Metal Mage 7

by Eric Vall

  “He … introduced me to his sons,” she admitted.

  The leader groaned. “I hate my sons, no,” he decided. “What else?”

  “There was a feast and a golden carriage at one point,” I told him flatly, and his buttery eyes flickered with amusement as he glanced back.

  “Of course there was,” he chuckled. “No, we won’t do that either.”

  The leader swiveled around and headed back toward the entrance of House Orrel, and I jogged to catch up as I considered his long strides and commanding presence.

  “Can I ask … how old you are?” I tried.

  Luir grinned. “Aging is indescribably irritating, Mason Flynt. The only use for age is as a weapon of deception. Wisdom is involved, of course, but that comes and goes. I knew the moment I started to age that I wanted none of it, so I found my own alternative.”

  I grinned back and began to like the leader a little more. “Which is the façade then? Old or young?”

  “Both,” he said with a shrug as we came to the quiet chamber where white-robed elves crossed to follow various paths into the glade. “Everyone in Nalnora waits with bated breath for me to turn into dust, and by all accounts, I’m old enough to be dead. On the other hand, I’m currently young enough to behave as stupidly as I wish, and yet I have all the supposed wisdom of my two thousand three hundred and … forty-three? Forty-six years?”

  Luir shrugged once more as we turned toward the stone path that led out into the valley surrounding House Orrel. Several robed elves bowed in respect to their leader as we passed, and I didn’t miss the few winks he sent to the more beautiful amongst them.

  “So, you’re immortal?” I clarified.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ll find that out eventually, I suppose. At present, I’m more concerned with other aspects. It seems youth can do nearly everything I command of it, although not quite. Here we are.”

  We turned toward another stone structure just as overgrown as the last, and white-robed elves strolled in and out of the open archway of the entrance. I honestly couldn’t believe the elf was answering any of my prying questions, but he was also the first elf in Nalnora to offer a personal tour of his House.

  I blinked as we came into the shadows of the stone building, and I looked around while my eyes adjusted to the dim cast of the place. Both ends of the room were completely shelved with books from floor to vaulted ceiling, and I realized it must be the extensive library Dragir had mentioned.

  There were large stone tables laid out for the students to work around, and we followed the head of House Orrel while he strolled amongst his pupils. Some of them had small brandings on their wrists or arms, but each one looked different from the last, and others wore their sleeves so their skin was completely concealed.

  None of the students looked up from their work while we passed, and without any constant glares from the crowd, I was able to focus more directly on what they were doing.

  “What are they studying?” Cayla asked quietly.

  “Anything they like,” Luir replied. “Remedy, weaponry, rune magic … ”

  I looked up to find the leader grinning at me, and I gave the appearance of being immediately intrigued despite the fact that I’d been scanning the mappings and degree lines around me from the second I’d entered.

  I was currently trying to discern what the nearest elf was working on, and so far, I knew she was harnessing two of the elements Dragir had used in the head of the rocket, but the forces were directed inward.

  I grinned at the glint in Luir’s eye. “You realize I have a thousand questions now,” I told him as I squinted in confusion over the student’s work.

  “Good,” the leader returned. “Shall we continue?”

  I feigned my disappointment as he led us back to the glade, and Deya smiled sweetly at the leader when he offered his arm once more.

  “I never realized you had so many students here with you,” Deya said, and Luir looked pleased by the statement as he slowed his pace a bit.

  “No one does,” he told her in a low voice, and his grin widened when she giggled. “Ask Aeris how many inhabitants there are at House Orrel. If he’s in a bad mood, I guarantee he’ll tell you two hundred. On a good day, he might admit to three hundred.”

  “And how many are there really?” Deya whispered with a glint in her violet eyes.

  The leader leaned closer. “The number would terrify you, my little sprite.”

  Deya’s amusement faltered, but she recovered quickly to smile at the leader before he chuckled and walked on.

  “What is it you plan to do with so many?” I asked. “Surely you must have an ambition in mind to operate an establishment like this.”

  This seemed to amuse the leader, and he thought for a moment before he responded.

  “I don’t need an army of elves, if that is what you are suggesting,” he said as we turned toward another set of buildings. “The other Houses believe there is only strength in armies and in wealth these days, and this is true if you have no foresight. I, however, have lived long enough to know better. My students are not so disposable to me as the soldiers in the south. They are worth far more alive than they are dead.”

  The leader seemed to anticipate my next question.

  “Is it their interest that you value, or their potential for power?”

  “Wealth, and the very definition of, falls away with time, Mason Flynt,” he said, and he slowed to a stop outside a small arching entrance at the base of a tower as he released Deya. “Even morality is a thin and malleable veil. Power, on the other hand, is like an endless trove if you feed it well over the years. Let us just say, I feed my trove very well.”

  “So … is your objective to fully reclaim what the ancients knew of rune magic?” I asked. “Or to return to the ways of the old world, and do away with the ten Houses completely?”

  The leader’s eyes glinted ever so slightly. “You’re a very curious man,” he told me. “You ask many direct questions.”

  “I did come to Nalnora for answers,” I replied with a grin.

