Liv had been told that Silica was different than the younger, smaller wyrms that House Iravata controlled in battle. That made sense; none of those wyrms were twelve hundred years old, after all. None of them - at least not the few she’d encountered - used words of power.

The reality, somehow, was still more than she’d prepared herself for.

Silica’s long, sinuous body was coiled around the open bowl at the center of the mountain like a garden snake around a clay pot. Downslope from the double doors through which Liv, Arjun and Rosamund had entered, one great coil lay across the ground like the wall of a castle. The dark scales, glittering in the light of both moon and ring, were each the size of a large kite shield, and there was a soft rustling sound, like dry leaves in autumn wind, coming from where the coils began to move against each other as Silica lifted her head.

The enormous creature’s head moved toward them, as if to get a better look, and her tongue flicked out to taste the air. At the same time, two enormous shapes rose up from the ground to blot out the light of the desert sky, and for a moment Liv couldn’t process what those shapes were. Finally, her mind managed to link them to a concept, to something familiar - Wren’s outstretched bat wings. Silica seemed far too large to be capable of flight, but then again she must have been created with magic in the first place - and a flying wyrm would explain just how she was able to get down into the hollow middle of the mountain.

The mouth that opened was large enough to swallow all three of them at once, and probably the eight Elden soldiers serving as their escort, besides. Liv had seen wyrms spit venom before, and her mind conjured a rather unpleasant image of just how much venom might spray forth when Silica attacked them. Enough to drench them all from head to toe, and leave them standing in a puddle of it, she suspected.

“We’ve come to talk,” Liv shouted, in Vakansa, holding up her arms to display open palms, and the fact that she wasn’t holding a weapon. “Ghethēmus Thrīa.” It felt odd to speak Vædic aloud without using a word of power, with no intent shaping her mana into a spell.

The enormous, serpentine head pulled back slightly, then cocked to one side, at an angle, like a hound who has just heard its owner call out its name. “You come in love, little cotheeria?”

“Peace,” Liv shouted back. “We come in peace. And we don’t use that name anymore - we call ourselves Vakansa.” She suppressed her own flash of annoyance at getting a word wrong: there wasn’t a lot of call for using either of those concepts in her spellwork, and the mage guild’s records were focused on preserving language that was useful in casting.

“The free people,” Silica murmured - though even the whisper of such a titanic creature rumbled like an avalanche. “Interesting. The last people who came to me claimed they wished only to talk, as well - and when I refused their entreaties, they assaulted me.”

A cloud passed between the ground and the moon, and in the changing light, Liv realized that the scales on the left side of Silica’s face had been scorched and burnt so thoroughly that many of them had fallen off, exposing raw flesh beneath. A familiar smell, carried on the night breeze, reminded her of shifts working in the infirmary of Coral Bay, or accompanying Master Cushing on his rounds in Whitehill - the stink of seeping pus.

“What’s she saying?” Rose asked.

“Someone came here to talk and then attacked her,” Liv said in Lucanian. Then, she turned back to the wyrm. “Was it servants of Ractia who came to you?” she asked. “There might have been an old man who wielded fire magic - a man in armor. Aariv and Manfred?”

The wyrm hissed; Liv wondered if that was the creature’s equivalent of a frown. Perhaps Silica’s face might be expressive to another wyrm, or to one who’d studied their ways, but to her there was little sign of what the ancient thing was thinking or feeling.

“Those names, yes,” Silica confirmed. “Nighthawk, as well - one of the traitorous Red Shields. He approached under the ancient peace I honored with the Painted Desert Tribe, though they have dwindled and passed from this world, and so I met with them and heard their words. It was foolish on my part. A mistake I shall not repeat.”

“We’re not here to fight you,” Liv said. “Look. I’ll put my wand down on the ground and back away from it. We all will.” Moving slowly, she drew her wand from its leather sheath and then set the length of bone down in front of her. She swapped to speaking Lucanian, for Rose and Arjun. “Put your weapons down,” Liv told them. “No sudden movements.”

At her urging, Arjun set down his wand of neem wood, and Rose laid her sword on the ground. Hesitantly, the Elden soldiers followed their example, and then Liv had them all back up away from the weapons.

“Does that prove our good intentions?” Liv asked Silica. “Will you listen to us, at least?”

The enormous coils shifted, and there was something about the motion that put Liv in the mind of tension leaving a person’s shoulders. “Speak, then,” the ancient wyrm said, lowering her head. “For however long remains to me to listen. I grow weary.”

“I’m going to start from the beginning, then,” Liv said, “because I’m not certain how much you know. About twenty-five years ago, one of the people who came to speak with you, Nighthawk Wind Dancer, sent his daughter across the ocean to steal a statue of Ractia. When she brought it back to him, the Red Shield tribe used it to revive Ractia. If you remember a day where roving orbs of blood erupted and tried to kill everything around them, that’s when the goddess came back.”

