by Devin Hanson
“Excuses!” Bircham cried. “That means nothing. Proves nothing!”
“Oh come off it, you old bag,” a woman from the right called, “the test was meaningless and you know it. The lad speaks with the dragon, it’s plain to see.”
Milkin thumped his cane on the ground. “Order! Be still, now. We have heard the test results. Be mindful that this test is to determine if Andrew Condign is a Dragon Speaker. External political considerations and personal agenda have no place here. Write your verdict upon your slips and submit them. Lady Vierra, would you be so kind as to collect the slips? One from each judge.”
Jules nodded and walked about the room, collecting slips. Most were ready with their verdicts immediately, though a few wanted more time and the last, professor Kilpatri, sat contemplating nearly ten minutes, pointedly ignoring the impatient shuffling and throat clearing of the other alchemists before finally making his mark and handing the slip to Jules.
Milkin accepted the slips with a short bow and took his place in front of Andrew. He held up a hand for quiet, then started reading off the slips. “Aye. Nay. Nay. Aye. Aye.” He continued through to the end. Andrew, counting behind him, counted seven for aye, and five for nay.
“Andrew Condign,” Milkin said, turning to face him after he finished reading off the votes, “it is my very great honor and privilege to proclaim you a Dragon Speaker. My congratulations.”
Andrew shook Milkin’s hand. He felt light-headed. “I did it then? I guessed all that Jules was doing?”
“Perfectly, my boy. Perfectly. Though in my youth we called them snow witches, not snow dragons.” Milkin stepped aside and another alchemist took his place, a younger professor, given his robes, but still old enough to be Andrew’s father.
“Capital performance, old chap! I say, I haven’t had such excitement since as far back as I can recall. Splendid!” The professor pumped Andrew’s hand enthusiastically, then made room for a woman of Milkin’s age, dressed in fine silks covered with cat hair.
Andrew lost track of who was whom in the press of congratulatory alchemists, but he did note that Jules forced her way to his side and stuck there, refusing to be shifted, one hand at her belt near the long knife she kept there.
He leaned over and in a moment between congratulatory alchemists said, “Jules, there is more to what Ava said about that rune. The only use for it is to become a kossante.”
Jules shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything. There are half a dozen runes that we’ve lost meaning to.”
“One out of six isn’t exactly high odds, but it can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, it probably isn’t. But there’s no way we could prove it otherwise.”
Jules was right, but Andrew still didn’t like it. The line of alchemists offering him congratulations seemed to have ended and he was just looking around for Milkin, when space suddenly opened up around him and he found himself facing Bircham.
“So,” Bircham said in an overly loud voice heavy with false cheer. “The first Dragon Speaker! Might as well call you the first, since we’ve lost records of all who came before.”
Andrew nodded his head. “Bircham. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure before now.”
“I would think not. After all, you’ve no training as an alchemist. And yet, everyone here is willing to usher you to the highest ranks of our Guild with nothing more than a parlor trick.”
Andrew looked at the faces turned toward him and saw that Bircham wasn’t the only alchemist who felt that way. These men and women had schemed and scrounged for snippets of knowledge in the cutthroat Guild, fighting for scraps of power. Bircham might be the only one to say it, but more than a few of these men and women resented him for the happenstance of fate that placed him ahead of them with little or no effort on his part.
Time to be diplomatic. “I understand how you feel. After all, everyone here is a master alchemist at the very least. What right do I have to stand before you now? Being a Dragon Speaker isn’t only about speaking with dragons. You know that the runes are named after the dragon tongue. When the dragons speak to me, I hear the runes in their words. I hear the true sounds of them, their inflections and hidden meanings that are impossible to understand through runework alone. I may not be an alchemist by training, not yet at least, but I will bring such a revolution to this Guild as has never before been seen.
“You want to be great. Respected by lords, honored by kings, revered by the common folk. This I can give you. Alchemy can bring greatness and freedom to the world again. I do not seek a place of power in the Guild, but when I have proven myself, I will claim my right.”
