Oath Keeper

With the wracking sobs finally under control, Eliza rolled over. It may have sounded like laughter, but there had been no hint of merriment about it, and the feeling that remained in her gut had the somber aftertaste of despair. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and was not entirely surprised to find herself lying on the ground. Sometimes, the little things could completely undo you.

Like the time five or six years ago, when Sister Manipula had rushed Rhonda to see a doctor. Eliza could easily remember how furious she’d been about the whole thing. Not because the girl had received prompt medical attention, or because Rhonda had escaped from Goody chores for three whole days in the hospital. Eliza had been furious with jealousy, because when Rhonda came back, she’d had a souvenir of her adventure, visible as Sister Manipula had marched her back into the Old Shoe. A little slip of paper sticking out of her fist. A bus ticket. Having never been on a bus before, that ticket could only have meant one thing to Eliza’s child mind: a chariot ride to adventure.

She could remember the rage that had stampeded through her then. She’d wanted to hit Rhonda with something heavy, to jump up and down, and scream. To break things. But her body had rebelled then, just as it had now, and she’d sat down. Laughing. Suddenly and uncontrollably. Right in the middle of the hallway, forcing all the other kids to walk around her as they made their way to the basement for lunch.

Faced with such overwhelmingly conflicted emotions, laughing on the floor had just seemed to be the most appropriate response. What else do you do when nothing makes sense? It was unfair how the Goodies treated everyone, how they picked favorites. And un-favorites. It was unfair how some girls got to be sick and have adventures while other girls did not. But most of all, Eliza had been angry with herself—angry at how badly she’d wanted to hit Rhonda, for doing nothing more than getting sick and being miserable. Overwhelmed by her own inability to make sense of those conflicting angers, Eliza had just plopped herself down on the floor. Her emotions had gone on strike, and laughter had been put temporarily in charge.

Seeing Mehklok pop Scraw into his mouth, Eliza’s first instinct had been to punch him, and she might have done it too, if she’d been able to move. But she’d seen his face in that moment before he’d turned away. She’d seen his sudden realization that, once again, he had done something wrong. He had no idea what, but she had seen that betrayal clearly registered. He’d been doing something that seemed totally natural to him, and had then been brought up short by her unexpected judgment.

It was in that moment that Eliza first saw herself through his eyes, his alien, Gnomileshi eyes. And what she saw there was more horrifying to her than anything she had ever seen before. Because the look that had scampered across his face had been uncomfortably familiar. She had seen it before. On the faces of her friends.

When their souls were being crushed by one of the Goodies.

One of the good things about gut-wrenching laughter—no matter why you’re doing it—is that, when you’re done, you feel clean. You feel as though the entire world has been reset, and you could handle anything again.

Eliza got slowly to her feet. Her knees were a bit rubbery, as though even they had taken an active part in the laughing fit. Was it a bad sign when even your knees were laughing at you? But as she stood, she heard a sound, coming from a little ways off through the trees. Opposite from the direction Mehklok had run.

At first it had sounded like an echo of her own laughter, but when it rose again, it was more of a warbling trill, like a dove in a trap. She really ought to go find her strange little companion—the only companion she had left now, she reminded herself—but the cooing sound called through the trees once more.

And it sounded a little more frantic. A little more desperate.

Deciding that she would just have to trust Mehklok for a few minutes longer, Eliza turned toward the strange animal cry and set off to investigate.

Eventually, Eliza tracked the sound. It was coming from a dense cluster of trees. They formed a ring at their base, and looked like a traveler’s dehn that had been allowed to grow wild. The trill was coming from inside the ring.

“Hello?” Eliza called as she approached. The trunks were pressed tightly together, all the way around the circle, and as high up as several yards above her head before they thinned enough to show gaps between them.

The trilling continued, although the pitch had lowered some in response to Eliza’s call. It was now more of a whimper of unhappiness than a cry for help.

If Scraw was here, he’d be able to— Eliza felt a pang of sadness then, as she realized that Scraw was not going to come suddenly bursting out of the trees to help her. She would have to solve this problem herself.

