Rune Song (Dragon Speaker Series Book 2)

by Devin Hanson

  Kilpatri rapped his gavel three times and announced. “This committee has presented its findings and the hearing is closed. Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you good day.”

  Milkin pushed himself back to his feet. By the time he was standing, the auditorium was in full uproar. Not everyone on the committee was happy with the findings, of course, and Milkin took note of those who left the stage in the same black temper as Trent had moments before. Chief among those was Bircham Lameda, whose towering height and broad shoulders made him clearly visible as he chased after Trent.

  Out of the auditorium, with the door shut firmly behind, Milkin could finally hear himself think. Behind him, Kilpatri sighed. “Well, that could have gone better, I think.”

  Milkin shook his head. “No, do not doubt yourself, Sean. Plenty of others will want to tear down your authority. Don’t do it yourself. The law is on your side. Were it anyone else, there would be no contention. Do not let the bias and anger of others sway you from the truth.”

  “You’re right, of course, Aaron.” Kilpatri shook his head. “Still, I fear the rift this may cause.”

  Milkin thought about Bircham leaving the room, and the look on Trent’s face as the sentence came down. “We must head it off before it can get properly started.” He looked into the face of the other man, his eyes sharp and penetrating. “Sean, Condign spoke to me in confidence before we left the waystation. He gave voice to a disturbing concern, and I can’t help but see a corollary between it and the current state of the Guild.”

  “Well, let it out, man. We’re all friends here.”

  Milkin looked around at the committee filing out of the antechamber and down the stairs. “I think not. In your office would be best.”

  Kilpatri frowned, his eyes troubled. “I see. Very well.”

  Professor Kilpatri’s office was typical for a bachelor Guild chairman. It was more than just an office, it was a living space as well, separated from the front rooms by an antechamber. Milkin followed the other professor into the front office, checked the laboratory and stuck his head through the antechamber and peered about the living quarters before he was satisfied.

  “Your paranoia is in fine form,” Kilpatri said, attempting at humor, but nerves made his voice quaver.

  Milkin double checked the hallway outside the office, then turned to pace across the room. “Before I start, I have to ask. What made you choose the ska rune for the test?”

  Kilpatri’s brow furrowed. “What does that have to do with anything? I just picked it off the list at random.”

  “And did anyone suggest it to you?”

  “Come, Aaron, you know how it is. Half the committee had spent their lives researching one lost rune or another. Everyone wanted their rune to be picked as the question.”

  “Do you remember who wanted ska?”

  “No, and I don’t see why it would matter. Several suggested it, I think.”

  “Maybe after I tell you what the Speaker revealed you’ll be more inclined to remember carefully.”

  “Enough with the foreshadowing, Aaron!”

  “Hmm.” Milkin looked carefully at the other professor, and saw nothing but impatience. “Very well. The dragon attacked us, and was called off by the Speaker.”

  “Tiny gods. As if I could forget.”

  “The reason the dragon lashed out was it smelled the corruption of an Incantor among us.”

  Milkin let the silence hang, watched Kilpatri’s face closely. The professor’s reaction was surprised shock, followed by disgust and anger, then finally fear as he put it together. “Burn me, Aaron,” Kilpatri’s voice was hoarse. “Do you think Priah is an Incantor?”

  “What?” Milkin blinked. He hadn’t taken that particular path in his thoughts, but now that Kilpatri had suggested it, the possibility seemed disturbingly viable. But no, the lad had plenty of power; he had no need to go hunting for the forbidden kind. “No, I don’t think so. But now that he’s banished from the Guild, I would not doubt he intends to search it out.”

  “The Incantors have ever been a suppressed group. The reach of the Fraternity Sicaria is too long for them to operate openly. I worry that this matter of Priah’s expulsion might be the fulcrum by which the Guild is split apart. The Incantors will foment the fracture, seeking to build a power base without the laws of the Guild to restrict them.”

