Oathkeeper, p.5
Oathkeeper, page 5
He turned the staff’s eye to face him and peered into it deeply. A small horizontal slit opened in the center of his forehead, revealing a stone exactly matching the one mounted on his staff. When he spoke, a blue nimbus surrounded it, glowing more brightly the longer he continued. “From Sedric, dean of the Guild City Long Speaker’s College and Possessor of the Seventh Eye to whomever is currently stationed at the North Gate Relay.” He pictured the predetermined geometric shape currently used to designate North Gate. “I have it on . . . good authority . . . that four young Overwatches who have recently passed through your gate have or will shortly run into trouble in Castleguard. You are to relay this information to the kholster of the Token Hundred on the Dwarven side of the gate immediately.”
Blue light, visible only to those with Long Skills coalesced around the staff’s head, then fired into the air. The energy pierced the wall along the most direct path to North Gate and vanished into the night. After a few moments, the Third Eye closed, and the adrenaline rush that accompanied all successful transmissions pulsed through him.
He paused.
Technically that was sufficient. Technically.
Sedric gazed down at Cadence’s slowly breathing body and considered his Seventh Eye. Most Long Speakers had a Third Eye. Advanced Long Speakers had a fourth and perhaps a fifth for discreet communications and for projecting boards and game pieces for the various amusements in which the idle rich liked to engage with one another over long distances. If the Long Speakers used these moments to glean bits and pieces of information from the unprotected minds of the merchants and royals to whom they sold their services at the same time . . . well, that knowledge was kept within the Long Speaker hierarchy, so whom did it actually harm?
Each stone or crystalline eye was implanted into the psychic space every collegially trained Long Speaker housed in their brain, a practical merging of magic and mental power.
Only those with the most calculating, focused minds could survive the implantation process, and though Khalvadian Long Speakers had been long renowned as the best, the Hulsite school of training was finally coming into its own, largely because of Sedric’s rise to power in the Guild Cities’ school.
Few had a Sixth Eye; it was reserved for messages so secret that no chance of interception could be risked. The Sixth Eye allowed a handful of Long Speakers to communicate directly mind to mind, instantaneously. It was also incredibly draining.
Only three Long Speakers in the whole of Barrone possessed a Seventh Eye. One was the Guild Master of the Khalvadian Long Speakers Guild; the second was the Headmaster of the Khalvadian Long Speakers Academy. The third was Sedric.
The Seventh Eye burned like a tiny sun, so bright it was difficult to look at. At times, its presence drowned out all surrounding thought, granting sweet yet disturbing moments of complete mindquiet.
Sedric’s own father had died trying to accept the Seventh Eye, but Sedric had succeeded where every Long Speaker in fourteen generations of his family had failed. The Seventh Eye was a weapon, pure and simple. It was also the reason the rate for Sedric’s services was twenty times that of a Revered Master Long Speaker.
Sedric calmly invoked the eye but did not open it. Even so, it illuminated the stone cell with a hellish red light. A thin crimson line pulsed an inch above his wispy eyebrows.
It could be used to kill, to maim . . . it could also be used to purposefully burn out another Long Speaker’s abilities. And yet Kholster had placed this woman in his care, under his protection, to be trained . . . not handicapped and discarded.
“Hells,” he cursed, dismissing the Seventh Eye. “Hells. Hells and triple hells besides. I’ll likely boil in the Bone Queen’s bathwater for it, but . . .”
He opened his Sixth Eye and reached directly into the mind of the Head Long Speaker positioned at the Castleguard Relay: Cassandra, this is Sedric, dean of the Guild City Long Speaker’s College and Possessor of the Seventh Eye. I ask this very respectfully as you are a Revered Master Long Speaker and Possessor of the Sixth Eye, not to mention the fact that your mother is a Possessor of the Seventh Eye, my senior and mentor: What in all the Maker’s creation is going on up there in Castleguard?
