Oath Keeper

The Flame Gang, as Eliza now thought of herself and her two-companions-in-one, walked on for a little while—just far enough to discourage any of the boys from coming to find the Flame of the Dragon. She wasn’t ready to talk to them yet. And besides, she and Mardu needed time to figure out their next step. And if she was lucky, maybe some down time would give her the chance to find out what the hell was going on.

After a ten minute hike, more or less following the stream, Eliza still wasn’t sure they’d gone far enough, but the shadows were now joining hands into actual darkness, and Mardu urged her to find somewhere to sleep. A tree would be best, but we won’t be able to find one in full darkness.

Sleep in a tree? What, so I can fall out and kill myself? Then what will happen to your Dragon’s Peace?

You will not fall if you choose the proper tree, Mardu replied. I will show you.

And to Eliza’s surprise, she did. Sooner than she’d thought possible, Scraw had found her a tree with two adjacent branches that spread apart above a third, creating a secure bed pocket with a solid floor and walls and everything. After a short, easy climb, Eliza nestled herself down into the cozy little nook, hardly able to believe that she was ten or fifteen feet above the forest floor. It wasn’t as comfortable as an actual mattress, of course, but she was young, and where an older person’s bones might have felt pressed and uncomfortable, Eliza found that she conformed rather easily into the contours of her makeshift bed, and so she did her best to arrange her stupid blanket robe thing around her. Tomorrow she definitely had to find some clothes that she did not have to hold tightly with both hands to stay decent.

Once she was settled, Scraw flitted up higher into the tree, seeking the shelter of leaves, hiding himself from whatever it was that crows feared, and of course, Mardu went with him. Eliza closed her eyes, but even though she was tired, a troubling memory bubbled just behind her consciousness, and it held her up, not letting her drift down into sleep. After a few minutes of trying, and failing, she gave up.

Mardu? What you said earlier, before things got crazy back there… Did you really volunteer as a sacrifice?

For a moment, there was no answer, but then Mardu replied. Her mind-voice was quiet, halting. As though the memory disturbed her.

Long ago, yes. I was one of three. Sacrificed to enjoin the Oath. My father was Notawhey, King of the Wasketchin.

So you were, like, an actual princess? And you just volunteered to be his scape-girl?

No! Eliza could feel a wave of outrage flowing back through their connection. You know nothing of the time I come from! My father was a great and just man. He did not manipulate me like some goat being led to slaughter. The choice was mine!

I’m sorry, Eliza replied. But I just don’t get it. Why would you volunteer for something like that? Didn’t you want to live? Eliza worried that maybe she had offended her new companion, but then she heard—or rather felt—a sigh in her mind, and the anger seemed to leak away with it.

The world was not as you see it now, Mardu said. Today it is peaceful and green… In the time of my walking, every day was a day of war and hardship. The Miseratu preyed upon our people, feeding themselves from our fears. The water sprites, with their tricks and illusions, owned the low, damp places. Kalupliks stole our children along the banks of the rivers, and the enormous xiucatl serpents would swallow entire families, whole.

And always, there were the Dragons. To carry the bone of such a one was a prize beyond measuring. With such magic, one could stand against a hundred sprites or a thousand ‘pliks, and suffer not a scratch. But even a Dragon’s magic does not survive long after its body dies, and so always our hunters quested for another. Each clan contested with the other, and Peoples fought against Peoples, seeking the nesting ground or feeding pasture of another of the great beasts, so that they could bring back more bones or scales of another Dragon, and thus live in quiet once again, sheltered from the constant battling for a time. But the Dragons did not die willingly for our moments of calm. They fought us in every corner, wreaking havoc and destruction upon the Peoples at every turn. All was hardship and grief.

Then, upon one unexpected summer, the last remaining two turned upon each other. For days they fought until, in the end, the Dragon Grimorl fled the land, and only a single member of his kind remained. His brother, the Dragon Methilien. The largest and greatest of them all. Should Methilien ever die, there would be no other. No more scales or bones. No tooth or spine plate. No dragon-vim anywhere with which to stave off the predations of the other kinds.

It was my father who summoned the kings together to devise a plan. They must unite, he told them, and find some way to preserve this last Dragon, or all the Peoples might perish before the spring. But the other kings mocked my father. They thought him a fool, and they would take no part in his soft ploys, believing he meant to trick them from this greatest prize of all. So my father went alone into the forest, and put his question to the trees. Would Methilien come to parlay, that they might find a solution to the ever-turning wheel of battle, death, and vengeance?

