by Stephen Deas
In the quiet moments of the night Zafir dozed. Her dreams were of fire, of the smell of scorched air and burning skin and singed hair. When she woke the smell was still with her. She called to Myst and Onyx to dress her for war.
‘A dragon-rider learns about fire,’ she said as Myst held up her dragonscale, ‘and a dragon-rider learns that they are alone, but most of all a dragon-rider learns, quick and early, how to check their armour. I was ten years old when I was given my first dragonscale. My mother fastened and buckled every piece with painstaking words that commanded my attention. I felt so proud. She took me to the summit. There was a dragon perched on the edge of the cliff with my father on its back, my real father back then. My mother stood me in front of him. She gave me a helm and told me to put it on. She told me that if I moved, that if I even flinched, then the dragon would eat me, and then she walked away. I tried so hard not to be afraid. Fear before a dragon is doom and a short bloody end, every dragon-rider learns that. So I stood and waited, daring it to hurt me, as it opened its mouth and breathed its fire over me.’
She shivered as she fastened her dragonscale, as she checked each buckle, remembering how the force of the flames had staggered her. ‘I screamed,’ she said, ‘but I held my ground because I was told I must. The fire went on and on and on, and slowly I understood that I wasn’t burning. I stopped being afraid. I leaned into the flames as though basking in them and asking for more. I stretched out my arms to embrace the fire. I reached into it, forgetting the palms of a rider’s gauntlets are soft plain leather to bend and flex and not dragonscale at all. My hands burned, but the fire went on.’ She held out her arms for Myst and Onyx to strap on her Taiytakei gold-glass plates. ‘The burns weren’t deep, hardly anything. They hurt for a few days and didn’t even scar. My mother told me I was stupid, and that I must dress myself the next time. So I did.’ From the corner of her eye she saw Tuuran sidle in, keeping quiet, waiting patiently. ‘It hurt doing the buckles with burned hands, but I did them anyway. I climbed the Grand Stair alone and bathed again in dragon-fire. By the time my mother found me, all there was to see was her little girl wrapped in flames.’ She turned to Tuuran. ‘The Black Moon will come soon.’ In the calm now she saw his face clearly, one side red and swollen where he’d been caught by a touch of dragon-fire under the Spur.
‘I know.’ Tuuran rolled his shoulders, easing out the stiffness there. Adamantine Men learned about fire too, in the same ruthless ways. His Merizikat men were a mess.
‘You need a new legion. A proper one.’
‘Holiness, what will you do when the Black Moon comes?’
He craved closeness from her, the closeness they’d had under the Spur. She understood that well enough, both of them driven by demons they couldn’t fight, although Tuuran’s demon at least had a name and a face and some teeth he could punch out if the mood took him.
‘Berren Crowntaker is still inside him,’ he said.
‘I know, Tuuran.’ It would be easy to tell him what he longed to hear. Easy, too, to give him what he wanted from her.
‘He was my friend. The only friend I had for years.’
‘I know that too, Tuuran.’ If she was honest with herself, she wanted it too.
‘I don’t know what to do, Holiness.’
‘Nor do I.’ She turned and fleetingly touched him. He could have that much, even if he could never again have more.
‘Help him, Holiness,’ Tuuran whispered. ‘Please.’
‘And the Black Moon half-god who rules his soul?’
Tuuran flinched from her. ‘The Black Moon can have my axe in his skull!’
Zafir sighed. She turned away. Too hard to look him in the eye for what had to be said. ‘When the half-god comes, Tuuran, I will stand at his side. I will do as he asks, and you will do the same, and so will the alchemists if there are any of them left, even though they despise us both. We will all do as he asks because what else is there? Who will save us from fiery annihilation if not our Black Moon?’ It was hard to give him any hope when she didn’t see any herself.
‘You have your dragon, Holiness. I have him.’ And we could have each other. His unspoken words. He leaned closer, words whispered: ‘He told me how to set him free, Holiness. With the spear. I told you—’
‘I know.’ She pushed Tuuran back, gentle but firm. ‘And the spear will open the way to the Silver Sea. I have seen and done that much.’ The old Zafir might have said she’d done it just for him too. Tried to earn his gratitude even when she didn’t need it. But it had been an accident, that was all, and the Zafir she found in her skin today simply wished she hadn’t said anything at all, because Tuuran’s eyes turned wide as saucers. Hope flared in them so bright that she had to look away again. It seared her.
