by J. F. Lewis
Yes. Yes. I’m threatened beyond all measure. Had I the appropriate plumbing, I’m certain I would soil myself. The god, long presumed dead by the others of his pantheon except perhaps for the two who must have known, smiled, basking in the light of Tsan’s scales. His golden skin reflected and amplified that light, his curved horns glowing brighter than the rest of him. Do you treat all of your advisors with such discourtesy?
“What changed?” Tsan narrowed her gaze, the focus pinpointing Kilke with twin beams of yellow-white from her eyes.
Nothing changed. Kilke frowned. You still need to make an alliance with the Aern, but you’ll want someone to make the initial contact. You could go, yourself, but if you prefer to avoid your presence starting its own little conflict, I suggest a messenger of lesser stature.
He thought he was being clever, but Tsan saw through it. There were different sorts of power, and in the absence of raw superiority, Kilke intended to explore other avenues. Such admirable adaptability. No doubt this facile grasp of shifting dynamics explained the deity’s long survival beyond his decapitation.
Had it been the lack of familiarity with draconic powers that led him to temporarily misjudge her, or was it possible that the feeling of superiority she now felt was exactly what he wanted her to feel?
Either seems likely, Kilke replied, but if it is amenable to your draconic immensity, let’s presume my current behavior to be genuine. Shall we?
I hope—Tsan caught the thoughts of the deity very dimly, as if he had not meant for her to overhear—my other heads have chosen more tractable pawns.
*
Silhouetted against the noonday suns, the two flying companions passed over a Holsvenian border town. Dolvek felt it before he saw it, a pull of raw magic as disturbing as the army that had left it in its wake. Small and deserted, a modest temple to Jun the Builder stood at the town’s center. A broken statue of Jun lay in pieces not far from the temple, its roughhewn head farthest from the steps, as if it had been pulled off and dragged. Mining equipment littered the streets, broken and bloodied.
Yavi’s air spirit deposited her at the entrance to the mine, where grooves had been dug into the dirt by several heavy objects that had been dragged from the depths.
“An old spirit was disturbed here,” Yavi called up to him. “I don’t know what kind of stone it was, but it dripped so much power, I can see the trail stretching off that way.”
She squinted at the furrowed earth and sighed.
“But that’s kind of obvious even to you non-spirity types, huh?”
“Yes.” Dolvek landed nearby, taking care not to kick up any dust when he did so. “But can you tell me anything more about the spirit? How can you tell it was old?”
“Just a feeling, I guess.” Yavi coughed. “Blech! It is enough to make my eyes water. I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must be for the spirit, to be stretched out like this.”
Dolvek closed his eyes and cursed, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“What do you mean?”
“Part of the spirit is still here.” Yavi pointed as if that would make everything clearer, but Dolvek saw nothing unusual. “It flows from the depths, drawn tight along the road. But it doesn’t look like the spirit is trying to hold on . . .”
Yavi vanished into the mine entrance, and Dolvek summoned a glowing bead of magic flame to light the way as he ran in after her. Warmer air left Dolvek feeling clammy and wet a few yards inside the tunnel. Rot and reptile stink mixed with a smell that alarmed Dolvek, even though he could not readily place it. Touching the elemental realms of water and air, he lifted off the mine floor protected by a wall of air and ice.
A second-level ward against atmospheric poisons, Dolvek wondered. What sort of mineral requires that? I don’t think I’ve used one of those since Hasimak took Rivvek and me to the old quarry and . . .
“Yavi,” Dolvek called. “Come back! The rocks are dangerous here!”
Flying after her, Dolvek widened his elemental connection, ice forming on the rocky walls, spreading down the shaft ahead of him. Increasing the brightness of his globe of fire, Dolvek spotted veins of red Dragon’s Blood and dagger-sharp formations like a mixture of silver and steel. Yellowish veins of sulfur marked the walls as well. Dragon’s Blood alone was a forbidden mineral because of the silvery poison contained within, but together . . .
“Yavi!” Dolvek shouted. “We need to get—”
He found her standing before a pool of quicksilver, coughing and wiping at her eyes.
