With a few extra breaks — for the sake of the children — it took us from shortly after sunrise to well after sunset to reach Lady’s Rest. Once we arrived, I barely took the time to say goodbye. I waited as long as it took for Herald to grab whatever she needed from Stalwart’s packs then took her up the mountain and down to my hoard. It wasn’t that I was tired of anyone or wanted to get away — I wouldn’t have minded at all to lie by the fire for a while as everyone settled in. But I could very easily see Mother flying down to visit now that I was close, and I really didn’t think that the dark of night after half a day’s walking was the right time for my followers to meet her. As long as I was deep in the mountain, she’d probably be satisfied with a fly-by followed by returning to her new mountain hide-away.
Unless she decided to just carve her way in. My hoard was far too deep to get to in a reasonable time, and I didn’t think she’d try in the first place, but Mercies, just the thought made me shudder.
Going home early was also a good excuse to snuggle up with Herald for a few hours longer. We hadn’t had much opportunity to just curl up and read together lately, so that was what we did late into the night. Herald had brought some new adventure story with her, more of an epic poem than a novel, and read the first however much of it to me with great enthusiasm.
I’d never been much for poetry, but it was Herald reading it to me, and I could have listened to her read an enchantment textbook. Anything was tolerable, as long as I did it with her. She even had me do the dialogue for the Tekereteki queen, and I enjoyed it!
We only stopped when she started slurring and then entirely missing words. When I took the scroll away from her, she was out almost immediately, and I wasn’t far behind.
I didn’t do any dreamwalking that night. I could have, and I could easily afford to — I’d already planned to go find a Rift for Herald to top up from. But nothing felt too pressing, and I’d had such a nice evening with Herald that I didn’t want to sour it with what was essentially work, so instead I willed myself to just have a good night’s sleep without a lucid dream in sight.
Speaking of work, the next morning was full of it. I delivered Herald to Lady’s Rest for breakfast then went and had a look at the pit around the gate. It was ten to twelve feet deep at the cliff face, thirty to thirty five feet wide at the top, and still pretty much full of water. Before our scholars could do anything, we had to drain that pit.
Doing so was simple, but it took a lot of work and a lot of time. I got started on digging a trench while the others had their breakfast. It was tedious work, and I didn’t want to think about how much worse it would have been if I wasn’t monstrously strong and tireless, and lacked claws that were strong enough to tear right through compacted soil and roots. The damn trench had to be long enough to reach the slope into the forest, deep enough to drain the bottom of the pit, and wide enough for me to fit, so I could keep digging. Most of the Lady’s Resters showed up to help move the soil away, but most of the hard work fell on me. For the greater part of that day I was a glorified excavator.
I couldn’t tell if that was good or bad for my image. Working together with my subjects sure made them more comfortable around me, which I liked, but they were the closest thing I had to an actual cult of worshippers. Not that I’d ever treated them that way, but my gut told me that I was supposed to be some kind of semi-divine figure to them. By the time the trench was done, I was sure that I must have lost most of that godly lustre. On the bright side, the kids had finally warmed up to me. The giant winged lizard apparently wasn’t as scary once you’d seen her scrabbling in the dirt with your dad for several hours.
Mother flew over, twice, but she didn’t land. I wasn’t sure why, but I appreciated it. We had work to do, and work was not going to get done with the destroyer of worlds showing up to say hello. Her just flying by was enough to stop work as people stood and stared at the sky, and that was despite them knowing that she was, in most senses, friendly.
When the time came to breach the actual pit, we were all well and truly done with digging — preferably forever. I dug away the top foot or so of soil holding back the water, and after that it did its own thing, chewing its way down like a million years of erosion in a few minutes. I only had to step in and dig again when there were two or so feet left, but then I could at least watch the water flow out and listen to the delighted squeals of the kids.
With the water drained, I could only hope that the gates were as tightly sealed as they looked. The tunnel beyond sloped upward, but it wasn’t a steep grade, and if the gate had leaked, there would be a lot of water in there. I’d not rather have a gazillion gallons shoot out at me when I opened it up.
“So why did you not dive in and open the gate before you drained the pit?” Herald asked. “Then the water in the pit would have kept the water in the tunnel back. And if the tunnel was dry, all that would have happened would be that the floor would be wet when they go in tomorrow.”
