There should have been a guard here.
Adwyn smelt the rotting blood, the lingering ozone, and a very — aseptic smell he only knew he’d never smelt before. Not here. The shattered boulder was here by the ravine walls, already dusted with sand or moss. The spears were here. A tattered bit of magicless net was here.
There should have been a guard here.
He halted the assistants then, and they lingered.
Adwyn did not trust in anything preternatural; he knew the merely physical was far subtler than oft credited. He glimpsed there were very minute details — perhaps the sound of bones smally popping or out of place breathing; perhaps a whiff of just one chemical one couldn’t place; perhaps a shadow or flicker you’d never twitch at.
Things almost absent, things very cloudy, things that simply don’t register to a skeptical mind.
So too with Adwyn. But they built up this feeling — malign and just out of reach. It felt to Adwyn like lady death breathing down his neck.
She felt very close.
“Why did we stop, Adwyn-sofran?”
“Funny you’d stop to gawk after purporting this mission to be so important.”
Such were the last words of the assistants.
The lamps all around had gone out, and when Adwyn turned he saw two dark dead dragons.
A momentary prayer to Dyfns. Light my path.
Lifting his head very slowly Adwyn saw a deep shadow advancing with meticulous steps, dithering movements and so much quietness. Sharp, thin things orbited them, and Adwyn knew their smell was of blood.
“Adwyn, the black ascendant, scion of house Graig Mwsogl.” His murmuring voice carried only thanks to the deep quiet he brought. “I should apologize it took so long for us to meet.”
The figure looked up, pierced him with a gaze. But Adwyn only saw little orb-lights sown into the cloak, too round and bright to be the real eyes. As if they hid their gaze.
“...But I knew it was pointless.”
Adwyn said, “You killed them.”
He didn’t care. He only wondered why. What was the impetus?
“Taking proper caution. In the worst case, you would be dangerous enough alone. Unfortunately, you are the one who matters.”
Adwyn drew his baton, ridiculously, but he wanted the appearance. “How flattering. Perhaps recognizing that will encourage you to make sense. It should.” His tone frayed on those words.
“I don’t find I need to. All will make sense when it must.”
Adwyn made himself nod. His gaze fleeted, caught in the air the drifting sharp forms. “Is that magic?”
The figure paused then. In the dark there were no tells but that. They said, “You would call it so.”
Adwyn could sigh. With a slightly trembling foreleg, he reached for the male assistant, pressed hard a vein.
Adwyn had said it. The figure had said it. He should have known.
And yet, the confirmation was a great cold settling just under his scales, a very lonely rime.
Adwyn looked at the figure, and somewhere dim and occulted mental muscles shifted and Adwyn merely frowned. Truth shone only in his eyes.
His voice, meanwhile, was a casual probe. “I glimpse you’ve done this a few times or more.” An alula motioned toward a corpse.
“Often it is the simplest, cleanest path.” They nodded. “Would it be wrong to call them rounding errors in the grand equation?”
Simple, clean. Adwyn could glean the appeal.
And yet.
“Simple and clean for you. Their deaths will cause a mess and one that I’d see most of.”
“Forget the capitol, Adwyn. There’s no alliance; do you think Mlaen cannot shield you? Slough the needless hindrances.”
“A cliff drake doesn’t abandon his loyalties.”
“You are from the canyons, Adwyn.”
Adwyn turned a little, looked off down the ravine. “I cannot simply abandon my loyalties. I’d dissolve. How can one stand if they stand for nothing?”
“There are more fundamental things you can strive for. Freedom. Power. Balance.”
“The trouble with blurry abstraction like those is you cannot pin them down. They’ll shift under you, and you’ll be doing anything you want.”
“Are you afraid of what you want, Adwyn?” A pause. “False question. You are. You wouldn’t be anywhere near where you are lest you were furiously hiding or denying what you want.”
“Are you a priest, then? Here to talk me out of my troubles?” Over the corpses you rendered?
