by Will Wight
But even he had limits.
His shouts woke Fisher Gesha. She made it to the top of the stairs to see the Underlord with a hand over Cassias' mouth, stopping him from calling out to Lindon.
Cassias hadn’t even gotten a chance to draw his sword; Eithan had seen every movement coming, broken his techniques before they formed, broken his stance, and broken the flow of his madra. It had taken him no more effort than scooping up a kitten.
Cassias stopped struggling, his shoulders slumped. There was no standing against an Underlord.
As Lindon and the entire Arelius family would soon realize.
***
It was their last day before landing in the Blackflame Empire, and Lindon was up early to train. Not earlier than Yerin, who was sitting with legs crossed outside the circle of wooden dummies at dawn, already cycling.
And now, this was to be his final attempt at the eighteen-man course before landing in Serpent's Grave. He slipped the parasite ring into his pocket and cycled his madra, standing in front of the first dummy.
He glanced at Yerin so that she would start counting. She nodded. “Run it.”
Lindon moved with a speed born of habit, striking at the targets on the right arm, torso, left arm. Without looking, he raised his forearm to block the counterstrike.
He could hear the bone creak.
The sudden pain was a flash of lightning down his arm, but he'd already moved to the second dummy. The injury cooled just as quickly, his Bloodforged Iron body drawing his madra directly to fuel his recovery.
It had been impossible for him to complete the course. Even if he'd executed each step perfectly, every hit that landed on him took too much of his madra. He'd asked if he could stop the drain, and Eithan had looked at him as though he were crazy. “Can you stop your body from healing? No. That's what bodies do. Yours just does it a little too well.”
With two Iron cores and three weeks of training under the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel, he could barely, just barely, finish the eighteenth dummy.
This run went smoothly all the way up to number sixteen, where he placed his foot too wide and didn't have the footing to take the overhead blow. He blocked with both arms crossed, but he was supposed to stay on his feet. This time, thanks to his misstep, he went down to a knee.
He couldn't allow his last attempt to end in a failure.
Lindon slammed the heel of his hand into the dummy's chin, pushing an Empty Palm through the bottom of the circle and into the center. The madra penetrated, even though the hit had been off-center, and the circle glowed.
He lunged for the next dummy, clearing the last two without incident.
As soon as the last bell rung and the last light shone, he draped himself over the wooden frame, panting and sweating. Both his cores were weak and empty, and it would take him half an hour to refill them even under the effects of the pill.
But that wasn't the important part. He looked to Yerin expectantly.
“Twenty-one, by my count.” She chuckled at his relief as he sagged off the dummy, collapsing to the floor. “That's more than nothing. I'd have been proud of that at Iron.”
“I don’t believe you had a course like this when you were Iron,” Lindon said, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling.
“No, I had to fight half a dozen starving wolves with a shaving-razor.” She sighed and moved into the center of the ring. “You got a count going?”
He hesitated. “Yerin, we're already there. I don’t mean to suggest anything...”
“Start the count,” she said, steel in her voice.
He started counting.
She leaned into the first dummy, her Goldsign blurring silver. First target green, second target blue, third target white. One-two-three and she was onto the next one. Even with just the bladed arm, she was faster than Lindon.
Yerin complained that she couldn't make the Goldsign do what she wanted it to. Over and over she said that, until Lindon was sick of hearing it. To him, she always looked in complete control.
She reached the ninth dummy in seven seconds, and this one had a target low in the abdomen—where the core would be, in any sacred artist but Lindon—one in the chest, and one in the center of its head. It was one of Lindon's favorites, because it only moved its arms defensively; it never hit him back.
Yerin struck the lowest circle easily, the second a little slow, and her third blow was knocked aside by a wooden hand.
All the previous eight dummies, which had remained lit until then, dimmed slowly as though the light leaked out of them.
She stood there panting, glaring at her wooden enemy, and Lindon thought the red rope around her waist had brightened from dark red to the pure crimson of fresh blood.
Finally, she screamed, her Goldsign striking forward and taking the dummy's head.
She didn't look at Lindon or excuse herself, dropping to the floor right there and beginning to cycle. Her cheeks and throat were flushed with anger, her scars standing out in stark contrast to her red skin.
Lindon was already walking to a box in the corner, which was filled with replacement heads. They'd picked up some extra wood on one of their landings, and every time Fisher Gesha said he needed practical experience, he hollowed one out and filled it with the simple scripts and basic constructs the dummies needed to function.
The outer scripts and core constructs of each dummy were all unique, but the heads were the same, which fortunately made them easy to replace.
He screwed it on—the original wood was lighter than the replacement, and he would need to carve a target circle onto it. He pulled out a short-bladed knife to start, but Eithan threw open the door.
“Twenty-one seconds is fairly good,” Eithan said with a broad smile. “Now, if you'd gotten below twenty seconds, then you'd have done something.”
Lindon bowed, accepting what little compliment there was. After weeks of working with Eithan, he'd started to realize exactly how high the Underlord's standards were. If he used a technique to blow a hole in the moon, Eithan would ask why he hadn't taken care of the sun, too.
