by Marc Secchia
Whisper said, “Rhyme, would you tell me why Drex needed a morning’s respite?”
Rhyme gave her the look she usually reserved for the Warleader’s back. Her voice held an edge as polished as her well-honed axes as she snapped, “Don’t pry, Whisper. Drex will speak in his own time – if he will speak.”
“Where’s he from?”
Now, her persistence earned a vexed frown. “His land is called Illuxor. It lies very far across the Brass Mirror – or at least, across an inlet thereof – as best I understand the geography,” replied the Princess. “Illuxor seems very different to our setting in every way, but they suffer from sunstrike just as we do. I’ve known Drex since I was a little girl. Twelve years. I’m nineteen, now. According to the tale Drex tells, he was caught up in a windstorm he called a tornado and hurled high into the sky, and then carried off over the Ocean by the mighty winds aloft. Almost frozen through, he was saved by a type of Dragon no scholar has ever heard of; the beast brought him to safe landing near our fair city. We treated his wounds and nursed him back to full health, and he has since become a mighty warrior and leader of men. A strange tale that marries in some ways with what you related regarding your treatment by the Chalky Cloud-Dragon, and before that, the Arboreal.”
Whisper hid her prurient interest carefully. “Fascinating. I must ask him about this journey from his homeland. And Rhyme, must I pay back my debt?”
She smiled at this. “According to Consul Yara, the debt is the Kingdom’s proper provision to any intelligent creature in need of aid, but your continued service and return to Arbor would be warmly welcomed. How’s that for fork-tongued dracoworm-speak?”
“Perfectly Yara,” replied the Whisper, stretching her aching knee. Soon …
“Remember, you’ve an interview with Mage Shivura later,” the Princess reminded her, with an expression that coupled a friendly wink with a devious smirk. “One must feed the Dragonkind, or they’ll grow testy and bite.”
“Don’t remind me,” said Whisper, brushing out her silky fur with an old hairbrush of the Princess’. The motion was soothing; her memories, less so. Was she so fearful, she’d flee mindlessly from the draconids like before? Where was her courage? Rhyme said she could trust the Mage, her overpaid brain-pickler. Whisper would rather have stuck her head into a whippet-draconid’s jaw and shouted a few choice insults down its throat.
Nothing impelled her to remain here at Arbor and receive a new commission. She felt nauseous just considering the idea. What did she truly owe these people? Looking within, Whisper felt disgusted that she was contemplating slinking off to join a bunch of dracoslugs beneath the nearest boulder. These people were living souls. She owed it to them to confound and defeat Warlock Sanfuri. Simple. Aye, the motivation of revenge helped, but she was surprised to find that her primary motivation was altruistic. Were Whispers constrained by moral imperatives apart from, or even concerning, the messages they delivered? Had they always been forced into compliance by blood-oath magic, or did a simple ‘please take my message’ suffice?
The Princess said, “Been chewed on enough for one lifetime?”
“Aye. A few times by the draconids, and daily by your grumpy Warleader. At least the Cartographers seem happy – and, every child I meet.”
“They all think you’re an exotic plaything. You need to hone your slurs and slights.”
Ah, so that was the key to survival in a foreign city?
“Not so easy when they’re chasing you with axes, and they’re not really playing,” Whisper said drily.
“I shall issue a decree!” Rhyme returned, with false brightness. “I really don’t issue enough decrees. Consul Yara is a proponent of the ‘viciously despotic’ style of leadership – you know, oppress the populace, sow widespread fear and unreason and have your Mage randomly blow up people you disagree with.”
Hooting with laughter, Whisper clutched her stomach. “Ooh, that still hurts.”
Suddenly, the Princess stilled. Her gaze seemed very distant.
“Rhyme, what is it?”
“Now I remember,” she said slowly. “Warlock Sanfuri was Azarinthine – he came from an Azar community, at least. They’re called the people of Grey, adherents of shadow and masters of a strange form of penetrative logic. They’re a nation of legendary cunning. Whisper, if you do travel … you’ll have to promise me you’ll be as watchful as a Dragoness brooding over her eggs, alright?”
