Rune Master (Dragon Speaker Series Book 3)

by Devin Hanson

Her gradual turn brought Andronath into view to the north. From this altitude, the city had a spiral shape reminiscent of a snail’s shell. If this was what the Speaker experienced every time he flew on dragon back, she could almost see herself braving the dangers of the dragon herself. The freedom of flight was addicting.

  Gradually, she tilted the yoke forward and brought the monoplane into a drifting, downward spiral. The fields drew closer and she tilted the nose back up, killing her speed even further. Michael had gone over the mechanics of flight with her in detail, paying close attention to how the monoplane would act during the landing sequence.

  Her first landing had been rough, bobbing up and down a dozen feet off the ground before suddenly stalling out and nose diving into the ground. She had come away from that landing with a bloody nose and a determination to do it right the next time. Her second landing had gone the opposite direction, she misjudged her altitude and the tail of the monoplane caught on the grass as she struggled to pull up. While the ‘landing’ had been easier, it was a good thing that Michael had made the body of the monoplane out of airon, as normal iron or steel would have warped from the furrow she had plowed into the grass.

  This time, as she drifted toward the grass, she had a better idea of what to expect and she evened out just before the monoplane stalled and dropped the last three feet to the grass with a thump. She slid over the grass for a dozen feet before hitting a large tuft and jarring to a halt.

  Michael and Amir reached her breathing hard from their run, as she was pulling free of the parachute straps.

  “That was a much better landing!” Michael huffed. He put one leg up on a wing to keep a gust from blowing the monoplane away and bent over with his hands braced against his raised knee. “Gah. I’m out of shape.”

  Amir, on the other hand, was breathing deeply but easily, only a light sheen of sweat on his face. “You have improved greatly, Ms. Yale. So…” he asked with a smile slowly widening, “how did you like flying?”

  “Exhilarating!” She rubbed her hip where the landing had jarred her against a support strut. “I need to practice my landings more, though. I’m nowhere near as smooth as you guys are.”

  “Try landing with the nose facing upwind,” Amir suggested. “The wind flow emulates forward movement and lets you slow down much more before stalling.”

  Michael nodded in agreement, but was too out of breath to add anything on his own.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Meria said as they started dragging the monoplane toward a small hill they had been launching from. “Flying these monoplanes is great fun and an engaging way to spend a day off work, but they could have uses beyond entertainment.”

  “Not much good for transportation,” Michael mused. “Unless just the pilot needs moving.”

  “Or small valuables,” Amir said.

  “Airships are much better suited for moving cargo,” Meria agreed. “But what about military uses? Or civil, like setting up a mail network? How long do you think it would take to go from here to Ardhal in one?”

  “Ten, maybe twelve hours,” Michael said, but a frown was on his face. “I don’t think I like the idea of the monoplane being used in a military capacity.”

  Amir shrugged the best he could while carrying the tail of the monoplane. “Military is always the first to adopt new technology. They have the money and incentive to improve the original designs. Such is the way of things.”

  “Either way,” Meria soothed, “I think there is a market available for monoplanes. I know you don’t enjoy routine transmuting, Michael, but I’ll bet it’s entirely different when you have your own business making something you love.”

  Michael got a faraway look in his eyes and he nodded. “I would enjoy doing that, but the monoplane requires far too much effort to mass produce, or even reproduce. This one is designed as a glider, and the long wings, actually, are a hindrance at high speeds. What we need are shorter wings.”

  “Such designs exist,” Amir said doubtfully. “Two wings stacked on top of each other to provide extra lift and rigidity to the wings, but nobody has ever managed to get one off the ground for more than a few hundred yards.”

  “A biplane!” Meria exclaimed. “Sorry. It seemed to fit.”

  Michael smiled. “I’d like to see a sketch of that design, Amir.”

  “When we return to the city,” Amir agreed. “But only if I get to take the next turn.”