  “But who would harbor such monsters? Salia,” Milkin said with a groan, answering his own question. “Salia goes to war. They would welcome an allegiance with alchemists and would not look too closely into their activities, especially with one of their own nobility leading them.”

  “If Priah is not an Incantor, he will be by the end of the month.” Kilpatri voiced his prediction with sad certainty.

  “We must act quickly to consolidate our people,” Milkin said grimly. “Many who are otherwise innocent chafe under the strictures of the Guild. They would see the opportunity to form their own charter as a blessing.”

  “And what about the Incantors? If they see us organizing against them, they might not hesitate to strike against us.”

  “We do not mention the Incantors for now. Silence has always been the best policy, because we never could be sure who is and who isn’t one. That has changed.”

  Kilpatri came to his feet. “The dragon! She sensed it. Is that what you mean?”

  “Indeed. The dragon can smell the corruption of an Incantor.” He held up his hand, showing the healing cut on his thumb. “I performed my trial and the dragon cleared me. I would ask the same of you.”

  “Absolutely.” Kilpatri rubbed his face, thinking. “Does the dragon have to be present? How do we call the dragon for the test? Without the Speaker present, I admit to fear of that meeting.”

  Milkin gave a sympathetic smile. It had taken quite an effort of will to walk out into the open night and draw close to the dragon. “I predicted something like this, and Andrew and I have set up a method of communication. If you provide me with a sample, I can seal it within a glass vial and send it to the Speaker.”

  “I suppose that’s as good a plan as any.” Kilpatri cast about his office before coming up with a discarded pureglass vial previously used for storing dragongas. “Here, this will work. How much, do you think?”

  “A few drops will do. The dragon scented it off my hand from a dozen paces.” Milkin watched as Kilpatri pricked the ball of his thumb and forced half a dozen drops into the vial before sealing the top with a rubber stopper and wax.

  “Okay. Here you are. Wait, better label it. I don’t want my sample getting mixed up with someone else’s.” He scratched his initials into the cooling wax then handed it over.

  “Thank you, Sean. We should meet again tomorrow and discuss a plan. We need more people we can trust. Sound out those closest to you and bring the ones you trust to the meeting. I will do the same. The sooner we start forming a stable nucleus of opinion leaders, the better chance we’ll have at heading off a major fracture of the Guild.”

  “I will bring vials,” the professor promised.

  Milkin was half way out of the Academy when he remembered he still had a class to teach. The excitement and pressure of the committee and subsequent meetings had completely driven the more mundane cycles of his life from his mind. He almost brushed off the class. They had done without him for nearly two weeks while he took the stagecoach journey south to meet with Andrew, and they could wait another day. Then he sighed and forced himself to turn around and climb back up the stairs. If he was going to find people to join his cause, who better to start with than students who already looked up to him?

  He made it to his classroom late. Of the score of students scheduled to attend, only a handful remained. Milkin’s specialty was runes. Despite their necessity to the craft, runes often got a short shrift among the students and other alchemists. They were perversely difficult to learn well. Though one had to know the runes before one could use alchemy, the precision of knowledge required for alchemy was minor. You could always just thro
w more vitae at the problem rather than precisely knowing the runes used.

  Consequently, the rich and well-connected didn’t place much importance on runes, only enough that their alchemy would function as desired. The fact that their sub-par runes consumed more vitae didn’t bother the rich overmuch. For students in the Academy that weren’t rich or sponsored, learning runes became much more important. With precise runes, alchemy could be performed with a fraction of the vitae.

  There were exceptions, of course. Jules Vierra, for one, was one of the wealthiest students in the Academy during her years studying, but she also took to runing with a passion. Besides a few of the professors, she held the highest number of master runes of any alchemist Milkin knew.

  The students remaining in the classroom were those Milkin considered as “his” students. They were among the poorest students in the Academy, but also the brightest, those he had found with the greatest aptitude for learning and practicing the art of runing. They had been clustered around one of the desks in the rear of the room, heads together, and looked up in surprise as Milkin walked in.

