by Stephen Deas
‘So dragons make you weak then, do they? They make you useless.’
They didn’t answer, but the tone of their silence gave them away.
In a blistering fury Zafir dressed for war. She clutched at the circlet around her head. Rage had been building from the day she’d come back from Dhar Thosis and now it needed release. Something. Anything. The sun was setting and dragons didn’t like to fly at night and she’d already taken Diamond Eye to hunt today but it wasn’t enough and she needed to fly again. Needed it. The infernal enchanted glass around her head gnawed at her. The witch-Arbiter had caged her and she couldn’t stand it. When there was no hope any more then she would take the Arbiter in Diamond Eye’s claws, their lives wrapped together tight as wet silk. But not yet.
Find the dragon. The one that is far. Go!
Diamond Eye understood. She felt him surge with glee as he launched himself from the eyrie rim. He was fast in this realm, faster than he’d ever been in the world from which they’d come.
Tuuran gaped as the hatchling stared at him across the darkness and opened its mouth. Bloody marvellous, this was. With his axes and his shield and the dragon-scale armour of an Adamantine Man, he might have had a go at a hatchling. Oh, and also not being in a cage would have helped. As things were, there wasn’t much he could do. He lurched to grab one of the other slaves and use him as a shield against the flames and then stopped. That wouldn’t do him any good either.
The dragon had stopped too. Its mouth hung open, fire still gathered in its throat.
‘Come on then, dragon! Do it!’
Other slaves were waking. Screaming. Shouting. For another long second the hatchling didn’t move, then it turned suddenly away and spread its wings and no fire came after all.
You are lucky, little one. She comes for you.
*
Diamond Eye was burning hot. The heat of him reached through the saddle. It scorched the air Zafir breathed and warmed her even through the dragon-scale of her armour. How the Elemental Men behind her weren’t being cooked alive she didn’t know and didn’t care. The hatchling was close, that was what mattered. The sun had set behind them, the moon and darkness had risen, but Bellepheros’s dragon was near.
Other things were near too. Diamond Eye sensed them but he had no idea what they were. Strange colossal things. Old things that tried to reach through the fog of alchemy that ruined every thought to touch some ancient memory. She’d felt him like this in Dhar Thosis when the Adamantine Man and his strange little friend had come and stood before her. The other one. In flashes now and then, Diamond Eye thought he knew him.
The hatchling. She had to keep reminding him why he was here. Find it and kill it.
Obediently Diamond Eye sharpened his eyes. He tucked in his wings and arrowed for the ground.
There was no warning when the second dragon came. Tuuran was still staring at the space where the hatchling had been when the monster dropped out of the sky like a fallen star and hit the ground with a crash that shook the earth, wings stretched out. Instinct made Tuuran throw himself flat because every Adamantine Man knew what came next from those flared-out wings. As the dragon shrieked and the ground quivered, the wind picked up man and beast alike and threw them aside. Those slaves still lying down rolled and tumbled, but the ones who’d stood up to scream at the sight of the little dragon now flew like dolls, smashed into the bars of their cages, shattering man and wood alike. Tuuran lay still, listening to his bones and his bruises before he even tried to move, waiting to see what was broken and what the dragon would do. Feed, he supposed, but it didn’t. It jumped to the edge of the abyss and dived, shrieking challenges into the depthless darkness.
A lot of bruises. No broken bones. And just for a bit, no dragons.
Best be getting on then, because at least one of them would surely come back. He picked up one of the shattered wooden staves that had once been part of his cage and looked at it. Sheared off nice and sharp. A good enough spear in a pinch.
Zafir glimpsed the hatchling. Its flesh wasn’t the same as the hatchling she’d seen on the slave ship that had taken her from Fury-mouth but Diamond Eye knew its soul. You.
The hatchling knew her too. It filled with an eager hunger, the thrill of the chase.
You gave me the Statue Plague. I will kill you.