Walking around the column of trees, Eliza found a small chink in the armored palisade. A twist in one of the trunks that left a gap between it and its neighbor. Not a gap that went all the way through, but one that was deep enough that she could get her toes jammed into it, and after a bit of grunting and pulling, she had climbed high enough to see in through the gaps above.

It was the Gnome squad’s Yeren. The creature was tied up inside the tree ring, obviously in distress. The rope they’d tied her with wasn’t even long enough to let the poor creature stand, and she was hunkered down, pressed back against the tree wall, trembling. And still trilling her fear. How long she had been there was anybody’s guess, but that didn’t really matter. At least this gave Eliza something to think about. Another distraction to help her while away the eternity of death.

At her first approach, the creature had flinched back even further, as though trying to press herself into the tiny crevices between the tree trunks that were her cage. Her enormous eyes glittered in fear. But when Eliza dropped lightly to the ground, clearly not a Gnome, the wideness of those eyes relaxed, and the tension in her bearing seemed to melt a little.

Eliza couldn’t be sure, but she’d already decided this was a she-Yeren. There was something about the soft roundness of her face, and the slenderness of her arms that suggested girlishness. Gorilla girlishness maybe, but there was a definite femininity there.

Eliza quickly squatted down, to make herself look less threatening. “Are you okay?” she said, in English, holding out a hand as though she was approaching an unfamiliar dog. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The poor thing didn’t likely understand her words, but she seemed to respond to Eliza’s tone. Her hands were bound together with a silvery cord, and the other end was tied to a thin branch overhead. Too high for the Yeren to reach, and with her hands tied, too high for her to climb, too.

Eliza stared up at the end of the rope for a moment, trying to figure out how she could climb up there to untie it, when she suddenly realized that she didn’t have to. She reached out slowly and gave a gentle tug on the middle of the rope. The Yeren reached out with her bound hands and Eliza moved cautiously forward. More scared of frightening the creature than of any danger to herself.

When she got close enough, she could see that the knot wasn’t particularly complicated, and she began working at it with her fingers. The Yeren seemed to relax a little more, and the pitch of her trilling dropped even lower. Almost to a purr, but not quite low enough for that. Nor calm enough either.

The rope was thin and the knot had been tied tightly, making it hard for Eliza to get at it without pulling. Beneath the circle of rope, the creature’s skin was exposed in an angry ring of redness. The fur there had been rubbed away by her struggles, and the fur immediately surrounding the area was matted into sticky clumps of dirt and dried blood.

As she worked, Eliza made shushing noises at the poor thing and stroked the fur of her arms, trying to appear friendly and helpful, and saying nonthreatening things. “I’m trying to help. I won’t hurt you. Stay calm.”

It took several long minutes of working at it before the knot finally began to unravel, but eventually it did, and as she unwrapped the rope from around the creature’s wounded wrists, Eliza tensed herself a little, fully expecting a violent shove as the freed captive made her escape and bolted away into the forest. But the shove never came.

Instead, with her hands at last freed from those painful bonds, the creature gestured for Eliza to move back and then stood, slowly unfolding her cramped limbs and standing, and unfolding, and then standing some more, until she was fully upright. Eliza’s eyes widened.

“You don’t play basketball by any chance, do you?”

The creature was at least seven feet tall. Maybe eight. But instead of fleeing, this gentle giantess moved into a slow, sinuous dance, stretching herself in a fluid kind of yoga ballet. Utterly calm, she exuded a profound grace, an elegance that seemed to mark her in Eliza’s eyes as a sort of Zen Buddhist priestess of dance, if there was such a thing. There was little sign of recently freed slave creature about her. Even the full-body fur coat she had going seemed part of her magic, and Eliza was entranced. It was like watching a private moment of some famous Russian ballerina maybe, after she’d first climbed out of bed. The kind of dancer who performed for kings and queens and only ever ate oranges and salads. Eliza could easily imagine that between performances, she spent her days working as a professional artist’s muse, and that by night she appeared in the dreams of little girls, teaching them to be princesses.