  “Good afternoon,” Milkin greeted them with a smile. “How many of you were in the auditorium earlier today?”

  A few raised their hands. Jethram, eldest of the group, said, “Is Trent really going to be banished from alchemy?”

  Milkin waited until he found his seat and settled into it, easing his stiff knees. “Oh, very much so. The accusation of Ranno Kossar is one of our most serious laws.”

  “But,” this time Meria spoke up, her high-pitched voice concerned, “Such an accusation comes at the will of a Speaker. Can anyone be trusted with that kind of power? How do we know it is a valid accusation?”

  Milkin was glad he had asked Andrew that same question, and he had an answer ready. “Ranno Kossar,” he said, shifting into lecture mode, “comes from the lines of the Guild charter. Its meaning has been lost to us since before our histories began, but as Speaker Condign revealed, it has its roots in the dragon tongue.”

  He stood up long enough to chalk the words up on the blackboard. “Despite popular mythos, dragons are quite intelligent and have a language just as complex as ours. Koss is the word dragons use to refer to themselves. A kossar is a dragon egg. Dragon reproduction has always been something of a myth, despite our best efforts at research. Andrew Condign met his dragon as she was brooding, which is a tale in itself. Later! Lessons first, and then maybe I’ll tell stories afterward.

  “A dragon comes into season very rarely. The dragon Avandakossi has not had a clutch of eggs for over two thousand years.” He nodded to the gasps of disbelief. “Dragons appear to be immortal, despite what our assumptions about them have been. To go back to our definition, a Ranno Kossar is an egg thief. Avandakossi laid five eggs in her clutch and Trent Priah stole one.

  “Consider, for a moment, what that means. Five eggs in two thousand years. That would make them more precious to dragons than entire kingdoms. As alchemists, we rely on dragons for our power. They are feared, it is true, but without them, our Guild would not exist. It is vital to the survival of the Guild that dragons continue to breed. To interrupt that cycle, to any degree, threatens the entirety of the Guild. It cannot be tolerated, and our harshest punishment is reserved for it alone.

  “As for why Andrew Condign called Trent Priah a Ranno Kossar, well, Avandakossi called him thus, and the Speaker merely repeated the epithet, unknowing of what it meant to our laws.”

  “The Speaker really talks to dragons?” Meria asked. It wasn’t a challenge, just a question asked in wide-eyed wonder.

  Milkin smiled. “As easily as I speak to you. The things he can do with alchemy…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “We know alchemy through the source runes, combined into runewords and finally into Sayings. The verbal component of alchemy comes from the dragon tongue, and our Sayings are blind stabs in the dark at grammar and phrasing.

  “Andrew speaks the language fluently, with some concentration and preparation. He does not need to guess at meaning or fumble with grammar. He can create new sayings as easily as you would write a letter home to your parents. I saw him create a thirty-second firework display in a few minutes, and he sang the Saying in the dragon tongue. If he was a member of the Guild, a fraction of his skill would place him as our Guild Master in an instant.”

  “Why doesn’t he, then?” Jethram demanded.

  Milkin sighed. Like many students joining the Academy, Jethram’s goal was the accumulation of power. He could rub Jethram’s face in Andrew’s altruism, but it wouldn’t likely win Andrew any friends. Instead he took a different approach and just lied out of his teeth.

  “What do you know about the different types of dragons, Jethram?”

  The boy scowled, wanting an answer, not a lesson, but he answered anyway, if grudgingly. “The flying dragons of Salia and north in the wastes are but one type of dragon. There are, uh, six? types of dragons, each type has unique runes that don’t appear on the others.”

  “Correct. Andrew may be a Speaker, but he has only been studying runes and alchemy for around two months. He has a good teacher, but it is his aptitude for it that has advanced him as far as he has gotten. Without runes…” he waited for the class to finish, which they did in bored unison:

  “There is no alchemy.”

