The Path of Destruction (Rune Breaker) (24 page)

“No, that doesn't make sense. You've made it obvious that you've hated every one of your masters.”

Ru pinched the bridge of his nose and turned away, muttering. “Why is everyone associated with Miss Taylin so damnably curious?” Louder, he continued, “Of course I shed no tears for Bresnic. The man was unusually worthless even by the standards of those I've served. He never did anything for himself or took more initiative than giving me orders.

“But when Immurai began to break his mind, the link forced me to feel it as his sanity slipped, cracked and then shattered.” He looked back at her, doing a bad job of masking the haunted look on his face. “You have no idea what it is to feel yourself going mad—and yet remain sensible enough to feel the horror of it all.”

One of his usual growls built in his throat. “When Immurai discovered what was happening, he tried to use it as leverage to convince me to serve him and teach him how to use the link when Bresnic finally died. That is why I will see him destroyed.”

Rai had only been partly listening because her mind was working through all the things she now knew and what it added up to made her ill. “He's going to do the same to Taylin, isn't he? Taking Motsey and using him against me is just a means to try and break her, isn't it?”

Despite seeing the raw emotion in her eyes, Ru remained impassive. “It is likely.”

Fear clenched at her chest and Rai scrambled to her feet just so she could feel that she was doing
something
. “We can't let that happen! Not to Taylin and certainly not to Motsey. You have to know a way to fix it, right? You're the godsdamned Rune Breaker!”

Still, Ru was dispassionate when he spoke. “I can promise you that Immurai will die. Swiftly and in agony. And if he is dead, your son will be in no danger. And as for Miss Taylin, I wonder if it is possible for even Immurai to break her.”

Rai arched any eyebrow. Did that sound at least a little... respectful toward her sister?

The dark mage waved a hand idly. “Bresnic was only human. So were all of my previous masters: mortals through and through. Miss Taylin has the blood of dragons within her, and as I noticed when she first entered my cavern, hers is a strong soul.

“She endured slavery and war only to fight her way out of both. She has been betrayed and had someone she cared for taken from her and she still strides forward. Bashurra assailed her mind with a spell that dredged up pain so deep that she made herself forget, and still she destroyed him for it. Perhaps that's will, or perhaps...” he paused and licked his lips distractedly,

He raised himself up to his full height, looking as if he was barely there with Rai mentally any longer. “I am not in the business of offering hope. But I do not believe that you have to worry overmuch about her. As I said, she has a strong soul.”

***

They didn't talk much after that. Raiteria seemed to be calmed somewhat by his uncharacteristic endorsement of Taylin's abilities and soon decided to head back downstairs to sleep.

Ru was left in the newly minted room with only his mind for company.

As if he didn't have enough on his mind; what with being denied sleep by the link's attempts at doing him mental harm, and the new annoyance of the burned spirit beasts. Ru had a good idea of who was doing that, but not
why
.

Now his mind flickered back to that day, only a few months ago relatively, but really almost five hundred years in the past; the day that he sensed the powerful presence entering his chamber.

I sense a strong soul.
He'd said.

And then he recalled the battle with Bashurra the Crevasse and the voice that spoke to him through the link that wasn't Taylin but was all the same.

That returned him to that dark cavern where he met the one who would train him to become a shapeshifting master...

Even as the huge, dimly glowing eye bored into him, lights began to wink into being near the cavern's ceiling. None of them had been larger than young Ru's thumb, but they were all brighter than a hundred candles. They revealed to him for the first time, the colossal form of Paive-Endiro.

The great dragon had filled Ru's vision, ten times the size of a horse: the largest creature young Ru had seen up until that moment.

His great head narrowed from the crown of horns that swept back from his brow to a sharp wedge filled with curved teeth, some longer than Ru's arm. Obsidian scales, the shape and size of which reminded Ru of spades, covered his body, dulling to dark gray on the scuta across his belly and throat. In the newly illuminated room, the edges of the great beast's scales seemed dance with silver fire.

