by Chris Fox
“I have fire magic,” Nara offered. “I can take care of light.”
“Yeah, that’s a really bad idea,” Wes said. He wrapped a headlamp with an elastic band over his forehead. “Listen, I don’t want to make any assumptions about what you do or don’t know, so how about we do like a quick two-minute strategy session? If you find that I’m, uh, techsplaining, just glare and I’ll stop.”
Wes watched her carefully for a moment. Nara raised an expectant eyebrow.
“Yes, well, we’re heading down into the warrens,” he began. “The warrens are massive. They cover the entire continent. Basically, we’re looking at layers of strata. Each strata connects to a different epoch in the age of dragons. This planet has been inhabited continuously for at least a hundred thousand years, and during that time, countless wars have been fought.”
“The warrens?” Nara prompted when he started to wander off topic. “Not that I don’t want to know more about the history of Virkon, but first I want to understand where we’re going.”
“Ah, right. Well, Virkonna is down there at the center of the warrens. I mean, I know you know that, since it’s her magical signature we’re trying to circumvent.” Wes stopped in front of a cluster of boulders. There was a shadowed gap between two of them. From a few meters back, it didn’t look like anything, but as Wes approached, Nara realized it led inside a cave. “Anyway, a Catalyst as powerful as Virkonna draws primals. Do you know what a primal is?”
“Conceptually.” She ducked into the cave, blinking as her eyes attempted to adjust. “I know they’re drawn to Catalysts, and the magical energies of a god begin shaping them into a race that god would have found pleasing. I’m guessing all the drakes here come from primals, and they’re an early stage of what will eventually become dragons.”
Wes took a moment to adjust the strap to his headlamp so it fit snuggly. He immediately turned toward her, shining the light in her eyes.
“Ow.” She held up a hand to block the light.
“That’s all correct. I still don’t know where primals come from originally. Someone probably does, but no one on Ternus.” Wes turned the light away from her and began picking his way deeper into the cavern. “I’ve only seen one other Catalyst, but I’ve studied quite a few. You’re right about the drakes. If this world were empty, and primals found it, eventually the drakes they became would breed true, and become real dragons.”
“The magical cycle of life,” Nara said. She ducked under a low, rock ceiling, and when she stood again they’d entered a much more recognizable trail. The tunnel was perhaps a dozen meters wide, and relatively clear of debris. It was in better repair than she’d have expected, and smelled more of wet rock than the raw sewage her mind had conjured.
“And you’re familiar with the unstable?” Wes asked. He fell into a fast walk, his light bobbing as he headed up the tunnel.
“The what?” Nara asked as she fell into step behind him.
“The unstable.” Wes glanced back at her, but this time Nara was ready. She got a hand up in time to stop him from blinding her. The light turned away again and she removed her hand. “They’re primals that absorb too much energy. A common phenomenon as we get closer to Virkonna. The unstable mutate in unpredictable ways. I saw a drake with three heads, one of which was on its tail.” He shuddered.
“That sounds lovely. Let’s do what we can to skirt anything like that,” Nara suggested. “We don’t want to get close to Virkonna, just close enough to pass here so we can get below, remember?”
“I know these tunnels fairly well, but not where we’re going.” The tunnel sloped downward gradually, but in a very straight line. “It’s possible we can skirt Virkonna, I just want to make sure you know the kind of dangers we’ll be facing.”
“Trust me.” Nara smiled. “We can deal with anything we run into. I’m very sneaky when I need to be.”
“Ooh, sneaky I like. It’s the direct confrontation thing I prefer to avoid,” Wes said, rather sheepishly.
“Ismene said you’re a deadly killer,” Nara pointed out skeptically.
“Oh, I am. Super deadly.” Wes adopted what she assumed was meant to be a dangerous expression. Even Bord could have managed better.
She sincerely hoped they didn’t run into any real threats, because if they did, she was going to be pretty much on her own.
