Grudgebearer (43 page)

Rae'en had always wanted to see one of the plant steeds of the Gromman Plainsriders, but she guessed it would have to wait.

“How much time do we have left?” Rae'en unslung Grudge and offered it back to her father.

“Twelve days.” Kholster raised an eyebrow but accepted the warpick and returned Testament to her.

“Can we still make it?”

“It's just under nine hundred jun to Oot.” Kholster settled Grudge on his back, and Rae'en wondered if he noticed that she moved in unison with him, returning Testament to her back with the same one-armed careless sling. Her shoulders, aching from days of near-constant travel, flared with pain when the warpick snapped into place on her back, but it felt good to be whole again.

“We will have to keep a steady pace, like we did in Bridgeland.” Kholster patted her on the shoulder.

She smiled, but inwardly her heart sank. Did her father's muscles not ache as hers did? Fiery lances of protest shot through her thighs, calves, and the bottoms of her feet with each step. Even her back and arms hurt. At any moment she was sure she'd start trembling and not be able to stop, but . . . 
is Kholster hiding it?

Probably not
, she answered her own question. She wondered if age would grant her that boon as well, or if that was a benefit only afforded the Armored.

“The Garden of Divinity.” Kholster nodded toward Castle Mioden, “is on the far side of the castle.”

“Then we can find out who won the Bridge Race.” Rae'en perked up, patting the saddlebag containing her gift.

“I win either way, you know.” He looked at her askance.

“How do you plot that course?” Rae'en smirked.

“Simple.” They walked together under a bridge lined with soldiers. “If I win, I am victorious, and if you win, my troops have seized victory, and, as Kholster, I am therefore . . . ?”

“Victorious.” She laughed. “Very funny.”

*

They reached the Garden of Divinity a few hours before noon, and Kholster guided his daughter through the manicured garden surrounding the likenesses of the gods on a scale which Rae'en felt had to be about twice life-size. After all, the statue of Kilke was roughly twice the size of her father, roughly thirty-six hands, and what god would need to be larger than Kholster?

Worked in white marble, some of the gods looked diminished, while others seemed well suited to such a pale palette. The statues were arranged in half circles, six on one side, six on the other, with Shidarva standing where Kilke once stood, at the head of the design, one half-circle on her left, the other on her right. A tremendous fountain in the middle sent up synchronized lances of water into the air.

Kilke, with his two horned heads on either side of the central stump he'd lost in some long-ago cosmic coup, leered at her with one head, the other tilted toward Nomi, the once-mortal woman who'd stolen Dienox's flaming hair as he slept in a postcoital daze, becoming the goddess of fire. Xalistan, the hunter, appearing as a snarling wolf (also horned)—
these male gods love their horns
, Rae'en thought to her Overwatches, partly out of habit and partly out of hope that they could hear her even when she couldn't hear them—his teeth bared at the outstretched hand of Queelay, who appeared to have playfully dampened his fur.

Yhask, god of the wind, ignored them both, glaring hatefully across the fountain at the figure of Dienox in full plate armor who—

“Is he pouting?” Rae'en prodded Kholster.

“I'd say he's angry that Coal killed his hurricane.” He studied Yhask, running his hand between the layers of statue; the wispy rings of Yhask's elemental form did not quite touch, some hovering over others with a magic Rae'en's father clearly found interesting. “Yhask, I would imagine, is angry that Dienox didn't believe it would all be for nought, but look at his eyes.”

At a second glance, Rae'en saw triumph layered amidst the disdain, revealed by a scarce turning up of the lip and crinkle at the edges of Yhask's eyes.

“He got something out of Dienox,” Rae'en said, “Yhask still isn't thrilled about it, but it's a consolation.”

“I agree.”

Kholster tipped his head to the statue of Aldo, who, despite his appearance as an Oathbreaker in voluminous robes, was reading a book. Rae'en started as Kholster stopped at the base of Shidarva's statue and yarped up a wet mass of hair and bones on the statue's feet.

One of the few stalwart pilgrims milling about the garden with them opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and waited for Kholster to pass before reaching down to clear the pellet away.

“Don't touch it,” Kholster snapped as he stopped before Sedvinia, the weeping goddess of sadness and joy. Trembling with indecision, the wrinkled pilgrim looked to Rae'en, but she shook her head.

“Just leave it until we go,” she advised.

Not watching to see what the pilgrim decided, Rae'en moved ahead to join her father as he passed the Bone Queen's statue. Kilke's mono-headed sister (the only goddess with horns) stood with regal bearing, her beauty both wonderful and terrible. She wore corsetry the same way Dienox wore his plate mail, as armor, and seemed lost in conversation with Jun, who stood to her right and past Jun to Gromma, goddess of growth and decay, her hair filled with brambles, her clothing a collection of furs and pelts sewn together with barbaric pride.

“Again?!” Rae'en put her hand to her mouth in mock dismay as her father moved on to Dienox and yarped a second, larger pellet on his feet. “You all empty now?”

“I was saving it up.” Kholster chuckled.

Dienox's statue was frozen in mid-argument with the Harvester. The god of war's lips curled back, and his accusing finger pointed at Torgrimm's bone plate.

To Torgrimm, Kholster bowed low.

“Find one you like?” Rae'en quipped around a yawn.

“Yes,” Kholster sat down on the statue's foot, resting his back against the deity's shins. “I liked him better before he felt the need to wear the plate armor.”

“Why?” Rae'en settled down next to her father.

“Because I don't understand why he needs it and it scares me a little to think he might.”

