Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"
CHAPTER TWENTY: Winter Flowers
...
It hadn't been much of the wyrmling running that he witnessed, the young wyrms that would grow to become dragons had been half-butchered when he, Abhilash, and Ginga had crested the last ridge before entering the sweeping desolation of the northern wastes. The largest specimen, stretched larger as it was flayed and harvested, could have rivaled Kuruk in height from snout to haunch with a tail easily that length again. Its wings tattered rags of leathery skin that could have stretched wider than the whole length of the wyrmling, but the mess of slashed membrane and crumpled bones were too scattered to make any clear determination.
The sun was dropping to the rim of the world -- far west where the northern waste descended at last to the Sea of White Knives. The northernmost coast was inaccessible to merchant ships, for the many spires of bonelike stone jutting up from the foaming, steaming waves. The wastes, too, made three broad shoals of dark stone blades that refused, however briefly, to succumb into the fine sand that the sluggish breakers demanded for scattering along the shoreline.
Damon kept his eyes narrowed as he looked at Dragon Eater. Abhilash had taught him this meant he acknowledged the ork to be a great threat. Narrowing his eyes only a little, or relaxing his gaze would convey that he felt comfortable -- able to conquer anything he saw. When seeking favors, this would be an insult. Better to keep his eyes narrowed, studying his foe for weakness he couldn't find. Not that he had much hope of finding an exploitable weakness in the savage, scarred ork with the over-sized saber. Even without the War Gods tribe amassed around them, Damon wasn't sure the help of
Pyaas
would bring victory.
The ork chieftain called Dragon Eater stared one-eyed death at him, wordless and fuming, even after the jotun slave had been sent to instruct Dragon Eater's warriors to grant meiyo to Damon's trio. It was a curious matter, and Damon found himself desperate for the plain manner to which he and Ginga had grown accustomed traveling for so long with Abhilash. It might be that he was overthinking matters, but something felt decidedly wrong with everything Dragon Eater was doing.
Even what Damon believed must be the natural rhythm of a successful hunt -- would it be considered a battle? -- such as this, appeared broken around the chieftain's stony behavior. Skin little brighter, a rosier hue of gray slate like the blasted ground on which he sat, Dragon Eater was bare-chested and thin. Myriad scars -- slashes, burns, punctures from wyrmling bites -- covered hands, arms, chest and back before disappearing into his hide and fur leggings. The prominent burn that blinded the ork's right eye was a slab of burn scar that still looked angry and pushed the line of the ork's braided dark-brown hair to an odd angle, mangling the point of that ear in the process. The ork's hands were overlarge, and Damon found himself wondering if the massive saber were purpose-built for Dragon Eater -- or if the chieftain had salvaged it in combat with some now-dead jotun. Possibly his kept slave's father, brother, or mate.
I AM
.
"What?" Damon asked, but it became clear at a glance to his right where Abhilash sat eating raw wyrmling liver that his own voice was the first thing to break the silence since his arrival before the northern chief.
He shook his head, tapping the heel of his palm roughly above his temple as though knocking rocks loose from his ears. It had sounded like a voice. Yet his ears bore not the ringing that should have followed, loud as it was.
"Chieftain..." Damon bobbed his head, eyes angling down briefly before locking with the one obvious, threatening eye staring at him. He kept his eyes narrow.
He felt the sound again -- now clearly in his own mind buzzing like an angry hornet -- louder and more distracting.
WAITING
.
"Why are you here?" The ork's voice was low, soft. Dragon Eater spoke with deliberate effort, as though his mouth only barely remembered the way of it and he wasn't himself certain the words meant what he intended. Smoke-stained, yellowing teeth and tusks bit through the ends of words.
I AM WAITING
. Damon shuddered, trying to shake the voice in his head loose without breaking eye contact with the ork chief. Pressure built painfully behind his eyes as his vision swam violently.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been staggered by whatever mental intrusion this was -- unless it was something else. The ork narrowed his singular gaze at Damon, a clawed hand closing tightly about the hilt of the jotun-sized saber that Dragon Eater kept close by.
Damon realized the ork had asked him a question, but he couldn't remember what it was. His vision was blurring, dimming as the pressure increased in his skull.
"I am..." Damon felt the words scrape across his lips, pulled out of him by some will other than his own. "...waiting."
He could taste blood on his tongue, his teeth clacking together sharply as the ork grabbed the clasp of his cloak suddenly and pulled him down to stare him in the eyes.
...
"He's had another one of his fits." Abhilash cradled Damon's head in her lap, refusing to look up at the ork called Dragon Eater lest she feel compelled to challenge him. "He is magic sick."
