Grandfather returned to Eyrie Peak that evening. It was no surprise, really. Querit was still off wherever he’d gone to sulk. A cabal of mages many times stronger than the Wolf Pack had turned up on the island and had an unhealthy amount of interest in me and my allies. I still hadn’t figured out how to make bio-mysteel, nor did I have any ideas on how to complete my advancement back to stage nine without outside assistance that lacked the skills to do what was needed even if I got over my trust issues.
So, of course that was when the old grayfeather popped back up and wanted to talk to me. Fortunately, with the stabilization of the spell holding up their graveyard, he was finally free to travel around. That meant I got to host Grandfather for the first time ever instead, which was sure to be an interesting experience.
For one thing, he was too large to actually fit on a teleportation platform, so he was either going to be flying the whole way or he’d be altering his size. I knew brakvaw could shrink themselves down to a degree, but I’d never once seen Grandfather do it. Usually he crafted a projection and inhabited that when he wanted to be somewhere other than his eyrie.
I was expecting a slightly smaller version of Grandfather to appear on the platform, but instead, two humans teleported in. I recognized one of them, it being the shape Grandfather used when he projected a human shape to me. The other was a stranger in appearance, but something about his mana was familiar to me.
“Keiran,” Grandfather said, somewhat more fondly than I would have expected. “So nice to see you again.”
“You… too,” I said slowly, a frown on my lips. What was this weird behavior?
I took a mental step back to look at the whole situation. Suddenly, everything made a bit too much sense. Mentally, I projected, ‘The Order found you?’
‘Indeed,’ Grandfather’s voice echoed in my mind, far more grave than the warm tone he’d used to greet me. ‘Are we safe from their scrying eyes here?’
‘We should be, but hold up the act for a few more minutes until we get inside.’
“Come, join me,” I said, affecting not to recognize the unexpected guest who’d come with him. That man looked to be in his late teens, with dark brown skin and thick, wavy hair that was draped over wide, expressive eyes. His lips were parted in an amazed expression as he feigned looking around the valley.
I quickly led my two guests to my home, or at least to the decoy house I kept on the surface of my valley near the teleportation platform. I didn’t actually live in it, but it was fine for meeting guests I allowed to actually view the valley. Fortunately, Bakir hadn’t rated even that much, so he’d missed out on an opportunity to actually see any of my demesne from the inside.
Once inside the house, I activated the wards woven into the walls and said, “We’re safe to talk now. The Order has been thorough if they’ve reached all the way to Eyrie Peak. I’m going to assume they wanted information about me.”
“Essentially,” Grandfather said. “They were more interested in the portal network at first, but they quickly connected it to you.”
“Did they find out about the gestalt?” I asked sharply. While the entity as a whole would be in no danger from losing a few hundred ants, I didn’t want those mages even thinking they needed to be on guard against being spied upon by little bugs in the walls.
“If so, they didn’t mention it,” Grandfather said. “Why?”
“Because the gestalt does all my scrying for me, and the Order is shaping up to be a hostile faction. It’s better for us if they don’t learn who our spymaster is.”
“We’re a faction now?” the other man said. “Wouldn’t that imply a level of trust between us?”
It was easy to forget that Querit was technically a shape shifter. His entire outer body structure was a morphic alloy of metal that could be rearranged by running mana through it. He usually stuck to his default appearance, sometimes shrinking in size if he needed to fit inside a particular frame for some reason. The combat ones were sometimes big enough to hold an adult, but a lot of the research ones required him to be much smaller to use.
It was rare to see him with a new face, however. I suspected this wasn’t a coincidence. “Hiding from the Order?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted a bit of distance from who I was last week.”
“Querit.”
He glared back at me while Grandfather watched us with a bemused expression on his face. I was momentarily distracted wondering just how he’d gotten so adept at mimicking human facial expressions and whether it was an unconscious reaction or if he was mocking us in some way. Regardless, it was a question for later.
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“If you don’t want me to pry into your life, do me the courtesy of doing the same,” the golem said.
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
“Because your new friends are poking around everywhere looking for any and every scrap of information about you. As much of an ass as you are most days, I still thought you deserved to know, but I can see now that I wasted my time adopting this form and coming here to warn you.”
“Ah, well, whatever it is this is,” Grandfather cut in, “I’m sure you can continue it later. Let’s shift this discussion back to the relevant topic. Who are these mages, and what do they want?”
I quickly outlined everything I’d learned about them and their activities. Neither of my companions were surprised to learn that the Order was primarily out for itself, or about what my preliminary moves had been to counter them.
“The two biggest problems are that we don’t know their numbers or how strong their leaders are,” I said. “And with them being based out of another continent, it makes it easy to move against the ones that are here without having to worry about them calling in emergency reinforcements, but difficult to predict who’s going to show up next once they stop reporting back in.”
