by C. M. Hayden
“He’s dying. He came to me a few years ago and asked if he could use the Arclight to extend his life. Isn’t that ironic? After years of crushing his own people’s use of the Old Gods’ magic, when he’s on his deathbed he comes right to the source. As you can imagine, I told him to piss off.” Ross ruffled the paper in the air. “Recognizing this is one thing, understanding it is quite another.”
Taro folded his arms against his chest. “Do you know if there’s a way to track where the other page is?”
“Dowsing?” Ross said curiously, leaning away from the hilto board. “What’s this about?”
“My sister, Nima. She’s been missing for months now. She had the other page.” Taro pointed to Nima’s unmistakable handwriting on the sheet. “I’ve written back to her a dozen times, but she hasn’t responded.”
Ross casually knocked over Taro’s last piece, winning their game. “I’m afraid Piper didn’t teach you too well.”
“If he were still alive, maybe we would’ve had a few more games to practice together,” Taro said sharply.
“If you’re implying his death was my fault—”
“I’m not implying it, I’m saying it. You might not have killed him directly, but you’re part of the reason he’s dead.” He grimaced. “You and Vexis.”
“Then maybe you should go rant at her,” Ross said.
“She won’t help me. She’s a sociopath. She has no remorse for what she does.”
Ross’ sky-blue eyes narrowed. “And you think I do?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.” Taro glared back. “If there’s anything you know, anything at all, please tell me. I’m begging you. I might never get another chance to talk to you.”
Ross rubbed her right eye and thought for a moment. “When the Shahl began burning Helian records, the Magisterium frantically collected a great deal of material to prevent its destruction. Many of the pieces were damaged or so rare they couldn’t be displayed in the Librarium. They’d be in the Tombs. Moira could find them for you, but it would take a lifetime to fish through all of them. That’s all I know.” Ross’ voice was remarkably sincere.
“The Tombs. Well, it’s a start.” Taro stood and thanked her. When he was inches from the door, Ross called to him one last time.
“One more thing, Mr. Taro.”
Taro glanced over his shoulder at her. “Yes?”
“You might want to reconsider speaking to Vexis. She’s Helian, and might know more than I, or a book, could tell you.”
“She’ll never help me,” Taro said matter-of-factly.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. She loves to hear herself speak. If you coax her enough, she’ll talk, and then you just have to sort through her lies. A daunting task, I know, but you’ve got one advantage. The one thing that might break through her wall of bullshit.”
Taro tilted his head. “What would that be?”
Ross upended the rest of her tea. “Her sister, Kadia. The only thing Vexis ever seemed to care about.”
Chapter Two
The Dragons of the North
Day or night, the Artificium bustled with noise. Taro had grown deaf to the clinking of hammers, the scraping of metal, and the unending chatter of a hundred artificers tinkering in the alcoves spread throughout the maze-like workshop. Airship fuselages hung from chains overhead, and steam hissed and bellowed from the steel grates underfoot. If Taro hadn’t navigated it a hundred times before, it would’ve been easy to get lost among its many twists and turns.
Ven was in his usual spot on the second level near a hot kiln. The over-cloak of his blue artificer’s uniform hung from his waist by his belt, and his skin had a thin sheen of sweat on it. In his left hand were iron tongs that clamped onto a red-hot piece of Crissom steel. He held the steel over a curved anvil head and struck with the hammer several times until it took on a curved shape. Several smacks later, he dipped it into a bucket of water, sending up a cloud of steam.
Taro scratched idly at the back of his hand with an almost nervous tick. “I spoke with her,” he finally said, his voice only one level above a whisper.
Ven didn’t seem surprised by his presence. He glanced up briefly, then placed the metal back into the kiln. “I’d take anything she says with a grain of salt. I’m honestly surprised the Sun King let you in the same room with her.”
Taro ignored the comment. “She said the parchment was made in Helia.”
“Helians don’t use magic,” Ven said simply, turning the metal slightly in the hot furnace.
