The Silver Kings

by Stephen Deas

  ‘As you were,’ Bellepheros said gruffly. ‘I’ve brought more ­alchemists with me from the Spur. Where is her Holiness?’

  ‘Alchemist? How did you get inside?’ Their hands drifted to their swords. In an instant Jasaan had his lightning thrower pointed to their faces. Bellepheros shook his head.

  ‘No, Jasaan. No need.’

  Jasaan gave him a look as though he was daft. ‘Then shall I tie them up? Set a man to watch them? How many should I leave, do you think? One? Two? What if they shout out? Do my men kill them for that? How many soldiers live here? Will more come this way? When will other men come to relieve this post? Hours? Minutes?’

  ‘Leave the soldiering to the soldiers,’ muttered Jeiros, sidling beside Bellepheros and craning his neck to whisper in his ear.

  Bellepheros looked at them all. ‘What are we? What have you all become?’

  Almost every potion he made held a taint of his blood mingled with that of a dragon and diluted with water. They were nearly all the same. Oh yes, there were spices and ground-up roots, but those were more for taste to cover the iron underneath. He reached into the two riders and snapped them to sleep like snuffing a candle. There wasn’t a man alive in these realms who hadn’t once tasted him. He glanced to Kataros and then met Jasaan’s eye.

  ‘We are all abominations, Jasaan,’ he said. ‘Every one of us. The difference is what we choose to do with ourselves. Tell me, was this more evil or less than slitting their throats?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He led the way after that, brazenly walking wherever he chose, through a gateway that carried them in a single step through half a mile and more of stone to the upper reaches of the Enchanted Palace and the Princes’ Hall. Everyone knew who he was, Queen Zafir’s grand master alchemist, and no one short of Tuuran himself would stop him.

  They reached the foot of the Grand Stair. Two dragon-riders stood with their backs to the steps, keeping people out. They looked pale and nervous.

  ‘Her Holiness is up there, is she?’ Bellepheros asked. ‘And your Night Watchman?’

  ‘And a very great many dragons, Grand Master.’

  Bellepheros smiled at them. Their knees buckled and down they fell.

  ‘Then that’s where we need to be,’ he said.

  Dragons swarmed the Pinnacles. Hundreds. They swirled and circled, a vortex of wings spiralling over the Black Moon on his throne.

  ‘He’s talking to them,’ whispered Myst. Zafir held her close. Her and Tuuran, afraid of what Tuuran might do if she let him go. ‘The dragons tell him he is a ghost, a shadow, a mist-made echo of their half-god creator. They say he is not whole, that he is only a splinter. He answers that he is the Black Moon, come to end what began ten thousand years ago.’

  The Black Moon rose from his throne. His voice thundered volcanic, shuddering the air with syllables Zafir had never heard, words and sounds that bent the world and changed its fabric. Colours spoke and stone mourned.

  ‘He declares himself against gods in every realm. He demands our obedience. Obeisance. Many refuse. They will not demean themselves to an echo. Others acquiesce. They know, as I know, that there is no resistance to be offered …’ Myst’s voice petered out to a whisper. ‘Little one. It comes, and I must fight for him. The cut he gave me commands it. Some others will fly for him, but most will not. Hide away, little one. It comes once more. Dragon against dragon in the names of gods and half-gods.’

  ‘We both knew this was waiting for us, Diamond Eye.’ Zafir bowed her head. ‘Come to me then. Let me ride you this last time to battle.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry, but for this last service I command you. Whether you will it or not.’

  ‘I cannot hear your thoughts, little one.’ Myst looked as fierce as a tiger. Was that her, or was that some manifestation of the dragon speaking inside her?

  ‘No matter. I will ride you anyway. This is our end.’

  Myst gasped and shrank away as Diamond Eye crashed into the mountain beside her. A fury bellowed from him. Zafir took up her spear and bounded to the mounting ropes.

  ‘Myst! Look after Tuuran. Keep him close. Night Watchman, care for my Myst and my Onyx!’ She wasn’t sure Tuuran heard, but Myst bowed and touched a finger to her brow. Zafir jumped into the harness and tightened the buckles that held her fast. The Black Moon’s voice thundered in the dead words of a tongue long lost, but Zafir didn’t need to see into Diamond Eye’s thoughts to know what he said. She knew this speech, a hundred times from a hundred different men. Always, in its heart, the same. I am your master. I have power and I will use it. I will have your obedience, because that is what you owe me, because of who I am.