In that moment, I was quite possibly the most annoyed with Herald that I’d ever been. I had to almost physically restrain myself from snapping when I said, “Sure. Yeah. Great idea. You couldn’t have suggested that earlier?”
She had the gall to look unconcerned. She just shrugged and said, “It looked like you knew what you were doing.”
I didn’t say, “I’m a dragon, not a beaver. What the hell do I know about water?” What I did say instead was, “I appreciate the confidence. Any ideas now that we’ve already drained the pit?”
“Stand to the side when you open the gate?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
When I opened the gate, I neither got blasted into the forest or squished by the massive stone doors. The tunnel was blessedly dry. Whoever my father had make these things knew what they were about!
“How did you do that?!” Tavia exclaimed once the tunnel lay open to them. “We tried everything we could think of, but nothing worked. And you just touched the stone and they opened! How?”
“She can’t have just touched it,” Ramban mused beside her.
“That’s what I mean! There must be some form of magic involved!”
Ramban nodded. “An enchantment, most likely.”
“Agreed, but then, where are the runes? We scoured both sides of the doors! They’re blank!”
“That detail can wait, I think. What I want to know is: what triggered the enchantment? An activation rune would be the most likely, but you’d expect that to be on the center, or more likely on the seam between the doors. But she was off to the side, touching nowhere close to that.”
“Good points. Could the entire surface of the door be an activator? But then why did it never trigger for us?”
The two scholars went on theorizing, slowly turning toward each other, their voices getting lower as they forgot about the world around them. I stayed where I was, not sure if I should be offended or not. It really didn’t seem at all like they were conspiring or trying to hide anything — they’d just forgotten that there were any number of people there who weren’t part of the conversation.
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Then they both jumped. Literally — Tavia leaped to the side so quickly that she hit the ground when Herald appeared beside them. Part of why I hadn’t said anything was because I’d noticed her Shift and slide into their shadows, and I wondered what she might do. “It might work,” she said, “but I would not try it if I were you. Not without Draka’s permission. You have been allowed to come here out of courtesy. If you abuse that, or anything you learn here, there will be consequences.”
“Mercies, girl!” Ramban scolded her. “Don’t sneak up on people like that! But no, of course not, we’d never! It was just an idea, some idle theorizing.”
“Ramban, she did not sneak up on us!” Tavia said indignantly from the ground. “She wasn’t there, and then she was! That’s not sneaking, that’s… I don’t know what that is!”
“It’s incredibly useful,” I said. Then, rather than make a fool of myself trying to climb the muddy walls of the pit, I leaped up next to them using my wings. “Herald can go all kinds of places if she needs to, and no one the wiser. What were you talking about? What was it that Herald thought might work?”
While Tavia stood and brushed off her robe, Ramban answered. “There are these devices used in enchanting. They call them charge stones; they can either impart or withdraw a magical charge. Not worth the cost for the vast majority of people, even those who can afford an enchanted device in the first place, but very useful while testing enchantments that charge slowly from ambient mana. Or so I understand. Tavia suggested that the gates might work with a key, which you could perhaps replicate somehow, and I wondered if either a positive or negative charge stone might work to activate the enchantment.”
“That’s interesting, actually,” I said. If it worked, the Lady’s Resters could use one of those stones, or a pair if you needed one to open and one to close. They’d be able to get into the tunnels if they needed to. “Herald, you think it’s worth trying?”
“If we had a stone already,” she said, “but I do not even know what one might cost. The enchantment looks very complex, though. Expensive relative to other small enchanted items, for sure.”
“Right. Let’s call that a maybe. For now I’m going to close the gate. I’ll be back to open it up early in the morning. Then we can go through the rules one more time, make sure that everyone’s on board, and I’ll leave you to it.” Ramban and Tavia both seemed happy with this, nodding pleasantly. I stared at them long enough for them to start looking decidedly uncomfortable before I continued, “But let me be clear: Herald is absolutely right. You are here when and because I allow it. I have decided to extend some small amount of trust to you. If I find out that you’ve broken my rules, or that you’ve returned here and tried to get back in — and I will find out — ‘consequences’ does not begin to describe what will happen. Do we understand each other?”
As if to drive my point home, Herald Shifted behind them, only to materialize out of my shadow, standing by my side.
It took a few moments for either scholar to find their voice. They understood perfectly.
