by Devin Hanson
“Beware the red light,” Iria cautioned them. “The dragons come out when Maeis is high in the sky and their vision is best. If one does find us, Andrew will attempt to communicate with it. But do not hesitate. The dragons are large, and they move more swiftly than you might think.”
“Can we even fight them if it comes to it?” Jules asked.
“With luck,” Iria allowed, “but not in the arroyos. We travel on the surface now.”
Andrew set out following Iria’s lead. His pack was lighter now by over a gallon of water. The sun may have gone down, but the sand still radiated heat that he felt through the soles of his boots. He missed the presence of Ava. While traveling through Salia, she seemed to always be right on the edge of his awareness, able to come swiftly if called. The relay between Andronath and Andrew was a necessity, but he didn’t have to like it. Now, with the threat of the desert dragons a very real possibility, he felt naked without the dragon’s strength by his side.
Presently, Iria brought them to a halt. “The site of the slain dragon is on the far side of this arroyo. We proceed with caution now. Be silent as mice.”
Andrew caught a faint scent of cinnamon on the night breeze. “I smell a dragon nearby,” he whispered.
Iria nodded, tapped her nose and pointed ahead, then slunk forward. Andrew followed, trying to set his feet softly, but every step he could hear the crunch of sand beneath his boots. How did Iria move so quietly? Maybe it was those sandals she wore.
A desert owl called, so close it startled Andrew, and he turned to see Rajya focused on something over to one side. Iria chittered back, the sound of a mouse perfectly duplicated, and Rajya slipped off into the desert, crouched low and making no noise in the sand.
Alongside these two desert warriors, Andrew suddenly felt inadequate. The balai were in their element, their moves practiced in hundreds of hours of drill, their language made of animal sounds that blended in with the night. He shivered as a cold wind gusted from the east. There was no moisture in the air to act as a heat buffer, and now that the sun was gone the temperature was starting to plummet.
Rajya’s owl call came again, a different pitch, and Iria nodded and pushed forward again. The scent of cinnamon was starting to be mixed with the sweet stench of decay and rose sharply when they reached the edge of the arroyo. The corpse of the dragon lay within, blasted apart by alchemy. Along with the cinnamon smell from the dragon, human bodies were scattered about, dressed in the Ranger’s signature robe.
The wildlife had been at the humans, though the dragon had been left largely alone. Andrew saw Iria settle her sand mask down into place, and he caught a glimpse of her eyes before they were shut away; they were hard as stone and a cold fury emanated from her.
The whooping call of some desert night bird came from the desert on the far side of the arroyo and Iria gestured for Andrew and Jules to follow her. “We’re clear for the moment. Rajya will keep watch.” She dropped over the edge of the arroyo and skipped down the water-hewn sides.
Andrew and Jules followed more carefully. By the time they reached the bottom of the arroyo, Iria was already examining the bodies of the Rangers. She called Jules over and together they knelt down over the body. Andrew watched from a distance, his stomach doing loops. He couldn’t decide if he was going to throw up or not. The bodies were days old, and the scent of decay wasn’t as strong as he had feared.
Jules stood up and quickly moved to another body, then another. “They are all the same,” she called.
“What are?” Andrew asked, his curiosity getting the better of his sickness.
“Their chests have been split open. A heavy blade did the work, an axe or a large sword.”
“Kind of an inefficient way to kill someone,” Andrew hazarded, trying to mask his unease with a little gallows humor.
“No, this was done after they were dead,” Iria said. “See, there is not enough bleeding for it to be the kill stroke.” She rolled a body over, revealing a writhing mass of maggots deep within the chest cavity of the fallen Ranger.
Andrew threw up.
The two women verified that all the dead humans had their chests split open while Andrew followed from a distance and tried not to look too closely at what they were doing.
“It reminds me of how I found Hashim. His heart was cut from his chest while he still lived.”
“The alchemist did that?” Jules asked.
“I assumed so. This looks methodical, but unskilled. Whoever did this was determined but had not performed such butchery before.”
“There’s a thread of common plot among the Incantor stories I heard,” Jules mused, “They got their power from eating the flesh of dragons. But in some stories, it was the flesh of men as well. And some even specified the heart.”
Iria cursed quietly. “These Rangers. You think they were killed to feed the alchemist’s power?”
“It makes a solid picture of what happened here,” Jules reasoned. “Killing a score of men and women would be noticed unless it was a squad of Rangers lost in the desert investigating furious dragons. It would just be assumed that the dragons did the killing.”
“This alchemist, the Incantor as you call him. I would dearly like to question him.”
“I don’t think this is about the alchemist,” Andrew said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
“What do you mean?” Jules asked.
“Well, think about it. If you have some way of eating people to grow in power, you don’t do it all at once. That just draws attention. You do it slowly, carefully, and hide it as you go. People go missing all the time; it barely raises an eyebrow. But killing twenty all at once would sound every alarm society has.” Andrew shook his head. “I think they were creating another Incantor.”
“Are you sure about this, Speaker?” Iria demanded.
