Oathkeeper (52 page)

“Secrets are not lies,” sneered Kilke's leftmost head.

“Nor are shadows,” said Kilke's rightmost head.

“Aldo was no more intended to be the god of knowledge, Dienox, than you are only intended to be the god of war.” Kholster bared his teeth. “You are not what you are supposed to be. You play at being mortal and it simply makes you sad hoaxes, mockeries of what you should be. So I'm—”

“You're what?” Shidarva and Dienox brandished their weapons, flaming scimitars alongside a blackened longsword. “What is it you think you're going to do, new god?”

“We three,” Vander said, “four, if you count Kilke, are going to explain it to you.”

“What?” Dienox laughed. “With a lecture?”

“By whichever methods are required.” Kholster spread his arms wide. “You want to play games with mortals? You like the idea of powerful beings toying with, rather than respecting, those weaker than themselves? Very well. I accept your challenge. Come then and play a game with me.”

“Four gods,” Dienox muttered, peering from one god to the other. “I only count three over here. Are you counting Jun?”

“No.” Vander smiled. “No, he is not.”

*

In the ruins of a broken tower, floating in a chaotic sea of sensory overload, Hasimak held the barrier in place, protecting himself and his wards, but the Ghaiattri were coming. A lone ram-horned creature with leather wings and a light-brown hide had noticed his intrusion, but one meant others would gather—moths to a flame.

“We don't have much longer.” Hasimak breathed easily, still drawing enough power from the remaining Port Gates: one at Fort Sunder, one in the kingdom of the bug-like Issic-Gnoss, and a third in the frozen lands where the beings with whom he'd meant to keep a line of communication open had long since vanished from Barrone, slain by a menace he'd had never been allowed to investigate. Of the two local Port Gates that had remained in near alignment after the first dragon attack, now only one remained in partial alignment. It was like the destruction of Alt come again. A once thriving people, Shidarva's worshippers on Alt had given their lives and homeland to stop the threat to the World Crystal, and, at the last moment, Uled had forbidden Hasimak to let them escape through the Port Gates. Forced him to seal them off as they sank beneath the waves. It hadn't been murder in any technical sense, but it still felt like it. “Can you see the dragon?”

“All I see is madness,” Zerris answered.

I've forgotten to open a view port.

A gesture opened a rift in the air.

“Look through it, but do not put any portion of yourselves, not even your magic, through it or we will be thrust back into the material world whether we are ready or not,” Hasimak whispered. “And don't try to make it wider.”

More Ghaiattri came, scrabbling against his protective shell. Whispering his name.
Did the others speak Ghaiattric?
He did not think so.

“Opener of doors!” the demons sang in their horrid tongue. “Weakener of walls! Shatterer! Bond breaker! Let us in!”

“No,” Hasimak hissed back in the same language. “I. Will. Not. Never again!”

Hasimak only hoped that in drawing this many of the demons to him, he was drawing them away from Fort Sunder's gate as well. Geography in the Never Dark did not map itself with a strict one-to-one correlation onto the material plane that shadowed it. That was how the Port Gates functioned, effectively moving through one side of the gate, with the gate itself shifting location so that when one emerged, the other side of the gate had moved in the demon's world to where you wanted to emerge; the tricky bit was to hurl the traveler through a brief tear in dimensions and drop them safely at their destination without opening a gate into the demon realm itself.

So easy for so long and then . . . Alt.

The wise men and women of Shidarva's kingdom, those who studied stars and energy, worked magic and mystery . . . in their last desperate moments, they had tried to force their gates, to bull through into Port Ammond and thus reach safety . . .

“I see it,” Klerris said. “Great Aldo, but he's destroyed the towers. The city burns!”

“Port Ammond has been razed and reborn nine times in my memory.” Hasimak smiled. “It can rise again so long as there are elves, whatever they call themselves, to take up the task. I've told you. It can all be built again.”

“Focus.” Beads of sweat rolled down his face, dampening his grayish hair. “Can you tell if he is on his third breath?”

“He is snuggled in amid the glowing slag that was Port Ammond,” Hollis, the Sea Lord, said. “He crouches there. Waiting.”