To his astonishment, the Dragon came.

When my father returned from the forest, he was ablaze with his new purpose, for he and the Dragon had fashioned a plan. And what a plan it was! The Dragon no more wished to fight or to die than did my father, or any other. Together they had agreed that the Wasketchin would hunt him no more, nor permit others to do so. In return, the Dragon would cease his offenses against the Wasketchin, and against any other Peoples who would join their pledge.

And more, the Dragon would employ his magic to create for them all a realm of peace, where any Peoples who would take the Oath might dwell in comfort, as brother races. But to work this magic, the Dragon would have to spend all the vim within him. For a time after, he would be as weak as a babe. So he required three conditions of my father. First, that it was not enough for the Peoples to simply promise to walk the paths of peace. He required that they must be enjoined to that promise, by the very magic that created their new realm, and that with the crowning of each new king, the pledge must be renewed by all. Second, that all creatures who did not take up the Oath with them must be banished from the realm, never to return. And third, that there be none remaining who were not enjoined. To do this, the Dragon required that the blood of each royal house be spilled in sacrifice, binding each and every person to the Oath through the vows they had already sworn to their kings.

In addition to the peace so established, the Dragon further pledged that in time, when his vim had returned to him, he would spread it upon the waters and the rivers of the new realm, gifting it to the Peoples, so that with it they might hasten the creation of their new world of peace, and that, for so long as he yet lived, they might all enjoy the uses his magic might bring them.

So tell me, friend Eliza. I was oldest of my siblings, fated to be queen in my time. But a queen of what? Of hardship? Of scarcity and predation? In a world so filled with death and strife, how long might I have lived? A year? A decade? You simply cannot know, but to be offered such a chance, so simple a path for peace and happiness, with so much good to be gained and so much ill to be lost? How could a queen—how could I—do anything other than step forward? It was my duty, and I gave my blood—and my life—willingly.

Tears ran down Eliza’s face as she lay there in the darkness. She hadn’t just heard the words. She had seen them. Somehow, Mardu’s memories of the horrors her world had faced had come through the link they shared, and for a few moments, Eliza had been there. She had seen the broken warriors dragged home by their defeated brothers. She had felt the cavernous grief of a mother whose child had been taken in the night. And then she had shared in Mardu’s relief too. After so much pain, to be able to actually do something about it. She’d felt the fierce pride—the honor—of those final words. “How could I do anything other than step forward?” The simple humanity of those words, and the feelings that had accompanied them, left Eliza in awe.

I’m sorry, she sent. I had no idea.

But now some viper of a Gnome f’znat digs his fetid claws into my Dragon Lord and threatens to return our realm to those very horrors that were only narrowly averted? He seeks to gorge himself on the corpse of the peace I purchased with my very life’s blood? I don’t think so, sister!

As impressed as she was by the righteous anger of a queen whose people had been threatened, Eliza couldn’t help but giggle just the same. ‘I don’t think so, sister?’ How can you sound like a raging queen and an outraged chica, all at the same time?

Because I am both? Mardu suggested.

Eliza sent a grin of companionable sisterhood back across the link. This was getting weird, and complicated, but for the first time since awaking in this strange afterlife, she wondered if maybe her problems weren’t the biggest ones on the block. With that thought to guide her, Eliza wriggled one last time to get comfortable, and drifted off to sleep.

It was some hours later when the sounds of shuffling and muttering in the darkness awakened her. The boys. How stupid did they think she was? No doubt they were rooting around in the darkness, searching for her with a bag full of questions that simply wouldn’t keep until morning. Well, maybe she didn’t have any answers for them yet, and since she was pretty sure they couldn’t see her in her hidey-hole from down below, she decided to just let them keep looking, so she lay there, silent in her tree-loft bed as they passed by right below her, never even thinking to look up.

Boys! Could they get any dimmer?

When the sounds of their shuffling moved on, back toward their camp, Eliza smiled to herself in satisfaction and went back to sleep.

Mehklok hid beneath a log and whimpered. All around him, the forest was making noises. Each was no doubt a creature waiting to kill him.