When the stretching was over, the white-furred dancer bowed gracefully before Eliza, bringing her forehead down to touch delicately against Eliza’s. She held herself there for a moment, and then looked up, meeting Eliza’s curious gaze with her great, brown eyes. There was a question there, Eliza thought, and then a sadness, a disappointment perhaps. And intelligence. Definitely intelligence. This was not some dull-witted she-beast, but a wise and thoughtful creature.

When the little ritual of thanks was over, the wise and thoughtful fur woman stood up once more. And then she walked away, reaching up with her long arms and lifting herself gracefully up to the gap between the trees. Then a moment later, she lowered herself beyond them and was gone.

“Wow,” Eliza said. “That was intense.”

She had a moment of panic, wondering how she was going to get out of the tree-ring, but then she noticed the rope, now just laying there. A few grumbles and scrambles later, she had untied the other end and used it to climb up high enough to squeeze through the gap, and she too was free once more. But of the graceful Yeren woman, she could find no trace. Eliza sighed.

Hell was easily the strangest place she had ever been.

Since the Forging of the Oath, she had slumbered, waiting, a vouchsafe against the day when the Dragon’s Peace might fall and she would be awakened— Wait a moment. We’ve done that already. The Peace already has fallen. And then I awoke… Memories flooded back into the Flame of the Dragon, Keeper of the Oath. Recent ones. Brilliant pebbles of recollection set against the quieter smear of long ago. A girl. A bird. A fire. Then, with a sudden shift of thought, she remembered herself.

Mardu looked out at the world. She was in a box. A shell. A thin disk of entrapment. The Flame of the Dragon That Was, Keeper of the Oath, looked out at the sky beyond her barrier and smiled. At least it was still now. There was still time.

Her prison tasted like dragon.

The greatest challenge about being dead, it seemed, was figuring out what to do with all the me-time. Now, for the first time since Scraw and Mardu had been killed by the blast, Eliza came face-to-face with where that left her. What was she supposed to do now? Meeting Mardu had seemed to solve the problem of how to spend her blissful ever-after. The strange ghost-girl had provided her with a purpose and a direction, which had taken her mind off her own troubles for a time and held the unfairness tantrum at bay. But that had only lasted three days. Now she had no Mardu, no mission, and still no idea what the rules were in this strange land of death and crow-eating midgets.

Feeling lost and more alone than she had felt since first waking up here, Eliza wandered through the trees until she came to the edge of a stream and sat at its edge to pull off her borrowed boots. It was the same stream that flowed on into the clearing, she figured, but she didn’t want to think about what lay downstream just now. She just wanted to stand in the river and let it drag the sadness out of her through her toes. It seemed like as good a plan as any.

Lifting up the trailing bits of her dress-toga thing in one hand, Eliza stepped out into the current, and closed her eyes as it tugged gently at her skin. Her toes sank into the cool, sandy bottom. And in that quiet moment, the tears came. She didn’t know for whom, but they came anyway. For Scraw? For Mardu? Maybe. A little. But if she was willing to be totally honest, no, not even for them. There was something bigger, of course. The humongous thing. The thing she had been pushing away every time it had demanded her attention. Eliza wept for the one death she had not been able to let herself think about.

It wasn’t fair. Why did God have to jerk things away from little kids? Had she been evil? Was there something she’d done that deserved a nonstop suck-hole life of constant punishment? Only to be followed by a suck-hole afterlife of punishment? What could she possibly have done to deserve that? Or did God just get his jollies kicking little kids, like a grade school bully pulling the legs off spiders?

She couldn’t remember her parents, and she’d gotten over losing them eventually, but that’s when it had all started. The first of all the badness. To be followed quickly by some judge throwing her to the Goodies, and then the years of drudging slavery on the fifth floor. Her friendship with Tayna had been the only good thing that had happened in all the years she’d been there, tortured and abused by those… ghouls. But even Tayna had turned out to be just one more thing to let her love and then take away. In all those years, she had dreamed a million dreams of getting out, of finding new parents and a new place.