  The same tired tirade. A flash of rage streaked across her eyes, and she might have struck him down there and then if she’d had a way. The entitlement. The arrogance. The naked demand of ownership. God or half-god, speaker or king, no matter the consequence, no matter what he stood for and what might come either way, she would spit in the eye of any who ever made such a claim of her.

  And how many times have I claimed others thus?

  Diamond Eye shot into the air. The dragons were coming now. She spotted Snow among them, not too crippled to fly but lurching with a distinctive beat to her wings.

  Enslaved to a half-god, or have dragons devour us all. An annihilation or an end to the curse of alchemy.

  A score of dragons dived at the Black Moon on his throne, fire scouring the stone. Pointless. Other dragons gave chase, snapping at their tails.

  The spear is yours. Diamond Eye’s voice. Not heard, but remembered. Call it to your hand and it will come.

  A wild melee spread across the sky, tail and claw and fire. Choosing sides, some for, many against. Dragons swooping to burn the Black Moon. Others gave chase, still more chasing the chasers. In circling swirls, dragon turned on dragon. They tore into one another, claw and fang, hurling each other from the sky while the half-god on his throne railed madness against the moon, turning on his creator while demanding fealty from his progeny. Dragons rebelling against a creator of their own. But we little ones are still little ones, and we will all die in fire in the end.

  Diamond Eye smashed into the back of a red-scaled dragon. He ripped at its wings, crippling it. Wheeled away as Zafir watched the dragon fall. He rolled and lurched, throwing her like a doll, slamming her into his scales. The wind roared. Dragons were everywhere. A monster in silver and grey lurched and snapped at Diamond Eye’s neck. He veered. Another came from above, green this one. Zafir turned. An awkward motion. The green dragon opened its mouth. Fire bloomed. It reached its claws to rip her to pieces …

  She threw the Silver King’s spear. It struck the dragon in its throat. Green scales rippled to grey, wings froze and it fell, made into stone. Diamond Eye bucked and twisted and threw her forward, tearing at another as it passed beneath. The dragon she’d killed plunged and smashed into what had once been the Reflecting Garden. It shattered into a thousand pieces.

  The spear is yours. Call it to your hand and it will come. She held out her hand as she had under the Spur, willing the spear to return, never thinking it would. It hadn’t before.

  The spear was in her hand once more. The Black Moon had shown her how.

  Putting guardsmen to sleep was one thing, climbing the Grand Stair was quite another. Bellepheros struggled up, cursing under his breath at the pain in his knees which came with every step, quite sure he’d never make it to the top. At least old Jeiros was having trouble too, his chair carried by gasping soldiers. The rest bounded on ahead, Adamantine Men, who never wore down, Kataros and the younger alchemists, who still had youth in their legs. Chay-Liang simply floated up on her gold-glass sled.

  ‘Get on,’ she grumbled. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘I hate that thing.’ Distant rumbles shook the mountain, the shiver and shudder, the dull muted screams of dragons.
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  ‘Just get on it, you silly old man, or whatever is happening will be finished!’

  They stopped. The Adamantine Men carrying Jeiros gratefully hoisted him onto the sled. Bellepheros climbed after him. He thought of the disc Li had made on the very first day he’d met her, carrying them all up through the sky to the floating Palace of Leaves, and then wobbled, dizzy, and wished he hadn’t. He’d hated that too.

  Diamond Eye twisted and rolled. The whip-crack of a tail swept over Zafir. The wind of it jerked her head. She lunged, stabbed, drove the Silver King’s spear through scales. Another dragon turned to stone, crashed across Diamond Eye’s back and almost knocked him out of the sky, then fell to smash below. Diamond Eye drove for a cluster of smaller dragons, scattering them as a shark might scatter a shoal of fish. They wheeled and came at him from all sides. He tore one out of the air, almost ripped it in half. Zafir hurled the spear. Another dragon fell. A monster as big as Diamond Eye himself shot from beneath. The two dragons tangled, biting at one anothers’ throats, claws tearing at bellies, sunk into shoulders, slashing at wings.