“I was once a priest. And so, I would if you’d allow it. But I know the look of a meteor fated to crash. I’ll only point you.”
“Point me?
“To the pits. You were going through Wydrlllos, were you not? The rumors were true. You are a fascinating amalgam of stupidity and brilliance.” A head slowly shaken. “Follow me.”
“How could I trust you?”
The shadow turned, began low-walking analytically toward a ravine wall.
“I’m sure you’ll find a reason.”
----------------------------------------
The figure flew up to become a silhouette on high. Adwyn looked up the cliff wall.
Sense was sense. Adwyn lowered his gaze and in quiet slinked away from the figure into the night.
The dark spot with the boulder and spears and — the assistants was behind him. He didn’t look back, but perhaps when that high whistle pierced the night those false eyes were tracking him.
His gaze remained in front of him, and it was fortune, for there was no sound and there was no scent.
Only a pale fanged thing rearing in the dark.
The drake had taken another step before he really saw the golden python.
Three steps in front of him, thick as his neck, it softly, daringly hissed.
His fear flared, blinding all else, for one moment. Then Adwyn breathed and crouched. Snakes could leap high, but if he —
Wings spread behind the pale fanged head.
He whirled around, saw the false eyes watching. He glanced down the ravine opposite the snake, glanced up the wall opposite the figure. He took a step — and saw the figure had wings aspread.
Sense... was sense.
Behind him the wingèd python mimed silence as it slithered over moss and gravel. Picking his way to the wall then climbing, Adwyn heard it always remaining, a goldenscaled warning.
“I expected you to care more about this.” They watched Adwyn climb, the slender snake and its master.
“I care more about my own life.”
“Do you? I hadn’t realized.” They turned their head to look at the climbing drake. “Dyfns, capitol, Gwymr/Frina, Mlaen, sense — you care about many things, but I don’t glimpse your self-sacrificing life amongst them.” A pause. “Is it simple cowardice, then? Fear to tread near the shadow of the night?”
“There’s no courage in facing unavoidable death.”
“I will not kill you, Adwyn. Sense will tell you that.”
Adwyn had climbed footspans near the ravine’s top.
The figure was there, reaching, grabbing the orange drake, pulling him up slowly.
They said, “Meeting me at all, speaking to me at all, is an allowance.”
Adwyn lunged away from the grasp, stumbling. “I don’t appreciate my being at your mercy.”
They stood still, false eyes watching. “You prefer being the one administering it.”
Adwyn turned his head to look at the figure, face still settling into a reaction. It was a frown, and became tight, for the figure had gained new definition, outside the shadow of the ravine.
The golden snake had followed him already, and coiled its fat body around the master. With the lustrous black cloak waving and above it the healthy slick scales coiled, the intermixing light of moons and stars rendered a stark figure.
Adwyn nursed spice in his glands. Dragons didn’t stand that straight. Their voices weren’t so precisely pitched, and Adwyn didn’t like that there came one breath for every ten of his own.
“Walk with me.”
“Walk?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“You saw the meteor crash.”
Adwyn only tilted.
“It’s the perfect excuse for Rhyfel and for Wrang to have their dragons out in the cliffs.” They whisked a wing. “Ostensibly to get rich finding the meteor, really to watch out for the rogue adviser on the loose, after who knows what.”
“Fine. Walk to where?”
“The pits. Where else?”
“I don’t glimpse you’d be sensible enough to simply walk into Wydrllos and give yourself to us.”
The figure began high-walking, the overlong body of that wingèd serpent trailing on the ground, idly slithering.
They finally said, “Do not trust the guard, Adwyn. You should have glimpsed their true colors by now.”
“I don’t see the relevance.”
There were two breaths, unusually close together. One could have been a sigh.
“There are more ways into the pits than Wydrllos.”
“You know the lake well, then?”
“Of course.”
Quite telling, in light of recent events. He said, “How fortunate for me.”
