Rune Scale (Dragon Speaker Series Book 1)

by Devin Hanson

  "How will they know when we've found the den?"

  "Hopefully they won't. They saw we had moved last night and are waiting for us to stop moving before coming back and checking on us again."

  "So what do we do? Lead them right to the den?"

  Jules shrugged. "I don't know of a better plan. We find the den, get the scales we can, then get out before the airship flies up and angers the dragon. For now, we just need to worry about finding the den. Once we do that we'll worry about the airship."

  "And to find the den, we need to trace back the dragon."

  "And to do that," Jules finished for him, "you need to stop being such a wimp. Break time is over. Hup!"

  The next mountain didn't have the same scree rubble blocking plant growth as the other mountain and it became quickly apparent that they weren't going to get a clear panoramic view until almost to the very top. Jules pushed them forward until they stumbled on a clearing centered around a large shelf of rock.

  "This is as good a place as we're going to find," Andrew suggested. "Why don't we wait here? We've got a clear view across the valley and all the way to the north and south."

  Jules responded by dropping her pack in the shade of a bent pine and sitting down with a sigh. Andrew joined her, habitually arranging his cloak.

  "I've been thinking," he said, "Milkin wanted me to learn how to use a flux. I get that the scale I have is a container for holding vitae. And vitae is used for alchemy. Alchemy uses spoken runewords. But that's as far as I've managed to figure it."

  "You want me to explain it now?"

  "Got something better to do? We could be sitting here all day."

  Jules sighed. "I suppose. Well, what do you want to know?"

  Andrew waved a hand, trying to encompass all of the mystery of alchemy. "I don't know... how do you go from saying 'Igan' to having dragongas burst into flames?"

  "Okay. I'll explain it. But don't expect to be able to do it immediately. If all it took was memorizing a few syllables, there wouldn't be a need for a whole Academy. Let's see. First, let's define alchemy."

  "A reasonable place to start," Andrew agreed.

  "Stop interrupting me." She glared at him until he raised his hands in supplication then continued. "Alchemy is the act of changing a substance from one thing to another. The physical universe around us has rules. If I drop a stone, it falls. With alchemy, I can tell the stone to ignore the pull of the earth, or be attracted to something else in the same way.

  "Since a stone doesn't naturally want to be weightless, the vitae used in the alchemy is consumed. The more you're changing about the nature of the thing, the faster the vitae is consumed."

  "We've been over this already," Andrew objected.

  "Shut it! I have to start from the beginning or I lose my place. Where was I?"

  "Sorry. Consuming vitae."

  "Right. Okay, change, vitae, um... okay. So the trick, then, is getting the vitae to listen. Anyone can hold a vial of dragongas and say the words, but it requires a mental component as well. You must hold an understanding of what the words mean and envision both the runes and the target of your will performing the action. With the Airweight Saying, I said the Saying and fixed in my mind what the Saying looks like and the stone weighing about as much as I do. When it's done correctly, the vitae is absorbed into the object and for a time becomes as a dragon is."

  Andrew waiting until he was sure Jules had finished talking then asked, "I understand that now, in theory I guess, and how dragongas would work. But what significance are the words? If I focused on the rune for Igan, but said 'flame' instead, it wouldn't work would it?"

  "No. The runes and their Sayings must be spoken correctly and clearly. A wrong word or a flubbed syllable renders the alchemy null."

  "Where do the names of the runes come from, then? I can't imagine someone saw the first Ig rune and just knew what to say."

  Jules shook her head. "Nobody knows. There are runes that alchemists have isolated and can use in runework, but because nobody knows how to pronounce them, they can't be used in alchemy. The discovery of what the runes are called happened so long ago there are no records of it."

  Andrew frowned, mulling that over for a minute. "Well, alright. So using dragongas to perform alchemy I think I understand, but my scale isn't liquid. How do I apply the stored vitae?"

