Spear of Destiny

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Awesome.” I had another sip of brandy and eased back. “You already told me where Vash is at. Is that all?”

  “For now,” Istvan said. “Countess Hussar is apparently almost finished settling matters in Bas, and sent a letter saying that she will join us soon to serve as Suri’s squire. Until then, we have at least a brief interlude between crises.”

  “Don’t jinx us.” I rapped the arm of the sofa and shook my head. “How about you? Doing alright?”

  He looked past me to the window. “Healing from the war is a slow process, with many stops and starts. Drilling the recruits and watching them shape up into soldiers helps. Seeing the castle rebuilt helps even more. Though… I would like to make a request of you, when we have some coin to spare.”

  “Whatever you need, man.” I spread a hand and gestured widely. “Go ahead.”

  “There was a large cottage with its own yard behind the kitchens,” Istvan said, crossing his legs and slouching back. “The place where I lived with my wife, my daughter, and my daughter’s puppy. It was razed to its foundations when they breached the castle.”

  “You want it rebuilt?”

  Istvan shook his head, gazing toward the windows. “No. I would like to create a memorial of sorts. A garden, if we can afford it. Yava had a flower bed that she cared for every day… it… it would mean a great deal to me.”

  I leaned forward on the sofa. “Tell me what you need, and we’ll go ahead with it. I’m two-hundred-percent on board.”

  Istvan let out a small sigh of relief. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

  [New Side-Quest: Yava’s Garden.]

  “We all need to time to heal from the shit that’s happened to us,” I said, adding the Quest to my queue. “Rule me up a plan, or give me a lead to the architect you need to make a plan, and I’ll follow it up once we’ve got Withering Rose sorted out.”

  “I will.” Istvan drained his glass, then took to the bar and rinsed it before setting it to dry. “Do you wish to take the night off? Or shall I send the artist in to see you?”

  “Go ahead. Might as well get that out of the way before I head off to bed.” I sprawled back on the sofa—my sofa—with a sigh. “Now that the gatehouse is fixed, I can get from here to the Lord’s Tower, right?”

  “Yes. There is a door which unlocks with your Lord’s Key,” Istvan said. “You will enter onto the kitchen level. Your rooms are two flights up from there.”

  “Thanks, man.” I thoughtfully drained the rest of my glass. “Let’s get this artist in here, and sketch the hell out of some heraldry.”

  Chapter 49

  By mid-morning, me and the visiting artist had decided on a standard for House Dragozin: a black spear on a sky-blue field, with the nine Keystones represented in their associated colors: White for Veles, Indigo for Matir, Red for Khors, and so on. It wasn’t a complicated flag, but it did everything I needed it to do. It was visible at a distance, it embodied the key identifiers that most represented the House, and—most importantly—wasn’t any shade of green.

  On the way to my rooms, I found myself gawking at all the small, but obvious changes that had taken place between leaving for Taltos and returning from Meewhome. Carpets cleaned, water leaks fixed, missing tiles replaced. When I entered my apartment and went to the bathroom, I found it had been cleared of sand. There was a nicely folded towel on the thick rim of the tub, along with new soap, razor, and small clay jars.

  “Huh.” I scratched my head. Rudolph knew I needed to sleep in earth to get the Well-Rested buff, so he normally didn’t touch the Ducal Litterbox. It seemed unlikely a maid had come through. “Did it despawn?”

  Curious, I made my way to the darkened bedroom. The four-poster bed was gone. In its place was a specially constructed, very fancy sandpit. Karalti was stretched out on top of it, nude, her hair fanned out across the loose earth. She had one hand up by her mouth, the other resting just underneath one small breast.

  My pulse jumped in my neck and under my tongue as I set my things down and walked over to sit. Warmth radiated up from the sand. I dug my hand into it, and found that it was warm all the way down. There was some kind of device built into the bedframe that heated it.

  “Mmm…” Karalti’s eyes slowly opened, and she blinked up at me in a daze.

  “Sorry.” My voice was tight enough I had to clear my throat. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Karalti smiled at me, her eyes dark and hazy, and opened her arms. Unable to take my eyes off her, I unequipped my clothing and climbed onto the bed. She embraced me, murmuring sleepily, and I pulled her in against my chest… and not for the first time, or the last, found myself feeling like the luckiest man on Earth.

