by Devin Hanson
His new discovery made the runes an order of magnitude more complex and he soon realized that he was nowhere near perfect on his runework. This was something that would require significantly more effort on his part to learn. At the same time he was more determined than ever to get it perfect.
He started practicing Tan again, starting back at square one, and quickly found that his early impatient efforts to sharpen the pencil had shorn into the charcoal at the same time, destroying the perfect proportion. Jules watched him sweating over trying to pare away only the wood and leave the charcoal behind untouched for a few minutes, then took the knife from him impatiently and showed him how to follow the flat of the charcoal with the blade. The rest of the wood wasn't glued, apparently, and just fell away, leaving the center behind unmarred.
"Honestly, it's like you've never sharpened a runing pencil before."
Andrew took the sarcasm with a smile and bent to practice his Tan. Jules watched him for a few minutes, then curled up and went to sleep with her usual promptness. He practiced holding the pencil with his wrist at an angle, trying to work out the best way to let his hand impart the minutiae of the runes. While it wasn't a perfect solution, he practiced it until he was reasonably happy with the accuracy of his new Tan.
He put his scale and runing supplies away finally, happy with the night's progress. As he drifted off to sleep, Jules' Tan above his head winked at him in the firelight, the depth of the grooves Jules had carved mocking him with their perfection. Maybe he was a fast learner, or the runes spoke to him or whatever, but he had a long way to go before he could toss out a casual rune with the amount of detail that Jules could impart.
Chapter 16
The Chase Begins
Jules woke Andrew with the sun still below the horizon. "Wakey wakey. I want to be in position before the sun comes up."
Andrew groaned and rolled over. "Aren't dragons active at night?"
"What gave you that idea?"
"Just something I heard once." Andrew sighed and heaved himself out of his bedroll. That dragons weren't nocturnal, at least according to Jules, didn't really come as a surprise. There was a lot he thought he knew about dragons that was wrong.
"Dragons are strictly diurnal. The only time they come out at night is to defend their nest."
"Diurnal? I'm but a humble gunny, and don't have the vocabulary of a princess."
"Day time. And don't ever call me that again." She mock-growled at him and slugged him in the arm.
Andrew laughed and left the shelter with his pack slung over one shoulder under his cloak. Jules joined him a few minutes later in the lee of a boulder on the north slope. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, sending soft rose-colored streaks proceeding it across the sky.
"I've drawn a map," she announced after she had made herself comfortable.
Andrew starting parceling out food for breakfast. His early enthusiasm for bread, meat and cheese had dwindled. He ate now because if he didn't he'd have no energy during the day, but he took no more pleasure in it than the gruel he had eaten for breakfast as a gunny. At least the gruel had been warm.
Over the last week, he had filled out a lot. He was still skinny, he knew, but the shirt that had been baggy on him when he purchased it was starting to feel tight across the shoulders. He might not feel enthusiastic about the fare, but at least he wasn't slowly starving any more.
Jules held her map up and Andrew saw she had done a passable job at cartography, rendering the mountains in topographic lines. As they ate, Jules idly filled in the mountains surrounding the four mountains of interest from their first map. Andrew watched over her shoulder, eating slowly.
Over the mountains, Jules drew the path the dragon had followed the previous day, then, at Andrew's direction, drew in the original path.
"It certainly looks like the brood den is north of us," Andrew observed.
Jules gave a wry laugh. "Sure. One of those dozens of mountains. We have three days, maybe four if we're lucky. Then the dragon will lay her eggs and we won't see her for a week at least."
"And then she starts eating her scales."
"Precisely."
They sat in silence as the sun rose higher into the sky. Still the brooder didn't show. A few times Andrew tried engaging Jules in conversation or lead her into another discussion about alchemy or runing, but she brushed it off, peevish and snappy.
Noon came. Neither of them said it, but Andrew was thinking it and he was sure Jules was as well. Were they on the right side of the mountain? If the brooder had already come and gone, changing positions would be futile. And there was no guarantee the dragon would hunt to the south again. Maybe it had gone some other direction to where hunting was better. Or, worst case scenario, she had started to lay her eggs and they were already too late.
Andrew prepared their lunch late. The wind was starting to pick up, throwing bits of dust and grit into the cheese despite his best efforts. Jules sniped at him for it and it was all he could do not to throw it in her face.
"If you don't like me preparing the food, you could stir a finger and do it yourself next time."
"Don't you pull that ‘noble lady' shit on me, boy!" Jules almost shouted.
"Maybe if you didn't act like you expected a train of servants to do everything for you, it wouldn't sound so much like it."
"You're just a gunny!" This time she did shout. "You have no right to speak to me like that!"
"Just a gunny? Is that right. What happened to 'you saved my life, I owe you'? You're just another noble scheming to get her way regardless of how others suffer."
"That's how it is, is it? At least my life has meaning. Who are you? What have you accomplished in your life? You're a nobody. Less than nobody. You could die up here and there isn't a soul who would even wonder where you had gone. You're a waste of food, a drain on the society."
