Awakening Arte (The Eldest Throne Book 1) Read online

  Sethra shouted something Roun didn’t catch and began expanding her fortress while Laeshiro laughed. Zareus gestured at the earthen keep from beside Kamil, but turned to glance at Roun. The scribe said nothing and neither did Roun.

  He watched them for a while longer, then made his way to the tower and down to Zareus’s workshop.

  Zareus arrived some time later. The scribe went to his large table, which always seemed to have a chunk of chimera flesh; Roun still didn’t know where it came from. Élanic script ran all along the table and looped back to a pedestal with a removable orb of deep obsidian.

  The script probably prevented the flesh from rotting, but he wasn’t sure. He waited while Zareus cut into the sinew with his ever-present scalpel. The scribe was still shirtless, though pretty much everyone had gotten used to that by now. They had also become accustomed to his smell, which was the same as his workshop; a weird mix of herbs, medicinal concoctions, rot, and septic.

  The scent was strong enough at the source that Roun couldn’t help but blow air from his nostrils. Even after several hours, his nose refused to adjust to the shifting aromas; they were that pungent.

  “Have you come up with something?” Zareus asked without pausing.

  Roun licked his lips. “I think my arte might be related to chimeras.” He still wasn’t sure about his spiritual vessel, but some Grimoires had quirks with their artes that influenced how they gathered or stored élan, so it was possible his worked the same way. Though all of them had still taken in dawnlight just fine…

  Well, it was better than nothing, and if he could uncover his arte, then maybe its theme would offer some hints.

  The problem was that his theory required him to seek out chimeras, which wasn’t something Avyleir would allow without good reason. Even Yhul had told them they were a long way off from being ready, so Roun honestly expected Zareus to laugh him away.

  The scribe didn’t. Instead, he turned around and fixed a curious look on him. “What led you to this conclusion?”

  Roun took a deep breath. “For starters, my arte didn’t manifest immediately at dawn.” Grimoires who didn’t awaken at dawn usually lacked an outlet for their arte. What happened instead was that their awakening remained latent, either until their arte could manifest or an unpredictable length of time had passed, which forced the awakening to instead take the form of a searing and forceful burst of élan.

  Zareus told him as much, but Roun shook his head.

  “I looked over the records the librarians made after my awakening,” Roun said. “No one was hurt and there wasn’t any damage to the city, and witnesses insisted I clawed and bludgeoned the dream eater nearly to death before its arte finally put me to sleep and allowed it to flee. Not exactly useful or very comforting, but it’s something. The timing is off too. Too much of a coincidence, so I don’t think it was a forced awakening.”

  “Meaning you believe the dream eater somehow triggered your arte.”

  Roun shrugged. “I’ve thought over this way too many times and to me it’s the only thing that makes sense.” He paused. “The dream eater hit me with a shard, so maybe that’s it.”

  Zareus snorted. “Let’s hope not. Depending on an enemy to land their arte in order to use your own would be singularly horrific.”

  Roun decided he agreed.

  “Anything else? Even you must admit this is grasping at straws.”

  “True,” Roun agreed. “I’m at a pretty depressing dead end.”

  Zareus considered for a moment, then nodded. “You told us you had experience with chimeras and trekking through the night?”

  “Some,” Roun said, wondering where this was going. “My father was a mercenary that specialized in tracking and identifying chimeras before passing on the information to Guardsmen, but he once told me he’s killed a few on his own before.” Roun shrugged. “He taught me everything he knew and had me learn my glyphs so I could read the more detailed bestiaries.”

  “If we outfitted you, would you be comfortable venturing after a chimera on your own? We would, of course, choose a suitable chimera and location. I have both in mind already.”

  Roun blinked. “You want me to go slay a chimera, on my own, weakened as I am?”

  “It would be a closer match than the last time you faced one,” the scribe replied. “For now, we’ll have you try wraiths and work up towards luring a chimera to observe, as your father taught you. That might be enough for your arte if it truly is related.”

