Page 8 of To Touch A Silent Fury

I walked in, gait as taut as a sheaf in Heape.

The king stood over the great table, its top carved with a wooden map of the lands. His fingers rested at spindly angles; his coat swamping him as the candlelight cast his gaunt cheeks in hollow relief.

Beside him was the only man more emaciated than him in Droundhaven—his Moontouched advisor and second cousin, Millisen. Three spans Braxthorn’s elder, Millisen was only one further span from eighty dry years. With his grey and white colouring as a member of the Brotherhood, Millisen had seemed ancient to me even when I was a boy. My family had formed their order, and yet I found the Brothers to be creepy at best.

“Son,” King Braxthorn said, with hundreds of calculations in every flick of his unnaturally blue eyes. “Where is your coat?”

“Lost it in a fight,” I replied. Technically, it was the truth.

He assessed me with little warmth. “Come, we have work to discuss.”

I stepped over to the table, nodding to Millisen. “Where’s Banrillen?”

My father tapped a city on his coveted map. “I sent him to Sellador with a squad from the Vidarium earlier this morning.”

“If my brother is the best diplomat we have, we’re in trouble,” I said.

Braxthorn narrowed his eyes. “There comes a time to look beyond diplomacy.”

“Odenor still resisting?” I asked.

“The Soundlands have been stubborn for longer than it’s been submerged in snow.”

“And Odenor has lived longer than the roots of most of its trees,” Millisen added.

After the Founders came together and defeated the Oktorok, each of the Five returned to their lands and divided themselves again. The Triad as we know it, comprising the Tastelands, Scentlands, and Sightlands, had first formed in the wake of Courvin’s triumph across the continent over a century later, when he united those three lands under the banner of the Five Founders. Over the last few centuries, our lands have quarrelled and come apart, only to make peace a generation later.

But the Soundlands and the Touchlands had never joined our trade alliance. Those loyal to the Soundlands capital, Euphonos, hated our noise. More than that, those Euphons could not align their mysticism in the natural world with our mercantile domination of the lands. The growing contingent of Selladorians to the west of the Ramelon River were far more reasonable, but their thane didn’t have the power to overrule the Euphon king. If not for their copious silver mines, I doubted my father would have minded leaving them to hug their trees.

However, if the Soundlanders broadly disliked our ways, the Touchlands hated us. They fundamentally disagreed with Edrin’s account of the history, transcribed into our texts and taught to our children. They especially took umbrage with the assertion that their Founder, Hain, had betrayed the others. Their theological anger was only compounded when the Tastelands spilt over the Barrow and took Cajim by force two hundred years ago.

A generation back, when the old rulers died and the new ones took over, the Shieldblood had sent a missive to my father. He showed me the letter when I was old enough to understand it, and his reply. They had only asked for three things: fair levies and taxes, an addendum toThe History of the Five, and the return of Cajim. My father had refused on all counts and instead responded that should they wish to trade with the Triad, they must give up their Blood Trials and adopt a more ‘civilised’ worldview. In essence, he might as well have written back a concise ‘fuck you’.

The carved shepherds on our lands pointed north, to the Soundlands, the lands of Founder Mephluan’s people. I knew my father craved a war, some way to live up to the legacy of his own father, Norgallin the Hammer, and I had no doubt that someday he would force us into one. But I had no interest in a pointless war against the Euphons in the freezing cold of their forests. “Why not wait it out? His son is far more pliable. Once the old man is dead, then force Frodenor to bend the knee.”

Braxthorn glanced at Millisen. “We can’t afford to wait. We need to claim the Gossamir Forest before it is too late.”

“Too late for what?” I asked.

“The Threads have sent word. They believe Vellintris may soon lay a final egg. It is known she laid Kallamont in Gossamir.”

“Another blue dragon in the world,” I murmured. “Who has mated her?”

Braxthorn flexed his jaw. “We don’t know. You understand why we can’t wait.”

Wyvern and dragon mating had been attempted before, despite the size differential between them. They weren’t the same species, but other than the extra limbs of the dragon, their physiologies were very similar. In theory, it was possible, but no female wyvern had been able to carry Kallamont’s egg to term. With no adult female to use before Chaethor, and she herself not willing, I wasn’t sure if a male unbonded wyverncouldhave mated with Vellintris. But, if it wasn’t one of the straggling untamed wyverns, the only alternative was that this egg was of Skirmtold’s line.

Millisen inclined his head gravely. “The egg cannot be permitted to fall to the Soundlanders.”

I stared between them. “So, you’ve sent my brother to what? Make threats and throw his weight around?”

“I’ve sent Banrillen to speak to the thane,” Braxthorn growled. “He is a man of commerce, at least. We need control of the forest sooner than later.”

A man of commerce. It was a polite way of indicating the leader could be bought. “And me? What do you want from me?”

“You and Chaethor need to be seen,” he said. “Take her out over the Soundlands, let the world fear you. While you’re there, check for dragonsign over the Cloven. Any sign that Vellintris may be nesting.”

Yes,Chaethor purred.I’ve been waiting to stretch my wings.