by Marc Secchia
Whisper was just enjoying the final throes of a fat, five-inch wriggler upon her tongue when King Xan rampaged into the tent, wild of hair and soot-rimmed beneath the eyes. Together with his strangely mottled grey complexion, that was an alarming effect. She learned the meaning of the expression, ‘leaped like a frightened drakkid’.
He cried, “Warlock Sanfuri has a Dragon for a familiar?”
“Mrrmm …”
Daggers in paw, mouth stuffed full of worm meat. Great. Her meal had to be swallowed whole. Not half as fun as sucking out its insides, and its sticky legs made the going down her throat difficult. She supposed a certain level of worm-reluctance was understandable – had she not thought the same when faced with the prospect of sauntering down Ignothax’s throat? Taking a huge swig from her gourd of miskoa-juice, she knocked the portion down. Still squirming. Yum!
“A Dragon familiar?” shouted Xan. “Speak, o creature of magic!”
There was something about a tousle-haired madman, clad in nothing but his sleeping shorts, screaming at her across the tent that put the fear of Dragon fire into her paws. Before she knew it, she felt her fur camouflage.
“Aye, King Xan, Sanfuri has the Dragon Ignothax for a familiar,” she offered carefully, coiling her legs in case there was need of a quick getaway. She sheathed the daggers, feeling it unnecessary to bait the King’s bodyguards yet again.
His mouth twisted. “It makes sense. It interlocks perfectly, every piece a perfect fit. But it doesn’t … make …” To her shock, the King collapsed as though a whippet-draconid had bowled full-tilt into the back of his knees.
Whisper leaped!
King, chair and Whisper crashed down together. Thankfully, she had his head cradled against her stomach so she saved him a nasty blow against the wooden arm of the folding chair. She struggled to catch her breath, momentarily winded. After a few minutes of heavy breathing, seeing as the monarch appeared to possess neither the will nor the ability to rise, Whisper pushed his head aside.
“Why, my Lord, you are simply too forward this evening!” she declaimed, in a passable imitation of Rhyme’s voice.
Xola came charging into the canvas tent, haloes of blue electricity or mana – hopefully not pure mana – wreathing her hands as she stared about wildly. “Where is she? Where is that girl? Rhyme, you had better not … Whisper!”
Whisper pointed. “Does your brother often throw himself at maidens like this?”
“What did he say?”
Clearly, Queen Xola missed her jest entirely. Whisper repeated their brief conversation.
Xola prodded her comatose sibling with the point of one toe. “Great. He’s found the solution. Now, he will likely as not sleep for a week and we get to haul his sorry somnolent stuffed shirt across the canyon. Could he not have told us before collapsing in an inconvenient heap? Brothers, I tell you. You can’t take them anywhere in public. It’s just plain embarrassing.”
Whisper chuckled dutifully. Poor Xola. Social graces were not a strength, and her jokes … she was just trying too hard, wasn’t she?
Was a Whisper trying too hard to be Human? Did she even know who, or what, she was?
* * * *
Two hours before dawn, Whisper stood upon the bole of the horizontal-lying sentikor tree, coiling a length of ultra-lightweight metal-core cable in her nervous paws. The fate of Arbor might very well depend upon this moment. One end of the cable was tied to her right ankle. After coiling in her paws as much as she felt she could carry, the rest of the length was wound with great exactitude around a running wheel firmly bolted to the branch, which would be operated by two engineers, Jamax and Joz. Manrax stood at the ready with the follow-up cable, a heavier and stronger core, which would be run across on the cord first should Whisper succeed in anchoring the far side somewhere near or preferably on the old bridge supports.
For Arbor, I will fly.
She awaited the change in conditions which the Head Engineer, who had numerous times in his career worked on the general maintenance of the old air-bridge, had promised would arrive – a warm, rising breeze off the Brass Mirror called the estiphoon. That was the key to this madcap idea. She needed as much lift as she could muster to fly as directly across the canyon as possible. Much depended upon where she ended up, but as long as she could secure the initial cable in a good location, the engineering and Warlock-work would be able to proceed. Striking close to the old bridge supports, however, was the aim.