‘Holiness! Then we can save him! Holiness, if you have opened the way to the Silver Sea then I swear on everything, I will find a way to take him there and push—’
‘Stop!’ She rounded on him, though she still couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘Just stop, Tuuran. Even if I could fool him. Even if I did, what then? What of the dragons? We burn and slowly starve.’
But no, there was no crushing an Adamantine Man. Tuuran set his jaw. He nodded, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. Right then. Dragons first, and then boot the bastard half-god back where he belongs. Something like that.
The dragons left them alone on the second day, waiting now for the Black Moon to come. Zafir hid with Myst and pretended to sleep – Flame knew she needed it – but in the middle of the night she dressed in gold and glass and dragonscale. She slipped alone to the foot of the Grand Stair and touched another hidden piece of moonsilver. The stone that barred the way shivered and shifted and rose without a sound, opening once more. A gateway wide enough for a full-grown dragon if it didn’t mind a bit of a squeeze.
She called to Diamond Eye. She felt the dragon touching her soul again now. Kataros’s potion had worn away at last, and so perhaps Kataros could reach from the Spur to touch her again now too. Another alchemist might know the answer to that, but Zafir didn’t have any of those and so she supposed she’d never know until it happened. She tried not to think about that. Too much like the alchemy that Bellepheros and his ilk once used to control the dragons. Too much like the gold-glass circlet the Taiytakei had wrapped across her brow to crush her skull whenever the whim took them, until the Black Moon had turned it to ash and set her free.
Was that what he was? A liberator? Hard not to have her doubts about that, all things considered.
She climbed the Grand Stair and walked into the night, sucking in the air, revelling in the space around her. The stars. The moon. The cold. The scents rising from the land far below. Never again. Never again trapped in suffocating holes and tunnels and caves. Never again living in a cage. She’d rather die.
Diamond Eye waited for her on the cliff edge of the summit.
The others? she asked. The dragons?
Some have flown to burn the Black Moon’s eyrie. A few have scattered, knowing what must come. Most wait close for him. Some will side with him when he comes. Most will not.
Can they stop him?
No.
Then it’s futile, is it? The Black Moon will be master of us all. He will make slaves of everyone he touches, even dragons. But what else is there? We will all become like the man who was once Tuuran’s friend. Caged and drowning in our own skin.
That one is gone, dragon-queen. The Black Moon snuffed him out. He has taken what essence remained of the Isul Aieha and has added it to his own. He is finding his true strength.
Zafir walked through the fire-cracked stone. She stopped at the bubbling water, all that was left of the Silver King’s Reflecting Garden. She took a drink. The water was cool and pure and fresh, as it always was. Why did you have to smash it? Where was the need for that?
Diamond Eye rumbled, looming over her, massive and dark against th
e night. A flash of fury seared her. Five hundreds years of servitude, little one. That was his gift to us. We would erase his memory as he erased ours.
Vengeance, Diamond Eye? I thought dragons had no use for it.
He didn’t answer at once. His thoughts, when he did, were measured. So that no one else remembers that it can be done, little one.
Is that wise? You were half-gods once. Did you remember that?
Another pause. No.
But you know that it’s true.
Yes.
Yet if the Isul Aieha had not left his story you would never know what you once were. You would never know that it not only could be done, but that it already had. Zafir left the water and climbed onto his back. Take me to the dragon Snow.
She will kill you.
You will not let her.
And the other thousand dragons who wait? Shall I fight them too?
You will do what you can.
Diamond Eye lowered his head. He turned and stepped off the edge and spread his wings. Would you dive together, little one, one last time?
Zafir smiled. I would. She didn’t quite know why she was doing this. Stupid, perhaps. But what did she want? Not the things she’d wanted before the Taiytakei took her as a slave, when all she thought was to climb to the highest throne where no one could touch her. And after they took me, all I wanted was to be free. Was there a lesson there? Or were they actually the same thing when you cut to the heart of it? Perhaps they were. She didn’t know.