“Words!” Bircham shouted. “He offers empty platitudes with one hand and plunges us into war with the other.”
“You speak of Trent Priah?” Andrew asked.
“Who else? You would cast out an eminent member of our Guild, bar him on pain of death from practicing alchemy. You, who have no knowledge of our culture, our laws, our Guild!”
“Trent Priah is a murderer,” Jules said coldly, anger giving a bite to her words, “A kidnapper, a blackmailer, an extortionist, and a pirate.”
“Slander!”
“These I have seen with my own eyes.”
“You—”
“Have a care, Mr. Lameda. You know who I am. Call me a liar and I will have satisfaction. You’re not in Andronath: Salian law applies here and you have no loopholes to hide behind.” Jules stepped forward, her bearing regal. “Trent Priah is no upstanding member of the Guild. I call him murderer, kidnapper, blackmailer, extortionist, pirate.”
“Lord Trent Priah is Ranno Kossar,” Andrew said firmly. “So I call him.”
“This is a farce! A blight upon our Guild! I will not stand for it!”
“Thank you, Bircham.” Milkin stepped between Andrew and the alchemist. “You have made your views clear. This conclave was put together with the sole purpose of determining if Andrew Condign is a Dragon Speaker. And so we have found him.
“Per the laws of our Guild, a Dragon Speaker may name an individual Ranno Kossar. If you wish to challenge this ruling, you may offer a formal complaint. As of this moment, Trent Priah is Ranno Kossar. He has been named such by an accredited Dragon Speaker. If a later ruling is able to remove this stigma, then Lord Priah will be reinstated to his former position in the Guild.” Milkin’s kindly face grew hard as stone. “This is our law. And you will abide by it.”
Bircham made to spit, flicked his gaze to Jules, and cursed. He spun around and stormed off, a few members of his group following him, muttering amongst themselves and shaking their heads.
“If I didn’t know better,” Andrew said after the stunned silence had broken into quiet talk, “I would say you have a history with Bircham. And that he’s terrified of you.”
“He should be,” Jules growled. “He was the one Trent collaborated with to have me kidnapped from the Guild. I almost wish he had spit at my feet. I would have gutted him like a herring where he stood.”
“I have to say, that went a lot better than I was afraid it might. I wasn’t going to push for Trent to be exiled, but Bircham forced my hand there.”
“You’ve developed quite a bearing, my boy,” Milkin said, a twinkle in his eye, “a far cry from the lost lad I first met outside the Guild gates.”
“Blame her,” Andrew said, jerking a thumb at Jules. “I’ve spent so much time with her that I’ve started picking up her mannerisms.”
“You’ve piqued my interest,” Milkin said, “Your little speech there about learning rune wording from dragons… you were quite serious?”
“Oh. Well, sure. I mean it is true, after all. Jules says I still haven’t mastered the fire rune Ig, but I can make it do some amazing things with alchemy.”
“I would dearly like to see that.”
“What, now? You want a demonstration?”
“Besides my own curiosity, it wouldn’t hurt to cement in the minds of the alchemists here that you are worthy of your new title. A
demonstration of power would go a long way.”
Andrew shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
“Do you need dragongas? Or a flux? We have a supply, if so.”
“No,” Andrew smiled, “I think I’ve got that covered.”
“Excellent. Let me make my rounds, gather everyone’s attention again.”
Andrew waved him off. “Please do. I’ll need a few minutes to clear my mind.” He glanced at Jules. “Stay close?”
“I’ll be right next to you. You can count on that.”
Andrew settled himself on the bale of hay with his legs crossed. It wasn’t meditation, not by a long shot. When you meditated, you worked at emptying your mind. The first part was like that; he had to have an empty slate on which to build the phrases of dragon tongue upon. His first attempts had been difficult, but now he could manage a sort of partial emptiness, just barely enough to put together the runes he wanted.