  "It's even simpler. While you're touching the scale, or close to it, the vitae is used directly from the scale. You have to picture how long you want to effect to last. I've heard of people draining their flux in one use because they forgot to picture when the Airweight Saying would wear off. Best to practice with dragongas until you get the hang of it then use your scale."

  "So can I try it?"

  "Try what?"

  "Alchemy. Use the Airweight Saying on a pebble or something."

  Jules frowned, thinking about it, then shrugged. "Sure, why not. Though the Airweight is a bit tricky, and you don't know the Saying yet. Why don't you try something simple. Igan." She dug into her pack and produced the vial of dragongas. "Just make sure you flick the dragongas off your finger before you say the runeword. And picture the flying dragongas bursting into flame, not the stuff still on your finger."

  "Can't I put a drop on the rock and do it there?"

  "Nope. Got to be in contact, or close proximity."

  Andrew accepted the vial a bit nervously. Jules' hand was still wrapped and though she was moving it easily now, he didn't want to have his hand burned the day before they might have to climb a mountain to hunt down a dragon's lair.

  "First cover the top with a finger. Which do you flick with?"

  Andrew made the gesture to test it out. "Middle finger."

  "Okay. Good, now tip the vial over. You want just a drop."

  Andrew did and felt the greasy substance cover the ball of his finger.

  "Good, now flip it back over. Picture the flying drop of dragongas bursting into flame and going out before it hits the ground, along with the rune. Got to picture the end too, don't forget."

  Andrew tried, flicked his finger. "Igan!" The drop of dragongas flew out and spattered on the rock. Nothing else happened.

  Jules heaved a sigh. "And here I thought you would do it perfectly the first time. I guess you are actually human after all. No big loss though. Try again. One step at a time. Get the drop... good. Now, picture the drop bursting into flame as it leaves your fingertip. You have to know the runeword, so fix that in your mind as well."

  Andrew squeezed his eyes shut, picturing Igan. He ran over the curves and angles, the subtle variations in depth. Something clicked. He knew Igan. Knew it intimately. The problem was his Igan was huge, not the weak sputtering flame that Jules made and he had tried to imitate. He had to use his understanding, use the complete rune. That was what needed to happen. It would happen. He opened his eyes and flicked his finger. "Igan!"

  A great gout of fire roared out from his hand, accompanied by a blast of heat. Jules yelped and fell over backwards. Andrew was not surprised. He expected the flames to do just that and they had complied perfectly. The fire died out almost instantly, the meager drop of vitae only enough to sustain the fire for a fraction of a second.

  Across the outcrop of rock, a bush flickered with flame before going out in a coil of smoke.

  "I figured it out," Andrew announced then frowned. "Though I didn't remember to include the ending."

  Jules took a deep breath. "Didn't take you long," she finally said. "Try it again, but control it this time. Remember, in alchemy, just as in runing, you have to know what will happen before you do it. Dying in a forest fire is not how I want to go."

  "Right. Sorry."

  "It's okay. Let's go through the steps again. Get the drop, good, now picture the flame in all its stages. Beginning, middle and end. Try and limit how far the flame goes."

  Andrew nodded, concentrated, flicked. "Igan!"

  The flames erupted again, but instead of the gouting fire, it was a controlled ball that laun
ched from his hand, went forward to the end of the rock and went out.

  "That was surprisingly easy," Andrew said cheerfully. "It's interesting how the rune changes subtly to do different things. I just seemed to know how to shape the rune and the fire did exactly what I wanted."

  Jules had nothing to say, just stared at him mute.

  "I'm going to try with the scale now," Andrew continued, oblivious to Jules. He corked the vial and handed it back then stuck his hand into his belt pouch and wrapped his fingers around the scale inside. It was hot through the Tan-protected leather. He didn't want to waste the vitae. He concentrated for a second, pictured exactly what he wanted and how long it would last.

  "Igan." It was soft, almost a whisper. The rune in his mind flexed subtly, a change in a whorl here, a slight difference in angle there. A flame no larger than a candle flame appeared in the air in front of him, burned for a few seconds then went out.

  Jules heaved a sigh behind him and he turned to face her. "Is there any limit?"