“Look,” Yavi said between coughs, “they cut big chunks out of the walls farther back.”
“It’s dangerous to even stand on the stone here.” Spreading his ward to protect her, too, Dolvek held out his arms. “I can hold you, or if you prefer to climb on my back or maybe an air spirit could . . . ?”
“They won’t come down here.” Yavi let him lift her in his open arms, her forehead against his shoulder. “Too afraid of the spirits in the stone. They aren’t mean spirits, but they pollute what they touch and this one is angry because they deliberately tied part of it here.”
Cut into the walls with the smooth precision only Geomancy or Dwarven ingenuity could accomplish, three ring-shaped sections of stone had been excised and, if the marks outside were any indication, hauled away. Exactly three times, Dolvek had been in the presence of objects that would have fit those indentations. He’d been a young man the first time. Hasimak had brought him into the chamber of High Elementals, where thirteen of them stood, one broken by Kholster in the Demon Wars.
The last time had been when General Bloodmane led mixed groups of Eldrennai and warsuits through the Port Gates in an attempt to stop the Zaur. Dolvek had never been as adept at perceiving magic as Rivvek, but he closed his right eye, squinting at the granite with his left.
Residual traces of magic, etched in violet and chased with red, told the prince a story he did not wish to hear or believe. Yavi’s spiritual observations were not a component of construction Dolvek recalled, but it also was not an aspect of which the Eldrennai elemancers and artificers of old would have been familiar. Not even Hasimak.
“Dolvek?” Yavi looked up at him. “I trust you and all, but I thought we were flying out of here.”
“We are—” A shadow fell over the mine entrance, light passing through the semitranslucent obstruction, casting a red tint over the two of them. “—I hope.”
CHAPTER 18
SETTING DOWN ROOTS
Yavi perched on Dolvek’s back, feathering their pursuer with arrows from her heartbow as the prince flew deeper into the depths of the abandoned mine. Most arrows glanced off the hide of the thing (golem?), but three arrows stuck firm in its carven face.
Made from a red stone mixed with a crystal of a similar hue, the thing was roughly people-shaped and obviously intended to be a boy-type person. Light from Dolvek’s mystic flames reflected imperfectly in its quicksilver eyes. Gaping and filled with broad flat teeth, its mouth opened wide enough to take in her entire head. Hands ending in thick, badger-like claws pulled at the walls of the shaft, taking every effort to hurl itself faster.
“Can’t you break through—fly us up and out, like you did back in the warlord’s throne room?” Yavi shouted.
“These minerals are poison,” Dolvek said. “When I reach out to shift them, I can feel more dangerous veins in the surrounding stone: metals that sicken and kill long after exposure, and seeded with a dark magic I’ve never encountered. I’ll keep trying, but if I get it hot enough to break the golem, the gas it would release would kill me. Possibly you, too.”
“Can’t you hold it back with Aeromancy?” Yavi asked.
“No, but if I’m careful and focus all my strength into Pyromancy, maybe I can do enough damage make it withdraw unbroken.”
“But it’s made of rock, can’t you use Geomancy and—?”
“It has a will now that Uled has awakened it,” Dolvek said. “I tried, but it’s mixed with magic stronger than m
ine.”
Yavi concentrated her fire on the crystalline veins running through the monster, hoping to crack loose a leg or break an arm. With more arrows and more time, she imagined it would eventually work, but who knew how deep the mine was?
“Think you can make it past if we turn around?” Yavi asked. “This isn’t working.”
“Y-yes.”
A quick thump to the back of the head made Dolvek yelp in surprise.
“You don’t get to lie to me!” She thumped him two more times in quick succession. “We need to get past. If I wanted to leave you behind, I would have.”
“Don’t mines usually go down?” Dolvek slowed.
“Dwarves would know, but I don’t.” Yavi frowned at the creature’s accelerated approach. “Why are you stopping?”
“Not much mine left.” Dolvek hovered. “I was hoping to find a safe section to bull through, but we’re going to have to make it past Uled’s construct.”
“I thought you couldn’t,” Yavi said.
