Grudgebearer (34 page)

The knights rode along a gently descending arc. Much of the rubble from the town had been pressed deep into the sides and bottom of the pit, giving it an almost intentional-seeming tiled appearance. Broad trenches curved along the pit's floor in what might have been a sinuous pattern. Near the bottom on the southeastern wall was a tunnel tall enough for three soldiers to stand on each other's shoulders and wide enough for her knights to ride four abreast. Remains of the watch town littered the base of the massive pit, but there were no signs of the Eldrennai and human townfolk who had lived there.

A sneezing fit came over Wylant, and her eyes began to water. She came to a stop near the fragmented base of the town's ruined central tower, pulled off her gauntlet, and reached into her saddlebag for a pouch of
jallek
root. She bit off a piece of the bitter black medicine and let it rest under her tongue. Wylant returned the pouch to her saddlebag, slid her gauntlet back on, and waited for the herb to take effect, angrily fighting back sneezes.

As soon as she could speak properly again, Wylant addressed her Lance, “Reminders. The Zaur may be resistant to your magic, but their surroundings aren't. Don't hit a Zaur with ice, hit the ground at its feet. Use magic to control the battlefield, to mold it to your advantage. Don't think about what you can't do. Concentrate on what you can do.”

“
Ikai
,” Wylant urged her horse slowly forward into the tunnel. Zaur stench, which had been bearable in the pit, grew stronger beneath the ground, forcing her knights to struggle against nausea. Even Wylant had never experienced such a strong concentration of the reptilian musk.

“Mazik.” Wylant mimed waving away an odor.

Behind her, the knight chanted an incantation and made fluid gestures in the air. The stink lessened, replaced somewhat by the smell of the royal gardens.

“Good job, Mazik,” heckled Roc. “Now it smells like lizards and roses.”

“I'd like to see you do better, Lieutenant,” Mazik growled. “Not all of us can be as humble as you and ride the air a few inches low . . . out of respect.”

“That's enough,” Wylant ordered, glad they couldn't see the look of amusement beneath her helm. She gave another command and each of her Lancers summoned a magic lantern, little wisps of flame hovering above them in the dark of the tunnel to light their way.

At her signal, they rode forward in search of Zaur.
If all goes well, we'll get a look at part of the Zaur force, kill a few, take their measure, and then make it out alive. If not . . .

PART THREE

CALL TO WAR

“The Vaelsilyn, or Vael, as they now prefer, were created as little more than a breeding aid in my father's eyes. He used the Royal Hedge Rose as a base partially because those were at hand and also because he noticed that Aern universally appeared to enjoy the odor of those hardy orange blooms. No examples of the altered Vaelsilyn Rose Bush exist. According to the official records in the royal archive, this is due to the draining effect of producing Vael infants. Each plant bloomed only once, producing an average of eight viable offspring before wilting.

“Uled's private notes tell a different story. Each successive generation of blooms produced a proportionately larger number of Vael with the potential for what my grandfather called ‘prodigious and alarming spiritual abilities.' By the fourth generation, the Vaelsilyn Rose ceased blooming at all, the leaves turning blue and the root structure altering to resemble a large tree rather than a bush.

“Alarmed by the transformed plant's similarity to the notorious Genna Tree, Uled states that he began poisoning the bushes after their first yield, not wishing to repeat something he described as his ‘reptilian error.'”

An excerpt from
The Bloom of Life—A Study of the Vael
by Sargus

CHAPTER 33

BLOOD-RED MOON

Under a blood-red moon, the four Overwatches moved at a fast jog, their boots slapping like pounding hammers beating out a steady rhythm on the stone of the Guild Commerce Highway. Summer was fading fast, and each of the four young Aern had fun trying to render the mental map they held in their minds between them with the most accurate details. Rae'en might never notice the difference, but Kazan had taken the detail of the map Malmung had shown them as a challenge.

Rae'en?
Kazan sent out. He'd expected to get back within range faster than this.

Any of you able to reach her yet?
Joose thought. Three tokens, one representing each of the other three Overwatches, went gray, a visual “No” they'd learned early on but had started using again after one of Kholster Malmung's Overwatches, Lena, had reintroduced the topic.

“A kholster needs to be able to pay attention to what his own senses are telling him, too.” Lena had explained. “Malmung doesn't mind a little conversation, but the reason he doesn't send his auditory input, the reason Kholster doesn't typically share his, is sound can be more confusing than visual information.

“A kholster or a soldier can have a map in the corner of her vision and know it isn't really there. It might cost them a small portion of their field of vision, but it expands their overall knowledge.”

“Put phantom sounds in their ears,” Joose had spoken up, “and you just confuse them.”

“Or endanger them.” Lena had granted Joose one of her rare smiles, revealing an upper canine only partially regrown next to its neighbor. “A twig snap heard on your end could make them turn the wrong way and react to it unnecessarily, or if you're close enough to hear it, too, they might react in the wrong direction or hear it from both sides and not know how to respond.”

Don't you think we should have been back in range by now?
Joose thought.

Three gold tokens flashed on the map.

Lena told me we might have to get closer to reacquire full contact than we were when we lost it
, M'jynn thought.

When were you spending time alone with Lena?
Arbokk asked.

Hey, the mating age is twenty-one
, M'jynn thought back.

What does that have to do with Lena teaching you how to knit?
Kazan thought.
Because that's what she told me you two were doing. She even showed me some of your work.

She did?

I am your Prime Overwatch and, in your kholster's absence . . .

Kholster Rae'en
, M'jynn thought as loud as he could, including the others in his broadcast,
can you hear me yet?!

I think she's already in the Guild Cities
, Kazan laughed.
Maybe when we hit the halfway mark.

Are we there yet?
M'jynn joked.

