Oathkeeper (40 page)

“Truly?” he'd asked as the two of them talked late at night in his own private chambers.

“You have your plan, my prince.” Sargus had rested his hand on Rivvek's silk-draped shoulder. “It is a good one and if any has a chance of working, it does. But please, allow me my own plot to ensure your safe return.”

“Highness?” A mystic whisper from Bhaeshal cast the thought away, the Sargus of his mind's eye replaced by his people, frightened but hopeful as he delivered his message to another hundred of them. As he called up his people, a hundred at a time, he wondered how many of them had ever seen his father, King Grivek, let alone the four Elemental Nobles who stood with Rivvek now: the Stone Lord and Lady Air on his left with the Sea Lord and Lady Flame on his right. Several steps back and to the side, but unmistakable presences.

Surrounded by a sea of soldiers, knights, and elemancers (not to mention an array of Aern and their warsuits), Rivvek remained astonished by the small number of Port Ammond's citizenry who had attempted to attack him once he'd explained the decision they faced.

Hollis, the Sea Lord, cleared his throat.

Resisting all urges to straighten the slender crown upon his brow, Rivvek started again.

“There will be no war with the Aern.” Rivvek's voice, amplified by Bhaeshal's elemancy, echoed as his words bounced off of the buildings behind the crowd. He waited, but this group did not cheer. Either they knew what he was going to say or word had gotten around that not all who attended the new king's series of intimate addresses came back again.

“I am your king: Rivvek, son of Grivek, heir to the throne of Villok and I have passed the Test of Four.”

Out in the city, his knights and Elementalists, along with Aern and warsuits, were rounding up the people of Port Ammond to be sorted and brought, in an orderly fashion, before their king. He could have tried to ignore the import of that, but he could not bring himself to do it.

They will think me . . .

Words failed him. Let them think whatever they liked so long as they lived to think it.

“He is king,” the four Elemental Nobles recited as one.

“I am also Aiannai.” Rivvek looked over his left shoulder for Bloodmane, those assembled gasping when the living armor, looming taller than all present, stepped up behind the king to rest a gauntlet on either of the king's shoulders. “Oathkeeper.”

“He is Aiannai,” Bloodmane boomed, “an Oathkeeper with my maker's own scars upon his back.”

“Each of you will present yourself to Bloodmane.” Rivvek stumbled over the end of the name but pressed on. “Or one of the other warsuits present. If you are acceptable as Aiannai and are willing to bear the scars of the Aern who finds you acceptable upon your back, you may leave here in peace.”

A rumbling rose from the crowd. They did not like the sound of that. No Eldrennai yet had, but with such a show of force—

“Go to hells!”

Alas
, he thought,
I have already been there.

“Walked right into the hunter's trap,” yelled another person in the crowd. “You're no king. You—”

A handful of others shouted. Well, it had to happen eventually. One of the groups was bound to know what he was going to say and have their hearts hardened to his words before he spoke them.

One threw a rock. Then another.

Those who did . . . died.

Is it merciless to kill those one cannot save to spare others one can?
Rivvek's stomach burned and his bowels churned, but he did not look away as the ones who had thrown rocks were killed with them, either by the Stone Lord or one of the Geomancers present. Hasimak's presence would have helped, but after countless repeat performances, the old Eldrennai has grown too fatigued to continue and retired to the Tower of Elementals.

Lightning and fire rained down upon the other objectors, so fast the crowd was stunned into silence, the guards closing in, forcing them closer together.

“Enough!” Rivvek shouted, a hand signal letting Bhaeshal know to make it even louder with her Aeromancy. His next words came as calm whispers raised to the level on an irkanth's roar. “I did not doom you. Nor did my father, Grivek, or brother, Dolvek. Even Uled was not alone in his blame. Some here have not ‘held the leash' as the Aern say, but some of us—”

“We did nothing wrong!” one of them shouted. An older Eldrennai, with the look of a retired soldier. “Nothing!”

