Rune Master (Dragon Speaker Series Book 3)

by Devin Hanson

  “I will let them know. One of the animi is paralyzed and lies in a bed. Will that be a problem?”

  “The hatchlings will be hungry.”

  Andrew frowned at the typical lack of useful information from Ava, but shrugged it off. They would figure it out.

  “I met your mate,” Andrew said. “Thank you for sending him.”

  Ava looked at him for a long moment, her eyes glittering in the half light. “I did not send Leonkosso. But it is good he aided you.”

  “I didn’t think male dragons could speak. It was something of a surprise.”

  “He is eldest,” Ava said as if that explained everything.

  Andrew turned away, shaking his head. He hoped there was at least one female dragon. Maybe Meria’s personality and memories would make her more open to speaking plainly and she could help translate some of Ava’s more vague statements. After the dim light of the hatching grounds, the light streaming into the tunnel was bright enough to make Andrew squint.

  He beckoned to the people waiting. “You may enter now. Move slowly and quietly. If you are not participating directly, you will find room to sit on the left.”

  Andrew stopped the animi and the condemned men before they could step onto the sand. “The first female hatchling should be directed to Meria. No matter what happens,” he said firmly, “a female must not attack one of them.” He nodded toward the convicts.

  “How will we tell which are male and which are female?” one of the wardens asked.

  That was a good question. Andrew returned to the chamber and asked Ava.

  “You will know,” came the response.

  Andrew shook his head. “I would like some more details, Ava. I don’t want to risk a female attacking a convict on accident.”

  “If you cannot tell them apart,” Ava said, a snort of laughter following her words, “then I will tell you when they hatch.”

  Andrew returned to the waiting animi. “The dragon says we will know it when we see it, but I will help advise you.” He leaned over Meria and brushed a strand of hair off her face. “How are you holding up?” he asked her quietly.

  “I’ll let you know when this is over,” she replied. Her face was pale and beaded with sweat.

  “They’re going to carry you into the chamber now. The sand is hot, but you should be okay.” He winked at her. “At least you get to lay down. The others will have to walk on the sand.”

  She smiled wanly. “Thank you, Speaker.”

  “My friends call me Andrew,” he said, and stood up. “Bring her in,” he ordered the wardens. “Do you need any help controlling your prisoners?” he asked one of the guards.

  “Oy, gov, you can’t just bloody feed us to them beasts!” one of the prisoners shrieked. “It ain’t right, I tell you!”

  A warden lashed out hard, punching the prisoner in the gut and twice across the jaw. The prisoner went limp, breathing raggedly through a freshly broken nose. “We have control, Speaker,” the warden said, rubbing his fist.

  Andrew thought about the crimes the man had committed. Rape, murder, brigandry and extortion. And those were just crimes he had admitted to. “Take them in,” Andrew said. Giving male dragons their first vitae was almost too much of an honor for them. He felt no sympathy.

  The wardens dragged the bound prisoners onto the sand to a spot fifteen feet from the eggs. Ava’s head lifted and swung down, interposing herself between the prisoners and the eggs. The dragon’s lips curled back, exposing rows of gleaming teeth. The wardens didn’t need any more encouragement to stop and jerked their captives to a halt.

  The warden animi lifted Meria’s bed and carried it in, setting it down near to where the convicts stood.

  Andrew fingered the scale hanging around his neck. If it came down to it, he could subdue the convicts himself and use alchemy to guide the hatchlings to their right targets, but he had faith in the wardens. It would only shame them if he took the responsibility away from them now.

  After Ava’s frantic urgency, he half expected the eggs to burst open the moment the animi set foot on the sand. Minute after minute passed with nothing happening. The watchers on the edge of the chamber went from nervous excitement to a sort of fearful boredom. They couldn’t be truly bored, not with a dragon lying in the sand not twenty paces away. But as the minutes stretched on and they grew uncomfortable in the heat, they started to fidget and whisper among themselves.

