*

  Tsan struggled to conceal her surprise at the condition of the warlord. Once strong and hale, he seemed gaunt and wasted, and the red blotch of scales between Xastix’s eye ridges had turned black and now wept a milky substance. Eyes like those of a wild beast in a trap greeted Tsan’s gaze, rolling in an unfocused manner as if the warlord were trying to track the flight of a very swift insect.

  “You may approach,” Xastix hissed.

  “Warlord Xastix.” Tsan dipped low, baring her throat submissively. “May I present representatives from The Parliament of Ages and the Eldren Plains. Princess Yavi of the Vael and Prince Dolvek of the Eldrennai.”

  Silence.

  Princess Yavi, eyes down out of respect, waited patiently to be recognized. Dolvek gawped openly both at Kilke’s head and at the warlord’s obvious ill health, before his manners asserted themselves and he bowed low.

  Silence.

  “I have informed them of the requirement to shed blood as a sign of sincerity before any further discussion of treaties can begin.”

  “Blood,” Xastix muttered. “Yes, the blood is . . . required.”

  <> Tsan tapped with her tail, <>

  Four black-scaled Sri’Zaur entered; two took positions on either side of the throne, and the other two stood between the guests and the warlord. One of them offered Tsan his own Skreel knife.

  “Princess Yavi.” Tsan took the blade, offering it to her hilt first. “Would you do us the honor of opening our talks?”

  Yavi nodded, reaching for the Skreel knife, opening her mouth to speak as she lifted her head to find the eyes of the warlord, but what came out instead of pleasantries was a scream.

  *

  “It’s a demon, Dolvek,” Yavi shouted, “and a monster and something I don’t even have a word for!”

  More than anything, Dolvek wanted Yavi to be wrong—for this all to be some mistake, but it was Yavi who had looked at the unawakened Aernese Prototype and seen the tortured spirit, driven mad by pain, still clinging to it. It had been Yavi who had looked at the warsuits in that same display and known they were alive and sentient. He wished, in the split instant of decision, that she were some silly, pretty thing who hadn’t killed more Zaur at Oot, faster, better, and more tactically than he had.

  But she had done all of those things, and despite how much he needed this to work, how much he wanted to establish a treaty, to have some tangible proof he was worthy of the blood of his father that had spilled out at Oot for his people . . . possibly because Dolvek himself had been too arrogant, too stupid, too tied up in his own false little world to do anything remotely useful for the entirety of his existence. While Yavi, though silly and happy and so desirous of peace, had been willing to take even him, Dolvek, into her kingdom to try and save him.

  For all those reasons and a thousand more he could not articulate, Dolvek did not question. Instead, throwing open his connection to the elemental planes of earth and air, Dolvek acted.

  What he did not do was grab the knife.

  *

  “I apologize, Princess,” Dolvek shouted as he seized her by the waist and shot for the ceiling. A sharp yelp ripped through her as the Skreel knife, slapped harshly by the ascent, slashed the back of her arm. Too shocked to even process she had been grabbed, Yavi gawped, eyes wide as the rock ceiling tore itself apart, making way for their rapid exit. Fire blazed from Dolvek’s outstretched palm, filling the hole left in their wake with flame.

  “I very much need you to tell me,” Dolvek said, his voice shaking as they reached the open air, slamming the earth behind them back together with a closed fist, “that you were not joking about the monster.”

  Yavi tore his mask off and twisted around to kiss him full on the mouth, which she hoped even a male-type person as thick-headed as Dolvek would understand as a very firm yes.

  “Thank you for rescuing me,” Dolvek told her, chest heaving as his breath came in ragged pants, almost falling from the sky except that then he might have dropped her.

  “I did thank you.” Yavi quirked her lips at him, brows furrowed. “That’s what the kissing was about.”

  “It wasn’t a prompt,” Dolvek laughed. “The thanks was genuine. Whatever that thing was, I would have stood there like an idiot and been eaten, hoping all the while it would sign a treaty with me.”