34
Kem'Hedj
Voria had spent the last few days expecting a Krox attack. She’d laid a fresh set of wards to her quarters, and had been vigilant in her scrying. But, nothing had come. The Krox, if they’d recognized Ikadra, hadn’t reacted at all.
She knew better than to assume that meant anything. If this pair of hatchlings were intelligent, they could merely be biding their time and waiting for the right opportunity to strike. She’d do well to remember that.
Voria had a better idea of what to expect when she returned to the gathering of Wyrms. There were more in attendance this time, all in their curiously hairless attempt at human forms. As before, refreshments floated on little trays, bobbing up to groups of twos and threes that stood chatting and laughing throughout the cavernous room.
She scanned the crowd carefully, but there was no sign of the Krox hatchlings. That should have relieved her, but instead it filled her with dread. If they weren’t here, there was no doubt some other mischief they were up to.
There’d still been no word of Aran’s final fate, and that terrified her. What if they’d gone to finish him off? Not that finishing him off would be easy, but even Aran could only deal with so many enemies arrayed against him. He was strongest when backed by his team.
Then there was the matter of Nara. Voria approved of the girl’s initiative, but not her choice of companions. The Ternus Royal Academy had a terrible reputation among scholars, not just on Shaya, but on every world that took pride in the accumulation of knowledge.
Their so-called archeologists had almost no real requirements to join, not even the ability to cast spells. Anyone could pick up a drill and claim they belonged to the order, so long as they paid their annual fee, and they were known more for tomb robbing than anything approaching archeology. That didn’t exactly fill Voria with confidence. It was possible Nara had chanced upon one of the competent ones, but she doubted it.
A familiar, and rather irritating, Wyrm threaded through the crowd in her direction. Aetherius gave her an imperious once over, and sniffed in apparent disdain. Finally, he inclined his bald head a fraction of a degree. “I see the Shayan has returned. Have you come to take your mind off the death of your friend?”
Voria’s heart leapt into her mouth. “What do you know?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard.” Aetherius raised a hand to his mouth in mock surprise. He gave her a cruel, too-wide grin. “Why don’t you come play a game of Kem’Hedj with me, and we can discuss it? I’m told you’re an accomplished commander. We require our commanders to master it, as we believe it can approximate their skill in battle.”
“All right,” Voria allowed. She followed Aetherius toward a floating game board, one of many dotting the room. A pair of men had been moving in its direction to play, but one look at Aetherius and they headed for another.
The olive-skinned Wyrm stopped before the table. He tapped his forearm with a long-nailed finger, and a single scale floated up into the air. He waved and it landed on a square near the center. A single move didn’t tell her much, beyond that he favored an offensive strategy. Instead of attempting to control a corner he was claiming position near the center, and it would allow him to better encircle her own pieces if she encroached.
“Forgive me, but I don’t have scales,” Voria pointed out. “Our version of this game uses stones.”
“Ah, how rude of me,” Aetherius replied. He was all mock embarrassment, the kind that would have felt trite on a secondary school playground. Aetherius rose to his full height and waved across the crowd. “Olyssa, would you join us?”
Olyssa threaded her way over, and stopped n
ext to Voria. She glanced askance at Aetherius. “You’re going to play a Shayan at Kem’Hedj?”
“Why not? She is our equal, or as close as tree children can get,” he pointed out smugly. “But I was hoping you might aid her, as you are her host for this event. She has no scales with which to play.”
“And if you best her you get to claim some of my scales, is that it?” Olyssa gave a snort that would have broken a human’s neck. “Very well. I suppose that is a small price to pay to see what sort of skill a Shayan commander possesses. I will admit I am…not optimistic, Major.”
“That’s fair. He has several centuries more experience.” Voria shrugged, though that nonchalance only masked her growing fury. She wanted to know what this bastard knew about Aran, and after she had that information, she wanted nothing more than to publicly humiliate him for the way he had treated her, and her crew.
