by Dante King
“Two crystals?” Claire hedged.
I threw up my hands, laughing in exasperation. “Why am I even bothering to try and tell a goddamn Seer news. No doubt you already knew all of this was going to take place.”
Claire said nothing, but her red and blue eyes shimmered enigmatically.
“I see a lot,” she said, when I did not rise to the bait of silence. “But not everything I see is cut in crystal.”
“Did you see this?” I asked, and I pulled the waifish woman to me and kissed her.
Distantly, as if heard from the other side of a thin wall, I heard gasps of awe. I figured that it was probably something to do with a mere Rank One dragonmancer having the balls to lay a smooch on the Seer herself. That’s the thing about almost being eaten by a dragon though—it really helps to put your priorities in order.
“Mike,” Claire said softly, as our lips parted and the world expanded back out to its proper size, “I came here because I wanted to make sure that you and the others were safe.”
“Very conscientious of you,” I muttered.
“Yes, but I also came to tell you that it would be better for you if you stayed here for as long as you can.”
“You don’t think I should head back to the Academy?” I asked.
Claire shook her perfect head. “Joining the expeditions into the Subterranean Realms will be more beneficial—not just for you, but for the warriors that follow you.”
“I lead no warriors yet, Claire,” I told her. “Only my coterie. You know that they don’t entrust Rank Ones with command of anyone.”
Claire rolled her mismatched eyes and put a smooth palm to my stubble-roughened face.
“You might not lead, Mike Noctis,” she said in a sure voice, “but men and women follow you regardless. You’re a natural leader—the best kind. The kind of leader that doesn’t even know he is leading; that could lead even from the back, so that the soldiers following him believe that they accomplished their aims on their own.”
I looked at her in unconcealed wonder. “I don’t know if that’s true...” I said, chancing a glance at the faces crowding all around us. “I mean, these guys go through hell for us.”
Claire beamed. “No, they go through hell with you. And they keep on pushing through whatever hell they find themselves in because you, and your friends, stand beside them.”
I looked down at my boots. I wasn’t overly comfortable when it came to being heaped with praise.
“So, no going back to the Drako Academy?” I said.
“You can visit the Academy,” Claire said, lowering her voice so that only I could hear her words, “but it’s essential that you should be made out to seem integral to the efforts here.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the Martial Council would give anything to have you strapped to a table while the Lorekeepers use you as a bull among the heifers, now that they know you have the means to rejuvenate your seed.”
“Yeah,” I said, “a working vacation does sound more enjoyable than that.”
General Shiloh cleared her throat at that point, and Claire politely turned to her.
“Yes, General?” she said cordially.
“I was wondering, Seer,” the General said gruffly, “seeing as you are here, whether I could invite you into my tent for refreshments? There is something that has only just come to my attention. A development. I would be greatly pleased to have your view and advice on the matter.”
“I would be more than delighted,” Claire replied amiably. “I would deem it a favor if you let Dragonmancer Noctis come with us.”
The look on the General's face told me that this was definitely against protocol, but she did not dare contradict the wish of such a hallowed figure.
“Of course,” she said, leading the way into the tent and holding the flap open for the Seer.
There was a dragonmancer already waiting inside the tent when we entered. She was a tall, thin woman with angular features and blue hair that had been shaved into a severe mohawk. Her tanned face was covered in intricate tattoos that might have been runes of some kind. Her hands had long, clever fingers and fluttered constantly at her sides. She was dressed in worn, comfortable-looking traveling leathers.
“Seer, Dragonmancer Noctis, this is Dragonmancer Scrutor, head of my scouting network,” General Shiloh said, introducing the stranger.
Head of the General’s scouting network, I pondered. Sounds like the fancy way to say someone is a fucking capable spy.
The tall woman, Scrutor, nodded to me and bowed to the Seer.
“Dragonmancer Scrutor is paired with a dragon of most singular abilities,” General Shiloh said, as she rummaged for cups and a fresh jug of Hangman. “Isn’t that right, Scrutor?”
“Yes, General,” Scrutor said, in a surprisingly high and feminine voice. “Tindruth is a Scry Dragon.” She nodded at the dragon that was lying curled at her feet, watching proceedings out of one fishy eye. The creature was about the size of a Basset Hound and mottled brown and green. It was so unobtrusive that I had not even noticed it in the gloom of the tent until Scrutor had pointed it out.
Claire nodded at this, though I had no idea what the hell a Scry Dragon was.
“Scrutor has been on a do-or-die reconnaissance mission of unparalleled danger,” General Shiloh said. “She has pushed further forward, on her lonesome, mark you, than anyone in the Empire has yet gone. She has only recently returned from the frontier.”
Scrutor’s angular face and intelligent eyes remained impassive as the General explained what she had been up to.
“Show the Seer and Dragonmancer Noctis what you just showed me, Scrutor,” the General ordered, handing around the cups of potent spirit.
“Very good, General,” Scrutor said.
