Grudgebearer (58 page)

Dolvek drew his sword, dumping the attendant healer onto his rump. “Get away from her!”

“You think I would hurt her?” Kholster laughed, taking a step back from Yavi. “Me, with whom she is safest? She should have let you die and spared your father the grief of yet another half-wit son.”

“I can take care of myself, Prince Dolvek.” Even as she spoke, Yavi was struck by Kholster's choice of words, so similar to the words Bloodmane had spoken when they met in the museum:
He will think that you are in danger
, the armor had scoffed,
here where you are safest.

“Of course, I didn't mean to imply . . .” The prince's voice softened.

“You didn't mean, you didn't understand, you didn't think,” Kholster berated. “You are all the same. You only mean something if it works. You only accept responsibility for a gambit if it succeeds. Any failings should be forgiven you, because the high holy Eldrennai always have the best intentions!”

“Could you please not shout like that right over me?” Yavi held her hands to her ears.

“My apology is yours, Yavi,” Kholster responded instantly. “I let him get beneath my armor.” The backs of his fingertips touched her cheek, soft and feather-like, a phantom touch.
Gromma
, she thought,
you'd think he was a Vael, no grabbing, no confining movements. Even when he stood against me, he didn't grasp; he left me free to escape. I think I know what Mother saw in him after all.

“And my forgiveness is yours, Kholster; just keep it down to an irkanth's roar.”

Kholster nodded. Yavi waited for someone else to say something, but they all stood in the silence, glaring at one another. Dolvek sheathed his sword grudgingly but showed no sign of returning to his exercises.

“Do you have to wear that in the house?” Yavi tapped the center of her forehead then flicked the finger outward, an expression of noncomprehension.

“As long as the Aern is here,” Dolvek said defensively, “and it's a castle, not a . . .”

“Put it away,” Grivek said acidly.

The prince complied by drawing his sword and hurling it at the wall, where the blade stuck point first. Yavi and Kholster remained silent. The king stood quietly too, but his silence seemed born of embarrassment, rather than the hatred between Kholster and Dolvek.

“Have you heard back from your scouts, Oathbreaker?” The Aern returned to his seat at Dolvek's desk.

“From three of them,” Grivek answered. “The South Watch is safe, as is Forest Watch. My Lancers also checked in on Silverleaf and Porthost as they traveled the White Road.”

“And the third watch city?” Kholster asked.

Grivek looked down, his emotions unreadable. “The North Watch tower is gone. Wylant led her Lancers down into a tunnel they found in its place. I have not heard more than that which young Kam brought with him.”

“Wylant will be fine,” Kholster snorted, leaning back in the chair and propping his boots up on the desk. “She's just decided to engage the enemy. You'll hear back from her when the fighting's over.”

When he spoke of Wylant, Yavi thought she heard fondness, almost affection, in his voice.
I must be hearing things
,
she told herself
.

“I hope that is true.” King Grivek looked away.

“The North Watch is gone?” Dolvek demanded. “When did this happen?”

“While you were sleeping.” Kholster drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the bone-steel rings of his mail shirt. “I'm impressed they've decided to use tunnels. They've dug pits before, but to tunnel under a Watch and take it from below . . . Warlord Xastix must be a cunning reptile indeed.”

“Kholster,” Grivek began. “Since you're here, perhaps you would give us the benefit of your military advice?”

“I suggest you build a tremendous bonfire and burn yourselves on it.” Kholster put a hand casually on the haft of his warpick. “Why ask me? Why not ask your dear friend Bloodmane? He seems sympathetic enough to your cause.”

“Great Aldo,” King Grivek sighed. To Yavi, it seemed his spirit flickered and dimmed. She offered him a hand for support, but he waved it away. “So you do know.”

