by J. S. Morin
“Why not the bed?” Madlin asked. “I might not go home every night. With a praise-to-Eziel bed here, I can get a proper night’s sleep without retreating to my own world.”
K’k’rt nodded slowly, still looking into the bedroom. “Good … good thinking.”
“What brought you here?” Madlin asked. “You the one they nominated to find out why I threw my furniture by the roadside?”
K’k’rt turned toward Madlin and blinked. Then he smiled at her and gave his familiar chuckle. “Not quite. I came by to see if you had come back at all. Fr’n’ta’gur wasn’t sure whether you would.”
Madlin snorted. “You’re not going to buy me off with a few crates of my own guns. You’re stuck with me until I’ve got what’s mine.”
“You know … you and Fr’n’ta’gur have a lot in common in that respect.”
“Comparing me to your god?” Madlin asked, raising an eyebrow. “Isn’t that sacrilege?”
K’k’rt chuckled. “Even the dragons know they aren’t gods. They just get most of us to pretend, and spend their days surrounded by the most gullible of goblins.”
“The priests?”
K’k’rt nodded. “It keeps the hopeless ones out of the workshops and military, so it works out for everyone. So … back to work?”
Madlin nodded and stood, gathering her tool belt and goggles. “Back to work.”
That evening, Madlin found herself back in Fr’n’ta’gur’s lair. This time, the dragon loomed over a stack of fourteen crates, an improvement over the previous day’s delivery. Madlin’s hopes rose. He’s going to follow through. This is going to work out. Yesterday’s cries of deceit and treachery seemed like so much fear mongering. Her father had been hammering his own delusions into everyone else’s heads for so long that they were beginning to see conspiracies behind every door. The Human Rebellion’s bargain with Fr’n’ta’gur made too much sense for both sides for either to risk the arrangement by betrayal. One day that might change, and Rynn would be ready to extract Madlin at a moment’s notice—Rynn was at the controls of the Jennai’s primary world-ripper at that very second—but for now, things would continue as they had been.
“Your gift for today,” Fr’n’ta’gur grumbled. Madlin flinched anew each time she felt the dragon’s voice pound through her. It was a sensation she could never acclimate to.
“I take it there are eighty-four guns in total?” Madlin asked.
“Indeed,” Fr’n’ta’gur replied. “Summon your minions and carry them away.”
Madlin nodded and walked to the stack of crated coil guns. Any second …
The world-hole opened, and the workers spilled through in an instant. The dragon watched, but did not try to peek around to see through into Korr this time. Instead, he muttered something in a foreign tongue, neither Korrish nor goblin speech. Madlin felt a tingle all over her body and knew that the dragon had worked magic on her.
In a sudden panic, Madlin fled through the world-hole. Or at least, she tried. The hole became a solid pane of glass to her, too thick even for her body weight to shatter as she slammed against it. Spots swam before her eyes as Madlin staggered back. She reached up to check a wet sensation on her lips and found blood running from a broken nose.
“This time, she stays,” said Fr’n’ta’gur, twisting around to look into the Jennai’s hold.
Madlin pinched her nose shut to staunch the flow of blood, and watched the chaos through the world-hole. The crewmen had scattered as armed soldiers rushed in, coil guns at the ready. Rynn stood at the controls, one hand on the switch that would shut the world-hole, the other on the dial that would move the viewframe laterally in relations to the dragon’s position.
“By all means, attack me!” Fr’n’ta’gur proclaimed. “But your Madlin Errol will die if you do. She is mine now, and she may not pass your gate. You will continue receiving your weapons as stated in our deal, but any other disturbance from this device of yours, and she will suffer. My worshipers will find ways where she will beg them to stop, but leave her still able to work at her inventions.” The world-hole closed an instant later.
“Why?” Madlin asked, her voice nasal, her head swimming.
“Because you are going to make me far more than just the weapons you have shown me,” Fr’n’ta’gur said. “You are going to create everything I tell you to.” He finished by calling out in the goblin tongue, words that, for all her time in Veydrus, Madlin had yet to glean even the simplest meanings from.