A rough, primordial laugh came as Paive-Endiro watched Ru's reaction. The sound had vibrated in Ru's chest until he felt as if he was going to pass out. But he still stood there, trying to beat back the part of his brain that wanted nothing more than to flee.

“Good. You are least have some resolve then.” With those words, the great dragon... melted. Or at least that was how it looked to a young Ru's addled senses.

Bones and muscles collapsed, slithering over one another and running together beneath the skin until it too started to run like heated wax. The dragon's mass shrank and collapsed until it reached a tipping point where what was left had stopped melting (for lack of a better word) and began to take a new form.

Suddenly standing before Ru was a man who looked like the very definition of 'old master': a weathered face like the exposed shoulder of a mountain, wild gray hair that was long all over except for where it had receded from his forehead, and steely eyes that drilled into Ru where he stood. He was wearing a black velvet robe with a silver pattern that evoked scales.

As if to answer the question already forming in Ru's head, Paive-Endiro said, “I am a dragon who can take the shape of a man. I can take the shape of anything. Such is the sheer immensity of power we dragons hold in our very souls that even our young can accomplish a rudimentary effort purely on instinct.”

He regarded Ru with a critical eye that even through the lens of memory made Ru feel small. “You however are mortal, no matter how much potential Gand says you and your 'siblings' have. If you want to become a shapeshifting master, you will have to be as a dragon made mortal.”

Back in the present, Ru stood in thought.

He thought of how Novacula Kuponya became instantly charged when Taylin first picked it up, and her strange, ecstatic reactions to healing. Of the moment of their meeting and how her presence felt. And of how she'd managed to power through his sleep spell and strike him after her ill-conceived order.

His eyes narrowed. “She has a strong soul.” He repeated himself. When he said it to Raiteria, it was mere observation. Now however, for the first time, he cared enough to put the pieces together. There wasn't enough to be definitive, but it set his teeth on edge nonetheless.

“A very strong soul indeed.”

'Something I did not expect is how I've come to understand ang-hailene over the course of this trial. Aside from the unfortunate coloration of wings and hair, I have often found myself wondering as to what defect among them justifies their status. They run the same gamut of mental acuity, physical capability and emotional capacity as any of us.

I have watched them fret over their health, mourn those who died, and celebrate healthy births. And I have also seen the anguish in each of the surrogates, as they face the reality that the children they bore will be taken from them.

These women have birthed a new hope for the Hailene. And once this is over, they will be returned to lives of toil and obscurity. I weep for them and am forced to wonder if we even deserve the salvation they offer us.'

~ excerpt from the journal of Lena Hiddakko.

***

It took them an extra day to reach the road, as they were forced to detour around an enclave of aesthetics that hadn't been there when the maps Kaiel knew were drawn. In the early morning of the fourth day, Taylin spotted a watchtower from the air and using it as a landmark, the group reached the road shortly before noon.

The Passage of Conquerors was a road wide enough for four standard wagons to pass abreast with no trouble. Dull stone slabs, their color varying with that of the local rock, were laid down to form it and were routinely tended by
ere-a
-focused wizards in the service of the King to keep it in good repair.

Approximately every twenty miles, there was a relief station consisting of a watchtower, modest stable and barracks for the mounted patrols and maintenance crews that worked the road. The buildings were always made of baked clay of magical origin:
ere-a
used to pile and shape dirt,
akua
to wet it, and both
flaer
and
ferif
applied to fire and strengthen it.

No matter what principality it passed through, the road and the relief stations belonged to the one true king of Novrom; the son of Nov I, the man who united the nation. The only rule for using the roads Nov built was that no Prince could use them to move troops. In this way, the skirmishes between princes always remained regional concerns rather than all-out civil war.

By the next morning, they were out of Khish and through a narrow pass between two mountains: Mount Olaar and Mount Tenridhun. Beyond it was what Kaiel recalled as the Principality of Olaarian Valley, but what they soon discovered had become the twin Principalities of Olaarian Valley and Mahtesh.

