Rune Scale (Dragon Speaker Series Book 1)

by Devin Hanson

  Jules' pack was nearby, but ripped open at the seams and the contents scattered. If Trent hadn't bothered to check Andrew for a scale, he had certainly made sure that Jules didn't have one secreted in her pack somewhere.

  Andrew turned and went back into the dark depths of the dragon's lair. He didn't feel the slightest bit of fear as he did so. In fact, he hadn't felt as safe since he was a child sitting in his father's lap.

  Once he reached the boulder he was going to turn into the kossarigan, he waved to Ava to get her attention. "I found something which belongs to you," he called.

  Ava swung her head around and looked at him. "What is it, Kossirith?"

  Hands shaking slightly, he fumbled in his belt pouch and drew out the scale, holding it in the fold of leather.

  Ava's pupil expanded as Andrew held it up and she shifted closer. "You have a morikoss. No, a morikossar, an egg scale." She sniffed. "It is old. How did you come by such?"

  "It is yours." Andrew explained how he had come to find it after Ava had landed right next to him while hunting.

  "It is not stolen," Ava declared when he had finished, "therefore it is not mine."

  "All the same, I wish you to have it."

  Ava examined him, her pupil gradually narrowing back down to its normal expansion. "It is rare for one of the Koss to be indebted to a human, even a Kossirith. If you would ask a boon for your gift, I will grant it."

  "Help me save Jules Vierra," Andrew responded without thinking. "The man who stole your egg, the ranno kossar, he is holding my teacher against her will."

  Ava gave her rumbling laugh. "It is done." With an impossible gentleness, she plucked the scale from his hand with her lips. Andrew heard it crunch in her teeth and a wave of heat washed over Ava before subsiding. Andrew felt a twinge of loss. It wasn't the money that he regretted losing, but the opportunity to learn that the scale represented.

  "You are sad," Ava observed.

  Andrew's lips twitched in a small smile. "I am still learning," he explained. "The scale was my way of becoming a better Kossirith."

  "I do not understand."

  Andrew struggled to find a way to explain it. How could he explain alchemy to a dragon? Avandakossi was ancient, apparently, thousands of years old or more. She remembered a time when dragons and humans coexisted. Were allies, even. Who could possibly say what she thought of as normal? "I use the scale, the, um, the morikoss, to study the runes contained on it."

  Ava rumbled. "I know of what you humans call alchemy. I do not understand why you are sad."

  Andrew shrugged, uncertain of how to explain it. "Without the scale, I can't learn more."

  The dragon's nictitating membranes flicked. "You do not know what being Kossirith means," she stated.

  "No." How could he?

  "Much time has passed," Ava said, "and humans have short memories. You are Kossirith. Properly, you are Avandir, friend of Avandakossi. Kossirith aid in the creation of the kossarigan, guard the nest," Ava shifted, regarding Andrew with her other eye and her voice came through, deadly serious, "and provide scratches. In return, Avandakossi provides her Kossirith with the morikoss and assistance in his needs. It is only fair. Do you require one to create the kossarigan? Time passes and the kossar grow cold."

  Ava would just give him scales? He struggled to come to grips with the business arrangement he seemed to have entered himself into. Or was it more of a friendship? Something of both? "No," he said, relieved that his studies hadn't come to an abrupt end. "Though I would ask one of you when I am complete."

  "It is done."

  Andrew turned his attention to the boulder. He had one chance at this. Ideally, from what he understood of runes, there would be a Saying that would encompass the full extent of what he was trying to accomplish. Without a Saying, or even any idea of how to go about creating one, he would have to stick to the basic runes he knew. It should be simple, he thought. Really, only two runewords were needed. Igan for the heat, Tan to preserve the stone.

  If he carved the Igan first, the stone would melt. If he carved the Tan first, the Igan would take forever to carve. The solution, he realized, was something he had already practiced many times. He would carve the Igan, all except for that last tail, then carve the Tan. Extending the tail would be hard work, but feasible.