Her fur stirred.
“Wait on it,” said Manrax, eyeing an instrument held aloft by an apprentice. “Still, boy. Hold still!”
The apprentice looked as if his upraised arms were ready to drop off.
The night was glorious. A mighty band of asteroids spanned the night sky over the weakside horizon, toward Arbor, its sunstrike-facing edge thick and bright against the brilliant background of stars, while its trailing edge was a darker arc of black against the starlit skies. Eoxilor, the spiral galaxy, stood a paw-span above the mountains on the stongside horizon, as sharply defined as ever. Hope born of starlight, glimmering all the way into the depths of this phenomenal landmark, where they spat sparks off the Brass Mirror, it seemed to her. No, not mountains, her memories corrected her misapprehension. Broad-shouldered bulwarks, hiding life between their mighty buttresses. Would the Igneous Dragons not rise up against this enterprise? If they did, how did the Grey Men of Azarinthe propose to stand against them?
What had become of all the crystal dust since yesterday afternoon? Just the faintest sparkle persisted in the air, which was otherwise as clear as … well, crystal. She laughed at her lack of better descriptors. Whisper scanned the bulwarks, wondering if the protodragons stirred. When might they come? What triggered their swarming behaviour – was it environmental conditions, or population pressure, perhaps? All seemed still. Rather too still.
She smoothed her fur for the umpteenth time. Mad, mad Whisper. Now her little heart wanted to gallop over the Brass Mirror and past the stars, rather than be right here, right now. Her problems were all too present.
The Engineer spoke again, “Still waiting …”
“Quickly! Whisper!” gasped a young Element Enchanter, rushing up to her side. “The Queen … says … take these.”
“Thank you, Atraxa of the Water Element,” she said.
The girl’s face suffused with pleasure as Whisper effortlessly hauled her name out of the immensity of her ridiculously detailed, forget-nothing memory. She panted, “Queen Xola … instructions. Throw … whippet-draconids. It’s a reversal … even Sanfuri won’t … anticipate.”
Whisper eyed the trio of nut-sized gourds optimistically. They did not look terribly exciting. “Really?”
The grey-faced girl nodded solemnly. “If this works, the draconids will track the initiator of the spell instead. The Queen says, ‘Enjoy. Whisper aloft.’ ”
“Ha! Thank her –”
“Go, you useless, prattling hairball. Go!” yelled Manrax.
Stuffing the small gourds into the bracer on her right wrist, Whisper gathered her paws beneath her, talons fully extended, and sprang into action. The cord blurred beneath her, as did the sunstrike-blasted bark of the tree’s exposed upper side. Darkness. The Brass Mirror. A vast ocean of air between the stars and the mirror below. The wood-covered path narrowing toward the end of the trunk. Flashing past the two Engineers at a speed that whipped her fur back from her face and neck, and flattened her ears against her skull. She passed the secondary and tertiary branches, all bowing downward from either side of the main trunk as though already fearing to bear the brunt of the day that must come. The terrible heat. The blistering winds of morning.
She could not restrain a whoop of admittedly panicked joy as she sprinted full-pelt along the final stretch of branch and leaped as far and high as she possibly could, as if yearning to touch the stars above the bulwarks. Then, the cliff opposite began to tilt toward her as her nose drifted downward and Whisper assumed the most streamlined position that s
he knew, a position slightly modified by the Head Engineer and his staff during their interview before leaving Azarinthe.
Warm air tickled her armpits, rising past her flying body with surprising force. Whisper adjusted her glide minutely; as shallow as possible while maintaining adequate forward momentum was the mantra. She checked the crude altimeter strapped to her left wrist. The Azarinthe had never made one before, not having foreseen the need, but had used their three days on the trail so far to construct a solution on the fly. Good. Not winding down too fast. She resisted the urge to glance back over her shoulder. That would break the aerodynamic simplicity of her current position. Instead, she fixed her eyes on the target, half a mile ahead and several miles below.