  "No. Only in the vitae you expend." She smiled awkwardly. "Have to say, I'm glad you didn't see how big it could go."

  "I don't want to waste my scale," he explained.

  Jules choked a laugh. "That little flame you just made. The expenditure was... insignificant. Even for dragongas. Like a speck. Less. The scale holds, gods, I don't know, a lake's worth of dragongas. A huge amount. You could set the whole mountain on fire and it wouldn't use more than a percentage of the vitae stored within."

  "That's a lot," Andrew said doubtfully.

  "There's enough vitae in that scale to last you throughout a whole course of study at the Academy and still have enough left over to carry out business for years afterwards."

  "That's why it's so valuable?"

  Jules laughed at the understatement. "If that airship up there knew you had the scale, they wouldn't wait for us to lead them to the dragon. They'd murder us both right now to get their hands on it."

  "Even you?"

  "In a heartbeat."

  "You're saying it like they're pirates."

  Jules rolled her eyes. "The Storm Shadow is a privateer, Andrew. It is a pirate ship, just a legally operated one. Besides. All men are pirates," Jules said severely, "women too. With enough chance of gain, anyone will turn pirate. Never forget that."

  "But not Professor Milkin. And not you."

  Jules made a face. "Milkin is too old to care about such things. And, well, I had that kind of wealth. I know what it means. It's a burden enough when it's honest. I couldn't live with myself if I had gained it dishonestly."

  Their conversation drifted after that, turning to idle talk about nothing in particular, then dwindling out into a companionable silence. They ate. Jules took a nap cautioning Andrew repeatedly to stay awake then took a turn watching while Andrew curled up in his cloak and slept for an hour.

  He woke to Jules nudging him gently with her boot. He started to turn his head and Jules hissed at him. Andrew froze then very slowly turned his head until he could see the sky. The brooding dragon was flying slowly around the mountain peak they were on, drifting on thermals and occasionally spiraling upward rather than beating her wings.

  As they watched, the dragon swooped down the mountainside, not a hundred yards to the left of their ledge, and shot across the valley. Andrew was close enough to clearly see the claws, longer than his arm, curled on the ends of fingers the size of his body. Her wingspan was enormous, at least forty yards across. Her scales were dark red, almost black, with the red glow of heat making the air wave in her passage. Her mouth was slightly open, baring teeth gleaming white in the sun, out of a head fifteen feet long from nose to the top of her horned skull. From their vantage, they could clearly see the dragon strike down at something hidden in the bracken then fly upward with a limp deer pinned in her claws.

  Carrying the deer seemed to put stress on the dragon's flying and she had to beat her wings repeatedly to gain altitude as she swept back up the valley heading straight for the mountain to the north of where Andrew and Jules hid.

  Moving painstakingly slow, Andrew turned his head, trying to follow the dragon all the way, but lost her in the trees.

  Jules was cursing. "So close! That has got to be her den. Somewhere on that mountain."

  "It would certainly seem so, though that mountain is huge. It would take us days to search just the southern slope."

  Jules swore again. "We'll have to watch one more day then. Somewhere we can clearly see the mountain. Look at the bright side," she added when Andrew groaned, "at least there's still a few hours of daylight left. We should be able to get into a good position before the sun sets. No scrambling around in the dark again."

  Andrew heaved his pack onto his back with a sigh. "Let's get on with it then."

  Chapter 17

  Final Approach

  Gravity worked in their favor this time as they pushed through the bracken and they made good time down the mountain. After a pause to fill their water skins from crystal clear stream running down the center of the valley Jules drove them onward to the west and a bit north.

  "There's a spot up on this mountain," Jules explained between breaths as they started climbing once again, "I saw it from the ledge while you slept. It'll give us a good vantage for tomorrow."

  "A spot." Andrew groaned. "Can you be a little more specific?"

  "It's just up this slope. Maybe another hour."

  Andrew really wanted to sit down and rest again, but with Jules' spot such a short distance away, he made himself continue climbing and even sped up a little.

