Grudgebearer (51 page)

“And a Named one,” she agreed.

He looked down at her again, pointing with such precision as he spoke that Yavi was certain he knew instinctively where the cities lay, despite his long absence. “He'll probably hit Stone Watch or Albren. They'll attack the Eldrennai first, giving the Vael time to prepare a defense or . . .” He stroked Yavi's cheek along the edge of her samir gently with his fingertips, his voice dropping to a more intimate level, too quiet for Dolvek to hear. “The Vael can come with me, retreat south toward Castleguard. It would not take long for reinforcements to arrive.”

“No,” Yavi told him. “We couldn't.”

“Once the reinforcements get here,” he continued in his normal tone, almost ignoring her words, “we can push back into The Parliament of Ages, ensure its safety, and head northeast into the Eldren Plains to drive the Zaur out and reclaim our homeland.”

“What of my people?” scoffed Dolvek, setting off another fit of coughing.

“You'll be dead by the time we return,” Kholster snarled. “We'll build a monument to you, of course. It can tell how the Eldrennai redeemed themselves with their final sacrifice . . . how they protected the homeland of the Vael and the Aern with their last breaths,” he continued sarcastically. “Don't worry, stump ears, I'll make sure it's fit for a king.”

CHAPTER 45

UNLIKELY ALLIES

King Grivek entered the Aern exhibit his son had built and dismissed his guards. Bloodstains still marred the rich carpet, and the whole chamber stank of death. The slender crown of crystal and steel he wore upon his brow seemed to press down on him as he walked. His face was young, but his movements revealed his age. It was all so very tiring. Shards of crystal crunched under his boots with each step as he walked across the room and stood before the armor of General Bloodmane.

Phantom voices of advisors, both living and dead, haunted his thoughts. He hadn't asked anyone's permission, nor had he asked their opinions. They had been with him so long he knew what many of them would tell him anyway.

“It's rash and unwise,” Barthus would say.

Ghijik would have asked for money and suggested “a simple but exhaustive oracular analysis of the possible outcomes.”

If Braert had survived the Sundering, then Grivek would have asked for his thoughts on the subject, but like so many good beings on all three sides, Braert had been struck down in fury and hatred, in the chaos of the rebellion. Lastly there was Wylant.

He owed his crown and the lives of all his people to Wylant, but he knew what she would say. She would advise a path of bloodshed. The Sundering had broken something in Wylant . . . since that time, she'd grown harder, colder. She was still a brilliant tactician, but there was an inner glow, a lust for life that had vanished. The only blonde in a dark-haired race, her golden tresses had marked her as blessed by the gods, yet since that time she had shaved her head regularly, letting not even the barest hint of stubble show. Maybe Wylant could come up with another miracle to defeat the Aern, but Grivek thought too much blood had been shed already.

“You're weak, boy!” He imagined his father's outraged voice, strong and unwavering, but also quite wrong. “You should have killed them all, the ungrateful savages! How dare they raise their hands against us? We created them! We are their gods!”

In his splendid robes, King Grivek approached the center of the chamber and stared at the homunculus, the unborn Aern. In the remains of their cases, ten warsuits of the surviving first One Hundred Aern glared at him, unmoving but possessed of an intelligence beyond even what he had come to suspect.

He spread his arms in a gesture of peace before addressing the armor. It wouldn't do to have them strike him down in an attempt to protect a comrade who was in no danger.

“I'm not going to hurt him,” he said in Aernese. “Bloodmane, Falcon's Claw, Heart Taker, Eyes of Vengeance, all of you . . . I want you to know that.”

He approached Bloodmane and bowed his head, placing the scroll on the floor before him. Grivek removed his crown and set it on the pedestal next to Hunger, General Kholster's ancient weapon. Words slid from his grasp beneath the armor's crystalline gaze. What could he say to make them understand what he was trying to do? They were intelligent; Yavi said Bloodmane had spoken to her with eloquence. Their spirits were battered and angry, but they were good spirits with noble minds, not the mindless implements of war his father had thought them to be.

