“No, Finn’s right,” Emre said, turning toward the drakken siblings. “This may take a while. This isn’t like a normal séance with the Pentax. She’s trying to find Tevun in the Meadows. We could do with some rest.”
“Drakken don’t need to sleep like you, humir. I want to stay in case this bikrome does anything untoward.”
“Truth told, Ruane, your father said the same thing many a time.” The mention of their father made Ruane snap her jaws tight. A sorrow rolled through Lojen’s innards. “But Val will not harm him, you have my word.”
“The word of a humir means nothing.”
“You have the word of your father’s ward.”
Ruane growled, “Fine, but if she does anything, I’ll tear her limb from limb.”
“I’d expect nothing less, Ruane. Come.”
The Gutter King led the small group deeper into the safehouse. Though darkened by the aethecite lamps turned low, the safehouse was much bigger than Lojen originally had guessed. The room with the radios and the weapons was only a third of the entire safehouse.
A pair of barracks with bunked beds was on both sides. There were trunks for each bed bunk, most of the linens finely made, a few of the injured rebels taking up others while a handful cared for the wounded. Meeting rooms with small, rounded tables and chairs came next. Some had giant maps of the city along the walls, others had scribbled whiteboards. Things like the times of watch changes of Imperium guards, pass codes to important buildings, routes for Imperium supply chains. Intricate drawings of Gargantua and its tethers. There were some hand-drawn schematics of the aethecite mines, with notes jotted down all over.
Finally, they reached a crude mess hall. There were many long tables with benches. A couple of rebels sat eating. There were racks with dried and canned food. Boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables. Meats hung from poles, all smoked and salted for extended supply. Gallons of water and ale were stacked from ground to ceiling. An aethecite-powered stove top with metal pots and pans. Finn and Wick went straight for the racks of food, and Lojen’s stomach unconsciously approved.
Emre sat at one of the long tables, so Lojen sat across from him. Ruane took a seat beside him, her talons gouging lines into the tabletop.
“You said my father planned this entire thing?” Emre suddenly became pensive as he nodded. “The Fallen has taken everything from us. We want to help you, but we can’t do anything if you don’t tell us the truth. Why were we summoned here?”
XV
Emre
“AFTER THE FALL of Eminence, when my father came to Drenth,” Lojen picked at his plate while he spoke, “he said it was duty that bound him here. Said he owed it to the Last Godsking. I never knew why, and he never gave his reason.”
“Here you go, Em.” Wick placed a plate and mug of ale in front of him.
Ruane ravished her meal by stabbing sausages with her longknife. Finn tried to offer Ruane some boiled eggs but the drakken gave him a rueful stare.
There was hesitation in Emre about Tevun’s hatchlings. Not because they couldn’t be trusted to see out what he needed of them, but because the truth of what was at stake was a heavy burden to bear. Tevun had done so out of his obligation to Eminence, the Great Crystal, and to Canlon Carr.
It was unfair to place that mantle upon their shoulders. Yet, Emre had no other choice. Just as the burden had been placed on his.
Emre sighed. “Truth told, Lojen, I didn’t know until after the Fallen conquered us why Tevun specifically chose Drenth to ward.” The elder drakken looked up while Ruane picked at something between her teeth with the tip of her longknife. Both of the same brood, yet so completely different of a hatch. O Tevun, both sides of you. “Not many knew this after the Fall, how could they when the records were erased in the upheaval of the old world…” he tapered into silence.
The thought of Tevun caused Emre to smile fondly. All the lessons. All the teachings before and after the invasion. Love bound Tevun to him, not duty. His duty was required elsewhere. As was Emre’s.
Sensing his reticence, Lojen pushed away his plate of untouched food. “My father would send communications once Drenth stabilized after the Fall. Mostly his love. And when you were born, he told us everything in his life led up to that moment. That his honor bound him to you, the child of Edric and Alandy. That you were his true ward, his calling. It was everything to him. And in his stead, now, that duty has passed to me.”
“To us,” Ruane said.
“To us,” Lojen confirmed. He gripped Ruane’s taloned claw. The younger drakken tensed slightly, some underlying animosity between them. On Ruane’s part, not Lojen’s.
When he was finished with his plate of greens, Wick stood. “I’m going to go sit with Val. Bring her some food.”
“I guess I’ll take cleaning duty,” Finn offered as he stacked the plates and retreated to the sink.
“My father intended for us to do something here in Drenth. I am honor bound, as is Ruane, to do whatever it is you command of us, Emre. Til our death.”
Tevun, my friend, he’s more like you than you ever knew. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” Honestly, he didn’t know if he possessed the strength to carry it through to the end. How Val was able to, he wouldn’t ever know. Cad, forgive me. This is all for her. “Aethecite is the lifeblood of the Mistlands,” Emre started, banishing the thoughts of his beloved wife and child. Steeling himself for what was to come. “Without it, the world crumbles.”
“Everyone knows that, humir.” Ruane spat out the thing that had been stuck in her craw. A bone, it appeared. “Why did our father have to die? What’s in Drenth that made him sacrifice his family and lead to his death?”
The young drakken was a spitfire. He hoped her resolve would remain intact. “Solanine intends to throw a party on Gargantua to honor the Fallen’s annual remembrance of Drenth’s conquest. When the Fallen started his war after his rebirth, he came to Drenth last. Spending decades gobbling up mega-cities all along the south before setting sights on us. Growing his Imperium until Drenth could withstand no longer.”
“He wanted the mines,” Ruane answered as if it was simple logic. “Take them and he controls the Mistlands.”
“The truth is far more dire than that. Aether, Ruane. There is aether within the mines, the hardened ore.” He drew out the vial of parch that Kephren had tried to con him with. He placed it on the table, its contents shined in the aethecite lamps. “Without the mines, not only does the Imperium control the source of fuel in all the Mistlands, but there is more.” Emre tossed the vial into the air, then burned his aetheurgy. His hand whipped out faster than the eye could follow, catching the vial before it had completed its upward apex. “The mist is also borne of aether. Tell me, what do you know about Eminence prior to the Fall? The city, that is.”
“The world’s greatest civilization.” Lojen’s snouted face had a poignant look about it as he answered, the shadows of the safehouse plied over his exoscales. “High in the heavens of the Pentax it floated. A city like no other, my father once told me. Beauty unheralded. The Crystal of Life shone down from the highest spire in the center of the city. Everyone worshiped the Crystal as Zenith Himself. The All Father, He Who Fathered the World.”
“Do you know what happened to a Godsking? What it meant to be chosen by Zenith to carry this honorific?” The drakken siblings shook their heads. “Mortals, that’s all they were before Zenith chose them. Chosen because they have a spark within their souls. A spark of aether. The Scattered Shards have named it Godsblood. And this spark, if you will, is built upon the ideal that all Life and Death in this world is within the soul.”
“The drakken are borne of aether,” Ruane said. “All draconem are. Aether is our essence. There’s never been mention of such Godsbloods in Merj.”
“There is much in your lore that is kept from the unworthy.”
“You mean only the wardkeepers know?”
“Yes, Lojen.” Emre fought the urge to scratch at his scars, almost as if afraid he might tear the flesh from his bones. “Tevun broke an oath by telling me this. An oath to the Arbiter. But he had to, for it is the only way for us to defeat the Fallen.”
Lojen pondered for heartbeats, staring at the table. “If aether derives within the soul, then the Godskings must have a greater purpose. Yes?”