And she had come so close, too! Less than an hour. Minutes really. Just another handful of seconds and she’d have become Eliza Nackenfausch. For real. Daughter of Ned and Sue Nackenfausch, and part-time intern at the Barbington Clinic for Toyfolk, providing full service health care to puppets, manikins, stuffies and dolls of all descriptions. That’s what Sue had told her, and she should know, because Sue was owner and chief surgeon of the place. To live with cool parents in a doll hospital wasn’t the life she’d always dreamed of, but that was only because her imagination had never been able to make up something that totally amazing. If it had been, then Eliza knew without a doubt that the Barbington Clinic would definitely have become her go-to happy place from the very moment she’d first conceived it.

But that life was gone.

All she had left was this stupid robe-dress and the water rushing past her. It felt good, flowing over her calves and ankles. Loose grains of sand suspended in the current tickled as they bumped over the tops of her feet. But as nice as it felt, standing in the stream wasn’t solving anything. It didn’t bring her life back. It didn’t bring her friends back. It just took. Rivers were like life, she realized. All they ever did was tear things away from you.

And with that sad thought rolling around in her head, her enjoyment of the current’s gentle tug flowed out of her, just one more thing to be snatched up and swept away by the water. She turned around and lifted a dripping foot up to climb out onto the bank. And then a movement caught her eye.

Eliza looked up and was surprised to see the Yeren watching her from the forest. She wasn’t spying or trying to hide. She just stood there, her big eyes open and filled with curiosity. Somehow she even made standing still seem an act of grace and elegance.

“Hello,” Eliza said. “I didn’t think you’d be coming back.” When the creature did not respond, Eliza shrugged and stepped up onto the mossy bank and began to negotiate with her boots.

Her feet had puffed up a bit in the water, and the scratches and cuts she’d accumulated during her barefoot phase still hadn’t healed, so even though the boots were a bit big, it was difficult to convince her feet to go back in. The scent of moss and then a quiet cooing sound told Eliza that the creature had come closer, but it wasn’t until a pair of white-furred hands reached out to probe gently at her sore feet that Eliza realized how much closer. She glanced over her shoulder, but saw only curious compassion in the creature’s eyes. No. Not creature. Woman? Eliza wasn’t sure, but she was definitely more intelligent than something you would call a “creature.” Although “woman” didn’t seem right either.

“Guess I’ll just have to call you Lucinda,” she said, as “Lucinda” continued to probe delicately at all the scabs and scratches that Eliza’s feet had been busy collecting over the last few days. And speaking of injuries, she noticed that Lucinda’s wrists were now each completely wrapped in a tight-fitting clay bracelet of some kind that hid the angry red sores that had been chafed into her skin. Eliza reached out and touched one of the bracelets, gently, and Lucinda paused to let her examine it. The material was dry, and rough like paper, but heavier to the touch, although it seemed to flex readily whenever Lucinda’s hands moved beneath it. A sort of bandage. Actually, an almost perfect bandage.

“Do you have one big enough for an entire foot?” Eliza said. “Probably not.”

She went back to trying to coax her feet into the boots when Lucinda suddenly looked downstream and cocked her head. A moment later, she stood up and hurried off down the bank toward the river’s bend and whatever sound it was that had drawn her attention. Just before she vanished, Lucinda turned back and gestured to Eliza in an unmistakable sign. Aren’t you coming? Then she rounded the bend and was gone.

Ignoring the aches and twinges, Eliza jammed her feet into the boots as quickly as she could and then hobbled off to see what the hubbub was all about.

Immediately after the bend, the stream flowed straight into the blackened clearing. Lucinda stood at the center of it all, on the island. Well, in the island, actually. A good bit of its soil had been flung away by the blast, leaving behind a cone-shaped depression, which is where the tall willowy creature now stood, visible from the waist up. She was peering curiously at something in the crater, near her feet.

“At least, I hope she still has feet,” Eliza muttered as she trudged across the charred landscape, sending up puffs of black flakes in her wake that smelled like barbecued hay.

