by Marc Secchia
“Aye,” said one of the Commanders. “That’s the truth, and no circularity about it.”
Whisper said, Therefore, we determined to send this Whisper to you, together with the mistorialite ring you once gifted to me, as a token by which you might verify the veracity of this urgent message. She is able to find a path where none exists. She will bring you here.
I must be frank for the sake of our old friendship. It appears Sanfuri conjured this Whisper from a place no Dragon or Human knows, to do his bidding, which was to blaze for him a trail across the Sundering and lead him to Arbor. As you know, according to legend, Whispers must obey magical imperatives. For this, he whipped the Whisper and severed her tail, and despatched his whippet-draconids to track and savage her person, yet she survived and crossed the Sundering – proof, you will agree, of her extraordinary wayfinding capabilities.
Whisper has been briefed. You can trust her, as do we. She carries much information in her mind, including a personal message for your son, Prince Xan.
Once more, I entreat you, King Xaryiza. Please rush to Arbor’s aid before it is too late.
Your grateful ally, Rhyathala-Shimmira, Princess Blue of Arbor.
Whisper lowered her eyes, indicating the end of her message. With a gasp, Queen Xola tottered forward several steps, feeling her throat gingerly before she reasserted her presence. “How do we know this is not a trick of that old lizard Sanfuri’s?” she demanded.
No revenge? Xola was even more dangerous than she had imagined.
“Because this mistorialite ring has a property that I never revealed to the Princess,” said the King. Holding up the stone, he said clearly, “Huuy’xi litho!”
At once, a tiny scene materialised in the air above the ring. Whisper heard Princess Rhyme say, ‘Xan once gave me this. Show this to him, and tell him our need is urgent. Tell him … tell him … o Whisper, I don’t know what else to say!’
And the Whisper’s burry tones replied, ‘I will suggest he had better return this token in person, or you’ll let your axes do the talking?’
‘Diplomatically!’ stammered the thumb-sized image of Princess Rhyme.
At once, the magic dissipated. Far from seeming overcome by the image of his old flame, the King narrowed his eyes as he stared at Whisper. “A true message and a true messenger? Intriguing. I foresee many challenges. The trail. The Warlock’s unexpected power, not least shown in the conjuration of a living being of a kind which was thought extinct. His binding of a Dragon army. And not least, the problem of the Arborite King’s poisoning. We must turn our powers to discerning the true lie of Arbor’s travails before they become our own, as they undoubtedly will, if Warlock Sanfuri succeeds in this immoral undertaking.”
“Aye,” said Queen Xola, seeming to grow improbably taller and sterner as she approached the now-sober saboteur, and said candidly, “Whisper-creature. There is much to discuss. We must interrogate you closely – well, question you. You are not a prisoner, but also you must understand, you are not a friend as yet. Friends have proven qualities, like the finest gemstones.”
In the face of the Queen’s overt aggression, Whisper could only breathe, “But … Arbor?”
Xan nodded. “Commanders! Prepare our forces to travel at once! See also to the city’s defences. We shall ride at dawn –”
“If possible,” his sister interposed smoothly. “Just the small matter of a broken air-bridge and Dragons who refuse to – how did you negotiate with the Dragons, Whisper? Our intelligence says you approached from the direction of Igneous Dragon territory.”
“Poorly,” Whisper admitted, drawing from the Queen the first glimmer of a smile she had seen crease those severe features. “I almost negotiated my way down their throats.”
“Hmm,” said Xola, in one syllable endeavouring to convey that she would have preferred precisely that demise for a creature who had just held her captive.
While making enemies was never exactly recommended, this woman was not one she would have chosen under any circumstances. Not with the magical power she saw swimming in those perilous grey eyes, and leaching slightly from the skin of her clenched fists.
Now, the Queen rapped, “Whisper. What is the other message for my brother?”
“It is of a personal nature,” said Whisper, not without a nervous lick of her lips.
