with all this smoke and ash covering his bark. He stared hard at the wood and fire-choked doorway, the smoke and fumes stinging his eyes, generating more sap to cover them and lending everything a gauzy out-of-focus cast. Hildi's corpse caught his eye.

There's no one between me and the door
. Kholburran and Arri noticed it in nearly the same heartbeat.

“Snapdragon, don't!” Arri shouted.

Snapdragon did.

Sweeping his warpick over his head the Vael prince charged the fiery obstruction, bringing the thornlike head of Resolute down once, twice, three times. Each blow cracked and splintered wood, but the mass of debris refused to move. Steam hissed off his outer bark, but his sap was cooking off first.

Still safe
, he told himself.
Not burning
.

With the next few blows, chunks of debris broke loose, but the increased airflow only strengthened the flames. Sending gouts of fire rushing up, enveloping Kholburran as he continued to strike and kick the mass. A high creaking touched his ears, his movements growing harder to make. His outer bark, the soft pliant layer that did such a good job of mimicking all the tactile pleasures of Eldrennai skin, pulled taut, cracking.

Gromma
, his eyes widened with fear.
I'm drying out!

A spark of fire lit upon his arm and caught.

*

Welts raised on the back of Cadence's hands, spreading to her forearms, right shoulder, side, and cheek from the heat as whoever she was touching charged the flaming debris. This was wrong, utterly wrong, Long Speaking was from Long Speaker to Long Speaker or established through eye contact, and even then it had to be a willing connection. This remote link was . . . was . . .

“No!” she screamed, pushing the heat away, sucking it out of her burns and thrusting it away, not here, but there. Wherever there was. With a victorious cry, the mind she'd been touching (Snapdragon? Was that really a name?) burst through the blockage tumbling out onto the ground. Safe, for the moment, on parched dry dirt in black grass where fire had already spent itself and spread elsewhere.

How do I break free of this?

The slap caught her by surprise. She blinked to find Dean Sedric standing over her, ready to strike her again with his open palm. He looked like a man who'd just soiled his breeches and was afraid he might have to give a repeat performance before he got to the latrine.

“I'm back.” She coughed, rubbing her jaw, doubly glad to feel no sign of the welts that had raised there. “I couldn't pull loose of his head.” She didn't realize she'd been smelling a deep forest until, odor gone, the scent of grass mat, sweat, and incense resumed their normal places in her olfactory palette.

“Does your jaw hurt?” Sedric asked, his voice gruff. “I'm sorry, but I couldn't get through to your mind. Where were you?”

“My jaw never hurts.” The last time she'd felt any pain in her mouth at all was when Kholster had extracted her cracked and broken molars—teeth she'd damaged crunching god rock to enhance her Far Flame ability in a futile attempt to kill him—and generously replaced them with some of his own.

That had to be why when the death god died or, rather, when the new death god rose to power, Cadence Vindalius had felt it in her gums. If crunching god rock was “twisting crystal,” what did one call having a deity's teeth rooted and living at the back of your jaw?

“A different tactic then. I apologize if this seems redundant,” Sedric said, visibly relaxing back into his role as stern-faced educator. “But could you confirm for me where exactly you believe yourself to be now?”

“Back home.” Cadence patted the grass meditation mat at the center of her cold stone room.

Sedric frowned, brow furrowed as if her answer was insufficient.

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “In the Long Speaker's College.”

He kept staring at her, hands clasped behind his back.

“In the Guild Cities . . .” Cadence watched the older man closely for a sign that she had said enough. “On the lower continent. Just south of Bridgeland. What? What? I know where I am.”

“I know where I am . . . what?” Sedric trailed off, a faint smile on his lips.

“Sir,” Cadence scoffed. “I know where I am, sir. Aldo's name, Sedric. Is this really the time for . . .” she trailed off. “‘Emotional responses may become muted when a Long Speaker overextends him or herself. It may become necessary to provoke an emotional reaction to assess the extent of the fatigue in trainees,'” she quoted at him.

