Rune Song (Dragon Speaker Series Book 2)

by Devin Hanson

  The Rune Song reached a crescendo and Andrew shouted the last lines, releasing the built up power in a wave. The scale in his hand crumbled to dust as the last traces of vitae were pulled from it. The power of the Song hit the arches in a wave and the marble crumbled. The first columns to be hit were simply blasted to sand and dust, then, as the Song propagated through the Palace of a Thousand Arches and the Song’s impact split and split again, the columns and great plinths supporting the soaring arches only shattered and cracked. The Song faded, the echoes of destroyed stone drifted to silence, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.

  When Andrew was a small child, he had seen an enormous window of plate glass broken. A man was whipping his horse and the animal had panicked, leaping and bucking about. It had thrown a shoe and the semicircle of iron had struck the window with a sound like a drum.

  For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, then a tiny hairline fracture appeared near where the shoe had struck. During the space of a held breath, the tiny crack grew in minute increments, then suddenly the cracks ramified explosively and the window collapsed in a cascade of shards.

  Somewhere deep within the bowels of the palace, stone groaned as weight redistributed. It seemed, for a few heartbeats, that the strength of the arches would support the re-arranged weight. Then a column exploded under the millions of tons of pressure placed on it. As if it were a signal, arches all throughout the Palace began to sag and collapse.

  Like the shop window that had shattered in Andrew’s youth, the arches started buckling and collapsing, minor failures that individually didn’t have a large effect on the whole palace. Then as each failure triggered two more, the entire soaring Palace of a Thousand Arches began to collapse on the southern side.

  The noise was deafening. Andrew pressed his hands against his ears but the roar of the millions of tons of rose marble that composed the palace falling, breaking, smashing and crushing everything below it thundered through him. He felt the sound in his bones and abdominal cavity, his teeth chattered against each other. The Incantors were among that enormity of destruction; there was no way they could survive.

  Andrew felt Ava’s muscles gather beneath him and he grabbed for a spine a moment before she threw herself into the air. As the dragon spiraled upward, Andrew got a better view of the palace as it crumbled in on itself. Or, rather, as it tumbled over the promontory and into the Silent Sea. Once the arches started failing, they tugged the still standing arches in the same direction. Like dominos falling over, each one triggered a further failure in the same direction.

  The Palace of a Thousand Arches had stood hundreds of feet tall, a marvel of engineering and testament to the skill of the Maar. All that height began to fold in on itself as it tipped over. The Silent Sea surged in gargantuan waves as ton after ton of marble crashed into it.

  The bridges were some of the last arches to fall, but collapse they did, leaving the promontory isolated by cliffs. Andrew watched, stunned, as the last of the arches in the palace fell, leaving a mountain of rubble on the promontory. The shattered masonry was still shifting and settling, and would likely continue for hours to come.

  “Tiny gods. Jules!” Andrew gasped. He had been so caught up in the necessity of stopping the Incantors, then in the awesome destruction of the palace, that he had completely forgotten about anything else. “Ava, I must return to where you picked me up. Hurry!”

  “We go,” Ava acknowledged, and dropped into a screaming dive that stung tears from Andrew’s eyes.

  Iria stared upward in shock as the world seemed to tip over. For a few seconds, she couldn’t understand what was happening. Her inner ear told her the ground was steady and her eyes told her something else entirely.

  It was the stars staying stable in position overhead that finally snapped the illusion of tipping into what it really was: the columns, arches and buttresses overhead were falling over to the south, seemingly in slow motion. In truth, there was nothing slow about it, but the height and size of the palace overhead gave it the illusion of grace.

  Jules Vierra was staring upwards as well, her eyes wide with shock. Iria grabbed her arm and screamed into her ear to be heard over the swelling thunder of falling stone. “We need to move! Now!”

  Without waiting for the Salian to acknowledge her, Iria started running for the collapsed front of the Hall of Morning. Others among the balai saw her running and understood her intent. Move to the north, away from where the falling arches were going to land. They were lucky, in a way. The Hall and, more directly, the Court of the Rising Sun, were on the very northward edge of the palace. Standing by the cliff face of the promontory, there were no arches or other structures directly overhead. Given the general southward movement of the stone, it was possible they could find an area of calm within the disintegrating palace.

