by Devin Hanson
Finally reaching the door, Corvis rapped it with a knuckle and swung it open. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom, but gradually he made out the features of Trent Priah, his son.
“Hello, Father,” Trent said coolly. He was sitting at a desk, a platter in front of him with what looked like raw meat on it. A single candle illuminated half of Trent’s face, the other half was steeped in darkness. An open book sat on the table next to the candle.
“Nice place you have here.”
Trent leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?” Corvis asked dryly. “It has been six months since you lost the majority of my fleet. No progress has been made on rebuilding. None!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Trent rolled his shoulders in an elaborate shrug. “The ships are nearly complete. Just lacking in finishing touches.”
“The engines are still cast iron,” Corvis pointed out. “Iron engines don’t fly.”
Trent sighed. “What do you want me to say, Father? No trade with Andronath means no vitae. No vitae means no airon. No airon means no airships.”
“You mean to say you have no vitae?” Corvis scoffed. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Oh, I have vitae,” Trent said, a smile spreading on his face that slowly turned into a manic grin. “I’ve never had so much vitae.”
“Well,” Corvis said, “If you have so much vitae, why no airships?”
Trent waved a hand, dismissing it. “The airships aren’t important.”
“Not important? Burn you, Trent! Our wealth was built with airships. Out power depends on it! Without airships, there is no noble title, no chance at the throne!”
“It was a good scheme,” Trent admitted. “But we never took into account Jules Vierra being so difficult. She’s abdicated, Father, renounced all position within the Salian court. That plan won’t work anymore. Besides. I’ve something better now.”
Corvis stared at his son, wondering when cordial dislike had taken the downward dive into hatred.
“What?” Corvis said, throwing his arms out to indicate the Old Hollow. “This? This is a slum, Trent.”
Trent rolled his eyes. “The Old Hollow is just convenient, Father. It is but a stepping stone.”
Corvis rubbed his face with one hand. “Help me out here, son. You’re telling me my life’s work is a failure, that your family’s goals mean nothing to you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Just that building airships is menial, Father.” Trent stood up and waved a hand. “Igan!” Candles all around the room burst into flame with a string of popping sizzles. “Look at me, Father!”
Corvis flinched at the display of alchemy, and had to force himself to stand straight and look upon his son in the bright light. Trent’s skin was crisscrossed with dozens of hair-thin silvery scars, the kind that Corvis was familiar with in his own mirror. But Corvis had acquired his scars decades ago, and they had faded over the years. None of the scars on Trent had been there a year ago. And so many of them! There wasn’t an inch of skin that wasn’t scarred.
“What? Tiny gods, Trent, what happened to you?”
“Immortality.” Trent smiled and the scars on his face pinched and warped the skin around his eyes and mouth, turning the expression ghoulish. “You see the results of what the Dragon Speaker did to me. He slashed my skin to ribbons, tore my flesh to shreds, but was still unable to kill me. This is what I’ve been building here, Father, this is what is more important than a few airships.”
“How?” Corvis stepped closer, unconsciously raising one hand toward his son’s face, disbelieving what his eyes were showing him.
“The secrets of alchemy. This is what the old fools in the Guild are afraid of. This is what alchemists can become without the laws and restrictions of antiquated organization. This is what I’m building here in Ardhal. An army of immortal alchemists, more powerful than any army this planet has ever seen.”
Corvis stared at his son in horror. Trent had been handsome the last time he saw him. This horribly scarred… creature couldn’t possibly be him. But Corvis had never been one to lie to himself. This man was his son.
“Show me,” he whispered hoarsely.
Trent smirked and picked the knife up off his plate. Without hesitation, he drove the blade through the meat of his forearm. “Kian'skalani'kion,” he chanted, drawing the knife free and turning to show Corvis as the wound sealed itself. Trent wiped the blood away, revealing nothing left from the horrible wound but another fine silver scar, and tossed the knife back into the plate with a clatter.
“By the gods,” Corvis muttered. His eyes fell on the knife, and the meat next to it. “Is that a heart?”
Trent sliced a piece off, careless of his own blood on the knife and held it up for inspection. “Indeed. The key to my new power.”
Corvis swallowed and tried not to be sick as Trent popped the ragged morsel into his mouth and chewed. In the flickering candlelight, the play of the scars on Trent’s face made his visage into a mask of horror. “The others… the other alchemists, they share in this power as well?”
Trent shook his head and cut himself another bite. “No, only a few. The Guild was watching for people like me and would have noticed. But we are trying to find ways to increase our numbers. The thrice-cursed Speaker destroyed many of us in Nas Shahr and made it impossible to create more… for now.”
“These hearts,” Corvis asked, dreading the answer, “they come from animals?”
Trent barked a laugh. “Power has its price, Father. You of all people should know that. How many died so you could be rich? This is no different.”
Corvis nodded slowly. He considered drawing his rapier and running it through what was left of Trent’s heart, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. And he wasn’t sure if it would work, even assuming he was fast enough to beat Trent’s alchemy. “The townsfolk are afraid,” he said instead, putting together cues he had picked up on since arriving in Ardhal. “How many have you killed?”
