Way Walkers: Tangled Paths (The Tazu Saga)

by Leigh, J.

  Layla nudged Jathen with her nose, pushing him sideways. Recalling that the lovely dragon belonged to the older of the brothers, he was fairly certain he was addressing Dirk. “Security point?”

  Dirk shrugged. “It’s common.” He removed his gloves. “Our travel papers will get checked, and then we can go.”

  Patting the persistent dragon, Jathen inquired, “So this should be quick, then?”

  Dirk pursed his lips. “Maybe.”

  The conversation in the clearing grew heated enough for Jathen to hear.

  “And since when are there tolls that high for air travel?” Hatori asked.

  “It’s new.” Scarface snickered. “Just put on the books.”

  The exchange sent an unpleasant feeling through Jathen. The old sizzle simmered in his chest. “Are they doing what I think they are doing?”

  “Hmm.” Dirk stroked a skittish Layla. “Happens sometimes. Most full-bloods don’t like anything in the air that’s not Tazu. Some of them make sure we remember by charging for the privilege.”

  “But there are laws against provincial lords enacting prejudicial taxes or tolls.”

  “Oh, the lord will probably see none of it. Look how many Tazu are here, more than a typical company.” His scowl had a feral gleam. “This bunch will pocket it all, no question.”

  Jathen shook his head. Skaniss was a sadistic, prejudiced ass, and Kyanith was a narrow-minded, shortsighted old lizard, but even the two of them would scoff at what was going on a few lengths away. Glowering, Jathen broke away from the riders.

  “Do you think age makes Clan senile?” Hatori asked heatedly as Jathen strode up behind him. “Because I can assure you I am lucid enough to recognize extortion when it’s waving its ugly red flag before me, gentlemen.” Hatori stabbed the sword cane menacingly into the ground. “And more than versed in how one should be punished for it.”

  Two of the tyrn wavered on their haunches, glancing sideways at their leader.

  “If you aren’t going to comply,” Scarface said, craning his dark neck so he was muzzle to nose with Hatori, “maybe we’ll just impound the whole ship and hold the lot of you while we search the thing for hidden compartments.” He sneered, teeth shining around forked tongue. “Never know what disreputable outlanders might be smuggling in or out.”

  “Enough!” Jathen slipped the chain off his neck, brandishing the signet ring. He reveled in the widening eyes as the gold and amethyst object was recognized. “By the authority of the Monortith Royal House, the queen’s office, and my station as a Prince of the Blood, you are hereby ordered to cease in this farce, return our property, and give us free passage.”

  The guards looked frightened, Pallotos impressed, and Hatori’s expression somewhere between.

  “That isn’t real,” Scarface muttered, stepping close to inspect the ring. “Can’t be.”

  “You question me?” More shocked and appalled than furious, Jathen thrust the ring into the tyrn’s face. “How many blond, golden-eyed, pink-skinned moot princes do you think we have in this country, Sergeant?”

  Anger flashing in his eyes, the sergeant begrudgingly barked commands that Jathen’s orders be carried out, and the dirigible was soon aloft again.

  Pallotos clapped him on the back. “For all your moping and self-doubting, Highness, when push comes to shove, your core shines as a prince.”

  That evening, Charmed Wind docked at the next town and the travelers booked rooms at the local inn. When they went down after washing up for dinner, a few of the soldiers from the earlier altercation were coiled around the bar, gulping down sankal that was much too powerful for men on active duty. There was no shameful quieting as Jathen and the others passed them on the way to a table. Jathen glared at Scarface before putting his back to the bar.

  “Noble, ha!” The low, inebriated voice of Scarface was just loud enough to carry. “It’s easy to appear noble when someone arranges it that way. Like with his brother… The Talentless moot suddenly has a vision and saves the day? I heard he slipped the real heir something and then arrived with an antidote, just so the moot could play the hero.”

  Reality tilted and blazed crimson inside Jathen’s head. He was dimly aware of grasping the nearest empty chair then whipping it around. Immediately following was the sound of a crash and the scarred Tazu’s squeal. Hands gripped him, and Jathen was practically carried back up to his room.