  We slept that way, tangled together in the warm sand, until a HUD notification chirped and I started up out of a dead sleep. Blearily, I compulsively swiped it across, and Navigail’s cheery robovoice began to speak.

  [Your Steward has deposited 500,034 Gold Olbia in the Treasury!]

  [Myszno has 1,363,843 olbia available. Use your Kingdom Management System to manage projects, pay your Royal Dues, and recruit specialists!]

  Well, damn. Just like that, I was a millionaire. I rolled over onto my back, one arm over my face, and tried to wake up. If the money was back from Krivan Pass, that meant only one thing. “Hey, Tidbit. Wake up. Vash is back.”

  “Mmmngh?” Karalti burrowed in against my chest, wrapping her arm a little tighter, and sighed. I waited to see if she was actually going to open her eyes, and when she didn’t, I sucked my lips in like a fish and began kissing her: her head, her shoulders, then her cheek.

  “Mmm… nnn…” Karalti began to squirm, then to giggle. “Nuuu! Stop fishing me!”

  “The Fish Imperium knows no surrender, only victory!” I lunged in and got hold of her ear. “Num-num-num-num.”

  “Eeek!” Laughing helplessly, she pushed at my chest as the assault intensified. I let her go just enough she could worm away. She rolled over her shoulder and tried to get up in a crouch, but was too close to the edge of the bed to save it. With a squeak of dismay, she overbalanced and tumbled to the floor. Now I was the one laughing as she scrambled up to her feet and danced around, dusting sand off herself and scowling.

  “Yeah, laugh it up.” Karalti narrowed her eyes and stuck her lips out at me. “Just you wait. I’ll get you.”

  “Sorry, but the Fish Imperium does not negotiate with terrorists.” I sat up and looked over the edge of her side of the bed. “Poor Rudolph has to sweep all this up, you know.”

  “Hmmph.” Karalti shook her hair out, raining sand everywhere, and turned her back to me. I couldn’t help but notice the way her vestigial scales tapered down her back to the base of her spine, partly framing her butt. This incredible work of art was suddenly and tragically concealed as she began equipping her armor and gauntlets—exactly what I needed to do, if we were going to start the day.

  We found Istvan and Vash in the dining room offside the great hall, where one of the kitchen staff was dishing up dinner. Now that it had been repaired, it actually looked like somewhere I wanted to be. The paneling was fixed, the table polished, the chairs repaired and replaced. As soon as I walked in, my mouth started watering from the mingled smells of lamb, garlic, and butter. The meal for tonight was a kind of dumpling called Khinkali. They were twisted knobs of dough bigger than a golf ball, filled with meat and spices and rich broth that burst in your mouth when you bit into them. There was also a platter of Khachapuri—a large, flat, flaky bread boat full of cheese with an egg cracked on top—plates of assorted picked vegetables, and a dish of dense green sauce I’d never seen before. It looked a lot like spinach and artichoke dip. When I scurried over to it, my HUD highlighted it as [Pikhali: An Eastern Vlachian sauce made from spinach, walnuts and garlic. Commonly eaten with Khachapuri.]

  “Mmm. These smell amazing!” Karalti heaped her plate with dumplings, skipping the vegetarian stuff, and nearly ran to the table with her haul. I took a more balanced array of pretty much
everything on offer: bright red marinated peppers, eggplant, sharp white sheep’s cheese, and the ever-present csalamádé, mixed pickles with cabbage, cucumbers, and other vegetables. With the pikhali and khachapuri, I had all of the essential Vlachian daily food groups covered: fat, salt, meat, vinegar and cheese.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living, you glorious cocksucker.” Vash had his feet up on the table and his pipe in his hand. His plate was already empty. Istvan was still eating, cutting his dumplings up with a knife and fork. “I heard from Istvan—seen here defiling his khinkali by spilling the soup out of them all over his plate for the sake of ‘decency’—that you, Suri, Karalti and Rin managed to somehow secure an alliance with the royalty of Meewhome. Well done.”