“That! That is exactly what you did!” Rivvek tore off his crown, going off script even though he knew it was unwise. “You never let the people see you take off your crown,” his father would have said, but he'd been rehearsing this argument in his head ever since Dolvek had first started showing signs of denial. All at once he had the words he'd been trying to find for all those years. “I . . . I have heard many Eldrennai, too many, say they did not hold the leash. Claim they never abused a Vael. Some even say they knew what the king was doing was wrong all along. But what you did with that knowledge was—” he shook his crown at them, “—nothing!

“You stood by and let Uled make not one race of slaves, but two. You could have risen up against my grandfather. Perhaps you would have died, but you would have done something! It could have made a difference. What it might have changed, we will never know, but maybe the Aern would have thought differently of the Eldrennai.

“Perhaps this crown,” he said, as he held it aloft, “would still be on my father's brow and we might have had six hundred years of true peace rather than the uneasy cessation of hostilities we have enjoyed. Vael might walk our cities alongside Aern who had forgiven us. . . .

“You did nothing and thus, you failed. This crown?” He handed the crown to Emma's son and picked up his helm. “This crown must be exchanged for armor. Kind words to stir the heart must become hard, stinging breaths grasping at faint hope.

“You failed the Aern and the Vael. You failed yourselves. Do not fail your children. Two great leaders have died to buy you a chance. If we do not seize this final opportunity to make amends, we, our whole race, will vanish from the face of Barrone and we will not be fondly remembered.

“I have sentenced all of those Eldrennai whom the Aern find unacceptable to death.” Rivvek saw some in the crowd open their mouths, with anger in their eyes, but no sound escaped their throats. A few understood what was happening and held their tongues, but those who actually protested fell dead, the air ripped from their lungs courtesy of Lady Air and her Aeromancers.
And if I wasn't a monster before, I am become one now.
“But it is a sentence I hope to commute. When I met Kholster at the Grand Conjunction,” Rivvek said, “I understood what many of you cannot. There is no way we can atone for what we did, but I tried to find a way.

“I was young and arrogant, in my own way, and I believed there was a chance to bring back some of those we cost the Aern. The Lost Command marched armorless through the Port Gates, led by Wylant's father Kyland to hold back the Ghaiattri long enough for the Port Gates that could be sealed to be sealed and those that could not to be destroyed. Their sacrifice, like that of the Elementalists who wrapped the Eldren Plains in an impenetrable field of magic that even the Ghaiattri could not pierce, holding them here rather than letting them overrun the whole of Barrone, was true sacrifice. . . . They were not ordered to go, but, to protect us all, they went.

“So, I decided to go into the Never Dark after them, to find their remains and retrieve their bones. I did not make it far before the Ghaiattri found me, but for those of you who have wondered, that is where I got my scars. Therefore, I now charge you, my people whom the Aern do not accept, those called Oathbreaker or Leash Holder, to atone! Come with me and help me prove we have changed and are willing to die to make things right. I will lead as many as will come through the Port Gates. We will return the Lost Legion to the Aern . . . or die trying.

“For it is truly a death sentence.” Rivvek coughed. “But if any should return, I challenge the Aern to call them by a different name. Call them Vhoulk, the Redeemed, or Tesset, the Forgiven. And then, with no Eldrennai left who claims that name, let us be at peace.”

Among the sea of faces, some believed him, wanted to make amends, others pinned him with baleful eyes.

“You are angry. I understand. You are afraid. So am I. You need someone to blame. Blame me. Hate me.” Rivvek held the demonic helm over his head. “I am scarred. I am the loathsome one who will kill those he cannot save. Call me a murderer. When this is done, assassinate me. Curse my name for all time!”

He donned the helm, blinking fiercely at the transition from the mundane world to the shadowed overlap of the Ghaiattri's dimension, the Never Dark that bled over into it under his demon-hooded gaze. Magic was beautiful, the only thing of beauty in that realm beyond, the mystic art of those around him coursing through the crowd. Lady Flame and the other Pyromancers lit up with the power of their fire; the Aeromancers, shimmering as the elemental air they controlled, glimmered in his sight. Veins of granite crisscrossed the skin of his Geomancers. All the Hydromancers' pale skin shone blue.