  The spear returned to her hand. She drove it into a claw and turned the monster to stone. They fell, all three of them together, a shock of speed until Diamond Eye burst free.

  See, little one. See! She didn’t need to read Diamond Eye’s thoughts to know his mind. Nor the Black Moon as he watched her, revelling in the chaos. Dragon fell on dragon. Flames wreathed the Black Moon, but a silver light wrapped him and pushed them away. She threw the spear again. Missed. Did it matter what dragon she hit any more? No. Like the dragons themselves, the fury took her and carried her past any care.

  Li’s sled drifted serenely into the Grand Aisle behind the Queen’s Gate. Beyond the colonnades the air was unbridled fury. Dragons shredded one another. Fire raged. They fell, wrapped in furious tearing balls, curled up together and ripping each other to pieces. Bellepheros saw three dragons crash into a fourth. He saw them fall, plunging down the cliffs of the Moonlit Mountain towards the ruin of the Silver City below.

  ‘You should get off,’ Li said. The Queen’s Gate was open wide, a maw in the mountain summit big enough for a dragon. The sled eased towards it. Li started lining up pieces of glass around her, slowly shaping them.

  ‘What are you doing, Li?’

  ‘Off, old man!’

  Bellepheros levered himself over the side of the sled and slid ­gingerly down, wincing as his knees bent. Li helped Jeiros to follow. From the height of the Queen’s Gate the flat top of the mountain summit spread below. Bellepheros saw the Black Moon, arms aloft, wreathed in moonlight. Dragon murdered dragon in the sky, jarring the mountain as they crashed bone-breaking into stone and wrestled on the ground. Two pinned a third, holding it down, and ripped out its throat. Another limped away, dragging a mangled wing. Others threw themselves back aloft. A monstrous shape fell, fast and hard as a stone meteorite. It shattered and exploded on the edge of the cliff. Pieces arced into the void below. Bellepheros looked up. He squinted.

  ‘Li, what are you doing?’ he asked again.

  ‘Someone has to stop her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Zafir, you blind old man!’

  ‘She’s here then? Where?’ he asked. ‘Li! Where is Zafir? What’s she doing?’

  Li pointed into the sky and the thunder-swirl of dragon-fire. ‘Killing dragons. Turning them to stone. She has the spear, Belli.’

  ‘On whose side does she fight?’ Bellepheros threw himself flat as an emerald hunting dragon dived from the sky, claws outstretched, and shot over his head. It struck the Black Moon’s silver halo and dissolved into a cloud of ash. ‘Does she fly for the Black Moon or against him?’

  ‘How in Xibaiya do you suppose I can tell? For, I think. Does it matter?’ Li finished whatever she was doing with her glass and rubbed her hands. ‘So how do I stop him, Belli? How do I stop the Black Moon?’

  ‘The Black Moon? You don’t, Li. You wait and bide your time and we poison him, remember?’ He struggled to her side. ‘Li … He’s the only thing that can make everything back as it was, Li. Leave him be. Leave it all be. Let them fight. I don’t want to lose you.’

  The glass around Chay-Liang shifted and grew, spreading slowly around her. She watched him sadly as she worked. ‘Back as it was? It’s too late for that, Belli. Far too late, and you know it.’ Her eyes lingered on him and her face softened. ‘You always came through, Belli. You always sought the truth that lies beneath and you never gave up until you had the answers. You always had a trick up your sleeve, and you always did what was right. More than anything that’s why I came to love you. Gather your alchemists and do what you can. The Black Moon is the end of everything, and I believe you know that. Stop him for me, Belli, and I will see to his dragon-queen.’ She looked back to the hall as Jasaan and Kataros crested the Grand Stair. ‘You! Adamantine Man. Bring those and come here!’

  Jasaan trotted forward, puzzled. He had one of Li’s rockets slung across his back.

  ‘You wanted to kill dragons? Now’s your chance.’

  There were rules for war. When a dragon-rider flew, she flew with the words of Prince Lai’s Principles filling her head. Height and speed. Death from above. The rider is the weakness, so ignore the dragon and kill the rider. Strafe with fire to burn a harness until it snaps. A slash of a tail, enough to break every bone in a man’s body. Never claw and fang, though that would be the dragon’s desire, because claw and fang meant first flying through fire and tail.