  “Warlord Xastix is tied to a Ghaiattri, and his shard of the world crystal has gone terribly insane.” Yavi kissed him again. “And there is another soul inside him, like a parasite, belonging but evil. I’ve never seen anything, even a Ghaiattri, that was actually pure evil before, but whatever is inside the warlord . . . it wants nothing good.”

  “I’ll set us down and then you can ride on my back so you won’t have to endure being held,” Dolvek told her.

  “No.” She put the backs of her hands on either side of his face, wrists crossed beneath his chin. “You must not land on that mountain. Get us out of here as fast as you can. Take us . . . take us . . .”

  “Back to Hashan and Warrune?”

  “Fort Sunder first.” Yavi wrapped her arms around him. “Here, just so it is easier to carry me. Once we’re free of the mountain, I’ll be able to fly with the spirits for a while.”

  “Yes, Princess,” Dolvek answered. So that, he thought, is what it feels like to do one thing right. It’s a start.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE TRUE ENEMY

  Tsan grabbed for the Skreel knife, leaping free of the fire and rubble. Neither as lucky nor as quick, the two guards nearest her lay crushed under a small mound of rubble. Rocks had cracked one marble table; the artifacts displayed upon it lay broken or scattered. On either side of Warlord Xastix, his guards moved to get him out of the chamber only to find themselves hurled against the walls, like string-cut marionettes.

  “The blood?” Xastix hissed.

  Checking the blade, Tsan prayed she had been right. She thought the knife had slashed the Weed during her rapid ascent with the Eldrennai. And . . . yes . . . there it was on the blade—a trace of blood running down the length of the edge.

  “Is it enough?” Tsan asked, offering the blade to her warlord.

  “Yes!” Xastix danced on his hind legs, twirling amid the remains of his guards and laughing wildly. “Now for the offering.”

  “What offering, you fool?” said an entirely different voice, using the warlord’s throat. “You’ll put the blood on the skull, you won’t pour it out for some useless god!”

  “But he’ll make the pain stop,” Xastix said in his own voice.

  “I’ll make the pain stop,” the other voice snapped. “Now do it.”

  Wedged-shaped head cocked at an angle, Tsan began to back away from her warlord.

  “Well done,” Kilke’s head said from its place on the Throne of Scale. “Pour the blood upon the throne and I will bless you with—”

  “You lie,” the other voice spat. Xastix snatched up the Eldrennai skull and the vials moments before lightning fired from Kilke’s eyes, hurling Xastix across the room. Crushed between his chest and the skull, the two vials broke, smearing the skull with blood. Where they mixed, lines beneath the surface of the bone shone silver.

  “Don’t!” Kilke shouted.

  “Last sample.” Xastix wiped the blade across the skull, then spat his own blood upon the bone.

  Flesh ripped itself from the warlord’s body in ragged strips. Jagged lances of bone thrust through skin and organs on its way out of the mighty Sri’Zaur’s body, his screams filling the auditory receptors and mind of General Tsan. Nothing, in Tsan’s estimation, could have been worse than the sound of the skull’s laughter.

  “Reptilian error? That’s what the boy called you all?” A cruel voice croaked from lips formed of stolen skin and cartilage with a tongue still as forked and gray as it had been in the mouth of its previous owner. “Error?”

  General Tsan’s eyes widened.

  The Weed was right, she thought desperately. It’s time to get the hells out of here.

  She tried to run, knew she should, but her body would not turn. Her slit-pupiled eyes could not help but watch as a crude yet increasingly elegant skeleton wove itself together from the flailing near-corpse of her warlord.

  “Error?!” the thing taking shape before her shrieked. “I make no mistakes! I make discoveries!” It nodded to itself, raising a hand held together by veins and wriggling ligaments into the air. “Such things I have learned no other being on the whole of Barrone was brave enough to master. Not before me and not after!

  “Hasimak may have discovered the Port Gates, but I have created a new state of being!” Parts of the warlord’s scales flowed like liquid, settling into an approximation of smooth Eldrennai flesh, but not all of it. One eye transformed into a perfect elfin eye with a dark-brown iris then settled itself into the ocular orbit, muscle and nerve endings reattaching themselves like snakes latching hold of their prey. The creature’s left eye stopped mid-transformation with two pupils off center in the orb, one matching its elfin mate, the other bright green with a slit pupil.