  Meria sat in the classroom and tried to listen to the professor’s lecture. The words slid by her without meaning, pedantic formulas for vitae expenditure and calculations to estimate how much vitae would be consumed through various Sayings. It was enough to turn anyone’s mind to mush.

  Of course, she couldn’t complain about the relevance of the subject. In the day-to-day application of alchemy, it was important to know how much vitae you needed to expend in order to give yourself enough time to carve your Tan rune and make the transmutation permanent. You could always use more vitae to be sure, but that was wasteful. Compared to trading bolts of deadly fire with enemy alchemists or flying the monoplane, though, it was deadly dull.

  She sighed and forced herself to follow along with what the professor was saying for a few minutes, but found herself drifting again. She glanced around the classroom surreptitiously and was a little gratified to see she wasn’t the only one having problems concentrating. She thought of Michael Esterforth’s boss, the crabby old transmuter and shuddered. She could never be satisfied with that kind of work.

  Meria was nineteen and nearing the stage of her studies as an alchemist where she would have to pick something to specialize in and direct her final year at the Academy toward a specific profession. Then she would have two or three years working under an established professional as a journeyman, and finally achieve independence and a Guild license.

  It just seemed like so much work. She couldn’t live doing the alchemical equivalent of waiting tables for the rest of her life. A few months back, during the siege of Andronath when Trent Priah’s forces were attacking the Academy, she had thrived under the pressure and danger.

  Returning to routine studies drove her to distraction. She just didn’t care about the vitae expenditure calculations. Her grasp of runes was better than that of any other student currently in the class. Old Professor Milkin had hinted that she was close to Mastery on some of her better runes. Carving runes might take longer than using alchemy, but the effects were permanent. Any Tan rune shy of a Master Rune would slowly leak out the vitae used to perform the transmutation, and there were precious few alchemists who could claim that mastery.

  She thought of the short sword she had seen Lady Vierra use and felt a stirring of interest that her current lecture completely failed to produce. If only the professors were interesting! If the Lady Vierra taught a class, Meria had no doubt every moment of it would be riveting.

  It was too bad the sale of alchemical weapons and armor was strictly prohibited. She understood the reasons, but that would be a livelihood she could be interested in. Her parents were merchants, and she knew if all else failed, she could find a living making coldboxes, glowlights, and other mundane alchemical products. That thought made her blood run cold. It would be a life of comfortable stagnation; there was no doubt such items sold well and were in constant demand, but by the tiny gods, she would rather slit her wrists than do something so boring for the rest of her life.

  Michael had the fortune, if you could call it that, of finding fulfillment in his craftsmanship, and he loved airships and flying. Making monoplanes, or maybe even biplanes, would be something he could do happily for many years. Meria, though, as much as she loved flying the monoplane, didn’t think she could be happy with making things for others. Monoplanes were more exciting than coldboxes, but at the end of the day, it was the same thing.

  No, she needed something that was demanding, both intellectually and physically. The wardens had open training offered to anyone who wanted to join. That was something the Lady Vierra had that M
eria did not: competence with a blade in battle. Her short sword was a beautiful and deadly instrument, but it took skill to wield such a weapon.

  Maybe that’s the route she should take. Take advanced runing at the start of next year, and then sign on with the wardens. Routine military life might be just as dull as working as a transmuter, but at least it had the benefit of offering occasional thrills. And who knows, an alchemist warden might find work that was beyond the norm. Look at the life the Speaker was leading! Nobody could accuse him of being boring. Of course, being the only dragon speaker in written history helped with that.

  Someone jogged her elbow, and she realized people were grinning at her and the professor was standing at the chalkboard glaring in her direction.

  “Sorry, I got distracted,” she muttered, feeling her face flush with embarrassment.