“I know. Apparently, it’s from before they stopped using it. But it’s so old that she has no idea how it works.”
“So, that’s that then?” Ven peeked into the kiln at the rapidly heating metal.
“There are books on Helian magic in the Librarium that survived. It’s a lot though. I’m going to need some help sorting through them. You up for it?” Taro tried to sound casual, as if he couldn’t care less what Ven’s response would be. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ven had been distant for months now; and the longer it went on, the more Taro feared that Ven was trying to distance himself from him.
Ven gave a sharp look that quickly softened into an exhausted half-smile. “Taro…” He didn’t look angry, exactly, but his eyes showed definite reproach.
“You promised you’d help,” Taro said pleadingly.
Ven set the hot metal on the anvil again and tapped it with his hammer, smoothing it out. “And I will. But I can’t devote every waking minute to it. Especially when there’s no guarantee Nima is in any trouble.”
Taro held up the parchment. “It says ‘help me.’”
“That’s what she said to Mathan, not to you. How can you begin to guess what that means? Why would she ask her kidnapper for help when she was in trouble?” Ven drew out a sheet of tin and began measuring it, marking each end with a grease pencil.
“I don’t know,” Taro said honestly. “But I can’t do this alone.”
“You’re not alone. I’ll help you when I can.” Ven passed him and sat the red-hot bit of curved metal on the anvil again. “But I want to be a magister. Preferably sometime this century. I need a sponsor, and Magister Kyra’s my best bet.”
Taro started to realize what Ven was getting at. “And you don’t want her to see you with me.”
Ven sighed hard but didn’t refute it. “I didn’t say that.”
“It’s fine,” Taro said dejectedly. “I understand. Maybe when you’re free.”
_____
“Staring at it’s not going to help,” Suri said, as she pressed her thumb down onto a thin metal wing of a mechanical bird.
Taro slumped onto the desk they both sat at. It was wide and took up almost the entire reading alcove, so much so that the chairs couldn’t pull out the entire way.
“It’s the only thing that helps,” Taro said, leaning his cheek against his fist.
The Librarium was busy considering the late hour. Recruits crammed every table, studying for their approaching trials, and the line in front of the librarian’s desk stretched out the front door. Outside it was bright, as it always was these days; but the glass ceiling of the Librarium was enchanted to darken as the day progressed. As the glass was practically black now, it must’ve been well after nine o’clock.
The Librarium was a circular building between the Magisterium and the Royal Palace, though still well within the Magisterium’s Midway barrier. Containing an untold number of underground floors, it housed hundreds of thousands of books. The interior had seven walls lined with bookshelves three-stories tall. Magisters and artificers could call upon the inscriptions on the higher-up books, and bring them down with their templar, but recruits were forced to brave the numerous rickety ladders that wobbled and swayed as they tried to reach the top.
The table between Taro and Suri was piled high with books, scrolls, and ledgers. It had been two weeks since they’d begun delving into the Helian materials. Some of the books were so frail and burned that the pages
had to be handled with tweezers. The head librarian, Moira, had allowed them to examine anything they needed in exchange for them transcribing the old tomes into new manuscripts. It was grueling work, and Suri wasn’t much help. She’d set her sights on an apprenticeship with the new Imperator, Magister Briego, and getting the flutter-brained old man to notice her was a constant chore.
Her most recent attempt at impressing him was a bird construct. But despite her sincerest efforts, she couldn’t quite get it to work, and it frustrated her to no end.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Taro said after shutting another book. This one was a treatise on proper runic leys.
Suri placed the lifeless metal bird she was working on onto the tabletop and laced her fingers together with a short sigh. “Taro, you know I’m all for helping you find your sister, but maybe it’s time to accept that what you’re looking for isn’t here.”
“What do you suggest then?” Taro said, a bit sharper than he’d intended.
If Suri was offended, she didn’t show it. “If Mathan were alive, I’d say ask him.”