Xola’s face managed to imitate an infuriated granite statue very effectively. She sniffed, “Very well. I can be spared the sordid details. I suppose that blue girl’s pretty enough, if you like the curvaceous sort. Probably as healthy and frisky as a dragonet, too, and I’ll wager –”
To Whisper’s surprise, Xan cut in roughly, “Enough, Xola!”
His sister, too, pulled up in evident astonishment. She said, “Is that the cut of the gemstone, brother?”
“It most certainly is!”
“Very well. I shall hasten to prepare my apprentices and my effects.” Bowing stiffly to her brother, Queen Xola swept out of the chamber, seemingly absconding with her personal icy wind and electrical storm.
Every person in the chamber appeared to relax and breathe easier once she was gone.
Jumping jindragons, and she had taken the scholarly-looking Prince for a wet blanket with two legs and a head. Whisper shook her muzzle in delight. She should have known Rhyme would have excellent taste in monarchs! This King was intelligent, well-spoken, completely clueless with a weapon in hand, and had just betrayed his regard for her Princess in the best possible way. He definitely had potential.
All he needed was a Whisper to guide him.
She rubbed her paws gleefully.
Chapter 12: Reasoning with Whispers
RATHER LESS PLEASINGLY, the King of Grey was also a dreadful bore. For two entire days, he monopolised Whisper’s company as he demanded every possible detail residing in Whisper’s memory regarding the interactions of the Princess and her councillors. When he discovered she had eidetic recall, this catapulted him into a state of cerebral ecstasy that she simply could not understand. What it amounted to, was two days of him asking questions and her repeating conversations, her reflections upon those conversations, and then everything she had seen, smelled, tasted or intuited about those conversations, and her intuitions about her intuitions, and so on. Ad nauseum.
He was either a dazzling genius, or as barking mad as the canodraconids these Azar greybeards used for riding and carrying their supplies.
All of the canodraconids hated her. She gladly hated them right back. They were slavering, dull creatures with six squat legs, brutish faces and a grating, low-pitched bark that made her hackles rise every time she heard one, which was constantly. Their body armour looked like sleek hair, but it was Dragon scales, and their colour she might politely describe as cesspit green, which perfectly suited their appalling lack of bodily cleanliness and general state of ill humour, which varied between curmudgeonly and downright atrocious – hence the grumpy barking. The Azarinthe handlers drove them by shaking and tugging on the chains affixed to their nasty, drooling black tongues. The canodraconids regularly tried to bite their handlers’ heads off.
Must be mutual love.
However, the canodraconids also boasted strength and great stamina, which was just as well, or the snail’s pace of this small army would truly have driven her to distraction.
Abruptly, that second evening as the scouts welcomed the King and Queen to a prearranged trailside campsite, Xan said aside to her, “Now, Whisper, I will meditate upon this data. Thank you. You have been most helpful.”
Whisper leaped seven feet down from the canodraconid’s back, wincing as her weaker left knee twinged upon landing. Still not right. The men had set up camp in a natural dell that carved into a canyon’s side. A violet-tinged waterfall trickled from above, doubtless coloured by five thousand feet of purple fluorite and istorialite extrusions covering the cliff face above, feeding a pool with an outlet that ran a mere twenty feet before diving down a small sinkhole. Here, the men led the canodraconids
for a deserved watering, clearly intending to reserve the main pool for drinking water for the men.
Queen Xola, apparently in charge of on-trail affairs, snapped, “Perimeter guard, report. Scouts, afore, behind and above. Engineers, let’s talk about the process of bridging the canyon. I want to know how we can reduce the time to repair.”
King Xan vanished into his tent.
“Whisper, get your scruffy hide over here,” Xola snarled unexpectedly.
“May I cool my head?”
“Aye, and rinse off your attitude while you’re at it,” snorted the Queen. “Two minutes. Now that my brother’s finished with you, it’s my turn.”
As comforting as an invitation to the gallows.