“Of course not. But all the pieces of rumor and comments from Ava lead me to believe that eating the dragon’s flesh is required. In the dragon tongue, an Incantor is kossante, or eater of dragons. It can’t be a coincidence that all these Rangers have their hearts cut out at the same time a dragon is killed. Iria, does the dragon look the same as it did when you first saw it dead?”
Iria frowned and looked over at the dragon corpse. “It is hard to say. It was dark, and I did not look closely at the time.”
“Let’s look.” Andrew walked over to the dragon. “The teeth were pulled after it was dead. Normally, that would be the end of it. There should be no reason to mess with the dragon’s body further at that point, right? And yet, look at the way it is lying, the way the ribs are prised apart.”
“Someone cut out the dragon’s heart,” Jules said.
“Iria, did Malik seem unusually strong or fast to you when you killed him?”
The balai shook her head. “No. He was always good at weapons play. He could have been a balai if it was only skill at arms that qualified you.”
“He was corrupt?”
Iria shook her head again. “Nothing proven, but even the suggestion of taking bribes is enough to have your admittance delayed while an investigation takes place. Malik had too many suggestions, too many times.”
“That leaves the Colonel,” Jules mused. “Mohandi, you said his name was?”
Iria nodded.
“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say Mohandi is the newest Incantor.”
“Such an accusation…” Iria shrugged. “In another time, in another place, I would have called you to account for saying such. Today, I think you are correct.”
“How would Rajya react to the news?” Jules asked quietly.
Iria shrugged again. “I could not say. I think it would be best to keep that particular guess private, for now at least. Let her come to the same conclusion given more solid evidence.”
Chapter 12
To Make an Incantor
“One dragon killed to make an Incantor would be bad enough news,” Andrew broke the silence after a few minutes. “But you said the dragons were being worke
d into a fury and attacking nearby settlements. It isn’t much of a stretch to assume Mohandi and our maroon friend aren’t the only Incantors about.”
Iria shook her head. “Harvesting the dragons for their teeth is bad enough. You think the Incantors are building their ranks too?”
“It follows,” Jules agreed, “You don’t need to be an alchemist to become an Incantor. Given the regenerative power of the alchemist you killed, I think you would find many people interested in gaining that strength.”
“At the cost of human lives?” Iria cursed, spreading her arms to encompass the arroyo and its corpses. “All this for one man to do what? Recover from a stab wound quicker?”
“I don’t know what limits an Incantor has. It’s probably safe to say that recovering from near-fatal wounds is not the full scope of what they can do.” Jules sighed. “At any rate, speculation gets us no closer to tracking them down.”
“What next, then?” Andrew asked. Hunting people down for any reason was entirely out of his skill set.
“If we knew their objective, we could find out where they will be next,” Jules suggested. “What can you tell us about Mohandi? He’s our best bet at finding these Incantors. The alchemist is too much of a wild card. We don’t even know his name.”
Iria tilted her head back to look up at Maeis high overhead. The red moon was bright enough to cast shadows. “I do not know Mohandi personally, only by reputation. He is known for his passionless judgment of criminals and swift action. If he sees something that needs to be corrected, he takes immediate steps to solve it. His critics say he overreacts sometimes, but that could simply be opinion.”
“He’s a colonel,” Andrew pointed out. “His critics must not have been very influential.”
“Every powerful man has detractors.” Jules slashed her hand, rejecting Andrew’s comment. “In some manner, the strength and number of one’s critics is a measure of your success.”
“Perhaps in Salian politics,” Iria said, “Among the balai, total trust cannot be placed unless such critics are found to be vocal for their own gain.”
“Which I assume was the case with Mohandi, then, or the critics became vocal sometime after he had gained his rank,” Jules pointed out. “Iria, what happens if someone lodges a complaint against a balai?”
Even through the sand mask, Andrew could tell Iria was puzzled. “Why would someone complain about a balai?”
“I dunno,” he said with a wry smile. “Leaving bodies lying around in an abandoned warehouse?”
“Why would someone complain about that? They assaulted me, and I reported it immediately.”
“Different cultures, Andrew,” Jules chuckled. “But even so, someone must complain eventually, even if, as you put it, for their own gain.”
“Nobody would complain about the actions a balai took.”
“But you just said Mohandi has critics,” Andrew pointed out.
“Only among the balai. And they never speak ill of his actions, only that perhaps there could have been other solutions.”
“Fair enough. The real question,” Jules said, “is why would a generally respected colonel of the balai turn traitor and join the ranks of the Incantors, murdering Rangers to do it?”
Iria fell silent, her hunched shoulders betraying her conflicting emotions. Eventually, she spoke, sadness heavy in her voice. “The Emperor Asim Akram has grown old. Some would say senile. His Speakers act with undue power and make policy that the Emperor of old would never have condoned.
“I tell you this in confidence, Lady Jules Vierra and Speaker Andrew Condign. It is not widely known even among the balai. There is… unrest. Mohandi may be gathering power to challenge the Speakers and restore honor to the Empire.”
The trio stood in silence for a few minutes before Andrew spoke. “How much do you want to bet,” he said bitterly, “that Trent Priah knows and is starting the war because of it?”