He’d been tracking the witch woman for days, and though he hadn’t caught an actual glimpse of her, he knew the trail was hers. He could still taste the otherly tang of tiny decay that she left on the rocks and branches as she brushed past them. It’s what drew him on, this certitude that he had not yet lost her, that there was still hope of getting her corpse back to where he had found it before its owner learned of his involvement.

Each morning he arose before the sun, drained and exhausted, to resume his search. And each evening, he pressed on as late into the darkness as his imagination would allow. But inevitably, the light would fail once more, and with it, the crackles and snaps, the chirrups and twitters, the burbles and croaks of the forest grew louder and louder in his mind, until each of them was a crouching… something, lying in wait behind the very next tree—and the tree behind him, too—freezing him in terror to the spot on which he stood, leaving him no choice but to sink to his haunches on the disgusting, dry soil and cover his head with his arms, quaking in fear against the night.

So this was how she had brought low the Chaplain of Garnok’s Rage. This was how she forced him to spend the restful hours of his nights. Not nestled deep in a damp hole, as he should be, surrounded by his familiar comforts, but out here in the night air of a foreign land, eyes wide with fear, throat closed with terror, crouching under whatever bugless shrub or life-starved log happened to be nearest when the sounds of the forest overwhelmed him. Unable to sleep. Unable to go home. Waiting for the snarl and the teeth that would end his journey.

Eliza came awake in alarm. A short, sharp cry in her dream had awakened her. At least, she thought it had been in her dream, but it had been so brief that she couldn’t be sure, so she lay there, listening intently for any echos that might tell her if the cry had come from her dream world, or from this nightmare world she actually seemed to be living in.

But there was nothing. It had been just a dream sound after all. She was just drifting back to sleep when her alerted ears caught a different noise. Eliza groaned. Singing? Really? At this time of night? What is wrong with these guys? Don’t they have like, jobs in the morning? More huts to fix, or something?

She tried to shut their stupid antics out of her ears and thoughts, but everything else in this world was stupid, so why should their music be any different? The song had some strange, unfamiliar melody. Alien. As though they didn’t even use the same sounds as real music. She couldn’t make the words out at all, not that she’d have understood them, even if she could, but the chant’s awkward, staggering rhythm tugged at her awareness, teasing her back from the edge of sleep each time she neared it.

To make things worse, she couldn’t help but notice how badly voiced it was too. Full of screeching and barking, like a chorus of bats and wolves fraying at the tatters of night. Then she realized what was happening. They were actually baiting her. They’d searched for her earlier and when they hadn’t found her, they’d decided to annoy her awake. Make her angry so that she’d come back sooner than she’d said. And it was working. Frustration building, Eliza squirmed herself into a sitting position.

This was totally bogus! Were they really that selfish? Hadn’t they seen how tired she was? What is it with boys? Why can’t they just accept when they lose a battle of wits and let it be? Eliza swore under her breath and rolled out of the tree, lowering herself down to the ground in silence. The singing stopped soon after she let go of the branch. No doubt they planned to deny that there had been any singing at all, but it was too late. Hardly adults, these were clearly still little boys, and they were going to hear a thing or two about proper behavior, whether they wanted to hear it or not.

We’re returning now? Mardu asked over their link.

I’ll be back in a minute. Just some juveniles who need a good yelling at, Eliza replied.

Then perhaps your yelling parts should come with you, Mardu said, as she and Scraw flapped out of the tree tops and descended to their place on Eliza’s shoulder.

“Good point,” Eliza muttered, as she stormed through the trees, her temper rising rapidly as she marched back to the boys’ camp. She knew where it was, and went directly toward it, through the trees, rather than going back to follow the stream.

And that’s what saved her.

She was almost on top of the Gnome sentry before she even knew he was there. Had she been following the stream, she’d have been spotted easily, out on its open, mossy bank. But in the shadows of the trees, Eliza was nearly invisible as she drew herself to a sudden halt and held her breath when the sentry appeared suddenly in the darkness ahead of her.

A Gnome! Mardu cried out, over their link. Hide! The Gnomes and the Wasketchin are at war! If he sees you he will attack!