CHAPTER 5
DEATH WALKS ALONE
Under the same moon, deep in tunnels hidden from its light, reptilian hordes clashed with rank upon rank of sentient Aernese armor beneath West Watch. The death god, Kholster, formerly the leader of the Aern, walked among them. Kholster moved through the three main prongs of battle winnowing the souls of the fallen. He hurled spirits of the dead into the Horned Queen’s clutches without comment, question, or pause. Each step took him to a new dying mortal.
None saw the grim-faced deity in his bone-wrought armor until their souls were gripped in his pale white gauntlets beneath the crimson scrutiny of his warsuit’s crystalline eyes. He did not wonder whether they knew there was a face behind that Irkanth skull helm with its leonine lines and curving horns. The Harvester came when needed, warpick across his back.
It hadn’t always been that way. Only days ago, he’d been burning, wounded by Ghaiattri flame through the bond he’d shared with Bloodmane, his warsuit . . . his former warsuit. Over the six-hundred-year exile since the Sundering, they had grown apart, a chasm that only widened when it came time to redeem Kholster’s oath to slay his former masters, the Eldrennai . . . the Oathbreakers. Bloodmane had believed that a way should be found to forgive them.
That rift had become strong enough that when he’d finally been reunited with his warsuit, his second skin, when Kholster touched the armor with his hand, his palm had sizzled. Used to being able to flow back into his armor if slain, the warsuit protecting and preserving his soul until his body could be repaired, the bones stripped of meat, interred in the warsuit and the warsuit filled with blood, protein with which he could rebuild his body, Kholster had not realized the true extent of the problem until the last moment. When the fire slew him and his soul pulled free, rocketing across the miles between him and his warsuit, as his soul touched the warsuit, he had begun to burn, to Bloodmane’s dismay.
Torgrimm, the god of birth and death, had stepped between them, giving Kholster the option to choose his death or Bloodmane’s. When he opted to die rather than slay his own creation, Torgrimm had presented Kholster with a second opportunity, to fight Torgrimm for a portion of his power and then use that power to try to set right a wrong growing within the heavens.
In many ways, being a god was no different than being Armored and First of One Hundred. Variations of temperature meant nothing to him. But as he trod from death to death, his path led him not only into the dark tunnels where the warsuits of his former people the Aern waged war upon the reptilian Zaur, but to the jungles of Gromm where the envenomed fangs of an hourglass spider found the unprotected flesh of an explorer’s ankle, aging its victim to dust, to a sickbed in Darvan where the God Speaker’s husband lay stricken by the weeping reds, and elsewhere to harvest the souls of peoples and in places of which Kholster had not even dreamt when he had been mortal.
Odors and sounds assailed his senses in the way he imagined his closest friend, Vander, Second of One Hundred, or one of the other Overwatches might feel as they leapt from mind to mind in battle gathering data and relaying it to their kholster—would his name remain both a verb and a rank, he wondered, now that he was death?—in a cohesive broadcast, allowing him or her to make judgment calls, alter strategy, and . . .
When he collected the soul of the Root Tree Tranduvallu, Kholster sighed, taking only minor solace in the six little Vael lives who had escaped the slaughter. It seemed only right that the young Vael who charged heedless of the flames to clear the wreckage wore a face so similar to his own, the same hard jaw and wolfish expression. Even though Kholburran, like all Vael, had much longer ears almost akin to a donkey’s, they were similarly placed: set higher up on the head than a human’s or an Eldrennai’s, much the same as an Aern’s. Kholster’s own ears looked more wolfish, with the same shape and motility though without the furry coat.
He lacked the close-cut beard Kholster wore, but despite his head being covered in head petals rather than actual hair, Kholburran kept his in the same style Kholster did, cut short, like a Hulsite mercenary, close to the scalp. Kholster guessed they were of a similar height, roughly eighteen hands tall, though Kholster imagined a male of Kholburran’s age would take credit for the length of his ears and claim to be taller.