“I knew before I came, Eldrennai king.” Kholster slid his boots off the desk, his heels leaving a faint scuff on the finish. “When your idiot son dared speak down to my wife, when he questioned whether or not I could even read. More than thirteen years ago he implied that I was not ‘a specter of death looming in the shadows and waiting to destroy' you all. That's exactly what I was. More than thirteen years ago, Dolvek shattered our truce, and yet here I am, fulfilling my part of the bargain, keeping my oaths. I said that I or my representative would return in one hundred years for the next Grand Conjunction.” He stood, brought Grudge up in an arc and slammed it down, reducing the desk to splinters. “And here I am.” He pointed at Grivek with his warpick, and it let loose the angry cry of a bird of prey. “As promised. My other oaths will be kept as well.”

“Kholster, I know what we have done to your people. I recall your oath, and yet it is my hope . . .” Grivek began cautiously.

“Do not beg from him, Father,” Dolvek interrupted. “If our truce is no more, then he is an enemy of the Eldrennai. I say we put him to death.”

Kholster grinned at the prince, as if daring him to try.

“Be silent, Dolvek,” roared the king, “or blood or no blood, son or no son, I will put
you
to death! You don't have the barest inkling of what is at stake here. If the Aern come for us, they will destroy us. If we do not have the Aern's help, the Zaur will destroy us. How many Zaur do you think there are in the mountains? How many of them do you think are trained from birth as warriors?” He reached out to put a hand on Dolvek's shoulder, but his son turned away.

“You are a coward, Father, just like Rivvek.” Dolvek walked back to the balcony doors, his attendant doing his best to stay out of the way. “You bow down to the Aern like we owe them our lives,” he snarled. “So we enslaved them? We freed them as well. We created them! Wylant could have wiped them out at the Sundering, but you stayed her hand. We let them go. We owe them nothing else! Price paid.”

“He's such a nice bowel movement,” Kholster told Yavi, stepping over the splinters of the desk. “Aren't you glad you decided to preserve him?”

“And you accuse us of hatred?” Dolvek shouted from the balcony. “What did we do that was so terrible? I've read the histories and nothing seems . . .”

“The Battle of As You Please,” Kholster said softly.

“More tale spinning,” Dolvek laughed. “Everyone knows that did
not
happen.”

“It happened,” said King Grivek dully.

“Oh, please,” Dolvek protested. “Maybe something like it happened, but . . .

“It happened just as the Aern say it did,” Grivek continued, almost emotionlessly. “I have never heard it told falsely, except by Eldrennai.”

Yavi held up her hand. “Um, right, just so that I'm tracking you all . . . what is the Battle of Azupleez? I don't even know where that is.”

“As. You. Please,” Kholster corrected. “The Battle of As You Please. There are other reasons. Being used as breeding stock. Being forced by magic to follow orders, being treated as property instead of as allies . . .” He shook his head. “Not allowing my direct descendants to forge warsuits and join the ranks of the Armored. I can forgive many things, but I cannot forgive the Battle of As You Please.”

CHAPTER 53

THE BATTLE OF
AS YOU PLEASE

Grudgebearer, Vael, and Eldrennai stood in the prince's chambers. Yavi sat down on an overstuffed sofa, and Dolvek's father sat next to her. Both of them looked on with rapt attention as Kholster deliberately removed his bone-steel mail. Seeing the Aern bare to the waist increased the prince's ill temper, but he shepherded his words carefully. Anything he said at this point would only make Yavi more likely to side with the lying Grudgebearer. What was the Aern trying to prove by wearing mail without a gambeson? As if he were actually that hardened.

The prince leaned against the sofa reluctantly, watching Kholster as he drew a bone-steel chain bearing little charms and ornaments—also bone-steel—from his pack, attaching them reverently to his warpick until the chain-wrapped weapon resembled an awkward percussion instrument.

“These are the bones of my children, a single chain or charm from each of the slain. The links from sons. The charms from my daughters.”

