The Splintered Gods

by Stephen Deas

  The alchemist started telling her something dull about how bringing food out here was hard for whoever ran the eyrie – Baros Tsen, then Mai’Choiro, then the Elemental Men, now the doll-woman, except the doll-woman was gone. Was anyone at all running it now? Zafir didn’t know and didn’t care. She looked at the slaves rushing about and a little smile crept over her face. Shonda had called their bluff and now the killers didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s very hard to get food out here into the middle of the desert.’ She waved Bellepheros away. ‘I suppose on account of there being no water and the animals dying of thirst all the time? And yet I seem to remember that Queen Shezira managed to feed two hundred dragons at Outwatch and that was in the middle of a desert. Was it not, alchemist?’ Show me then, killers, show me how you answer. ‘If it’s that difficult, they can simply move us.’

  ‘I have asked them to, Holiness. I am told it’s not my concern nor my business and I should keep to my dragons.’

  ‘My dragons, alchemist,’ she corrected him. Something in his voice sounded off. She turned to look at him at last but now he was gazing off into the sky, lost in his own flurry of thoughts.

  ‘I’ve heard the Taiytakei speak of this, Holiness. They are . . . loud. And often pass my rooms.’

  ‘It’s a pity your enchantress isn’t here. She could have made something for you to hear every word.’ She probably had. She’d done it before – the pair of golden dragons with ruby eyes, given to Prince Jehal on his wedding to his starling bride Lystra.

  ‘Holiness, I’m not certain . . .’ He wandered off into what he thought Chay-Liang could and couldn’t do; Zafir turned her attention back to the dragon yard and stopped listening. She missed most of what he said but his last words caught her attention.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I fear they are keeping us here so they might drop the entire eyrie into the storm-dark.’

  Zafir raised an eyebrow, thinking of the lightning and the ride she’d taken with Bellepheros pinned in front of her. ‘And will that work, master alchemist? Will the storm devour us or not?’

  ‘I don’t know, Holiness. I would not pin my hopes either way.’

  He went away after that. Zafir sat and watched and waited, musing. Perhaps the white stone was impervious but even so, that didn’t guarantee anything more than a scoured stone skeleton would survive.

  She didn’t feel the pop of air on the rim behind her, but Diamond Eye rode the Elemental Man’s thoughts as soon as he appeared. It was the one who’d ridden with her earlier today.

  ‘We have considered your proposal, rider-slave,’ he said. ‘To return Lord Shonda of Vespinarr to this place.’

  She already knew their answer. Diamond Eye had plucked it from inside his head.

  Yes.

  ‘When it’s dark,’ she told them. ‘When they don’t see me coming.’ The glasships were long out of sight but Diamond Eye kept staring after them. He was watching them in his mind, following the faint whispers of their thoughts.

  If we just didn’t come back . . . How long before they came looking? We could run, couldn’t we? Should we? She laughed, harsh and bitter. Run? But to where that would change anything? To the north or the south and the sea? To the east and the ruin of Dhar Thosis? To the west and the great cities of Takei’Tarr? And then what? Burn them? But nothing would make any difference any more. She could run all she liked and she’d never get home. And then there was Shonda, and that little gesture he made, reminding her she was a slave and that he was not.

  Just this once, my deathbringer. Just this once. Afterwards . . .

  Tsen watched Shonda’s gondolas fly. He watched the dragon rise from the desert and give chase and then turn away, and his middle finger told him that Shrin Chrias Kwen was watching too. Atop their sled full of barrels of water even Sivan and the other slaves stopped their games of dice and peered out across the burning sands, squinting and shielding their eyes. The glasship fleet of Vespinarr. Tsen had no idea why the dragon might throw itself against them but as the lightning cannon began to glow and the monster thought better of it, the sight filled him with an unexpected joy. No matter that it was Shonda passing overhead, no matter how Shonda deserved to hang, he’d shown there was a limit to what the dragon could do. He’d shown it could be turned back.

  ‘Even monsters can fall,’ he murmured.

  ‘Thing is,’ muttered Sivan beside him, ‘they keep getting up again. It’s the riders that don’t.’

