Undisclosed Location
Ovinne Mountain Range
Baranthurian ruins were common enough, strewn as they were across the known lands; yet never had Carvus looked to find one so deep within the Ovinne range. Fortunate they had been, and doubly so. To have happened upon a site so long forgotten, and that while seeking a seat near the Elemental Dragon’s lair, was fortune enough by itself; that it should hold aurethium besides, he scarce dared dwell upon, lest the dwelling spoil it.
What had kept the dwarves from venturing thither, he knew not. Perilous the road was, that he allowed; mayhap that alone had stayed them, and the place had lain untouched for want of any so foolhardy as to hazard the passage. Yet another account he held, as did his men, though truthfully it was not wholly free of pride.
Lunara had laid her hand upon their labors: of this he could conceive no other explanation. Their study of the Subjugation craft had sped too kindly for mere diligence to answer for it. Such favor fell not to men who did but labor honestly. It fell to men the goddess looked upon with grace. And were they so looked upon, the grace was earned – hers to bestow, yet his to have merited.
And Velkrath above all! To have drawn the heretic nations and their Otherworlders so far abroad, to have set the dwarves and Americans chasing phantoms while the true work went forward behind them, that such a stroke should have fallen out so cleanly was beyond anything mere scheming could promise. What was it, then, if not the goddess’s hand laid plain upon their cause? Aye, hers, and no hand but hers.
Nor needed he ask what she would have of such favor; the answer stood in the window at his back. Carvus turned his chair to face it, and lifted his eyes to the pale shape that crowned Vendrukt Peak. A spire of the gods, it rose beside the summit itself, so high that at a distance one might have mistaken it for a second peak. And beneath its roots lay the very trial toward which all his labors had tended.
For all the favor shown him, he did not mistake the weight of what lay before him. Any beast they had bound before, he could have borne the loss of; at worst it would have cost him men and time, and both might yet be regained. The dragon would cost him everything, and grant him but a single cast, and that to be made well.
Though Tier Nine had yielded to their Subjugation Runes, Tier Ten might yet stand beyond them, whatever likeness the numbers might feign and whatever assurances aurethium seemed to offer.
And even should the task prove beyond them, the loss would not be total. The dragon’s wrath, once roused, might yet be turned upon Ovinnegard and the Sonaran Federation, and so made to serve the Empire by ruin where it would not by mastery. Some small comfort lay there, however cold. For to salvage ruin was no triumph at all, and Carvus had not come so far to be consoled by lesser victories.
He drank of the wine at his desk and found it gone tepid. Somehow, that vexed him more than it ought. Yet he finished the cup regardless, and for a time thereafter sat without moving. The chamber lay still behind him, save for the low stirring of the hearth.
At length another figure appeared upon the darkened glass, black against the brightness beyond. Carvus knew it for Eldreyn before the man had spoken a word.
He had come without summons.
Carvus did not turn. He only sighed. “What word do you bring now, Serarch?”
“Good word, milord, and I’d not have troubled you for less.” Eldreyn took a breath before he went on, as though to set the matter in its proper order. “The scouts upon the high terraces have come upon a den, milord, and within it three young. Dragon-spawn, by their seeming: newly hatched, or near to it, for they are small things yet, no bigger than a common dradak, and awkward in their movements, as Trelian’s man tells it. He saw no grown beast by them, though he allows he durst not stay to be sure of it.”
Carvus turned his chair at once. Ordinarily he would have disliked the eagerness of it, though at present he found he did not greatly care.
“Should they prove the Elemental Dragon’s brood,” Eldreyn continued, “then we needn’t bind the beast at all. With her young in our hands, the mother may submit herself to us of her own accord. All this labor spent upon the binding may come to naught. The very aurethium may prove needless, milord, and the threads with it!”
Carvus contemplated a moment. The promise of them pleased him, though he did not suffer the pleasure to reach his face. Better schemes than this had failed once set to action.
“And how are we to take them?” he asked. “If they are so newly hatched, the mother will keep them close.”
“Aye, milord. Trelian’s scouts saw the same.”
Carvus nodded. That they could not simply take the brood was a pity indeed. Yet the obstacle did not trouble him. Rather, he welcomed it, for this was the sort of difficulty a determined will might yet master.
“Then let them be,” he said. “For however dread the beast and its brood, however far above us they stand, they live, and anything that lives must eat. The mother shall be driven out to hunt in time, and the young left without her guard. Therefore set a watch upon the den. Mark when she leaves the young, and how long they lie vulnerable.” He paused. “I trust I need not impress upon you the delicacy of this task. Nevertheless, leave nothing to chance.”
“As you command, milord.” Eldreyn bowed and withdrew.