  “Then it is lucky you fell in with Dragir,” he said and started up the spiral steps that led into the tower. “I admit I did not expect that development when I first met you.”

  “Why is that?”

  The leader stopped mid-step to look past me toward Deya just behind.

  “Why would that be, my little sprite?” he asked as he eyed her carefully.

  Deya reigned in her blush a bit better this time, but I could tell she was tired of the leader pressing the subject.

  “Because my brother is a busy man,” she said sweetly.

  The head of House Orrel raised his brows in amusement.

  “Wrong again,” he replied, and he continued up the steps. “Dragir could be busy for all I know, but it wouldn’t matter if he was not. I’ve kept my eyes on him as best as I can, but it’s an exhausting endeavor. The stubborn bastard has a habit of disappearing entirely at the most inopportune moments if you ask me.” He was chuckling when he held the door at the top of the long stairwell open for us, and he glanced at Deya as he continued. “It seems even I cannot get Dragir’s attention if he does not wish to give it.”

  Deya rolled her eyes playfully and brushed past the two of us with the other three women close behind.

  “I guess I’ll count myself lucky he hasn’t brushed me off yet,” I told the leader.

  “You should,” he replied more soberly, and he gestured inside.

  We came out onto a stone bridge that stretched the width of the giant structure some forty feet above the ground. Several large nests made of woven branches were balanced between the columns that encircled us or along the upper ledge of the great domed ceiling. I realized it must be a rookery for some sort of creature, and just as I was about to ask what was kept in here, a whoosh of wind came in through the columns, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

  The owls I’d noticed resting in the trees of the lagoon had looked like any
other, but the owl that landed in the giant nest on the ledge above us was easily as tall as the Mustang was long, and its wings were virtually silent as it flapped and settled in.

  The leader came to stand beside me, and he nudged me in the side as he flashed another grin. “Incredible, aren’t they?” he asked.

  “That’s an understatement,” I chuckled as I watched the owl preen its feathers.

  Then two more arrived, and I marveled at the silence of their wings as they swooped in and landed without shifting a single branch under their weight.

  “Do you hunt with them?” Deya asked curiously.

  “They are not like your dogs,” the leader said with a smirk. “We do not own or train them. These are my eyes.”

  I furrowed my brow. “The eyes you’ve been keeping on Dragir?”

  The leader laughed. “When I want to be frustrated? Yes,” he allowed. “But they travel all over Nalnora for me. They’re transmuters. It’s what they do.”

  Deya turned her back on us to move further along the bridge.

  “What is a transmuter?” I asked.

  A calculating grin came to the leader’s face, and he propped his elbows on the bridge rail beside me. “You’ve already met one,” he told me. “Or rather, you’ve met two.”

  I thought back, but before I could respond, Aurora turned her head our direction.

  “The elves with the white eyes?” she guessed, and Luir started slightly at the sound of her voice.

  We both looked over at Aurora, and I smirked at the cold cast of her emerald eyes as she held the gaze of the leader as if she were daring him to speak to her.

  The head of House Orrel nodded slowly, and he shifted to look directly at the half-elf.

  “You … you are oddly familiar,” he mused.

  Aurora’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been walking with you for the past forty minutes,” she said thickly.

  “Yes, but it’s best not to look directly at a mutt,” Luir explained casually. “Now that I really consider you, there’s something that strikes my memory … have I tried to kill you before?”

  I narrowed my own eyes and listened carefully for the answer.

  “You’re still alive,” the half-elf replied coolly. “So, I would guess not.”

  She sauntered off to join Deya further down the bridge, and the leader shrugged as he turned back to me.

  “Touchy creature,” he mumbled. “The mutt is correct, though. The transmuters at the docks channel their powers through two of these magnificent beasts, but there are others here and there around the grounds as well. They are all my eyes.”

  Luir said this with pride as he looked down on the owl nesting below us, and while I watched the bird’s head swivel to the side, his eyes flickered and went white.

  Suddenly, the owl gave a piercing screech, and he dove to the base of the rookery to snatch what looked like a mouse from the floor.

  “They’re so quiet when they fly,” Cayla pointed out from my other side.

  “And weightless,” the leader added. “Rune magic has many little uses like this. My transmuters are merely one of my ways of ensuring the security of House Orrel. They’re also quite useful when certain mages lead attacks against infiltrating forces.”

  My head whipped to the side to find the leader sending me another conspiratorial grin.

  “I think my favorite part was the end,” he informed me, “when you buried the fleeing soldiers alive. Imagine their frustration.”

  The head of House Orrel turned to lead us back along the bridge, and I stared at his sleek hair for a moment.

  Then I quickly fell in step with him.

  “You have an eye on every House then?” I clarified as we headed down the spiral steps.

  “Of course not,” he chuckled with a wave of his hand. “That would be remarkably boring, but they’re always on hand should the need arise.”

  I didn’t miss the subtle shift in his tone while he said this, and I began to wonder how often the head of House Orrel had sent his eyes to keep watch on me during my time in Nalnora.

  The last couple weeks were a blur of ferns and bloody run-ins, but despite how uncomfortable the idea was, it was more irritating to me that Luir had stood by and witnessed the onslaught of the Master’s army.