  Tossing its head back in triumphant joy, the thing shook its head as long trails of thick, black head petals sprouted from the skin and muscle attempting to cleave to the skull. As Warlord Xastix’s screams died away, first in her auditory receptors and lastly in her mind, General Tsan’s body began to move: first the shifting of one hind leg, then the other, and the spell was broken.

  “Dead, am I?” the creature roared. “Dead once. Born twice, but now . . . something new.” The warlord’s lovely scales had become a hybrid of Zaur and elf hide, with dark-brown scaly patches outlined in pale, perfect Eldrennai skin slipping into place with a soft sucking sound where the interior assembly of meat and bones was complete. “Neither dead nor alive. Beyond the reach of Sower or Reaper!”

  General Tsan backed away as the entity stuck out its forked gray tongue past a newly grown nose, narrowing its gaze as the forked ends melded together, the whole mass of muscle thickening and becoming more elfin without losing its color.

  An odor like burning hair and sizzling fat hit Tsan’s nostrils, joined by the sickly sweet aroma of decaying meat.

  Smiling with rictus glee, revealing a mouth full of bone-steel teeth, the being waved its skinless hands in time to music Tsan could not hear, humming snatches of the music, as it conducted its own construction, nodding, swaying, and gesturing to different points in the throne room as if keeping time for an unseen orchestra. Using the reflection it saw in the polished bronze mirror that lined one wall of the throne room, the coalescing thing shifted to accept organ after organ.

  Tsan’s tail twitched nervously as the intestines coiled, spewing out their contents onto the floor of what had once been the seat of Zauran and Sri’Zauran rule.

  No more, Tsan thought. We are all lost now.

  Not quite, Kilke’s voice whispered in her mind. Take me and flee. Take with you as many soldiers as you can. You are Warlord . . . No, Warleader. I don’t care what gender you are, so long as you can plot and scheme and strike. Can you do this? He will only be distracted for a little while longer.

  What is he? Tsan thought, leaping over the churning remains of the warlord, claws scrabbling for purchase on the blood- and fluid-slick tile. One false start, and Tsan landed on the throne, hovering over the severed head with its golden scales and curled ram’s horns.

  An abomination, the god purred. No time for reverence and obeisance now, Kilke urged. Pick me up and run.

  Can’t you protect me? Tsan asked.

  I can make you stronger, faster. I can even let you remain female for the rest of the unnaturally long life I will grant you, Kilke promised, but first you have to get me away from that creature of death. He is new, and my power over him will remain limited until I understand exactly how this came to pass. Torgrimm is an unbroken circle of death and birth.

  Nearby on the lone surviving table of artifacts, several items drew Tsan’s attention in quick succession. Brssti’s Axe, forged from metal that fell from the sky, worked by Kilke himself. Made to be wielded in two hands when standing upright, yet capable of splitting into twin hand axes for quadrupedal strikes.

  Mere legend-making, Kilke hissed in her mind, It’s made from a rare Dwarven alloy. I only told Brssti how to work the metal and design the apparatus that allows it to come apart and rejoin.

  Tsan seized the axe, the silk beneath sliding under her touch to reveal the naked quartz tables underneath. Gathering in the air over the still-shifting form of the thing composed of Tsan’s warlord’s corpse, the silk cut itself with delicate precision, unraveling in strips to form thread with which to sew itself.

  He’s almost complete, Kilke shouted in Tsan’s mind. The pack Warlord Viax used, it skidded behind the throne when the Vael and the Eldrennai escaped. It can hold more than it appears to hold, at one-tenth the weight. Put me in it so your forepaws will be free. Bring the axe and grab Warlord Ryyk’s armor, if you want—it’s the necklace that looks silver and has the sapphires—just trust me, I’ll explain how to use it later.

  “But the armor of Warlord Ryyk was lost,” Tsan muttered as she snatched up the necklace. Slipping the necklace on, she dropped behind the Throne of Scale and found Viax’s pack exactly where Kilke had said it would be. She tore open the flap before unceremoniously snatching the head of her god from the throne and thrusting him inside, muttering apologies as she did so.