“As for you, Yerin...” She didn't open her eyes at Eithan's words, apparently still cycling, but Lindon was sure she was listening. He'd gotten to know her better over the last few weeks too.
“...you're still trying to get your Remnant to guide you. You’re making things harder for yourself.”
“He’s talking to me,” Yerin said stubbornly, eyes still closed. “If I could hear him clear, I’d be two stages stronger by now.”
Eithan’s smile was filled with pity, as though he looked down on a dying old woman. “No will of your master remains in the Remnant. You’re hearing impressions that echo from his remaining memories.”
“It’s him, so I’m listening.”
“The easiest way to reach Highgold is to break down your Remnant for power. You are staring at a feast from afar while wondering why you’re so hungry. All other paths to Highgold are—”
She bounded to her feet, cutting him off. “I’m not going to bury his voice. You know how much of his teaching I’d be giving up? You think you can make up for that? Are you a Sage?”
“If only I were,” Eithan said calmly. “It would solve many of my problems.”
She stepped forward, glaring up at his chin. “A Sage’s Remnant can do things you can’t imagine. I’m telling you, he’s in there, and he’ll get me to Highgold in a snap.”
Eithan placed two fingers on her forehead and slowly pushed her back until she was standing an arm’s length away. “The path from Lowgold to Highgold is learning to use more than the excess energy your Remnant provides you. You normally break down the Remnant itself for power, digesting its skills and its madra. There are other ways past Lowgold, certainly, but this is the most direct path.”
Her face reddened even further, her Goldsign drew back as though to strike, but Eithan continued with his tone and smile still friendly. “We have time. Perhaps you’ll choose to feed on your master’s Remnant, or perhaps
you’ll find another way. Or you could do neither, and Lindon and I will leave you behind.”
Lindon flinched. He had been perfectly happy to stay out of that conversation. For the past four weeks, Yerin had ranted about Eithan’s instruction and how he didn’t understand her master like she did.
Eithan clapped his hands together. “All right! Let's leave your failures and inadequacies aside for the moment. Even now, we are arriving at our destination. You should clean yourselves and join me in the sitting-room, because I suspect you'll want to see this.”
Eithan left Lindon and Yerin behind, which suspended them in silence as they toweled off and packed up.
“It's less than easy to keep a Remnant under control,” Yerin said after two minutes of quiet.
“I can't even imagine,” Lindon said honestly. Someday he would, though. He looked forward to it.
“I am trying. My master knows how to reach Highgold without cracking into his Remnant, I just need to hear what he’s telling me.”
Sometimes Yerin spoke like this when she needed to bounce ideas off Lindon, even when he had no clue what she was talking about. He usually nodded and let her work it out aloud.
But he could tell the difference between needing a sounding board and needing encouragement.
“You're pushing against Highgold, and you're complaining that it's too slow?” Lindon asked, exaggerating his surprise. “You're disappointed because you're not a Highgold by...sixteen summers? Seventeen?”
She shrugged. “Thereabouts. The count gets a little thrown off for a while.”
“And you’re not just a Gold! You were hand-selected by the Sword Sage himself! Compared to Eithan…” He hesitated, because he wasn’t sure how powerful the Sword Sage was. He’d never heard of the man until Suriel had mentioned him as Yerin’s master.
“He was much stronger than an Underlord,” she said quietly.
“Underlords and Sages are fighting over you. It wasn’t until this year that I could push an eight-year-old Copper off his feet, while you could carve your way through a mountain with a dull spoon.”
“I have more than one reason why I can’t just drift merrily along,” she said, but a smile had started to creep onto her face. “You don't have to polish me up, you know. I'm just venting smoke.”
Lindon tucked the parasite ring into his pack, making sure all the pockets were closed and fastened before he hoisted it onto his shoulder. “I'm not ‘polishing’ anything. The heavens opened up and showed me visions of all the greatest people on the planet, people who can wrestle dragons and strike down armies. Then they brought me to you. You’re all so far above me you might as well be stars.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before he heard them, and then some heat rose into his cheeks. He didn't look away, though.
Yerin gave him a lopsided smile, and this one sunk into his memory: her smile, the thin scars standing out against her skin, her black hair mussed from training so it didn’t look straight anymore.
“That has a sweet sound to it, now you've said it,” she said at last. The instant passed, and she turned to open the door onto the screaming wind. “Heavens never came down to show me anything, and that's the truth.”
***
Eithan stopped in his tracks even as the front windows filled with crags of black stone: Shiryu Mountain, the peak where the last of the dragons had gone to die. He'd intended to leave the children to their little moment—they would need to trust each other even more than they trusted him, and trust was always built on small, personal moments—but a phrase caught his ear, carried to him on threads of power.
The heavens opened up and showed me...
He tended to smile by default, but now his grin stretched his lips to the breaking point. He'd wondered. From the first glimpse of that little glass ball in Lindon's pocket, the one with the steady blue flame, he'd wondered. Some of the boy's comments, some of his actions, had made him more and more certain.
And now...now he knew.
The heavens opened up...
Very interesting indeed.
Chapter 8
With Cassias actively working at the control panel and Eithan standing proudly in front of the windows, Lindon and Yerin looked down over the city of Serpent's Grave.
