Oathkeeper (37 page)

That's because he wanted you to overhear his side of the conversation
, Vax sent.

“I tried, Caz.” Wylant walked through the steps in her mind, tracing, even as she spoke, a possible route to victory against the warsuit and the Aern sheathed within. “He doesn't want to be awakened yet. You talk to him. Have Silencer talk to him. If you can convince Vax, I'll wake him now. I'll do whatever it takes to do it. Give me a birthing bucket and I'll use my own blood!”

Warmth lit her up from the inside out. Compassion, joy, and love enfolded her, a warm comforter on a frozen night. Emotions familiar and yet alien in their primal simplicity cascaded over her.

Vax?
Her breath caught in her throat.

Yes
. Trembling with feeling, his thoughts quavered in her mind.
I was hoping you felt that way. Father said you did, but I've never been sure.

Of course I do.
Overcome with the desire to hug him to her chest, Wylant pictured it in her head and thought it at Vax as hard as she could.
What I did to you, even though I wasn't entirely me . . . perhaps I would have done it in the end, even if I hadn't been forced . . . but that thought, that I would sacrifice my own child, even to save my race—

If you hadn't
, Vax sent back,
you would have broken your oath.
Which explained everything to him. The fundamental difference between the Aern and all other races. They would justify anything in the service of keeping an oath . . . no matter how monstrous.

“I would rather I had been Foresworn than hurt you,” Wylant gasped. “Do you—” She swapped back to mental communication.
Do you understand that, Vax?

Vax went silent. Whether he was offended at the idea his mother would rather have been an Oathbreaker or if he thought no comment was needed, she could not guess. Wylant blinked at Silencer still standing there, her wrist in his bone-steel grip. Her lips drew into a thin grim line.

“Why now, Caz?” Wylant asked. “Why confront me in Fort Sunder? Why didn't you attack me at Oot?”

“He did not know Armored could be slain when we watched you at Oot,” Silencer answered. “Now that they fall, he worries he may die with his oath to Kholster unfulfilled.”

“What oath?”

“His was sworn to secrecy,” Silencer answered.

“Kholster made him promise to see that Vax was awakened,” Wylant said, answering her own question. “But if he died before that happened, or in the attempt . . . death redeems all oaths.”

“Caz does not wish death to redeem his.” Silencer tightened his grip. “Now . . . we come for the bones.”

“Vax will be awakened when Vax is ready to be awakened, Caz.” Wylant closed her eyes, summoning her connection to planes of elemental ice and air. “He told you that himself.”

“I'm afraid Caz remains insistent.” Silencer squeezed even harder. Wylant felt the pressure break her skin.

“I don't want to hurt you, Caz.” A truth that was rapidly becoming a lie . . .

“Caz wishes to remind you that he is Armored and you, despite your elevated status, are merely—”

“Wylant,” she boomed with the maximum volume she, as a Thunder Speaker, could achieve, her voice a cannon blast. Seizing Silencer's free gauntlet with her left hand, Wylant froze not the floor itself, because it was bone-steel, but the layer of air above it, a slick glazing of ice flowing along the floor and into the room that had once contained the smithy whose components had comprised the Life Forge.

Hurling herself backward in flight, Wylant felt Silencer struggle to retain his balance. He lost it, but not his grip. She judged this to be fair enough because her wrist broke, but her concentration did not. The two of them rocketed toward the door at the end of the hall. Such a common mistake, Wylant mused, to feel invulnerable because of a warsuit, to think just because you have a hand on me or land one blow that you've won. Kholster himself had made the same error in multitudinous sparring matches over the years. Sure, she'd lost every match at first, but eventually, it was Kholster who tended to lose more than he won.

The Armored could treat death like a game, because for them it was an option, not an inevitability. They called her the Destroyer, or they had in the past, because she had brought her son, her soul-forged weapon, down upon the overlong anvil of amber-hued metal that was the core of the Life Forge, rivaled in power and importance only by the mystic forge of Jun itself in which fires burned that could shape souls and melt reality.