“I do not know this Trent Priah,” Iria responded, “but Salia’s war could not have come at a worse time.”
“Trent is smart,” Jules nodded, “and his moves gathering power in Salia have been well-crafted, but his connection with the Incantors is unknown. I doubt he has the reach to affect two nations with his schemes.”
“This is all guesswork,” Iria said irritably. “Without speaking with Mohandi or this Trent Priah, we get nowhere.”
“So, what, then? We track down Mohandi?” Andrew shook his head. “If it was that easy, you’d have done it by now, Iria.”
“It is safe to assume,” Jules said firmly, “that the Incantors know of Mohandi’s plans.”
“We do not need to track down Mohandi,” Iria said suddenly, “we only need to go where he will be next.”
“And where is that?” Andrew asked.
“Khar Bora,” Iria answered. “The Imperial Palace.”
The trip back to Chia was uneventful, other than finally arriving at daybreak completely exhausted. They had been up for twenty-four hours straight. Rajya claimed there were dragons following them at a distance, but nobody else heard or saw anything. Andrew chalked it up to nerves but still felt a vast surge of relief when they finally exited the Sunwell and got back to normal, flat desert.
“We have two options,” Iria said that evening after they had all slept through the majority of the day. “Option one, return to Nok Norrah. There we could resupply. If you wish, I would relieve you of responsibility for tracking down this alchemist, and you could continue with your original diplomatic mission.
“Option two, we go directly from Chia to Khar Bora. That route is less traveled, but there are enough oases and sip-wells along the way that we could make the journey safely. It would save us several days compared to traveling back to Nok Norrah first.”
“I am not giving up on the hunt,” Jules said grimly, “and we have to go to Khar Bora anyway.”
“It will be dangerous,” Rajya said.
“And the passage from Nok Norrah isn’t?”
“It is less so. We will be traveling along the Sunwell going south,” Iria said, sketching it out on the tabletop with a bit of spilled water, “The real land is between us and our destination. There are three routes through or around. Far to the west is the ocean path, but that route takes weeks to travel even with a fast horse. In the middle is the central route. It is the most safe, with regular watch towers one could seek refuge in. Our route is here,” she drew a path following the Sunwell south then cutting through the real land. “It is least traveled and there are no watch towers.”
“Is there a threat of dragons?” Jules asked.
“There are always dragons,” Rajya replied.
“Since we must travel at night, there is a good chance we will encounter dragons,” Iria confirmed.
“Must we fight them?” Andrew asked.
“Only if we have no other choice. A good horse can outrun a dragon. If we keep our eyes open and our senses sharp, we will have enough warning to see one coming and escape.”
“Not exactly a sure plan,” Jules muttered.
“As I said,” Iria smiled tightly back, “it is a dangerous route.”
“If Andrew can’t speak with them, I’m confident we can handle a dragon attack,” Jules said, “but only as a last resort.”
“I have yet to see your alchemy in action,” Rajya said, her tone distrustful, “but do not rely on it overmuch.”
“The sun sets,” Iria said, standing. “If we are agreed, there is work to be done before we leave.”
“I’m with you,” Jules confirmed.
“And what say you, Speaker?”
“What, you think I’m going to be left out? If I can walk into the northern dragon wastes with this crazy lady,” he nodded at Jules, “I’m not about to get cold feet now.”
The sun was a dull ball of fire on the horizon when they left Chia behind again. They rode horses this time, Ranger mounts left behind when their owners met their bloody fates in the Sunwell. Iria gave the remaining horses and their mu
les to the town, for them to sell or keep as it pleased them. In return, the locals provided them with everything they might need for the long trip south.
Andrew led his packhorse up the last ramp out of Chia and through the blue-painted ward stones hiding the town from the dragons. The horses were much less sure-footed than the mules had been, and it had been touch and go a few times as the nervous horses balked.
They walked the horses away from the town, then brought them up to a canter after the sun finished sinking below the horizon. Iria led them at a pace designed to keep the horses warm but never fast enough to get them out of breath, alternating between short periods of cantering and long periods of walking. After the week spent in the barn, the horses were eager to run and full of energy.
In one of the walking periods, Jules drew her horse up next to Andrew. “When we were leaving Chia, I saw a pigeon fly to the west toward Nok Norrah.”
“Someone sharing news of our route?” Andrew asked.
“It could be nothing.”
“Or we could have company on the road. Did you tell Iria?”
“Yes. She took a pragmatic view. Either someone alerted our enemies of our route, or they did not. Either way, we continue forward. In her words, more or less.”
“Sounds like her.”
“She’s not wrong, but I don’t like the idea of someone following us.”
Andrew turned in his saddle to look to the north.
“You won’t see them behind us,” Jules said wryly. “They won’t be leaving Nok Norrah until the morning at the very earliest.”
“I know. I’m not looking for them. Ava is still far from here. And we go further from her every minute.”
“Is she coming? That would put a damper on people attacking us on the road.”
Andrew shook his head and settled back into his saddle. “It’s too far to tell. She left to go north to Andronath nearly a week ago. I thought she’d be back by now, even if she stopped to hunt.”