Olyssa placed a hand over her arm, and there was a bright flash of brilliant blue light. She extended the hand to Voria, and a dozen glittering scales sat in her palm. “When these run out, I will provide more.”
Voria sketched an air sigil, and used a bit of wind to carry her first scale onto the game board. She set it in opposition, a few spaces away. The instant it clicked into place, a vision overtook her. Possibilities spun out in all directions, each showing where a piece would land, and what possible responses could be.
There was a moment of vertigo, then she was leaning against the base of a nearby perch. All eyes were on Aetherius, who still deliberated over the board. He extended another finger, and a scale levitated to the board. It settled adjacent to her own, the first attempt to box her piece in.
Voria waved another piece over, placing it behind his. They exchanged turns for a while, each attempting to capture the other’s pieces. Voria lost one early, but made up for it two turns later when she captured three of Aetherius’s.
She played feverishly, driven forward by the vision. Voria placed pieces almost instantly each turn, a stark contrast to Aetherius and his more deliberate plays. He set down another scale and looked up at her sadly. “I believe we are nearing the end, Shayan. I admire your boldness, and the speed with which you make decisions. But those decisions are hastily made, and were they made on the battlefield would mean the end of your troops.”
He placed another piece, boxing her forces in. Her own blue scales were surrounded by a sea of white. But Voria had anticipated that, had seen this possibility a hundred turns back. She placed one more piece, and schooled her features to a passive mask as she waited for Aetherius to realize what she’d done.
“Impressive,” Olyssa murmured beside her. “You’ve set up two eyes. He cannot take both, and so long as one is open you have a route to escape. Well done. I thought you’d lost that entire quadrant, but now it looks as if you possess a near equal part of that territory.”
Olyssa referred to two gaps in Voria’s territory, arrayed in just such a way that Aetherius couldn’t entrap them. Placing a piece in one would allow her to use the other to capture it, thus making the move illegal. She’d lost a little ground, but only a little.
Prior to meeting Neith, Voria had been an indifferent Go player at best. She didn’t have the patience for the complex strategies, and unlike many of her classmates never engaged in any of the play-by-missive leagues they had established.
Aetherius, unsurprisingly, continued his offense. He pressed her in another quadrant in a desperate attempt to surround her. This, too, she had anticipated many, many turns ago. Voria dropped pieces as fast as he, the pattern growing until much of that quadrant was filled.
Then Voria dropped a scale in a third quadrant. It threatened his position there. If she dropped one more piece he’d lose four, and she’d command a full third of that quadrant. He had no choice but to respond.
Their battle moved to that third quadrant, white battling blue as their pattern of pieces spread. It eventually touched the second quadrant, just as Voria had known it would. Her forces from the second joined the third, and she encircled a dozen of Aetherius’s pieces. They disappeared from the board, and appeared in a stack next to her—a stack worth more than all the pay she’d ever received from the Confederacy.
Voria smiled down at the board. If she continued like this, she could take it all. And now, Aetherius knew it. “So you were going to tell me about my friend, Aran. You implied he was dead.”
She hoped the opportunity to jab her with the revelation would prove irresistible, since he was losing. She wasn’t disappointed.
“Ah, an amusing story, that.” He peered down at the board with a deep frown as he sought a way to extricate himself from Voria’s trap. “Apparently, your champion fought his way all the way to the temple. An impressive feat, for an Outrider. But then, we don’t expect too much from them. Olyssa sees hers as tools. I see mine as pets. One does not expect a dog or a cat to pilot a starship. And they shouldn’t be surprised when the pet defecates on their floor.”
“Indeed.” Voria hoped the ambiguous answer would keep him talking. Wyrms didn’t seem much different from people, and enjoyed the sound of their own voices just as much. Perhaps more.