One mile below the terminal line of sentikor growth, the lowest the trees would grow, stood the old air-bridge platform, and there, on its edge, Whisper spotted a familiar quartet. Whippet-draconids, a dull jade colour. She hoped they might be terminally ill, perhaps, for they looked ill-kempt and snaggletoothed. The quartet watched her approach as though she had announced her arrival with her own personal Whisper, plus trumpet fanfare and an escort of thundering Dragons. Whisper gritted her fangs. So, they wanted a fight, did they?
They would have one – when she arrived, which might be several minutes yet – for Whisper realised now that her initial target of overshooting the old platform was unattainable. Lightweight as each foot of cord might be, several thousand feet still accumulated significant mass, and the wheel also caused some unavoidable friction, despite its magic-enhanced bearings. She was forced to adjust downward, and downward again, as the seconds of her frantic heartbeat wound away and the pull on her ankle became ever stronger, dragging as if Sanfuri had strapped a boulder to her back, rather than stealing her tail. She was going to miss! Flap the arms? No, that way lay madness. Her eyes flickered to the cliffs, to the edge, to the platform and the trail leading from it, calculating. How could she land safely? How would she reach it? Closer. Closer still. Just a hundred feet remained now; she had slowed almost to a stall.
She was dinner on a long string.
Aha … Whisper palmed one of the tiny gourds. Come on, boys. Time to gobble up some of Xola’s finest brew!
An absurd thought intruded – were they actually males? Who cared? Stretching desperately for her landing place, knowing that anything at all would do, anything that did not result in the cord’s pull summarily hauling her backward into the canyon, Whisper flicked the gourd. Hit!
Nothing happened.
Quick as a bolt of lightning vying with another to be first to strike, Whisper flicked the other two gourds in succession and then pulled up sharply. Two whippet-draconids had been leaning their ugly lengths right over the stone railing in an attempt to snag the gliding Whisper. The first overbalanced and fell, howling, into the darkness. The second jerked upward, but too late. Whisper alighted on its back. Score one for the Whisper!
“Hello, scalies! Can’t catch me!”
The draconids pounced, but Whisper’s instincts caused her to spring onto an unexpected route. She slithered around her chosen draconid’s flank and beneath his belly, right into the reach of his deadly talons. The cord tightened around the whippet’s muscular lower torso. Away! Diving between the railing’s supports, Whisper realised she had just begun to truss the draconid with the weight of half a mile of cord. Could she reach the old bridge? Aye! Three loops left in her paws, forgotten … still moving in a blur, she danced away from the scything dark talons, along the top of the railing and leaped over to the old supports, before dropping at once through a metal ring three quarters of a foot in diameter and five inches thick. She rapidly removed the loop around her ankle as the cord snaked back, hissing against the metal as it tightened under its own weight. Must tie it … what … dagger! Snick! Her paws jammed the dagger sideways beneath the ring as the huge length snapped taut, dragging the whippet against the bridge. Crushing its ribs.
The other two … oh.
Whisper paused, muscles a-tremble. More draconids! Ten whippets, eleven, scrambled down the cliff face toward her, but the two ten-foot beasts on the bridge seemed fixated on something she could not see. Their heads shook; the tails whipped about frantically – excited? Whisper’s ears twitched. What?
Suddenly, the draconids began to call to each other with sharp, authoritative barks. New orders? New smells? The Enchantress’ reversal! She watched in fascination and no small relief as the whippet-draconids abruptly charged off in the opposite direction, yipping in happy anticipation of sinking their fangs into something she fervently hoped resembled a Warlock’s pulsating, bloody heart.
She did a silly, undulating dance and yelled into the still dawn, “Xola! You’re the best!”
Relief left her breathless.
Further movement tugged her eyes closer. That draconid she had tied might sever the cord with its death throes!
Palming her second dagger, Whisper swung down onto the old staging platform. The draconid hissed hatefully at her, its fiery gaze showing only the first signs of dulling. Blood trickled between its fangs, hissing into green froth where it touched the stone. The talons reached fitfully for her, but had no strength.
Dancing around those dangerous talon-blades, Whisper said, “No hard feelings.”
The draconid looked quizzically at the space where she had stood. She ghosted forward, and buried the dagger hilt-deep between the vertebrae of its neck. Viciously, she sawed the blade back and forth, severing the spinal column.