An unaccustomed squeezing sensation gripped Whisper’s chest as she considered not only the Princess’ words, but the trepidation apparent in her manner. Without a word, she put her paws around her friend’s neck, as she had seen Humans do, and nuzzled her earlobe.
Then, she departed.
* * * *
Whispers needed to test their Whispering.
Therefore, she stole into the soldiers’ barracks to try to learn more about Human patterns of behaviour. How they only saw what was expected. How, in a blink of inattention, she might tiptoe from one ornamental bush to another. How a guard’s rhythmic scanning might be dissected, understood and used against him, although she did not fully grasp the exact field of Human peripheral vision. Upside-down, she used her talons to silently grip the stone as she passed overhead of two sentries, penetrating to the courtyard beyond.
Aye, and she was in pain. Not too many more crazy upside-down manoeuvers left in her, and she had barely started her sabotage. Right. What next?
Her best guess was that the higher-ranked officers’ accommodation would command views either of the canyon or of this pretty yet still functional central courtyard area, and that the lesser-ranked and the common soldiers, as Warleader Ammox called them, would be quartered within the caves of the soldiers’ complex itself. Perhaps the married officers lived nearby, but she understood that Captain Drex was single. Therefore, a room near the main barracks.
She crept along the rock-carved shendite pillars behind a thick layer of flowering red terhissa blossoms, testing the play of her still-healing muscles. Soon, a Whisper must run … she scrabbled over an archway, biting her rough tongue in concentration, and then lowered herself from above a window to peer past the wooden shutters, which stood half a foot ajar, into the first chamber. Not this one. This officer was cheerfully shaving himself with a crystal blade and a small, octagonal mirror turned to the light. He preened, and made what she supposed must pass for a handsome grin at himself. Another Human foible, their fondness for mirrors, most often exercised when they thought no-one was watching.
Her muscles protested the climbing as she completed a circuit of the lower rooms. Nothing. Then, a slight noise caught her sensitive hearing – a noise which was out of place.
Whisper scaled a thick vine anchored to the walls by its roots, flattening her body to pass silently through the branches. Two guards walked by beneath, discussing Dragon watching duty, whatever that was. She held her breath, before slipping up alongside a balcony. Not this one, either. The next, trimmed with a white and gold terhissa variant, was the source of the sound.
A man’s low chanting.
Creeping through a gap in the railing, Whisper slipped up to the open shutters and peered inside. Drex. What was he doing? The huge warrior knelt facing away from her. Just in front of him, on a small stand, lay a cream-coloured candle, a stick of incense slowly curling its smoke about the shadowy room, and three small bunches of white limthis-daisies, each neatly tied with a blue string bow. As she watched, the huge man stretched out prostrate before his – well, his altar? Was this some form of worship?
Again, the chanting emerged, muffled, words of a language or dialect that Whisper sensed was familiar to her memories, but not to her immediate consciousness. Nor did she recognise the incense. The sound rose and fell in an eerie cadence, on and on, as the warrior lay unmoving save for the slight resonance-vibration in his shoulders and neck. The sense that she watched something intensely private permeated her cognizance by degrees, so that she only belatedly realised how her paws stood rooted
, her talons cramped against the stone, and her heart tripped dolefully in her throat. Sacrosanct. She intruded upon grief.
Whisper felt ashamed. Her sneaking about was not half as clever as she had imagined. His mourning plainsong wreathed her soul in melancholy as she retreated, as silent as a hunting dragonet upon her paws. Raw grief clenched her throat.
This man had saved her life.
How could a Whisper presume to offer comfort?
For the longest time she crouched just beneath the edge of his small balcony, not knowing why her tears kept flowing in a mirror of his, until she realised that the song had stopped. Clothing rustled within the room. Footsteps.
Decisively, she pushed though the foliage, making plenty of noise, and made sure her talons tap-tapped across the stones to his window. She scratched at the wooden shutters.
“Whisper? So, it were yar.”
She hissed in shock. “I – I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
“No need.” His hand pressed the shutters further apart. “Come inside. I don’t often entertain. Thar’s an old bachelor’s lair, thar is.”
“You, old? Properly decrepit, everyone says.”