  “The Speaker is a natural alchemist, but his command of runes is limited. Andrew is learning the runes on the scales of the flying dragons we’re so familiar with, but he has no access to the scales, bones and teeth of other dragons. What do you think would happen if he showed up at Andronath and demanded to see the flux vault?”

  Even Jethram nodded, this time. “He would be stopped cold. Those jealous old bastards would never let him in.”

  “Easy there, Jethram. I’m one of those jealous old bastards myself, remember? But you’re quite right. While I personally might not take issue with it, secrecy has been our tradition for too long for it to be easily set aside.”

  “So he travels to other lands to collect and study new dragon runes?” Meria asked.

  No, Milkin thought, he goes to attempt to put an end to a war before it starts and hide from Trent Priah’s murderous minions while he grows in power. “Quite right,” he said aloud, smiling. After all, it wasn’t completely a lie. Nas Shahr had its own breed of dragon, after all.

  He looked over his class, wondering if humanizing Andrew to them would result in a positive outcome or a negative one. These students were the future of the Alchemists Guild. The fact that they were here, in his classroom, meant they had the dedication to learn runing despite its difficulty. They had not yet succumbed to the ease and power of alchemy. It was likely they hadn’t been corrupted by the Incantors either.

  “I have something I want to speak to you about.” He made eye contact with all the students in turn. “Tomorrow, class will be held in Professor Kilpatri’s office. In the meantime, think on the events of today. I want each of you to find an example in history where disaster was averted through sticking to the laws of the Guild charter. You may work together, but find different examples. Dismissed.”

  Milkin watched them file out, muttering to each other about the strange assignment, then turn as one to head deeper into the Academy toward the libraries. They were smart. It probably wouldn’t take them long to figure out why he wanted them to research that particular topic. He sighed. He really was no good at this kind of thing.

  Who else could he find to bring to tomorrow’s meeting? Milkin limped out of the classroom, mind already caught up in whom he could trust.

  Milkin arrived at Kilpatri’s office early. There were still thirty minutes before the appointed time, yet there were already a score of students loitering outside. The old professor worked his way through the crowd using his cane to help balance himself. Several of the students greeted him as he passed, and he nodded acknowledgement. Among the students were several journeyman alchemists, students who had graduated from the Academy but stayed on in Andronath t
o learn a trade. Among these was Michael Esterforth, an old student of Milkin’s and currently working under an unimaginative and crotchety old transmuter specializing in airship engines.

  He paused outside Kilpatri’s door to exchange a few words with Michael, then excused himself and entered the office. Sean Kilpatri had taken the time to convert the cluttered front office into a wide-open meeting room with all the furniture removed but for a low speaking platform and a spindly desk supporting a few wooden cases of pureglass vials, a candle and a stick of sealing wax.

  Kilpatri heard the door close behind Milkin and emerged from the laboratory, wiping his hands on a rag. “Good, I was hoping you would be here early. We didn’t have much time yesterday to coordinate on how this is going to go. How many did you invite?”

  “Twenty or so,” Milkin replied, “most of them old or current students of mine.”

  “More than me,” Kilpatri grumbled. “The price of teaching alchemy over runes, I suppose.”

  Milkin chuckled. Being a professor of alchemy was much more glamorous and attracted the richer students, thus had better funding, better classrooms and better perks. This was probably the first and only time Kilpatri had ever wished he taught runes.

  “Better you take the majority of the talking, then,” Kilpatri continued. “You know the Speaker personally, after all.”

  “We must show a combined front on this, though,” Milkin cautioned. “Any disagreement will undermine our efforts.”

  “I agree. I received a pigeon this morning from the Fraternity Sicaria.”

  Milkin frowned. “What did they have to say?”

  “That they are aware of the situation and are sending a representative to coordinate.”

  “Did they say who?”

  “No.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to find out then.” Milkin shook his head. “Or maybe we’ll never know who it is. I have to say, I’m glad it is not my responsibility to deal with them.”