Trent shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“I guess it doesn’t.” An idea occurred to him, a possible way to get what he needed out of his son after all. “There are too few people living in Ardhal. Come home to Galdaris. A few deaths would go unnoticed there.”
Trent smiled, showing teeth red with blood. “A capital notion.”
“I will help you were I can, my son. But,” Corvis hardened his voice. “Not until after those airships are flying. Do you understand?”
Trent’s face was a rictus, his laughter off-key. “Perfectly, Father. Perfectly.”
Chapter 2
The Ruins of Vanali
Wind howled past Andrew as the dragon Avandakossi dipped into a steep, spiraling dive. Goggles kept the wind from blinding him and riding leathers turned away the worst of the wind chill, but the cold of the mountains sank bony fingers into his flesh wherever there was a gap in the leathers.
He shivered and gripped the harness straps tighter as Ava’s dive bottomed out. They were far above the tree line at their current altitude and despite the summer sun baking the land far below, temperatures still occasionally dipped below freezing at night.
“What are you showing me?” he called to the dragon.
“Patience, Avandir. You will see it soon.”
“Soon” for a dragon was an ephemeral concept. Ava could be talking about the next five minute or sometime next year. The dragon was well over two thousand years old, a number Andrew had extrapolated from anecdotes rather than fact.
Andrew put their destination from his mind and took a moment to enjoy the freedom of flight. He had spent too long cooped up in the Academy Alchemic the last few weeks and Ava’s showing up outside the walls of Andronath had come like a reprieve.
“The old humans had many cities,” Ava said. Despite her voice rumbling just on the edge of Andrew’s hearing over the rush of wind, he could plainly understand what she was saying.
Ava rumbled a laugh. “All of Nain is dragon territory.”
“Nain?”
“Do you not know the name of the world, Avandir? I thought you educated.”
“I haven’t heard it called that. The Salians call it Luciana.”
“Young thinkers,” Ava declared. “Ask your desert killer for the proper name. She will know the right of it.”
“We go to see a city?” Andrew asked, trying to change the subject.
“You have need of land,” the dragon replied cryptically.
Ava dropped into another dive, following the slope of the mountain as it plunged down. In the far distance, Andrew saw a glimmer of sunlight reflecting off something.
“What is that? Ahead and to the left.”
“You see the ocean. We are nearly there.”
Trees were beginning to fur the mountain slopes, softening the edges of hard rock. Streams and ponds flashed by in the valley below, too fast for Andrew to catch more than a glimpse. Soon, the meandering streams merged together into a river that cut a wide gorge before emptying out into the ocean. A broad delta spread past the gorge cliffs into the blue waters of the ocean.
“We are here.”
It took Andrew a minute or two of peering before he could figure out where ‘here’ was. A gleam of white caught his eye, and as Ava circled lower, gradually slowing down until she drifted along on thermals, it resolved into a partially collapsed dome of marble. Trees grew all around the building, even through the hole in the dome.
As Ava glided down the gorge toward the delta, Andrew made out more stone structures dotting the tops of the cliffs. There were hints of a road, or roads, that persisted despite the millennia that had passed since the last time humans had lived here. The city, if that’s what Andrew was looking at, must have been enormous. Khar Bora, the largest city Andrew had ever seen, could easily fit into only a part of these ruins, and on only one side of the cliffs.
The gorge widened until it was nearly a mile across before the headlands dropped away to the sea in a series of tumbledown cliffs. In the floodplains between the two cliffs, Andrew caught glimpses of pillars and other stonework, the details blurred by thousands of years of silt and erosion.
Ava swung around over the delta then came back in along the northern cliff face, closer this time. Shadowed overhangs resolved into holes carved into the cliffs, dozens of them, hundreds, even. As the dragon drifted alongside the cliff, Andrew began to understand that the stone was honeycombed with tunnels, many of them large enough for Ava to fly down comfortably.
“What is this place?” Andrew asked, staring at the tunnels in the cliffs as they drifted by. With one hand he unlaced the front of his riding leathers. The valley and the ocean had combined to create a climate that was warm enough to make him sweat. The air was thick with humidity, and his goggles, still cold from the high mountain air, were fogging.
“We are in Vanali, the seat of human power on this continent before the breaking. Here the Koss were born and the kossirith, the Dragon Speakers, ruled. It is your birthright.”
Andrew shook his head, but didn’t take the dragon up on it. He knew a losing battle when he heard one. “Were you born here?”
“As I said.”
Ava dipped into a shallow dive, turning to approach a particularly large tunnel. The dragon’s wings only filled half the space, and she glided in easily before cupping her wings and coming in to land gently. Off to the sides, more tunnels disappeared into the gloom. Dust, dirt and windblown leaves covered the floor and piled in the corners, but Andrew could tell that this place had been built with human hands. The stone floor was flat, the walls came up at right angles. Worn cavities in the walls were spaced at regular intervals, as if they had once held torches or some other source of light.