“Yar too kind.” He sighed heavily. “Captains get thar quarters o’ luxury. Cot. Weapons an’ armour. Yar take the chair. Desk. My favoured hammer when I’m fightin’-like real big Dragons. Y’know, ones’ll like pass yar over to snack on me.”
A sweep of his dark hand indicated a hammer that seemed capable of demolishing cities. Whisper regarded the weapon with awe. Her quick eyes took in the simple quarters of a soldier, rough wooden furniture arranged around the traditional single hexagonal room, typical of simple Arborite dwellings, she had learned. A bed, sized and additionally braced for a man of his bulk, stood farthest from the doorway. A carved ankibor-wood screen provided privacy for changing. His chair and desk stood beneath the window to catch the light, and a lantern hung by hook and chain from the centre of the flat, unadorned ceiling. His walls, however, were painted in blocks of thick, earthy colours. Whisper liked that touch.
“That’s a nice drakkid-bopper,” she offered, smiling at Drex’s regard for his hammer.
He chuckled, “Good call, lil’un. I names her ‘Ping’ for the sweet ring she makes on yar Dragons’ ’eads.”
“Didn’t I intrude?”
“A favour for a favour?” he said, extending one huge paw.
Scrambling up into his chair, Whisper said, “I owe you my life. How’s that repayable?”
“Jus’ shake yar paw, lil’un!”
She lifted her right forepaw. “Are you certain you can catch this?”
He darted his hand forward, and then laughed as she tiptoed her digits up his passing arm, before pulling her paw back. “Yarrrr!” he growled. “Right.”
“Ask away, Drex.”
“Yar trouble!” Indicating the flowers, he said, “I was married, once. Back in Illuxor.”
Quietly, he told her the tale she knew already, but in his own way, beginning with his wife Tysi and his twin sons, Mezx and Trox. They had been but one month old when he mysteriously lost control of his glider ailerons while patrolling the skies above Illuxor – sabotage, he suspected, by his own twin brother, Gorx. When Whisper queried this with a quizzical twitch of her ears, he explained the jealousy which had soured their relationship since before he could remember.
“I tried takin’ yar high canyon, lil’un, but Gorx, he were always the lil’ Dragon of our twin-pair, an’ it done strange things to thar ’ead of his.” He spread his huge mitts and gazed at his palms as if he might find the answers written there. “Gorx said he got yar dragonet’s portion an’ I were the Dragon. Like that were a good thing. He were sly an’ always lookin’ for ill, no matter what I done or said or given-like – nuthin’. Much kin be said, lil’ Whisper. Much. But yar don’t want that bitterness. I don’t. I want to throw’t in yar Brass Mirror.”
Suddenly, his voice twisted in a way that knotted Whisper’s healing gut painfully. “Our ways mean yar brother, Gorx, should take my beautiful Tysi to wife – ’cause I’m good as dead! Thar what he done! His duty! Yar want t’ know my pain, Whisper? Yar curious?”
She shook her head – no, not anymore! Yet his anguish gripped her, the graven planes of his face so harsh in that moment, she feared Drex meant to do her harm.
He growled, “I done run with Sanfuri for a time, lil’ Whisper, bein’ a killer of no conscience – I were that embittered, that warped in ’ere.” He thumped his chest. “What yar think o’ thar, eh? Secret enough for yar? Dishonour is … curse it!”
In his grief-rage, he began to slip into his native dialect, but the words and forms came easier to her mind now, as though her cognitive processing had made new connections in the background, while she concentrated on other matters. He ground his teeth in her face, just inches away, even as he tucked his hands beneath his armpits as though to prevent them from leaping out to strangle her.
“I’ve no words, Drex,” she whispered.
He roared, “Yar pityin’? I don’t want yar pity!”
“Nor I, yours!”
Now, Drex gripped the chair’s arms until the wood groaned. “What yar mean?”
Words gushed out before Whisper could stop them. “What did you see that day, Drex? A dumb, hurting animal? What moved you to swing down that rope and take wounds of your own –” she touched the scarred upper side of his left forearm, where a draconid’s talons had sliced his flesh deeply “– and spill your blood for a furry beast? Were that pity, it purchased my life. Do you hear me? And here I sit stewing in bitter rage over my animal identity issues when I should be kissing my saviour’s bootstraps – is that gratitude? No, it’s a heart maimed!”
