Dragon Road

by Joseph Brassey

  He removed a set of leather-bound, hardback journals chased with gold leaf. “He kept immaculate records,” the lord shipman said. “Rachim turned the key over to me shortly after Amut passed… I think he feared being killed for it himself.”

  “Have you read them?” Harkon asked.

  “No,” Viltas shook his head and held up a refusing hand. “He was my friend, but it is not my place.” His voice sounded pained. “A man deserves his secrets. Even after death. If there are things he did not tell me, I am certain he had his reasons.”

  “All men should be so fortunate in their friends,” Harkon murmured, looking over the texts. “Hmm, that’s odd. The last two pages of his final journal are blank.”

  “He was too ill to write,” Viltas said, shaking his head, expression pained. “It burned through him quickly, whatever it was. He couldn’t even speak, at the end.”

  Aimee turned, examining the rest of the room. Something nagged at the back of her mind. A tease pulled at the corner of her attuned magic senses. Since boarding Iseult, she’d grown accustomed to the ambient mystic sense of the upper levels, and the powerful – if distant – presence of its much more powerful metadrive, but this was different. The feel of magic, to Aimee, had always been warm. This, faint though it was, was cold. A breath of frigid winter air slipping through unseen cracks in the wall of a well-insulated house. Her eyes cast about for things that couldn’t be properly seen.

  “Can I walk around a little?” she asked, distractedly. The sensation, now noticed, was impossible to ignore. “I’d like to get a better sense for how he lived.”

  “Absolutely,” Viltas answered. “You have the run of the place. Let us know if you find anything.”

  Aimee let the door to the beautiful room close behind her, and breathed out in her first moment of real solitude in several days of unending interpersonal work. Amut’s healers had been tired sorts, each as stumped by the speed at which their captain had been taken as the one before. Harkon clearly suspected something, but he hadn’t shared whatever it was yet – not that there had been time. When they were not with Rachim, they were with Viltas or his son. She’d barely seen the rest of the crew since their first day aboard. She understood Elias had made contact with Belit, but hadn’t been able to talk to him about what he’d learned.

  Now alone, she closed her eyes for a long span and let her hands flow through the air, summoning a simple spell to hone her senses. “Alright, little breeze,” she addressed the chill she’d felt, “show me the holes in the wall.”

  It pulled her along. The first prime of magic dictated that magic wanted to be used. It tugged at the senses of the sorcerer, longing to be given form through spells. The same could be true of lingering spell effects. She backtracked through rooms of beautiful flora. Iseult flew above a thick bank of clouds today, one day from her next jump to return to the flotilla. Sunlight flowing in through the estate’s windows lashed over the reaching, broad leaves of rare trees stretching towards the day. She passed the portrait again and paused, taking closer stock of it.

  Something about the veiled posture of the dead captain stood out to her: he had been ebon-skinned, she saw, darker than most of the officer aristocracy by a shade. His head had been shaven, and there was something in the eyes, though she couldn’t see their color through the fabric. She filed it away in her mind, made note not to forget.

  Eventually she came to a door of rich dark wood set with bronze handles. The cold was stronger here, and her senses nearly dragged her forward. Careful, she thought, remembering the past several months, everything she had been through, the dangers of unknown magic. Harkon had taught her to refine her shielding spells since Port Providence, so she cast one: tighter, invisible to the untrained eye. The subtlety of it meant that it was weaker. If a trap lay on the other side of the door, it would protect her from only one powerful effect, but that itself would buy her extra time. Aimee was fast when there was need. She took a deep breath, settling her nerves, and stared at the door which suddenly looked vaguely menacing. It was absurd to be afraid. She’d faced down knights of the Eternal Order and that thing that had called itself Esric. She let her breath out, but the fear didn’t quite go with it.

  Perhaps remembering the black-eyed, monstrous healer wasn’t the best idea, even if she had killed him.