The next comment was almost idle. “Most fortunate would be to have no association with the pits. But upon us is the burden of saving Gwymr/Frina. Again.”
The black ascendant had practiced the grandiose tones of speech till they came natural — he didn’t think the figure had.
Adwyn was picking his way after the figure. “You ever illume more questions. Which of them will you deign to answer?”
“All you must know is that Gwymr/Frina is under threat from exactly those who claim to want to save it. Rhyfel, Ushra. Do not trust them.”
A backward glance as it was said, and a fractional nod at the orange drake, and then the figure added, “You know already. They trust you.”
“Rhyfel does.” Emphasis fell on the silence.
The reply: “I know Ushra. Better than you do. The little alchemist likes you. That’s closest to his trust. The closest without pulsing a drop of his blood.”
“I only met him this morning.”
The figure stopped at that. His stride paused in one leg. The other three fell stiffly still.
Adwyn could add that Ushra threatened him obliquely, that his wife betrayed the town, that his granddaughter was the apprentice of some ambiguous him.
He didn’t think he would.
“And Rhyfel?” the figure asked.
Adwyn measured out the words, and voiced them. “I work with him.”
“Nothing more than that? Has he never mentioned the pits to you?”
Adwyn smirked. Gotcha. But the murderer needed a story. “No,” he started, buying breaths. Who else knew of the pits? Who else knew the secrets of this town?
Of course. “Mlaen tasked me with investigating the pits.”
A fleeting nod. “There are worse dragons with which to ally yourself.”
“Such as yourself.”
“Suffice it to not ally yourself against me, Adwyn of Dyfns.”
And with that the mysterious figure began to walk onward.
Behind them Adwyn worked his frills, those painted flaps thoughtfully twisting in the moonslight.
The figure wasn’t allknowing and therefore not allpowerful. Adwyn could still solve this.
They walked across the top of the ravine where you could look down upon the lamplit cobble and catwalks like some haughty lord. The figure’s serpent disappeared to swallow some screaming squirrel once, and never returned to the lustrous cloak.
Adwyn couldn’t hear it breathe behind him.
It was quieter, high above the safety of the ravine floor. Up high, one saw what could be an owl or mean anurognath flying from clifftop to clifftop; there was the jumping cat stalking about; and a dragon off on some business whom Adwyn didn’t hope or dare to involve.
The figure continued the analytical walk forward.
Adwyn asked, “How did you know I was out, going to the pits?”
The response grew in silence. “An associate of mine spied you making your way to the east gate.” A pause in stride. “And even before that the rumor of the rogue adviser had spread quick amongst the guard.”
Of course the female assistant brought the magical murderer down on his head. Somehow, Adwyn couldn’t muster the venom in the thought.
Adwyn looked the figure up and down. “I would glimpse a — character such as yourself would prefer to work alone.”
At that moment the golden wingèd snake leapt out and landed bodily on the figure. They swayed to a stop, and dragon and serpent turned to face Adwyn together. The figure’s face remained covered, but the snake yawned.
Adwyn rolled his head. “That is a beast.”
“No dragon is truly alone.” They turned around once more, but murmured, “I resent that you don’t respect the intelligent of amphipteres. They are capable creatures.”
“…Do they speak as well?”
“They are snakes. No.”
Adwyn kept a stare at it. “Are they magical?”
“Have you ever seen a amphiptere?”
“Why insult me?”
“It was an answer. Amphipteres are rare, for they had been bred. Or rather, designed.”
“…With magic.”
A slowly said, “Yes.”
Subtle by his side a wing lowered and his alula fingered the dangling gray net. Magic against magic. He should try his luck.
Adwyn kept a stare at the wingèd serpent as onward they walked.
----------------------------------------
“Do you care for spiders?”
“What kind of fool-sighted question is that?”
“Though so,” they said. “The war was unprovoked, you know.”
“What?”
“Dyfnder/Geunant could have left well enough alone. The spider war was a choice.”
“They are vermin. Extermination befits them.”