“If I overlay my armor with magic crystal and drop all my magic except for Aeromancy,” Dolvek said, “I think I can get past if you coax it even a little out of center.”
“Are you sure?” Yavi asked.
“We don’t have time to debate it.” The monster charged on, light from Dolvek’s bead of flame lending an eerie leer to its mercurial eyes. “Are you going left or right?”
Plates of crystal descended over Dolvek’s hybrid suit of demi-plate. In the dark, a warm, candlelike glow suffused it, casting light even when Dolvek dropped his Pyromantic illumination.
“Left!” Yavi shouted as she rushed the thing, firing a final volley of arrows at the seams in its legs. Slick under her feet, the thin layer of ice Dolvek had been laying down came close to killing her as she spun wildly against the wall of the cave into another patch of ice. Claws the size of a warsuit’s lower vambrace struck the wall above her shoulder, spraying her back with shards of red.
That got him out of position, Yavi thought with a smirk.
“Dolvek,” she called over her shoulder, “are you—?”
Light so bright it blinded her filled the mineshaft. Even the creature’s silhouette was lost in a brilliance that was like staring directly at one of the suns. Water and melting ice rained down from the ceiling. The floor turned to slush.
“Run, Yavi!” Dolvek bellowed. “The gas will be poison!”
“You were supposed to—” Eyes adjusting, Yavi saw that Dolvek had attempted to make it around the golem and failed. Crystal armor shattered, and breastplate bent by a blow from the golem’s other hand, the Eldrennai prince was pinned to the wall by the red-stone monster, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.
Blazing fire, Dolvek’s gauntlets shone red- then white-hot as he forced his hands toward the crystalline flaws in the death trap of a creature Uled had left behind.
“Please, make me some laughing salve, if you can,” Dolvek said through gritted teeth. “If I make it out of this, I’m going to need it.”
A roar filled the tunnel as prince fought construct. Crystalline plates of armor formed and shattered as the creature battered Dolvek, fumes hissing free of its stone body as Dolvek unleashed his inferno. Flaws in the golem turned red then orange, flecks of stone falling away.
Laughing salve, Yavi thought as she turned back toward the mine entrance and broke into a run. I have no idea how to make that, but maybe I can find some.
*
When nearing the more well-traveled paths, Kholburran became accustomed to other Vael steering his Root Guard and him in one direction or another, routing them around areas of thickest fighting or danger. Smoke marked places in the distance where bodies of the dead were burning in order to keep them dead, or where trees burned as the dead overtook the defenses of the living. He could not always tell which.
Not even sure which way the Twin Trees lay at this point, Kholburran eyed a column of smoke to the west. Faulina handed him a heavy cut of wild boar wrapped in wild lettuce and topped with mushrooms: one of his favorite trail meals. Though he nodded his appreciation, asked after the hunter, and thanked her directly as was expected and appropriate, he could not concentrate on the meal and savor it properly.
“So.” Gilly, one of the newest members of his Root Guard, and the one who’d provided the night’s dinner, sidled up next to him as he forced himself to chew the food he wasn’t tasting. “Arri said you aren’t like other princes and that this Root Taking isn’t likely to have the same sorts of . . . benefits others have, but . . . if you fancy a bit of fun while you’re still mobile . . .”
“You flatter me, Gilly, but I have eyes only for Malli.” Kholburran brushed away the hand she placed on his thigh, and tried not to let his anger show. “My apologies.”
Gilly stepped away, flustered but polite. Why was it so hard for girl-type persons to understand a boy-type person who only wanted one mate? Crossing to a more isolated branch with a better view of the dark funnel of smoke, he tried to place it.
Trees or corpses?
“That’s a group of the dead,” Arri glided toward him, dropping onto the end of his branch. It was broad enough for three, but she landed up branch from him, leaving him the trunk to retreat to, should he so desire it.
“Thanks.” He tried not to stare at the lambent amber whorls at her neck and on her right forearm, but it was hard not to see them and feel guilty.
“Mind if I join you?” Arri pulled her own meal out of her pack.
“Sure.”