She nudged the dragon at her feet with a boot and clicked her tongue a couple of times at it.
The Scry Dragon rose slowly until it was sitting back on its haunches like the caricature of a dog begging for a treat. Then, it opened its mouth. A thick, coiling vapor flowed out from between its jaws and formed a solid cube of smoke in front of us. The smoke must have been under the little dragon’s control because it did not dissipate but hung stolidly in the air.
Scrutor clicked her tongue again.
A bright orange light blossomed in Tindruth’s throat and, suddenly, I was looking at a castle projected into the smoke. It was very much like watching an old film being projected onto a screen, or a Star Wars-esque hologram. The picture was in muted colors, but I hazarded a guess that it was being projected from the dragon’s own memories.
“This is something that you and your dragon saw?” I asked, wanting to make sure that my guess was right.
“Correct,” Scrutor said. “It was the finding of this kobold stronghold that convinced me to return with all haste to our base here and show my findings to the General.”
“And what exactly is this stronghold?” Claire asked, tilting her head and taking a step toward the projection.
The fortress looked to be on a scale that made the ruined castle where we had fought the wild dragons and kobolds look like a toy. It was huge and looked unassailable. It might have been designed, for all its obvious size and strength, by a child: a mammoth main keep with a tower set a little way away from each of the four corners, and on top of each one of these towers…
“Are those…?” I asked.
“Dragons,” Scrutor said. “Yes. Wild ones. This is a kobold mega-stronghold, the likes of which the Lorekeepers would be able to tell you more about. Each of its towers is a temple for a wild dragon, and the wild dragons are perched on their peaks, as you can see. And these are not just any wild dragons, but Elder Dragons.”
Scrutor spoke in neat, clipped syllables, never using more words than were strictly necessary.
“We do not know the exact name of this stronghold,” she continued “but—”
“It is called the Bronze Citadel,” said a voice, as the tent flapped was ripped aside.
The General opened her mouth in outrage, at the sight of Hana, the bearmancer standing there.
A guard burst through the flap a second later and grabbed the bearmancer by the arm. He looked sheepishly at General Shiloh and said, “General, my apologies, she slipped past me and—”
Claire raised a single small hand, and the guard was silenced as effectively as if someone had pressed a mute button.
“Speak, Bearmancer,” the Seer said, her eyes locked on the petite woman wrapped in her cloak and shawl, her wrists bound. “Speak. For you clearly have something to say.”
Hana regarded Claire with an untrusting eye, but said, “That is the Bronze Citadel. It is where you will find more crystals—more Etherstones. Their exact location, however, is a mystery.”
A soft light pulsated suddenly at my side. Casting my eyes downward, I saw that Will, the wisp, had come into being right next to me. I couldn’t say how I knew, but I was certain that the little will-o’-the-wisp was staring intently at Hana.
General Shiloh’s eyes flicked from me to Hana to Will to Claire and back again. With an impatient gesture, she banished the guard from the tent. The man gratefully retreated. She grunted a laugh, looked at Claire and said, “You knew about this, Seer?”
Claire gave an enigmatic little shrug of one shoulder. Then she placed a hand on my shoulder and subjected the General to a long, slow look.
General Shiloh huffed a half amused, half irked sigh. “Yes. Well. I suppose that’s where you come in, Dragonmancer Noctis. You and your little wisp friend down there.”
I looked from Will to the General.
“That’s where I come in to do what?” I asked.
“The location of the Etherstones,” Claire said quietly, nudging me with an elbow.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Cool. Sorry, it’s been a busy couple of days, you know.”
General Shiloh gave me a poker-faced stare. She looked like she wanted to call me some sort of fresh name, but before she could do so, there was a clamor of trumpets from somewhere in the opposite direction to where the center of Dodge City lay.
“What in the blazes is that about?” General Shiloh snapped.
Claire looked totally unperturbed, but as a woman who was renowned for being able to look into the future, that might not have struck anyone as very surprising.
The tent flap was torn aside yet again, and the same guard that had come in with Hana poked his head inside. He looked flustered.
“General Shiloh,” he said. “Enemies approach from the southwest!”
General Shiloh, Scrutor, Claire, Hana, and I hurried outside. Escorted by a squad of soldiers, three of whom were my trusted coterie, we made our way without delay to the southwestern outskirts of the Galipolas Mountain encampment.
“There, Ma’am!” a watchwoman said. “Over yonder. Atop the hills. You see them?”
“I see them,” General Shiloh said.
It was hard not to see these newcomers.
Three warriors, riding on the backs of three massive bears. Lit by the light of the noon sun that had burned off the wispy clouds, I could see that the bears were all different. As different as one dragon was to another. One was white as your typical polar bear, the second was a deep russet red, and the last bear was covered with fur that lay somewhere between blue and black.
Hana, standing next to me, said proudly, “They are my kin. If they are here now, they wish none of your Mystocean troops any harm. They must have a grave reason for risking everything to be here.”