  Tsen shuddered then. He’d never forget the first time he’d seen the dragon fly, the terrible speed and strength and power, the lash of the tail that cracked the unbreakable stone of his eyrie, the fire that burned the desert sand to glass. Now he watched it fly into the sky, back the way it had come. That was what Sivan wanted? Really? But it was. The shifter’s face gave away his naked hunger, the gleeful hate of vengeful ambition. Yes, he wanted that, and no matter the cost.

  So you have to stop him then, T’Varr. But how? O Kalaiya, how?

  The sled drifted under the fringes of the storm-dark. A glasship lowered its chains to snare them. Sword-slaves on fast-flying sleds skimmed in and jumped down among the barrels. It was a tricky manoeuvre and Tsen quietly admired their skill. They slowed the sled to a stop, made fast the chains, and the glasship dragged them in its slow leisurely way through the sky and lowered them to the earth. As it did, Tsen stared at the waiting chaos of this new Vespinese camp, the t’varr in him aghast. Men milled everywhere, most of them doing nothing. T’Varrs and kwens prowled with small groups of soldiers, bawling orders and poking at slaves with sticks. The air was tinged with a crazy madness, discipline and order hanging by a thread. The desert, the dragon, the storm-dark, the Godspike: everything was out of control and simply too much to grasp, and Tsen wanted to laugh, a wild crazy laugh because he knew exactly how the Vespinese felt, long past fear and well on the way to madness.

  ‘We need to get up there.’ Sivan threw a hard look at Tsen. ‘Those were Shonda’s glasships we saw, weren’t they?’

  Tsen nodded. ‘Silver gondolas. Vespinese.’ Abruptly he gripped Sivan by the collar. ‘Understand me, shifter. I will not lift a finger for you without Kalaiya. And I will not be fooled. I will ask questions, and the answers will be things you cannot possibly know. Try to trick me and you’ll never leave my eyrie. Remember that I saw through you before.’

  ‘I’ll bring you your slave, T’Varr. That is the least of your worries.’ Sivan delicately lifted Tsen’s fingers away from his shirt. ‘Whether you get to keep her depends on you.’

  They busied themselves doing what they were told, rolling the barrels of water off the sled and half-burying them in the sand under the shadow of the storm-dark above. The sun set and they worked on into the twilight and then the dark. A kwen paced among them, barking at them now and then to work harder. When they were done, another giant sled drifted over with a pair of Vespinese on the back to guide it. Water for the eyrie. And now Tsen found himself unearthing other barrels that were older and rolling them onto the new sled while the t’varr in him howled at the waste of effort. Why didn’t they just take the load they’d brought straight on up?

  In the darkness two of the slaves got into a fight and it took the kwen, three of his soldiers and a couple of sharp doses of lightning to separate them. Five minutes later a second fight kicked off. As soon as the Taiytakei were distracted, Sivan touched the soldier beside him lightly on the arm and stopped his heart. It was done and over in a second. A sword-slave squatted in the shadows and began stripping the dead soldier’s clothes and weapons and armour. Sivan took down a second soldier from behind and then took the last two together. He walked up to the kwen, quick yet obsequious as anything, begging the kwen not to kill the quarrelsome slaves for their terrible discipline, a stream of placating words until he was close enough, and then killed him with a touch. The final soldier gawped, and that was the look on his face when he died, a split second later. The rest of the sword-slave
s stopped, stripped the bodies, then finished loading the barrels as though nothing had happened. They opened the last few, half-emptied them and, one by one, got inside, all except the three now dressed as soldiers and Sivan dressed as their kwen, until only Tsen was left. The shifter gestured at the last barrel. ‘Yours, T’Varr.’

  A bath, at last, said some stupid voice inside him. Tsen climbed in. For Kalaiya, he told himself. ‘And then?’

  Sivan laughed at him. ‘You were t’varr to a sea lord. Use your imagination.’ The shifter closed the lid.

  Zafir spent the last hours of daylight with the image of Shonda in her mind, remembering when the lord of Vespinarr had come to see Diamond Eye and one of his men had thrown lightning in the dragon’s face. That one. Find him. And Diamond Eye remembered that day too and found the distant pattern of Shonda’s thoughts. When he had it, Zafir pictured a glasship and a gondola, Shonda inside it, Diamond Eye falling like a stone to snatch both in his talons and flying away, carrying the gondola between his claws. She imagined it over and over until she knew that Diamond Eye understood. It filled the time, waiting for midnight.

