by Devin Hanson
“Ava! No!” Andrew screamed.
The dragon pulled up short of the cluster of alchemists, showering them with dirt and dust. Her wings beat the air and she roared in their faces. Her breath blew their hats and hoods off and singed their hair. Fire boiled in the back of her throat, casting ruddy light over the faces of the terrified alchemists.
“Please, Ava,” Andrew shouted, “Talk to me, tell me what angers you! Just don’t kill them.”
Ava roared again and spat fire into the sky, liquid flame that shot up in a billowing column hundreds of feet. “There are Kossante among them!” She spun toward Andrew, the hate in her voice palpable. “Betrayers! Murderers! Eaters of the Koss!”
“What? Ava, I don’t understand. They eat… dragons?”
“I smell their taint, the blood corruption! For a thousand years, I haven’t smelled that curse, but here! Now! At your dedication, no less!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jules ushering the alchemists back into the waystation, more than one alchemist limping along with the aid of a companion. There were old men and women in that group. He hoped none of them would suffer from Ava’s display of rage.
“Ava, please, slow down. You never told me about the Kossante. Who are they? What did they do?”
“I should raze that pathetic building to the ground. Kill everyone inside just to clear the taint.”
Andrew stepped up to Ava and grabbed onto one of the spines that sprouted from her eye ridge. He thought furiously, desperate to think of a way to defuse the dragon’s anger. “Avandakossi, listen to me. Killing these few will do nothing. Nothing! These Kossante, whoever they are, they are just a few old men and women. If you kill them all, as much as they may deserve it, we will never find out who they are, who their friends are, who they work with. If you kill them now, they will be alerted. We’ll never find out who the others are.”
Ava settled down, the tight muscles in her neck softening slowly. The nictitating membrane flicked over her eye. “Avandir,” her voice came through in Andrew’s head laden with sorrow, “that is almost exactly what my last Kossirith said when he discovered their presence.”
“Was he wrong?”
“He died because of it. They all died because of it.”
“But,” Andrew swallowed as his voice cracked, “was he wrong?”
Ava was silent for a long time. “No.” The sadness was heavy in her voice. “No, he was not. But he was righteous and strong, and he had many like him. You are but one, the only one in two thousand years.”
“If I am to gain allies, I need to be recognized by this group of alchemists. If we kill them now, I will stay alone and powerless.” Andrew pleaded, “With allies, though, I can warn them, lead them in the fight against these Kossante.”
“Your words are true, Avandir.” Ava sighed, a gust of hot air that singed the grass in front of her in a broad swath.
“Will you be able to tell them apart? If you could smell them?”
“They have the stench, but it is… ephemeral. It would be difficult. Tasting is better.”
“I hardly think they’ll let you eat a finger each or something,” Andrew said, trying to choke down a hysterical laugh at the idea.
“A drop of blood would suffice.”
“Yeah…” Andrew leaned against Ava, staring at the waystation, imagining the furor within. “Well, I’ll see what I can do.” He pushed himself erect, straightened his cloak.
“You go within?”
“I must.”
“Be wary, Avandir. I would not have you in danger.”
“If I need help, I will call. You can hear me at that distance?”
“For this, I would hear you from the icy north.”
Andrew laid a hand on Ava’s muzzle. “Thank you, Ava.” He walked down the rise toward the waystation, worry tight in his chest.
In the distance, he heard Ava rumble, “Just come back to me, Avandir. I would not wait another two thousand years for another Kossirith.”
Andrew walked into pandemonium that immediately settled to silence as the door swung shut behind him. One of the alchemists, a grizzled professor with a face red from anger and shouting, stepped forward, his mouth open.
“You were told to remain inside,” Andrew said, his voice cold with his own anger. “This is not a game. Have you no sense? That’s a dragon outside! A dragon more than capable of killing us all with the same effort you would use to halve an apple.”
