Pirin and Gray scampered back and forth across the shore, hauling cargo and helping load the barges. They carried crates of rations for the elves and reams of fabric for the weavelings. He helped tie down ballistae and flak catapults belowdeck, and he helped mount repeating crossbows at the barges’ sterns and bows—in case there was an ambush along the way. They hadn’t had enough weapons to prepare the barges beforehand, and they’d needed them for the expected battle, but now? They could safely spare some repeating crossbows, no matter how expensive the weapons were.
As he carried a crate, relying on his enhanced body to do most of the heavy lifting, he glanced at a weaveling beside him. The fabric man had donned his helmet. It framed his rigid face, before spiking up to a peak. Wing-shaped ornamental fins poked out the sides, and though it looked awfully heavy, it also made the weaving look an extra half-foot taller.
“So…Pak, right?” Pirin asked. He knew the weavelings could understand Low Speech, though they didn’t have the capacity to make a full range of sounds as men and elves did. As he understood, they couldn’t pronounce hard or soft G’s, F’s, Th’s, Y’s, and more. “In the tongue your kind devised, two clicks…” He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and created two clicking sounds (as close to the weaveling language as he could muster). “...means ‘Yes’, correct?”
Pak dipped his head in affirmation, then made a similar sound—though it came out a lot more woody from the weaveling.
“Is it right to say that it’s…Low Speech, the common language, except with different sounds that are easy for you to pronounce?”
Pak replied with a chain of clicks, rumpling fabric, and assorted vowel sounds, before finally culminating in a pair of clicks.
“Give me a second to decipher that…” Pirin said. He set the box down on the gravel in front of a cargo crane and fastened a hook to it, then tugged on the rope to signal that he’d attached it. The crane operator lifted the box up into the air and hoisted it onto the deck of a transport barge.
“Right,” Pirin said, after stretching his mind a little to absorb the meaning of the phrase. “So it’s got the same structure, different sounds.” Shouldn’t be too hard to learn.
You’re telling me I have to learn a whole new set of sounds? Gray asked. She dropped down and spread her wings, letting a pair of crates slide off her saddle. Pirin hooked them onto the crane as well. Oh…oh no…I’m not sure if—
“You don’t have to learn them, Gray,” Pirin said. “I just want to be able to speak with the weavelings.”
Oh, thank the Eane. Low Speech is hard enough.
Pak clapped Pirin on the shoulder graciously, then motioned toward the ship and walked away. Pirin let him leave.
Only after Pak walked away did he notice a trio of nearby Sirdian soldiers with their swords drawn, their faces twisted into fear. Someone had just laid a hand on their king and walked away without dismissal?
But Pirin didn’t want to be that sort of king. He didn’t want to be like Ethelvaed, ordering around underlings and making a fool of himself.
They don’t trust the weavelings, Gray said. That’s gotta be a part of it, right?
“Possibly.” Pirin walked toward the soldiers slowly. Their armour clattered, and they sheathed their swords before dipping their heads. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes, my lord,” one elf said. He was only a little older than Pirin, with short, messy hair and a cloak so mud-stained it looked more brown than blue. “We were just concerned, that is all.”
“If you die, we have nothing,” said a different elf. “If a weaveling were to kill you, to act up and attack…”
Pirin clasped his hands together, then rolled up his sleeve, revealing more of his runebond tattoo and the bodily enhancement markings—the gloves of pale green cloud that formed a net around his hand. “Do you know what these mean?”
Two of the Sirdian soldiers were quiet, but the third, the oldest, an elf with long grey hair bound into braids down his back, said, “Runebond etchings…and the mark of a near-perfect enhanced body.” He raised his gaze, eyes focussing on the side of Pirin’s head.
He was probably looking at the bondmark—a clump of gnatsnapper feathers behind each of his ears, signifying his advancement to Blaze.
“I promise, the weavelings pose little threat to me now, unless they were to all work in huge numbers.”
The three elves didn’t say anything.
“And I promise, I won’t let them hurt any of you, either. You’re as valuable to this effort as they are, and…” Pirin stepped forward. “I left, I hunted for power, because I wanted to save my homeland. Because I loved what I knew, and I loved its people. I won’t give them up now just because there’s a new army of wraiths to help us out.”
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The three elves visibly relaxed, and Pirin held his hands out, just for good measure. “Look, see, if I was using the Memory Chain to put thoughts in your minds, you’d see the technique in my hands.” Whether it had been a concern or not, he figured he’d say it as well. “What are your names? I’m doing my best to learn about everyone I can.”
“Ledel, Iämme, and Firanor,” said the older soldier, first pointing at himself then the other two as he said their names.
“A pleasure to meet you,” Pirin said. “Now, what do you say? Let’s get these ships filled up and on the river?”