Though the matter of capture stood settled enough, the magic still troubled him. Hatchlings would surely prove easier to subjugate than the mother, yet by what margin? That reckoning belonged properly to Hestian.
And so he rose. The wine he carried to the basin by the wall, there to rinse the cup and dry it before returning it to its place among the others. Then did he cross to the door, in search of the magister.
The passages beyond his chamber lay quiet, as they ever did. His platoon was a small company for so great a place. The halls swallowed them so wholly that a man might walk here a long while and meet no one.
Past the offices he went and down the stair beyond them, descending two floors as the air cooled about him, until at last the steps gave onto a wide lobby, and the lobby in its turn onto the laboratories.
Here the Baranthurians had left their instruments thick about the chambers. Devices whose purposes he could only guess at stood ranged upon the benches, as though their makers had stepped out but a moment before and meant shortly to return. It galled him how little leisure they had been granted to make proper study of it all. So great a trove lay before them, left to molder for want of scholars to plumb it.
Yet that, too, might be mended. Should the dragon be brought to heel, and should the way down the Ovinne range remain in their keeping, the Order of the Veil might be summoned in earnest. Then would there be time enough, hands enough, to bear every last relic home and wring from them all the knowledge they held.
Down a long hall he went for some minutes more, until at last the way opened upon the sky.
Beyond lay a great yard, hewn flat against the mountain’s flank and long surrendered to overgrowth. There the Baranthurians had set their greater works. There his men labored amid the bones of those works, setting them to a purpose their builders never intended. The runes sprawled across the whole of it, vast beyond what any chamber could have held: ring within ring of figures graven deep into the stone, each sigil broad as a man was tall, the lines of them running true for all their age.
About the perimeter the generators stood: great drums of iron and crystal drawing surrounding mana into themselves and holding it fast, a hoard of power gathered against the hour it would be spent.
And threading the whole, binding generator to rune and rune to rune, ran the aurethium. Filament after filament of a metal whereof many a noble lives and dies without the beholding, laid down here in lengths no treasury could have purchased, nor any favor short of the gods’ procured. It caught what little light there was and gave it back as gold, and under that bright threading the dead stone of ages took on the look of waking.
Hestian he found near the array’s edge, crouched over a spool of the aurethium thread and feeding it slowly into the channel cut to receive it.
Carvus came up beside him. “Magister. A word, if your labor can spare the moment.”
Hestian set down his spool and rose, working the stiffness from his back. “Milord. How may I serve?”
“Word’s come from the high terraces. The scouts have found a den, three of the dragon’s brood within it, newly hatched or near to it.” Carvus watched the man’s face as he spoke. “I’d know what that changes for your craft. Were it the young we bound, mind, and not the mother… how would the Rune System stand then?”
Hestian thought a moment. “The young,” he said slowly. “Hm. You’d think three the harder task in place of the one, and so it would be, were it the count that mattered.” He shook his head. “But it’s the will a binding takes hold of, milord, not the muscle. Strong as it might be, a thing that new has barely got a will to speak of. The mother’d fight me every hour she breathed. A hatchling will hardly feel the thread take hold.”
Carvus weighed that. “Can the runes hold all three at once, or must we settle for fewer?”
Hestian responded with little contemplation. “All three at once. Aye, I’d sooner bind three whelps than a hundred hobgoblins. Mind, though, I’ll not promise it. ‘Should’ is as far as I’ll carry it.”
“And how long can the hold be kept, once they’re bound?” Carvus asked.
“Indefinitely, milord. Well… so long as the spire holds.” Hestian pointed toward the generators. “The engines draw from the ambient mana, y’see, and there’s abundance enough of it here whilst that great spire remains standing. Why, I’d sooner expect the fittings to foul than the spell itself give way.”
Carvus had heard enough to be convinced. “Good. That will serve.” He stepped back from the array’s edge. “See to it, then. When all stands prepared, send to me at once.”
Hestian bowed. “It shall be done, milord.”
The way back he climbed without haste, until once more he came unto his chamber. There he gathered what remained needful to him: first the armor, then the sword, and lastly the remainder of his harness.
Hatchlings though they were, dragons they remained. Tier Nine strength had he faced before, though seldom so, and never three together, nor yet without an army near at hand to spend dearly against them.
A grievous trial stood now before him. Grievouser far than even that day upon which the Americans had shattered his ranks and driven him from the field, dishonored.
That day sat ill with him still. But the battle to come would sit fouler yet, were he to meet it unprepared.
So whilst the mages bent themselves to their restorations, and the scouts kept watch upon the heights, he would not suffer the intervening days to pass idly. The upper reaches abounded in Tier Eight monsters, and amongst such beasts a man might still harden himself for worthier trials to come.
Thus resolved, he furnished himself with what restoratives remained to him, and departed alone into the upper reaches.