“Do whatever you like when this is ended, but know—” as he spoke, heart pounding, face hot, his scars pulsing, purple light flared behind him casting all around him in the lambent shadow of wings composed entirely of violet flame, “—you will wait until I am done saving you. Until the last Eldrennai has fallen, surrendered, died, or been claimed . . . I! Am! Your! King!”

*

Kazan knew a terrible thing had happened when he failed to open his eyes. One eye, his left, functioned well enough—a little blurry, perhaps. All attempts to open his right eye, however, generated the most amazing jolts of agony he had ever experienced. Leaves of an ancient blood oak rustled above in the cold breeze, and the coppery tang of human blood scented the air. As he watched, one of the seed-bearing leaves dropped free of the branch, spiraling off to find purchase. He remembered there had been a second attack, a group of knights falling on them in the night as they hobbled along the path toward Port Ammond, but after that first crush of combat his memories were fuzzy.

I'm not thinking straight.

Breath came in labored, uneven pulls.

I'm lying down.
His thoughts were unsteady as his breath.
My mouth is dry, too.
He smacked his lips, and that felt . . . odd as well. Not painful like the eyes, but strange.
Some stupid um . . .
The word he wanted escaped him, so he moved past it . . .
left a dead knight on top of me. Is that why it's hard to breathe?

Guys?
He reached out for the others.

“Over here!”
Joose shouted both in his head and in his brain.

Part of Kazan's mental map repopulated when Joose came into range. M'jynn and Arbokk were okay even though the Arvash'ae-influenced end of the battle had spread them far afield from each other. Two humans, Cadence and Tyree, outlined in gold to mark them as allies, were north of Kazan next to each other. Blurring, the map smeared itself across his vision until he banished it with a thought. What were the others thinking, covering up his whole field of vision like that?

Kazan tried to shift the knight off of himself, but his left arm wouldn't move and his right arm barely managed to nudge the heavily armored corpse. Even that slight movement lit a fire of pain in Kazan's belly, spreading along nerve pathways in a single pulse of agony, vanishing once Kazan had registered it.

That's not good
, he thought, twitching his eye again to check and see if the pain there behaved the same. It did.

There was a human saying: “Pain is your body's way of letting you know you're still alive.” For Aern the saying was even more accurate. Small irritations like cold or heat the body ignored up to a point, reading them as warning signs then dismissing them. Pain did the same thing, but it persisted. You felt pain so you'd know where you were hurt . . . and continued to feel it to help avoid further injury. But for a wound, a bad one, to stop hurting . . . flicker then fade . . . Kazan had never heard of that. Well, not in any good context.

“Bird squirt.” Joose hissed the words, horror-stricken. Pinioned with arrows and dotted with lacerations that were quickly vanishing now that Joose had eaten his fill, Kazan's fellow Overwatch displayed a few notable injuries. He had lost a hand during the fighting and had it tucked into the top of his pants, the fingers poking out above the top of his belt. His nostrils hung flayed wide open and raw where one of the knights had sliced away a large chunk of his nose. The sight made Kazan want to wince, but doing so would have taken too much of an effort.

“Hrrgl.” Whatever was wrong with Kazan's jaw kept him from speaking audibly with any real chance of being understood, the words coming out as more of a liquid gurgle.

Trying to look in the direction of the others sent another sharp barb through Kazan's head and ended in failure.

Why won't it turn?

One by one the other Overwatches arrived. Arbokk seemed none the worse for wear, or would have if Kazan didn't know Arbokk had had a full head of hair at the beginning of the fight. A melted patch or two still dotted his pate, but Kazan bet there was a story behind that one. Once they got all the nasty bits shaved off, Kazan was sure Arbokk would be more than happy to tell his tale.

“Kholster's name!” Arbokk took one look at Kazan and tripped over a root.

“It can't be all that ba—” M'jynn froze. He was still picking arrows out of himself as best he could while trying to stay mounted on one of the chargers the knights had been riding. His left leg had been hacked off above the knee—which had to have been painful. Kazan couldn't see the leg and wondered whether they were going to have to scour the roadside looking for it or if M'jynn already had it in his saddlebags. He'd hate for a Bone Finder to have to come out here just to get it.