“Your pet, if you’ll allow the indulgence, made it all the way to the temple. Thanks to the treacherous armor he smuggled onto the march, he even managed to kill all the forces arrayed against him.” Aetherius sounded genuinely impressed. “You have no idea how rare that is. Almost all such marches end in death, usually well before the Outrider reaches the top of the Temple. Yet, after your friend found victory, my grandmother struck him down. She cast a bolt from the heavens, and incinerated his body. Nothing but a greasy stain of ash remains.”
Voria raised a trembling hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. She accounted herself a good judge of character, and Aetherius had taken a little too much pleasure in the delivery to have been lying. He was recounting a memory, no doubt shown him through divination. She could perform the same spell, and verify the truth of it.
“It is your move,” Aetherius pointed out. He didn’t seem pleased about it, and she couldn’t blame him. Three more turns and he lost another seven pieces. It would only get worse from there.
“Pass,” she said.
Shocked murmurs rippled through the crowd of Wyrms that had gathered around her table. If Aetherius also passed, then the game would be over. Their respective territory on the board would be totaled, as would the number of captured pieces. If the game ended now, that total would put her ahead, by the slimmest of margins.
“Why are you doing this?” He leaned forward over the board, his slitted eyes locked on her as if trying to puzzle something out.
“Because you’ve badly misunderstood something, Aetherius.” Voria rose and smoothed her jacket. “You and your people wonder if you’re better than a Shayan at a game you’d played for millennia. You were certain you’d win, certain you’d embarrass me. But what you didn’t know?” Now it was her turn to lean over the game board. She speared him with her gaze. “I don’t care about games. I save my interest for war. You want to see what I’m capable of? That’s the only place you’ll ever see it.”
Aetherius eyed her thoughtfully. “Pass,” he finally said.
35
That's a Big Snake
Nara dearly missed the sun. Being trapped underground took her back to the Umbral Depths, back to the world in the darkness. Only this was somehow worse. In the Umbral Depths there was darkness, but there was also vast emptiness.
Here the stone pressed all around her. Some tunnels were barely wide enough to squeeze through, and twice she’d had to use a teleport spell to get past an area where her armor wouldn’t fit.
Sound echoed oddly here, often magnified in strange ways. It made sleeping difficult, and she’d taken to wearing her helmet as she slept. It blocked the sound and made her feel at least a little safer.
Thankfully they hadn’t seen any of the unstable Wes had mentioned. It was a phenomenon she’d never heard of, one of many things Wes had
been happy to talk about as they journeyed. He was proving to be a wealth of information, and knew a surprising amount about both history and magical theory.
Nara had been hesitant after Voria’s skepticism, but Wes was proving far more capable, academically at least, than she’d hoped.
“Do you want some coffee?” Wes whispered loudly. He snapped a packet and dropped it into his cup. It began to bubble and hiss, and the water darkened into a bitter-smelling brew.
“More than anything.” She removed her helmet and set it on a rock next to her. “How close to Virkonna are we? I have no sense of scale down here.” Nara removed an MRE from her void pocket and snapped it open.
She waited for the meal, something called lasagna, to heat. She had no idea what it was made with, but it was passable enough. Aran loved these things. She preferred cake, or any of the other Shayan delicacies she could summon on the Talon.
“We’ll pass below her today. We’re entering a tunnel called the spiral, because it…well, it spirals.” Wes sketched a descending corkscrew pattern in the air. “We’ll pass the first bend inside of an hour. That’s where things will start to get dangerous, I think. We’re close enough to Virkonna to see some pretty scary stuff. If we do, I’ll warn you with a manly yell.”
“A manly yell?” Nara blinked.
He smiled cheerfully. “Fair point. It may not be manly. But it will be a yell.” He offered her a sealed cup of caf, which she gratefully accepted. Caf was one of the very best things Ternus had introduced to the rest of the Confederacy.
Wes started up the tunnel, the light from his headlamp bobbing as he began to hum to himself. He did that often as he walked, and Nara often found it amusing. Today, less so.