“Hasimak!” The dragon's voice shook the stones. “I've saved the third breath for you, old friend. Promises kept to the god of death and his daughter, I have slain thousands and ruined the capital of their ancient masters. Come then, crafty elf, eldest of the Eldrennai. Master of magicks! I await your pleasure. Let us duel one last time before I die!”

Under the gaze of his apprentices, with enemies from beyond the Port Gates calling him and the dragon challenging him, Hasimak felt as trapped as he had the day Uled had enslaved him. He could have killed Uled. Many would say he should have, but he had seen so much then, nations' rise and fall, Nomi's defeat of Dienox, the exodus of dragons. . . . How do you justify the shedding of blood? How many genocides did it take before killing was as thoughtless as breathing? For Hasimak, it had been three . . . and then his eyes had been opened, retribution, punishment from the goddess Shidarva. . . . He would always love her for that.

“When he is weak.” Hasimak cleared his throat. “When I have taxed him and his breath is merely flame. Then he will be vulnerable.”

“Then we should kill it?” Klerris asked, her face so intense, it was hard for him to look at her.

“Then you will have the option of slaying the dragon.” Hasimak's voice was hoarse, choked with emotion.

“Why wouldn't we kill it?” Lord Stone asked.

“I can think of countless reasons.” Hasimak patted him on the shoulder. “But you must provide your own.”

“Hasimak!” The dragon bellowed.

“Dragons feed on heat,” Hasimak said earnestly, looking from one student to the next, making eye contact. “Cold cannot normally harm them, but when they have spent their might in grand fashion like this, then they can be vulnerable to elemental ice.”

“Hasimak!” Coal roared. “My years are numbered now in less than a century. I will not tire of waiting for you this time, old sneak. Death is my friend and will come to collect me. All my promises are kept. I have visited the mountains of my true home a final time. All the remaining years I grant to you, if need be. Wait as long as you like. With sufficient delay, I shall regain my strength. This area shall once more be rich with ambient heat upon which I shall feast, and then you can taste a First Breath.”

“What now, teacher?” Zerris asked.

“Now I watch for it.” Hasimak eyed the small rift he had opened into the material world. “A moment of distraction. A moment of inattention.” His shields flickered, Ghaiattri beating against the magic shell.

I only hope I have enough time.

CHAPTER 38

PATHS OF LEAST RESISTANCE

If there were any Eldrennai in the whole of creation less comfortable than Dolvek was, he hoped their pain ended quickly. He enjoyed flight. Not as much as some did. He didn't know if it was because he associated flight with arguments with his father or with his realization at an early age that his brother could no longer do it. Flight was the reason Bhaeshal's eyes were permanently masked, the confines of the mask slowly taking up more and more surface area as she used her magic.

Were Dolvek honest with himself about his instinctive dislike and disrespect for General . . . no . . . for kholster Wylant, he might even admit it had its roots in the way she could use her Aeromancy with such casual disregard for the limitations her actions had brought upon others, and that without being angry, he often felt too guilty to fly.

It wasn't the view. Even in the autumn weather, the trees stretching out below him had their beauty. The Parliament of Ages, due to the interference of Hashan, Warrune, and the other Root Trees, perennially received optimum rainfall for the growing things below, and thus, even as they left the supernatural spring of Hearth that kept some non-evergreens green year round, flowing away from the Root Cities, the forest unrolled a canvas painted in rich golds and reds, even the occasional purple of magic-eating Genna Trees.

Pyromancy ablated the cold, working in tandem with his cloak and armor. A scar of black ran off to the left (was that northeast?), the forest fire begun by the destruction of Tranduvallu raging on. Yavi assured him it was a healthy blaze now, controlled and renewing, and if anyone knew about such things, he was certain the Vaelsilyn . . . the Vael did. But the black billowed for miles, a sight that, combined with the firelight from below, he imagined at night might be mistaken for the steady march of one hell or another.

Flying alongside Yavi was a thrill.