The Gnome looked around with darting movements of his eyes and head. Eliza froze and watched him from scarcely ten feet away. Even without Mardu’s warning, terror crept its way up from her stomach, with its own grim reminder. The last Gnome she had seen had tried to kill her in some underground perv lair. What would this guy do if he saw her? She did not want to find out. Had he heard her approach? His eyes darted left and right as she watched him, but he did not pause when he glanced in her direction. Then he looked straight back toward the fire at the camp site, probably ruining any night vision he might have had in the process. Eliza thanked herself for her luck and slowly crouched down, sidling sideways as she did so, inching herself silently toward the deeper shadow of the large tree that stood off to her left. Scraw seemed to understand the situation, and clung to her shoulder as best he could, without a flutter or a squawk as her movements threatened to shake him free. Eliza kept her eyes on the Gnome as she made her way toward cover, but his gaze did not track with her. It seemed she had not been discovered.

Once she got behind the tree, Eliza leaned heavily against it, sucking air in and out, trying to calm her thumping heart. She pulled the blanket up higher, tugging its loose end up over her head, seeking its shadows to hide her face. And then a horrible thought occurred to her. The boys! What had happened to them? Eliza inched around her tree and risked a peek, but there was little she could see.

The Gnome guard appeared to have moved off, but how long would he be gone? Wait here, she said, meaning both Scraw and Mardu. I may need backup. Once the crow had stepped quietly off her shoulder, onto the branch beside her, Eliza sucked her courage up into her lungs and ventured cautiously out from behind her dark shield tree.

Gnomes normally have excellent dark vision, Mardu cautioned.

Not when they’re stupid, Eliza replied. This one kept looking back at the fire. I think he was scared.

Eliza crept further forward, keeping her body low to the ground and her hood pulled down over her face. From her vantage, on the slope above the hut, she could see three Gnomes below her. Two were on watch, one upstream, to her right, the other downstream, back near the hiker-berries. The third stood at the stream bank, tying the boys together with a thin rope. But for some reason, they were happy to just stand there, with vacant expressions, allowing themselves to be bound.

Why are they cooperating? Why don’t they run? Did they even put up a fight?

I do not know, Mardu replied. There was a quiet rustle of feathers and Eliza saw a dark shape flit down toward a tree near the bank.

It makes no sense, Mardu said. They just stand together, waiting to be tied.

When the Gnome had finished linking the boys, he wrapped the end of his rope around a branch—not even bothering to tie it—and then hobbled away toward the fire with his awkward Gnome-gait. Like the guard she had seen earlier, this one’s eyes kept flicking about with apprehension, seemingly nervous of the leafy unknown beyond the reach of the fire’s light.

What has happened to my people? Mardu asked. Even when their captor’s back is turned and his attention so obviously elsewhere, they do nothing. They simply stand, as though waiting to be led off to breakfast. Where are my mighty warriors?

As much as Eliza hated to admit it, even boys were not that stupid. Somehow they must have been drugged into a stupor.

Maybe that’s what happens when you give them a few thousand years of peace? Eliza asked.

No, Mardu replied. Peaceful they have become, yes, but not sheep. They have been charmed.

Great, drugged with magic, Eliza thought. So they’ll be no help at all. Not to us and not to themselves. She rubbed at her arms in the chill night air. Her skin was still slightly sticky from the berry juice. She’d washed the worst of it off as she’d stormed away from the boys earlier, but she hadn’t taken time for a full rinse, and she could only imagine that she still looked almost as scary as she had when she had first emerged from the hedge. Could she use that? Would she be able to frighten the guards for long enough? But long enough to do what? That slender thought of attacking died however, when a fourth Gnome emerged from the hut. Three? Maybe. If she was lucky. But four? Even at her most scary-looking, Eliza didn’t like those odds.

This new Gnome carried something with him, but he stood in shadow and she couldn’t make it out. A vaguely round shape, clutched tight under one arm. He shambled over to the fire and held a brief conversation with the rope-Gnome, who nodded in agreement. When the discussion was over, Eliza watched in confused silence as the junior Gnome snatched a burning branch from the fire and went over to the hut, where he set the flaming stick at the base of the dehn, next to the door, and walked away. Did he think he could burn it down? A living ring of trees? With a single, smoldering branch?

I do not know, Mardu replied. Eliza hadn’t even realized she’d been sending.