Andrew threw down his food, his mild hunger vanished, replaced with a sick churning in his gut. He threw on his cloak and stormed out of the shelter. "You know nothing about me, Jules," he called back. He took a deep breath and looked out over the valley. It was beautiful, he knew, but all he saw was stark greys and browns, with the imminent dragon threat looming over it all. "If you had been dealt the same hand as I have in life, how well would you have faired? All your power, all your skill, you bought with your father's money. Without that, what would you be? Nobody. You'd be grubbing up on the mountain covered in shit, or worse. You don't even know how easy you have it. All you have to do is open your legs to Trent and you'll be guaranteed a lifetime of ease and luxury."
Jules voice came from behind him, tight with fury. "You think that would be a good life? Whoring myself out to the Priah fortune?"
"Oh, boo hoo. You're acting like you're the first person to ever have an arranged marriage. Thousands of people are married that way every year. What makes you so special that you get to ignore the good of your family, even the good of the kingdom! I'm sorry, but I spent the last year dressed in rags, eating barely enough to survive. Last winter, four people froze to death at night not a dozen paces from me. You have no idea what hardship means."
Andrew suddenly felt the cold pressure of her gun barrel pressed against his neck. "You say I have no idea what hardship is. You don't know me, you don't know what I've gone through. Do you know how many people have tried to kill me, how many I've been forced to kill in self defense? I'll take hard work and being cold any day over being hunted like an animal through the wilderness because some lowlife pirate scum thinks he can make an easy fortune off my ransom. You don't even--"
Andrew froze, not because he was scared moving would set off Jules' temper and her trigger finger. Not because he had suddenly realized how amazingly stupid the argument was. Though both those things were true, he froze because a shadow flicked overhead, blotting out the sun for a fraction of a second.
Jules cut herself off mid-word.
"I'd ask you to take the gun away from my head," Andrew said quietly, "b
ut I think it's best if you didn't move at all." Jules didn't say anything, but the continued pressure of the gun barrel told him she was at least listening to him. Moving very slowly, Andrew turned his head until he was looking to the west, until he saw what had eclipsed the sun.
It wasn't a dragon. Flying high above a mountain two peaks over, an airship cruised at what Andrew would hesitantly peg as its maximum flight ceiling. The Storm Shadow.
"It would appear," Jules said quietly as she took the gun away from Andrew's head, "that we have been found again."
"Are they insane? This is a dragon hunting ground!" The only thing Andrew could think of was the way the dragon had smashed through the gondola of the Meremacht, the way its fiery breath had annihilated the crew of the Belathon.
"It's because we're in a hunting ground that they might be safe," Jules said thoughtfully. "Dragons look down while they hunt. Never up."
Reluctantly, Andrew had to agree. It was a dangerous ploy, but if the airship hadn't passed directly between the sun and their hiding spot, they would never have seen the airship either. "Sorry. About what I said, I mean. I wouldn't wish marriage to Trent on anyone."
Jules grunted something, but she put the gun away. He didn't expect an apology out of her, but not actively pointing a gun at him was the next best thing.
"Why aren't they just attacking again?" Andrew asked. "We've no cover here."
"Probably because someone with brains is aboard now," Jules said with a frown. "I'd place my money on Trent. He may be the worst person alive, but he's not stupid."
Andrew watched the airship for a while, as it did lazy figure eights overhead. "Maybe they don't know we're here."
"On the contrary," Jules said quietly, "they know where we are. The shadow trick was to let us know that they know."
"I still don't understand how they found us the first time. And you said you had done something to block it?"
Jules sighed. "It wasn't a guarantee. I guessed at what they used to track me, but it would seem I was wrong. They use a scrying compass, this time and the first. My guess is that they used one of my hairs to track us down the first time. Trent probably returned to where we had our little fight in the gulch and he found some blood of mine. I didn't protect against blood, just the hair."
This threw Andrew. "You can do that? With alchemy?"
"It's a Saying. Most of the runes you don't have on your scale. The Locuscorpi Saying. Goes
Bind the body to the flesh,
Keep the distance to nothing,
The body will find,
The flesh will bind.
In the case of the Locuscorpi, body is whatever piece you have of the person you're trying to find. Usually it's done with hair, though more romantic types prefer blood. For this Saying, you'll need hair, Ro, flesh, Ki, distance, La, nothing, Li and find, Be. The runes in the Saying are On Ro Ki An La Li Ro Be Ki On. The words of the Saying are On Rokala'li Robeki On." Jules described the Saying absent-mindedly, her attention on the airship.
Jules repeated the Saying and it's breakdown in a monotone, her hood too low for Andrew to see her face.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Repeat it."
Andrew did, flubbing one of the syllables and Jules repeated it from the top until Andrew got it right.
"But why?"
"I suspect we might need it. It'll be best if you know how to find me, and I you."
"Okay, I can see that, but I don't know half those runes."
"It's a good thing you're a fast study. Watch for the brooder while I draw the Saying."