“I . . . I was wrong, and I'm sorry. My father was wrong. We didn't understand, have never understood. We thought we were gods, but though immortal, we are not divine.” He fumbled with his cloak self-consciously and reached for words with his left hand as if they might succumb to his searching and materialize in his grasp.

“None of the past can be undone, but I can put one thing right.” He gestured to the homunculus, still sleeping, unliving, yet, as Yavi had assured him, with a spirit attached to it for all these thousands of years, waiting to be born.

“Your brother can be awakened.” He met the eyes of each suit as he spoke.
Great Aldo, let them see my sincerity
, he silently prayed. “I didn't know enough to know that he had a soul . . . that he was waiting for the words of life. I thought . . . In my ignorance, I thought he was a thing, a physical prototype . . . until the coming of Yavi, daughter of Kari, a princess among the Vael. After much searching, I have found the scroll in the archives amongst Uled's writings. I don't want to offend you further by reading it myself.”

Swabbing his brow absentmindedly with the edge of his sleeve, Grivek realized that he was sweating. “No magic should be required. Just the correct words . . . so I was hoping you would read them. Then you would know I'm not . . . not trying to be a god . . . just trying to . . . make things right.”

Crystal eyes inset in the helmet resembling a roaring irkanth lit up from within, and Grivek took two steps backward. He'd managed to get their attention.

“This?” whispered a metallic voice. “The words are on this paper?” Bloodmane stooped to pick up the scroll and held it in front of Grivek.

“Where it says ‘Rite of Creation,'” Grivek answered.

“Are there others?” the voice asked.

“Other scrolls?” asked Grivek.

Bloodmane stepped out of its shattered display, crystal crunching beneath its boots. “Other sleeping ones.”

“No. Or, rather, I think not. I'll look. No, that's not the whole truth. Yes, I will look, but we'll know soonest if I have Sargus look,” Grivek assured the massive metal warsuit. “If there are any other sleeping ones I . . . we . . . will find them and bring them to you.”

For four long minutes that felt like hours, the armor stood and watched him. Grivek's gaze flitted from warsuit to warsuit as their eyes flickered brightly in no discernable pattern. Were they communicating? Could they somehow speak with one another telepathically?

He remembered seeing the Aern in battle, before the Sundering, their uncanny coordination and wordless combat. Even in the Battle of As You Please, a demonstration he'd been forced to attend as a child, the Aern had moved in a silent ballet of death. That had to be it! But if it were true, great Aldo, what if the armor was still in contact with the Aern? What if Kholster knew that Grivek's son, whom he'd sent to the Conjunction, had broken the treaty by moving their weapons and armor?

Ten sets of crystalline eyes flickered brightly, and then Bloodmane spoke. “Why are you doing this?” it asked.

“Because someone has to do something,” he answered. “Someone has to step forward and do more than offer empty platitudes once every century. And who else is there, but me? I am the king.” He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “I was there.”

“Yes, I remember,” the armor said softly, then snapped out an order. “Send soldiers to Oot. Send a physician with them.”

“Why? What has happened?”

“
Do not question me, Eldrennai king.”

Eldrennai? Not Oathbreaker?
Grivek struggled to hold his tongue.

“Send scouts, real scouts, not mystic constructs, to check the Watches. There are Zaur within your borders. We must know how many there are and how soon they can attack.” The armor rested a cold gauntlet on his shoulder. “We must do this if we are to save your land, Eldrennai king.”

“I will do as you say,” Grivek stammered. “It will be done at once. Thank you.”

“Do not thank me,” the empty armor told him. It pointed at the plaque beneath its empty pedestal. “I am Bloodmane, armor of Kholster, but I am not Kholster. I can forgive you. Perhaps it is because I lack blood to boil. Perhaps it is that I have no heart to ache, but I believe you are worth forgiving.”

“But surely,” Grivek said imploringly. “You could speak to them, explain to them.”