She felt the hatchling laugh at her challenge and then caught the flash of a face as Diamond Eye smashed into the ground and the hatchling darted away. The Adamantine Man. The one from Dhar Thosis. He was here. The hatchling’s thoughts surged with anger. Diamond Eye powered into the air again, hurling himself after the other dragon. He revelled in her glee, her hunger. The hatchling had given itself away.
And yet . . . a moment of hesitation. Only a moment, but as she thought of the Adamantine Man and what he’d meant, of the one great thing he’d done for her, she wondered: should she let the hatchling go? Should she find the Adamantine Man instead? He was a slave here. A favour returned . . .
The hatchling threw itself into the abyss. Zafir swore and threw the Adamantine Man aside, forgotten for now but not for ever. The hatchling had tried to ruin her and then it had tried to kill her, and she would have a price in blood for that. The Adamantine Man could look after his own skin a while longer. She could come back another time.
Kill my flesh and I will return again.
Then I will find you again and I will force the potions of my alchemists down your throat!
The hatchling dived deeper into the crack in the earth. Zafir felt its rage, how it burned to turn on her and tear her to shreds and scatter her far and wide, and she threw its fury straight back, tenfold stronger. Diamond Eye screamed in its wake, pouring flame to light their way. Fire streamed over her, scorching the harness, washing over the gold-glass of her visor, her helm, her armour, the heat held back by the dragon-scale underneath. The abyss went on, bottomless, all the way to Xibaiya, and Diamond Eye heard the distant ghosts of the dead deep beneath the earth yet strangely close and so Zafir heard them too. Steps and terraces flashed past, etched into the chasm’s sides, some lit by clusters of torches, others barren and empty. The air grew thick. Zafir’s ears popped and clicked.
We all come back. One after another, we awaken.
The chasm narrowed. She had no idea how deep they were. Three miles? Four? The air was as thick as treacle, far beneath the sands of the desert and close to something old and terrible, but Diamond Eye was a dragon as Zafir was a dragon-queen, slaves to hunger and fury, strangers to caution and fear. A stone arch whistled past. The hatchling flared its wings to check its fall and shot sideways. Zafir felt her bones bend as Diamond Eye followed. Another arch and then another, and then they were in a maze of them where the chasm walls narrowed further still. Diamond Eye’s wing clipped one. His lashing tail smashed against another, using it to lever himself into a turn, shattering the stone so it fell in colossal pieces the size of the dragon itself. The hatchling darted and wove between them. Slower than the monster war-dragon she rode but nimble.
Little one, I am not for you today.
The force of the wind pulled and tugged at her. The roar of it screamed in her ears. They were all she knew amid the hunger and the fury and the inexhaustible raging need. Diamond Eye was holding back. She felt it. Holding back to spare her own fragile bones. And then the dragon abruptly slowed and the hatchling pulled away and vanished into the darkness, and Zafir found the tugging and pulling and the roar in her ears was more than the wind. An Elemental Man was wrapped around her, one arm locked about her chest, the other tearing at her head, screaming at her to stop.
‘Enough, slave! Enough!’
They were afraid. Truly, properly afraid.
Confusion and chaos were always an escaping slave’s best friends, Tuuran reckoned, and there was certainly plenty of that. Many in the camp had seen the dragon, and those who hadn’t only hadn’t because they’d been sleeping. The whole place had been knocked flat by the storm wind of its landing. Men reeled every
where, lying on the ground, running this way and that, the way men always did when a dragon came.
But not him. He ran a few paces and stopped. The dragon had gone over the edge of the abyss. Dull glimmers of flame lit up the far cliff, quickly diminishing. And last he’d heard, that was where Crazy had gone and so that was where he was going too – but not before he had a few things to take with him, and so he ran first into the heart of the camp, not far away. The first slaver he saw looked at him blankly, all the wits driven from him. Tuuran punched him in the gut. As the slaver doubled over, Tuuran took his spear and pinned him with it into the dirt. It wasn’t much of a camp and it didn’t take him long to find the baggage the slavers had carried on their humpbacked horses from Dhar Thosis. It was all piled together, everything they’d looted. His axe was right there in front of him, and the gold-glass shield too. With those back in his hands, he felt whole again.