A laugh tore from his throat. “I knew legends o’ Whispers –”
“Save a legend? For the Kingdom’s sake?”
Her head whirled at the sense of connection between his dark, unshuttered gaze and the black depths of her own gaze, the huge dark pupils in their irises of soft, shimmering apricot colours. Connection. A thread of understanding, so fragile, that linked them now, soul to soul. The breath that each of them breathed of their lives, mingling slowly, inexpressibly sweet.
A new truth struck her: I am empathic!
Drex said slowly, “I knew not thar’n, but I know yar now. Some. Thar were a creature in trouble, cryin’ for our’n King, an’ thar pain … that were the deepest cry of my own spirit, Whisper. Thar’n why I leaped. ’Cause I couldn’t not act.”
Ever so delicately, Whisper reached out her tiny paw and touched it to Drex’s cheek. “If I could – if I can – I will sniff out a way to your homeland, Drex. I will help you to return.”
“Have yar’n oath force yar to swim the Mirror?” He shook his head roughly, but then lifted his hand to engulf her paw. “Yar sweet, Whisper, but no. I refuse, respectful-like. Yar can’t. Yar don’t know what’s lost in yar’n past. Yar nowt liftin’ my burdens for … don’t yar look at me like yar stubborn, like shendite. I said no.”
“This isn’t your choice, it’s mine.”
He growled softly, “Is that so?”
“’Cause I couldn’t not act,” she said, imitating his accent inexpertly.
His cheek twitched beneath her paw as though threatening to break out in a smile. “Thar’n nowt but a lil’ tyrant. Yar saved my knee, I saw. Thanks due to yar.”
Whisper flicked out the inch-and-a-half talons of her other paw and pretended to blow nonchalantly across them. “Tyrant in training, technically. Well, I’d also need to learn a great deal more about my quasi-legendary magical powers, first – you know, I’d have to become a real Whisper …”
“Yar walk through bulwarks-like? Prance over canyons leapin’ on Dragons’ noses?”
Suddenly, they were grinning at each other – zany, happy, hopeful grins. She said, “Aye. Once the Mage has finished pickling my brains for his experiments, I’ll know everything there is to know about Whisper-magic.”
“Pocket-sized tyrant
s need thar picklin’ real good-like,” agreed the warrior, sweeping her up onto his stalwart arm. “Now, tell me, how’d yar burgle these ’ere barracks, lil’un? I’ve some soldierin’ backsides t’ boot to the next canyon if thar’n be true. An’ if that Mage singes so much as one hair on thar’n cheeky lil’ tum, I’ll be thar one makin’ me some pickled magician stew…”
Chapter 8: Whisper into Mission
THE MAGE’S LABORATORY was a low, dark chamber – hexagonal, of course – in what Drex described cheerfully as a ‘burrow for nefarious deeds of the night’. However, Whisper did appreciate how the warrior lingered, making quite sure Shivura saw him fingering the haft of his smaller war-hammer before making a few swishing motions with his hand that distinctly implied the imminent destruction of men in mushroom hats should the warrior take umbrage at his behaviour. He departed with a cheerful, “See yar later for’n briefing, Whisper,” and a beetle-browed glower for the Mage.
There was a quality in that glower that clearly set Mage Shivura on edge. Perhaps the memory of a man who claimed to have served Warlock Sanfuri. Why had he chosen to reveal that detail? Did he know how much she hated the Warlock; how that knowledge must torment her?
The disgraced warrior. She shook her head slowly, peering about the lair. Magiscience? This place looked like the shiny collection of a kleptomaniac dragonet. Great shelves covered every wall, barely making room for the doorway, stacked with miscellaneous equipment and scrolls and old, dragonhide-bound tomes. The room itself was roughly divided in two by a long workbench, behind which stood seven further, smaller workbenches for the Apprentices. Each and every surface, corner, space beneath the benches and work surface was crammed with diverse instruments and mind-boggling miscellany, leaving only the smallest, most shadowy napkin-sized spaces in which to actually work. Smoky lanterns hung from the heavy rafters, lighting the dingy scene with a reluctant air.