by Stephen Deas
‘May I come in?’ asked Zafir.
There was a moment of hesitation before Chay-Liang nodded.
‘The armour you made for me is battered. I’d ask you to repair it, but you have more pressing things to do, and I don’t imagine we shall find ourselves under attack while we remain adrift at sea. Use its parts as you see fit.’ She looked around Chay-Liang’s workshop, trying not to stare, not to seem nosy or aghast at the sheer chaos of it, benches covered with half-formed pieces of glass, metal, bundles of gold and copper wires, pincers, tongs, scalpel-sharp knives, and at least a dozen tools whose purpose Zafir couldn’t imagine never mind name.
Chay-Liang pointed to a box on the floor. It already contained pieces of half-made armour. ‘There.’ Myst dropped her bundle into the box.
Zafir spread her arms. ‘You have a lightning wand somewhere here, Chay-Liang? I’m sure you must. If you want to use it then get on and do it.’ She tilted her head.
‘This again?’ Chay-Liang hooted and banged her worktop. ‘We cannot return through the storm-dark without that devil creature, and he, it seems, is useless now. We have no navigator. We are stuck here, wherever here is. We need your dragon or we will all drift and die! So we need him to fly and search for land, and we need him not to eat us, and thus we need you. You well know these things. If you turn on us – if you hurt Bellepheros in any way – I will rack you with lightning enough to make your bones burst, slave. Until then you may strut all you like without fear of me. Go away and make yourself useful.’
‘There are no slaves any more, Chay-Liang. None. I will not tolerate it.’
The enchantress almost spat at her. She glared and then looked hard at Myst. ‘Have you told that to her?’
‘I freed Myst and Onyx long before the Elemental Men came to end us. She chooses to stay.’ Zafir met Chay-Liang’s eye as if facing down a dragon. ‘I am not your enemy, Chay-Liang.’
‘Ha!’ The witch barked with laughter, then stared, hard and cold. ‘Here and now you are not. Here and now every soul on this eyrie needs you, as they need me, and neither can survive without the other, and so, as we are both practical women, we put aside our differences. But I have no doubt that as soon as we find land you quickly will become my enemy again. That is what you are, and then my lightning will come for you.’
Zafir’s eye glittered, a flash of fury. ‘I could simply fly away, you know. Take Diamond Eye and head off and not come back. Take my chances. They would be far better than yours.’
‘Oh, I’m quite sure you could!’ The witch snorted her scorn. ‘But you’ll not leave us without your alchemist, whose potions keep at bay the plague in your blood.’
Zafir tugged at the arm of her shift. The patch of skin on the inside of her elbow. No bigger than a fingernail for now, but the witch was right: it would kill her in time without Bellepheros and his potions. She pulled up her sleeve and offered her arm. ‘You can check on it every day if you like to make sure I’m still in thrall.’ Then spun on her heel and strode away, calling over her shoulder, ‘Until landfall then, enchantress. Do let me know if I can in any way help you in your endeavours.’
As an overture of peace Zafir supposed she’d achieved her purpose. It stuck with her though, Chay-Liang’s scorn, and chased her through the eyrie like a petulant ghost. A dragon-queen wasn’t supposed to care what her servants thought. A dragon-queen ruled and her subjects obeyed, and that was the simple way of the world. But not here.
The next morning she rose early. She went to Diamond Eye and checked his saddle and harness. She replaced and repaired what she could, and reminded herself that, battered and frayed and broken as the harness was, it had survived intact enough to keep her safe through the battle with the Taiytakei glasships. When she’d done what she could she sent Myst and Onyx for water. A lot of it. Too much, the others might say, but they weren’t about to spend day after day with their skin flayed by the wind and the sun on their back. She was about to mount and take wing when the witch came out into the dragon yard, tugging a sled. On the back of it was a huge glass bucket, and in the bucket was Zafir’s armour. Chay-Liang stopped at the bottom of the wall.
‘Dragon-slave! You asked if you could help. You can.’
‘How?’
‘Take this tub and fill it with seawater. Bellepheros and I mean to begin our work, he to test his alchemy and I my enchantments.’
