by Stephen Deas
Specks of light rose from the stricken eyrie. Sleds were heading for the glasships floating high above. She watched, carefully distant, considering. If the eyrie fell into the storm-dark, that was the end of the alchemist. No more potions. No more dragon poison. No more eggs or hatchlings. Just her and Diamond Eye, and in time Diamond Eye would wake up. The Elemental Men would survive, of course. They’d hunt her.
Or she could do something?
They’d kill her either way. Just maybe later.
Bellepheros came outside, huffing and out of breath and with a satchel over his shoulder. He seized the first Scales he found by the arm. ‘Get everyone together. All the Scales.’ More and more sleds were taking to the air now. Bellepheros couldn’t tell whether the Taiytakei were abandoning the eyrie to its fate or trying to do something to save it. A bit of both, perhaps?
The Scales he’d sent to get the sled for the kwen was tugging at his sleeve. ‘The sled isn’t there, Master Alchemist. It went with the glasship like you told us.’
‘What? What glasship? What are you talking about?’ He had a second sled hidden in his room of corpses. Not that he could fly it. Not that he’d want to, but better that than falling into the storm-dark. ‘Speak! What glasship?’
The shriek of Diamond Eye thundered over the rushing wind. The dragon crashed onto the wall and the whole eyrie shivered. It was holding something that looked like a battered gondola in its foreclaws, clutching it as though it was precious. It grabbed the wall with its massive hind talons, dug in and started to flap its wings. Bellepheros watched, paralysed with amazement. He staggered as the wind of each wingbeat shuddered across the dragon yard, but even for a dragon, lifting the whole eyrie was too much. It let go and disappeared up into the sky. Bellepheros grasped the Scales by his shoulders.
‘In the larder where the corpses hang is another sled. Get it and get the rest of you together.’ It wouldn’t be big enough for all of them but he didn’t know what else to do.
And when it isn’t? Who stays and who goes?
There wasn’t a comfortable answer to that. How could he leave another man to die, even a Scales?
Li . . .
In his study, underneath the page on the Konsidar, was another he knew by heart. The Righteous Ones are a mystery among the Taiytakei . . . Truth was, he had nothing, nothing that made any sense. Another race of men, or a race of something different, not creatures of flesh and bone at all but beings of the spirit or of something else, or else arcane constructs like the golems of the Crimson Sunburst.
Li . . . That was where she was, in the Konsidar. He’d told her he’d be safe. He’d told her not to worry. And now he needed her more than anything.
The dragon powered up towards the glasships and he lost track of it in the darkness. The first sleds were already coming back. Taiytakei ran back and forth, yelling at each other. They were on the edge of panic. The glasships weren’t getting any closer. If anything, they were further away. Bellepheros stared up into the night sky. The writings of the Rava are whispered to describe men who change both flesh and bone . . . Not that that meant much since even having seen a copy of the Rava was punishable by death. He’d come across whispers that said the Rava was pretty much anything you could imagine, from a manual to summon demons to an excessively lewd collection of erotic poetry. But men who changed both flesh and bone? They were skin-shifters surely?
Specks of light darted back and forth high above like rising embers dancing in the smoke of a camp fire. Frantic sleds in the moonlight, rushing to the receding glasships. Bellepheros had no idea whether the glasships could descend fast enough to catch the eyrie anyway. He thought probably not.
Li . . . Of all of them, of everyone here, she’d have been the one who would have known what to do, and he really couldn’t fly away on a sled and leave a man behind, not even a Scales. After everything he had done to them, especially not a Scales.
The eyrie was too much. Diamond Eye’s talons dug into the stone but after a few heavy beats of his wings, they both knew it wasn’t going to work.
Why are you trying to help them? The thought was her own, not the dragon’s, and she didn’t know the answer, but she was beginning to think it had to do with the Adamantine Man from Dhar Thosis. Seeing him again after so many years had changed something. She wasn’t sure what, but it had started then. Started when she’d knocked the poison from Baros Tsen T’Varr’s own lips. She wasn’t as . . . certain of things as she’d once been.
