World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (20 page)

Cadmus stared into the sorcerer’s eyes. Despite being seated and physically shorter than the young sorcerer, he still seemed to loom over Anzik. “Pretty speech. You rehearse it long?”

Anzik tilted his head. “I did no such thing. I saw your displeasure at my presence, assumed that it was based on my parentage, since I have had no dealings with you and nothing but favorable encounters with your daughter. I drew the analogy that seemed best suited to improve our working relationship.”

Cadmus grunted.

“What do you need from me to navigate?” Anzik asked.

“Can you just tell us where the dragon lives?” Madlin asked. “We’re pretty good at finding things.”

“I fear we may lack a geographic reference,” Anzik replied. “There is no settlement in Tellurak that correlates. The city is in along the eastern edge of the westernmost mountain range in Khesh, but it’s wilderness as far as you would know it.”

Cadmus stood and walked to one of the non-decorative tables, one that had been in the chamber since it he and Madlin had first moved there. It was strewn with maps and notation papers. Shuffling through the piles, Cadmus pulled out a pair and laid them across the rest of the mess. Both showed the southern continent that Anzik was describing, one showing Korr, the other Tellurak. “Can you point it out on here? I just need a place to start looking.”

Anzik peered down, his eyes flicking to and fro around the maps. He stuck a finger down on the map of Korr. “That looks closest.”

“Ebrinn,” said Cadmus, nodding to himself. “Fine then. We go to Ebrinn.”

“Is that one of the ones underground?” Anzik asked. “Madlin has explained about your subterranean cities.”

“It’s got a deep and a sky,” Cadmus replied. “I’m to understand that dragons live in the deeps?”

“Not as you would know them,” Anzik replied. “It’s a much simpler cavern complex. There are goblin settlements surrounding it that might be analogous, but I don’t expect that Fr’n’ta’gur’s lair will remind you of home.”

“Fr’n’ta’gur … that’s certainly a mouthful,” Madlin said. She repeated it twice more. “I’m not going to offend it if I gargle-mouth its name, will it?”

“First, remember that Fr’n’ta’gur is male. ‘He,’ not ‘it.’ That will certainly be cause for offense,” Anzik said. “Other than that, I suspect it would do little more than lower his opinion of you. A fluent pronunciation might impress him, but a poor one should not prove fatal.”

“And you’re sure that he’ll speak Korrish?” Jamile asked.

Anzik remained facing Madlin as he replied. “I have been able to confirm that your world’s major language is in fact spoken in Veydrus. It is the language of the stone folk, the daruu. Fr’n’ta’gur would be inexcusably remiss in being ignorant of it.”

“Wait, what?” Cadmus asked. “Your world has daruu? Since when?”

“Since always,” Anzik replied. “We have little time for history before we send Madlin on her way, but I would be willing to fill you in on Veydran history in the coming months.”

Cadmus rubbed at his chin. “Just tell me one thing first: how do your people get on with them?”

Anzik shrugged, though it was little more than a twitch of his shoulders. “We have hardly any dealings with them. My father fought them, briefly, when they allied themselves with the Kadrin Empire. Their numbers are few and they live in isolation. In my world, they are not a major factor.”

Cadmus smirked. “Guess we beat ‘em on one world, at least.”

“Two, I suspect,” Anzik said. “Tellurak might well have had stone folk at one point, but wiped them out entirely.”

Madlin watched the viewframe trek across Veydrus with detachment. Her eyes faced the images as they rushed by, but never passed them along for her brain to process. If ever there was a time when she would need to be at her best, it was now—or rather, very soon. Thinking ahead to her negotiation, she rehearsed her introduction.

“I am Madlin Errol, representative of the humans of Korr, a world much like this one. I have come to bargain for your aid” … no, that’s not right … “I have come to forge an alliance to our mutual benefit.” Should I be more formal about the introductions?
There was no solution in sight, for anything she said would be wrong. It was just a matter of
how
wrong. Fr’n’ta’gur would view her as an inferior creature regardless.

“There,” Anzik said, pointing to a spot in the countryside, nestled against the side of a mountain. “That’s it.”

Madlin blinked and shook herself from her stupor. The goblin city was a sprawling, wooden shantytown, with haphazard streets and no uniformity among the buildings.
It’s just like Khesh
, Madlin thought with a wry smile. The rolling, irregular landscape had the same effect on goblin city planning as it had on the Kheshis, it seemed.
Maybe they aren’t so foreign after all …

That thought lasted until Cadmus was able to bring the view closer, and Madlin was able to make out the inhabitants. The goblins were spindly creatures, all limb and head. All were some combination of green and grey that varied from goblin to goblin. While the streets of most large Kheshi cities teemed with chaotic market-goers, there was a remarkable sense of purpose to the goblin streets. Though equally packed with bodies, there was a distinct flow, with no sign of jostling or turbulence, just a steady, laminar flow of traffic.

“We are looking for a building on the northern outskirts,” Anzik said. “That’s where we’ll find your sponsor.”

Anzik had explained that she could not just pop in on Fr’n’ta’gur unannounced. If the dragon did not kill her on sight, his priests would. So even though the world-ripper could deposit her right inside Fr’n’ta’gur’s sanctum, she would be going in with an escort who had arranged for her visit.

Madlin flinched as Jamile’s hands took her just above the shoulders, where the muscles connect to the neck. “You’re tight as a stuck valve,” she whispered, fingers kneading the knotted muscle. “You can still back out.” Madlin shook her head and shrugged Jamile away.