A squad of goblins emerged from the hallway. Madlin tried to focus on them, but she could barely stand. She heard chains though. It was a sound she could never forget. The goblins surrounded her, crowding too close for her comfort. They pulled at her arms, sending shooting pains into her nose as she tried to hold it steady and shut. She tried to shake them off, but weaklings that they were, they outnumbered her. After a brief scuffle, they slipped something over her head, and she felt another tingle in the aether of magic working upon her, and then the far more concrete sensation of cold metal around her neck.
With blood dripping down her face, Madlin clutched at the collar, finding two eyelets with chains leading into goblin hands, but neither hinge nor clasp. It was Deliah all over again. She had been captured, collared. She pulled on one of the chains with both hands, yanking one of her goblin captors from his feet, but then a jolt of spark shook her body and she collapsed to the stone floor. Three more jolts followed, each sending a spasm through her every muscle. Fr’n’ta’gur spoke a brief command to the goblins, and the jolts stopped.
“They will take you to the healer, then to your new quarters,” said Fr’n’ta’gur. “In time, you will learn that you have received a great honor. I do not trifle with forces like your allies lightly. You are very valuable.”
The goblins holding the chains tugged Madlin to her feet. Thankfully, they did not object when she resumed quelling the flow of blood from her nose. Still reeling and unable to focus her thoughts, she allowed herself to be led from the dragon’s lair and up into the passages to the surface.
The journey to the goblin healer was not a long one. Perhaps two blocks filled with gawking eyes were all it took to bring her to a tidy, whitewashed building that smelled of antiseptics. At least they seem to have some concept of medicine. She had not run into any goblin medical personnel in the valley during her stay, so she could only guess that they were more primitive than Tellurak’s physicians. Once her handlers ushered her inside, she was only mildly relieved.
The hospital room was centered on a knee-high table with a polished shine that told her that the wood was well-sealed. Shelves along one wall were filled with glass jars bearing illegible labels. Cabinets dominated another wall, and a third bore hooks holding tools of every description. Many of them had familiar appearances, similar in form to ones that Jamile had described from her medical training. Others, Madlin’s imagination could only make macabre guesses as to their function. She could only hope that a simple broken nose wouldn’t require any of them.
One of the goblins spoke up and conversed with the flummoxed physician, who was clearly unprepared to receive a human patient. Madlin was guided to a seat on the floor while the physician climbed onto the table to examine her. She allowed her hands to be pried free of her face, restarting the flow of blood. The physician chittered orders to an assistant, and in moments Madlin’s face had been daubed clean with alcohol. Rolled bits of liniment-soaked cloth were stuffed up her nostrils, stemming the flow of blood. A pair of thin, metal bars flared to life with aether in the physician’s hands. Madlin flinched away, but the handlers forced her forward and still once more. The physician pinched the bars to the sides of Madlin’s nose, forcing it straight with a stabbing twinge; then they felt cold, far colder than bare metal should have. In seconds her nose began to numb, the sensation spreading across her cheekbones and up to her brow. A slathering of paste was then applied, holding the bars in place. The assistant packed cloth at both sides of her nose and wrapped a bandag
e around her head, packing everything tight.
The cold numbed the pain in her face, but brought her wits back to her. Madlin began taking stock of her new situation as the goblins brought her a wash bowl and soap, and helped her cleanse herself of blood. I’m collared again. She was still too shocked and disoriented for that to have finished sinking in. For now, it was a fact, nothing more. The dragon wants me, which means he wants me alive. That’s good. He might find ways to make my life miserable, but as long as I can survive, I can figure a way out of this. Eziel’s blood, he even said he’d keep delivering coil guns. Madlin paused in her thoughts as the handlers prodded her to her feet. She followed them out of the hospital and back toward the mountain. Of course he’d promise to keep the deal. He needed to buy time, and to stop them thinking of ways to rescue me. As long as they keep getting the guns, he must assume they’ll play things safe.
Madlin sighed. He’s probably right, too. In a strange way, it was a relief. The expected treachery had come, albeit in a form none of them had predicted. And she was still alive.
Madlin’s new quarters were within the dragon’s complex. It was not a part of the lair itself, but rather a newly excavated chamber not far from where Fr’n’ta’gur’s priests lived and worked. Life in Korr’s deeps had taught her what new stonework looked like. It galled her to think that the goblins had been planning ahead for weeks for this betrayal. Almost as galling was the fact that by the time she had arrived back from the goblin hospital, all her belongings had already been set up within. From desk to dresser, everything from her cottage in the valley was set up just as she had left it. The sheets were even tucked, and the pillows fluffed.