  The offer was close to what Roun had wanted, but even he understood how ridiculous it sounded. Well, maybe not completely ridiculous. Roun’s father had been a mortal. A far better skilled mortal than him, sure, but Roun had watched him work, so he knew that dealing with chimeras required caution, cleverness, and a healthy amount of patience. He could manage that much.

  This would also let him see if his arte had anything to do with chimeras without putting the others in danger or distracting the Rozarian Guard and senior Grimoires from genuine work. Roun just needed to be willing to shoulder the risk himself.

  And why not? He had sometimes dreamed of joining the Rozarian Guard and walking alongside Noban as an equal, but he had always known it would remain a dream. Being a Guardsman was an honorable profession, so outcasts couldn’t join their ranks even though being clanless was the same as being disposable.

  His only other acceptable option had been working as a mercenary, like his father. Wasn’t that what Roun had been training for before awakening, after all? Was this really that different? And Zareus was right; even in his current state, he was still at least a Grimoire.

  Roun thought it over for a while longer, then nodded. “This will be enough to satisfy me. Thank you.”

  “Very well, then,” Zareus said. “I’ll do everything possible to help you, so consider this an extension of your training at Avyleir. With that in mind, I’ll also offer you a gift that should serve you well from what Yhul tells me. ”

  Zareus walked across his workshop to one of his smaller tables and then with surprising apathy swept all the bottles and vials out of the way.

  Roun frowned.

  The scribe began unpinning inked diagrams of the human body and directions for various procedures and alchemical recipes from the wall. He then tapped against the wall in deliberate patterns and finished with a flourish.

  Script so faint that Roun barely noticed it shimmer; seams then appeared in the shape of a rectangle as a series of clicks rang out. Zareus pressed his hands against the wall, and after some rocking, removed a stone panel.

  Behind it was his father’s axe.

  Or at least a bloodhawk axe that looked exactly like it. Roun had seen drawings of the weapons and knew they were supposed to be imperial gold and red like the one his father owned. This one had an odd, almost leathery texture everywhere except the cutting edge that was dyed different shades of black with a tinge of dark blue.

  Neither of them spoke for what felt an eternity. Zareus just stood there flicking his scalpel while he watched Roun without emotion.

  “This… is a bloodhawk axe,” Roun finally said. “My father had one like it, but it didn’t have that odd texture or coloring—what’s that look for?”

  Zareus had been staring with deep amusement. At Roun’s question, he raised an eyebrow. “Bloodhawk axes are made exclusively for warrior monks, and not just any monk, but those trained to hunt chimeras and assist Grimoires in battle against them.”

  Roun frowned, but Zareus surprised him by saying nothing else. Not that he knew what to think about the possibility that his father had been a deserted warrior monk.

  Zareus instead picked up a fresh scalpel, dipped it in something that made bubbles when the metal entered it, and then shook it dry.

  “Show me your palm,” Zareus said.

  He obliged, but didn’t expect the scribe to slice his flesh wide open.

  “Ow!” Roun cried as he jerked his hand back.

  Zareus waited. “Again, before it heals.”


  Roun sighed and held out his hand again. The wounds closed almost immediately, but slowly; liquid gold and red light still gushed from them.

  Zareus gestured at the bloodhawk axe with his scalpel. “Take it. It’s yours now.”

  Roun reached up to remove the weapon from the wall and startled when it drank his élan—he worried he would pass out again for a moment, but the axe stopped after a few heartbeats.

  “Good,” Zareus said with a nod. “I assume you’re familiar with how it works?”

  “Mostly,” Roun muttered. “It’s been a while since I practiced with one and...”

  “You couldn’t use the weapon’s script because it was bound to your father,” Zareus finished. When Roun nodded, he shrugged. “You can work on it later.” Zareus then turned to glance at a map of the Rozarian Demesne spread across the wall. He stepped forward to place a finger on the paper, at a location some distance to the west of Rozaria City. “You will go here.”