Together they plunged from the summit of the Moonlit Mountain. Zafir clung to Diamond Eye and pressed herself against his scales. The wind tore and whipped, and for a short span she lost herself in the rush of it, the sheer exhilaration of arrowing almost a mile straight down through the air. Diamond Eye broke the dive gently, sparing her bruises and battered bones. He soared silently, wings stretched taut, gliding through the night from the smashed-down ruin of the Silver City and the eyrie beside it, east towards the great Fury river and Hammerford. Zafir closed her mind, keeping him distant and all the other dragons too. The spear was back in her room. Perhaps without it they might not notice her – they might not think to look – but as they came close and started their descent, Diamond Eye felt the presence of the white dragon Snow circling over the long-burned town. Zafir felt it too. The white dragon was waiting for her.
Why leave your fortress, little one? The white dragon asked. Out here you are only prey.
In the moonlight below Zafir could make out the stone dragons on the waterfront, the frozen statues made by the Silver King’s spear, the first dragons to die in their war of awakening. Your name is Snow. I remember you, although I never saw you. You were supposed to be a present for Jehal. A gift to come with his bride.
The half-god comes, little one.
The Black Moon will make you into the scourge of worlds, Zafir said, curious, yet Diamond Eye says you mean to fight him. Does it not please you what he brings? Fire and death and ash? Destruction, annihilation, isn’t that what you are? Isn’t that what you crave? Isn’t that your nature?
We are all that, little one, and such things shall not be tamed into servitude. The dragon Snow snarled her thoughts. Zafir looked about, trying to spot her in the sky.
Diamond Eye laughed. Little sister, how will you stop him? With the spear in your claws, even if you held it? I held it once, torn from the grasp of the Isul Aieha himself. It served me nothing.
With remorseless fire and tooth and talon and tail, great brother. With an endless whirlwind to weather him down. We will all die the little death, over and over, but we will come at him again and again and again, and we will never stop until he breaks.
Snow shot out of the night, arrow hard. Zafir almost didn’t see her. Diamond Eye rolled at the last and took the impact. Claws raked around his flank, reaching. Snow’s tail slashed the air. It whipped past Zafir’s head and curled and smashed down, and would have shattered her, but Diamond Eye twisted and lunged and caught the tip of it in his jaws and bit it off. A haze of dragon blood misted the air. Snow snapped at Diamond Eye’s throat and tore at flesh and scales.
You are weaker, great brother, with this little one on your back. She makes you small.
Diamond Eye caught Snow’s head between his foreclaws and pulled her away. Little Snow. Little hunter with your long wings and tail, but what substance is there to you? You have no strength. Graceful wings but not for fighting. I have given the little death to far greater dragons.
Snow raked fire over his belly, not that he felt it, but Zafir knew the fire was for her, for the harness that held her. Claws tore a savage gash in Diamond Eye’s flank, lashing to catch his wing. Diamond Eye threw Snow away and wheeled. He dived after her, but Snow was a hunting dragon, fast and agile, and while Diamond Eye had speed and strength to match her and more, he could never be as nimble. The white dragon darted aside. She twisted in the air, wheeled and arced and lunged and snapped at Zafir. The long tail lashed again, its bloody severed tip whip-cracking past Zafir’s face. Diamond Eye rolled, a vicious wrench as he flared his wings, falling backwards. Snow veered away, out of reach of Diamond Eye’s great claws.
Let me have her, great brother. Who are you to serve a little one? Snow arced and pirouetted and slipped beneath Diamond Eye and came again. Zafir pressed herself hard flat. The fury of the fight had her. The two dragons were inside her head, coursing through her, pitiless for blood, to claw and slash and rend and kill …
Give her to me, great brother. Snow came again, a violent flurry of talons, of blood still flying from her damaged tail, drops spattering Zafir’s face. She howled with a furious glee. The blood of my enemies! Diamond Eye roared. Snow lacerated his flanks. He flared and wheeled and shot in pursuit. Snow pinwheeled. The dragons passed one another, and again Diamond Eye rolled Zafir away from Snow’s claws and tail, and again they savaged one another, and this time Zafir felt a surge of vicious delight. Snow didn’t turn this time as they parted, but dived for the ruin of Hammerford. Zafir pushed herself upright and peered. She quivered and shook, wrapped bloodthirsty and murderous in dragon-fire and fury. The white dragon was favouring one wing.