  He found a good spot on the boulder, a relatively flat space and one without any veins or variances in the grain of the rock. Carefully, he carved the Igan, leaving the tail for now. Working the stone was different than what he was used to, but not really that much more difficult. His stylus was sharp, the rock soft enough that he didn't need a mallet, but hard enough that it didn't flake or crack where he didn't want it to. He was sweating by the time he was done and turned his attention to the Tan.

  How precise should he make it? If it was too precise, carving the rest of the Igan would be very difficult. If he didn't make it precise enough, the rock would melt and lose its runework. If he was going to be doing this regularly, he would have to do some experiments and find the best arrangement. Different stone, too, might prove to be better and holding heat. He remembered a trip with his parents to Nas Shahr and an arrowhead made from some sort of black glass stone. There had been whole mountainsides covered with it. How would that stone hold the heat? For now, though, he figured he had better make the Tan as perfect as he was able.

  Andrew took his time, grinding out each part of the Tan carefully. He paused to sharpen his stylus and stretch the kinks out of his neck then went back to it.

  An hour after starting the Igan, he finished the Tan. His shirt was wet with sweat down his back and under his arms. His hands were cramped from holding tight to the stylus. It was time to extend the tail of the Igan and make the boulder hot enough to melt stone on contact.

  He placed his stylus at the start of the tail and leaned his weight into it. Nothing happened. He pushed harder and the stylus skidded on the surface of the stone. Dismayed, Andrew held the stylus up and saw he had bent it. There wasn't a single scratch by the Igan where he had tried to extend the tail. All was not lost, though. He dug back into his pack and drew out the piton hammer. It was designed for driving metal spikes into rock and had a suitably heavy head.

  Andrew placed the tip of the stylus where the tail would begin on the Igan and gave the head a tap. He frowned, tapped harder. Nothing happened. Andrew struck the head of the stylus harder and harder until he finally found the swing strength required for a tiny puff of rock dust to appear. He really had to beat on the stylus for it to cut into the stone at all.

  Slowly, Andrew extended the tail on the Igan, with the rock growing warmer under his hands as he worked. Twenty minutes into the carving, he struck the head of the stylus and the steel point snapped off with a shriek of distressed metal. Andrew stared dumbly at the stylus. Now what was he going to do? If only he had Jules' blade. Or a stylus carved with the same runes.

  Of course! Jules had a special stylus, one with an alchemically hardened tip. Kicking himself for an idiot, Andrew hurried back to the tunnel where Jules' pack was scattered about, praying that Trent hadn't taken the stylus with him. To his relief, he found Jules' stylus without too much difficulty. Being the noble that he was, it didn't surprise Andrew that Trent had left it behind.

  Andrew returned to carving his Igan and was delighted at how quickly Jules' stylus ate through the stone. Soon, though, Andrew found he had a new problem. The stone was growing hot. And more than just hot to the touch, his sweat sizzled when it dripped onto the stone, popping around like it would on a hot griddle. He couldn't touch the stone without burning himself, and it was becoming unbearable just to be near it.

  Finally, he had to give up. The stone was just too hot to work.

  "Ava," he called. "I have a problem."

  The dragon's head swung around from where it was resting. "The kossarigan is progressing," she observed.

  "Right. And that's part of the problem. It is getting too hot. I can't work it."

  "Do you not
shield yourself?" she asked.

  Andrew opened his mouth then shut it. No, he hadn't. He hadn't the first idea of how to start. "I haven't learned the shielding runes yet." He remembered Jules throwing up a shield of ice that deflected a bullet, and the shields of hardened air she had used in her fight with Trent. In retrospect, that probably would have been a good thing to learn.

  "Then I will shield you while you work," Ava said.

  A sudden idea came to Andrew. "Could you teach me the runes for it?" What better way to learn runes than from a dragon, after all?

  Ava rumbled her laughter. "What use do the Koss have for runes? No. Avandakossi does not know runes."

  Andrew felt his excitement pop like a burst bubble. Of course. Dragons were like the most lazy of nobles, they didn't even need to learn Tan to perform alchemy.