“She started by gathering allies,” Liv continued. “Most of the Red Shield tribe. Vakansa who worshipped her in small cults, and then most of House Iravata. Human mercenaries. Antrian war-machines that she found sleeping in Vædic ruins. Then, she started launching attacks on the Eld - the Vakansa - and setting off eruptions in rifts. She’s been gathering pieces of machinery from all across the world, and she’s building something. We’re trying to stop her.”

“This rift is one of the closest to her base in the mountains,” Liv explained. “As far as we knew when we came, she hadn’t moved into the badlands.”

“Your information was wrong,” Silica practically growled.

Liv nodded. “Based on what we knew, we wanted to take control of the waystone here and use it to move our troops close enough to mount an assault on Ractia.”

“So you are just like those who came before, after all,” the wyrm hissed. “Both of you want my home for yourselves. Go ahead and take it, then, little ones. Your enemies have already wounded me. I can hardly fight back, at this point.”

“We don’t want to fight you.” Liv shook her head. “Ractia’s our enemy, not you. All we want to do is move troops, and deny this rift to her. I think we can do both of those things, and help you at the same time.” She pointed to Arjun. “My friend here is a healer from the east. He has three words of power that can all be used to treat injuries.”

Silica’s enormous head swung on her long neck, right up to Arjun, close enough to cause him to take a step back in surprise. “I’m not about to be eaten, am I?” he asked Liv in Lucanian.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

“I don’t think so,” Liv told him. “Just stay still for a moment.”

“Tell me what you are offering,” Silica said, her breath rushing over Arjun with such force that it blew his dark hair back, as if in a great wind. “Speak it clearly, Vakansa.”

“You’re dying,” Liv began, swapping back from Lucanian so that the wyrm could understand her. “I can smell the blood and pus on you, and you’ve as much as admitted that you couldn’t fight us off if we wanted to kill you.” For her part, she wasn’t so certain about that; Liv had no doubt that fighting Silica would be a dangerous and costly mistake, and she had no intention of losing any of her friends in a battle they didn’t have to fight.

“Arjun will heal your wounds,” she offered. “In return, you will allow us to move troops through this rift. You’ll allow me access to the control room, so that I can secure the waystone against Ractia and her people. You’ll do your part to deny this rift to Ractia’s forces, if they come back, but you’ll fight with our support, rather than alone. When the war is over, we’ll leave the rift and the ruins to you in peace. I can make whatever changes to the waystone you want at that time.” Liv glanced over to Rosamund. “And you’ll imprint your word of power on my friend Rose, here.”

“Only one of the Vædim can take control of a rift in the manner you describe,” the wyrm said, swinging her head back around to Liv.

“Or someone carrying one of their keys,” Liv responded, tapping the silver crown on her forehead with two fingers. “The key of Celris.”

“I give you control of my home for some indeterminate length of time,” Silica mused. “You gain my aid in battle.”

“I’m only asking for you to help defend this place,” Liv clarified. “I’m not asking for you to attack Ractia with us. If they don’t attack Feic Seria, you don’t ever need to fight beside us.”

“And if I refuse, as you have pointed out, I perish anyway and gain nothing,” Silica practically hissed. “But I am not so cheaply bought, and you have forgotten one thing. Your allies hidden around the outside of this mountain will not get here quickly enough to stop me if I decide to kill you right now, little cotheeria. I could melt your body in my venom, or swallow you in a single bite.” It was a sudden reversal from the wyrm's earlier insistence that she couldn't fight back; Liv couldn't tell if it was a negotiation tactic, or simply desperation. Fever?

“But if you do that, you die,” Liv reminded her.

“Life for life, death for death,” Silica muttered. “Our dealings will be even. A word for a word. If you wish Stai for your human, I will have a word in return. One that can be used to heal myself.”

Liv turned to Arjun. “She wants you to imprint her with Cail, in return for Rose getting her word.”

“That’s fine,” Arjun said.

“Agreed,” Liv told Silica.

The enormous wyrm nodded her head. “And I want a promise, between your people and myself. Not only that these ruins, this rift, are left to me when your war is over - you will make the same commitment the Painted Desert Tribe did long ago. These lands are mine, and mine alone. Travelers will seek my approval before crossing the high desert. If my territory is violated, I may call for aid, and you will answer.”

“I can’t promise that all by myself,” Liv said. “I need to bring that to the elders of the Vakansa. I can ask them to agree to it, but I can’t make a guarantee. I can bring it to the Duchy of Whitehill, as well, and perhaps eventually to the mages guild.” Once it’s been wrested from Genevieve’s control, Liv told herself.

“You will do this,” Silica said. “And what is more, everyone one of you present now in my lands will make this promise personally. You will give me your oaths to come when called. It is worth little from the humans, they live such short lives - but I consider it a principle. And from you Vakansa, as you call yourselves, it is at least a measurable commitment.”