  Iria clambered up the shattered façade of the hall, running with her knees bent, hunched over for balance. Jules ran by her side, then outdistanced her as her longer legs and reach allowed her to simply vault obstructions that Iria had to climb over. The Salian reached the crest of the rubble mound and skidded to a halt, shouting something that was buried in the deafening clamor of falling stone.

  It only took Iria a few more seconds to reach the peak beside the Lady Vierra and she saw what had given the other woman pause. The Court was teeming with dragons. Maybe teeming wasn’t the right word, but Iria had never seen more than one dragon at a time until a few days ago, and the sight of the score or so of dragons made her heart race.

  Ultimately, there was no choice. They could stay and be crushed beneath a hundred tons of falling marble in a few seconds, or they could sprint for the slender promise of safety by the cliff edge. If they hesitated any longer, it would be meaningless anyway. With a shout of defiance, Iria dashed down the sloped rubble to the Court, the ex-balai following after her in a wave.

  The dragons, it seemed, had other things to occupy their attention. Iria tucked her head down and sprinted for the ledge, fighting to keep her balance as enormous blocks of masonry crashed to the earth, pulverizing anything they landed on. She saw one of the smaller dragons get crushed in a welter of gore by a tumbling keystone the size of a hay wain. A pair of running balai twenty feet to her left vanished beneath a cascade of smaller marble blocks. If she looked up to try and predict what was coming she would trip on the clutter that filled the courtyard, so she didn’t bother trying to dodge the falling rubble; she simply ran and trusted to luck.

  Iria dodged around a dragon, breathing hard, her lungs threatening to seize on the clouds of stone dust billowing through the air, and saw the manicured shrubbery of the terrace directly ahead. The landscaping had been torn in great furrows by dragons climbing up over the cliff edge and the elegant statuary and stone furnishings had been knocked askew and crushed beneath their weight.

  She risked a glance upward and saw open sky overhead, bespeckled with the soft shimmer of stars. She had never felt so glad to be out under the empty night. Jules was following close on her heels and the Salian woman turned, focusing upward at the Palace of a Thousand Arches as it collapsed in on itself. Balai were still streaming across the Court, hindered now by the rubble that had already fallen. As Iria watched, a cluster of them were buried beneath a collapsing arch, killed instantly beneath tons of marble.

  “Ban!” Jules cried, one hand outstretched, “Ban’datola!”

  For a moment, it seemed like nothing was happening, then Iria saw a tumbling pillar collide with something invisible and ricochet away with astonishing force. All over the courtyard, the stone raining down on the balai was turned aside.

  Iria stared at Jules in astonishment. The noblewoman’s face was locked in concentration, the dragon tooth in her hand clutched tight in a white-knuckled fist. The brief description of alchemy she had been given gave her a rudimentary understanding of vitae and its use, but the shield Jules was holding was huge, dozens of times larger than the shield Mohandi had used. And yet she held it in place moment aft
er moment. With every beat of Iria’s pounding heart, she expected the shield to collapse and the balai making their way through the last of the rubble field to be crushed beneath the falling rock.

  Then the tooth clutched in Jules’s hand collapsed into drifting dust and the shield failed. A last handful of balai, limping from earlier injuries, disappeared behind billowing clouds of pulverized marble. Jules cried out, her voice lost in the thunder of the cataclysm, twin tracks of tears carving channels through the dust on her face.

  The collapse seemed to continue for ages, but it really only took a few minutes. Of the balai that had sought shelter in the Hall of Morning, only three score had escaped to the edge of the promontory. There were others that had retreated into the buildings and tunnels, but their numbers were unknown.

  Gradually, Iria found herself becoming aware of just how thoroughly the palace had been destroyed. Much of the air was still filled with clouds of dust, but the sky above was clear of the great arches that had dominated it not ten minutes earlier. The light of Maeis shone through the drifting clouds, adding a ruddy glow to the scene.