“This is the royal aerie,” Ava said, her rumbling voice echoing off the walls. “It is here that the king and his kossi lived.”
“The kings of this place,” Andrew asked as he unclipped himself from the riding harness and slid to the ground, “they were all kossirith?”
“They were.”
Andrew stared at the ceiling high overhead. He would have to measure it to be sure, but he guessed the tunnel was nearly twenty yards high and thirty yards across. All but the largest buildings in Andronath could fit within this one tunnel. The ceiling had the rough claw marks in it that Andrew had first seen in the cave where he had met Ava. Whatever these tunnels had been originally, dragons had worked at enlarging them.
The mulch under Andrew’s feet was deep, and he kicked away leaf litter and crumbling dirt until he found the smooth stone floor beneath. No animals lived in this aerie, at least not in the wide open spaces. He would have to take care wandering around, though. He wouldn’t want to stumble upon a bear or a wildcat.
“How many people lived here, Ava? This place is enormous.”
“Millions,” Ava said sadly. “None survived the wrath of the males.”
Andrew turned slowly, seeing in his mind’s eye the destruction and devastation the males would have caused as they exacted their vengeance, mad with rage. He couldn’t even imagine what a million people would be like, let alone multiple millions. How did you feed that many people? Andronath had a population of around twenty thousand, and it was a constant struggle to find enough food for them. How many cows, how many sheep, would that many people eat in a day? In a year? He had so many questions and the only one he could ask them to was Ava, who had little interest in the mundane affairs of men.
“Did you ever meet the king?” he asked.
Ava ducked her head down and swiveled around until she could regard Andrew from a few feet away. The iridescent iris of her eye caught the light and sparkled in shards of gold. “The king was my mother’s kossirith,” she said with pride in her voice. “He presided over the recognition ceremony of my own kossirith.” She blinked the nictitating membrane over her eye. “He was the first to fall when the betrayals began.”
“Why are you showing me this place, telling me these things? You have never spoken much of the times before the breaking.”
“You are kossirith, Avandir. You must know of these things, for when you are king.”
“I don’t understand,” Andrew said peevishly. “I never asked to be king.”
Ava laughed, the throaty booms echoing off the walls. “You are kossirith.”
As if that explained things, Andrew thought gloomily. Everyone seemed to assume that’s what he wanted. First the wardens started addressing him as “Lord Speaker”, and then it spread to the alchemists and to the citizens of Andronath. It didn’t help that he couldn’t brush his teeth without an honor guard of wardens watching his back. Now even the most uptight alchemist treated him like visiting royalty. If only he had been faster in nipping the title in the bud.
Speaking of the wardens, Iria was going to be furious he had left the city without telling her. The diminutive woman was fiercely protective of him and he didn’t doubt she was pacing the walls right now thinking up some grim exercise to repay him for his thoughtlessness.
“You think of your people,” Ava said, once again watching him from a disconcertingly close distance.
Andrew scowled. “Of course I do. Jules is going to kill me for leaving without telling her.”
“As it should be.”
“You’re not helping,” Andrew sighed. “I still don’t know why you brought me here. It’s fascinating, for sure, but what am I supposed to do?”
“You are kossirith,” Ava said unhelpfully.
“Well, it’ll take an army of workers to sweep these aeries out, and the tiny gods only know how many more people to make them livable again. If you think this is going to be my new kingdom, you’ve got it wrong, my friend.”
The dragon merely blinked at him, then swung her head away. “I have shown you Vanali. It is time to return.”
Andrew nodded.
As interesting as seeing the ancient city was, it was time to get back. He turned to the dragon and reached for the dangling harness straps. From the corner of his eye, he saw the quality of the light change as something huge swept past the aerie opening.
“Ava, what–?”
“Be silent, Avandir,” Ava hissed and whipped around, interposing herself between Andrew and the opening.
The light streaming in through the cavernous opening darkened once more, then a dragon dropped into view and landed with a crash, plowing furrows through the litter on the ground. Sparks flew as the dragon’s talons caught on the stone before grinding to a final halt.
Peering out from behind Ava, Andrew could see that the dragon was roughly the same size as Avandakossi, but thinner and longer. Where Ava was a deep burnished red, almost black in places, this dragon was nearly yellow, with wings of a darker orange hue.
“Avandakossi,” the dragon thundered. “Imagine my surprise when I saw males flying north with rumor of your return in their minds. It has been centuries since you were here last.”
“Benettikossi,” Ava rumbled. She seemed to swell in size, her scales standing on end, her wings half-spread, her jaws hanging open. From behind, Andrew felt a palpable wave of threat coming off the dragon. In all the time he had known her, Ava had never displayed like that, even when an airship was attacking her nest.
“It has been so long,” Benettikossi hissed, pacing sinuously across the opening. The dragon’s tail vibrated against the floor with a chattering sound. “I had to come and visit. Catch up on old times. You look well, it is good that you have been eating.”
To Andrew, there seemed something wrong with Benettikossi’s voice, high-pitched and almost falsetto, dripping with fake charm.
“Be gone,” Ava snapped in reply. “You bring darkness on this day.”