Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [77]
Rafiq’s grin gave way to open-mouthed amazement. “This is the red rock? The ingredient required for making the Esper metal?”
“Carmot. Yes, we think so. There was a small transport approaching Palandius with the chest. A mage, some soldiers, some little blue-skinned things. They are sure gonna be angry when they wake up. The experiences your friend Mubin shared with us, his insights into their mind attacks, were invaluable.”
“That’s good. All right. Take us to our little sleepers. I want to be there when they wake up.”
Kaeda cocked his head and pointed his beak. “Yes, sir.”
The mage Drimma, before she became the first Esperite ever to be captured by Bant, had studied the Noble Work her entire life. The Noble Work was a grand project, handed down by the wise sphinxes, to perfect all life on Esper by infusing it with the magical alloy known as etherium. Etherium extended one’s lifespan and refined one’s savage impulses, and made Esper a superior, more satisfyingly controlled world in general.
The convergence of Esper with the foreign planes was certainly a shock. The scholars hadn’t predicted it, and if the sphinxes knew it would happen, they hadn’t spread that fact to the human and vedalken communities. That no foreknowledge of that violent, world-shaking event had arisen was unthinkable, and it had shaken common trust in the Hegemon and all the other minds in charge. Drimma’s own mind fluttered with a mixture of unstifled emotions, as confused about the world as she had been in her childhood.
On the other hand, the influx of exotic materials from the fronts had revitalized her life’s work. Etherium stores on Esper had all but dried up across the entire plane, and most believed that the formula for creating more of the magical metal was lost to time. However, a sect of scholars claimed to have attained knowledge of the miraculous recipe, and were conducting experiments to try to reproduce the alloy. Substances not found anywhere on Esper were flooding in as soldiers captured caches of valuables along Esper’s fronts. The prospect of actually creating an ingot of new, not recycled etherium electrified her.
That was how Drimma found herself and her entourage of prosaics and homunculi transporting a chunk of Jundian ore, the material they called carmot, to the Cliffs of Ot. And that was how she found herself overcome by bandit bird-men from Bant.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” said a deep-voiced man in a strange accent.
Drimma’s eyelids cracked open. She scowled up at the faces around her. Oh, yes, she thought—those were the warriors of Bant who had ensorcelled her with clumsy sleep magics. It was embarrassing that they had managed to get the upper hand on her.
She glanced around. Her prosaics and homunculi were motionless on the sand—still out cold, or dead. The man who had spoken, apparently their leader, had a hawk-humanoid and a small force of human soldiers with him.
“What do you want,” she croaked at them, enunciating precisely so that they would understand.
“I am Rafiq of the Many, Knight-General of Bant,” said the man. His hair was cropped close to his head, and he was encased in armor of solid metal. A burnished medallion depicting a woman’s face hung over his breast. “And we want the secret of etherium.”
“That’s rather progressive of you,” Drimma said. “But I’m not surprised you want to stop wearing all your metal on the outside.”
The man chuckled. It sounded peculiar coming from an adult. “It’s not for us. We just want to know how to make it, and use it, for … our injured, back on Bant.”
“That would be impossible. This war has cost us much in resources and manpower. There is not enough etherium even for our own people.”
The man looked at her etherium enhancements, the filigree whorls and matrices in her neck and upper arms. “But you can make more. We have the red crystal you were