After a few minutes, Jules handed Andrew a sheet of paper with each new source rune drawn individually with the complete Saying drawn in below. "When you finish the Saying, the next piece of hair that touches this intersection here, of the two Ro runes, will bind and activate the Saying. Watch." She pulled a hair from her head and let the wind blow one end onto the runes. It seemed to glue in place and Jules tugged, snapping the extra length of hair off. "It's bound, now. If you were to run a needle through the center of the Saying, the paper would rotate so this peak here points towards me." She stabbed the pencil through and sure enough, the paper rotated despite the wind trying to push it until the Saying was pointing at Jules' heart.
"It would seem," Andrew said softly, "there is much ill that can be done with alchemy."
"There is a reason why no monarch dares challenge the Guild."
"But can any alchemist do this? If you can make a Saying to find someone, you can make one to kill just as easily."
"Any alchemist, yes, any alchemist that knows the proper runes and has the skill to make it work. These runes," she pointed out Ki and Ro, "are closely guarded runes. You will not find them in any books of runing. Nor any scale."
"Then how--"
"Milkin asked me to teach you the basics of runing, Andrew, not the deep secrets. Be happy I'm going this far."
Andrew set to practicing the Saying, sensing Jules had gone as far as he could push her for now. After a while, he asked, "Does Trent have the skill to carve these runes?"
"Despite how awful a person he is, or perhaps because of it, he is quite skilled at runing. At least as good as I was when I left."
"And he went straight for the secret runes."
"You guessed it. My first clue that he was scum. Used my access to the archives and broke in one night. I got in trouble for it, he paid his way out."
"But the professors--"
"Are just men, Andrew. And men like money. Enough talk. Finish your rune."
They didn't see the brooder until almost nightfall. Andrew was practicing the Locuscorpi Saying, using his own hair to bind the rune then testing its strength by sticking it on his pencil. He hadn't got it strong enough yet to rotate against the friction, but Jules thought he was almost there. She was pointing out a flaw in the bridge from Ro to Ka when the dragon crested the ridge to the north-east.
Andrew watched with a wave of relief as the dragon glided gently through the valley then hooked a sharp left and dived. She came up circling a second later, a deer clutched in her claws then, beating her wings, rose up and finished circling the eastern mountain, eventually going out of sight again.
Jules heaved a sigh. "They have such beauty."
"And very sharp teeth."
"That too." Jules got out her map and drew the path the dragon had taken. "Her den is definitely to the north. Come, let's break camp."
"You want to climb down the mountain? Now?" Andrew glanced at the sun. "We've got maybe forty minutes before nightfall. Less if we're in the valley."
Jules let him finish talking then said, "Better stop wasting time then."
Grumbling, Andrew followed Jules back to their shelter. There wasn't much for them to do besides interrupting the Igan runes on their campfire and rolling up their bedding.
"I'll disrupt the Tan of the roof stone now," Jules warned him. "Should be enough vitae in the Saying to keep it light for a few more seconds." She knelt down under the edge of the roof and with her stylus disrupted the Tan before darting out. She made it half a dozen steps before the roof buckled and, with a booming crash, collapsed in a cloud of dust.
"And that's that," Jules announced with a mischievous grin.
"Wasn't that dangerous? You could have been smashed!" Andrew's heart was pounding and he blinked stone dust out of his eyes.
Jules waved a hand, dismissing his worry. "What other choice was there? Besides, I know how long my Sayings last."
Andrew let it drop. They didn't have time to argue. Now that their shelter was a pile of rubble, they had to get down into the valley or they would have a miserable night shivering in the cold wind.
Climbing down the north face was a welcome change to being cooped up on the peak and they both moved quickly, their packs lighter by a few days worth of food. Even so, it was full dark by the time they reached the valley and the ground started to even out. Compared to the constant wind on the peak, the dell they made camp in was p
ositively warm in comparison.
Andrew fell asleep that night with the realization that he was actually chasing down a dragon to its lair. And not any dragon, a heavily pregnant dragon with eggs imminent. A lingering comparison to bears and their young gave him very strange dreams.
Dawn found Andrew sweating under his cloak as Jules urged him on from behind. His stomach rumbled. They'd already been up for hours, picking their way north across the valley's stream by moonlight. In the pre-dawn, they reached the bottom slope of the mountain directly to the north of their camp at the peak. Bracken covered the ground and Jules made him take the lead, following behind as he struggled to break them a path. By the time they cleared the bracken and made it into the pine trees, the sun was all the way up and Andrew was ready to take a break.
"We've been hiking for hours," he complained. "A full day's travel and the sun is just up."
"You wimping out on me?" she asked.
"You're sweating too. Let's just take a break. Five minutes. Get some food, drink some water."
"Girls don't sweat," Jules informed him haughtily. "They glow."
Andrew watched the glow dripping off her for a second then swung his pack off his back.
"I didn't say we could stop."
"I wasn't asking. I need some food or I'm going to collapse."
Jules planted her fists on her hips then her stomach growled, ruining whatever argument she had planned. "Fine. Five minutes!"
Andrew handed her share of hardtack and cheese over and wolfed his own, washing it down with a long swallow of water. He handed the skin over and tried to find the airship through the tree branches. "I don't see the airship," he said, after Jules had finished drinking.
"Course not. They've gone somewhere where there aren't so many dragons flying about."