The alchemist snapped his mouth shut and Andrew saw the depth of fear in the old man’s eyes, fear that had driven him near the brink of insanity. His anger was just a symptom, a desperate attempt to claw back some modicum of control in the face of death.
Andrew softened his voice with an effort. “Be at ease, though. I have calmed her, for the moment.” He flicked a glance toward Jules and she stepped forward, smoothly inserting herself into the conversation.
“Professor Kilpatri,” Jules’s voice was smooth honey, warm with just the right amount of distress and concern. “Nobody is more aggrieved than you, I am sure. A dangerous beast indeed! All the more astonishing, don’t you think, that Andrew was able to call it off before it struck?”
“Come now!” someone called, “That’s unproven as yet!”
“Of course,” Jules patted Kilpatri on his shoulder and helped ease him down onto a bale of hay. “My mistake. After all, dragons stop their assaults all the time! At a word from a,” she took on a mocking tone, “what was it, a mere pipsqueak of a boy?”
Professor Milkin pushed himself off his own hay bale and slapped his cane across a man’s chest as he started to surge forward, a vein bulging in his forehead. “I think we’ve heard enough, Bircham. Thank you, Lady Vierra. Your intervention outside was quite timely.” He planted himself in the center of the open space and leaned on his cane. His face was calm, even kind, but his eyes snapped with authority. “I must confess, Mister Condign, it was my own curiosity that is to blame.”
Andrew bowed his head briefly. “I cannot blame the curious, only advise caution and foresight.”
“Words of wisdom,” Milkin said with finality, “And said with grace. Come, my fellow alchemists. This is to be a night of wonder. Let us view the tests to come with the dignity and respect this occasion merits.”
“Hear, hear,” one of the alchemists called. Tension drained from the room and the noise level picked up as the alchemists turned to each other, their voices high with excitement.
Andrew caught Jules’s attention and waved her over. “We have a problem,” he said quietly.
“Burn me, Andrew, what was that! What came over her? I thought for sure she would kill them all!”
“That’s what we need to talk about.” He looked over her shoulder and caught the eye of the alchemist Milkin had stopped, Bircham. The man looked away quickly, but not before Andrew saw the hate in his eyes. “Perhaps we should go outside.”
Jules glanced over her shoulder, her anger fading into worry. “Tiny gods, Andrew. What is it?”
“Outside.” He turned and led the way back into the cool night. The breeze, so pleasant earlier, was frigid as it hit the sweat on his brow. He waved to Ava, smiled as she trumpeted.
Jules let the door swing shut behind her. “What is it? Why did Ava attack them?”
“Jules, do you know the term Kossante?”
She frowned and shook her head. “No, is that like Ranno Kossar?”
“In a way.” Andrew frowned. Was it right to tell Jules? Telling her would likely put her in mortal danger. The Kossante would kill anyone who knew of their secret. What if Jules was one of them? No, impossible. Ava would have known. He saw the worry in Jules’s eyes deepening into fear and forced himself to smile, but even without a mirror he knew it wasn’t genuine.
“Ava told me something. Just knowing it could get you killed.”
Jules made an impatient gesture. “Well, spill it.”
Andrew cracked a grin, an honest one this time. He wasn’t surprised, really.
Jules would be the last one to back away from something just because it was dangerous. His smile faded away. “The Kossante… Ava said they were the reason, the cause behind the dragon betrayal. They’re the ones who murdered the dragons two thousand years ago and triggered the war. Jules, they eat the flesh of dragons.”
“Incantors?” Jules laughed incredulously. “You’re talking about a myth, Andrew. The dreaded dark alchemists! Long-fanged evil of a hundred campfire tales!” Her humor faded away as Andrew’s face remained serious. “Really? Incantors? No, it can’t be.”
“How come? I’ve never heard of Incantors before. How bad can they be? It’s bad enough that they eat dragons, isn’t it?”