Andrew sculpted Igan, plotting the path the fire would take, how hot it would be, how compact or expanded. He recalled fireworks he had seen as a child and alchemical preparations ignited during the Evensong celebrations at Andronath. He patterned it, wove it, colored it with touches of Co, the rune of steel, Ca, the rune of iron, and Pi, the rune of copper. He formed the whole display in his mind, fit the dragon words to the permutations. When he was ready, the Igan hummed at his lips, demanding to be set free.
He touched the scale in his belt pouch, the source of dragon life force, the vitae, that made alchemy possible. He opened his eyes, opened his mouth, and let the song out.
Fire bubbled from an outstretched hand as he spoke the Igan, danced into the air and hung swirling, roiling in on itself, suspended on nothing. He commanded the Igan, whispered it, cried it hard, and spoke it gentle.
He sang the Song of fire, and the fire responded.
The fire burst into swirls that danced and flickered, coalesced and fractured apart again, shades of color blurring throughout, green and blue, yellow and red. He sang the Igan through all its permutations. He knew, at an instinctual level, how much vitae he needed to draw from the scale. He could go bigger, hotter, faster, but he kept the urges under control, guiding the fire to do his bidding rather than submitting to its nature.
With a last shout, Andrew flung his arms wide and the Igan came to an end. He was panting and sweating from the effort, the sudden lack of mental focus made him dizzy. The room was silent and Andrew lowered his gaze to find the gathered alchemists frozen in wonder. They stared at him in awe, glanced at each other as if trying to determine if the others had seen what they had.
The applause began haltingly but quickly crescendoed. Andrew gave a small bow from his seat, uncertain that his legs would support him if he tried to stand.
“That was a flashy show,” Jules muttered in an aside. “And impressive. Best one yet.”
“Thanks. There are times to hold back but now is not one of them.”
“Of course. Catch your breath; I’ll hold them off until you get it together again.”
Andrew closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths until the spinning in his head slowed down. It took a lot out of him every time he did it. Jules said he was performing off-the-cuff Sayings on a massive scale, a feat she compared to a man leaping over a mountain in a single bound. Impossible, in other words. An alchemist might spend several years refining a new Saying, a new way to make Igan perform for a brief moment. He had just put on a thirty-second display after two or three minutes of preparation.
He smiled. What Jules didn’t understand was that he wasn’t performing alchemy as she knew it. He was just speaking to the fire in the dragon tongue, and it did as he commanded. But then, that’s what alchemy was, wasn’t it?
Andrew opened his eyes finally. Jules was standing firm between him and the alchemists, fielding their questions quietly. She was doing a fine job of it, and Andrew didn’t really feel like explaining to some withered old man things that he barely understood himself.
He swung his feet off the bale and stood up. His head felt empty and he wanted nothing more than to get some space. He glanced back at Jules and saw the alchemists looking at him with a welter of emotions. He saw fear, wonder, awe, worship even. He hadn’t been a Dragon Speaker before that display, not really. Oh, sure, he could speak with dragons. That’s what the title said, right? But these men and women built their power around the ability to perform alchemy and he had done something out of a story book, out of legend. He had performed the impossible. Before they might have questioned his right as a Dragon Speaker, but the Alchemists Guild was nothing if not a meritocracy, and he had proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that he belonged at the top.
Odd, then, that all he felt was lonely.
He walked outside and found Ava waiting for him. In the dragon, he had a companion that he didn’t have to explain anything to. She followed him back up the hill with a quiet comfort, solid and undemanding. He lay against her neck, idly scratching between her scales, and let his mind drift and the freedom of the open sky above wash the tensions of the evening away.
Tomorrow, he had to work out with Jules and Milkin some sort of plan to start combating these kossante, the Incantors. But that was tomorrow. For now, he had Ava and the stars.
Chapter 4
Betrayal
Night was falling as Iria crested the last rise and the great blue gates of Nok Norrah hove into view. Sand shifted under her feet as she adjusted the dead weight of Rajya on her shoulders. Even this close to the city, the raised road was sporadically buried beneath drifts of sand. Her mouth was parched, her lips cracked and dry.