Back at the fire, the fourth Gnome raised his round burden to the flames. It was a large container, she realized, as she caught a glimpse of firelight shining off it in winks. Metal of some kind. And polished. Then she recognized it. But how could that be? One of Regalia’s urns? Here? After saluting the fire with his giant cup, the Gnome brought it down and tipped his head back. He was drinking from it! Then he lowered the urn and turned to face the shelter, as he uttered a single snarling bark of a word.

Get down! Mardu shouted suddenly.

And the entire hut exploded in a concussion of flame.

The burst of heat that erupted from the hut knocked Eliza to the ground. When she had scrambled back to her knees, she saw that one of the Gnomes had been caught off guard as well, and was now whimpering for help from the middle of the hiker-berries. But his companions did not go to his aid. Instead, they arranged themselves around the shuffling Wasketchin boys down by the stream, and with a tug on the rope to get them moving, marched their string of captives toward the blazing fire and the hill.

Little help? Eliza sent. A distraction maybe? But there was no response from Mardu. Had she been hurt in the explosion? But Eliza didn’t have time to worry about Mardu right now. The Gnomes were still coming right at her. In a few seconds, they would pass the raging fire and begin to climb up the slope.

Hot yellow light bathed everything—the Gnomes, their captives, and even helpless Eliza, kneeling there in plain sight. The lead Gnome hadn’t seen her yet, but surely even the slightest movement would draw his attention. She flicked her eyes—left, right, anywhere! But dammit, there wasn’t so much as a stump to hide behind. If not for the dark blotchiness of her stained blanket and the fact that she was frozen motionless on her hands and knees, they’d have already seen her. She could already make out the soft downy hairs that covered the leader’s face. The layer of fuzz glowed with reflected firelight in a golden halo that enveloped the great, flapping flesh-loaf of a nose that dominated his face. At any moment he was going to look up and see! His eyes would lock onto hers…

Remain calm. Think.

Mardu? Is that you? Again there was no reply.

But she was right. Eliza forced herself to breathe slowly and to think. Why hadn’t the Gnome seen her already? The fire! It was in front of him, still searing his vision. But not for long. He was almost even with the hut now, and as soon as he passed it and put its flames behind him…

But she just could not bring herself to break cover and run. She just knelt there, facing downhill, her weight still carried on arms that quivered and shook with fear. She wanted to run. She needed to run. But she could not. Whimpering with mounting fear, Eliza watched and sobbed as the leader of the Gnome group advanced past the hut. Any second his eyes would adjust. Any moment his gaze would lock… But still she could not move. He was only twenty feet away.

Eliza’s legs finally gave up waiting for orders from her brain, and slowly gathered themselves together beneath her, making ready to flee on their own. Stop that! she screamed at them inside her head. Crap oh crap oh crap! But it was too late. Already the leader’s gaze was turning toward her, toward the movement of her legs.

“Scraw!” At that moment, a black shape spun crazily from the trees, out of control, and spiraled into the hiker-berries, more a desperate lurch and plummet than actual flight. An instant later, a high, watery screech rose from the berry hedge. A screech of Gnomish pain. All the Gnomes jerked around at the sound, and for a moment, Eliza looked that way too.

But her feet didn’t.

They, at least, recognized this slender morsel of a chance, and before she could even murmur a silent thanks to her feathered friend, Eliza’s body flung itself away toward the darkness. It took her brain a moment to realize that her body was now running away without her, and when she did, she wisely decided to join it, taking over the management job from her legs, calling in favors from her lungs and her arms and sprinting now with her entire body. Eliza flew across the face of the slope, crashing through the low ground cover, snapping twigs and branches, heedless of anything save the need to reach that nearest cluster of trees and the hallowed darkness they guarded behind them.

In her mind, she was as noisy as a nun falling down a flight of stairs, and she was certain that the Gnome leader would grunt out one of his spell-barks at any instant and set her ablaze, like the hut. But she heard nothing above the roar of the fire and the pitiful wailing of the injured Gnome in the berry hedge. No cries of alarm. No snarls of command. And thankfully, no shouts of recognition from the boys either.

At long last, after what felt like an hour of terror-propelled flight, Eliza reached the cluster of trees and threw herself behind them, dropping to the ground in utter, exhausted surrender. If they had seen her, she was done. She was totally spent. Her lungs heaved in and out, clutching at the air in great sucking gasps. She strained her ears, trying to hear any pursuit, but all she heard was the hammering of her heart, the wheezing rasp of her lungs, and the steady, deeper roar of the flames.

