Oathkeeper (8 page)

It is likely. Not to be repetitive, but I refer to you my earlier suggestion, sir. Strictly as a prudential measure.

I'll take that under consideration.
And then, not liking himself for doing so, Kholster gave Harvester his plan for dealing with Aldo should the need arise.

I will make the request, sir,
Harvester intoned.
An excellent precaution.

Kholster disagreed, even felt disappointed with himself for taking the precautions, but hard decisions came with the territory and being prepared was rarely as disastrous as failing to be ready to meet undesired eventualities. Hopefully, all he was doing was wasting a few days of Irka's time. And yet . . .

“I'm sorry.” Removing his glasses and setting them atop the closed book, Aldo rubbed his eyes. “As we were saying, you are everywhere anyone dies. That is not how Torgrimm did it, he popped the souls out into his little adytum—”

“Adytum?”

“Sanctum, sanctuary, hiding place, foxhole . . .” Aldo sighed. “There are many descriptors from myriad dimensions. That one, in particular, comes from the realm Abyssimus claimed, but I use them all. In this case, I use adytum to refer to the personal dimension Torgrimm had outside of normal time. Souls waited there for him, time only passing—from their perspective—when he was within their proximity. Awfully hard to observe him there. Hear? Yes—at times. See? Not well.”

“I don't know of this dimension.” Kholster fought the urge to fold his arms over his chest, forced himself to keep his hands hanging neutrally at his sides. Two could play the outward appearances game.

“My theory lays the crux of the problem with the time ratio. There doesn't appear to be much, if any, causal adherence between time within and time without. He could spend an eternity in there without its passage taking place out here, or at least not from his viewpoint or from ours.”

Do I have access to this dimension?

After a fashion
, Harvester answered.
You appear to have internalized it. Multi-presence replacing infinite time for a singular self. I am cognizant of the change, but not how to alter or affect it. Perhaps each death god works according to his or her own skill sets.

Each?
Kholster thought.
His or her?

You have proved that the position of death god is open to seizure. Given that Nomi stole a portion of Dienox's might, it seems reasonable to assume you might at some future date be deposed by a male or female.

True
. Kholster laughed.
And what would you do if I were deposed?

Oh.
Harvester's timbre deepened.
They would have to destroy me too, of course. I am a part of you, sir. Torgrimm imagined my form, but you made me real . . . forged me into being. You are my maker, my rightful occupant. Anyone who thought otherwise would be in fatal error, as Reaper and I would vigorously demonstrate.

“Am I disturbing the two of you?” Aldo stifled a yawn. “I can leave my sanctum and go read out in the hall. . . .”

“How kind of you to offer.” Kholster blinked, not that Aldo could see his face behind Harvester's helm. “We'll only be a moment.”

Aldo's jaw dropped open.

Kholster laughed.

“And to think Kilke said you had no sense of humor,” Aldo growled. “I have half a mind not to direct your attention to it in advance.”

“In advance of what?”

Aldo gestured at the full-length mirror still hanging in the air next to his desk, then withdrew the wooden box of eyes from within his robes and pulled out a pair much heavier than the rest.

“Look and see,” Aldo said as he slipped the obsidian eyes with their jade irises and amber pupils into his eye sockets. “I believe you'll recognize the players.”

Players. Kholster directed his attention to the mirror as Aldo intended, but he did not like the sound of that word. It embodied the single greatest problem he saw with the divine order of things. The gods should not see mortals as playthings. As he watched, Kholster turned the problem over and over in his mind. He'd already decided to correct that failing of the gods. So far, he liked none of the plans that presented themselves, but that did not stop him from making them.

CHAPTER 6

OLD DRAGON, NEW TRICKS

Dawn broke over a dragon in flight. He roared to greet the light, birds and creatures below him fleeing in panic for miles. It felt good to be in the air despite the chill. A quarter of one black wing, as large as the mainsail on the
AWS
(
Aernese Warship
)
Grudgebearer
, cut through the clouds at a right angle before the dragon's gargantuan head surfaced. Rapid evaporation, brought about by the immense wave of heat given off by his body, cleared the cloud cover more efficiently than the gale-force winds from Coal's flight could have done on their own.