Up! She tore Diamond Eye loose from the wall and shot straight for the glasships. Taiytakei on sleds were milling about them. Several of the gondolas had open ramps, men inside now, trying to get the glasships to move. Diamond Eye picked at the sense of their thoughts. Not working. Not moving. Can’t make them obey. Fear and frustration and despair; they didn’t understand. And then the whisper of an Elemental Man among them who did. Doomed. Regret. Anger. The glasships had been locked with an enchanted key. They flew at the command of the black rod of Baros Tsen T’Varr or the enchantress Chay-Liang. No one else. One of them had done this. Baros Tsen was dead. The enchantress then.
The witch abandon her alchemist? Zafir laughed at that. Not likely. But none of them knew what to do . . .
None of them but her. She showed Diamond Eye, picturing it in her mind, and the dragon wheeled in the air and snatched at the chains of the nearest glasship, seizing them in his teeth. He dived, powering towards the falling eyrie, dragging the glasship after him. The glasship fought him stubbornly through every beat of his wings, adjusting the harmonics of its rotations to fight for its place in the air. A chaos of sleds whirled around her. An Elemental Man appeared in the air ahead of them, gestured and shouted words that were lost in the wind as Diamond Eye hauled the glasship down. The eyrie fell steadily lower, sinking towards the storm-dark. Halfway there and someone lit a torch out on the rim, and then another and then a whole ring of them, and Zafir understood they were guiding her in. As Diamond Eye came closer, she saw the lanterns formed a circle around the wreckage of a black-powder cannon blown to bits by the Vespinese not so many days before. She urged him on towards the violet clouds.
Bellepheros was on the wall as Zafir and the dragon came in. Half the Taiytakei of the eyrie were there now too, all of them holding their breath. The other half were out around the ruined cannon, waving lamps, or else up in the air on their sleds. Lots and lots of sleds. A couple of t’varrs had been trying to organise the evacuation, but even they had stopped to watch.
Diamond Eye reached the eyrie rim and seized it with his hind claws, tearing rents in the solid stone. The dragon still held a gondola in its forelimbs; now it leaned forward, the glasship chains clamped between its teeth, dangling limp. Bellepheros could see it, even from so far away, quivering with the effort. Before the Vespinese had blown it up with their lightning, the black powder cannon had been mounted on massive iron plinths set into the stone of the rim. The iron was still there, warped and twisted. Enough to wrap a chain around it, perhaps.
For a moment no one moved. Then a Taiytakei ran out and grabbed the end of one of the chains and started to pull on it, struggling to even lift it, to wrap it around the iron; and then more men ran forward, and in a moment a swarm of them were heaving beneath the dragon’s maw, slaves and Taiytakei alike, dragging the loose ends of the chains and wrapping them around the plinth, twisting them together, pinning them with the bent barrel of the ruined gun, shouting and cheering and swearing up a giddy frenzy of hope. The dragon terrified them to the core and yet they did it, and then they were finished and backed away and a cheer went up from the wall and Bellepheros found he was cheering too, but his heart was still racing because that was only the start.
The dragon let go. The chains snapped taut.
And held.
Bellepheros stayed on the wall, watching, as mesmerised as everyone else.
The first glasship stopped the eyrie’s fall with its underbelly touching the cloud. Zafir arced Diamond Eye under the rim to look
and see if the storm-dark devoured the stone but in the night it was all too dark to see. And maybe, just maybe, the eyrie was still very slowly sinking. She drove her dragon skyward again and one by one Diamond Eye hauled the glasships down. When she came with the second the men on the eyrie changed their plan and guided her to the white stone watchtowers, unbreakable by anything except a dragon, threading the chains through the windows of the towers to hold them fast.
Do I expect their gratitude for this? It wouldn’t make any difference. She’d burned and shattered Dhar Thosis to ash and splinters and in the end she’d hang for that come what may.
Why do it then?
She really didn’t know.