Right then. He turned back to the abyss. Crazy Mad was down there, so they said, and so that was where he was going because Crazy, whoever he was, whatever he was, was his friend, and here and now the only one he had; but before he did that there were a couple of other little scores he fancied he might settle. As chaos gripped them all, he ran through the ruin of the camp like a whirlwind, smashing the slave pens that weren’t already broken, screamed in the faces of terrified slavers. They all ran. They knew what was good for them. He let them. All of them but one.
‘Hello, Skinny,’ he said, when he found him. Skinny turned to run, but that wasn’t going to do him any good. Tuuran threw him down, and he begged and pleaded and wept but not for long because Tuuran was past any forgiveness. ‘Told you you’d be the first, you piece of camel shit.’ Even if strictly he wasn’t because of the slaver he’d stuck with his makeshift spear. First in thought. Something like that. Flame, did it matter?
Tuuran left Skinny in the sand, blood dripping off his axe just the way it should. Slaves and slavers were scattering like leaves in a storm. They’d seen a dragon. Not the little one they’d seen before but a proper monster of nightmare stories, the real thing. They weren’t men any more, any of them, just prey. Small screaming prey and they knew it.
He passed them by, laughing at their fear until he found the steps carved into the cliffs that would take him into the abyss of the Queverra, and down he went.
28
Dark Little Secrets
The setting sun blazed through the windows of Mai’Choiro’s gondola, washing the etched silver walls the colour of burnished copper. Red Lin Feyn sat in the Arbiter’s throne. The Elemental Men were waiting for her, hovering in the air as light or wind or shadows. The one they’d chosen to speak for them today knelt at her feet, a symbolic pretence of servitude though they all knew it didn’t work that way. With a little sigh, Lin Feyn folded her hands across her lap.
‘Mai’Choiro Kwen confesses and both the rider-slave and the enchantress tell much the same story.’ She wished she could pace up and down and walk around the backs of the killers. ‘Baros Tsen is dead and unable to defend himself. It seems very easy, doesn’t it?’ Her glance flickered up and shifted between the Elemental Men wafting around her. She couldn’t see them but she could feel they were there. Another day to be filled with questions, and she was beginning to think that the answers she wanted weren’t here to be found. She let out a second little sigh. Pacing helped her think – didn’t it help everyone do that? – but she was what she was and so she forced herself to be still. Let the killers around her squirm. ‘Where is Shrin Chrias Kwen?’
The kneeling Elemental Man bowed his head. ‘We continue our search, lady. He has hidden himself well.’
‘And Shonda? Do I have to send you looking for him too?’
‘Glasships left Vespinarr two days ago, lady. He will be here in the morning.’
Red Lin Feyn leaned forward in her throne. She stretched down and touched the killer’s hair. ‘Why do you fear these dragons so?’
The killer bowed again. There were at least seven other Elemental Men around her, and it crossed her mind that if they ever had a secret they all wished to hide, they’d have no difficulty.
‘They are monsters,’ the killer said. ‘Look at what even one has done.’
She made sure not to let her exasperation show. ‘Baros Tsen T’Varr sent one of you to stop the dragon-rider. He did not have to kill the monster, only the rider. Why did he fail, killer?’
The Elemental Man bowed his head further. ‘I have heard the testimony of the rider-slave as you related it, lady. I know no more.’
A lie. She had him. She lifted one arm from her chair and crooked a finger, beckoning him closer. Closer and closer, shuffling on his knees until he knelt right at her feet. She cupped his cheek with her hand. He would not lie to her now. ‘Killer, what do you know that you have not told me? Why do you fear them so? Why did you bring them here?’
‘They are monsters . . .’ he began, but they were long past that answer. Her hand didn’t move but a tiny puff of dark smoke rose from each of her fingers. A whiff of the storm-dark. They all had it inside them.
‘I will unmake you, killer, if you lie to me again,’ she said.