  After another hour of climbing the trees were still at thick as they were before. Occasionally they had a view of the mountain across the valley where they thought the den might be, but it was only a partial view; there was too much of the slope that was obscured. And, as Jules repeatedly pointed out, they had one or two days left, maximum.

  "She was totally gravid," Jules said excitedly as they climbed. "You could see the shapes of the eggs in her! I'm surprised she hasn't laid yet."

  "Lucky for us," Andrew said shortly. He was out of breath from the climb and Jules' ledge was nowhere in evidence. "You sure this ledge is near here?"

  "I saw it from the other mountain," she said, a little doubtfully.

  Andrew sighed and looked around a little more carefully. Clearly, Jules was useless when it came to navigation. The slope they were on was sparsely covered with pines growing fairly close to each other, maybe a dozen feet on average between the trees. The ground was slick with fallen pine needles and a heady scent followed their footsteps. Other groundcover was limited to the occasional outburst of manzanita. The contour of the slope blocked the view horizontally.

  "This way," he said, and struck out sideways, moving to the north.

  "You know where it is?" Jules asked hopefully.

  Andrew didn't bother answering until they crested the top of a ridge running down the side of the mountain. The view opened up dramatically now they were out of the cleft between ridges, but the pine trees still blocked the view. However, from the new vantage point, Andrew found a large sprawl of manzanita that had blocked pine tree growth over the years.

  "Down there. We'll sleep in that bush for the night."

  "In a bush?" Jules was horrified. "I don't want to sleep in a bush!"

  Andrew rolled his eyes. "Look around. Got a better idea? Besides, we'll be able to see the dragon from there. You'll see."

  Jules followed, albeit unwillingly, and they reached the patch of manzanita as the sun was starting to slip behind the mountain. Andrew pushed through the outer branches, holding them aside so Jules could follow and she gave a gasp of surprise when she ducked down to see.

  The manzanita bush, looking so dense from the outside, was really a big shell with thick red branches snaking around inside then branching out to support the heavy leaf cover. Between the branches, there was more than enough room to walk around in a crouch. The ground was covered with a soft mulch different f
rom the spiky pine needles elsewhere.

  "It's not a ledge, but it's probably better to be under cover like this," Andrew said. "And if we lash down a few branches, we should have perfect line of sight to the mountain across the valley, while still being under cover.

  Jules clapped her hands. "It's perfect. And I bet we could even have a bit of a fire before the sun sets all the way. Get a nice hot meal?"

  That sounded like a good idea to Andrew and he set about making their early supper using the last of the provisions in Jules' pack and finally breaking into the stores in his own. The knowledge that they would finally be eating his pack lighter finished putting him into a good mood and he hummed as he carved a few carefully imprecise Igan runes into a few pieces of dry manzanita.

  "We should speak about tomorrow," Jules said behind him.

  Remembering that they were out here to raid a dragon's lair crushed Andrew's cheer. "Oh. Right. What's the plan?"

  Jules pointed out across the valley at the southern slope. To say it was precipitous would be understating it. Crags jumped out at sheer angles and there were places where the face seemed to be almost vertical. "The dragon's den is probably around the top of that face," she said. Her voice had fallen into the matter-of-fact cadence that told Andrew she was quoting or paraphrasing a book somewhere. "They like to nest in natural caves, enlarging them with their claws. I suspect whatever natural force that created that cliff face also caused a crack to form. The dragon likely hollowed that crack out."

  "Okay, so we have to climb the cliff?"

  "It's always possible that I'm wrong," Jules shrugged and rolled her eyes.

  "For the sake of argument," Andrew suggested, "let's say you're right. We climb the cliff. Then what?"

  "Then we sneak in and hope the dragon isn't home."

  "Whoa. Slow down there. That's your plan? Sneak in and hope she's not home?"

  Jules shrugged again. "Well, yeah. Got a better idea?"

  "You realize that if the dragon comes back while we're inside her cave, we're dead? Like, completely and utterly screwed."