*
When the third glasship was secured to the eyrie and they were rising again, Bellepheros reckoned they were safe and he could probably go back to his room and get some sleep, or maybe go back to his book. But everyone else was out in the yard or up on the wall, slaves, soldiers and other Taiytakei, even his Scales, milling around and shouting at each other over the wind while they waited for the dragon to haul the next glasship down, so he stayed. He couldn’t stop thinking about Li, about how she’d have known what to do, the same thoughts running round in the same circles, staring blankly into space until suddenly it was done and over. Five glasships floated overhead. The eyrie wasn’t falling any more. Zafir, of all people, had saved them. Zafir, not Li.
He shook his head and turned away. He needed to think.
The dragon perched on the wall, hunched with its head almost resting on the battlements. It had carried the same dented silver gondola throughout, but now the gondola was lying in the dragon yard at the foot of the wall, discarded, and the dragon was holding something in its claws, looking hard at it. Not a something, Bellepheros saw as he came closer, heading for the tunnel back to his study. A someone. Her Holiness Zafir was on the wall, yelling, and the man in Diamond Eye’s talons was screaming, brimming with fear and outrage but unable to settle on one over the other. ‘You cannot do this!’ That sort of thing, over and over with different words and an occasionally varying order, but it all amounted to much the same.
Bellepheros walked on past. He’d seen it too many times over the years – the torture of a man who thought he couldn’t be touched. That was dragon-kings for you. They always did it, even when they didn’t need to. Even when they knew they didn’t need to because they’d called the grand master alchemist of the Order of the Scales to their eyrie to make truth-smoke, and Bellepheros, given time, could get the truth out of creation itself spoken by the very stones of the earth. They all knew it, but dragon-kings tortured their prey anyway. Queens, apparently, were no different. No great surprise – this was more the Zafir he knew. He paused, fought the wind and turned to see who the man was.
Shonda!? Dear Flame, she had Shonda! Even in the moonlight his robe gave the sea lord away. There was nothing else like it. Bellepheros sighed and hung his head. Truth-smoke was another thing he’d chosen not to mention to Li or the Elemental Men, mostly in case they decided to have him make the stuff and then use it on himself. Maybe now was the time. Better that than let her Holiness kill a man and then have to make his corpse speak.
He walked back to his study, dragging his feet all the way, sat down at his desk, picked up the next page and tried to get excited about it. Vespinese sorceress Abraxi increased her interest in the mountains and their subterranean dwellers in the last years of her reign. The few of her writings to survive confirm the apocryphal Rava although they may simply be repeating it. The Elemental Men have at least once directly spoken of the existence of shape-shifters beneath the Konsidar . . . Zafir had told him that, and he had no idea why an Elemental Man might have said such a thing to her. Maybe she’d made it up on a whim to tease him. He wouldn’t put it past her. He wouldn’t put anything past her any more. Abraxi’s writings suggest the Righteous Ones tamed dragons and now consort with them, keeping them as pets . . .
You picked a story and chose which one to believe. Some of the slaves from the desert claimed it was all a myth, that the Elemental Men were protecting some other secret from before the Splintering . . .
He couldn’t concentrate. With a flash of peevish resentment for everyone and everything for choosing this night of all nights for their excitement, Bellepheros put the pages away, got up and poured himself a glass of cold qaffeh. He missed sitting with Li, drinking qaffeh and eating Bolo. He’d missed it before but it was worse now. It hadn’t ever crossed his mind that he might not see her again but now . . . Now he found a fierce hunger burning inside him. He wanted to ask her what she’d seen. Tamed dragons? Was there any possibility of truth to it? No one else seemed to think so and yet he couldn’t let it go. The Vespinese had taken the dragon as a symbol of their city after all. Why?
Flame, he missed her. Too much. He wanted her back. They’d all nearly died tonight. It was like that every day. The tension . . .
I’m afraid.
He forced himself to sit down again. Tonight’s page was supposed to be on the Rava itself, the forbidden book of the Taiytakei, though he wasn’t much in the mood for writing. ‘Book about the ancient gods and the time before the Splintering. Probably no real copies left. Elemental Men hunt you and kill you if read a single word of it so don’t, and besides, if anyone claims they have a copy, it’s probably a fake. Possibly entirely mythical.’ Easy. Move on. Next entry. Except it wasn’t so easy because even if the book didn’t exist any more, even if it never had, its history was real enough and so was the who and why of its writing and probably the nature of what it contained.