  They sent an Elemental Man. He climbed onto Diamond Eye’s back, sat behind her and showed the bladeless knife he carried as if somehow she might have forgotten. ‘Any one of us, slave. Any one of us can end you.’ Zafir hardly heard him. It didn’t matter. If not today then they would kill her tomorrow. If not then, the day after. But not if I kill all of you first.

  Star by star, the constellation of the dragon crept over the horizon. Zafir turned Diamond Eye to the west and flew him high into the deep dark of the night, far above the glasships, hunting them out; and when he found them, Zafir circled slowly down as her dragon picked through all the thoughts that whispered below. She’d never understood quite how it worked, back in her own land, but she’d always known that it did. Picture the foe you wanted to find, and if the dragon you rode knew that knight then they would hunt them out no matter how thick the battle, even in the turmoil of a thousand dragons and riders and rage and fire and air made of scorpion bolts. No matter what, they’d find that rider if you held your mind hard enough. She’d done it once – over her home, over the Pinnacles, when Jehal and Hyrkallan had answered Valmeyan’s challenge and burned him out of the sky, but then she’d let it go and taken life over death. There were times she regretted that choice. It would have been a proper way for a dragon-queen to die.

  Diamond Eye shifted under her. He’d found what she was looking for.

  Not so fast, my deathbringer. We have another wasp to swat.

  Trapped in his barrel, sodden and cramped, Tsen’s legs went to sleep. He felt the sled move and rise and then for a long time nothing. His ears clicked and popped. His heart beat faster. His head started to hurt, just as it had when he’d first come here after his flight to Dhar Thosis. He closed his eyes and tried not to whimper at the pain – he’d forgotten how thin the air was. At least he had water. Then a jolt as the sled landed – he supposed in the dragon yard but there was no real way to know – and voices. And then, for a long time, nothing until a tiny tap on the lid of his barrel.

  ‘You just stay quietly there, T’Varr. My men will get the eggs; I’ll get your woman. I’ll come for you when I need you.’ Tsen hissed something back but the shifter was already gone. He found himself quietly hoping that one of the dragon eggs might hatch halfway to the glasship. When he tried to move, his legs had gone to sleep and the lid of the barrel was firmly shut.

  An interminable wait later someone pried open his barrel. For a moment Tsen didn’t recognise the face in the darkness. When he did, his eyes flew wide. Chay-Liang’s alchemist! ‘What are you—’

  ‘It’s Sivan, you idiot.’ Sivan clamped a hand over Tsen’s mouth.

  His legs still didn’t work. There was a lot of clumsy heaving and shoving and then Sivan gave up and tipped Tsen’s barrel over and spilled him onto the dragon yard. Tsen managed to lift himself half-up. He still couldn’t feel anything in his legs. ‘Are you mad? How can people not see what you’re doing?’

  ‘Of course they can see! How would they not? They think I have a reason. They think I’m the alchemist and so they let me do as I wish.’ His eyes glittered in the starlight. ‘Can’t you feel the tension, Tsen? Something has happened. The place is almost empty. Now come with me!’

  ‘I can’t move!’ Tsen gasped and tried not to whine as the first pins and needles slowly worked their way from his feet to his hips. Alchemist-Sivan stood there, taut as a halyard. He was right. The air was electric. Uncommonly still. Even the wind . . .

  ‘Come on, T’Varr!’

  This was Sivan wearing the alchemist’s face but it was so hard to keep remembering. He kept starting to think or speak as though the real alchemist, Liang’s slave, was there. ‘Where is she? Where’s Kalaiya?’

  ‘Patience!’ Sivan propped him up as he dripped all over the sled and the barrels around him. There were dozens of men in the dragon yard. The Scales and others too. They were hauling eggs out of the hatchery and into the open.

  ‘Dear forbidden gods!’

  ‘Dear gods indeed! Whenever you’re ready, T’Varr. I have her. She’s waiting for you.’

  Alchemist-Sivan jogged across the yard with far more grace than the real alchemist had ever shown and climbed one of the walls. Tsen looked about, still trying to remember how his legs were supposed to work. The dragon wasn’t here but no one seemed bothered. As soon as he could walk without veering sideways and falling over, he followed to the other side of the wall and onto the bare rock rim where one of the six glasships Chay-Liang had used to move the eyrie was chained into the stone. Its gondola hung nearby, close to the surface. The ramp was open.

