The Shining Wyrm

Jewel looked down upon the sodden wood, the best that was available in their circumstances. They had planned for the hospitality of one of Arva’s manor lords, but a landslide had taken the road they planned for and required them to divert.

The same rains which had washed away the entirety of the trail leading up the more direct route had pushed them along a great diversion through the hills, leading them to make camp with naught but an old cantor tower’s crumbling and overgrown edifice as a shelter.

There had been nothing to burn, just a pile of decades abandoned rot in the roofless wood store buried in earthy smelling mulch more soil than kindling. So her party had to set out to chop green trees, soaked through by the rain. All through the miserable preparations Jewel offered her wings as shelter for those that needed relief from the cold torrent.

If her company had been without her the muddy ground, slick stone and far too green wood would have prevented a fire that night. The poor weather might very well have cost a life or two, if they had been later into the year such a detour could have meant death to the whole party.

Even with the bundle of fire starters in their stores there was little hope of catching the fresh wood alight sodden as it was, setting up the waxed leather tarps would have been a terrible business and with rain heavy as this the trees gave no relief with their foliage.

If anyone had been vulnerable or frail it might have cost their lives from the cold and damp today. Jewel crushed that last thought hard.

If they had been alone without sorcery maybe a member of her party would have perished.

But Jewel was here, she lowered her head down, taking in a deep breath, then with the gentlest and softest whisper of her inner flame she could manage gave the most quiet of requests to the very heart of the overgreen wood in the lay.

“Burn.”

It was not like she once lit frozen solid wood in winter, she did not merely hiss out the cessation that was true wyrm flame along the icy bark until it caught, sparked and ignited in the aftermath. She spoke in a way that had no word of man akin to it and the world sprung into shape to match her beckoning.

The sudden hissing burst of flames and steam rising up from the wood at the heart of the lay should have been reassuring, a triumph, but under the sheets of rain and storm and the need to have taken this road in the first place?

All it reminded her of was that it was a failure.

Despite a decade trying to find some wyrmish sorcery to heat her baths the best she had found was a stone that felt warm to the touch, glowed like hot coals but failed to even melt snow, a way to make a room into a smothering trap for heat but allowed naught out from it and what she now could appreciate had only ever been a way to politely request that wood should burn no matter how wet.

It saved on the quality of timbers for the fires needed to heat her baths, or let the great thermae derived spaces beneath keep their heat for longer. But none had truly solved her conundrum, each of them a sparse and minor aid in reducing the cost to Valasect, but never curing it.

She had to use barely a whisper of a breath of the kind of flame she once needed to bring sodden logs to a cheery flame and wasted any of it like she had needed to in her youth.

Yet in this miserable weather that stank like her own exertions, filling the air with petrichor and making all three of her daughter-selves tremble and huddle into their cloaks for warmth?

Jewel stared at the fire and saw only her failures, as the rest of the logs began to steam and then catch in the insistent yellow flame she had kindled at its heart. She was forced to lean back as Dariusz and Smithson began to direct the rest of her staff and themselves with keeping it going. She only had to step back when the cover for the cooking tent was erected to give shelter to the flame.

Her motions brought the splay of her wings back and out, to the relief of those that had been waiting for the chance to begin drying out of the rain. Right she had more she should do to help with the preparations for camp.

With a breath, a whisper, the gentlest breaths of her flame, so light and delicately woven to not even really pass her lips at all let alone light the world water fell off from the clothes and bodies of her entourage.

Murmured thanks and sighs of relief rising up around her as those now warming under labor and firelight in the growing camp kitchen felt their bodies become less soaked, and by it lost some of the sapping chill she knew her three spawn still struggled with.

The twins especially were having a miserable time in the wet.

Yes, all three of them could muster their store of wyrmflame and that at least helped to sustain them with heat, but Gem was the only one of the three that had so far developed the Knack for Tsulogothalan’s spells of water and Jewel was never terribly good at any of them as her eldest spawn.

The twins had not even begun the grueling practice that seemed required to get the initial sorcery that was still stuck to Gem’s throat, fingertips, tail, and lips to form on their own bodies. Without the faux flame of her bog weird friend the rhymes and gestures were meaningless.

She waited until everyone in her party, staff and courtiers alike had gotten a turn under her wings, feeling the water shed off and run in rivulets and streams away from their chosen campsite before finally granting her two tallest spawn relief from the soak through from their cloaks.

A quick shake clearing out the last few droplets that had not yet escaped from the folds of the travel dresses.

“Most esteemed thanks to you, oh Countess Jewel of Rochford, Shining Wyrm of Viznove, Victorious serpent and conqueror of Magarska!”

Jewel shared a glance with her three selves, then spared them the frustration and sent them off to go help elsewhere in the camp while she turned to ‘engage’ with the addition that had joined them in Rochford Keep. Adelyne’s new ‘agent’ apparently groomed and trained to act as the Guild Mistress’ eyes and ears in the Capital.

“I say it again Marcel Petrason of Ostara, I did not conquer Magarska, a pair of cities sharing a river and the surrounding forts, villages and lands does not a conquest of the entire High Kingdom make.”

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The man who she honestly only barely had known the name of before this trip smiled in that way she could smell was a lie.