She had cracked open the forge and split the anvil in twain without result. The Life Forge was of a piece: forge, anvil, and tools. All had to be sundered. All had to be rent and broken. When she slammed Vax down upon the final tool, something Sargus called an aetheric hook, the walls had begun to shake, the anvil blazed from within in violent purple. Only then had the Life Forge surrendered, exploding, every piece of it as one, with such force Wylant had been sure she was going to die, but the debris had flown through them, leaving Sargus, and her, untouched. The explosion had left both of them in an empty room with no sign the Life Forge had ever been there . . . except for Vax, who had been so recently forged with it, and for its creator, dead and bloodless on the floor.

Wylant had never wanted to go back into that room, but she flew on all the same, toward whatever armor Vax and Kholster wanted her to see, toward a clash with Caz in Silencer. Wylant waited for the fear to come, but it didn't. She might not beat Caz, but even if she lost, then Vax would be awakened, which would be a victory itself. A rising tide of desire to just awaken him anyway rose in her heart, but she stemmed that tide.

No. His choice.

Soaring past the threshold, Wylant scraped Silencer off on the door jamb with a thunderous clang that would have signaled his occupant's death if he weren't one of the Armored. Vax flowed up along her forearm, holding her wrist in place as a spiked gauntlet. When Wylant touched the floor she heard whispers. Names and lineages at the edges of her thoughts. In the entryway, Caz struggled to his feet. Wylant backed away from him, each step bringing with it another whisper.

“It's the bones.” Wylant looked down at the bone-metal flooring. They had not done this before. What had caused the change? The scars on her back alone, or had Sedvinia, Shidarva, Kholster . . . or even Dienox done this when she slept? Or was it simply Vax serving as her intermediary translating whatever broadcast emanated from the Aernese bones?

“Silencer,” Wylant began, “I'm almost positive Caz was deafened by my shout, but . . .”

Her words fell away as, taking in her surroundings for tactical value, she realized the changes that had been wrought upon the room that had once housed the Life Forge. All around her the smithy had been remade in hues of pearlescent white rather than whatever alloy Uled had used for the original. All remade, but without the exotic tools for crafting souls. The tools which hung from these new walls were the mundane sort used by any smith. The only specialized pieces were items of Aernese dental equipment.

Most shocking of all was the warsuit standing near the center of the space, next to the elongated anvil. Heat poured into the room from the open forge, but it could not suppress the chill Wylant got from the amber-tinted hue of the warsuit itself, which exactly matched that of the Life Forge.

Do you like her, mother?
Vax asked.

A new warsuit?
Wylant studied the thing, noting the way even Silencer appeared shocked by its presence. Where other warsuits tended to have heads inspired by nature or weaponry, this warsuit's helm was a mass of intricate crystalline lines. The rest of . . . her . . . was without adornment other than the lacquered chatoyance so common to Aernese artwork, but it was made more stunning by the lack of detail in contrast to the helm.

Yes
, Vax thought at her,
but she isn't quite finished yet. I did the helm myself, so you can see out of her, but—

“But the Life Forge was destroyed.” Silencer stood in the doorway, blocking all exit.

Yes
, Vax thought.
That's true.

So how could you forge a new warsuit?
Wylant asked.

I
killed the Life Forge
, Vax thought with a laugh.
Father says I absorbed enough of its power to complete at least one warsuit, perhaps more.

But why would you—
Wylant started to ask.

Want to be Armored?
Vax's surprise hit her in a wave.
Why wouldn't I? I'll be the last one to ever manage it!

“Do you mind explaining that to Silencer?” Wylant asked.

I tried. Caz is scared by all the new stuff.
Vax's voice was tinged with sadness.
He is feeling his mortality for the first time and, well, he's not handling it gracefully.

New stuff? He said the Armored could be slain?
Wylant asked.
How is that even possible?

I can think of two ways
, Vax thought back.
I'm one of them. The other is—

*

“A shard of the Life Forge.” The minuscule sliver of metal held aloft in Glinfolgo's bloodied tweezers flared amber in the blue light of the floating pyramid. The Dwarf twisted and turned it in the air, blinking gravely through the green-tinted goggles, his so-called Dwarven Reading Glasses. A frustrated sigh escaped Glinfolgo's lips, his breath hot on Vander's cool skin.