“I’d disagree that any creature deserves that fate.”
Adwyn leapt across the gap where two ravine walls tended close. A big-eyed furry thing dodged out of the way, and the snake hissed at it.
He waited while the figure crossed over with merely a long step. The adviser said, “You have me at your mercy, and you inflict philosophy puzzles on me.”
“Do you not like puzzles?”
“I do not like being played with.”
“Yet you’ve done the same to me.”
The orange drake started off. He smiled to be walking in front of the figure. The trail through the caves and obscure edges of cliffs was such a line that he could manage it. When he came to a spot like here where the path went left or right up against a still higher wall he could just wait.
The figure passed in front and Adwyn saw that the snake had left again. He kept a measure on the thing now, puzzled out how it thought and acted.
They went left, the figure licking a brille. “The point is, some dragons are irrationally afraid of spiders. You should know there’s a web in the cliffs.”
Adwyn weighed again his odds escaping the amphiptere.
Their route was everything and meandering. But Adwyn felt a vague sulfur smell sidling up and moss grew thin now. He glanced behind him, saw the snake had disappeared again, and was gliding back with a lump like a bat down its throat.
The adviser felt the nets again, and followed on. Above them, the stars were unchallenged by city light. Laswaith was waxing, and even in the shadow of a ravine wall, it wasn’t too dark.
After a bit, the snake slithered in front of him to nudge its master, and then their route veered a bit. They soon came across a hissing opening in the ravine wall, and the figure paused while the serpent nosed into the hole, and Adwyn heard the harsh mewling and yelping or sizzling of the snake’s secret language.
When it came back, the orange drake looked closer, saw the serpent had eyes facing more forward than any natural python he’d seen. It had more of a face.
At one point along the way, the trail grew quite thin and treacherous and Adwyn held the murderer’s lamp while the other dragon kicked down bamboo. The serpent, circling around hissing, had stopped him from considering escape.
After the bamboo, they climbed up and walked atop the cliffs again. Adwyn had nearly stepped blindly into a muddy area where a very high rill went splashing lower. The wingèd python slipped past quick and lunged right at him, and there was a very draconic hiss as it watched the drake stumble back into the mud and wring and scrape his feet.
He glared at the snake as they marched forward, while the snake looked all around. It was flicking its tongue like it was scenting something specific before it slithered off with a high hiss.
“Adwyn,” the murderer called, and when the drake approached, he continued, tone as if the silence had begun to wear on them, “Do you have any regrets?”
He rolled his head, and might’ve ignored the baffling smalltalk. But aside from conversation, he had only his growling stomach and slim chance of escape to contemplate.
He said, “Many. I wouldn’t be in Gwymr/Frina if I didn’t have regrets, and I imagine it goes for about everyone who didn’t hatch here.”
“Quite true. For myself, I suppose my biggest regret is a very old one.” The figure looked up, wing flexing out. His murmuring grew wistful. “When I was young — very young — I had hoped to destroy death. Me, everyone I loved, everyone I didn’t, living. Just living, forever.”
He had stopped walked to look long down the cliffside. “In the end, I achieved the first part of that wish — perhaps even the third — but… I wouldn’t share it, not now. If I lost it, I don’t know if I would reach again for it.”
He looked back. “I tell you this because you are on — terms, with Ushra. He may make you an offer some day. If he does, ask him, ask Gronte, ask Rhyfel, ask Mlaen — ask them if they are happy. It won’t matter whom you pick.”
Adwyn gave a hisslaugh. “I can’t imagine I’d spend longer than I have to on this life. Dyfns saw death for a reason.” He could hear the old king speaking, Death is an old friend. We’ve had our disagreements, but she’s best kept at peace. Adwyn felt something — bitter light on his fangs at this.
Leaving his thoughts, he heard the murderer gave a perplexing hum — Adwyn knew not if it were idle agreement, restrained disagreement, or both.
They had to climb off the clifftops when they reached another edge, onward they marched through another ravine.