*

“No,” Lieutenant Kreej hissed at his human charge, “we are not there yet.” Sibilance bounced echoes of the susurrant statement around the stone tunnels through which the two traveled. With the added clack of his fore and hind claws on the stone and the scrape as they gripped the subtle concentric rings which ran the length of the underground passage, Kreej hoped the human would be cowed.

Maybe if he took the human's lantern away . . .

“How can you tell?” Randall Tyree gestured at the walls with the offending lantern, casting shadows down the passage and elongating Kreej's hunched shadow into a distorted shape Kreej hoped the human would find frightening. “It all looks the same.”

Kreej's gray tongue flicked out, tasting the air as he ran along the passageway on all fours. No fear in the air. No hint of even a cold sweat. “I know.”

It was, perhaps, not strictly within the scope of his orders to try to scare the human, but something about the creature was so off-putting. At first Kreej had liked the human, but after the first day . . . it was as if Tyree was hiding something. The human understood things it shouldn't, and that made Kreej want to put it off-balance.

Realizing he'd padded too far ahead, Kreej paused (again) to wait for the human and his slow two-legged gait. Kreej took advantage of the free semiprivate moment to express the musk glands near the base of his tail along the floor of the tunnel. He didn't know how it would help anyone (where was a Zaur going to get lost in a well-marked tunnel system like this?), but it was standard procedure, so he did as he was expected and added his scent to that of the hundreds of Zaur who had traversed the tunnel ahead of him.

Would anyone know if he failed to follow procedure? He couldn't imagine Warlord Xastix or General Tsan checking either, but he'd seen plenty of unexpected weather on this assignment. And where had that train of thought come from? Who cared if procedure made sense or not? Kreej just cared about the opportunity for another name . . . a name he would choose for himself.

“Can you tell me where we are going yet?” Tyree said as his lantern picked out Kreej's procumbent form.

“It would be meaningless to you.” Eyes canted up so they would flash in the lantern light. Kreej growled when the human smiled in return.

“Come on, Dimples.” Tyree breathed heavily as he caught up with Kreej and then jogged past the Zaur. “We'll never get to wherever we're going with you dragging your butt.”

“I was merely expressing my musk,” Kreej snapped.

“Oh,” Tyree coughed. “There's no ‘merely' about your musk. I'm sure it's quite the hit with all the girls.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.” Tyree laughed again, but Kreej could not tell why.

“Dryga.” Kreej said after the human stopped to rest some hours later. Why the human insisted on unloading its pack, laying out soft cloth and padding on the floor, and activating the second (and smaller) of the two Dwarven lanterns he carried with him was a mystery to Kreej. It was all so unnecessary.

“What is Dryga?” Tyree asked as he stripped out of one perfectly good cloth covering and into another. Kreej looked down at the ground and contemplated breaking the smallest of the two lanterns. He had no intention of telling the human about Captain Dryga, wasn't certain why he'd said the captain's name at all.

“There's a Captain Dryga, isn't there?” Tyree smiled, the light catching in his pellucid eyes. How did the human keep such white teeth? “You can tell me. I'm supposed to be your ward and ally—a friend of the Zaur . . . right?”

“You are to advise him at the forward base.” Kreej's head began to ache.

“How far forward?” Tyree shook his canteen. It was old and battered but also obviously of Dwarven make. “This canteen Uncle Japesh left me may keep the water situation under control, but I'm going to run out of food if we don't restock somewhere. I'm not a bad hunter, nor a good one either, but I can't hunt where there isn't any game.”

“Another day until we reach a supply store and a guard station.”

“More bug rations.” Tyree's veneer of unflappability dimmed then brightened again. “That will be the fifth one. I may be a little off, but that means, unless you've suddenly started doing things differently, that we've covered around two hundred and forty miles. We've passed completely beyond the Eldren Plains haven't we?”

“No,” Kreej lied.

“How did you manage that without the Eldrennai catching you out?”

“We work toward His secret purpose,” Kreej hissed, rising up on his hind legs, tapping his chest with his foreclaws. “The scarbacks would have found us as they have in the past, but the scarbacks are gone. The Eldrennai cannot stand against the chosen of Secret and Shadow.”

“Calm down.” Captain Tyree held his arms wide. “I'm on your side, remember? To His secret purpose, Musky. Remember? Who got you guys the information you wanted? Who is going to advise Captain Dryga?”

“You did.” Kreej dropped to all fours, clawing angrily at the back of his scales. “To His secret purpose.”

Tyree smiled again, and Kreej felt simultaneously soothed and alarmed. Something was wrong with this ally, and Kreej did not like one scale of it.

*

I don't like this
, Kholster thought at Vander.

Walking through the gates of this Guild City twisted an uncomfortable knot in Kholster's stomach. He'd never walked its tree-lined streets, but the looks in the eyes of the people working and training here unsettled him. They watched him with, for the most part, the same gaze some Elevens did. Unable to meet his gaze but unable to stop staring when his gaze moved past them. He saw awe and worship in their faces as they paused in their training on the various grounds and tiered buildings. . . . Some practicing archery, others with melee weapons or unarmed techniques.

The students and instructors at the open-air schools of Warfare crowded at the fences edging their practice areas. Indoor schools found the windows and doors thrown open as the occupants of those buildings leaned out of windows, over balcony railings, or filed out the doors to crowd the edges of the street.

Walking at an even pace toward the hexagonal building he did not want to enter, Kholster frowned, the facial expression generating scattered cheers and hoots of approval. He caught himself wishing that Teru were still with them carrying Cadence or that the conversation with Dean Sedric, at the Long Speaker's College, had taken longer and given him a better excuse for moving on without acceding to the Guild Masters' request for an audience.