  The warden animi were stoically waiting, lost in thought. They were desert born and raised, and the hot sand beneath their feet didn’t bother them. Meria had closed her eyes and had drifted into a shallow slumber. Her breathing was shallow, and when Andrew touched her forehead, he found it was dry and hot, and her skin felt papery.

  The convicts had all made efforts to escape with varying degrees of subtlety, but they had been beaten down mercilessly by their warden guards. They now waited with the lassitude only deep despair can bring, mindless of the hot sand and slumping against their bonds.

  Andrew sought out Jules among the watchers and found her near the front, speaking quietly with Merin Tithy. She saw him looking and waved her fingers at him before turning her attention back to what the councilwoman was saying.

  For his part, Andrew was caught between nervous excitement and obsessive concern. He felt like a new father anxiously awaiting news from the midwife.

  He was pacing nervously when Ava suddenly shifted, uncoiling herself from around the eggs. The chamber fell silent as the watchers took sudden interest. One of the convicts moaned in fear and struggled briefly before he was cuffed into silence again.

  Ava had arranged the eggs in a loose semicircle around the cluster of kossarigan. Every time Andrew had seen the eggs earlier, they had looked more or less the same. Bigger around than he could reach with his arms, around four feet long and vaguely ovoid with uneven dimples and curving dents. They had been a pale orange-grey, mottled with darker brown. The eggs Ava revealed now were dark brown, nearly black, almost as if they had been burnt during the last few days.

  In the silence after Ava stopped moving, Andrew could hear a clear pock, pock from one of the eggs. A crack appeared on the center egg. The tapping sound grew higher pitched as the egg started to break, then a large section broke free and the dragonet sprawled out onto the sand.

  It gleamed with slime from the inside of the egg and scrabbled about trying to right itself. It screeched shrilly, and raised a head on an unstable neck.

  A male, Avandir, Ava sent silently. Her words may have been silent, but her pride came through like a shout.

  “It’s a male,” Andrew said quietly to the warden guards.

  The warden closest to Andrew cut the bonds of his prisoner and hauled him to his feet. The prisoner started to panic, flailing against the warden’s grip. Andrew started to move, but before he could take more than a step, the warden had sunk a wickedly curved dagger deep into the prisoners bowels, then flung him forward to sprawl into the sand in front of the dragon.

  The prisoner shrieked and clutched the wound in his gut. He cried out again as he fell headlong into the searing sand. The dragonet pounced immediately, all ungainly limbs and uncoordinated movements, but it set upon the wounded prisoner with violent urgency. The man screamed as the dragonet ripped into him, teeth and claws tearing bloody rents in the man’s skin.

  Ava had been right. The dragonet was hungry. Andrew watched as the man’s hand was torn off and the dragonet bolted it whole before worrying into the man’s stomach, following the scent of blood from the stab wound. The dragonet seemed to sense something and went wild with hunger, shoving his head up into the man’s stomach and under his ribs. The convict gave a last despairing scream before jerking wildly, pushing futilely at the dragonet with his ragged stump of an arm.

  The dragonet yanked something free from deep inside the convict and pulled his head out, bolting down a red lump of meat that Andrew recognized as the man’s heart. The dragonet shuddered and strength seemed to rush through him. His head and
neck were soaked in blood, gleaming under the red light of the kossarigan.

  He spread his wings and shrieked again before returning to the man once more. The first attack and subsequent search for the heart had been frantic with need, but now he settled down to a more methodical consumption of the dead man, tearing strips of meat free and choking them down whole.

  Andrew had been so caught up in the grisly attack of the dragonet he hadn’t even noticed the second dragon hatching. Andrew didn’t need Ava’s prompt that this one was, again, a male. He looked much like the first one, dark red skin and the knobby beginnings of spines on its head and running down its back.

  “Male,” Andrew confirmed when a warden glanced back at him. The warden didn’t hesitate this time, and followed the lead of the first warden. He cut the prisoner’s bonds, sank his blade into the prisoner’s stomach and flung him forward to the sand a couple paces from where the first had wound up.