“Subject to guild culling exemptions,” Liv argued. “Someone who’s been crippled is released from their obligation to answer you, as is anyone too far away to reach you, and any woman carrying a child.”

For a long moment, the enormous eyes of the great wyrm fixed on Liv, and it was all she could do not to look away. The stillness stretched on as Silica considered her answer. “Agreed. If your healer can preserve my life, you have your bargain.”

☙

It wasn’t that simple, of course.

Once Arjun actually began to examine Silica, he found that the extent of her wounds was truly horrendous. Once the sun had risen over the high desert, and illuminated the lakeshore at the center of the mountain, he made a survey of the worst injuries like a master mason assessing the old, crumbling walls of a keep.

Rose and Liv both had enough medical training to help, and so they ended up using a platform of coherent mana to skim over and around the wyrm’s ravaged body, floating above coils so that Arjun could get a better look at what he was dealing with. Rose ended up being assigned the task of making a list in a notebook.

Silica’s scales had been scorched away not only on one side of her face, but on her belly, as well, and along the membrane of one wing. In each case, the burns - made by Aariv, Liv assumed - had not only burned through the scales, but down into the fat and muscle tissue that lay beneath them. “Nerve damage,” Arjun announced, clinically, after he poked his wand at the blackened edges of the wing-burn.

There were tears in the wyrm’s delicate wing-membranes, as well, some of which extended all the way to exposed bone. Those, it turned out, had mostly been made by Manfred and his mercenaries. Crossbow bolts, halberds and other polearms had been used to systematically bring Silica down and then deny her the ability to lift off again. They’d even used warhammers and maces to break the bones of her left wing.

They were great gashes in the wyrm’s scales, which had crusted over with blood but not healed, and that was the work of the Antrian war machines that had reinforced Nighthawk and his companions. Other scales had been shattered by the projectiles that erupted from the six-barrelled weapons each war-machine had mounted on their shoulders.

One of the most horrific injuries was actually located about a quarter of the length of Silica’s body down from her head, again on her underside. Someone had ripped multiple scales away and apparently tried to dig down through layers of muscle.

“That was Nighthawk Wind Dancer,” Silica explained, flinching away from Arjun’s probing hands while she lay on her back in the morning light. “He took the form of a great jaguar, and seemed determined to get to my heart.”

“He was trying to steal your form,” Wren said, from where she’d perched nearby on a great boulder that jutted out into the lake. Once it had become clear that there wasn’t going to be any fighting, Valtteri had led his soldiers into the heart of the rift, to make camp on the shore of the water.

“That’s a terrifying thought,” Liv admitted.

“If he could have taken her heart back to the blood-letters, it might have worked,” Wren said, nodding. “I can’t be certain. I don’t think anyone’s ever tried to take the form of a wyrm before, nevermind one as old as Silica.”

“Can you heal her?” Valtteri asked Arjun. The wind teased his white braids, lifting them up from his shoulders and rattling the charms of bone and stone that tipped each one.

“Yes, but,” Arjun replied. “It’s not going to be quick. I can’t do it all at once, and I’m going to have to prioritize the wounds that are putting her in the greatest danger. We’ve got to bring that infection under control, for instance. And then probably the burns - but the chest wound is a problem too.” He shook his head. “In all honesty? If she wasn’t here in front of me, able to move and talk, I’d never have believed that anything could live through this.”

“Iravata made her children difficult to kill,” Ghveris rumbled, from the shadow of the boulder Wren was sitting on. “Silica is one of the true wyrms, one of her first clutch. Two were killed in the war, by the time I was defeated, and both battles were... costly, for the rebels.”

“That sounds like an understatement,” Wren said, turning to Ghveris and giving the juggernaut a grin. He responded only with a nod of his armored head.

“This isn’t just going to be the work of a couple hours,” Arjun said, breaking back into the conversation. “I’m going to be here for days, Liv. Maybe weeks.”

“Alright.” Liv frowned, but nodded. She didn’t like the idea of leaving Arjun here, but there seemed to be nothing for it. “Get started on the worst, then. I’m going to bring Sidonie through so we can make adjustments to the waystone. Silica,” she said, switching from Lucanian back to Vakansa, “my friend Arjun is going to be staying here to treat your wounds for quite a while. I’m going to get someone to help me secure this place. If you’re feeling strong enough, perhaps you could imprint Rose here with that word of power? We’ve got a war to fight across the ocean, and I’d like her to come with me when I leave.”

Silica swung her head around to face Rose, and the dark haired girl stumbled backward a few steps when confronted with the sheer size of the wyrm’s face.

“Make sure you sit down first,” Liv reminded the other woman, and set off back into the ruins of Feic Seria, the crown already showing her the path to the waystone.