The joints in his mighty wings now worked wondrously, smoothly, with a power and resilience he hadn't felt in millennia. He was not as young as he used to be, but he felt vigorous. Renewed. His scales, once again the near black of his youth, began to glow. Stirred by flight and violent intent, an orange tinge worked outward from the dragon's core, patches of sulfur igniting along his underbelly, burning off to expose the thick, dark armored plates beneath, outlined in flame.

The Parliament of Ages stretched out beneath him. Acre after acre of unspoiled forest. Well, almost. Was that smoke to the distant southeast? He hoped so.

How I long to burn it.

But he was not there to end the life dance of this place. Not that any of his fellow dragons remained on this plane to hold him to such ancient treaties if he chose to break them, yet even so, the life secreted within the Outwork was all that remained of the once canorous and ebullient life song this dimension had birthed. In his mind's eye, he recalled distant days soaring alongside star-quelling flights.

To have been young enough to contain such heat! Casting his gaze northward Coal felt the draw of the Father's Forge Mountains. His short visit had not been enough, but he'd promised his aid to the Aern and they would have it, even if it meant he might never again set claw on the . . . what was it the mortals called them now?

“Sri . . . Sri . . . something.” He sounded the words out trying to tease it from his tired synapses. Once, he would have recalled the desired information instantaneously. He still might have managed, if seeing the mountains again hadn't brought back such vivid memories: flights of dragons dotting the mountains, wings spread and soaking in the heat of Jun's new sun as the industrious god worked on the sky.

“Zauran! Sri'Zauran!” He roared in triumph. Elation faded as he considered the words. The Fanged People Mountains. Such nonsense. Father's Forge was a much better name. Coal's memory drifted further back to the sight of Jun in his glittering armor, mirrored helm blazing with light as he . . .

Well, that was long ago. Maybe it was just as well they were named after the infamous new plague of reptiles. He would visit the mountains one last time, if he could, gaze up at a final dawn, and spread his wings accepting its heat. He would never again leave the mountains. Not yet, however. First he had promises to keep. And maybe this time he would succeed in keeping them. Spinning in a series of barrel rolls, he spat fire into the air and roared. “Kholster, but it is a wondrous gift to fly like this again!”

Swearing by his friend's name sent a chortle through the dragon. Swooping low, his body heat drawing wisps of smoke from the treetops below, Coal squinted, narrowing the focus of his blazing eyes to find the armor of his newly deified friend.

Below, a single pass cut through the center of the forest, no smaller than when Kevari had burned it, leaving Coal to marvel at her work.

Kevari? What had happened to Kevari? Had she died before or after the coming of the Junland Bridge? No
, he thought,
no, it had been Sulfur that disappeared beneath the waves at Junland Bridge. Kevari had died later, in the Demon War.
A molten tear hissed at the corner of the dragon's onyx eyes, running white-hot along the black.

“How silly,” he murmured to himself, “for the Betrayer to have forgotten how he earned the name. Even Kholster is not old enough to have known me by that one—like as not only Hasimak and I could tell that tale—so I suppose it can be explained, if not forgiven.”

A rejuvenated body, burning brightly at the end, but my mind is still ancient. I feel young . . . and old . . . at the same time.

Wheeling in the air, Coal flew a series of flips, dives, and recoveries to stretch his muscles. A twinge at the base of his tail reminded him of the time the Ghaiattri had cut into his hide during the Great Demon War, but he did his best to ignore it.

“Work to do and debts to repay.” He mumbled the Dwarven phrase and wondered if they still used it nowadays.

His immense shadow stretched over the forest below, his thermal wake igniting tree tops as he descended, searching for a signal, if not for the warsuit itself.

“Bloodmane?” he bellowed. “Dratted armor demands my presence and then doesn't bother to provide an address at which . . . no, I suppose I did fly off before I could be given one.” He mulled that over, shifting his jaws. “No, still his fault. Should have mentioned it all in the initial—”

Figures clad in armor careered about the sky shooting gouts of blue, green, and purple flames high into the air to get his attention.