Her captors had proven to be an enigma. Two goblins were assigned to the ends of her chains, which clasped around their wrists with hinged bracers. The goblins could remove these easily, but they also bore runes that would send one of those jolts of spark through her whenever they liked. Neither of them would admit to understanding the least bit of Korrish, but when she had pantomimed a desire to change out of her blood-stained clothes, they had been surprisingly accommodating. Both had removed their bracer, allowing Madlin to pull a fresh shirt over her head by threading the chains through one at a time. Changing in front of the goblins was somehow less intimidating than being naked in front of a kuduk. Kuduks looked almost human, and she could project human motives onto them. The goblins … well the ones that didn’t speak Korrish were little more than trained monkeys to her.
It occurred to her to run when she had herself free from the handlers briefly. Run where? That was the problem. For the time being, she had no solution to the impassable world-ripper. Working with Anzik on a solution to that would be a priority for her. She was also in the dragon’s lair, and would have to sneak past untold numbers of goblins just to reach the surface. That left a more old-fashioned escape a dubious prospect, not to mention that she would be dragging her chains the whole way.
The chains. Drat them for a sense of irony, but the goblins had used knowledge she had taught them to help free Korr’s humans, and turned it to her capture. The chains were forged of brightsteel, and were frankly one of their metallurgists’ better efforts.
I’m too tired to escape, anyway. The day’s events had drained Madlin, both of willpower and of blood. Whatever plans she came up with, they could wait for a bit of convalescence first. Broken noses weren’t the sort of thing that took months to heal. She collapsed onto the bed amid a clatter of delicate chain.
“K’k’rt,” she muttered. Surprisingly, being unable to breathe through her nose made goblin names a bit easier to pronounce. She repeated herself, lifting her head to see if she got any response from her keepers. One of them shook his head.
“K’k’rt?” Madlin asked, trying the human method of raising the last syllable to make an inquiry. The other keeper nodded, but the first one muttered to him, and then both looked to her and shook their heads.
Madlin collapsed onto her back and looked up at the stone ceiling. She was feeling queasy from having more of her own blood than food in her stomach, and exhausted from the turmoil. Rynn’s problem, she decided, and gave in to sleep.
Chapter 2
“Aim to become High Sorcerer one day, not Warlock. You get to work indoors and the only people trying to kill you are friends and colleagues.” – Axterion Solaran, to Danilaesis Solaran
Axterion Solaran sipped at a tea that reflected his mood—cold and bitter. The reports strewn across his desk held too little good news mixed in with all the bad. The Kadrin Empire relied little on the outside world, but since the war with Megrenn had begun in earnest, their foreign trade had dried up entirely. Their ships were lost at sea; their caravans disappeared from the tradeways. The old sorcerer shook his head in dismay. Letting a trickle of aether into his cup, he heated the tea back to a potable temperature.
The best news, as always, came in the form of missives from his grandson. For all the boy’s faults, Danilaesis Solaran was making a name for himself as a proper warlock, nipping at Megrenn raiders and giving pause to supply convoys, bottling up the forces arrayed along the borders of the empire wherever he could. Axterion was proud, in a wistful way. Boy’s got his uncle in him, that’s for certain. He’ll meet no good end, but he’ll end his share of the empire’s enemies first. It was the curse of a warlock. There was no actual curse, but the Kadrin Empire used them like battering rams, smashing them into their foes until one or the other broke. If the warlock survived, it was only a matter of time before the next war.
Well, this is the next war. Axterion sighed. There was always a next war. One hundred forty-eight years of living in Veydrus had shown him that often enough. There was no final war. Wipe out every living thing in the world, and the rocks would start fighting amongst themselves. Axterion scratched at his chin, wondering whether he could spare the time for a shave. The war wasn’t going anywhere.
A knock at his office door provided Axterion a respite from his own company. “What?” he snapped at whomever lay beyond. The door cracked open and an eye peeked through.
“General Varnus sent me to find you,” said Tolomey, one of the Tower of Contemplation’s many guards.