Kholster resisted the urge to reach out and help Kholburran, feeling further justified and pleasantly surprised when the crystal-twisted woman he had spared and entrusted to the Long Speaker’s College reached out to assist. The prince escaped with only minor scorching, and the young female who feared for him seemed on the path to reclaiming her life.
Good for both of you.
There was always some small victory for life to keep his outlook positive. That wasn’t the problem, but there most certainly was one. His mind felt empty—alone. The constant thread of other thoughts from other Armored, warsuits, and Overwatches at the edges of his consciousness had died when he had become a deity and been replaced with a near infinity of self. Kholster felt his physicality expand as more than one sentient died at a time. He knelt by dying mothers, drowning seamen, a young knight thrown from his horse, to the sides of the slain in multitudinous battles ranging from bar brawls gone wrong, to domestic horrors in the dark, to a gallows, to two children lost in the mountains, to the bedsides of a scattered handful of the aged and infirm. Any time more than one person lay dying simultaneously, which seemed to be most times, there were more than one of Kholster, his perceptions not split but duplicated. The closest thing he could compare it to was when, as First of the Aern, he’d shared a memory with his people or addressed them all at once. Only this new feeling came with a profoundly impressive headache.
“All know,” he muttered. “All recall.”
Shall I establish a connection, sir?
Almost alone.
Vander would have been better suited for this, Kholster thought at his warsuit.
Is that a yes or a no, sir? I could easily link you to Bloodmane and through him—
No thank you, Harvester.
At the mention of Bloodmane’s name a thought took one of Kholster’s many selves to his former warsuit’s side. So much history between them. Kholster remembered hammering and shaping every inch of the warsuit, working him into being on the Life Forge. Once joined, they had lived and fought as one for thousands of years, until many had come to think of Kholster as not simply Kholster, but Kholster Bloodmane. They had walked the world together as a force that could be delayed but never truly defeated . . .
Until the Sundering.
When Wylant had shattered the Life Forge in an attempt to win the war against the newly freed Aern, killing all Aern except those who were Armored, her actions, combined with the Vael’s desire for peace, had convinced Kholster to accept a treaty forcing the Aern to retreat into exile without their rightful skins, their constant companions, their warsuits . . .
If it had never happened, however, Kholster wondered whether his people ever would have discovered their warsuits’ potential. Though their connection remained unbroken, the warsuits, deprived of their occupants, grew apart from their makers, further developing their own sentience . . . and now they fought battles and forged agreements as a separate people, a people led by Bloodmane, armor of Kholster. Kholster could not have been more proud.
Blazing crimson light flashed within the crystalline eyes in the armor’s helm. Shaped in the likeness of a roaring Irkanth, a species of horned lion that (before the Sundering and the changes it had wrought to their natural habitat had pushed them in the wood, The Parliament of Ages) had been king of the Eldren Plains, the rich red of the warsuit’s namesake flowed behind it in an arc born of velocity.
“Now!” Bloodmane shouted, commanding not only the warsuits but their allies, the Eldrennai Oathbreakers.
On cue, Oathbreaker Geomancers ripped the ceiling of the tunnel open as Pyromancers at the ready superheated rock, letting it fall back as steaming magma. They hadn’t been able to save West Watch, but Bloodmane had avenged it thoroughly. If only Kholster’s former warsuit realized he was tying up all his resources on feints.
They haven’t found the central tunnel yet, Kholster thought. Or engaged the main force of the Sri’Zaur.
Skinner was dispatched to check Kevari Pass, he might notice—
He won’t. Bloodmane should have sent Scout or Eyes of Vengeance. Kholster stood next to Bloodmane, the magma’s orange glow painting his former armor in tones of anger and hate but leaving the bone of which Harvester was composed unmarked. Skinner was never very good at tracking.
Maybe he will be lucky this time?
They need reinforcements and they don’t even know it.