  The dragon began to hum, almost subsonic, a low drone that went on and on. The warmth from the nest and the more immediate heat from the boulder faded away.

  Andrew held his hand up to the boulder the same way one would when testing to see if a pan was hot, and felt nothing at all. It was amazing. He licked a finger and tapped the surface, and was rewarded with the pop of sudden steam. The boulder was still hot, but whatever radiant energy it was putting off was cut to nothing by Ava's shielding.

  Better not touch the surface then. He rolled up his sleeves, then on second thought, took his shirt off entirely. He didn't want to accidentally brush it and end up burning holes in his shirt. He took up Jules' stylus again, and with Ava's humming resounding deep in his chest, Andrew continued carefully carving out the Igan.

  The boulder grew hotter and hotter as he worked. The radiant heat was absent, but the handle of the stylus started getting uncomfortably hot as the heat traveled up the point into the hardwood handle. Faintly at first, the boulder started to glow. The sand it rested on started to melt and soften and the boulder shifted as it found new equilibrium.

  Still, Andrew chipped away at the Igan. He was nearing the maximum Igan tail length and the boulder was glowing brightly when Ava's tail swept around and gently pushed him back away from the boulder.

  The humming ceased, and Andrew jumped back as the blazing heat abruptly returned full force. Concentrating on the Igan, Andrew hadn't noticed that the boulder had melted its way through the sand and gravel, and was in fact gradually liquifying the hard stone around it.

  He had done it! The kossarigan was complete.

  Moving gently, Ava picked up the kossarigan in her claws, smoke rising in tendrils from where the points touched. She lifted it effortlessly and snugged it down in the center of the nest, with the four eggs spaced out around it. The already hot rock returned to a liquid state quickly until the eggs were surrounded by a pool that gave an occasional gassy belch.

  Ava sighed, blowing a wave of burnt cinnamon over Andrew, ruffling his hair. "It is a good kossarigan, Avandir. It has been thousands of years since the last Kossirith aided the Koss. Too long."

  Andrew moved back away from the nest and settled with his back against the side of the cave. After so long working on the kossarigan, all he wanted was a cold drink and something to eat.

  "Ava, I'm curious why you waited to talk to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, but I'm not sure I would have been so patient if I had been in your position."

  The dragon curled around the nest, for all the world like a brooding chicken minus the feathers. "It was a near thing," Ava agreed. "The ship that flies wounded me badly, and the fall broke many bones. I had to use nearly all my stored vitae to repair the damages. When I saw one of the kossar had been stolen, my fury nearly blinded me. But I am not so young that I do not remember the Kossirith of old. The ranno kossar fought with the alchemical arts, as did you and your teacher. It was possible that you were Kossirith. I took that chance."

  Andrew marveled at the self control the dragon must have had. "What would you have done, if I could not make the kossarigan?"

  "Your vitae would have been needed. I would have kept the kossar heated, though it would have been the end of me."

  "You would have died? Forgive me, but wouldn't it have been better to regain your vitae and try again later?"

  "You humans always are in a rush. Give up the kossar?" Ava snorted, blasting a wave of grit across Andrew's knees. "The Koss have young rarely. I have only laid one other clutch in my life, and I had the assistance of a Kossirith."

  Andrew's eyes widened. Twice in over two thousand years? So much for the guild's prediction of dragons going broody every fifty years. "Tiny gods. I think I understand then."

  "It is very difficult to collect enough vitae to keep a nest warm. The opportunity rarely coincides with the proximity of a suitable male. The Kosso, male dragons, are small-minded and violent. They are much larger than we females, the Kossi, and are rarely intelligent enough for even simple communication. I had to travel far to find one suitable. Be glad they are not common around here. The dwellings of man would not long exist."

  "I had an encounter with a dragon several years ago. It was almost twice the size of you. Could it have been one of the Kosso?"

  "It could only have been. I imagine your encounter did not end well."

  Andrew laughed bitterly. "You could say that." He briefly described the battle on the airships.

  "And yet you live. Even the Kosso do not kill Kossirith."

  "I… what? You mean the dragon didn't kill me on purpose?"