“How is that possible?” Vander asked. He made as if to lean up, only to have Glin hold him easily in place with his off hand.

“Stay put, you stubborn idiot.” Glinfolgo dropped the shard of metal into a nearby basin and set the tweezers down on a towel he'd lain across Vander's legs. Setting aside his goggles and rubbing his eyes, Glinfolgo shook his head. “When you shatter a window, do all the pieces cease to exist?”

“No.” Vander tried to keep his breath even, to remain calm, but not being able to sense other Aern or . . . especially his warsuit . . . preyed on him. It had been enough of a challenge getting used to having Rae'en in his mind instead of Kholster, but this . . . every moment felt like what he might imagine a blind and deaf human endured, stumbling through a world of smell and touch or warmth and cold, but all else dark and silent.

“But . . .”

“But?” Glinfolgo sniffed. “But what? When Wylant smashed the cursed thing it exploded. The debris was cast into another dimension if our sourc—if what I've been told about it is accurate.”

“But if it was lost in another dimension,” Amber got the words out before Vander could speak them, “then how—?”

“How? How what?” Glin snatched the floating pyramid out of the air and held it low over the open incision he'd made in Vander's chest. White muscle exposed. Orange blood seeping slowly. Two sections of the bone plates that protected an Aern's vitals lay atop the towel next to the tweezers, their edges warped and rounded where the Dwarf had used yet another Dwarven gizmo, this one a tiny handheld flaming device to cut through and reach the depth of the wound.

“Does anything look off to you?” Reaching into his box, Glinfolgo pulled out a polished steel mirror and held it at an angle so Vander could see down.

Other than the fact that all of the stuff at which he was looking ought to be covered up with a nice strong layer of bronze skin, Vander did not see anything particularly strange. Not that he'd taken to cutting open his chest and prying loose the plates. . . .

“Wait,” Vander said. “What is that mass of black stringy things?”

“That,” Glinfolgo answered, “is a bundle of dead nerves, specifically from one of the main nerve clusters that house your magnetoreceptors.”

“You said that before,” Vander said. “I still have no idea what it is.”

“You know how some animals know how to fly toward warmer climates in the cold part of the year and then back when it is hot?”

“Yes, but—”

“They do it by reading the,” he searched for a word, “unseen language of Barrone. It's the same language that lets a compass point north. Your Overwatches can use it to leave messages in bone metal.”

“Like the mountain steps back home?” Vander asked. “Is that what you mean?”

“Yes. Bone Finders sense along the lines of it that wrap around Barrone to feel the presence of Aernese bones. It's what connects you all.”

“And now that you have the metal out,” Feagus asked from his spot near the door, “he'll heal?”

Teeth that could break rock ground together: the telltale rumble of Dwarven indecision. Vander's chest rose painfully. So silly, he thought, to feel afraid to know the answer to a question.

Curious beyond words, Vander waited for the Dwarf to answer with a resounding yes and gesture with confidence at flesh knitting beneath his gaze. Then he recognized the scent of the wound. He had caught its sweet, rank bouquet from Ghaiattri wounds in the Demon Wars, where injuries on otherwise resilient bodies had to be cut away layer by layer until they found the healthy meat that could heal and scar.

Caz's throat.

Glayne's eyes.

Other less debilitating injuries and some worse. Kholster had insisted that he see each wound that would not heal, as if staring at the horror of a world gone wrong would help him understand why some could heal from the sizzling bite of a Ghaiattri's fire without a mark and others could not. Even the same Aern might heal some wounds but not others or initial wounds but not subsequent injuries.

Maybe he doesn't want to heal
, Kholster had thought to Vander as the two had stood over the prone form of Alfan, who had once been Armored. It had taken far too long for them to realize that none of Alfan's limbs would heal below the knee or elbow.
Could that be it?

I don't think he lacks a will to heal
, Vander remembered thinking back.
If Uled is correct and a Ghaiattri's flame can burn the soul . . . perhaps his spirit, thus injured, lacks the strength to support his whole body.