“Of course Countess, but it is what the birds of the realm carry as the names and accolades you are earning, be glad that Vlacish is not popular among your peerage under High King Mathias, or they would be calling you the Nightscale, Purifier, Blood mother, and She-Dracul as well!”

Jewel once again considered ordering Adelyne to call Havel back from the Sun Blessed Lands of Old Cantor so she could enjoy the waif’s far quieter company. But the argument for Marcel remained the same. He would be less notable then the waif staying in Burning Depths Ford. As a guest and honored courtier vouched for by Jewel herself as Mathias’ Vassal and Victorious Lady in War it would be difficult to refuse such for her liege.

In Adelyne’s guild, finding people who suited the places they were sent was far more important than the trickery with the awful interferer’s spell.

Jewel had to take a heavy breath to calm the sudden roiling of her inner flame at the thought of the awful cat. Marcel had proven his ability in using the trick to the Guildmistress’ satisfaction for work beyond Kaeketeh. But it was the woman’s council that the best sorcery was that of simply belonging where you were trying to be.

So far she had her doubts, Marcel was too talkative and an endlessly ‘helpful’ and ‘loyal’ man in Jewel’s company in their journey to the Capital of the Realm.

He was not alone, there were many other sons and daughters of the barons and baronesses of Viznove with her.

The lords of Bledaten and Pyrenean had even sent a youth for each city to represent them as newly claimed territories under the greater shelter of Cantor Reborn. But those two had been isolated, unsure of the customs of those around them, and more or less keeping to themselves, a young man and woman far from home, hardly older than seventeen winters by their scent.

There would be plenty of youths to obscure Adelyne's snare, Jewel had to trust it would be useful to the Guildmistress.

“Countess?”

Jewel blinked then carefully turned her gaze back down to Marcel Petrason. She’d gotten wool headed again! The urge to arch her neck and splay her wings was squashed with long practice.

Thankfully her spawn and their blushing faces were elsewhere!

“Apologies, lady’s son, my thoughts went elsewhere, could you repeat that?”

He nodded a bit at that. Then shifted from foot to foot as his gaze went a little vacant, paying attention to a sense beyond mortal ones before he refocused his gaze on her throat, just where it met the back of her skull.

Then he whispered in his throat, quiet enough the huddling crowd moving under Jewel’s wings might mistake it for prayer.

“Ah, well, uh, I just was apologizing, but the, uh, well our mutual friend was very clear in her instructions, I was too remind you of all the ‘new nonsense that the courts will glaze her with like spice on a pig’. She also insisted that I make a show of grating on your nerves my lady for the eyes and ears of the other guests, but if you absolutely insist I can s-stop lady, countess, if it truly is drawing your ire, but the-”

Jewel did not sigh again, once was more than enough! She had gotten ‘some’ of her composure back since the spring, but the desire was so much stronger than it ever had been. Even that much of a shift in her bearing was enough to silence the poor young man. He was obviously not as practiced at this as Adelyne’s best.

A necessity for taking in a suitably interested and trustworthy minor noble’s son instead of one of the more experienced guild members, she could smell his fear growing in the sweat off of him, adding new dampness to the clothes she had just commanded to dry themselves.

She spoke softly, quiet enough that none nearby should catch anything legible. Lowering her head down to meet his eyes with her own, glaring as if he had found a new way to annoy her even greater than before.

For show she also added a warning buzzing growl to her voice.

“No, I trust her judgement in these matters Marcel, if you are doing it under her orders then it was for a reason to the betterment of Viznove.”

The sheer relief in how the man’s shoulders sank from the tension he’d been building up too behind his false smile was honestly proof enough he’d been agitating Jewel at Adelyne’s explicit orders.

Still there was decorum and sights to be seen by the other spare children from nobles making this trip that were not as trustworthy. Whose rumors could help secure Marcel’s place in the Capital.

“Still, I will be checking in with the ‘lady’ with my own correspondence, so do not stray from the precise indulgences she has ordered you make. Now run off like you have finally overstrained my patience.”

The man gulped, then turned and walked briskly to the place where the huddled pavilion tarps had been planted and raised such that there was if not dry, at least less sodden earth beneath his boots.

Jewel turned her attention to the earth, to the rain and water falling down beyond the rapidly growing shelters around her. The smell of the smoke building in the highest point over the fire as Dariusz commanded men and women to set about preparing the meal.

They had maybe another two hours until sunset to have a hot meal ready for the company to warm them before the night’s rest, with a pot of hot broth kept burbling for the night watchers among Jewel and the noble’s footmen.

The Shining Wyrm who seemed to be gathering titles like moss on a stone stood in the rain, only shifting over as the shelter expanded for more of her party, wings and the forcefully parched earth at her feet giving respite to more of the party as she moved.

Finally when no more of her traveling companions took shelter under her wings Jewel let them fold at her sides and simply stood in the rain. Trying to forget all the misery she had come to learn that it brought to those with what she could only now call ‘mortal flesh’.

To focus on the times of her youth, before she had understood the bite of winter and the burn of cold. Letting her tears disappear in the rain as she weeped for the man that had first made her understand that.

To the woman that had taught Jewel so much and followed her to death.

She knew no god would hear her but all the same Jewel prayed silently to the deafness of the heavens that wherever her Father’s and Muriel’s souls were they were happy and at peace.