  “What’s there?” Roun asked.

  Zareus grunted. “A Burrow.”

  10

  Roun hurried through the city while mentally cycling through Zareus’s instructions, the first of which was to wait for dusk.

  A sigh escaped his lips as he glanced over at the Eldest Throne and watched it fall to slumber. The streets of Rozaria City were already empty; many people believed being outside during nightfall welcomed bad luck. They thought the same about sleeping through the dawn, but it was also poor manners and the shunning of tradition. No sensible person would tempt Fate like that if they could help it, though he supposed Guardsmen and Grimoires accepted it as a part of their lives.

  As the remaining élan in the air decayed, the sky cooled away from dusk’s beautiful warm hues. Roun couldn’t see over the city’s walls, but knew the night was already creeping inward from the edge of the world and consuming everything in its path.

  Roun continued down the sloping tile road of the outer western district. Years spent thieving and begging along its streets left him familiar with the labyrinthine jumble of shops and clustered hive-homes. The towering residences were a common sight in the outer districts, each nearly as high as the walls and interconnected by a series of catwalks.

  Roun never could look at a hive-home without shuddering. Sure, there were guardrails as well as scripts that maintained the integrity of the stone and wood, but many still fell to their deaths or were left crippled every year. Alleyways didn’t make for the best home, but at least he couldn’t fall from them.

  The people on a nearby catwalk were staring back, so he hurried along. He made it to the walls just as the day was darkening and found that the night captain was someone he recognized; the Guardswoman always lectured him whenever she caught him returning from his nightly ventures.

  This time she only gave him a hard, displeased look.

  Little surprise there; Roun was wearing his Grimoire raiments without the medallion, as instructed. He was also wearing a porcelain festival mask with a floral pattern. The mask had confused him until Zareus explained that, since he was still on probation, it would be better to try to remain unrecognizable.

  The guard captain waited with a frown while he approached and handed her a copper coin with a central ring of deep obsidian at the center and an additional ring of sapphire around the obsidian.

  She took the coin and spun it with her fingers. He wasn’t sure what she was doing, but she took her time before finally handing it back with a grunt and gesturing over to another woman. Roun went to her and watched as she unlocked a small postern door and held it open for him.

  Roun made his way through the narrow passageway and stepped outside. This time, he was better prepared than he had ever been before; a canteen and an élanic lantern rested against his hips, and an extra obsidian orb sat in one of the pockets of his robes. The makeshift holster carrying his axe hung from his shoulder and preservation scripts kept the weapon from wasting élan so long as another source of light was nearby.

  Roun set out into the growing darkness after checking his equipment one last time.

  That darkness had become absolute by the time he reached his destination a couple of hours later. Night swirled like a storm around him, held at bay by the light of his lantern. The air was chilled enough to draw vapor from his lips and he could hear unnatural sounds. Silhouettes and menacing shapes appeared ahead of him every so often before breaking apart, back into swirling shades of black and violet.

  Roun ignored it all, even though stumbling into a chimera was still a possibility, if unlikely; like Grimoires, they needed less sleep and became increasingly cathemeral as they grew stronger, but at night, most chimeras hunted their own kind instead.

  It was still better to be careful.

  Roun raised his lantern and frowned as the light ahead abruptly cut off. I’m already having second thoughts about this. He sighed and unwrapped the second obsidian orb, then slotted it in with the first. The lantern reached further, but still vanished beyond a certain distance, proof that the area ahead of him was a knot of night.

  They were clumps that persisted through the day and became thicker after dusk. Knots of night eventually broke apart on their own, so they were usually left alone so long as they didn’t show up somewhere inconvenient. A chimera had claimed this one, giving the knot permanence and turning it into something far more dangerous—a Burrow.

  Roun licked his lips. Avyleir had assigned the chimeras inside a Copper threat rating according to Zareus, but that wasn’t factoring his frighteningly shallow pool of élan.