  Chest ember blazing with rage, Jathen collapsed when Hatori thrust him onto a bed. All he could envision was returning and throttling the disfigured grunt, ripping and tearing his ugly scar anew.

  Hatori slammed the door shut. “Breathe, boy, before you give yourself a hemorrhage.”

  Jathen took a few deep breaths, and the red haze began to fade. “What they implied about Dol… that night, I saw this look in Kyanith’s eyes… that he might imagine… I didn’t realize…”

  The charm master gave him a sympathetic look. “That your own kin could think you capable of such a thing?”

  It was one thing to be held in contempt, one thing to be thought less of, put down, and discriminated against, even hated, but for Kyanith to think him capable of that… Wild images of Skaniss whispering to the king, fanning the rumor into a bonfire until Kyanith believed it, cascaded hysterically through Jathen’s mind. The thought of the words finding their way to Thee and his mother… Jathen gasped. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Breathe,” Hatori ordered. “Clan might only need to breathe to talk, but you need to get more oxygen to your brain to think. So breathe.”

  Doubled over, Jathen sucked in huge gulps of air.

  Hatori sat down beside him. “It’s not an easy realization, to think yourself accused of treasonous scheming by the very ones who should know you best. But it’s even harder to find yourself betrayed by someone trusted and harder still to be a king and always try to be ready to root out such betrayers.”

  “Are you saying this is justified?”

  “I’m saying if you want to entertain being a king, you need to entertain thinking like one. That also means not jumping around to all kinds of absurd conclusions like Kyanith or your mother actually believing such rot.”

  Jathen sighed. “My mother… yes, you are right. She wouldn’t. But Kyanith—”

  “Is a king, Jath. Whatever else you might think of him, he’s a decent one, and he’ll take any and all information he receives under advisement. But he won’t act on it or spread rumors about it. Not without proof.”

  “You make him sound so reasonable.”

  “He’s far more reasonable than some.” He clasped Jathen’s shoulder and stood. “Trust me, boy. This is a thing I know a bit about. Now keep breathing, and I’ll send Jephue up in a bit with something to eat.”

  “Hatori,” Jathen said, “I’m... sorry. I shouldn’t have hit him.”

  There was a spark of pride in his friend’s eyes. “Fret not, Jath. Pallo will handle the details of the mess. As for the rest, well that chair crashing over his head made far too satisfying a sound for me to regret the incident.”

  Jathen coughed a grudging laugh, and Hatori left the room.

  After taking a few more deep breaths, Jathen noticed his pack had fallen to the floor, probably when Hatori had tossed him on the bed. He got up, grabbed the bag, and then started picking up its spilled contents. When he opened the pack to refill it, a metallic flicker caught his eye. He reached in and pulled out the wrapped package. He blinked at the crumpled paper and limp purple bow in surprise, having forgotten about the odd gift from his sister’s friend.

  Pulling off the wrappings and opening the thin box, he discovered another box. Old and worn, it had a strange, almost clover shape, the lid carved with three rounded swirls meeting as a spiral in the center. Crafted of either wood or bone, the original finish had been painted with som
e sort of cheap lacquer. Turning it over in his hand, he caught glimpses of a yellowish-brown hue peeking through places where the dark overcoat had chipped. The motion caused a clinking noise and a shift in the weight of it.

  He tried to pry open the lid but couldn’t. The memory of Seren’s quick words resurfaced. “It’s a puzzle.” Jathen worked at the box from all angles, trying to solve it. He couldn’t find a latch, lever, button, or any obvious method of releasing the lid.

  He recognized the sound of Jephue’s footsteps in the hall and returned the box to his pack. I’ll solve it later. Spirit knows I’ve enough to occupy my mind tonight.

  To combat the mounting boredom on the dirigible, Jathen began to work on his letters, keeping notes on his daily thoughts and observations similar to Cyaone D. Ja’han’s method.

  I’d like to be able to say that, despite a lack of friends, purpose, usefulness, control of temper, or any grand revelations or newly discovered skills to help earn me a crown, I am slowly becoming...

  He chewed on the end of his pen, uncertain of the proper word.