  “Thanks. And yeah, Istvan? Eating soup dumplings with a knife and fork is now illegal in Myszno.” I picked up one of them and took a bite out of it, sucking the broth out the bottom. Karalti didn’t even bother with that formality: she just shoved the whole thing in her mouth and chewed, her eyes turning dark and glassy with pleasure.

  Istvan let out an exasperated sigh. “Well, my lord, I’m sorry you hate civilization.”

  “I don’t hate civilization. I just think knives and forks are for Ilian wussies.” I popped the rest of the dumpling in my mouth and grinned at him. “Besides, you’ve been dating Vash for a couple months now. I’d have thought you’d be able to fit more meat into your mouth.”

  “HAH!” Vash spluttered with laughter, which turned to coughing as he accidentally inhaled too hard on his pipe. Istvan turned the same color as the roasted pepper I was now smugly spreading over my cheese-egg-bread canoe.

  “This is a game for you two, isn’t it?” He looked between us, scowling pointedly at Vash as the monk hacked and coughed.

  “Sorry,” Vash croaked, waving his hand in front of his face. “Dying.”

  “The Dakhari call that ‘karma’.” Istvan set his knife down, and aggressively forked his next dumpling without cutting it. “Given what you see before you, you might as well ask that same question of Vash, Your Grace. As you can see, he can barely choke anything down.”

  Vash wheezed harder.

  “Ahh. True love.” I shook my head, pulled the bread apart, and stuffed a big chunk of it in my mouth. “Speaking of true love with or without reproduction, guess what? Cutthroat laid a clutch of eggs.”

  Istvan fumbled his fork with a clatter, and his eyes widened in sudden horror. “No.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Vash stared at us in naked disbelief.

  “Yeah!” Karalti wiggled excitedly in her seat. “Rin said we should throw a baby shower!”

  “We figure Payu knocked her up when we weren’t looking. That’s why Suri didn’t return with us. She’s travelling back the long way, taking an airship from Meewhome with Cutthroat. Her darling mommy-to-be decided to lay her clutch in the Captain’s Cabin.”

  “In the Captain’s… no. I don’t need to know.” Istvan held up his hands in surrender. “Talking about it will only curse us more.”

  “A dozen Cutthroats running around the castle. Burna grant us all peace in our next lives.” Vash made a holy sign over his chest with one hand, then pressed his palms together. “You know, hookwing eggs do taste good. And they’re khunehar. Totally acceptable within religious law.”

  Karalti hissed at him. “You leave Cutthroat’s babies alone! They’ll be little and cute and they’ll roll around all over the place, and I’ll feed them tidbits from my kills, and… and… it’ll be great!”

  “Then make cute little omelets out of them,” he replied. “Put faces on the omelets if you want. Na-tsho schrodna, I don’t know what we’re going to do if the little goblins turn out like their mother.”

  “We convince Suri to sell them to Taethawn, and he reaps the wild oats his bull has sown,” Istvan said sourly.

  “Hah. We shall see.” Vash relit his pipe, ruefully shaking his head.

  “Were you able to bring anything else back from the dragon burial grounds?” I asked him, still working on my food. “Istvan said that we’d be taking the next round of recoveries slowly.”

  “Yes, there is still an incredible number of valuable goods down in that holy place,” Vash said. “The goods in that place are probably worth another million olbia, but unlike the gold, they are inextricably bound with the bodies of the dead. Removing them requires a process of delicate retrieval, then reinternment. We also cannot gauge the uses or powers imbued in many of the artifacts there. Sadly for us, many of our archeologists and historical antiques experts died in the war. Once the university is open and staffed, they will be able to process these goods… and who knows what we’ll find. I saw armor, weapons, and jewelry as grand as anything in the Volod’s vault. It might take a year to properly assess the value of the goods. Those which embody the art of Karalti’s people are likely priceless, and could not be traded by anyone of good character.”

  “Anything of historical significance, we preserve,” I said. “Karalti and any other dragons who eventually join us get as much say in that as they want. As for the university...”

  I held up a finger, went into the KMS, and lined up the restoration: 168,000 olbia, committed without hesitation or regret.

  [You are pledging to construct the University of Karhad. Are you sure you wish to proceed?]

  “Yes.” I closed the confirmation and smiled. “There, done. The university is next on the building queue. Give it a month, and it’ll be back in good shape. Until then, we can store those valuables in the castle.”