“As you do not seem to have overextended yourself,” Sedric nodded, his eyes twinkling, “do you feel up to trying again? I believe you were Far Seeing, though your lack of control and the volatility of your powers (due probably to the crystal use) did produce rather unusual effects.”

That last part sounded like bird squirt to Cadence, but she let it go. The old man was immensely fond of telling her whatever he felt he needed to so that she would try something and then explaining it correctly later (at length) and assigning a reading selection about it that explained far more than she'd ever wanted to know about the subject upon which he prevaricated or glossed over during a practice session.

“This time try to let your mind go,” Sedric continued. “Don't reach out for any one thing. Be a seed on the wind, drifting wherever Aldo takes you. Some find that asking him for assistance directly helps focus their minds. So try that if you like. Can you do it?”

Cadence closed her eyes. Body weak from adherence to the days of detoxification rituals and techniques the alternately demanding, kind, and cold elder Long Speaker had given her to do, Cadence cleared her mind and started again at the first circle of expansion.

First inward to feel the core of herself then outward again by degrees. She froze in the middle of the twelfth circle of expansion, her consciousness hanging at the very edge of visual surroundings ready to break free. A cold stone square with nothing more than a cot, a candle, a change of clothes, and the meditation mat. By design, the room encouraged initiates to be bored with it, to force the mind to let go of the body and see beyond.

You can't do it
, Hap's voice spat in her mind.
Not without crystal. Sell them those Aernese teeth and you could buy all the rock you want. I don't know what you've let that stuffy old worm stick in your head, but you ain't nothing special without a little taste. Just a load a meaningless useless visions. Useless like you, you stupid, dried up—

“Ignore the voice and focus,” Sedric said gently. “He isn't here and he isn't a Long Speaker. He represents your doubts and your self-loathing. If you feel inadequate, he will tell you that you are. No one can cut you as deeply as you cut yourself.”

Cadence fought the surprise she felt every time at Sedric's knowledge of the inner workings of her mind. If he dealt with the same inner turmoil, he would not say, but she decided it did not matter. She was so glad someone understood, she was willing to do whatever it took to make him proud.

“It's not unusual for the most powerful of us to have a touch of madness. Especially when they and their abilities have been so abused for so long. It will take more time before we know how bad the damage is, but so far your talent is impressive even taking into account your crystal twisting.”

“Talent?” Cadence looked up from where she knelt on the mat, its coarse construction ablating the worst of the cold from the stone floor, but leaving basket-weave patterns in her skin through her cotton initiate's robes all the same. “I have no talent without—”

Sedric frowned, his only other response a turned back as he walked to the room's tiny door.

“I'll try again,” Cadence said at once. “Don't leave. Please, I—” She caught herself. “Please, sir, let me try again.”

“Self-doubt is your greatest enemy.” Sedric turned back. “You will learn your limits in time. Now I am determining what those limits are for myself. I have evaluated many students. Do not presume to tell me whether or not you have talent.” He gave a gravelly half-chuckle. “Try again. If it helps, start out by picturing yourself in the womb. It is warm and comforting and you are safer there than you will ever be again in life.”

Visions formed at the outskirts of her mind, but only random phantasms that came without sense or meaning. They fit together somehow . . . she knew they must, but she couldn't see it.
Please, Aldo
, she prayed,
let me see something. Something important. A vision Sedric can use to gauge my abilities like he wants. He says I have a gift. Please, help me unlock it.

“The girl with the death god's teeth requests a boon.” Aldo's voice rang in her mind and in her ears. It reminded her a little of Sedric's voice, but colder. “A favor I find amusing and intriguing to grant. So be it. A vision Dean Sedric can use to judge the extent of your skills and then the unlocking of those talents. If Kholster ever asks, I do hope you will point out that I did exactly and only what you asked of me.”

“Ah!” She hissed as a new vision drew her in and pushed her down, her mind erupting and opening as pieces of a puzzle snapped together in her brain.

*