She must alert the Azar. Walking to the edge of the platform, Whisper raised her aching arm and waved. The Head Engineer would be watching for her through his powerful looking-glass – an instrument which had failed to spy any draconids, she reminded herself. The creatures had been in hiding. Waiting. Knowing she must return this way.
Aye, small she might be. But she was a Whisper, feared by Dragons.
* * * *
Just seventeen minutes later, Manrax’s wind-up cable-crawler reached her position. Whisper used her second dagger to lever it around the columns, before finally taking up a length of slack cable thoughtfully attached to the device, and running it through the loop where she had jammed her dagger. One clever, self-welding Mage-tie later, and the loop was immovable, as far as she could tell. Whisper unclipped the cable-crawler – that old Engineer obviously just made up names for his toys on the spur of the moment – and waved again, more enthusiastically this time.
To her surprise, Manrax himself was the next person to cross the canyon, riding one of his cable-crawlers while dragging a third cable. Now, she understood, they would be undertaking the delicate operation called ‘the drop’ in which the first two cables would be released from their anchors upon the sentikor tree and lowered to be welded into the equivalent structure on the far side of the air-bridge, the original Draco-Mage-forged bridge anchors. After that, the engineering teams would swing into full action.
False dawn already spread across the sky in fingers of soft pink and vivid orange. Where had the hours vanished? With sunrise came extreme danger to any person who dared to cross over.
Whisper waved at the Engineer as he approached. “You made it!”
Manrax called, “Bah. Couldn’t let the youngsters pinch your glory, could I?” He scowled fiercely over his shoulder, and then quickly checked the straps securing him to the cable. Swinging into position to land boots first, he waved at the draconid’s corpse. “History will not bother to remember a crabby old Engineer, but by azarite itself, look at the mess you’ve left. Now I’m going to have to tidy up after a heroine. I hate my job!”
She almost fell off her perch laughing, and helped pull his carryall onto the ledge.
The Head Engineer immediately fell to unpacking his tools. “Seeing as you couldn’t possibly follow orders, and I know the type from my own five daughters, trust me, I took the liberty of cramming in a few effects that’ll help us – oh, for the King’s own sake, will you stop picking your furry snout over there and com
e lend a paw?”
“I do not …” Whisper seethed at his laughter.
“Efficiency, my dear Whisper, is the lodestone of engineers everywhere. A slice of luck sure is welcome, though.”
To the tune of the old-timer’s rapid-fire orders, Whisper replaced her stuck dagger with another contraption which boasted a pulley and several levers. She threaded it onto the wire and ratcheted several levers until the grips were as tight as she could make them. Then, she passed a linked wire-grip to the Head Engineer, who looped and welded the free end around the first two cords just outside the railing.
Manrax snorted, “Whisper. You asleep there?”
“Bored rigid waiting for you, you crusty old dragonet,” she fired back.
“Start ratcheting away. I’ll just give this piece a wee little tap with my hammer. Come on, work up some tension there!”
In a few seconds, she had the cord thrumming as her hands whirled rapidly, tightening the highly leveraged ratcheting system. The stone railing began to groan as the wires tensed up.
Crack!
To her surprise, Manrax’s well-placed tap snapped one of the short columns in two. The draconid’s body immediately squeezed through the gap and catapulted into space.
“Saves the broom and pan business later,” he explained, patently delighted at her crow of appreciation. “Left a nasty smear, though. Right. Help me fix those loose ends with welds. Once we have three cables fixed to the anchor point and my lazy apprentices complete their piece on the far side, we’ll start bringing the heavy-gauge cables over – those will take a dint more fixing. Dragons’ teeth, Whisper, what are you waiting for? A bedtime story?”
Whisper bowed over the anchor ring. “Don’t you talk yourself to sleep, old man.”
With a sly grin, he said, “Well, when I was knee-high to a geode, like you, girl, I remember there were Whispers running all over the engineering shop, so to speak. Shall I tell you a few snippets about those goode olde times?”
Chapter 14: Whisper of Olde