Anzik directed Cadmus as the two of them hunted down a particular goblin. He was, Anzik had said, as close as Veydrus had to a proper tinker. Madlin was skeptical, but as they passed through the city, she did see more technology than she’d found elsewhere in Veydrus. The goblins had pump wells, cranes, lifts, and even a drawbridge walkway that spanned two of the larger buildings on either side of the narrow river that ran through the town.

“That’s it,” Anzik indicated, pointing to one of the few buildings with a stone foundation. In fact, the whole first floor was stone-walled. Most of it appeared to only be a single, oversized story, but from one corner a taller section jutted skyward three more floors.

“Can’t we just go have a
look
at the dragon first?” Madlin asked.

Anzik shook his head. “I can sense when you’re looking at me through the machine. If Fr’n’ta’gur has a keener sense of the aether than I do, he might take offense. Top floor, please.”

Cadmus took the cue, and the view entered the building at the top floor. Inside, Madlin saw an obviously ancient goblin. He was grey-haired and hunched at the shoulders, his skin mottled with a grey so pale it was nearly white and so loose that it dangled from his bones. A pair of spectacles perched on his nose, with lenses thick as Madlin’s finger. He paced the room, which held a bed and desk, with every other surface covered in paper, from books to loose sheets of scratchings.

“Do it,” Madlin ordered. Cadmus pulled the switch.

A musty odor pervaded the lunar hideaway as the two worlds connected. The goblin made several clacking noises and hopped away from the world hole, showing surprising agility despite its obvious age. It glanced around and found Anzik, chittering away at him for a moment. Anzik replied in a language Madlin couldn’t understand. It boded ill, the two of them talking indecipherably. They could have been conspiring to have her killed, for all she knew. When the conversation went back and forth several times without any way to know what was being said, she butted in.

“You, goblin, do you speak my language?” she asked, pointing to eliminate any confusion as to whom she was addressing.

The wizened old goblin looked up at her. Though Madlin was average height for a woman—at her most optimistic—she towered over the creature. “Unfortunately, I do,” he replied. The vowels were clipped, but present, unlike the language he had spoken a moment before, which sounded more like a defective machine’s sputtering and clanking than real words. “I must force my tongue to these horrible shapes, all because you are dumb as an ox horn.”

Madlin scowled down at the creature. “What’s your name?”

“K’k’rt.” The goblin smirked at her, surprising her with the human-like mannerism.

“Kukroot, I’m Madlin Errol.”

“K’k’rt,” he said, correcting her. “No mooing between syllables. And I know who you are. You and I are going to have quite an interesting time, I think.”

“K’k’rt,” Madlin repeated, trying to mimic the goblin sound.

K’k’rt stuck out his lower lip and nodded. “Better. You may not be hopeless. Now, get rid of this hole in my house and send your lackeys away. That one, too.” He pointed to Anzik.

Madlin stepped into Veydrus and nodded to Cadmus. Their eyes met. It was as much of a goodbye as either of them wanted, perhaps even too much of one. Madlin saw him reach for the switch, but the hole disappeared at his first tug upon it.

K’k’rt collapsed into a chair in one corner of the room. “About time. I hate waiting. Care for some tea?” Nestled among a stack of papers was a teapot and cups. K’k’rt held a hand to the side of the teapot, and seconds later steam whistled through the spout.

“You’re a sorcerer?” Madlin asked.

“More common among my people than yours, but few are worth a wet sock at it.”

Madlin accepted a cup of tea which she had never officially requested. “And you?”

“Worth a whole drawer full of wet socks,” he replied, grinning.

“You seemed like you were in a hurry a moment ago,” said Madlin. “Now we’re just waiting and sipping tea?” She tasted hers and found that it had a Kheshi flavor to it.
Local ingredients
, she suspected.

“Yes, I was impatient to meet you,” said Kk’k’rt. “For your meeting today, you are going to be late.”

“What?” Madlin sat bolt upright in her chair.

K’k’rt chuckled. “I am sure your sorcerer friend warned you not to offend Fr’n’ta’gur. Your lateness will not bother him. Time passes differently for dragons. Today is a blink’s blink, less than nothing to him. Had you arrived tomorrow, we might not even have drawn his attention to your late arrival. No, we are doing this for his priests.”

“We’re provoking them … intentionally?” Madlin asked. She hoped that skepticism wasn’t lost on the goblin. “That doesn’t sound prudent.”

K’k’rt chuckled once more. “You’re a human about to bargain with a dragon. If you were the prudent sort, you’d have thrown someone out a window for suggesting this plan. No, you are willing to take risks. Bah, scratch that out, you
like
risks. Only a few humans have ever tried this sort of thing. That sorcerer’s father was one. That’s why he can’t have any part of this plan from here on. He got a dragon killed, listening to his plans. I don’t think it was his intent, but it happened, and dragons are cautious creatures.”

“So why upset the priests?”

K’k’rt took a sip of his tea, looking Madlin over. “You’re going to be here a while, perhaps a season or two, perhaps the rest of your life, if you’re unlucky. The priests run most things around here. You don’t want them running you, too. If you work for Fr’n’ta’gur, they might think you fall under their purview. We’re going to let them know, starting today, that you do not. You are going to ignore their schedule for your visit, and we are going to see Fr’n’ta’gur anyway.”

Madlin pulled off her goggles and rubbed her eyes. She was suddenly getting a headache. “So … politics.”

K’k’rt chuckled. “Ah, you have them in your world, too? Pity, I hoped I might find someplace quiet to retire once this is over.”