The walls, rising still high beside, were pressing closer and at the end this path funneled into a kind of cave.
Adwyn took another step — and heard a high squeal of a sound.
“She must want me to come see something. Mind waiting here while I do?”
The orange drake moved his head in a nod.
The figure leapt onto the wall and dithered off.
The adviser looked up the path and down. Backward was long and obvious, and forward lead to the lake after a fashion.
The adviser breathed for a little while, and then he too leapt and scratched up the still higher walls and stood atop the to crouch, just in time for the murmuring voice to say:
“Adwyn.”
He stopped. What else could he do?
“I parse that you do not quite trust or respect me, do you?”
A huff leaked out before Adwyn choked the budding laughter.
“Why? I’ve been helpful.”
It struck Adwyn blank and reflective for a second. Here was a vexing enigma of a dragon who only tended less threatening. As if the whole impression had been some accident.
The adviser’s mind didn’t stay blank for long. He smirked. “Why can’t you just cullet the mysteriousness and tell me what this is all about?” Why they had to die?
“If I told you the whole story, would you trust me not to lie?”
“I’d scry what you could gain from me believing.”
“And if that satisfied you, and you reported back to Mlaen — would she trust me not to have lied?” They shook their head. “Disbelief is worse than ignorance.”
“Mlaen trusts me. You only need to convince me.”
The figure walked to the edge of the cliff to stare out over the cracked and mountainous country.
Adwyn didn’t approach. “Tell me about the seal.”
“Mlaen knows about that as well?” It was said low, as if only for the heatdrawn bugs buzzing around them. “You do not need to know more about the seal. You aren’t to do anything about it.”
Behind the figure, where he couldn’t see, Adwyn clenched a foot. First they presumed to do him favors, next they plan around what he would and wouldn’t do. An embarrassment of an opposition, was what they were.
He said, “And what am I to do?” What piece am in your game?
The figure stepped off the cliff and began his stiff climb downward.
The orange drake leapt and footed himself in the other dragon’s path. They paused on the wall, pointed those false eyes at him.
“Follow me.”
Adwyn knew he stood in a low-stand, loose and relaxed on his feet. He knew his tail swayed, and knew the words scrambling up his throat were mistakes.
It was an answer. The adviser heard it, measured it, and turned.
In the corner of his eyes floated the sharp form once again. He knew they would not be put away so simply again.
Together, they did not walk onward. The new path resembled the one they came by, and when it split it was not toward the eastern lake Berwem.
The amphiptere squealed again.
Wind did not make its way into the ravine without willing it, and was weakened at that. It flicked the sleeves of the hooded dragon, and had the adviser lick dust from his brilles.
Soon more airborne particles lighted down on those brilles, and went unlicked. Breaths passed, and the path between the ravine tended wider. It met another cliff wall like a flattened fork, and below walked a stream almost dry. The figure looked up, though, and so did the orange drake.
A little cave found the wall nice, and nestled a bit under the top. A crouch — two crouches, and the two dragons lighted down into the mouth of that cave.
It was quiet. Quieter than the night, which betrayed lack of bats, or scurrying vermin, or certain overlarge bugs.
It took longer for Adwyn’s eyes to adjust and when they did he saw it was dark.
The figure produced something glowing glairy white. One saw dark blood and bone, old enough their smell lost its teeth, and certain snarling black fungal growths attended the corners of the cave. Flicking one’s tongue, one smelt a gnarlier reek of death and its conspecifics further in the cave, and something like musk. Nothing draconic, but close enough that it pulls from one a reaction. Tinged uncanny, perhaps.
Adwyn liked it, but they had wyverns in the canyons, well behaved ones. This smelt much wilder than they, though.
Adwyn glanced at the other, but they did not return it. They dithered forward.
“Do you smell the snake?”
The orange drake only found it in himself to creep forward in this cave that smelt of death. To the ceiling gripped bulbous stalactites. Stranded drops of water dripped into still pools.