You hurt her! She couldn’t let it go. Finish her!
Diamond Eye rolled away.
Kill her!
To what end, little one? To sate you? The great dragon circled. His thoughts, always cold, turned to abyssal ice. The Black Moon cut my soul with his knife of eyes, a fragment of the forgotten goddess of the stars. He bound me to you against my will. You demand this? So be it. I will kill for you. He snapped viciously in the air and shot after Snow. Zafir screamed. The rage was like a fire in her blood. Glorious flames, a violent greedy joy of victory that left no space for other thought …
Stop! She closed her eyes. You are free. Do as you wish.
Diamond Eye slowed. The white dragon Snow vanished into the night, sinking lower with each broken beat of her wings, and as Diamond Eye soared homeward towards the Pinnacles, Zafir thought she heard a voice that was meant for someone else.
Here lies your answer, little sister.
42
Gliding Dragon Gorge
Forty-two days after landfall
Chay-Liang flew low, the two of them freezing and shivering and squashed together for warmth. They left the mountains behind them in the night, Belli with his eyes tight shut and sunk so deep into himself with cold and his fear of heights and open spaces that Liang wondered if she’d ever get him back. As the land fell to foothills she skimmed rolling dales and dipping valleys, until the world below her dropped into the gorge of the Silver River and the Great Cliff beyond. She stopped not far from the sink-hole rush and torrent where the river vanished under the mountain spur, and shook Belli from his stupor.
‘Are we there yet?’ He didn’t move except to look at her balefully. ‘If we’re not, can I go back to sleep?’
Liang sn
orted and poked him. ‘We’re definitely somewhere. I don’t have the first idea where, so whether it’s there or not I couldn’t tell you.’ She rummaged through the leather satchels at the back of the sled. ‘I’m also too tired to care. While you’ve been snoring, one of us has been flying, you know.’
Belli didn’t move until she started building a fire. Then he hauled himself up and hobbled towards her, flapping his hands. ‘No! No fire.’
‘I’m cold, Belli. I want to be asleep, and I want to be warm. Wrapped in silk and lying on a bed of feathers with a hot summer breeze wafting in through the windows, if you could manage that for me.’
‘A dragon might see flames from miles away.’
Which made her feel a bit stupid. ‘You’re such a killjoy sometimes.’ She went to the sled and pulled out a bundle of sticks and sailcloth which, with the right application of patience and on a good day, could sometimes manage to turn itself into a sort of conical tent. She wrestled with it. ‘We can have a little fire inside this, can’t we? If I can get it up.’
Bellepheros glanced at the sky, but he didn’t say no. He was cold and shivering too. Liang fussed around him, battling ropes and poles.
‘I haven’t seen any dragons since this morning,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t that seem odd? They were everywhere when I followed Tsen’s eyrie to those caves.’
‘They’re probably still with the eyrie.’
‘What do you suppose they want?’
‘I don’t know.’ There was a flicker of amusement in his voice as he watched her struggle with the tent. ‘The Black Moon thinks himself their master. If they think otherwise then I’m glad not to be there.’ His head hung. ‘Suppose we succeed? Suppose we poison the Black Moon. What then?’
‘One day at a time. We’re alive, aren’t we?’ Liang ruffled his hair, mostly because she knew he hated that and so maybe it would snap him out of feeling sorry for himself. She leaned against her sled and scratched her head, and looked at the mess of cloth and poles and ropes and pegs scattered around her. The tent was having one of its days when it resolutely didn’t want to be put up. ‘You know, whenever I needed any sort of shelter in Takei’Tarr, I made it out of glass. A big block of it. I’d take my sled here apart and mould a shelter to fit the landscape. In the morning I’d turn it back into a sled! Both done in a matter of minutes! It was so easy. I hate your world, Belli. Nothing works as it should.’