“Congratulations,” Axterion replied. “But I wasn’t lost.” There was a blank stare from the eye in the doorway. Imbecile. Axterion rubbed his eyes, wondering if the headache was from too many hours of staring at words on paper or from the vexatious underlings that surrounded him. “What does the general want?”
“We’ve got visitors. Said you should meet them.”
Axterion gestured and the door to his office swung wide, revealing Tolomey fully. “General Varnus has never been prone to wasting my time. Either he has taken up a new hobby, or you are leaving out some important detail as to why, precisely, I should care that we have visitors. If they are dignitaries, they ought to see Empress Celia or her staff. If it’s a military matter, he ought to take care of it his blasted self. And if the issue was of a magical nature, I’d bloody blasted well hope that I’d hear about it from one of my own underlings, and not from that ox-head General Varnus.”
“They’re … um … rock people,” Tolomey replied, edging out of the doorway.
Axterion let his vision slip into the aether, looking for answers that eluded him in the light. He sighed. “Let me guess, they don’t speak Kadrin.”
“No, High Sorcerer,” Tolomey confirmed. “The general was hoping that you might, you know, understand their language, what with you being High Sorcerer and all. Do you? Happen to speak their language, that is?”
“No, I don’t” Axterion replied. He stood and began rummaging through the clutter in his office. Tolomey looked on, edging farther from the door by the moment, as if waiting for the perfect opportunity to slink away unnoticed. Axterion made a point of glancing in the guard’s direction often enough to keep him close by. “Aha!” The old sorcerer exclaimed, pulling a book-sized slate board from beneath a stack of historical texts. “I doubt I can speak their language, b
ut I can write it.”
Kezudkan tried to stand as still as he could, but his eyes kept pulling his head to one side or the other, taking in his environment. He was aware that there were skies where the majority of the population was human. There had never been reason for him to visit one, but from all that he had heard, they were dusty, grimy places that baked beneath the relentless sun. Never in his wildest imaginings had he envisioned anything like the human city of Kadris. Farther than the eye could see, buildings kept popping up from the landscape, clear to the horizon. Individually, they were primitive, homely structures, but taken en masse, the effect was humbling. This is the race that mops our floors and hauls coal out of our mines. These are the ones my kin turn to for aid. Not only were there buildings everywhere, but humans swarmed around them like maggots on raw meat. And from their vantage on a low hill on the outskirts, Kezudkan could only see the very edge of the city.
“How many of them live here?” Kezudkan asked in a hushed tone.
“Reports say anywhere from half to three quarters of a million humans,” replied Lunjak, the successor to King Dekulon. It was just the two of them, along with four soldiers of the Iron Guard who were acting as an official escort. The Iron Guardsmen stood in a square formation around the two daruu dignitaries, keeping the spear-toting Kadrin soldiers in their ratty chain shirts at bay. None of the humans spoke the daruu tongue, and King Dekulon had no one in his kingdom who knew how to speak the Kadrin dialect. By primitive gestures, the humans had conveyed that Kezudkan and Lunjak should wait where they stood.
“What are the odds that any one of those half million or more humans speaks our language?” Kezudkan asked.
Lunjak shrugged, causing a jingle in his gold-chain shirt. “I’m sure we’ll manage something. They have scholars.”
Kezudkan weathered the looks of the human soldiers as they waited half the morning for someone to come retrieve them. City this size, they might not even have gotten across it yet to ask around for daruu speakers. We should have brought chairs. At length, a delegation arrived, looking far more formal than the contingent of soldiers who happened to have been guarding the city gates that day. The soldiers acting as escorts wore plated armor, with swords dangling from their hips and shields in hand. In their midst, a monstrous human in gold-trimmed armor strode along, his shaved head and bushy grey beard not covered by any helm. Beside the giant was a slim human nearly the same height, clad all in black. With unkempt hair and a grit of unshaven beard on his face, the slim human reminded him of someone. When the entourage approached closely enough for Kezudkan to see the slim human’s eyes—set into a scowl beneath a furrowed brow—he knew who that was: Erefan. Though taller, the Kadrin human had the same look to him. As initial impressions went, the Kadrins could have done better than someone who looked like Kezudkan’s least favorite human.