He'd given up on any chance at romance with her. The young Vael's heart was clearly set in a more Aernese direction, and while that wounded him, Dolvek could no longer pretend he did not understand. Were the Aern noble and brave? Well, in Dolvek's opinion, no. It was hardly brave to be a well-made engine of destruction and then destroy things; what they were was . . . admirable. He could not begin to understand what it was to be Aern, but he understood enough to view them as admirable.

Having been created as instruments of war, built to kill and eat their fill of their enemies created a cycle that could prove endless, yet they did not wage a constant war. They reasoned. They made allowances for the differences of others and tried, more often than not, to accommodate that diversity and function as a part, rather than as despoilers, of Barrone. What would the world be like if the Aern, like the Zaur, exercised no population control?

No . . . his thoughts, though occupied one moment by the bleakest of imaginings about his people, the slaves they had created, even the death of his father, were not the problem. He did not cry because, as foolish as he now understood it sounded, an Eldrennai prince did not cry tears, he cried havoc. A lesson, one of many, he'd been taught without realizing how much of his father's heart wasn't in them.

What ruined the trip for Dolvek was the same thing that made his back ache and his flesh crawl. He shuddered at the sensation and not, he hoped, solely because of the passenger riding on his back, tail trailing out behind them, occasionally slapping against his legs, forepaws on his shoulders, wedge-shaped head resting far too close to his ears.

“Am I bothering you, Prince?” The Sri'Zaur's breath was dank on his neck.

“I was lost in thought, General,” Dolvek called over the wind.

“We could always walk,” Tsan purred. “You must be getting tired. Does it tax you more to carry a magic-resistant being with you when you fly than it does to carry a more malleable individual?”

“I can fly on horseback,” Dolvek scoffed. “You require far less effort than carrying a horse.”

“It is much faster this way,” Yavi whooped, a friendly wind spirit tossing her about the sky in wasteful arcs and dives. She shot low, dropping below the canopy, then arcing high above the clouds.

“Stay close enough for the prince to catch you should your elemental friend tire or grow bored,” Tsan shouted to be heard over the wind. “We wouldn't want to lose you.”

Every bone in Dolvek's body screamed for him to hurl the blasted lizard off his back and onto the hardest rock available, to let it smash to bits.

It wasn't jealousy, but Dolvek loathed the way Tsan spoke so solicitously to the Vael, tracking her, head darting in controlled motions up, up, down, down, left, right in response to her every move.

It wanted something from her, but Dolvek had no idea what and . . . if he had misjudged the Sri'Zaur as severely as he'd misjudged the Aern . . .

“How much longer do I fly this direction?” Dolvek asked.

“Keep heading northwest until you reach Rin'Saen Gorge.” Tsan's forked tongue flicked his earlobe.

“How far is that?” Yavi asked. “Most wind spirits won't travel more than a hundred jun, give or take, and will slow down a little more every ten jun or so before that. This one is strong, but we'll start to lag behind between forty and sixty jun. . . . It takes bunches out of them to go so fast without a storm.”

“Just shy of three hundred jun to the gorge,” Tsan called. “Then another twenty or so by paws through the tunnels.”

“And then where?” Dolvek asked.

“You know how your people have suspected for centuries that we were making our way into your lands through Rin'Saen Gorge?”

“Yes.”

“For once, they were correct.” Tsan's hind claws tightened. “You never dug deep enough.”

Biting back a response, Dolvek turned his thoughts to the path ahead. He had not given much consideration to what would take place when he got to Tsan's home. Instinct had told him to go, to be at the table when the Sri'Zaur dealt with the Vaelsilyn, or the Eldrennai would never get a seat at all. If Yavi's magic failed, would she let him carry her, either on his back or . . . could he use his cloak? Let her sit on it while he carried the fabric?

In as little as a day
, he told himself,
you have to have a plan.

*

“It's at least two hundred and fifty jun,” Tyree leaned over and whispered.

Why he had to get so close, Cadence knew too well.

You fancy him, don't you, you faithless
— Hap's voice rose and died, washing away in an echo of confidence not Cadence's own.

“Stop it,” she told the handsome captain. “No one invited you inside my head.”