It took two days to cross the valley, stopping only to resupply at an Olaarian fishing village on the edge of one of the valley's many lakes. From there, they entered another pass, this time emerging in a defile dotted with boulders.

The road passed from there into forested hills that seemed to go on forever except for the occasional logging or mining settlement and the ubiquitous relief stations.

Said settlements contributed to an increase of traffic on the road. Caravans of wagons or mule trains passed them regularly, as did armored patrols of soldiers and wizards in Nov's white and purple livery. Even on the heavily patrolled Passage, no one traveled alone and everyone carried weapons.

Taylin noticed that when there were no wizards with a group, more people carried swords, axes or other bladed weaponry. In the absence of spells or expensive ash chalk, the only way to put down a spirit beast was beheading. Crossbows and guns meant nothing to the monsters.

On the ninth day out, Taylin felt as if the monotony of the trip might kill her. As they were following the road, there was no need for her and Raiteria to scout ahead, and because Kaiel was so good at negotiation, they had more than enough provisions to last, obviating the need to forage or hunt. All that was left for her to do was bravely sit in Gaddigan's saddle (the horse wisely chose not to test her) and watch the miles go by.

While they were crossing the Olaarian Valley, she'd tried to read, but the words combined with the motion made her sick. She'd taken to asking Kaiel to impart knowledge of the places they passed through. Unfortunately, they were passing through another stretch of unclaimed territory that had no history, interesting or otherwise. Even Rai and Brin had been lulled into more or less dozing in the saddle instead of carrying on conversation.

And so she sat hunched in the saddle, wings outstretched for balance.

“Taylin.”

When Kaiel called her name, she was so grateful that she could have built a small temple in his honor. No matter what he was about to say, it would be better than the boredom.

She looked up to see him was smiling that self-satisfied smile that graced his features whenever he found cause to explain something new to her. “Kaiel?” She asked, trying to mask the desperation for some kind—any kind of mental stimulation.

Kaiel gestured up the road, about a mile distant, to where the Passage of Conquerors seemed to disappear. “We'll be reaching Rivenport around three hours past noon, but you should be able to see the city pretty well by now. Why don't you go up and have a look?”

Reining Gaddigan to a halt, Taylin clamored out of the saddle with a bright smile for Kaiel. “That sounds perfect, thank you!” Nothing she could do would have concealed her eagerness to occupy herself with something other than plodding forward.

Brin groaned as she drew up alongside Taylin on Miser and reined the bird up to stop as well. “Three past? We can't make any better time than that?”

“Sorry.” Kaiel shrugged, wheeling his horse about when he realized that Brin and Rai were both taking Taylin's dismounting as a chance to give their mounts some rest. “Even if we wanted to run flat out, we're coming up on Riven's Serpent; the road's going to be much more narrow and precarious if we're not careful. People die on the Serpent every year.”

To this, Brin rolled her eyes. “I work for the Historical Society and come this way regularly. People only really fall during hard rains and high winds. It's a calm day and those white clouds don't suggest rain to me. In fact, we've been having good weather the whole way in—except that sudden shower in the pass leading out of Olaarian Valley.”

“Safe than sorry.” Kaiel said. “You can run Miser all you want, but I'm not extending the endurance spells I cast on him to help you toward breaking bones on the Serpent's flanks.”

Taylin held in a laugh at the face Brin pulled at Kaiel, then gathered up Gaddigan's reins to pass him off to Rai. As she did so, she came face to face with the horse and looked him in the one brown eye turned toward her.

She hadn't known a horse could actually glare until that moment. It made her wonder if horses were smarter than she gave them credit for, or if there was something about breeding them for fearlessness that made them so. It seemed to her that any increased intellect Gaddigan possessed was being diverted toward hating her with all the bile his equine heart could muster. That, and to stay his teeth from nipping at her because if he bit her, she was more than capable of feeding him his teeth.

The reins were snatched from her hands and she could tell via the link that it was Ru's doing. They remained floating lazily in the air until the wizard floated up to grasp them. She nodded her thanks to him and he nodded as if she were a stable hand bringing his mount around.