  “We should have room.” Istvan nodded, and—with a sly glance at me—began to use his knife and fork on his khachapuri.

  Vash grunted. “A wise decision. The Vault of Heroes is vulnerable to thieves and plunderers. We are managing to keep it quiet thus far, but it’s a matter of time until someone realizes there is an ossuary full of dead dragons and their treasure barely a hundred miles north of here. We will have to defend the hoard from all comers if word gets out.”

  “Tell me about it.” I regarded him for a moment, chewing thoughtfully before speaking. “Do you feel ready to go south tonight? Or do you want to do it in the morning? Karalti and I leveled up in Meewhome, so we’re ready when you are.”

  “Already? Well.” The Baru set his feet down, thumping his heavy steel-toed boots to the floorboards. “I’ve been ready to go back to Tastalgan for thirty years, Herald. Finish up and meet me in the courtyard. I must commune with my god, and then I’ll be ready to fly.”

  Chapter 50

  The terrain in the far south of Myszno was nothing short of forbidding. The entire province was ringed by mountains, but none as awe-inspiring and severe as the Kuday Range, the mini-Himalaya that separated Vlachia from the northern border of Napath. This range was why Ashur had been able to take Vlachia by surprise: It hadn’t occurred to anyone that an army—even an army of undead—could make the trek from the other side of those mountains and survive.

  “I am struggling to make sense of why there are Tuun entombed with the dragons in Krivan Pass,” Vash said, helping me into a thick [Tuun Sherpa Coat]. It was made of camel hide with the wool turned inward, conveying an Insulation Buff that would keep us warm in the severe weather of the Kudays. “The Tuun of Myszno have only been here for a few generations. We came here as miners and farmers.”

  “Why here, though?” I frowned, looking thoughtfully to the sky. The Dark Star was glinting over the moon to the south. Veles’ Dragon Gate: Archemi’s first and only satellite.

  “My guess is that we ascertained the location of Burna’s resting place, and desired to live in a holy land. The Tuun of Myszno universally hold Burna in high regard, placing him over Tangur and the other two Heavenly Kings.”

  Tangur was the Tuun god of the sky, and the most important deity in my fictional homeland. He didn’t have a personification—he was literally the sky, the big blue dome over our heads, and ‘tangur’ was also the Tuun word for ‘daylight’. Faceless, omnipresent and
infinitely wise, he was the father and ruler of the Three Heavenly Kings: Burna, Dashin, and Vajra. “Putting Burna over Tangur? That’s about as close to heresy as you get in Tungaant, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed. If for no other reason that the abbots of Tempat Sonn don’t like it when their subjects think for themselves.” Vash clapped the front of my coat. “There we go. That should do. You and I are both are hardened against the weather, but it’s cold enough to freeze the tits off a demon at those altitudes this time of the year.”

  “We’ll be fine. I’ll keep you warm if I have to. The cold doesn’t bother me, as long as I can eat.” Karalti preened under her wing as we climbed a rope up to her back, and then pulled it up behind us. We had taken all the trekking gear we had in case we needed to make a camp somewhere. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

  I made sure my scarf was folded and tucked in, pulled my helmet on, and waited until Vash had situated himself. Like me, he didn’t bother with flight harness and straps. When he signaled the go-ahead, I patted Karalti on the shoulder and assumed the position.

  “Hang on tight! I bet it’s gonna be rough up there.” Karalti tossed her head, shook her wings, and launched herself into the sky.

  The first stage of our journey was to warp to the entry to Matir’s Dragon gate. We appeared over a half-frozen waterfall that plunged down into a pitiless glacial crevasse. Across the giant sinkhole were two enormous obelisks that stretched from the subterranean depths to a height greater than the nearest mountains: The Thunderstones. The monuments hummed with power, drawing blasts of lightning from the storm that swirled overhead. The Mark of Matir began to tingle and pulse under the skin of my hand.

  “Woahhhh!” Karalti corrected herself as a howling slap of snowy wind sent her drifting to one side. There was so much turbulence that she didn’t even have to beat her wings to stay airborne—just hover.

  “Incredible, aren’t they!” Vash shouted. Even though he was shoulder to shoulder with me on the saddle, I could barely hear him over the tempest.