He picked up his pen and dipped it in the ink. At the very end of his book he had a page set aside for Zaklat the Death Bat. He had fond thoughts of Zaklat. Zaklat meant the end. Zaklat meant he was done.
A hammering on his door made him jump. ‘Master Alchemist! Master Alchemist!’
Another Scales. Bellepheros glared at the closed door. ‘Are we falling out of the sky for a second time? Have the chains failed? Is her Holiness on the rampage, burning everyone?’ he shouted.
‘No. Master Alchemist.’
‘Then go away!’ Writing his journal was his own personal time, and Flame knew he got little enough of that. Even if he was staring at a blank page, not writing a word.
The Scales was still outside his door. Bellepheros wasn’t sure how he knew it but he did. He waited. Closed his eyes. Sighed. ‘Is the dragon injured again? Because if it is, I already showed you what to do.’ Which was to make sure the dragon was well fed, leave her Holiness to sit with it and keep as far away as possible.
‘No, Master Alchemist. They want to know about the other glasship. The one we used to move the eggs. Please come!’
‘Eggs? Who said anything about moving eggs?’ He got up and went to the door, growling and muttering to himself. He’d forgotten in all the excitement. ‘What are you talking about? Who moved eggs? What glasship?’
He opened the door. The Scales gave him a vacant imploring look. Bellepheros let out a deep sigh and followed for a second time, up the winding spiral of the white stone passageway. For the middle of the night there were a lot of Taiytakei about, but maybe it was hard to go back to sleep when you’d almost been dropped into the storm-dark. Most of them were looking at the dragon, at Zafir and Shonda. Most of the rest were looking at the chains or at the glasships, muttering to each other nervously. Wondering whether the chains would hold and for how long and who it was who’d tried to kill them all. And yes, now that he bothered to think about it, there were five glasships holding up Baros Tsen’s eyrie now where last night there had been six.
‘Master!’ The Scales was still dogging his heels and tugging at his robes.
‘Yes, yes, I see it.’ He looked at the dragon. You’d have to be blind not to see the hole in Diamond Eye’s wing from so close, but really what was he going to do? Stick a bandage on it and tell the dragon to rest until it got better? ‘There’s really nothing for it. Food and water and I’ll talk to he
r Holiness about flying him more carefully for a while.’ As if that would work either. Might as well talk to the dragon itself.
‘No, Master Alchemist, not Diamond Eye. The other masters wish to know where the sixth glasship went.’
Bellepheros turned and saw a t’varr closing on him with a squad of soldiers. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘They ask why we moved the eggs to the glasship and where they’ve gone and by whose order.’
‘Eggs? What eggs?’
‘The four eggs we drew from the hatchery an hour ago and sent away with the old t’varr’s glasship. They want to know where it went.’
The Taiytakei were almost on him, but never mind that. Bellepheros ran to the hatchery. It took only a glance to see that the Scales was right. Four eggs gone. He grabbed the Scales and shook him. ‘Where are they? Who told you to move them?’
The Scales only grew more bewildered. ‘You did, Master Alchemist. You were there. You told us to move the eggs and then you left with them.’
‘I left with them?’
The Taiytakei reached him. Soldiers seized him by the arms.
‘And the sled too,’ called the Scales as the soldiers dragged him away.
‘I did what?’ Bellepheros screamed, but his words were lost in the wind.
45
The Enemy of My Enemy
Red Lin Feyn’s glasship descended into the abyss of the Konsidar. Liang looked out of the windows as the day faded into a twilight gloom. The walls of the chasm were slick and black, the ferns and trees that grew from the cracks higher up now gone. Only mosses and lichen could live with so little sun. The gondola reached a platform in the stone and stopped. Red Lin Feyn, dressed in her glory as the Arbiter, gestured to open its golden ramp but the Elemental Man caught her hand.