He held her eyes then rose and stepped back, silent, breaking the pretence, exposing the lie of that false obedience. A dark scar blemished his cheek where her hand had touched him. It would never heal. For a moment she thought he’d turn and walk away, and if he did then she’d do the same. She’d return to the Dralamut and the killers could clean up their own mess as they saw fit without her. It seemed an inextricable part of this that the killers had brought the dragons to Takei’Tarr in the first place.
‘I exist for a reason,’ she whispered. ‘Your kind demand that I exist. You cannot walk away from that, killer.’
He bowed his head and then met her eye again. ‘The dragons devour the essence of the world, lady.’
She waited for more.
‘There are no sorcerers in the dragon-realms. Its magic is almost gone. The dragons have consumed it. They will do the same here. In time there will be no more Elemental Men, no enchanters, no sorceresses, no navigators. Lady, the great dragon drains the thread and weave of the world around it. We cannot stand before it except as ordinary men.’
‘Then why did you bring them here in the first place?’ A horrified part of Lin Feyn’s mind began to digest what the killer had told her and all that it implied. The rest of her kept the killer pinned where he was while she had him.
‘Sea Lord Quai’Shu brought the dragons to Takei’Tarr, lady. Not us.’
‘You helped him.’
‘And that is not your concern, lady.’
Lin Feyn blinked. Talking back to an Arbiter? Well if they wouldn’t obey the rules then neither would she. She stood up and began to pace. ‘It seems unwise, killer, to keep a creature that devours arcane energies aboard a device that depends upon such energies to exist while inexplicably levitating above a storm that destroys everything it touches. But you didn’t think it mattered? You didn’t think it was significant enough to mention?’
‘It was not important to your purpose, lady.’
‘Deemed so by whom?’ She waited for an answer. When she received only silence, Lin Feyn sat back in her crystal throne, opened her arms wide and cast her eyes around the gondola. ‘You’re afraid. All of you, and of something beyond these dragons. You can’t hide that.’ No answer. ‘I require Shrin Chrias Kwen and the hatchling dragon that escaped.’
The Elemental Man with the scarred cheek bowed. ‘We are looking, lady.’
‘Do better.’ She leaned towards them all. ‘Go to your masters. I require an answer as to why they saw fit to allow Sea Lord Quai’Shu to purchase two of their disciples when such a thing is without precedent.’ Her eyes shone with ire. ‘There was a slave from the dragon-lands who worked a while with the alchemist. He was in Dhar Thosis when it burned. He spoke with the rider-slave there. Find him.’ There – a next-to-impossible task. She waved them away. They wouldn’t leave her
entirely, but she waited until the gondola was empty and quiet, awash with evening light. It was late and she should retire and consider what she’d heard through the day and maybe even sleep for once, but she couldn’t, not now.
Lin Feyn yawned and blinked a few times, putting on a show for the two Elemental Men who lurked as wisps of air nearby, then opened the gondola’s ramp and let the wind buffet her. She looked for the dragon but it had gone and hadn’t yet returned, so she looked at the space where it habitually perched anyway and paused. Just in that moment she thought she understood why no one had found the courage to put the dragon and its rider down. I might need an ally. I no longer trust the killers who claim to serve me. That must be how it is for a sea lord, always. And so I keep close that which I might use against my enemies and never throw it away. Was that it? She smiled to herself. Perhaps. But am I falling into that same trap?
She crossed the dragon yard. The killers were nearby. One would waft ahead of her and one behind. To keep her safe from lesser assassins, or so they said, but lately she’d started to wonder. At the alchemist’s study she stopped abruptly and opened the iron door, walked through and shut it behind her in a moment. Iron. A bar to the killers. A place where they couldn’t reach her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling for any wisp of wind that might have crept in behind her and sensing none, finding only the stale smell of old fire, of a hundred burned things she didn’t know and, overpowering all else, the strong scent of cloves and of something dead.
Lin Feyn waited a moment, pressed against the door until she felt it quiver. She’d taken them by surprise and stranded her killers outside. She let out the tiniest groan of relief. She would stay here, exactly here.