  “Evidently. I’m sorry if I’m boring you, Ms. Yale. I was wondering,” the professor said sarcastically, “if you could assist me with finishing this equation. We have here a rod of iron weighing thirteen ounces, and we desire to perform an Airweight Saying on it reducing the weight to one ounce for a duration of thirty seconds. How many thaums of energy is displaced, and how many drops of dragongas are needed to perform the transmutation?”

  Meria ran through the calculations in her head, flustered by the number of students watching her, expecting her to make a mistake. Halfway through her calculations she got mixed up between converting from ounces to thaums, then realized it was a trick question since one thaum was equal to the vitae in a single drop of dragongas.

  People who calculated their dragongas usage through thaums were the worst kind of pedant. Even Michael’s boss didn’t do that. It was generally accepted that calculations were imprecise since every alchemist’s understanding of runes varied, making their usage of dragongas more or less efficient. The calculations were based on an average value, and students were expected to work out what their usage coefficient was on a personal level through experience.

  All that meant Meria could estimate an answer and bluff her way out of it assuming she was at least somewhere in the right area. She thought back to the last time she had used an Airweight Saying and estimated the weight and resulting transmutation. “Five thaums,” she answered.

  The professor harrumphed and turned back to the chalkboard. “If you’re using five thaums for thirty seconds of transmutation time, Ms. Yale, you need to practice your runes more.”

  Meria opened her mouth to protest that her skill with the Airweight runes was probably higher than the professors, then realized that would be undermining her successful bluff and shut it again. “I’ll work on that, Professor,” she said instead.

  Someone tittered and Meria felt her facing burning again. Who cares what these burning idiots thought about her skill at runes? Furious, both at her classmates and at her reaction to the laughter, she pushed her thoughts of the future from her mind and focused on doggedly listening to the professor.

  It didn’t take her long to figure out the mistake in her calculations. Under the pretense of following along with the professor as he worked through another problem, she wrote out the equation by hand this time. Using her own estimated coefficient for her skill at the runes involved in the Airweight Saying, she could perform the desired transmutation at less than a single thaum.

  She sighed. It just went to show how unsuited she was for a lifetime of careful vitae usage in routine applications where a formula might actually come into play. Well, this class was almost over. Despite her flustered fumbling of the verbal question, she knew how to perform the calculations. Maybe during the fall term, she could get some classes that weren’t a complete waste of time.

  Sean Kilpatri, Chairman of the Alchemists Guild, Master Alchemist and Professor of Alchemy, paced the antechamber of a suite of rooms he hadn’t been inside for years. The guild master, Jacob Hobbarth, had turned his attention to the study of the forgotten runes during the last decade of his life. He had slowly become more and more isolated until he never left his rooms at all. Besides a brief speech at the trial of Trent Priah, nobody but the servants bringing him meals had spoken with the aging guild master for over a year.

  In the next room, physicians hovered about the bed of Master Hobbarth. It was in the very early hours of the morning when any sane person would be in bed, but Kilpatri was there, doing his duty as Chairman, waiting for the old man to finally pass on.

  As the Council Chairman, Kilpatri was perfectly content running the Guild. The guild master’s role had slowly fallen into a ceremonial position as Hobbarth handed more and more of the duties and responsibilities over to the Chairman. In reality, Kilpatri was the guild master. A year ago, there had been no question among the Academy professors and Guild Council who would succeed Hobbarth when he finally passed.

  A year ago, things had been much simpler.

  The Guild was traditionally a meritocracy. Those with skill that stood above and beyond their fellows were recognized with titles and positions. Kilpatri, arguably, was the best alchemist alive. His skill with runes might not be unsurpassed, but he had a few Master Runes to his name and the number of living alchemists better at runes than he was a paltry few. The late Professor Milkin had been far and away the most accomplished living alchemist when it came to runes.

  Andrew Condign, Dragon Speaker, had changed everything. The man wasn’t even a real member of the Guild, by the gods! He hadn’t attended the Academy, he knew nothing of their history or traditions. He only had a few months of sporadic training! Most students attended the Academy for years before they could qualify to join the Guild.