Annoyed, Whisper scared off a few miniature turquoise aquatic draconids before dunking herself beneath the waterfall. Water. Cleansing so much more than just the body. The play of droplets upon her head and ears. The cool trickling down her body. Suddenly, her senses seemed to come alive, released from the cavern of her cranium. Delight. A strange ripple of laughter through her body that seemed to originate, bizarrely, in her wet pelt.
Xola was staring. Brusquely silencing the men speaking to her, the Element Enchantress stalked to the poolside, scowling her usual daggers at the water. However, the creases around her mouth suddenly seemed to morph by a process of transformation Whisper did not understand, into a childlike smile that betrayed her youth. She and Xan, her twin, were only twenty-two years of age, while their older sibling who had elected to remain behind to administer the city, King Xorda, was two years older. So young, to have lost both parents and be thrust into rulership of a people numbering some forty thousand, according to Arbor’s latest intelligence, now six years old. The Azar were far more populous than that, Whisper guessed from what she had observed. Perhaps double the number, or more.
A fascinating model of rulership, too. A triarchy. Her memories had never encountered such a system, with Xan covering governance, research and development, Xola being responsible for defence and military, and Xorda’s administrative gifts covering just about every other aspect, including an inner council that divided the duties relating to the many detailed facets of Azarinthine life.
Xola’s smile was unexpectedly inviting. Whisper stepped out of the waterfall. “How may I serve you, o Queen?”
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“The camouflage. It’s … astonishing. Your control of it. Do you realise you were just imitating a falling waterfall, including reshaping the water flow and even dealing with the light-refractive elements of shielding? And, most likely, playing with the ambient sound, too?”
Whisper shrugged. “Permission to annoy you intensely, Your Majesty?”
Xola’s laughter tinkled merrily around the dell, causing the Azarinthine soldiers, to a man, to stop what they were doing and stare. Evidently, Xola laughed about as often as a Dragon might roll over and submit to talons tickling his belly, rather than fight.
She chuckled, “Describe how a Whisper penetrates an impenetrable azarite-anchored shield, and I will be instantly un-annoyed. Xan’s room was protected by state-of-the-art elemental shielding of my own particular design, developed over the course of five years of intense study and experimentation. You did the scientifically, provably impossible.”
“Perhaps I’m a rogue element.”
“And how,” said the woman, feelingly. “I am annoyed – in a good way. Intrigued. You men! Get to work before I apply a million shards of mage-ice where it’ll hurt most!”
The general cursing beneath beards and grumbling meant that her threat required no further clarification. One more glare, however, and the complaints stopped as though they had charged headlong into a dark tunnel and discovered a hungry dracoworm within. Whisper imagined she might quite enjoy being around Queen Xola, if only because she was an imminent explosion on legs.
Xola snapped. “So? The seamless camouflage?”
“I think about it and it happens.”
“I knew I loathed you for good reason,” the Enchantress said politely. “More on that later. We’ve an engineering problem ahead of us and I need to know how you propose to fly the better part of a mile’s worth of cord across a canyon. Or are we hitchhiking through the Brass Mirror, perchance?”
“Your tongue is acid enough to make you right at home down there, wouldn’t you say?” Whisper returned, just as equably.
The Enchantress bared her teeth. “And?”
“Well, I don’t fly so much as … glide.”
With a wild cry of rage, Xola turned and blasted a perfectly innocent bush to smithereens. She dusted off her fingers, smoking from the bright blue electrical discharge, and smiled a completely different sort of smile at Whisper. “Why don’t you and I have a cosy little chat, girl to girl, my snarky little friend? Or would you like to see me lose my temper properly?”
Whisper opted for a dutiful nod. No point in shaking a volcano until it erupted.
The odd judicious prod promised unlimited entertainment, however.
* * * *
The following morning, the Azar army was on the march long before any birds, draconids, insects or any other form of life whatsoever even thought about rising. Whisper admired their dedication. The army was a thoroughly professional unit. Scouts had run the remaining length of canyon to the old air-bridge platform, dropping off sappers and engineers and pairs of Warlock Apprentices, where needed, to clear the trail ahead.