Once, obscure vibrations shook a rock to fall clack in the quiet. But what they’d seen was the large lizard skull it had hit shift suddenly in the dark.
Strange things happened as frills struggled to hear, significance was read into scales rubbing, distant howls that might’ve been close and quiet, passing air that might’ve been slumbering breaths.
The white light crept more carefully and quietly than they, and its ephemeral touch was the first to fall on thick, rough scales.
The first to see that hallux-less foot, to see that quartet of wings, see those twin tongues, and those eyelids open to inscrutable black slits.
The rockwraith awake, alert, stared at the dragons treading near its lair.
The figure and the light took another undaunted step, and they knew this to be the lair of three rockwraiths
One of which chased leaping a certain fluttery python. Behind them gaped another chamber of the cave.
The figure stared straight at the amphiptere. The floating sharp form returned — knives without handles. Adwyn hoped aluminum, but there were red hints at the flat edges.
The schizon clad drake leapt out of the glair light’s grasp. Rockwraiths, a strange dragon, and a strange creature. A battle which bore observation, and from the shadows Adwyn watched.
Two rockwraiths growled rumbling at the cloaked murderer, and one pursued the wingèd python through the floor’s deep crevices.
He could have a chance now, if he kept close attention. The two wraiths were stepping close, circling slowly but the dragon was still. Those handleless knives swayed in the air, never still, as if forced or pulled incessantly on like small light things in the wind.
The adviser kept watch, saw the four knives trace around the murderer a ring. He decided they could not keep the knives still.
One wraith lunged inside the ring, forewing swinging forward before its neck knew a thick red line. A foreleg kicked in a perfect arc. The body was a lump somewhere else.
A loud high hiss, like a shriek.
A bleeding scar ripped across the array of triangles patterning the scales of the amphiptere. Adwyn had seen a snake caught by a wildcat before.
Adwyn unclouded his eyes fully. He had a chance now. Gripping the gray net, yanking it off the bamboo spool, Adwyn wielded Cynfe’s magical gift. He knew how to activate it; the intent of the bright red wire sown loosely in had come clear awhile after examining it.
Adwyn dithered — was dithering. He pinched and unpinched the red wire, darted his gaze from attacked amphiptere to attacking rockwraith. All to avoid that final decision. Thoughts came quick, and he didn’t —
He didn’t want to think about where he was aiming, didn’t want to make the — right choice.
Adwyn had a chance, and Adwyn did not take the chance.
He ripped the red wire, and he threw the torn magical net.
The attacking rockwraith knew the electrifying pain, and the attacked amphiptere knew the slithering grace of freedom.
The black ascendant had wanted revenge, even in the most petty capacity. If he truly factored into the murderer’s plans, then a dead pet wouldn’t erase that.
But the female assistant nursed — had nursed, odd sweetness for snakes. And this creature was — not complicit in its master’s plans.
The false eyes were on him though, and the drake’s hesitation had been noted. A nod. The drake’s mercy had been acknowledged.
Two rockwraiths were dead. The survivor crouched a distance away, poised to leap, half growling half yiping. It turned a slow gaze to the wraith convulsing under a magic net, and then to the lump of dead wraith near the wall. It had two tongues, they flicked.
Adwyn’s did too, and he smelt fresh waste.
These creatures had fangs too, gnarled stabs of bone, but they dewed and smelt alien yet deeply, despairingly sour.
The crouch broke then and the wraith was leaping an attack. The neck broke then as the floating knife hit the wraith like it was blunt.
Silence rushed back in after the thump.
He breathed, sighed. But the murderer was still and normal. Adwyn stared for any sense of exertion or excitement.
Something moved before he ever did, and he glanced. The amphiptere was slinkslithering back toward them. Its head stayed low and guilty, and she stopped some distance from its master, a leathery form in her mouth.
The murderer just shook his head and turned.
“These cliffs are dangerous, Laswaith. You should know better.”
* * *