She had to take a running jump to get across the river, onto the island, and she stumbled on the uneven ground of the crater, but Lucinda reached out one long white arm to steady her.

The crater was deeper than Eliza had expected. Maybe three feet at the center. But it was the shape huddled at the center that had captured Lucinda’s attention.

Mehklok. With the bodies of all three dead Gnomes arranged around him in a circle. And in his hands, the feathers of the crow were twitching and shuddering in the breeze. Then Eliza’s breath caught in her throat.

There was no breeze. Scraw was alive!

Eliza flung herself to the bottom of the crater and threw her arms happily around the Gnome’s furry head and neck.

“How did you do that?” she cried, but she knew he did not understand her words, and hoped only that he was picking up on her happiness. He held up his hands, offering the crow to her, and she couldn’t help but be embarrassed by the uncertainty in his eyes. Was he really that afraid of her? Moving slowly, to show him she meant no harm, she ruffled the fur between his ears. “Relax. I won’t hurt you. You did good.” Then she gathered Scraw up delicately in her hands.

“Are you okay, Little Buddy?”

But Mehklok had already turned away with a curious look in his eye. As soon as his hands were free, he dug down into the soil, feeling around below the surface. Then he pulled, hard. After a moment of straining, something let go, and Mehklok was at last able to drag his prize up out of the dirt.

Eliza hadn’t been paying close attention. Instead she’d stroked Scraw’s feathers softly, just glad to have the little guy back. He wasn’t flapping or scrawing yet, but he looked a lot better than the last time she’d seen him. A gleam of metal caught her eye, and she looked back to Mehklok as he held his hands out to her with a round, silvery disk. A dinner plate? Maybe. But strange. It shimmered like water and there wasn’t even a speck of dirt on it, despite having just been pulled from the ground. Mehklok seemed to want Eliza to take it, so she handed Scraw into Lucinda’s large gentle hands, and then reached to take the plate. But it was heavier than it looked, and she had trouble lifting it. Everyone crowded around to get a look, and they were all peering down at the strange disk of metal, when the earth beneath their feet began to moan.

And the world around them shuddered in agony.

With the great shudder of pain that shook the world, Mardu’s confinement exploded, like a doorway opening into a hurricane. In an instant, forces of magic tore through the portal, swirling her in a vortex of power that threatened to strip her unanchored self away and fling it to the edges of oblivion, as the magic of there, of Grimorl, thundered back through the wedge he had left in the doorway to here, his original home, and to where his magic had now been summoned. She was a leaf, caught in its tornado, and any moment she would be torn from her tree. She needed shelter. An anchor.

But through the maelstrom there could be no vision. She could see no faces, hear no thought-voices. There was only a barely palpable tug of firmness. Three firmnesses, any of which could anchor her to the world while everything else shredded away into the madness. The scream of forces grabbed at her being, pushing, pulling and tearing, all in the same instant, straining to fling her toward the wherever. It was so strong! Too strong.

Mardu gripped her mind furiously to the edge of the doorway, trying to make a plan, but the vortex shrieked in her mind, drowning out all thought. Find an anchor! But she could not tell who was who in the upside-down tumbling scream of other-vim. She could feel her grip weakening, instant by instant. No time! It had to be now, while she still had strength. She drew a mental breath and then—quickly!—released the focus of her nexus, forcing it to expand, then she let go of her entrapment, just as her nexus gave itself to the riptide and shot away. Mardu flicked desperately with her thoughts, flinging a last tendril of her nexus toward the closest anchor as it flashed by, willing herself to its center, dragging and clawing against the cyclone, heaving to get a second grip on it, and then diving within, yanking the nexus closed behind her.

Had she made it? Mardu shrugged the shoulders, and bristled as the host body resisted her control. She wiggled her existence and felt herself settle more deeply into the oneness. It had all happened so quickly! She expanded the chest and thrilled as the lungs drew breath. No resistance. That was better. She was centered. But where? Who?

Chapter 40