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Once the barges were full, they hoisted sails and rolled out oars, then set off down the Eldflow river. The delta soon condensed into a single, slow-moving river, so wide that Pirin could barely see across it from the ground. First, it curved to the south, but that was only to skirt a hill of tall rock with the ruins of an ancient watchtower atop it.
Soon, the river turned north again, and the fleet of nearly seventy-five riverboats set off toward Vel Aerdeil.
Pirin hopped into Gray’s saddle, and together, they fluttered up to the sky, where the Featherflight hovered, maintaining a safe height above the fleet and keeping an eye on their surroundings.
Pirin and Gray landed in the airship’s open cargo hold, maneuvering expertly onto the cargo elevator. He hopped off the saddle right beside her nest, then cracked open a barrel of birdseed.
Thank you! Gray exclaimed. A fine meal for an especially fine dragon-bird!
“Keep warm and keep safe, alright?” Pirin said. “I’ll be back in a bit, and if you want, we can join a patrol.”
He climbed the ladder out of the cargo hold, through the airship’s wyvern-made gasbags, and to the axial catwalk. A pair of Sirdian archers walked down the catwalk, wearing light leather armour and quivers at their hips. Feanscent and Balarien. They were both lookouts, known for their good eyesight, and they’d flown up to the Featherflight on the journey to meet up with the Sirdian fleet.
They nodded to Pirin as he passed, and he nodded back. When he reached the bow of the airship, he descended a ladder down to the crew quarters, where Brealtod, the ship’s dragonfolk first mate, stirred a pot of soup with a ladle.
“Brealtod?” Pirin asked. “Can I ask you something?”
Brealtod hissed an affirmative response.
“You…know a bit about dragons, yes? What is the origin of…your people?”
He let out a chain of hisses, which Pirin roughly translated to, “The sagas say we descended from the ancient southern dragons, but those are myths. It’s more likely that we are the descendants of a sect of dragons who accumulated enough Essence and took on a form of their choosing—something more like men, more elegant.”
Pirin had been practicing his dragon-speak—or at least, improving his understanding of it. He needed to be able to talk with Brealtod.
“Wouldn’t your kind have more magic, then?”
Brealtod spoke again, and Pirin translated the hisses and clicks to, “It is possible that my ancestors had magic, but thousands of years passed. Think of it as a very, very mild Bloodline Talent that shapes us. True, there are some who could form a Reyad Bond, but they were no more common than in men.”
Pirin nodded. “You…don’t have the temperament of a dragon. Do you know why?”
“I have some guesses,” Brealtod said in his dragon-speak. “But—”
“Pirin? Is that you?” Nomad’s voice rang up from the gondola below the crew quarters.
“It’s me,” Pirin called back.
“They were waiting for you,” Brealtod said in dragon-speak. “I will make a list of my reasoning for you, so you can use it. It’s about your gnatsnapper, yes?”
“Yeah.” Pirin nodded. “Thank you.”
He ran over to his cot on the opposite side of the crew quarters and left a few pellets of manifested Essence for Göttrur, the wraith-fox, then ran back to the ladder and descended to the gondola below.
Alyus, the Featherflight’s ostal captain, stood at the ship’s wheels—an elevator wheel and a rudder wheel—holding them steady. Behind him, Nomad hunched over a table, poring over maps and muttering to himself.
“Ah, elfy!” Alyus exclaimed, glancing back. “You made it through the night!”
“Never doubted me for a minute, did you?” Pirin walked back to the map table, then leaned on it alongside Nomad.
“I saw plenty of blue flashes. Had me a little worried with how many of those fancy magic palm strikes you were using.”
“Just clearing a path through the sky.” He turned to Nomad. “What are we getting up to, then? You…really think I can hit Wildflame before the first snowfall?”
“I think you have to,” said Nomad. “The longer we try to hold Vel Aerdeil, exposed and vulnerable, the worse the situation will get for us. Not to mention the citizens within the city walls, who will no doubt grow more and more agitated.”
Pirin sighed. “Wonderful. So…what do I have to do?” No sense in dodging the point; he’d do what he had to in order to advance. “These…seven Inner Gates. What are they?”
Nomad pulled his flute-staff off his back and tapped seven points along Pirin’s spine. “The center-rhun channel. It runs from your soul at the top of your neck, all the way down to your core. Over the course of your life, it’s natural to build up blockages along it. But in order to reach Wildflame, you must open each of the seven Gates along the channel. Once the Essence is flowing freely, you’ll have to compress it all down with a cohesive Eane Revelation, and then you’ll advance to the realm of the Unbound Lords.”
Pirin nodded, but he didn’t really understand. “I…can’t envision the Gates. But, like you said, we’ll need a burst of elixir for that.”
“Indeed.”
“Then…we need to reach Vel Aerdeil with as few interruptions as possible.”