Rajya moaned from the movement but thankfully did not wake. Iria raised a hand to touch her cheek and found it hot. Not surprising Rajya was feverish. Not with her wound. She was almost to the city. All she had to do was cross the last stretch of desert and Rajya would get the care she needed.
Iria forced herself to take a step, then another. She tried mustering energy to break into the sliding jog that had brought her so far but her trembling muscles refused to cooperate. One slow, plodding step at a time was all she could manage.
Soon, Rajya. Her mouth formed the words, but she did not have breath to spare to make them audible. Hang on, Little Bird. We are almost there.
As it had so often during their flight from the desert, Iria’s thoughts went to how Rajya had been wounded and the hectic chaos of that last fight.
It was on the way back from the confrontation with the alchemist that Iria had the first sign that things were not as they should. In the distance, a voice raised in heated argument. She slowed her desert walk and fell into a crouch beside a cactus, signed Rajya to do the same. They had returned over the surface of the desert, avoiding the twisting paths of the arroyos as much as possible. They did not have the time to scout them properly, and they would be of no use to anyone if they stumbled upon a hunting dragon on their return trip.
Rajya settled into a crouch next to Iria and they listened to the shouting in the distance. “It is Aruul,” Rajya announced. “I recognize his voice.”
“Where is Malik? He would not allow the desert silence to be disturbed.”
The featureless leather mask on Rajya’s face hid her emotions, but Iria had long ago learned to read the body language of her squad. The tilt to her head, the set of her shoulders, the way Rajya’s hands twitched toward the wicked daggers hidden in her sleeves, told of Rajya’s need to do violence. Iria felt the same, despite the two lives taken by her hand this night.
“Come,” Iria said finally, “but with caution. This does not feel right.” Rajya did not reply, but her fingers touched the hilts in her sleeves and she gave a sharp nod.
She saw the first lookout before he saw her, a shadow in a crevice of rock that did not belong. He was facing away, looking toward the arroyo where the shouting was coming from. Iria crept up behind him silently, her sandals making no more noise on the sand than a hopping mouse. The guard shifted his weight, fumbled for his water skin
and Iria used the noise as cover to close the remaining distance. He was just lifting the skin to his mouth to drink when the blade of Iria’s knife pressed into his Adam’s apple.
“Do not move,” she hissed. “Make no noise, give no signal. I am in no trusting mood right now.” The guard froze, and Iria felt his throat bob against her knife as he swallowed. “What occurs? Speak quietly, make no sudden movement.”
“Empty night, Iria, you gave me a fright!”
He started to turn and Iria stopped him with a slight pressure against his throat with the knife. “Answer the question.”
In a back-alley mugging, it would have been a clever move. Iria felt the muscles in his back shift as he dropped a shoulder, heard the whisper of a blade clearing a sheathe, and rammed her knife home up through the bottom of his jaw, through the palate and into his brain. He was dead instantly. She held him upright until he stopped quivering, the tendons in her arms standing out from the strain, then slowly lowered him down to the ground.
She felt more than heard Rajya join her in the shadows. “He drew a blade on me,” Iria said quietly. “What is going on?”
Rajya rolled the guard over and flipped his sand mask up off his face. “I do not know this man,” she said.
Iria frowned. She did not recognize him either. “He knew me by name. Seemed to be expecting me.”
“Little good it did him.” Rajya clicked her tongue. “Stupid man, drawing steel on a balai.”
“I will have answers, if I must kill every last Ranger on the sands tonight.”
Rajya leaned down and flipped up the edge of the man’s robes, revealing boots on his feet rather than sandals. “Methinks these are not Rangers.”
“We are betrayed,” Iria said flatly. Strangely, the discovery did not surprise her. Deep down, she knew it already. “I would know if Malik lives. If he does, I will end him then we can away.”
Rajya grunted agreement and yanked Iria’s blade free of the man’s head. “More alchemists?” she asked, handing the blade over.