“Supposedly, Incantors are twisted alchemists. Depending on the story they’re in, they have a whole slew of powers. They can fly, they’re immortal, they breathe fire like a dragon, some stories say that an Incantor doesn’t need alchemical training, others that only a master alchemist can become one. One thing all the stories have in common is that they are quite mad.”
“Well, crazy alchemists are a dime a dozen, aren’t they?”
“Very funny, but the Incantors aren’t real, Andrew.”
“Ava seems to think otherwise. She said she smells the corruption in… in their blood.”
“In their blood, but I—”
“Jules, for the moment, at least, can we just assume Ava is right? That there are these Incantors here?”
Jules crossed her arms and hugged herself. “Okay. Sure.”
“Thank you. What do we do? How do we proceed? They will want to stop me from being named a Dragon Speaker at all costs.”
“What did Ava suggest?”
“She… was against caution. Her advice was to murder them all.”
Jules made a face. “That explains things. What did you say to that?”
“The same thing her last Kossirith said, that we need to be cautious and use subterfuge if we’re going to find the rest of these Incantors and weed them out. She didn’t like that very much.”
“I can see how she wouldn’t. Is there a way we can tell for certain who is and who isn’t? Ava said she could smell them?”
“The smell is faint. She says she can tell by taste.”
“Well, we can’t exactly ask the alchemists in there to submit to a taste test, can we?”
Andrew laughed. “My thoughts.”
“Milkin will submit to the test. If he won’t, I’ll kill him myself.”
“Try not to lead with that when you ask him,” Andrew sighed.
“Look at you, being all diplomatic.”
“I learned from the best.”
“Let’s get this over with, then. Come on, back inside.”
Chapter 3
The Song of Fire
“The first test,” Milkin explained, “is the old one, the standard by which Dragon Speakers were determined in the old days.”
The alchemists were sitting in a sort of improvised amphitheater, a half-circle of hay bales laid over with cloth. To Andrew’s eye, they seemed to have divided themselves into three camps. On his left sat a group of alchemists tightly clustered together, almost as if they were isolated. Andrew had seen similar groupings when a group of immigrants arrived in a new city for the first time and none of them spoke the native language. Prominent in this group, at least to Andrew’s eye, was Professor Kilpatri and the bulky, angry alchemist from earlier, Bircham.
In the center sat a looser grouping of Alchemists, and these Andrew mentally designated the independents. They were the calmest of the groups, neither openly hostile nor friendly. Despite the unfortunate incident with Ava, they appeared wholly unbiased. They weren’t allied in any way and appeared to take the nature of the occasion the most serious. Andrew couldn’t help but compare them to a traveling magistrate he had met once.
On the right gathered what he could only describe as “Milkin’s group.” These alchemists were openly supportive of Andrew, smiling encouragingly. They sat close to each other, if not as tight a knot as those on the left. These Andrew assumed had already made their decision based on how he had called Ava off, a fair judgment in Andrew’s mind.
“To perform the tests, Andrew, you must stay here, in this room. You must have no visual contact with the dragon. A neutral third party will go outside and perform a series of actions. The dragon will observe and relay to you what is being done. You, in turn, will relay the action to us, the judges. In light of the dragon’s… ill temper, shall we say, Jules Vierra will act as the third party.”
Bircham stirred, face growing stormy, but Milkin powered on before the alchemist could voice his evident disagreement. “The Lady Vierra was chosen for her reputation as a fair and honest woman, as well as her evident acceptability to the dragon. Do any of you wish to impugn the lady’s honor or volunteer to replace her outside, alone with the dragon?”
Nobody responded and Milkin harrumphed, resettled his grip on his cane and continued. “Lady Vierra, please accept the list of actions from the good professor Kilpatri.”
Andrew sat on his own hay bale in the center of the semicircle and watched as Jules took the list from the old professor.