  More self-aware, I suppose. Maybe it’s not attached to any Way, and maybe it’s not quite the same as actively “evolving my soul’s vibration,” but at least I’m trying. If only I could say the same for Jephue and his fear. Even after all this travel, he still looks squeamish every time we embark and gets ill if the gondola so much as bounces, which of course it does a lot.

  Petalith had included enough of the linen fiber pages for him to write several small novels, so he got into the habit of penning letters to his mother and Thee, dropping them off at the nearest mail deposits during stops. To his mother, he wrote of where he was and what he’d seen, as well as where they were going and how his health was. In Thee’s letters, however, Jathen voiced his actual thoughts on the journey so far, trusting his sister to keep the information to herself.

  The turbulence grew worse the closer they drew to the foothills, where winding channels of cold air blowing down from the mountains collided with the warm breezes that whipped across the plains.

  Pallotos worked feverishly at the helm during those days, grinning and whooping over Jephue’s screams. “Whoo-ya! This be happy-hatchling-moot weather!”

  Jathen could only agree, laughing and bouncing with the ship. As Charmed Wind rose over the Cathiny Mountains, Jathen saw the towering behemoths that had inspired the architecture in so many cities. The smaller peaks of the mountain range seemed more like buildings bereft of souls when viewed from above. Lonely, with no people to tend them and live within, warming their craggy recesses with home fires.

  Master Hatori bashed such sentiment as utter nonsense. “Mountains are more alive than any Tazu-molded fakes. Animals, creatures, and the vibrating souls of the rocks themselves—pulsing veins of minerals, semiprecious and powerful, living bloodlines flowing with untapped and raw energy—are the fuel of magic for the mundane and Talented alike if one knows how to mold it. You spout pure ignorance, boy! Have some ruddy respect for something molded by Spirit’s fathomless hand.”

  “But wasn’t the continent created by Rosin?”

  “Rosin and Ra’vien. They shaped it from the sea with far greater hands than yours, boy.”

  Jathen blinked. He knew of Rosin, Mistress of Mages, Amethyst Dragon of the Children and Avatar of the Way of Magic. But the other name was a mystery. “Ra’vien?”

  “Rhean’s Aspect, boy!” After another short rant on Jathen’s deplorable ignorance, Hatori informed him that Ra’vien was the formal name of Rhean’s Aspect, the Obsidian Dragon’s eternal partner. For every Avatar, there was an Aspect, another soul always reincarnating with them, another segment of their Way. Jathen was unfamiliar with the deeper meanings of the Avatar halves, having grown up mostly with Montage, who amid the Twelve was the only one who stood alone without an Aspect of his own.

  Hatori thwarted thieves twice while they were docked overnight. The first was a malnourished, preteen human boy who tried to pick Jephue’s pocket. At Jathen’s request, Hatori did not turn the kid over to the city guard but instead hoisted him back onto the street with a loaf of bread and a stern warning.

  The second thief struck when they were docked riverside for lunch. The Tazu emerged from a clump of bushes and tried to snatch Jathen’s pack. Hatori broke the would-be thief’s wrist. Unable to shift because of the pain, the murky-scaled Tazu dropped the bag and staggered back into the high grass. Later that evening, the same Tazu tried to shinny up the docking lines to the gondola.

  Hatori was not as lenient the second time. “I don’t sleep most of the night… obviously,” he explained to the city guard over Jephue’s relieved weeping. “And I just had a feeling, so I decided to spend the eve aboard. If my slashing when he came at me didn’t kill him, the fall through the window most certainly did.”

  Docked, the dirigible floated more than five stories from the ground, and the persistent Tazu had fallen the entire way without shifting. Jathen couldn’t manage to look at the bloody pulp of a body for long, as the sight made him shiver.

  The following morning dawned overcast with a heaviness to the air. Even Jathen was uncomfortably aware of the prevailing scent of ozone permeating the breezeless sunrise.

  “Storm,” Pallotos said over his coffee cup before heading off to confer with the riders. The verdict was to wait until they could be certain of the weather.

  But Hatori was having none of it. “We’ve already wasted a day. I’ll be damned if we lose another to an uncertain threat!”

  After twenty minutes of haggling with the two Lubreean riders and another thirty of downright fighting with Jephue, Hatori was able to get their party underway, hinging on the promise they would land at the next town if the weather worsened.