Zafir smiled, and for once she even meant it.
‘Here’s your armour. I can’t do anything for the dragonscale, but the gold-glass is repaired and shaped as it was. My own work so it was easy enough.’ She handed Zafir her helm. ‘I made some changes. You wear dragonscale. It must get very hot under there.’
‘Yes.’
‘Baros Tsen’s bathhouse, after the Arbiter came, was used to keep the dead. I placed an enchantment to keep it cold so they wouldn’t rot. The Black Moon had me take it away, so I’ve put it on your helm instead. Touch a finger to your left brow and it will cool you. Touch a finger to your right and it will stop.’
‘And is there another to crush my skull when the whim takes you?’ Zafir’s smile didn’t falter. It was what Red Lin Feyn had done.
Chay-Liang laughed. ‘If there was, I wouldn’t tell you, would I? Here.’ She passed Zafir one of the greaves that would cover her arm. It had a glass rod mounted along the top that hadn’t been there before. Liang tapped it. ‘A lightning thrower. In case your dragons misbehave.’
‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll turn it against you?’
‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll crush your skull?’ The enchantress twisted her face in a crude imitation of Zafir’s smirk. ‘The seawater, if you please.’
Zafir climbed the wall and stood beside Diamond Eye. She stripped to her riding shift, and if the former slaves on the rim working on the crane all stopped to stare, they knew better than to meet her eye. She armoured herself. Dragonscale, then gold and glass. The witch had done a better job this time. The armour fitted well.
Does she mean us harm? Zafir asked. Did you see that in her thoughts?
She knows you will turn on her when she least expects it, and that she lacks the courage to do the same. Diamond Eye felt distant.
I think it is not courage you describe, dragon. I think that is fear.
It is survival, little one. Nothing less and nothing more.
They flew together, carried Chay-Liang’s tub to the sea and returned it full to the brim, then took a bearing from the sun and flew again, fast and far. Hour after endless hour Zafir dozed while Diamond Eye flew. When they had travelled perhaps a thousand miles and could still see nothing but sea, she took him down to the water to rest. Not that he needed it, but she’d flown him hard and he was hot, and they both needed to cool. She stripped naked and dived into the water and swam. Later she wished she hadn’t. The salt from the sea, trapped against her skin, burned and chafed. She had no idea how far she went after that. They rested twice more, and everywhere looked the same. The sea and even the clouds. What if there was no land at all? Was that possible? She turned back when her water was half gone, as the second sunset of her flight began to fall, and without Diamond Eye to guide her to the distant whispers of chattering thoughts that were the eyrie, she might have flown out here for ever, adrift and lost over endless water.
She returned after three days on Diamond Eye’s back, dehydrated, fiercely hungry, so far into exhaustion that her vision kept blurring, and yet she’d found nothing. No land, no ships. She staggered across the dragon yard, shedding her armour as she went. When Tuuran ran to her side, she snapped him away. A dragon-rider stood on her own two feet. Always. Myst and Onyx had Baros Tsen’s bath waiting for her. She fell asleep in it and barely noticed when they pulled her out and dried her and put her to bed. When she woke, she realised that a bath meant Chay-Liang and Bellepheros were making fresh water from the sea as they’d promised. Fresh and pure and cool. She could have
kissed them both.
Tuuran had finished his cranes and was winching people in shifts down to the sea to fish. Zafir allowed herself a day to watch them, to rest and recover, and then flew again, a different direction this time, longer and further, and with more water to sustain her. Chay-Liang’s enchanted helm cooled her, but she found it gave her headaches too and so after the first day she stopped using it. This time, when she came back, she collapsed in the middle of the dragon yard and almost couldn’t get up again.
‘You’re not taking enough food,’ chided Bellepheros, but it wasn’t that. It was the sheer numbing exhaustion of flying a dragon so far. Further than any rider had ever flown before. Not that Diamond Eye cared. He would have flown for ever if she let him.