  Actually, Kilke thought at her, the armor only works properly for a Justicar of Kilke. Which brings us to my offer from earlier. You know any Sri’Zaur who might like the strength of ten, an immensely long and gender-locked life, and the gratitude of their god?

  “And all I have to do?” Tsan hissed as she ran through the tunnels of home.

  Is agree to accept it, Kilke answered. I led Warlord Xastix along the fool’s path because I wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. His soul was twisted, that I could see, but I’m not the god my other heads are.

  “Other heads?” Tsan lost her footing as a loud explosion shook the tunnel. She dove over falling debris, twisting clear of a huge mass of bronze as it rocked free of its mounting and crashed to the floor. “But you are Kilke.”

  I’m One-Headed Kilke. Kilke’s thoughts were angry and bitter, causing bile to rise in the back of Tsan’s throat. The gods have (or had) multiple natures. Before Shidarva took my throne I was Three-Headed Kilke, the god of secrets, shadow, and one other thing: The reason I was cut off and thrown from the heavens, the reason Shidarva feared to rule with me still amongst the gods.

  So, Tsan thought back at the god in her backpack, what were you the god of?

  Power, One-Headed Kilke whispered.

  Tsan burst out into the grand auditorium where relays waited with ready tails to send forth the commands of their warlord. Staring at her with frightened eyes, they shook, their gray-scaled bodies quivering.

  “The warlord?” asked the bravest of them.

  Tsan looked out upon the cavern, chosen for its pristine acoustics, knowing that below in other tunnels were other Relays waiting to issue commands.

  You will never have a better chance to seize power, Kilke tempted. You can lead them out of here. Regroup. Prepare and then come back to drive out that thing that clothed itself with your warlord’s meat.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head at the Relay.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, but I do know this.” She paused. “We need to run. I can lead you to safety, but we must go now.”

  I accept, Tsan thought to her god.

  *

  Cadence Vindalius and Randall Tyree found themselves sitting in yet another part of the Zaur tunnel system. Very close to South Watch according to Tyree, but he’d been saying the same thing for the last two hours. Dead Zaur lay about it, rotting in the stale air. Kazan stood next to them, waiting for the other Overwatches to pick through the corpses for any remaining good meat.

  “I guess that’s it,” M’jynn yelled. “All of this is too rotten.”

  “Not all of it,” Joose said with a mouthful of questionable meat.

  “I’m done, too,” Arbokk said, standing up from rooting around in a Zaur’s abdomen for liver.

  No one expected the dead Zaur to sit up, but it did.

  Arbokk jumped free, swinging Charming, his soul-bonded mace, at its skull, knocking it away. It was not the only body on the rise. Alberta whinnied nervously, and Tyree’s pack animal ran headlong down the tunnel, not looking back or slowing when Tyree called.

  “Have you ever—?” Cadence asked.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Tyree quipped.

  “The dead don’t just get up and walk around.” Cadence jumped up and was already putting distance between her and the dead. “Torgrimm wouldn’t . . . stand . . . for it.”

  “Maybe Kholster hasn’t read that far in the training booklet,” Tyree said. “I like to think they have one. You know, after Nomi became a goddess, I picture Shidarva and Aldo getting together and writing out a guide.”

  One by one, the fallen reptiles rose, some picking up their weapons, others their missing body parts, reattaching them when possible.

  “Run?” Tyree asked. “My plan is run.”

  “Run,” Cadence agreed.

  Behind them in the tunnel, the Aern ran and the dead walked.

  *

  Miles away, Teru, Whaar, and Alysaundra scouted among the ruins of Port Ammond, gathering the melted bone metal that had comprised Glayne’s weapon. Finding the bones of the Aern who had fallen defending the dockside warehouse had been easy, but Glayne’s weapon had been airborne when it melted, and droplets of bone-steel appeared to have scattered far afield.

  “Do we have to get all of it?” Whaar asked.

  “Only what you can sense,” Alysaundra answered, using her warsuit Bone Harvest’s fists as sledgehammers to break up a section of wall under which a large part of the weapon lay.

  “But we can sense all of it,” Teru groused.

 

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