  The handle turned in her hand, and the door creaked audibly inward. Aimee stood in the entryway to what looked like a large bedchamber. Plants lined the opposite walls, and a handful of Ishtierian crystal sculptures glimmered green near the single window with its view of the portside of the eternal sky. Nothing seemed amiss at first glance. The bed was immaculately made, the floor dusted and swept. The curtains were open, pinned, and the gentle sound of water running down the faces of carefully arranged rock sculptures cut through the silence of the dead man’s bedroom.

  And yet all Aimee felt was cold. A nameless dread hung on the air, so thick that stepping into the room was like walking into a fog that didn’t let you see your own outstretched hands.

  Aimee forced her nerves to settle and tried to parse the different mystic stimuli she felt. Walk away, her senses screamed at her when she made to step through the door. You don’t want whatever lies hidden here.

  And that was an even bigger red flag. Harkon’s lessons on illusions sprang fresh to Aimee’s mind: the most powerful deceptions were those that dovetailed perfectly with what the viewer wanted to see. A wan smile crossed her face despite her fear. “Nice try,” she whispered to the empty room. “But I got over that mental hang up a while ago.”

  She stepped through the door, trying to sense how the framework of the illusion fit together. It took her a few moments, but she felt it, tied to whatever cold-causing magic lay beneath it. It really was a work of marvel, she reflected: so simple. Most people who had reason to be here would simply feel the innate reticence attendant to stepping into a dead man’s bedroom, and walk away, thinking no more of it. It took knowing what you were looking at to even sense that something was off to begin with.

  Aimee wove her hands through the complex forms of a spell of sight, and held forth her hand. “Reveal yourself to me,” she commanded.

  She wasn’t prepared for what followed.

  Every plant in the room was dead. The illusion of soft greenery surrounding a placid space fell away. In its place, black leaves, bleached-white stems and bark. Everything was gray. Subdued. Leeched of color. A terrible, bone-chilling dread filled the space. Aimee gasped. She couldn’t hear the water or the wind. A quiet settled over her, so intense that the sound of her own heartbeat hammered in her ears and her breathing was a roar in the void.

  At the far end of the room, just above the head of the bed, a single black mark stained the wall. A glyph that Aimee didn’t recognize. It wasn’t just dark; even the night sky had a color, was filled with stars or clouds. This thing drank the light.

  She didn’t remember taking the first step back, or the second. But suddenly her heart hammered faster, her hands shook by her sides, and the ragged gasps sped up, until for the first time since she was a little girl, Aimee screamed.

  Harkon was suddenly at her side. His hands grasped her shoulder, turned her to face him. Her teacher’s eyes filled her vision, as one hand reached out to cup her face. “Aimee,” he said. “Aimee. Look at me. Look at me.”

  She fixed her eyes on his. Her mouth worked to form words for what seemed like eternity. Nothing came but stutters at first. Finally she managed a handful of words. “Cold,” she said. “Illusion. On the room. Something–” her voice cracked, whimpering “–quiet. Mark on the wall.”

  “Stay with her,” Harkon said, and Aimee heard something in his voice. A steel that made Viltas stay exactly where he stood. She sank to her knees. One hand grasped at her apprentice’s badge on its chain, the other pressed to the floor. She blinked furiously, and tried to calm her racing pulse.

  “What did you see in there?” Viltas said beside her, looking past her. “I see only the roo
m as it was.”

  “Illusion,” Aimee managed. Her voice was coming easier, now. The panic was receding and her mind was already racing through her repertoire of magical learning. She needed to know what that was. She needed to give it a name. A name put definition to nameless terrors, cut off the fear of uncertain parameters with understanding.

  “The whole room is under a potent illusion spell,” she finally said. “Hiding something else. All the plants are dead. The colors leeched out. There’s a horrible mark above his bed. I don’t recognize it.”