“This,” Eithan announced, “is the birthplace of the Blackflame Empire. The imperial capital has moved over time, and moved again, but here is where it all began: where the last of the dragons who once ruled this land were finally brought down.”
“Dragons?” Yerin asked, unsettled.
“That's where the empire got its name. After the dragons were destroyed, a certain family found a source of their power, ruling for centuries like dragons themselves. That source lies beneath us, although of course it's been all but tapped out over the generations.”
Lindon had been raised to believe dragons were myths—or if they did exist, only in the heavens. But Suriel had shown him a dragon beneath the sea.
And besides, something had left all those bones.
The black mountain beneath them rose from a desert like the crest of a dark, frozen wave. A vast spine, yellowed with age, twisted and curled around the rock, with a serpentine skull resting at the mountain's foot.
It was the most complete skeleton in Serpent's Grave, but far from the only one. A claw here, a pile of sharpened fangs there. And Sky's Mercy had yet to begin its descent—if he could see them from here, what would they look like on the ground?
“Serpent's Grave,” Lindon said aloud, and Eithan pointed to him.
“Well named, isn't it? I have to applaud the empire’s straightforward naming sense.”
The floor fell out from Lindon’s feet.
He caught himself on the edge of a table, which was bolted to the floor, and sank into one of the chairs. He'd discovered over the course of the journey that it was best to take a descent sitting down.
Yerin joined him, and Cassias was braced against the control panel with eyes locked on his landing, but Eithan stood with his hands in the pockets of his red-and-gold outer robe. His head was almost pressed against the glass, which reflected his smile.
As they fell lower, Lindon started to make out details among the bones. Dark spots in the bones resolved into holes—windows and doors, through which people streamed. The streets wound around the biggest bones but cut through others, which had been hollowed out or stacked together to make buildings.
Lindon leaned forward in his seat. Over the years, these people had carved a city into a dragon's graveyard. A long, straight bone, sticking out of the earth, was covered in windows and ringed with stairs. A fractured skull had a huge gong mounted in the eye socket. Four claws reached out of the ground with man-sized lanterns dangling from their tips.
The city had even crawled up the mountain, so that the black stone bristled with towers. More bones rose like a thorny crown from the mountain’s peak, with palaces nestled between its spikes.
Lindon was overwhelmed at the sight of it all. Sacred Valley had what they called towns and cities, but this city dwarfed his imagination. Even leaving aside the size, he had never heard so much as a legend about a city of dragon’s bone.
This was the world Suriel had opened for him. His myths didn’t even come close.
Sky's Mercy was circling one location: a rib cage, with the gaps between each rib closed by pale stone and mortar. A pair of banners—blue and black and white—flew from the highest peaks, proudly displaying the Arelius crest. Cassias descended until they were almost on top of the bones, then drifted to the end closest to the mountain.
Massive greenhouses stretched in rows behind the buildings, their glass roofs letting in sunlight and allowing Lindon to see the fields of crops growing inside. Scripts shone along the outside walls, and rain fell from one of the ceilings.
The sacred artists here had advanced beyond the need to live off the land. They had bottled up their farmland and taken it with them.
One plot with enough space to hold anothe
r enclosed farm had been left empty, little more than a wide square of reddish dirt. Cassias steered them until they floated over that square, and slowly edged down the last few feet.
Eithan turned from the window and walked to the door, hair streaming behind him. “I don't know about you,” he said, “but I'm ready to get to work.”
Cassias left the controls, running a hand through his yellow curls. He had worn his best today, and he smoothed every crease in his shirt as though worried about leaving the slightest imperfection.
Lindon was wearing a sacred artist’s robe in the Arelius colors, but it was weathered from the trip. He wondered if he should have asked for something more presentable, but Yerin was wearing the same tattered black she always did, and she didn’t seem concerned.
Eithan threw open the door, revealing a hundred people arranged in ten rows of ten, all clad in blue with the black crescent on their backs. Lindon had a very good view of their backs, as they had all prostrated themselves on the ground with their heads pressed against the reddish dirt.
“The Arelius family greets the Patriarch,” they shouted, in a unified voice that shook the ground.
Yerin winced and knuckled her ear. “Wouldn’t have turned down a warning.”
“Patriarch?” Lindon repeated. Eithan heard him and turned.
“Oh, yes, I’m the head of the family. I expected you to have guessed that by now.”
Cassias stepped in front of Eithan, his steel bracer Goldsign gleaming in the sun. “Number one, step forward and report.”
The leftmost servant in the front row, a heavyset woman in her middle years, stepped up and bowed to the Patriarch.
Even she was dressed for a festival. Polished blue-and-silver combs held back her gray-streaked hair, her servant’s uniform looked perfectly new, and rings glistened on her fingers.
Lindon first thought that even the servants lived like royalty here, but he supposed the Underlord’s arrival was a big day. Perhaps this was like an audience with a king.
She didn’t make her report in front of everyone, as Lindon had expected. Instead, she moved to whisper in Cassias’ ear. After a moment, Cassias turned to address Eithan in a normal tone.