Crystal dust-haze filtered down more and more thickly from above, Whisper observed, continuing the trend of the days becoming intolerably stuffy as heat and moisture built up in the canyons. The air was a smothering blanket, every hint of a breeze greeted by grateful soldiers mopping their brows. This muggy weather presaged a mating or a swarming, she remembered. The Grey scouts kept checking the heights with wary eyes, and the army had to pause frequently for water. The men resembled wet silver aquatic draconids, they were sweating so heavily. The canodraconids baulked and misbehaved, barking angrily at their handlers, but there was a break as they followed a shallow streambed for a few miles, and every person and beast could splash about or drink as they wished.
“Double time!” roared Xola, thereafter. “You’ll get your rest at the canyon!”
“Aye, while dangling my poxy nates eight miles over deathly acid while being menaced by savage Wyverns and dragonets,” muttered a soldier mounted on a canodraconid just ahead of Whisper’s beast, which she shared with the Enchantress.
The Queen scratched Whisper’s neck with hard, sharp fingernails. “Bet you could get us to that Warlock in half the time.”
Whisper shuddered at the note of animosity in the Enchantress’ voice. What grudge did Xola hold against Sanfuri that moved her to such a pitch of abhorrence, she actually smelled it on the woman’s skin? Not that she minded, true as Dragons laid eggs. She would far prefer to stand alongside a maddened Element Enchantress in that battle, and may she fry the Warlock in his own juices!
The Whisper cleaned her fur fastidiously.
Above her, the Enchantress’ face seemed as set as stone weathered smooth. She rode in the broad canodraconid saddle that perched atop the foot-tall shoulder spikes, so that the rider could bend their legs and keep balance either side due to the draconid’s snaking, multi-jointed gait. Standing taller than most men at the shoulder and weighing upward of five tonnes, the beasts were daunting foes, often used to break an enemy’s battle line, she understood. Transporting them across the air-bridge would be another issue altogether, one that most likely would not be solved in time for them to participate in the battle for Arbor.
Again, the fingers descended to her thick ruff of russet neck-fur, but this time the gesture was sympathetic, a friend’s touch.
I am not your pet!
Entirely unaware of Whisper’s inner acrimony, the Enchantress hissed, “Sanfuri hurt you, little Whisper. Retribution belongs to the scorned. It is your right.”
Whisper’s o
wn breath seemed to rise up to strangle in her throat. With the Enchantress’ clipped accent, so dissimilar to the brook-like lilt of Arbor, it was impossible to discern if she had said ‘your’ or ‘our’. Could she have stumbled upon a truth? She had overhead several soldiers discussing Xola quietly, saying that the Enchantress had no regard for any relationship whatsoever; that she was devoted to building her power and knowledge to the detriment of all else. They had agreed she was a handsome woman using terms Whisper would rather not have overheard, but King Xan was definitely the one from whose loins they would prefer the future royal house of Grey to flourish.
Even if his children came out grey with blue spots? Whisper grinned. She had to wonder. Blue and grey … stripes? Mottled for extra camouflage?
The fast-moving column clattered through a narrow, shady defile at this point, barely wide enough for the squat canodraconids to negotiate comfortably. They snapped at each other’s tails and factiously tore up their favourite berry-bushes in passing, mostly redberry, magisberry and yellow linberry in these parts. Toward the rear, Whisper had observed five canodraconids lugging the reels of heavy cables that would be used to construct a temporary bridge after a certain feline-humanoid creature flew the canyon for the cause – dragging half a mile of cord behind her.
Challenging.
However, it promised somewhat more fun than having her thigh bones gnawed upon by a witless pack of whippet-draconids – which might yet again become an issue. Would she enjoy a toothy reception on the far cliff face? Whisper snapped her daggers from their sheaths!
“Freaking … oh!” cried Xola, snatching her hands back in startlement.
Whisper grinned uneasily. “Sorry, I’m still not contemplating regicide. I’ll admit it is tempting, in your case.” She clicked the daggers smoothly back into place.
The Queen glared frost-daggers at her saddle companion. “You’re fast. And insolent.”