“Is it really that easy, though?” Grandfather asked. “Your portals don’t seem to suffer the same distance limitations your teleportation spells do. What if they set up one of those?”
“Ah, it’s complicated,” I said. “The portals still have some distance limitations via scaling cost with distance, enough that crossing an ocean with just one isn’t really feasible. Most likely, they’ve established a chain of islands to hop across. They can still move quickly, but it will cost them an incredible amount of mana.”
“That hasn’t much slowed you down,” Querit pointed out.
“I’ve seen the teleportation platform they installed in their new base. Trust me, it’s not efficient at all. If that’s what they’re using, it’s a considerable expense to move someone back and forth.”
“But not impossible.”
“No,” I agreed. “I’m sure they won’t give up if the agents they have here already go missing, but we shouldn’t expect a flood of stage five and six mages to come out of nowhere.”
“We’re talking like they’re enemies, but is that really true?” Grandfather asked. “They’ve been a bit pushy and asked a lot of questions, but really, that’s not that unusual behavior for anyone who’s considering approaching an unknown to form an alliance. It’s just smart to know as much as possible before trying to make a pact with a stranger.”
“That’s why I’m not eliminating them outright,” I said. “I don’t like how they’ve behaved, but I understand it. My concern is that they might threaten my allies.”
Of course, I really meant ‘family’ when I said that. While I would be upset of the Order were to attack Eyrie Peak or Hyago’s fledgling forest, if they attacked my parents or siblings, I’d kill them all instantly, then I’d trace their teleportation platforms back piece by piece until I found their base on Jeshaem and razed it to the ground.
“So, for now, you are keeping an eye on them and waiting for them to approach you with whatever offer they come up with?” Querit asked. “I thought you were going to be the one to offer them a deal when they made contact again.”
“I reconsidered once I learned they were talking to everyone but me. It’s obvious they’re not here to deal in good faith. If they remain harmless, then I’ll treat them that way. If they attempt to force my hand, they’ll suffer the consequences. I’m convinced at this point that they pose no threat to me, personally, so I’m taking steps to mitigate their ability to do damage to anyone else I care about.”
Our conversation eventually turned from ethical considerations—of which I had none—to the matter of what to do if the Order attacked Eyrie Peak, and finally to what Grandfather had wanted prior to the Order showing up.
“Your platform guard mentioned some place called Third Peak,” I said.
“Ah, yes. That… is not a place you’ll likely ever see. It’s something of a brakvaw holy place, our homeland,” the old grayfeather explained. “But it does concern that, yes. I realize how unreasonable it is to ask for your help, but…”
“You want some sort of large-scale magic there, something permanent, and aren’t sure how to go about setting it up,” I surmised. “And since your elder council doesn’t want me setting foot there, you’re hoping I can coach you through the process without ever actually doing any of the work myself.”
Grandfather at least had the grace to look embarrassed about the situation. “The council and I are in agreement on that,” he said. “I consider you a friend, Keiran, but this is a place that is for brakvaw alone. It is the cradle of our civilization, lost centuries back when the waypoints broke. Only I knew the way home without them, but I could never leave my eyrie before, and the world has changed too much for others to follow the directions I tried to give.”
I didn’t miss Querit’s scowl at Grandfather’s use of the term ‘friend.’ Unlike others I’d been dealing with lately, the golem wasn’t good at hiding his emotions. Then again, he wasn’t exactly trying. I knew he was upset with me. Even if I’d been blind, I still would have known. Querit wasn’t the type to hide what he was thinking.
I’d deal with that later. A bit of time for him to cool off would do us both good. When he was ready, we could talk about it. And if he never reached that point, well, it would be a loss to see him go. He was a capable research assistant.
And that was all. I frowned to myself. That was all, right? I’d had plenty of acquaintances come and go, some I would even call friends. One more relationship falling to the inexorable march of time was no great loss.
I shook those thoughts out of my head and focused on Grandfather again. “Let me guess. You want something to fly in the air. Is it another graveyard?”
“No, no. I’m afraid you’re thinking too small. We want to raise all of Third Peak at minimum. If possible, the entire thing.”
“The… what thing?” I asked slowly. I had to be misunderstanding him, here.
“All four peaks, and the valleys between them,” Grandfather said. “The entire brakvaw homeland, back into the sky.”
“Wait, you want an entire flying mountain?” I gaped at him. “Wait. What do you mean ‘back into the sky?’”
“Oh, yes. Back when I was fresh out of the egg, our home soared through the clouds.”
“You want to not only raise an entire mountain off the ground, you want to be able to move it around?”
Apparently Querit hadn’t known the extent of Grandfather’s ambitions, either. He was staring at him in mute astonishment, a look I was sure was mirrored on my own face for just a moment.
“That’s completely crazy,” I told him.