Eldrennai nonsense
, he thought dismissively.
Where are the warsuits? I'm not taking orders from some stump-eared haughty elf who thinks . . .

Flying lower still, flames licking the forest canopy, he spied a lone crevasse of collapsed earth stretching as far as his draconian eyes could see, toward the distant mountains. He landed there in the mass of fallen trees closest to the Eldrennai, fires springing up along his mass and the ground trembling beneath his weight.

“Well?” He clawed the ground. “Where is Bloodmane?”

“Mighty Koa-hul,” began a figure clad in bright robes. Coal could not make out his features, the dull haze rising from the fires causing anything further than a few hundred feet away to waver unclearly. “Flame bringer, master of the inner fire, he who is the mighty flow of white hot anger—”

Coal spat a thin stream of lava at the mage, incinerating him in flaming agony.

“Alas,” Coal lied, stifling a chuckle. “My aim is off. I only meant to singe him.”

Spotting a cluster of surviving figures nearby, Coal narrowed his gaze, shining brighter. “And I am Coal now, not whatever that fool called me.” He waited a breath to allow time for a response—well, half a breath. “Did you bring any Pyromancers? I shall not abide shouting back and forth to some tiny pink thing too small to bother seeing. Who dares approach me? Where is Bloodmane?”

One of the mortals, a knight clad in demon armor, flew into the ring of flames spreading rapidly from Coal's body. A flame ward flared brilliantly about his person, smartly cast, by Coal's estimation, not that it would provide any protection at all should the dragon decided to waste breath upon him. But no, he was saving such grand displays for Port Ammond, for surely that was where his true destruction would be most needed, to topple the towers of the Eldrennai that Kholster's daughter and her people might feast upon the tender meat within.

“I am Jolsit of the Eldrennai,” the tiny figure shouted. “You do not know me, but I fought at Kholster's side during the Great Demon War, and it was Kholster himself who gave me this armor. I am under Bloodmane's command. Skinner kholsters this particular squad. He and the Armored are still digging their way out.”

Jolsit gestured to the dirt-collapsed tunnel by way of explanation.

“Very well, Jolsit,” the dragon rumbled. “I am told you need Jun's fire for a lizard roast. Where do you want it?” Only mildly irked by Hydromancers spraying water on the trees around him, Coal paid attention as best he could. It was so much easier to see Aern. Their souls were bigger for one, and, up close, the fields that bound them to one another showed up quite well if he concentrated. Eldrennai were all so . . . small.

“As we speak,” Jolsit continued, “Aernese warsuits are driving the Zaur forces back through their tunnels. They will mass near here, and when the warsuits give the signal, my Geomancers will tear open the ground, exposing the central tunnel. That's where you come in.”

“You want me to fly into a cave?”

“No, Mighty Coal,” Jolsit assured him. “All we want you to do is unleash your breath into the tunnels. Fill them with Jun's wrath.”

“I daresay it will be my wrath, not Jun's, despite my occasional poetic license, but what of the warsuits?” Coal raised an eye ridge. “It is hard to melt metal wrought on the Life Forge, but I assure you my inferno is more than equal to the task even at the Third Breath.”

“I'm told Bloodmane has taken that into account, Mighty Coal,” Jolsit told him.

The knight's demeanor before a dragon continued to impress the ancient wyrm. More water poured onto the nearby flames, as if his holocaust could be extinguished with such meager effort. If it had been any other Eldrennai, Coal might have remained silent, but the mixture of confidence and respect this Jolsit carried reminded the dragon of another . . . mortal.

“Tell your Hydromancers they ought not attempt to quell dragon fire with water. It is insulting! They would need ice, and even then it will not die out so close to me unless I should want to quell it, and such a quelling you would doubtless fail to survive yourself.

“You will lose three dragon lengths in all directions . . . one of your miles, I believe, before their spells will have any effect. Have them fly out half a dragon length farther than that, douse the woods with water, and freeze them. If your Geomancers cut firebreaks into the forest there too, you will stop the conflagration . . . with luck.”