  Sivan handed Tsen his black rod. ‘Release the chain!’

  Tsen touched the rod to the enchanted glass welded into the stone and thought of the chain coming loose. The glass shifted and parted and the chain jerked free. Sivan nodded to the gondola.

  ‘Inside now! Get this over the yard where the eggs are.’

  Tsen shook his head. ‘Kalaiya first.’

  The shifter shoved him hard. Tsen almost tripped and fell. He stumbled halfway up the ramp and staggered into the gondola. And there she was, scared and shaking like a leaf, but it was her.

  ‘Kalaiya!’

  Zafir flew in straight and fast. Shonda’s glasships couldn’t possibly miss her. It will hurt, deathbringer. It will hurt us both. But it has to be this way. The lightning cannon of the nearest glasship began to glow. They’d seen her. And after one lit up, another followed and then another. She’d felt it in Dhar Thosis. Lightning hurt but lightning didn’t kill, not a dragon. And she had the armour that Chay-Liang made for her, while the Elemental Man behind her had nothing. Bound to the dragon by his harness, he couldn’t simply shift away into the air, and when the lightning came he would die. There was no way to be sure that he would die and she would not, but she didn’t care any more. If Shonda killed her too, then so be it. Another gamble poorly made.

  At the last moment Diamond Eye veered just as the first bolt hit him square in the shoulder. Zafir felt his mind blank and squealed in shared pain as his wing fell limp and he spiralled sharply down. A second blast hit him close behind her. Sparks arced over her glass-and-gold armour. The Elemental Man . . . But she had no room for those thoughts any more. She screamed as Diamond Eye tumbled and tipped onto his back, plummeting through the air towards the distant sand. A third blast hit him in the belly. The world spun, sky, earth, sky, earth, all roaring closer. The wind ripped at her head, trying to tear it off her shoulders. She clung to him. Her vision narrowed. Red tinged everything. For a moment she heard only a roaring, louder and louder in her ears, more than a hurricane wind – the screaming wail of death and a thousand vengeful ancestors. The glasships drifted away, lost into the darkness and a million twinkling stars. The desert sand rushed at her face. Zafir screamed again, one last savage burst of will to live, to stay breathing, for hearts to keep beating. S
creamed into the chaos that was the dragon’s mind.

  And lit, for a moment, a spark. A flicker of order, a surge of instinct. Diamond Eye’s wings stretched and flared and tore at the rushing wind with a savage bite that crushed her into his scales and squeezed every gasp of air out of her and then squeezed some more. She felt her ribs bend and creak, and there were her ancestors, riding their whirlwind to take her, and this time she had nothing left.

  They hit the ground hard, hard as the smack of a dragon’s tail, and for a moment everything went dark; but her ancestors never came, and when she opened her eyes Diamond Eye was on the ground, his wings stretched wide, glaring at the sky while her body was one long tortured shriek of pain. She weathered it, waiting for the waves to fade enough for her to move. Three long painful breaths and then she sat up and never mind the hurt. Her face was bleeding where her helm had been slammed against it. Her ribs had taken the worst but those pains were hard throbbing aches, not sharp stabs. Nothing broken, then. Cracked maybe, but not broken. Diamond Eye pawed at the sand, hungry to smash and shatter and burn and rend, waiting for her to release him to be what a dragon should be but she didn’t. He let out a cry, a challenge of fury and pain.

  Is the killer dead? She couldn’t feel him behind her but she couldn’t turn her head enough to see. It hurt too much.

  Diamond Eye threw himself into the air. Patience was something for others. It didn’t matter. Death didn’t matter. Death was the little death, and then came rebirth and he’d come again, over and over until the creatures that flew and spat their white fire were smashed and gone. Zafir rode his rage, taking it in, mingling it with her own – and the Great Flame knew she had plenty enough of that – turning it and guiding it. Nudging him until he eased gently down from his fury. She let him race back and forth, burning the sand to glass to let the fire out of him until at last he was ready to listen.

  Wait. Just a little, she soothed him. Just a little. Is the killer dead?

  She brought him down and this time he stayed long enough for her to turn her head to the Elemental Man who’d come to make sure that she obeyed. Neck snapped, lightning-charred, doll-limbed. Very, very dead.