Arri ate as if she tasted nothing, merely fueling herself in as efficient a manner as possible, remaining silent until she had picked the last scrap of oily lettuce from her fingers.
“I could stop them doing that,” Arri whispered, watching him. “What you and Malli have is something I don’t think I can fully understand, but I respect it now in a way I did not before.”
“Before what?” Kholburran set his half-eaten meal on the bark before him.
“Yours had mushrooms?” Arri smiled. “Gilly must be quite fond of you.”
“Everyone’s didn’t?”
“She didn’t find many, so, since it was her hunt, she got to decide what to do with them.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t feel bad, Kholburran.” Arri indicated a spot next to him. He nodded and she took a seat on the branch. “You’re the one Taking Root. She should have given them to you whether she hoped to curry favor and share your bed or not. On a mission like this, we are at your disposal, not the other way around.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” Kholburran said. “I think I have a jaded view of how all this is supposed to work.”
“Your interpretation is far closer than I might like to admit,” Arri said.
“How much longer to Fort Sunder?” Kholburran kept his gaze low, focused on her feet.
“We’ll pass through Silver Leaf tomorrow and reach Fort Sunder the day after, if all goes well.”
“Thanks, Arri.” Kholburran caught himself trying to decipher the expression on her face, but the inexpressiveness of her thicker winter bark stymied him, leaving all but the most exaggerated expressions frustratingly neutral.
“If . . .” she began, then stopped. “I’ll make sure to let Gilly and the others know how much you enjoyed the mushrooms. Maybe I can even get them to understand why you aren’t interested in some of the more intimate encounters they have in mind.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” Kholburran said, but Arri was already walking away.
*
The dragon stretched her wings, scales glittering like liquid rubies, as Tsan grunted with the effort of trying to fly. Smoke poured from her nostrils, her eyes shimmering with inner light, but no matter how hard she flapped, her massive bulk remained firmly ground bound.
I will not roar, she thought before unleashing a mighty roar.
“Problems?” One-headed Kilke’s disembodied head dangled at her throat like a pendant, secured with a braided harness she
’d had her soldiers construct from strips of her own shed skin. It may have been the precariousness of his situation that caused the deity to ask the question cheerfully, yet in a tone quiet enough that the Zaur and Sri’Zaur of her army were unlikely to hear.
Foolish deity, Tsan thought, you forget yourself.
No more than you fail to recall—
“Out!” Tsan shouted aloud and in her mind, casting the deity free of her thoughts.
“You’ll never fly that way,” Kilke tutted. “You are thinking like the Zaur you have ceased to be.”
She forced her way into his thoughts. Unguided, Tsan found instances of dragons flying, of two twins: one dark and one light, of Coal when he answered to another name, of other dragons being born and dying, but the secret of their flight eluded her. It was effortless to them, but also . . . She studied the wing length, noting that even newly hatched dragons with stubby little wings could fly. A nonsensical act from a purely physical approach, which meant . . .
Ah, I see. A fundamental lack of mystical experience. I have been altered by magical means, but never felt what it is like to actually use magic.
Stay out of my head, if I am not allowed in yours, Warleader, Kilke thought.
“I am no longer interested in an imprecise exchange of information, Kilke.” Tsan rolled her neck, feeling the strength of her new form. Finished. Muscles finally stable. Reliable. Fixed. Flying should be a simple exercise for an adult dragon.
Foolish for assuming it was a purely mechanical process. Lofting a foreclaw, feeling its heft, made it clear her bones were not hollow. Such weight could only be shifted with non-muscular aid. Assuming the assist would be purely chemical had been gross zoological prejudice. Even so, she felt it ought to work that way, and so she had tried. Finding her center of balance had been easy. Rapid though it had been, the metamorphosis from Sri’Zaur to dragon had felt gradual enough to allow Tsan to adjust, a previously undiscovered benefit of having gone through so many different breeds of Sri’Zaur . . . All the types of specialization, size, and weight shifting, membranes allowing her to fly, new toxins and strains of venom, the ways her paws hurt for a year after she could no longer glide.