Then she remembered her friends. Scraw? she thought.

We are safe, Mardu replied, and Eliza added a sigh of relief to the list of things she would do once she could breathe again.

For several long minutes, she just lay there, reveling in the relief of not being dead. After a time, when still no shouts of alarm had been raised, and no Gnomes had been sent to search among the trees, Eliza dared to push herself up and roll over. It was the hardest thing she had ever done, to lean her face out of the protective shadows and into the light of the fire. Hooded or not, she was sure she would be seen, certain that a Gnome face would snap at her the moment she looked around the trunk.

But there was nothing. To her left, at the top of the slope, she was just in time to see the back of the last Gnome as he disappeared over the top of the slope into darkness. At the base of the slope, the fire had exhausted most of its easy fuel, and the skeleton of the hut could now be seen through the smoke, black ribs, etched with embers of glowing orange. Beyond it, the hiker-berry bush looked as though it had been torn apart by wild animals. Apparently the Gnome who had been flung there had not wanted to be left behind.

Then it hit her. To her complete, and utter astonishment, they were alone. They were safe. “Hooray for us,” she said weakly.

And then she began to shake.

Once the trembling had subsided to merely jackhammer levels, Eliza stood up and limped her way down to the stream. She needed to clean the cuts and scrapes on her arms and legs and her poor, bare feet. But when she got there, she was stopped short by a twisted shape lying across the rocks at the water’s edge. Eliza swallowed hard. It was a body. She stood there for a moment, wondering what to do. Then finally, she sucked up her courage and took another step.

She could see the twist of a fabric-covered arm, and the swell of a hood. Whoever it was, he was turned face down. A strap trailed away from his leg and hung down into the water, twitching and tugging in the rippling current. Eliza took another step, peering through the pale moonlight. Scared to go closer, but scared not to, as well. What if he wasn’t dead? But it could be a trap, too. Eliza took another step. And then she started to laugh.

It was somebody’s laundry.

Three large pieces of cloth, freshly washed and laid out to dry. What she’d seen as an arm was in fact just an empty sleeve, and judging by the hoods and straps she could make out, it was probably a couple of the strange robes everyone seemed to wear around here. With a sudden giggle of relief, Eliza flung her tattered blanket aside and grabbed one of the garments. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get it on.

She was completely tangled in her unfamiliar new wardrobe when Mardu and the crow flapped down to join her, coming to rest on an old stump that jutted out over the water.

Eliza looked up and a more serious thought occurred to her. “We are going after them, right?”

To what hope? Scraw cocked his head in honest curiosity.

Eliza knew that it was really Mardu answering her, but it was still weird trying to match a crow’s body language to the very human voice she heard in her head. “To rescue them, of course. I thought that part was obvious.” She flipped a loose strap of fabric up over her shoulder, trying to decide if that’s where it was supposed to go.

Scraw shook his entire body. We cannot.

Eliza stopped fiddling with the belt thing and looked up at him. “What do you mean, we ‘cannot?’ Of course we can. As soon as the sun is fully up, we march over that hill and go the same way they went. They’re not exactly forest ninjas, you know. Even I can see that they leave a trail a blind man could follow, and this is the first time I’ve ever even been in a forest. We could totally do this.”

Scraw stamped a foot and glared back. Yet we will not, Mardu said.

“But we bound them to your stupid mission! We claimed them! And you don’t get do-overs on something like that. Where I come from, people like us stick together, because we’re all we have. We don’t turn our backs on each other, and that’s what you’re suggesting—turning our backs on them!”

You think I don’t know that? You think I watched my father lead his warriors into battle after battle against Dragons and Miseratu and xiucatl and windigos and yet learned nothing about the duties of command? That I do not know how a general must love his warriors more dearly than his own eyes?

Eliza let out a deep sigh. “You’re right,” she said. “I forgot. I’m sorry.” The memory of the horrors that Mardu had shared with her earlier came rushing back. Who was she to lecture a warrior queen on the etiquettes of leadership? “But do we really have to abandon them?”

Scraw looked down at the water and his shoulders slumped. We must, Mardu replied. For now. Time is not our friend, Eliza. With every day, the Gnome King grows stronger and his enemies—our friends—grow weaker. We can risk no delays. We must find stronger allies if we are to change the flow of history. And we must find them quickly.

Chapter 9