  Harkon was back with them again, kneeling on the floor beside them. There was a look of deep worry on his face. After a moment, he said, “Yes, you do. Remember, Aimee: forbidden arts, special class, defensive segment. I insisted you take it.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to recall, but nodding at the last. She did remember. He was right. “I don’t know the spell,” she finally said, shuddering, “but I recognize the art. I just… haven’t heard of it ever being used in the modern era.”

  “A little education for the non-sorcerer?” Viltas asked, straightening now.

  “How many mages have examined this room?” Harkon asked. “How powerful were they?”

  “Two,” Viltas said, sounding concerned. “Affiliated with the functionaries. I would not call them mighty, but they are competent, certainly. They found nothing wrong.”

  “They erred,” Harkon said. “Grievously. Perhaps it isn’t their fault entirely. Whoever did this is… strong. Give me Amut’s last journal, there is one final thing I need to check.”

  Viltas handed Harkon the leatherbound hardback. Harkon flipped to the last several pages, the ones that had dates but no writing. Aimee could see it, clear as day, but now she also sensed the same mystic distortion of perception. Harkon wove his hands through the motions of the same revealing spell, and inked words in the late captain’s handwriting appeared, growing ever more slurred as they reached the final lines.

  “I’m so cold. I can’t get warm. I am cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold. So cold.”

  A fist of ice clenched in Aimee’s chest, and she felt violently ill. They had called Amut the Lion of Heaven… and he had spent his last days wasting away as a spell sucked the life from him, writing the same words over and over and over.

  “We must speak with Rachim immediately,” Harkon said, closing the book. “Amut was murdered.”

  It was hours before Aimee believed she’d feel warm again. The villa had not sufficed, and now she sat upon one of the couches in Elysium’s common area, a mug of hot coffee in her hands and a blanket draped over her shoulders. Harkon stood before the window, while Bjorn paced irritably back and forth. Clutch stared straight ahead, Vlana and Vant behind her. Slightly apart from the group was Elias, sitting in a chair, his long legs crossed at the ankles and his green eyes lost in thought.

  Viltas, Vallus, and Rachim stood by, their faces stony and tired.

  “The art died out,” Bjorn growled. “With the last of its practitioners – three hundred years ago.”

  “Practices are hard to kill,” Elias said quietly, “especially ones that can simply be passed from teacher to student.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Bjorn swore, still pacing. “Fuck.”

  “How could you not know?” he abruptly exploded at their three guests. The old warrior’s face was red with fury. “How could you have no inkling that there was a fucking necromancer lurking on your ship?”

  “Do any of us look like sorcerers?” Rachim abruptly snapped back. “Have a care, warrior, even the greatest mages on Iseult are not all-seeing, and as you may have noticed: this ship is large, and folk aren’t currently inclined to share information.”

  “Will you still be making those excuses when everyone on this ship is a walking husk?” Bjorn snarled. “Don’t speak to me as if this is a simple inconvenience. I’m from Skellig. It’s been centuries since the last of them was destroyed, and the dead still don’t lie quiet in their barrows.”

  “Bjorn,” Harkon said. “That’s enough.”

  “Hark–” Bjorn started.

  “Take a walk,” Harkon said. “You need to clear your head.”

  The warrior stared at their leader for a moment, then grunted and stalked out of the room. Aimee released a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “He’s not entirely wrong,” she said, once the warrior had gone. “If the council’s division allowed this to happen, and stay hidden… everyone on this vessel is in dire peril.”

  “No doubt. I know only myths,” Rachim said. “Now tell me what we’re up against. Some sort of dead-raising psychopath?”

  “Raising the dead is a part of necromancy,” Harkon began, “but only its meanest, basest function; an expression of its greater functions, which is the control and manipulation of life-force.”

  “That sounds almost like the healing disciplines,” Viltas mused. “And it’s… familiar.”

  “Similar,” Aimee said. Her classes on the subject were coming back to her now, and working over the problem was helping drive away the dread. “But a healer restores. Necromancy is… parasitic. It requires the sorcerer to take from others to fuel its magic. With such potent fuel, it can produce disproportionately powerful – and horrible – effects, but the drawbacks… the first prime affects them far more dramatically. Necromancy is deeply, maddeningly addictive. It turns even the most reserved researchers into compulsive serial killers.”