  Now here he was, chatting us up and strolling around his grounds, and I’d never met an elf who would lay all their cards out so easily as this.

  The more I considered Luir’s roaming “eyes,” the more I began to fear he might know something.

  Overall, it seemed like there was little he could have observed out in the jungle that I needed to worry about. It was no secret I’d been working my way through the ten Houses and creating weapons, or that I’d fought alongside House Quyn and House Fehryn and attacked Houses Syru and Natyr.

  Unless any of his eyes were trained on the road when Deya and I’d gotten a little caught up with each other in the Mustang.

  My gut flipped at the notion, but when we got to the bottom of the spiral stairs, the leader sent me the same unaffected smile, and I quickly returned it as he gestured down a dirt path flanked with budding trees.

  I snuck a glance over my shoulder before I followed him, though, and all of the women had their brows furrowed toward the ground. I could tell they were thinking back just like I was, but it didn’t look like anything too detrimental had occurred to them.

  Deya looked displeased, however, and I could at least guess why.

  The idea that the leader had been watching her brother for who knew how long was an uncomfortable one, and I wondered if Dragir had known about any of this. At least he could disappear whenever he needed to thanks to the runes on his pendant, but considering the silent prowess of the giant owls we’d seen in the rookery, it seemed likely Dragir might have no idea at all.

  I decided this would be my first order of business when we returned to House Quyn, but for now, I came to a stop beside the head of House Orrel where he waited at a simple iron gate.

  Delicate tendrils of vines braided themselves up and down the gate, and with the sun lower in the sky and casting an orange glow throughout the valley, the tiny white flowers that dotted the vines all turned their faces toward the west.

  Shoshanne’s warm brown eyes widened as she peered between the iron rods, and she sent me a giddy smile.

  “Is that helio?” she asked the leader.

  “You are a healer,” Luir decided.

  “I am,” Shoshanne replied. “I studied at the Order of Pallax.”

  “Then you will like my gardens,” he assured her. “Some of these plants were planted by my own father, and the moriet tree was sown by my grandfather before him.”

  The leader slowly opened the gates as he worked not to disturb the plants that grew ravenously everywhere I looked, and only a thin and mossy footpath marked the way into the garden.

  We followed it in silence while it took us in a large circle, and as other paths branched off, Shoshanne followed them with a soft smile and let her fingertips graze the leaves as she went.

  Deya disappeared into the maze at the first opportunity, and I had the feeling she was avoiding the leader now as Aurora followed close on her heels.

  Cayla and I followed the head of House Orrel, though, while he named the various species and explained their uses. He had plants for heart ailments, diseases, mortal wounds, and even recreational enjoyment. There was a small grove of Aldrin saplings, and another of naticea, but my favorite was the willowish tree like the ones beside the waterfall at House Quyn.

  This turned out to be his grandfather’s moriet tree, and it was nearly three times as tall as those in the south. Apparently, the pink flowers it produced in the spring could be ground into a paste that was a powerful tranquilizer in concentrated doses.

  “The seeds from this tree were gifted to House Quyn following the great wars,” he told us, and he eyed Deya through the plants. “A means of harboring peace within the family.”

  “How closely related are y
ou to Qiran?” Cayla asked.

  “Qiran is my sister’s second son’s, son’s, son’s … ” The leader trailed off as he furrowed his brow.

  “One more son,” Deya called, and the leader nodded.

  “Yes, that sounds right,” he mused. “They do all trail together after a while. Qiran’s father was the most interesting one in centuries.”

  Luir brought us around another small footpath, and I noticed every plant in this area looked like it was locked in the end of autumn with their foliage half-faded. Further ahead, the limbs and stems were bare as they jutted up from beds of rotted leaves, and I realized we’d been walking through a series of seasons this whole time. Summer must have been back near the gate, and spring had been where the moriet tree was just beginning to bud.

  “Do you change the seasons or keep them constant?” I asked curiously.

  “It depends,” the leader answered, but he sounded somewhat distracted as he slowed his pace. “Some plants can be persuaded to exist in a perpetual state of … ”

  He trailed off into silence, and I could tell by the set of his jaw that he was training his ear like Deya and Aurora did.

  “In a perpetual state?” I led.

  The leader’s gaze snapped to mine.

  “Forgive me,” he said as he walked on. “My transmuter to the west was informing me of something. We had better head in for the evening.”

  Luir abruptly returned to naming the species while we made our way to the iron gate, and there were some he only hinted at the use of before directing our attention to another. It seemed like anything that could befall an elf at House Orrel had a remedy waiting in this garden, and when we were joined by Shoshanne again, the healer admitted she couldn’t even name every plant she saw.

  “Each one more brilliant than the next,” the leader said to the healer as he offered his arm once more to Deya. “Come, the night gathers quickly here. I will show you all to your quarters myself.”

  We strolled back along the footpaths to the stone walkway that led toward the domed entrance, and the entire valley paled as the sun slipped behind the peaks of the mountains. The air chilled immediately as bugs drifted up from the throng of plant life all around, and ahead of us, House Orrel’s round windows ignited with torchlight throughout.