  How many people had been within the palace when it collapsed? Hundreds? A thousand? None of them could have possibly survived the destruction. The Incantors who had fled into the palace were certainly dead as well, assuming the Speaker had managed to cut them off before they reached the bridges to the city.

  The totality of the destruction stunned her. A single arch falling would have been considered catastrophic yesterday. She couldn’t wrap her mind around what had happened. Nas Shahr, as a nation, was no more. How could it be, when the Emperor and all the nobles that lived in the palace were dead? There were dozens of cities and hamlets within the empire and they would be largely unaffected by the loss of the palace, but the central cohesion that made them a nation was gone.

  They had saved the people of Khar Bora and of Nas Shahr, but at what price? How many would die in the inevitable power struggles to come?

  Surprisingly, Iria found she was too weary to care. Her oath to protect the people of Nas Shahr had been under the guidance and aegis of the Emperor. Without an empire, the balai were just vigilantes. The righteousness and strength of the balai was gone as thoroughly as if the Emperor himself had disbanded them. They largely had no personal wealth, no home, and no families. All the balai had left now was their newfound rage against the Incantors and a fresh oath to Andrew Condign, Dragon Speaker.

  A dragon’s bellow pulled Iria out of her reminiscing just in time to see a dragon come hurtling out of the billowing dust clouds. It was a younger dragon, only half the size of the one she had ridden on her way to Khar Bora, but it was still higher at the shoulder than she could reach without jumping and twenty feet from horned snout to tail spines.

  Iria dove to the side, but her balance was off and her dive was more of a face plant than anything else. From her new vantage point on the ground, Iria couldn’t make out what was going on. She pushed herself to her feet just in time to see the dragon spin about with grace that belied its size, and charge again. This time, Iria saw who the dragon was attacking.

  Jules threw out an arm and barked a command. For a fraction of a second, a shield blurred the air then the dragon slammed into it and Jules tumbled away. The dragon’s impact translated through the shield and threw the Salian a few yards before she crashed back to the earth, rolling for several feet before fetching up against a slab of marble carved in decorous curlicues.

  Iria shouted at the dragon, trying to draw its attention for a moment and give Jules time to regain her feet, but her words fell on deaf ears as the dragon wheeled about and lined up for another charge. The Lady Vierra staggered to her feet, her face white, blood starting to sheet down her face from a scalp wound.

  The dragon lowered its head again and launched forward, kicking up plumes of dirt from under its clawed feet. Jules’s mouth was moving, but her eyes were having trouble focusing. The previous impact had stunned her and whatever alchemy she was trying to bring to bear failed to manifest. Iria saw the defeat in Jules’s eyes, could almost see the thoughts written on her face. Her alchemy had failed and there was no time to escape.

  Jules’s hand fell to her runed blade, but before she could draw, the dust clouds parted and another dragon leapt over her shoulder, landing with a ground-shaking crash. Iria recognized the patterning on the newly arrived dragon’s hide a moment before Nerivokosso body-checked the charging dragon and slammed it into the ground.

  The first dragon, while huge, was dwarfed by the ancient male. Lambent blue light gathered around Nerivokosso’s fanged jaws and sparks snapped and crackled, arcing between his teeth. The younger dragon tumbled before flailing to its feet and launched itself at Nerivokosso. With casual strength the older dragon swatted his berserk assailant out of the air with one enormous clawed hand and snapped his jaws around the dragon’s neck.

  Lightning cracked as the built-up energy in Nerivokosso’s mouth discharged and the young dragon flailed madly as its muscles spasmed. With a surge, Nerivokosso flung the dragon back into the dust clouds then moved to stand guard over Jules. The ancient dragon bellowed then voiced a rolling growl that rose and fell.

  More dragons replied from within the courtyard, and Iria got the distinct impression that Nerivokosso was warning the others to stay away.

  A new flicker of movement caught Iria’s eye and she twisted around, wondering what else could go wrong this night. She caught the impression of widespread leathery wings that seemed to blot out the sky before a sudden blast of wind kicked sand into her eyes. Iria threw an arm up and staggered as the ground shook again.