“Once outside, you may view the list. You must pick three actions for the dragon to relay to Andrew. We have agreed upon a dozen actions to be on the list. This is not a game of charades, after all, merely a verification of the ability to communicate.” The last was said with some severity toward the left side. Andrew inferred there had been some debate over the viability of some of the actions; one faction apparently had picked quite complicated actions in an attempt to throw off the results.
“At this point, the test will commence. Jules, please head outside and perform your actions.” Milkin walked over to the right and took a seat on a bale that had been reserved for him. Jules gave a curtsey toward the assembled alchemists and strode outside, the paper held clenched in one fist.
Andrew sat quietly, wishing he could see what was happening outside. He didn’t have to wait long; soon the ground shook as Ava settled just outside. More than one face among the seated alchemists blanched.
“The test is beginning,” Ava’s voice came from outside. Andrew heard the words, plain as any Milkin had spoken a minute earlier, but he also heard how the others were hearing it, a low rumbling growl, rich with inflection and tonal variance, at least to his ears.
A moment passed then Ava spoke again. “The woman you call Jules jumps and waves her hands.”
Andrew frowned. What kind of action is that? “Jumping jacks,” he said, and watched his words cause a frission through his audience.
“Be still!” Milkin called. “Withhold your judgment until the end of the trial.”
“Now she stands on her toes and steps in a circle. She holds her arms steady in front of her.” Ava’s words came through puzzled. “I do not recognize this motion she performs.”
Andrew pictured what Ava was describing. “Does she spin?” he asked back.
“She does. And steps in rhythm.”
“Dancing,” Andrew announced to the alchemists. This time there was no outburst, but it was clear that those who were withholding their decision earlier now believed that Andrew was a Dragon Speaker. Bircham was glaring at him, his mouth a tight line. What was his problem?
“Now she lies down on her back and waves her arms and legs. In all my time, Avandir, I have not seen such a strange activity.”
Once as a child, Andrew had traveled with his parents to the far north during the winter, visiting a chain of small villages. It was a trip commissioned by a local lord to provide relief to villages who had a poor harvest, and they had special wagons with skis instead of wheels to ease their passage over the snow. In one of the villages, Andrew had seen other children making shapes in the snow, calling them snow dragons.
“She makes snow dragons,” Andrew said, “though it might be called something else in other places.”
“Thank you, Andrew.” Milkin stood and gestured. The alchemist cl
osest to the door rose from his seat and stepped outside briefly before returning with Jules in tow. Her hair was mussed from her last performance.
“Andrew Condign has undertaken the first of the tests. The official test, I might add. Given the controversial nature of this conclave, a second test was requested. As moderator, I would encourage the judges to consider the additional nature of this test.”
“Just get on with it, Milkin,” Bircham called.
Professor Milkin frowned then sighed. “Very well. Andrew, for this test, we would have you ask the dragon of the nature of the ska rune. A rune we have retained the name of, but have lost the meaning and form over the years.”
It was Andrew’s turn to frown. “I will ask, but I should warn you, dragons have little concept of runes. They have no need for them and see them as the artifice of man.”
“Stop making excuses!” an alchemist from the left called.
Andrew fixed the woman with a glare and she subsided. “I make no excuses. This test is not a test that demonstrates my ability to speak with Avandakossi. But I will ask.” Andrew turned his attention outward, toward where he could feel Ava crouching next to the wall. “They have a second test.”
“It has been a long time,” Ava replied. “Man has lost trust in their heritage.”
“Right. Sure. They want to know what the ska rune is.”
Ava trumpeted outside and the alchemists flinched in unison. “The ska is a forbidden rune, even before the Breaking. It exists only in the flesh of the koss, not on the mori, the scales, or on the bones. Any who would seek that rune would travel down the forbidden path, the kossante.”
“Oh. Well, burn me. What do I tell these men and women then?”
“It is forbidden.”
“Fair enough.” Andrew cleared his throat and addressed himself to the alchemists around him. “Avandakossi declares that rune forbidden, that it leads men to corruption and will not provide more information.”