  At first, they only had to contend with whipping winds. Jathen was thrilled by the rolling and swaying, even as a threatening patter of rainfall began. Gripping the overhead straps, he whooped each time the ship dropped in a moment of weightless delight. When thunder rumbled and lightening crackled in the sky, the thrill wore off. The rain and wind intensified, pushing the gondola up then jerking it back so quickly everyone inside was shoved into one another. After an hour of colliding with elbows and knees, Jathen was thoroughly bruised and disenchanted. Jephue was a horrible shade of green, and another hour later, Hatori gave the order to land. Jathen worked his way up to the cockpit and relayed the message.

  “Can’t put her down,” Pallo yelled over the roar of the storm, while fighting the wheel. “Port-side brake panel won’t drop. Can’t halt the charm’s loop.”

  “Maybe one of the riders could fix it?”

  “Even if I could see them, they wouldn’t be able to hear me over the storm!”

  “Right.” Jathen edged back to the seats and struggled to put on his long coat.

  “What in the ruddy Pit are you doing?” Hatori demanded as Jathen reached for a harness. “You are not going out there, boy.”

  “Someone has to, or we’re not going to land. You’re the only one of us strong enough to pull someone back in against this wind. Also, I never fall.” He secured his goggles over his eyes with a snap. “So are you going to tell me exactly what I need to do or not?”

  After a brief hesitation, Hatori cursed and said, “You need to cut the secondary brake cord if it isn’t obstructed.” Hatori handed over a cable cutter. “If there’s something keeping the panel from falling, you’ll need to dislodge it first. But whatever you do”—he opened the window and secured Jathen to the guideline—“do not get caught in the airstream spewing out behind the engine. Understand?”

  “Yes, but what about getting sucked in the front?”

  “There’s a safety ward built into both the engine and your watch.” Hatori tapped Jathen’s left sleeve. “The engine’s rigged to shut down if any living organism enters the tube. Your watch will protect you
from the momentary pressure.”

  “Got it!” Jathen grinned as he hopped onto the ledge. “Last resort: just jump into the engine to stop it. Easy!”

  “Don’t be a smartass!”

  Jathen hooked an arm around the steel handrail in time to hold on for dear life as the ship twisted wildly. Once it steadied a little, he placed the cutters between his teeth and inched back to the brake panel. Coat edges fluttering toward the suction, Jathen cleared the raindrops from his goggles. Nothing was obstructing it. Up to the top to cut the brake cord, then.

  Battered by chilling rain, he managed to gain the ladder. He climbed, his boots slipping and skidding. A forest of cables and the still-suspended brake panel greeted him at the top. He wrapped the lead line around his wrist and crept forward.

  The slick surface beneath his feet disappeared as Charmed Wind tipped violently. For a moment, he was weightless, floating, and then the ship returned to meet him, slamming the charm-engine hard into his chest. He lost his grip on the cutters, and they clattered away. Guess it’s last resort time. Still clenching the lead line, he managed to rise to his knees and haul himself up to the forward edge, only to meet resistance. One of the line’s buckles had become wedged within the tangle of cables pressed against the wide brake panel. Damn it. I’m going to have to unbuckle myself to get this out.

  The ship tipped again, and he lost his footing, legs swinging out into open air while he clung to the cables. Now or never! When the world righted, he unclipped the buckle from the tangle. Just as he had it poised to latch onto his harness, something slammed into Charmed Wind. Tipping forward hard into the brake panel, Jathen was only vaguely aware of shouting and the odd twisting of wing sails before being pitched backward again. He felt one cord slip from his hand before he was slammed onto his back.

  Please, let me still have the right one! Realizing what he’d thought were wing sails were the real wings of a southern giant flying alongside the ship, he scrambled to locate the lost line before the dragon attacked. The beast butted the side of the gondola, and Jathen slid backward. The remaining cord slid through his gloved fingers. Reaching for the ledge, he nearly wept when his hands found the metal and he felt the life-saving jerk jolt all the way down to his shoulders. He used every ounce of his will to release one hand and gather the line on his harness to try to reattach it. The massive dragon cut sideways.