  Viltas sat down hard. “Do you know the story of how Amut became captain?” he asked.

  “Only the bare bones,” Harkon answered. “There have been limits to my time.”

  “They tell stories in the lower levels,” Vlana spoke up. “They say a powerful sorcerer menaced this ship a generation ago, with the power to enslave the dead, and that Amut and his companions came from Ishtier and killed them. They sing songs about it,” she added, a weight to her words. “He was their hero.”

  “Aye,” Rachim nodded. “The stories are true. The officer aristocracy elected him captain afterwards, for they felt there was none more worthy.”

  “They tell it differently below,” Vant said. “They say the officers knew that if they didn’t give him the chair, they’d have a revolt on their hands. They think you lot killed him.”

  Rachim and Viltas both looked weary. Then, at last, the lord shipman spoke again, an exhausted look on his face. “I was one of Amut’s companions, a latecomer when I saw what he might do for us,” Viltas said. “He killed a sorcerer, yes. Though I never marked what kind he was. A would-be dread-lord named the Faceless that ruled some cult that faded away when Amut killed him. I do remember that he used corpses as his thralls, but one type of terrible magic looks much like another to the uneducated, and there were few magi on Iseult in those days beyond the portalmages. It’s also true that many of the ship’s rulers weren’t happy to see an outsider ascend to the captain’s chair, but his popularity… It was what a hero’s always is.”

  “You’re sure this Faceless is truly dead?” Harkon asked quietly.

  Rachim shot Viltas a look. The lord shipman stared at Harkon for a long time with a very tired expression on his face. For the first time since she’d met him, Aimee reflected, he looked old. His face paled a little, and he nodded. “Amut cut him in half with an enchanted sword that rusted away to nothing after striking him down. We burned his corpse, and I scattered the ashes to the winds myself. He’s gone.”

  Harkon seemed to accept that. “An apprentice then. Or perhaps an imitator.”

  Viltas looked down. “I suppose we need to start investigating, then.”

  “Yes,” Rachim murmured, “but quietly.”

  “Agreed,” Harkon mused. “No need to tip off the aristocracy that we know there might be a necromancer in their ranks. We still don’t know why Amut was murdered. A captain is a high-p
rofile target, the risks are beyond reasoning. Starting tomorrow, the three of us will start going through the entire rolls of the ship’s ruling class, searching for irregularities.”

  “That’s going to take a damn long time,” Rachim sighed, nodding his head. “And on top of everything else…”

  “But it has to be done,” Viltas affirmed. “As lord shipman I have access to a great number of records of names, households, heirs, bloodlines. I’ll hit my books and bring you what I can in the morning.”

  Aimee noted that she’d been left conspicuously out of all this. Starting to stand, she said, “I’ll help too.”

  “No,” Harkon said, and with one hand, urged her back into her seat.

  “Teacher–” she began to protest, feeling a rising mingling of shame and anger.

  “You need to revisit your studies,” Harkon said. He was looking at her sideways now, in an odd sort of way that she’d learned implied double meaning. “Talk to Vlana and Elias. There are many other things that we still have to set in order for our stay,” and what he said next carried a weight of subtle emphasis. “An apprentice has her duties.”

  Then, rising, he started towards the door, beckoning for Rachim and Viltas to follow. “Gentlemen, I think a nightcap is in order. Will one of you be so kind as to provide me with a guide to the finer selections? It’s been too long since I had something aboard a proper behemoth.”

  When they heard the sounds of the three men leaving the ship, Aimee stood. Clutch looked up. “Well,” the pilot said. “That was blunt of him.”

  “Yeah, well, investigations up here in stuffy noblesville aren’t exactly what the lot of us are fit for,” Vant replied. A half smirk crossed his face. “Well, alright, maybe some of us.” He flashed Clutch a wink.