“And how did they enter the Mystocean Empire unseen, and get so close to our encampment without raising the alarm?” General Shiloh asked.
“The same way I did,” Hana replied in her lilting voice.
“You still haven’t informed me as to how you did that,” the General grumbled ominously.
“And I’m afraid, General, that I never will,” the bearmancer said mildly.
General Shiloh looked like she would have loved to tell the athletic, willow-switch of a woman just what she could make her say, but she swallowed her tongue when she caught Claire’s eye. She gritted her teeth, then gained control of herself.
“Prepare my tent for a meeting,” General Shiloh snapped to a guard at her elbow. “Food and drink suitable for distinguished guests. We will see what these Vetruscans have to say.”
Hana walked out to meet the three bearmancers, acting as an unofficial mediator. She was accompanied by half a dozen pikemen wearing full Imperial colors.
As I watched the three bearmancers escorted slowly toward us, down the hill that they had been standing on, I felt a pressure on either side of me.
“Don’t think you’re getting away from us that easily, Mike,” Penelope said into my ear. Her polite, studious voice was just as seductive in its own way as Tasmin’s foul mouth was.
“Yes,” Renji said. “We want our dragonlings, Mike. We want to help the Empire too…”
The djinn’s breath was cold as mountain air on my face and revived my sleepy senses somewhat.
“Well,” I said, “you’re going to have to wait, ladies. It sounds like we’re going to have to lay siege to a giant bronze fortress before I can get hold of more Etherstones.”
Penelope moved her head back so that she could scan my face for a punchline. When she saw no joke or lie in my eyes, she said, “Giant bronze fortress…”
Renji gazed at me and smiled her silver-toothed smile. Her blue-skinned hand trembled slightly, with anticipation, as she lay it on my chest.
“It is true then, what they say,” she said in her calm voice.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Veritably, there is no rest for the wicked,” the djinn said.
I snorted and put my arms around the two women.
We stared out at the approaching bearmancers, as they made their stately way toward the gathered Imperial troops on the back of their massively muscled beasts.
“No rest for the wicked,” I mused. “I guess that means there’s no rest for anyone, then.”
I looked out at the pristine mountain landscape that backed the approach of the three bearmancers. Gorgeous woodlands of fragrant firs, rivers that ran like threads of silver, and broken rocks formations of gray and purple and black. It was a wonderous, savage, and stunning land that lay out there. Mysterious and exciting. Much like the future that lay at my feet.
What would it hold?
I’d already met one bearmancer, and I was about to meet three more. What were they like and what were their intentions toward us? Hana seemed to me to be trustworthy, but was she a paragon of her people, of these Vetruscans?
Their very existence and coming here brought up another interesting point: what other mancers lived out there, out beyond the borders of this strange Empire that I had given my allegiance to?
I could only wonder at that.
I shook my head slightly, feeling the press of warmth from the women on either side of me. There were many questions surfacing now. Many thoughts whirling and jostling to be inquired over in my oversaturated and weary mind.
Three such queries that bubbled to the fore of my brain were; what were the wild dragons, truly? What mysteries did the Subterranean Realms have to offer me and the Mystocean Empire? We had barely scratched the surface there, I reckoned. And how many dragonlings would I father?
I looked out over the chain of mountains that stretched out and faded to dusky purple out on the horizon. Somewhere out of sight, a couple of birds were nattering away about sex or food or danger in their pretty voices.
Those questions of mine, that jostled for attention in my head, they could all be answered later. For now, I planned on leaving the politicking to the likes of General Shiloh and Claire. I had my women and my children to attend to, first and foremost.
I sighed. Breathed the crisp air and enjoyed the feel of the sunlight on my face and the backs of my hands. I meant to make the most of the little things while we were above ground. The gods knew, it sounde
d like we’d be spending a lot of time down in the echoing halls, cramped passages, and dangerous unexplored frontier that was the Subterranean Realms.
And, probably, sooner rather than later.
I turned away from the bearmancers, from the future, and focused on the women at my side and the present that I was in. You had to make a concerted effort to enjoy these moments, to enjoy the present. After all, most of us—the lucky ones—were living the life that we might one day look back on as the good old days.
It was best to make sure that they weren’t just good days, but fucking great.
“Come on,” I said, shoving my weariness aside, grinning and taking Renji and Penelope by the hands, “let’s go and find the others and get something to drink.”
Renji made a sound of assent. “Yes, there are many souls that need remembering today.”
“But,” said Penelope in the anxious voice of the student who is allowing herself to be talked into skipping class, “hadn’t we better start preparing for… for what comes next? For what we might be called upon to do down in the Subterranean Realms? Shouldn’t we be training or planning or reading maps? Should we really be drinking and cavorting and wasting precious time?”
“Ah, Pen,” I said, squeezing the Knowledge Sprite’s arm and kissing her lightly on the cheek, “didn’t you hear that time you enjoy wasting can never be considered as wasted time?”
And, together, we walked toward the future, while it looked back at us with a knowing smile.
End of Book 3
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