  Breathe. Roun went over the plan in his head as he unwrapped his axe. He removed his canteen and mask and left them on a nearby boulder with his holster, checked to make sure he had secured the lantern to his sash, and then nervously advanced forward. The dome of his lantern shrank half its size as he entered the influence of the Burrow, restricting the edge of his vision just as much; beyond the soft blurring of light and shadow, there was only an impenetrable wall of black.

  The knot fell over one of Rozaria’s many colossal hills that apparently weren’t steep or pointed enough to be deemed mountains. Rather than climbing, however, he instead searched for one of the openings that should now cover the hill and found one almost immediately.

  A violet, wax-like substance supported the tunnel’s shape; it ran along the sides and ceilings like veins, but spread evenly across the floor. His boots stepped across the odd substance without a sound.

  Roun made his way through the oppressive darkness for another few heartbeats before realizing he was an idiot. A moment later, he cast Farsight.

  The cantrip pulsed out and Roun startled as it returned numerous sources of élan. To his shock—and terror—a large number of them winked out, while the far dimmer orbs closest to him began moving in his direction.

  Roun frowned and continued forward. The first thing he noticed was that Farsight was even more useful than he had expected, because its ability to feed his senses at a reasonable distance didn’t seem to be affected by darkness—which was how he sensed the wraith above him.

  It launched itself into Roun the moment he jerked his head up, slamming him against the ground. Roun swung his axe too late, leaving it to cut air as his head thudded against the spongy floor. There was a brief struggle, though it was mostly him shoving back against the wraith and failing. Razor-sharp claws anchored the wraith deep within his flesh and it reacted to his efforts with fluid balance, twisting and bending rather than resisting; it had no bones and no inclination to care about its own wellbeing.

  Instead, the wraith opened its maw wide enough to form a near-perfect circle, revealing concentric rows of teeth, and clamped down on his shoulder.

  Their struggle had only gone on for a handful of heartbeats, but those heartbeats stretched to eternity when Roun felt the bite. The torment was layered so masterfully that he knew it couldn’t be anything but some kind of arte; the jagged piercing of skin came first, then a weird, feverish wave that left his wound
itchy followed. Last was the agony that jolted far deeper, making his spirit ache and his head reverberate as if a hammer struck it from the inside.

  The layered pain caught him by surprise, and an unrestrained scream escaped his lips.

  The scream echoed through the otherwise-silent tunnel, because wraiths were no more capable of making sound than they were of casting their own shadows.

  Élan-rich ichor gushed from within. It halted the momentum of the teeth and claws, preserved his life, and already worked to heal him, but did it all wastefully. Breathe. He swallowed panic and fear as Farsight allowed him to sense another wraith skitter close enough to pounce. Roun jerked and kicked the wraith while it was midair, then rolled and sawed his axe across the wraith still clawing and biting him with a flash of élan-empowered strength. The wraith melted apart into inky sludge that quickly dissipated.

  He sprang to his feet, ignoring the orchestra of pain thundering through him, and stumbled out of the way of another leaping wraith. He rebalanced himself a moment later and then swung an empowered chop downwards at the wraith he had kicked aside, which was now scrambling on all fours towards him.

  Wraiths were nothing more than a smudge of élan stirred in with the night, so his bloodhawk axe passed through the wraith without meeting the resistance of partial immortality. The third wraith tried to leap at him again, but this time he answered with a two-handed sweep of his axe. Roun misjudged and hit it with the flat, but he followed by smashing his axe down on the wraith repeatedly until it melted away.

  Air rasped into his throat after a gulp. He glanced ahead, fighting back the lingering pain of the bite as it forked through him like frozen lightning. More wraiths filled the tunnel ahead, all of them approaching.

  He considered for a moment—and then ran. This wouldn’t be the most glorious moment of his life as a Grimoire. The thought left a wry smile on his lips.