Taro shook his head. “Mathan was never inclined toward magic. He stole some bits and pieces, but I never got the sense that he truly understood them.”
Suri went back to tightening some cogs on her tiny construct. She looked as though she’d been bottling up a question for some time, and she finally let it spill out. “Let me ask you a pointed question. If you did find out where Nima is, what exactly would you do? What if she’s on the other side of the world or something? Are you going to just get up and walk?”
Taro didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“A thousand miles?”
“If I have to.”
Suri gave a sincere smile. “Gods below, I wish I cared about someone that much. Maybe I’m just too much of an asshole.” As she spoke, she busied herself removing a small fabric toolkit from a satchel, unraveled it, and retrieving a tiny flathead screwdriver from one of the frayed pockets.
“You care about Ven, don’t you?” Taro chided.
“Well, that’s complicated.” Suri set the construct upright on the wooden tabletop, tightened one of the pins below the right wing, and cracked her knuckles triumphantly. “I think I finally got it.”
“You’re sure this time?” Taro asked dubiously.
Suri gave him a peeved look, but an oil stain on the tip of her nose made it hard to take her seriously. “Positive,” she said, wiping the oil with the hem of her sleeve. “The last one was just a trial run.”
“A trial run that almost burned down your dad’s inn.”
“The fire didn’t spread too far.” Suri scratched a few small runes on the construct’s belly and pressed her fingers to the frame. The runes pulsed white, and the bird twitched and fluttered on the table but couldn’t manage to get into the air. It tweeted and clanked until a plume of smoke burst from its tiny inner workings and the machinery went still.
Taro coughed and fanned the smoke with a leather-bound notepad. “Well, that’s an improvement at least.”
“Damn it.” Suri tried to pick up the construct but burned her fingertip on the hot metal. She clenched her blistered finger between her teeth. “How the hell did Pipes do this so easily?”
“He had a gift,” Taro said. At the mention of Pipes, Taro felt a sliver of ice deep in the pit of his stomach. Just thinking about it was like touching a raw nerve. He paused for only a moment, not wanting to linger on the subject of his dead friend. “Y’know, if I could talk to Vexis for just a minute or two, maybe she could help.”
Suri was poking the still-hot construct with the tip of her screwdriver. “Even if she could dowse-out the other parchment—and that’s a big if, considering dowsing’s probably a myth—then you’d need to do more than talk to her. She’d probably need equipment, an inscriber, or God-knows what. And even if the Sun King allowed you to speak with her—”
“—there’s no way they’d give her access to anything magic-related. I know.” The next book in the stack was a curious one. It was certainly Helian, but it didn’t seem related to magic. It was called The Forty Truths of Ishal Valharis and looked fairly new compared to the more aged books.
Valharis was a Celosan alchemist living in Helia who (according to the first few pages) ‘revolutionized how magisters understand templar.’ In it, he described templar not as an internal force that can be wholly controlled, but rather as something unnaturally attached to a soul and is constantly trying to be expelled from it.
In his second truth, Valharis said that a templar is the maze that the soul runs through. The more vast and complex the templar, the more suppressed the soul is. He used this theory to explain why powerful people are sometimes predisposed to abuse their power.
In the middle of Valharis’ fourteenth truth, Taro was stirred out of reading by a strange creak along the walls of the reading alcove. It was fairly loud; but he wouldn’t have given it a second thought if the entire Librarium hadn’t gone immediately quiet. Sure, it had been quiet before, but that silence was filled with the rustling of pages, the scribbling of quills, and plenty of hushed chatter. This silence was menacingly empty, interrupted only by another loud creak, as if the entire building had been momentarily pulled from the ground.
The wind outside gusted as though a hurricane was barreling through Endra Edûn. Taro and Suri rushed outside and into the courtyard, toppling over a chair on their way out. There was a great deal of clamor and shouting outside, mixed with people staring up at the sky with their hands cupped over their eyes. Taro did the same. The Arclight was so bright it took time for his eyes to adjust, but he could make out three creatures casting massive shadows on the ground below.