They’d had a storm while she was gone, but it had passed. Afterwards Chay-Liang had moulded a hundred sleds. She wanted to use them to pull the eyrie so they didn’t simply drift in the wind, but she didn’t have any chains to tether them. Zafir had Diamond Eye move about the rim of the eyrie, burning it until it was molten, while Liang then set the sleds into the stone as it cooled. Half the sleds melted or fell out again, but it was better than nothing. They’d do some more after her next flight.
The Crowntaker was awake again too. He spent most of his time fishing, or so Tuuran told her, and didn’t say much. The Black Moon seemed to be gone, but the pain in Tuuran’s face told her that something was still terribly wrong.
‘He raves,’ Myst whispered. ‘He wanders in a daze.’
‘It’s like he’s not really there,’ said Onyx.
Zafir held them tight. When she asked Diamond Eye before they flew again, the dragon seemed not to know. The Black Moon is still inside him. But dormant or dead even I cannot tell. Nor do I much desire to look.
On the third flight she passed a pod of whales a hundred miles from the eyrie. Diamond Eye threw himself at them and almost drowned her snatching one out of the water. A small one. He carried it back to the eyrie and set it on the rim, where the dragons ripped it to shreds and left only bones. Zafir had him catch a second and leave it in the yard. Food enough for the days she was gone; and then off again. This time exhaustion took her long before Diamond Eye returned, and Tuuran had to pull her unconscious from her dragon’s back because no one else dared come close. He carried her across the dragon yard and sat with her until Myst and Onyx shooed him away, and he was sitting beside her again when she woke. Her eyes slowly focused on his face. She reached out to touch his cheek. He looked distraught.
‘You went too far, Holiness.’
She sat up, reeled a little as her head spun for a moment, then grabbed his face in both hands and pulled him to her. She kissed him, awash with unexpected feeling, then let go and wondered what she was doing. She slumped and closed her eyes.
‘No, I didn’t,’ she murmured. ‘I found land.’
18
Red Lin Feyn
Thirteen months before landfall
‘Welcome. We are honoured to have a former Arbiter aboard.’ Captain Beccerr of the Servant on Ice bowed in front of Red Lin Feyn, low enough that the long braids of her hair touched the deck. Lin Feyn smiled uncertainly and looked about her. Sail-slaves were hauling in her sea chests and carrying them below. There were men busy in the rigging. The ship was preparing to sail. ‘Our expedition is one of reconnaissance, but we will be in what have become hostile waters so—’
‘I am aware, Captain. Thank you for your hospitality. I would see to my cabin.’
Captain Beccerr led her into the stern castle, then waited as Lin Feyn shooed away the sail-slaves and set about unpacking her chests herself. The Taiytakei still traded freely at Helhex in the south of Aria, but had been evicted from Deephaven in the north and restricted to a handful of ships each month. The necropolis still stood in the heart of that city, and now the Ice Witch had built a colossal black fortress further up the coast. Raised it on her own from raw stone in a single night, they said. Whispers spoke of a civil war brewing in Aria, one that the enemies of the Ice Witch were hardly likely to win without some help, and so help they would get. The legions of the Sun King would cross the seas in holy war, carried by the Taiytakei, to put an end to the Ice Witch for ever. The sea lords of Khalishtor had decreed it would be so. Lin Feyn had her doubts, but she kept them to herself, and the Crown of the Sea Lords had not sought her opinion. Captain Beccerr clearly had her doubts too, but someone had to go and see what the Ice Witch was building up there.
‘Uneasy times.’
Red Lin Feyn nodded. Baros Tsen and his eyrie and his dragons were gone, but the hatchling from the Queverra was still unaccounted for, the Statue Plague still rampant among the slaves in Cashax and now in Khalishtor too, the cracked pillar still in the cage around the storm-dark of the Godspike.
‘This war will either save us or plunge us into irrevocable catastrophe,’ she said. ‘And I don’t believe any of us have the first idea which it will be.’
When Captain Beccerr was gone, Lin Feyn opened the false bottom of her chest. She took out her copy of the forbidden Rava and opened it. Damned book was a mishmash of myths, of stories and obscure symbolism all muddled together with no rhyme or reason she could fathom. She couldn’t understand why the Elemental Men were so afraid of it. Everyone, for example, knew the tales of how the first men were made: the Rava simply said the same in a more obscure way.