Yavi made a surprised noise and covered her mouth with both hands, but Kholster did not look at her. He turned away from them, revealing his broad, muscular back. Dolvek had expected it to be covered in battle scars but instead found the tan skin of Kholster's back oddly smooth except for the scars, identifying lineage, borne by all Aern. A wedge as long as Kholster's index finger angled inward along each shoulder blade, and a vertical thumb-width line marred the flesh along his spine. The last scar was at the small of his back. It was a diamond shape, each flat side of the diamond bearing two matching lines parallel to it.

Kholster flexed, and the marks whitened.

“These are not my father's scars.” Kholster pounded his warpick on the floor rhythmically, speaking in a singsong voice, calm but pregnant with emotion. “I have no father. I am of the One Hundred, the First, held by no womb, without mother.”

The jingling beat of the warpick and the cadence of Kholster's words reminded Dolvek of an entertainer who had once come to them from the far-off land of Khalvad, but the Aern's performance was neither whimsical nor erotic. It was somber and rebellious.

“When you hear these chains and charms, tremble, for you hear my children and they are born slayers. Rae'en of Helg: my heart; Irka of Kari: my peaceful son—my Incarna. They are my only Freeborn children, for I took no wife for five centuries, to honor the memory of my sons and daughters who died in a battle against no enemy. To them I was no father but Kholster only, yet they bore my scars and were my offspring. Of their mothers I know not.”

Drawn in despite himself, Dolvek involuntarily flinched back when Kholster spun around, warpick extended but still bent low, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Know me, that you know my tale is true. Told with words of one who saw and did, told at the edge of the Arvash'ae,” he said as his amber pupils expanded and lit from within, the jade of his iris all but banishing the black of his sclera, “that no lies can be spoken and memory cannot fail.” He drew a ragged breath and released it from his nostrils. Steam did not flow out with it, but Dolvek had expected that it might.

“I was there at As You Please, for I am now, have always been, the kholster of my people. Three weeks after we defeated the Zaur at North Watch, drove them back to their mountains, back beneath the rock, that was the day of As You Please. Seven hundred and two sons I lost that day, and daughters three. Each bore their father's scars.

“Zillek was angry. Zillek, the Leash Holder king; Zillek, the liar, the betrayer. Pray for him you who hear; pray that the Oathkeeper souls stay world-bound, that we never enter into the place beyond that holds his soul.”

“Laying it on a bit thick, isn't he?” Dolvek whispered to Yavi.

“Hush,” she replied.

Dolvek walked back to the balcony doors. This was all really just a sham, wasn't it? Kholster was just doing what all Aern did, playing up “legendary” misdeeds that happened thousands of years ago. Why was his father buying into this Grudgebearer nonsense? If the Zaur were really attacking, then Dolvek and Grivek should both be reviewing defense plans, not listening to overblown fireside chants. His father was acting as if, in the face of the Grudgebearer's overly dramatic declaration outside, a Zaur invasion was the least of their worries.

“In those days each great victory won a tribute from the king. Zillek, the king, the Leash Holder king, his highness pronounced it upon us, a gift, a boon, not of our choosing: more Vaelsilyn sent to the soldiers' beds, new quarters for sleeping, better grounds for training or practice. We were spell-sworn in those days, bound to obey, bound to answer, enslaved souls, but free of mind. The king offered a boon of my own devising, a gift, my own to name. The Leash Holder king had guests from afar; he'd impress with magnanimous grace. The boon that I asked angered Zillek the king, and he gave us the Battle of As You Please.”

“See,” Dolvek called from the doorway. “He admits that whatever happened they brought it on themselves.” The others hissed at him to be quiet, and he complied. It had been a halfhearted protest in any event. His real problem with Kholster's tale was that it didn't ring false. That troubled him.

“I might have asked for freedom, but that concept—freedom—lay yet beyond my understanding. I asked that we be allowed to choose our own mates, to breed only when we wished to do so. Oh, the anger I saw in his eyes when he said just three words: As You Please. It was clear in his bearing, the set of his jaw as his guests laughed and jeered at his plight . . . King Zillek, the king, the Leash Holder king would a reckoning devise to punish my crime.