They were obviously dragons, that much was certain, of the same type as Antherion. They had hard, slick scales, and amber eyes that burned with their own inner light. Each of their wings were as long as their bodies from snout to tail, and as they touched down on the grass the gust coming from their wings was enough to rip plants from the soil, and knock several warders onto their backs.
Taro and Suri raced to the edge of the courtyard where a crowd was already gathering. His prosthetic right leg ached as he tried to keep up with her. Normally, she was polite enough to walk slowly, but she seemed to forget him in her desire to see what all the commotion was.
He finally caught up, and pressed against the wrought iron fence, trying to get a better look at the three creatures. Not far from the palace, warders formed a perimeter around them and prodded their spears in the dragons’ direction, but the immense creatures seemed to take no notice of them. The sleek, silvery-orange dragon in the middle motioned to the others with a turn of its neck. Moments later, all three stretched out their wings and their scales began to glow.
They decreased in size and their bodies morphed into vaguely human forms, though their wings remained. The two on the sides were each much larger than Antherion had been; their skin was ridged and their teeth sharpened to points. Their eyes were like flaming embers at the bottom of a black well, and stood out even in the bright light.
The dragon in the middle was very different. It—or rather she—was the most beautiful creature Taro had ever laid his eyes on. Her silvery scales were faint and barely noticeable against her smooth skin, her hair was tucked to one side, and she had a glow about her like moonlight glimmering on a lake. Even with her size reduced, her wings were enormous canopies each as long as she was tall; she tucked them behind her and clenched her fists as if she was just growing accustomed to this new form.
She dressed immodestly, which is to say she wasn’t dressed at all. There were a dozen silver bands around her wrists and ankles, and what could be described as a ‘vine’ of cloth that wrapped around her waist and breasts.
Her eyes, too, were deep amber, and her gaze traced along the entire courtyard. When she saw Taro, she paused for a moment, and said something to her companions in what Taro could only guess was Draconic.
“Tämä on vimein leposija oika
ni? Katsokame tänä,” she said. Her voice was as cool and crisp as a rushing autumn river.
Despite the dragon to her right being a hulking, eight-foot tall mountain of scales and muscles, it was clear she was in charge. Her bodyguard pointed one of his claws away from the palace and toward the Midway barrier not far away; its magic blocked entry to the Magisterium for anyone who didn’t possess an aurom.
The three dragons left the palace courtyard, passing throngs of bewildered recruits and warders who looked on with helplessness and fear. The dragons approached the glowing runes etched into a stone bevel in the ground; these runes projected the Midway barrier around the tower and were said to be utterly impenetrable.
The female dragon ran her fingers across the barrier. When she did, there was a flicker of blue energy that shot through the air like a lightning bolt.
There was a flurry of confusion in the courtyard, and many things happened concurrently: more warders pooled in from the streets and guardhouses, forming a wide perimeter around the dragons, and several artificers ran inside the Magisterium (presumably to get Imperator Briego).
The largest dragon touched the Midway as well and recoiled as his hand was shocked. Taro had once touched the barrier while not wearing his aurom, and it’d made his entire arm limp as a boned fish for over an hour. The dragon only seemed mildly annoyed by it. He grunted and reared his teeth before kneeling down to examine the runes projecting the barrier.
He peered up at the female dragon. “Raaka kirjo.”
The female again pressed her hand against the barrier, and there was a tremendous whoosh and crackle. The barrier peeled away like a curtain, and the runes on the ground splintered and snapped in half. Each glowing rune fizzled and died in sequence, one after the other, until the barrier was gone. When the three passed through the gap, warders rushed in front of them with their swords and spears drawn.
“Stay where you are!” a warder-captain shouted.
The largest dragon huffed through his nose and stared down at the warder-captain, who was a full two feet shorter than himself. “We would speak with your Sun King.” He spoke perfect Amínnic.