  All that was true, and yet Condign could perform feats of alchemy that were unheard of, unprecedented, impossible. And he did so with an ease and minimal consumption of vitae that bespoke an almost perfect understanding of the runes. If he had yet to formally be recognized as a Rune Master, it was only a matter of time.

  How could Kilpatri expect to hold the respect and position of guild master when Condign was demonstrably superior in every way that mattered? Maddeningly, despite all that, Condign seemed to have no interest in the position. He had traveled south in secrecy and haste and had returned with a private army just in the nick of time to save the Guild from complete destruction. His wardens brought much-needed peace and security to Andronath.

  The citizens of Andronath and the Academy welcomed the wardens with open arms, though the wardens were an occupying army by any standard. Andrew himself had somehow acquired the title of lord, though lord of what was anyone’s guess. He had no lands, collected no taxes, though the practical fact of the matter was Andronath had become his vassal state and supported his army.

  Andrew Condign might not want the title of guild master, but by every definition that mattered, he was already Lord of Andronath.

  With a word, Andrew could claim the status of guild master and become the Lord of Andronath entire. And yet, he didn’t! Kilpatri couldn’t wrap his mind around that. All his professional life, Kilpatri had fought and struggled for status and he had clawed his way to the top through pure dogged determination. And now, at the peak of his career, Andrew had shown up and surpassed him with a wave.

  Was it possible that Condign didn’t understand what the power of the guild master offered? The Alchemists Guild was the most powerful non-sovereign entity in the world. The Guild Master was as powerful as the King of Salia.

  Kilpatri ground his teeth as he paced. Where was Condign? Off on some secretive errand, taking with him Jules Vierra and the core of his inner circle among the wardens.

  As much as Kilpatri wanted to deride Condign, he had the feeling that the young Speaker was off doing something terribly important. It was moments like this where Kilpatri wondered if he had his priorities straight. Condign could have the guild master title for the asking, but had decided instead to perform some other task. What could be more important than the power of the guild master?

  No, that couldn’t be. For thousands of years, the Alche
mists Guild had been a stable and powerful fixture of Salia. The title of guild master had definite power and prestige that went with it.

  One of the physicians cracked open the door to the bedchamber and beckoned to Kilaptri to enter. Frustrated and no closer to understanding the motives that drove Condign, Kilpatri obeyed.

  Master Hobbarth lay in his bed. His once vital frame had withered, his flesh had melted away and his skin was sallow and flaccid. Sweaty sheets were twisted about his waist. His breath came with difficulty and rasped in his chest.

  “Sean,” Hobbarth rasped. He coughed weakly, the effort twisting him and draining some of the remaining color from his cheeks. After a minute, Hobbarth fought the coughing back under control and beckoned for Kilpatri to come closer.

  “I’m here, Master.”

  Hobbarth waved his hand petulantly, discarding the necessities of titles and rank. “Sean,” Hobbarth said his voice thready and weak, “You have been Guild Master for years now, no matter the titles. But there is a Speaker, now. I have done much study in recent years, deciphering the oldest texts we have.” Hobbarth coughed again and closed his eyes.

  Kilpatri stayed close, patiently waiting for the old man to finish what he was saying, but it seemed like he had fallen asleep. Kilpatri moved to rise and Hobbarth’s eyes flickered open again.

  “The Speakers,” Hobbarth continued, as if he hadn’t just paused, “have always been concerned more with their dragons than with the Guild. It is their way. They have enormous power, Sean, but not as you or I would see it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kilpatri pleaded.

  “You will, in time. Remember, my friend, Condign might in time rule this Guild, but there will always be a need for people like you and me. You must not deny the Speaker his rightful place. Support him and your power will grow with his. Oppose him, and he will discard you and you will lose all.”

  Kilpatri hung his head. He knew what the old man was trying to say, and it crushed him to hear someone else say what his private thoughts had been.