  "The Kosso are not over intelligent and are instinctive killers, but they recognize and respect the Kossirith. If you were not Kossirith, you would not have survived."

  Andrew remembered the vicious strength and casual power of the dragon, the Kosso, and knew it to be true.

  "There was a time when humans and Kossi were close. It was a great honor among the humans to be called Kossirith. The Kosso were kept away, hidden in the deep mountains. The dwellings of man spread far across the land in those days."

  "What happened? I've never heard of that in our histories."

  "The memories of man are short. I am not surprised. Man brought the destruction on himself. In their greed, they betrayed the Kossi. They thought themselves powerful. It was not long before the Kosso came looking for us and found only men in our place. Men found their power was not enough to contain the Kosso. The destruction was complete."

  Andrew swallowed. He couldn't even imagine what that had been like. "You survived… were you not betrayed?" As soon as he said it, he wanted to take it back. Who knew what Ava's reaction would be to the question.

  Ava did not appear to be upset, though Andrew would be the first to admit he didn't know anything about dragon body language. "I was not," she agreed. "My Kossirith gave everything to protect me and I escaped with my life."

  "I don't understand, why would men betray the Koss?"

  Ava was silent for a long time and Andrew started to wonder if he had inadvertently upset the dragon. When she spoke again, her tone was deadly serious. "That is a story for another time. You have completed the kossarigan and proven yourself to be Kossirith. You are Avandir. In a few hours, the sun will set and we will recover the stolen kossar."

  Andrew felt a flush of panic. He had promised to help Ava recover the stolen egg. And he fully intended to keep that promise. But Ava expected him to do it now? Today? Trent, and presumably the egg, was on the Storm Shadow and could be anywhere. He had at least a day's head start. Where could he have gone? It wasn't likely he had returned to Andronath. His money gave him a lot of power, but Jules had too many friends in the city.

  Jules! Jules was with him. And Andrew could find Jules using the scrying compass, the Locuscorpi Saying. All he needed was a hair.

  "Alright," he said, "I need to prepare, but I will be ready to go within the hour. We will recover your kossar."

  Chapter 20

  The Storm Shadow

  Andrew clung to Avandakossi's neck for dear life. Below him was a sea of clouds, with bumpy, columnar rainclouds protruding massively, soaring high abo
ve him. All was soaked in radiance from the twin moons, bright enough to read by.

  Ava weaved between the clouds effortlessly, her wings beating steadily. They were traveling at a breakneck pace, far faster than any airship and the wind in his face made it almost impossible to see if he turned his face forward.

  Clutched tight in his hand was the trueglass vial that had held the dragongas, and floating in water within was a piece of cork with an inscribed splinter of wood jammed through it. The end of the splinter pointed unerringly forward, correcting itself by minute degrees as Ava threaded between clouds.

  On his back, Andrew had his backpack, stuffed with all the tools he could scrounge up from Jules' pack and his own, along with a few rune-carved tricks. Around his neck he had a fresh scale from Avandakossi lashed to a cord and another one in his belt pouch. He felt like he was armed to the teeth, and in truth, he had more than enough vitae at his fingertips to level a town.

  Ava had been flying for hours now, and Andrew had fully lost track of time. Given the positions of the twin moons overhead, it was sometime in the very early hours of the morning, still a long way from dawn. Even wearing every scrap of clothing he had, the wind bit through to the bone and only the latent warmth of the dragon kept him from hypothermia.

  Andrew was exhausted. He hadn't had a chance to sleep since waking up after Trent knocked him unconscious. His head throbbed at the temples and every muscle in his body was sore from the grueling climb up to the dragon's cave.

  Despite the thrill of the flight and the gut-clenching drop below, Andrew felt himself growing weary. His eyes sagged shut for a moment before he started to full wakefulness, horror sweat breaking out and immediately evaporating, leaving him chilled. This was not the time or place to fall asleep. He didn't know what Ava would do if he fell off her neck, but he suspected the dragon wouldn't be able to catch him gently. The claws on the ends of her fingers were not designed to be benign.