*

Somewhere between pondering his remark and opening her mouth to ask about her present, Rae'en fell asleep slumping against Kholster's shoulder.

She's tired
, Bloodmane and Vander sent in unison.

This is one of those moments
, Kholster thought back at them both, his eyes watering,
where I have to wonder: will this ever happen again?

Probably not
, Vander thought back.
Enjoy it.

I don't understand
, Bloodmane intoned.

Kholster tried to open his senses more completely to his warsuit, but nothing happened. Bloodmane could see through his eyes, relay his orders, even share other sensory data with Kholster, but not the other way around. Kholster closed his eyes, and for the first time in centuries, he closed them to what Bloodmane saw and stared instead at the inside of his own eyelids, the way the light shone through them as a vague orange haze.

He stayed that way until his tears stopped, wiping them carefully away with his hands before opening his eyes again, first his inner eyes, which saw what Bloodmane saw—the cursed exhibition hall, and secondly, his physical eyes. He wrapped his arms around Rae'en, held her, and slept.

The Changing of the Gods did not wake them.

CHAPTER 40

A PARTING OF WAYS

“I can't believe you won.” Rae'en smiled down at her ring. Kholster had forged it perfectly. She held it out by the silvered bone-steel chain her father had crafted to go with it and marveled at the way the inscription caught the light. On the outer ring, Kholster had wrought a stylized representation of his scars, but on the inside, he had engraved: Daughter, of you I am proud.

“I can't believe we slept through the Changing of the Gods,” Kholster countered. “We'd best not wait until midnight.”

“I know. I know.” The sun didn't shine so bright in Castleguard, but Kholster was wearing the smoked-glass lenses she'd bought him, their circular lenses held in place by wire frames the color of silver, so she hoped he liked her gift. Rae'en waited for him to ask to take her Testament away and hand her his Grudge, but Kholster never asked for her weapon again.

“You can do this.” He pushed the smoked lenses back up on his nose, smiling like an Eleven at first kill, so pleased with the way she looked at him when he wore them. She didn't have the heart to tell him he looked silly, especially since it was only partially true. The truth was he looked different and dangerous in a way she couldn't explain. His whole attitude changed, not toward her but toward the space around him. It reminded her of the way Irka moved when he showed a female around his gallery—confident and masculine—but was not the way a daughter imagined her father.

“I kept you too close on the trip, but you didn't need it. I apologize.”

She loved him for that, more than she'd ever thought possible, responding with a hug made only slightly awkward by their clinking mail shirts. As his arms enfolded her, she could not imagine a safer place in all reality. Those arms, she imagined, would be safe even if they'd been standing in the midst of a cataclysmic battle instead of the road leading down out of the mountains.

“With the ring, you can reach out to me if you want and I will hear you. The connection will only be one way, but I doubt you'll need it unless you want to send me details about the Conjunction.”

“You aren't coming with me?” she asked his shoulder.

“You kholster it. Do you need reinforcements?”

“I get to pick?” She stepped back and eyed him quizzically, head tilted, ears askance.

“I don't see why not.” He looked off into the heart of the forest. She was sure he saw something in the distance amongst the pines and firs with evergreen leaves and the blood oaks which, unlike other broad-leafed trees, refused to surrender their red leaves even during the end of autumn. It, whatever had his attention, wasn't in the forest, and he didn't see it with his eyes. Was it a memory? It didn't seem to be Vander. When Vander thought to Kholster, the corners of her father's lips tilted up in a phantom smile. Nor was it Bloodmane; these days his communications pulled her father's cheeks tight and furrowed his brow. “One day you will make all of the decisions.”

He looked . . . wistful?

“Once this war is over.” Kholster looked back at her, and she suddenly wished he would take off the smoked lenses. “When you're ready, the One Hundred and I feel it is time for a Freeborn to kholster the Aern.”

“But surely one of the more experienced.” Rae'en took an involuntary step back. “One of the Armored.”

“They want a Freeborn, one of my children. You could,” he looked back at something trammeled by the path they had taken or back to the past itself—which, Rae'en could not know, “wake one of the others, my unawakened, perhaps but . . .”

“Unawakened?” She threw up her hands. “Children? How many unawakened do you have?”

“Ask Zhan when you're First.”

“Why didn't you—”

“They were born before As You Please.”

“Oh.”

“Someday, they must be awakened, but you have another sibling I must see to first.”

“An Unawakened?”

“Mostly.” He looked down at his gloved hands.

“Mostly?”

“Yes.” A tear rolled down his cheek, and she was suddenly glad for the smoked glass which stood between her and her father's crying eyes. “So. I asked you a question.” He sniffed once and his demeanor changed, hardened. “Do you want me to come with you to Oot, to be your Overwatch, or would you prefer to kholster this alone?”

“Where will you go?” She tucked the ring, together with its chain, into her left saddlebag.

“If you don't need me?” He looked off into the forest, gazing northwest. Again a sad smile touched his lips. “I might like to see Kari again, to see where Irka grew up.”

“Go.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I can kholster this. It's just three days and nights camping.”

“You've only five days to get there.”

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe I'd better get going then.”

He let her go.

*

Rae'en unslung her warpick, spinning it overhead in a tight orbit. Light sparkled along the weapon's crystal head, tossing rainbows overhead even though, at an hour before dawn, the forest was still dark.

Rae'en remembered well the day she'd completed the warpick and had brought it before her father.

“My warpick, Kholster.”

Kholster had taken the warpick, given it a few test swings, and then frowned as he examined the haft.

“It is a fine weapon, Rae'en, but it has no spirit. You are not one with it.”