I closed the gate. Herald gathered a few things, and then we were off. The latest permanent change to the mountains, Mother’s new lair, was only a few minutes away at Herald’s most comfortable speed and easy to find. Even if I hadn’t know where it was, and even if Herald hadn’t spotted the all-too smooth and regular entrance in the mountainside opening onto a wide and long ledge, the field of lumpy black stone and burned off grass in the valley below would have been a dead give-away.
Mother, showing that she both knew and paid attention to where I was at all times, stepped out into the late afternoon light as we approached to land.
“Mother,” I said by way of greeting once I’d set down.
“Daughter,” she said, eyes wrinkling happily, “and dear little Herald. Welcome! Come, follow me inside.”
She turned to enter the cave, and we followed. I couldn’t say for sure if it was only my imagination, but the stone still seemed warm.
Clever girl that she was, the first words out of Herald’s mouth were, “Mercies, Lady Embers! You carved all this out yourself?”
“I did indeed,” Mother said with another of those pleased huffs; one that made Herald stumble for half a step and that even I felt in my bones. “It took some time, and I am sure that I will expand it soon enough, but it will do for now. But, Herald, I have told you: from you, ‘Embers’ is quite enough.”
Herald traced an enormous rent in the wall, showing where my mothers claws had cut through the hot stone. “As you say, Embers,” she said.
I had no doubt that the awe in her voice that time was real.
The rest of that day nothing much happened. Mother decided that we should take advantage of the light and took us flying. The first few minutes she didn’t look too happy about seeing Herald on my back, but she softened soon enough once my sister started cheering and whooping. She took us north along the mountains then closed in and asked me in slow, careful Draconic if I needed to refill my Heart.
“I can,” I replied, leaning on Instinct to help me. “But Herald needs first.”
“She can have her morsel before you have your meal,” Mother said magnanimously and led us to the nearest Rift. It sat in a high valley, where a herd of suspiciously large goats had gathered around it. They seemed to almost bask in its glory but cleared out when we arrived, not bothering with posturing in favor of survival. One of the rams was as big as me; it was still tiny compared to Mother.
“Go on, little Herald,” Mother said invitingly, gesturing to the Rift with a motion of her head. “Have your fill.”
Herald didn’t even hesitate. She slid off my back, practically swaggered up to the Rift, and took all that she could. All the while, my mother just settled in, softly rumbling as she watched her fondly. She was like me watching a kitten attack a saucerful of cream.
“Now you,” she said once Herald had taken all she could. “Do you think you will… need to rest, afterwards?”
“I always do,” I admitted.
“It really is terribly odd. But perhaps you will grow out of it. For now, it is well that you have such strong and loyal sisters to guard you.”
“It really is,” I said, nuzzling Herald’s hair. Then, with my sister standing guard and my mother watching inscrutably, I consumed the Rift and promptly passed out.
The next morning, after spending the night talking and sleeping in my Mother’s lair, Herald and I returned to Lady’s Rest. The scholars and Barro were awake and ready, waiting eagerly for our arrival. Well, Ramban and Tavia were. Barro seemed quite bemused about the whole thing, having already done this once, but I’d asked, so he obliged.
We went through the rules one last time. They were simple enough: tell no one anything, hide nothing from me, and be polite to the Lady’s Resters. If you think there’s even a chance that what you’re about to do will anger the dragon, don’t — wait until I come to check on you and ask.
I had a separate chat with Barro, making it clear that I expected him to enforce those rules draconically. He wasn’t thrilled about that but seemed confident that he’d be able to keep the two scholars in line without any unpleasantries.
To the Lady’s Resters I left only two instructions: be polite to and take care of Barro and the scholars, within reasonable limits. And if anyone comes by, try to prevent them from seeing the open gate if possible, and from entering if not — unless that would put you in danger. In that case, wait until I return then tell me exactly who they were, what they did, and where they went.
I was eager to get back to the city. With any luck, Onur would have arranged a meeting with Soandel. Then I could finally put my plan into action, getting my revenge on that backstabbing little bastard and turning the Council back in my favor with one simple conversation.
There’s an old saying my grandpa loved: “Man plans, and God laughs.” It was originally Hebrew, or Yiddish, or something like that, and I’d gone through much of my life letting those words lead me. What was the point of making grand plans when life came at you fast and hard?
My confidence in my own simple plan showed pretty clearly that no matter where I might have ended up, I should have remembered those words. I just could never figure out if it was the Mercies, the Sorrows, or everyone involved laughing at me.
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