“That you have convinced me and my fellow warsuits is useless unless you can convince the core of us, our soldiers, our makers, our rightful occupants. We are tools, the implements of war. What our creators will, we do. An axe has no loyalty to a tree. If an axe is turned by the woodsman against the very tree from which its haft was hewn, will it not cut as deeply? If it feels sympathy for the wood, to whom does it protest? It is merely an axe. So it is for me and mine, Eldrennai king.”

“I understand,” the elf king sighed, then glanced toward the unborn Aern. “I will leave you to perform the ritual in private.”

Once the doors were closed behind him, Grivek and his royal guard stood listening at the entrance. Their hearing was not as good as the Vael's or the Aern's. Eldrennai senses were scarcely better than a human's. Grivek could not make out the words Bloodmane spoke, but the cadence sounded right.

Jolsit, captain of the guards, stared at his king, confusion clear upon his face. “Your Majesty?”

“How many squadrons of Crystal Knights have you formed? Was it four?” Grivek stepped away from the large doors. “Tell me it was more than that.”

“Six, your Majesty. Seven if we count your royal guard.”

“Do they still have metal armor?” Grivek asked.

“They do, Majesty,” the captain admitted, “but they wear it in exercises only as punishment. Though Wylant and her Lance always wear metal.”

“Is she still in North Guard?”

“She has taken her Lance to Albren Pass, but I know she intends to press on to Stone Guard . . .”

“Excellent.” King Grivek laughed bitterly as he left the museum. He walked quickly, nearly running. It would normally have amused him, watching his guards trying to maintain decorum while matching his pace, but this was no time for frivolity. “Ready them all, my royal guard included. They are to pack their crystal armor but wear their plate and mail. Each troop is to head to the watch towers. We are going to physically check our borders. Gods, what I wouldn't give for a handful of Long Speakers right now.”

“Of course, sire, but may I ask . . .”

“You may not; there is no time!” Grivek insisted. The king looked mad in the moonlight; with his crown abandoned at Bloodmane's feet, his ebony locks were in disarray. “Muster our forces. Ready every human and every elf who can wield a weapon. Send a runner to the Tower of Elementals and wake the High Elementalist. Tell Hasimak I want his best students, except Sargus, practicing all the spells they know that have worked on the Zaur in the past.”

“The Zaur, sire?” Jolsit gasped.

“Bloodmane says we are being invaded by the Zaur, and I have no reason to doubt it.” Grivek paused and looked up at his mighty castle. “Tell Sargus to meet me in my study. I have a research project that cannot wait.”

He fought back the urge to vomit and closed his eyes. Sargus would be pleased to do research, even though Grivek could hardly spare such a talented Artificer now, deformed and twisted though he was. Wylant would feel vindicated, but he couldn't imagine that she would be happy. She would be more likely to share his concern. If he could not find a way to make peace with Kholster, none of it would matter. They could win the fight with the Zaur and still be crushed by the Aern.

PART FOUR

TRUE CONJUNCTION

“Breeding and Bloodline. It may one day be said that those two concepts, or the pursuit of them, were the final downfall of the Eldrennai. Is there a living being who can claim otherwise? Why, other than a need to control and shape bloodlines, would King Zillek have ordered the creation of a new species of slave for the Aern to breed with instead of granting permission to pursue the actualization of female Aern? A breeding between a male and a female Aern would have (and did when female Aern eventually came into existence) allowed the creation of new bloodlines.

“One wonders how Uled controlled the births of the Aern and the Vael to prevent female Aern and male Vael from coming into being for as long as he did. I have searched his notes thoroughly, and while numerous diary entries pertain to his worry of losing control over the breeding program, he is mute on the subject of attaining this control.

“Many have supposed that Uled realized early on that an Eldrennai female, having once carried an Aernese offspring, would become barren, but my research does not support such a claim. Did he consider such things unimportant, or did Uled, in his characteristic desire to place experimentation over research, simply not care?”