  Iria blinked her eyes clear and took a shaky step back. The newly arrived dragon had about the same mass as Nerivokosso, but this one was lean and strung out, almost willowy in comparison, and nearly twice the size of the ancient male, with a wingspan that spanned nearly the entire Court.

  A human figure slid down from the dragon’s neck and dropped lightly the last ten feet to the ground. The Speaker had returned. Iria felt a wave of relief wash over her. It was irrational, she knew, but somehow, with Andrew here, she suddenly knew everything was going to be okay.

  Nerivokosso bowed his head to Ava and stepped back, clearing the path for Jules to run out from behind him and throw herself into Andrew’s arms. Avandakossi threw her head back and bugled into the night, an unmistakable cry of victory.

  Andrew sipped at a mug of the bitter Maar seaweed brew and sighed as he felt the warmth rush through him. Jules sat beside him, wrapped in a blanket and nursing her own mug. A bandage was wrapped around her head, giving her a slightly lopsided appearance. Over his shoulder, Ava loomed. He hadn’t had much chance to talk to the dragon, but he got the feeling she was angry, whether at him or herself, he couldn’t tell. What was abundantly obvious, though, was the homicidal protectiveness the dragon exuded. It would go poorly for anyone, human or dragon, who made a threatening move toward her kossirith.

  Balai moved about the knoll, tending to the rows of staked horses and the myriad of other minor tasks. They shot glances toward Ava, their faces ranging between disbelief and awe. None dared to venture within a stone’s throw, and for the moment, Andrew was happy to have a few moments of peace and quiet. Iria was out there, limping, but working with seemingly endless energy to get the balai organized.

  The chaos following the auction had turned into a wearying sweep for survivors. The dragons had retreated to surround the promontory on all sides to ensure nobody escaped, but Andrew got the impression it was more of a token effort than an actual insurance policy. Indeed, in the very early hours of the morning, the dragons had moved away from their guard positions and started trickling back into the real lands. Ava said the corruption in the city was gone; the smell of the Incantors, or however the dragons detected them, was gone from the city and the promontory.

  The balai swept the wreckage searching for survivors, but it became pretty obvious that nobody above ground had survived the collapse of the P
alace of a Thousand Arches. Likewise, anyone who had been in the upper stories and fallen into the Silent Sea was equally dead.

  Underground, within the system of tunnels carved into the stone of the promontory, those who were lucky enough to be within when the arches fell had survived unscathed beyond the odd bruise from falling brickwork. The people who tended to live and work in the tunnels were the balai and associated civilians, all of whom had left the promontory near dawn and formed up a sort of tent city outside one of the gates. There were over a thousand people in the tent city, more than half of them balai.

  Andrew was surprised at how little confusion there had been in the end. Most people Andrew knew would have fallen into a panic if they discovered their city and government had been destroyed overnight, but these Maar were made of sterner stuff. That didn’t stop them from being a little shell-shocked, but they simply bent their necks and got to work rather than wailing and bemoaning their fate.

  For his part, Andrew got out of the way and let the balai sort it out. Iria seemed to have stepped up into some sort of leadership role, and the balai followed her orders, carrying out the evacuation and camp formation as if it were a drill they practiced annually. Once Jules was safe in his arms and the desert dragons had dispersed, Andrew had allowed the events of the night catch up with him. The feeling that he had betrayed the people of Khar Bora slowly faded into a burning rage at the Incantors.

  Andrew didn’t think he was one to fall into a spiral of grief and self-doubt, but he had a hard couple hours. It was the support of Jules and Avandakossi, reassuring him over and over again that it had been the right thing to do that gradually allowed Andrew to redirect his emotions toward the Incantors. He had done something terrible, there was no getting around that, but the alternative, allowing the Incantors to escape, would have caused the desert dragons to destroy the entire city just to make sure no corruption remained. If he allowed himself to second guess his actions and wonder about possible alternatives, he would go slowly insane. There were too many people still relying on him to allow that.