‘… and the four creators tore pieces of their essence and spread them; and the sparks of the sun fell like brilliant rain, and where each spark touched the oceans and deserts and forests of the earth there rose a man and a woman, naked and full grown; and as they stood for the first time on sun-cast limbs they saw one another, and were filled with desire and fell at once back to the earth in copulation; and from each union were born two more children of the sun, brother and sister, who emerged from the wombs of their mothers full grown and rich with lust so that they too fell upon one another, brother with sister, mother with son, father with daughter …’
Lin Feyn skimmed ahead. Prurient prose exalting incest perhaps merited the author’s execution, but surely not an entire order of sorcerous assassins dedicated to its eradication.
‘… and the shards of the moon fell in the night like silver snow, taut with sorceries of transformation; but the children of the moon did not sprout and teem and swarm in hordes like the seed of the sun, but waited dormant, yet bright was their allure so that the children of the sun might pick them up and give them form of flesh and bone, for always was it that the moon cannot shine without the sun, and yet the moon owns both night and day. And the children of the earth grew from stones, many in number and many in form, changers of shape and substance, while each star in the sky gave forth a single ray of its light, and some came to the earth and some did not, and some are seen coming still, blazing lines of star fire through the sky. For the power of the sun is motion and fire and irrepressible life, and the power of the moon is transformation and change and seduction and the hiding of things, and the power of the earth is mastery of shape and substance and strength, while the power of the stars is divination and time and the unfettering of the past and future from the present …’
Lin Feyn skipped ahead again. The whole book was like this, most of it in a hurried and barely legible hand.
The rocking of the ship changed. They were raising sail.
‘… and the children of all but the moon were many, but the children of the moon remained few and kept their holy essence undiluted as it was given them; and so the children of the moon rose to rule over all, Silver Kings and half-gods of matchless sorcery, each born over and over and yet each always the same, each life raised anew from a sun-child taken in its prime and cast aside, as a new cloak is favoured over an old and then discarded in turn when its threads grow bare and with equally as little thought, while the half-god within remains unchanged. So it is that the half-gods alone remember the origins of time itself an
d know their creators for what they were …’
The ship was starting to turn, and it was Red Lin Feyn’s personal ritual to stay on deck as she left home on any voyage, and to stand at the stern until she could no longer see the land. She was about to close the book and put it away, but the last words made her pause and then rummage frantically through the papers she’d been given when she was Arbiter, until she found the sheaf of notes on dragons, the claims of Chay-Liang’s slave, the alchemist Bellepheros.
‘Dragons do not die as we do. They live one life after another, and each remembers all those that have passed before. Thus when a dragon hatches from an egg, its flesh may be new and weak, but its soul is already a thousand years old.’
She closed the Rava and hid it away, and went to watch the coast of Khalishtor recede. It nagged at her. The Rava and the alchemist seemed to be saying the same thing, one about long-lost half-gods that had possibly never existed, the other about dragons which very much did. But the half-gods had not been dragons. Even the Rava wasn’t that obscure.
The curtains of the storm-dark were shifting more and more these days. The Servant on Ice was at sea for weeks before they found the curtain to take them to Aria. When they sighted it, the Servant turned and tacked against the wind towards a wall of black cloud from sea to sky that ran as far as the eye could see. Ran for ever, if you tried to find its end as some of the first sailors had done. Violet lightning lit up the cloud from within. As twilight fell and the Servant entered, Lin Feyn stood at the prow, and as the lightning cracked about them she wove the enchantments of her father of fathers, Feyn Charin, and drew the lightning to her until it wrapped the ship like an aura. She held it tight, as the cloud and the roaring wind and the violent seas and the lightning abruptly stopped to silence and a pitch-black nothing, as the Servant passed into the timeless void of the storm-dark’s heart. Lin Feyn counted out the heartbeats as the lightning-crackle about her ebbed and slipped away. A few more heartbeats with every passing year as the crossing became ever harder. There would come a time, not too many years away, when the navigators one by one would begin to fail, unable to find the strength to hold the Nothing at bay for so long. But not today.