"Better to kill him, then." Dragon Eater grunted, his voice a raspy tumbling well-matched to the blasted valley surrounding them. "But you have meiyo, so you may keep him."
"That is good." Abhilash nodded. "He seeks a dragon said to lair in the High Ice. The southerners call it Eclipse."
"The dragon's eye is the only dragon I know, around here." Dragon Eater sniffed, thrusting with his jaw to the northeast. "A cave, three peaks that way, half-sun walk up the valley. Three... no, eight days walking as a human walks."
"The chief of the War Gods is generous." Abhilash glanced up, eyes narrow, before averting her gaze. "This one knows a story the Dragon Eater may find amusing."
"Southern humor?" Dragon Eater snorted, curious and dismissive at the same time. "I'll hear it at the story fire. Eat. Drink. It has been too long since the blood of Sidero walked freely on the High Ice."
"Three winters is not so long a time." Abhilash smirked, blushing with pleasure at such a compliment.
"To you, perhaps." Dragon Eater sniffed. "I am sick with waiting for the jotun to challenge me, and Sidero was the only fool strong enough to best me in combat."
"Do you know how he died?" Abhilash glanced up again, wondering if the Betrayer's lies would be dispelled so easily.
"Feeding a dragon, I heard." The chieftain thumped his chest and laughed. "
I
only hunt the
little
ones!
He
was said to have found a great grandmother of a wyrm, her shadow could cover the whole of a single peak."
The ork chief waved grandly at a nearby mountain, a smiling laugh twisting his scarred face.
"When you showed up on the edge of my hunt, I thought you were here to challenge me." He scowled thoughtfully. "I'm tired as yak shit, and the thought angered me that I might lose."
"It is a wise chieftain who understands the dancing of a candle flame." Abhilash nodded, echoing something Sidero had said.
"Yes, but we are few. Too few." Dragon Eater squatted nearby, setting small bits of rock into arranged cairns to mimic the surrounding mountains. "Here to here, we range in the summer to hunt the jotun and ice trolls -- the dying races, we call them. They cling to the wick, like southerners in their little wooden villages, and snuff themselves as the world changes around them. We, too, are a dying kind."
"Just so." Abhilash watched the scene take shape at the chieftain's deft movements.
"Here... and here." He pointed, a place far to the east. "Your homeland, now empty. No jotun. No trolls. Plenty for human
city-makers
... lumber and stone, and water. Sheltered in the elbows of the High Ice, nearer to the Fire Tongue -- the burning mountain a full moon beyond the horizon, at the head of the wastes."
"I remember." Her interest piqued, seeing just how near -- or far -- the old territory of her sire sat from where she was now. "Perhaps the dragon did feast on him."
"Gone, anyway. Dead or not -- his horde is gone." Dragon Eater sniffed, spitting off to the side. "I bought half a dozen seed slaves shortly after, from the Ekimu People."
"Any Sidero?"
"No -- listen... they only sold to me because they wanted southern steel for their totem's blood rituals." Dragon Eater shook his head. "I do not keep with such rituals, but the slaves were good stock. The steel was probably used to feed their foul god your blood-kin. If you want to find Sidero's kin, look south of the Ice. In the shadows of the lowlands, maybe, among Viper and Bear. On the Ice, they would be too few, or they are one with White Death. They would be hunted by the Ekimu, because Sidero's death was their doing. I do not know it, but the signs are ill."
"Many would blame Kamakshi herself." Abhilash sneered, bitter relief at prying loose an old scab for all the itching it caused.
"I do not say they are wrong." Dragon Eater nodded. "She fought well. Near as strong as Sidero himself, with her magic. I do not know why his death made her flee, unless the Ekimu sent her poison dreams."
He frowned at that, looking somewhat sad as he reflected on the recent past.
"Still, the worshippers of the skull idol keep our wits and blades sharp." Dragon Eater clapped her shoulder and grinned with southern familiarity.
"Just so." Abhilash grinned with half her mouth in answer.
Damon stirred in her lap, his eyes wincing and fluttering open by turns -- searching in the deepening shadows of the rapid dusk of late autumn.
"Abhi...?" Damon's eyes skirted left and right, making out little more. "I... I thought..."
"You had another fit." The she-ork explained, her blunted claws trailing aimlessly across his temples and through his hair. "I had to catch you so you didn't split your head on a rock."
"How long?" He groaned, struggled to move, and resigned himself to laying still a few longer moments.
"Not long." Ginga angled into view, her belly shadowing them both from where she stood. "They've got plenty of fire, beer, meat, and furs for sleeping."
"I could've sworn..." Damon shook his head slowly, trying to slough-out the remaining fog in his thoughts. "Maybe it was a waking dream."
"Maybe." Ginga fretted her lower lip with her teeth. "What was it?"