  The new dragonet lurched across the sand, following the bleating cries of the prisoner. The first dragonet hissed protectively, guarding his kill, but the new hatchling had no interest in meat. He wanted vitae, and he sensed it within the wounded man scrabbling away from him in the sand.

  The dragonet followed, hissing at the wounded convict. The wardens dragged the remaining prisoners away, giving the hatchling room to hunt. Sensing space opening behind him, the prisoner rolled onto his knees and lurched upright, one hand clamped over the wound in his belly. The dragonet lunged forward in a flying leap and slammed into the prisoner’s back, riding him down into the sand.

  The convict managed to roll onto his back with the spitting, ravenous hatchling on his chest. The hatchling ignored the man’s shoving hands and ripped at his chest with its hind claws. Blood sprayed as the man’s flesh was shredded then the dragonet’s claws caught on the man’s ribs. Muscles strained in a moment of tension as the prisoner screamed, then with a snap the rib broke and the dragonet rammed its head through the bloody gap.

  More ribs snapped as the dragonet repeatedly smashed his head into the hole, widening it until he could fit his jaws through and tear free the man’s heart.

  The first dragonet had finishing stripping the large muscles off his victim. He latched his jaws around the dead man’s neck and dragged his prize back behind Ava, where it continued to eat, cracking bones with powerful jaws and bolting the shards.

  For a few minutes, nothing else happened. The second dragonet dragged his kill back to Ava and proceeded to consume the rest of it while the first curled up, his stomach bloated from his feast, and fell asleep.

  The warden animi exchanged looks with each other. Their faces were pale, but they stood their ground solidly. Andrew felt a surge of respect for them. They had just witnessed their fate: gruesome death at the fangs and claws of a ravenous dragon. But they stood steady, their backs straight and proud. Andrew thought back to Ava predicting it would be Andrew’s place one day to stand there and be eaten, and he wondered if he would have the willpower to let it happen with the same bravery that the wardens were displaying.

  Two eggs started hatching together, and the moment the dragonets broke free onto the sand, Andrew could tell that one of them was female. The males all had the same muscular build as their father, broad in the head and with heavy chests and legs. The female was slender, pale red, and moved in swift, lithe darting motions. The males were animalistic and attacked their prey immediately with ravenous strength, but the female was looking about, curious and cautious.

  One of the warden animi stepped forward, waving his arms to catch the attention of the male dragonet. The male lunged after him and the warden skipped away bare inches ahead of the snapping teeth. The warden led the male across the bloody sands to where the prisoners were being held. The third convict was thrown to the dragonet, which abandoned the swift warden and fell upon the wounded prisoner with terrible, violent hunger.

  The other warden animi stepped back, leaving Meria in her bed as the closest to the young female dragon. Andrew watched, his heart pounding in his chest, as the female dragonet leapt onto the bed and landed on Meria’s chest. The young alchemist looked at the dragonet, a smile on her face.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered.

  The dragonet peered into Meria’s eyes for a moment before lunging forward and snapping her jaws around Meria’s neck. The dragonet shook her head back and forth violently like a terrier worrying a rat. Meria’s neck snapped and the dragonet ripped through her belly and rammed her slender head up into the woman’s chest. With the same violent efficiency as the first male, the young female dragon ripped free Meria’s heart and swallowed it whole.

  Unlike the males, though, the female seemed content with just the heart. She licked at the blood on her snout before shrieking and beating her wings.

  Ava swung her head down and nuzzled against the young dragon. “You are Meriakossi,” Ava rumbled.

  The last egg hatching out a fourth male dragonet and the subsequent killing of the prisoner happened in Andrew’s periphery. He had eyes only for the young female, who was so different from the males. The young female dragon was mewling and rubbing her snout against Ava’s.

  “She will need food, Avandir,” Ava said.

  Andrew nodded. “Of course. What is best?”

  “Meat. Unburned as you consume it.”

  “I’ll have some brought.”

  Andrew sent a pair of wardens running back to the Pride to fetch a side of pork from the stores onboard before turning back to Ava. “Can I approach?” he asked, and swallowed. “Will she know me?”

  “You may. Take care, she is confused and upset.”