But surely the warsuits—
It is not the warsuits about whom I am worried. There are almost as many Zaur and Sri’Zaur deployed as there are living Aern in the whole of the Dwarven-Aernese Collective.
I could warn your son?
Which one?
Irka. Harvester thought at him. He is still your Incarna and there will always be a link there.
Ignoring the question, Kholster looked down at his white gauntlets, the sight killing his line of thought. “The light doesn’t touch me.”
Lava’s pale glow, Harvester intoned. No dragon’s fire or Ghaiattri flame may reach across the gulf to touch us, but . . .
The gulf?
Between the realm of gods and mortals. You could cross it if you wished, of course, sir . . .
No. Kholster hated that “no.” Rae’en is First now. She has all of the Armored to advise her. I . . .
A multitude of Kholster moved along the passageways of Xasti’Kaur and the lands above them collecting the souls of dead and burning Zaur, Vael, humans, and Eldrennai.
No Aern. Yet.
Watching the other versions of himself he couldn’t help but picture the Queen of the Issic-Gnoss on her faraway continent with her army of drones that had no thought which was not hers.
Is that what I am now, he mused, a death spider sitting at the center of my web of life?
If that was the price for freeing the Aern, for giving them a freeborn kholster no longer bound by the myriad oaths he’d sworn in the past, Kholster considered it a sacrifice well worth making. He just didn’t like the hidden costs that came with it.
As one Zaur rolled in agony, clawing at its burning scales and ruined hide, it occurred to Kholster how easy it would be to grant the dying a respite from pain and take them as soon as he felt the pull and knew death was certain.
He did not.
“Every moment of life, each breath, each heartbeat is theirs.” The memory of Torgrimm’s voice washed over him. “Do not steal it from them. Even at the end, at the last spark of life, the evil can see the error of their ways and the pure and bright can become resplendent in their glory.” Kholster turned away from the dying Zaur. The death god smiled to see the warsuits moving unscathed amid the flowing superheated earth . . . a smile that vanished when he felt eyes spying on him in the night.
Aldo?
Aldo, Harvester confirmed.
Kholster growled low and took a single step.
*
Gray and dim, the death god Kholster’s destination was little more than a carpeted cube floating in the ether, a single figure at its center. Wreathed in a swirling cloud of ever-shifting lenses, the occupant, a gnome-like being with cavernous eye sockets, twisted to face Kholster. Gold light gleamed from the being’s distended ocular orbits. His robes, unlike the ones worn by his statues, were simple and well made but without ornamentation or embroidery. He could assume any form he wanted in a vain attempt to hide his true self from the mortals, but this, Kholster imagined, was the real god of knowledge: a cringing, spying deceiver.
Flinching slightly, as if expecting Kholster to seize him by the neck and lift him into the air, Aldo smiled broadly when the death god stood at arms’ length.
“Aldo.” Kholster growled.
“Kholster.” A full-length mirror appeared in the space to Aldo’s right. “Did you wish to see something? Dienox, Torgrimm, and I have spent many a—”
“The eye that spies on me, I shall pluck out.” Kholster’s voice came as a rough whisper abrading the cloud of lenses nearest him. Convex and concave alike, mirrors of all sizes and shapes, floating circles of various liquids, and even a few made of quicksilver broke and scattered before that voice, shards and silvery droplets drifting in a mass.
“Then it is fortunate,” Aldo said amiably, “that I have none of them in at the moment.” He reached into his robes and withdrew a lacquered wooden box, holding it open for Kholster’s inspection.
He has you there, sir.
I’d noticed.
Kholster glared into the lacquered wooden box at the eyes, one pair for each type of sentient of Barrone, rolling about like marbles within.
“My friend, if pulling a few of my eyes out of their box and shaking them about would mollify you in any way—” Aldo thrust the box at him, further agitating its contents.
“I felt your eyes upon me, Aldo.” Kholster reached out, flipping the box closed. “I respect you for the kindnesses done for me when I was mortal, for the knowledge you gave me, the language you gave my people, but—”