  Andrew approached the dragonet slowly, like he would a skittish horse. “Meria? Meriakossi?” he called softly, “I am here. You are okay.”

  The dragonet’s head turned to Andrew and she mewled, turning and ramming her head into Andrew’s chest, smearing blood over his shirt.

  Andrew? The voice in his head was unmistakably Meria’s. I know you.

  Andrew picked up one of the strips of cloth that had been used to hold Meria’s body to the bed and wiped the worst of the clotting blood from the dragonet’s head and neck. Tears stung his eyes.

  “Food is coming,” he said, running his hands down her neck. “You’re safe. Everything will be alright.”

  Chapter 33

  Vanali of the Dragons

  Spring thaw swelled the rushing river that ran through the center of Vanali, bringing with it the fresh, green scent of new growth. The warm ocean air had kept the winter mild in the valley, but the mountain peaks were still white with deep snow.

  Long-dead Vanali had sat for two thousand years in empty silence, but now the city was beginning to stir with life once more. Of the Priah fleet, four airships had survived the encounter with the dragon and had been given to Andrew by King Delran. The airships ran an almost non-stop ferry between Vanali and Andronath, and between Andronath and Nas Shahr.

  Many of the wardens had accepted the Dragon Speaker’s offer to return to Nas Shahr, only to return to Vanali weeks or months later. Except on the return trip, instead of coming back alone, they brought their families and friends, and the population of Vanali swelled.

  Andronath was slowly rebuilding, but its role as the bastion of Alchemy no longer kept the city wealthy. It was a trading town, now, serving as a stopping point between Salia and Vanali. Alchemists still lingered there, and the Academy was still in use, but the vast majority of the Alchemists had also moved to Vanali.

  The new treaties between the dragons and mankind forbade the dragons from flying south to Andronath. Without the ready availability of dragon dung harvested from the mountains, the alchemical industry faltered. Fortunately for the alchemists, there were a score of female dragons living in the city of Vanali itself, and the mountains to the north were populated by the male dragons.

  It hadn’t taken long for the Guild to transfer to Vanali, and with it came the majority of the population of Andronath, swelling the city�
��s size even further. The Dragon Speaker welcomed the alchemists, but the welcome came with a price. The knowledge of runes was to be taught openly to any citizen of Vanali who wished to learn.

  At Jules’s suggestion, the Guild was left intact with Master Kilpatri at its head, and the study of alchemy was restricted to those who were accepted into the Guild.

  Between the Maar immigrants and the alchemists grew a new culture of science and knowledge. Michael Esterforth and Amir Nassah were among the first to enter into a new partnership, opening Vanali Aeronautics and offering monoplanes for sale. The new partnerships were still in their fledgling stages, but anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear could tell great things were in the city’s future.

  As the first snow began to fall, the Dragon Speaker was crowned Lord of Vanali in a dual ceremony where he married Jules Vierra. With his new wife by his side, he took the throne that had lain empty for two thousand years. The reign of Lord Condign started strong with the birth of a baby boy four months later, Sebastian Condign.

  As for the Incantors, they had vanished from the face of Nain. Besides Trent Priah, three had been killed in the Battle of Andronath. The remaining five Incantors had either been among the unidentified dead or had fled the battlefield. The anonymity that had kept them secret was gone. Thousands of people knew what to look for now, and the full might of Vanali’s wardens and alchemists waited for so much as a rumor to come crashing down on any Incantor so unwise as to alert others to their existence.

  The column of flame that marked the grave of Trent Priah burned still. No alchemist could get close enough to disrupt the master rune that kept it blazing. The flames could be seen from Ardhal on a clear night, a faint tongue of orange that flickered on the horizon. As much as anything else, the beacon of fire was a reminder to remain ever vigilant for the return of the Incantors.

  With the spring thaw in Vanali, the dragon Avandakossi drove her male offspring from her nest. Already the males had grown too large to live within the confines of the nest and were a constant danger to the humans. The population of Vanali watched the males wing their way into the northern wastes with sighs of relief.