  But there were no other riders today. Dragons for the Black Moon and his cause, others against, and Zafir had no way to tell them apart, knew only that she was alone, that these dragons, though all had once flown for Prince Lai in different scales and colours, cared nothing for the rules of Principles. There was no fire, because what was fire to a dragon? Time after time they crashed together and fell out of the sky, wrapped around one another until one was torn to bloody shreds or both smashed into the ground. Nor were they afraid, for what was death but a chance to be reborn?

  In slow steady defeat the Black Moon’s dragons were beaten down, torn apart, battered to the ground of the Moonlit Mountain. Alone, Diamond Eye flew undiminished. Wherever he soared dragons fell, turned to stone by Zafir’s lethal spear.

  A thunderclap jolted the air. A flash of lightning. Diamond Eye lurched as if stung.

  Liang dived over the edge of the cliffs and hugged her sled to the cleft-riven stone, mindful of dragons falling from above. She swung around the side of the mountain and shot across the Black Moon’s throne. A dragon came at her. She veered. Fire washed over the sled. The dragon dissolved into ash. Liang swore. She banked and looked over her shoulder. The Black Moon was watching her. Laughing. She swerved sharply, flipped, shot back over his head and scattered him with glass-wrapped snips of the storm-dark. Blackness swirled around the half-god. His wreath of silver flickered and waned, and then flared bright. He arched and flexed and tipped back his head and roared. I see you, Chay-Liang. Weep, little one, for I am the storm-dark. Silver light poured from his mouth and burst in a cloud of glittering rain. Droplets of silver blossomed about him. Where they fell, the stone of the mountain top turned white and smooth and lit up like the sun. A flock of silver birds sprouted and took to the air, chasing after Liang and her sled like winged arrows. She dived behind the mountain cliffs again, out of sight. When she looked back, the birds were gone.

  How could they stop him?

  Zafir’s spear. That was how.

  She sought Diamond Eye then, and found him where blood rained from the sky. A dragon fell, back broken, another turned to stone. She rolled the sled and hurled lightning into Diamond Eye’s tail. The dragon wheeled and snapped at her as she flew in a corkscrew around him. She glanced back, half fearing she must have thrown Jasaan away into the sky, half terrified Zafir’s dragon would murder her, but Jasaan clung grimly on. He fired lightning at Zafir, misse
d and hit the dragon again. He reached for the glass tube with a rocket inside. Liang levelled the sled for him, a moment of stillness. Jasaan shouldered the glass. Sparks showered from the back of it. Her rocket shot out on a plume of fire and smoke.

  ‘Jasaan!’ A dragon roared at her. Liang fled, dived and dodged and wove. The dragon followed, closing fast, but then another smashed into it from above. They tumbled away down the face of the cliffs, a jumble of claws and teeth. Liang looked again for Zafir. Diamond Eye was being mobbed, seven or eight dragons taking turns to swoop and strafe, streaming flame, drowning the dragon-queen in fire.

  Kataros bounded from the Queen’s Gate, yelling at the Adamantine Men. They ignored her, spreading out in the rubble, taking shelter where they could, lifting their Taiytakei rockets, firing them in among the dragons. She saw one shoot through the middle of the swarm and on, up into the sky until its trail of smoke faltered and died. Another streaked low across the stones and exploded around the Black Moon. The silver light flashed and flared. More flew skyward. A rocket struck a dragon in the belly and burst, and a terrible black nothing spread across the dragon’s scales. Pieces of it disintegrated, annihilated by the touch of the storm-dark. The ruined dragon spiralled and dipped and fell. It crashed dead to the ground.

  Dragon after dragon came down as they tore at each other. The rockets from the Adamantine Men petered out and died. A handful of dragons flew in low, raking the stone with fire, burning everything that moved. The lightning throwers left by the night-skin witch might as well have been feathers. The Adamantine Men, with nothing left to save them, turned and ran.

  Kataros looked to the sky. She saw the witch chasing a red and gold monster. The sun glinted from something on the dragon’s back. Gleeful and grinning, Kataros reached into her blood and across the binding between them to stop the dragon-queen’s heart.

  Chay-Liang! The Taiytakei rocket struck Diamond Eye on the shoulder. A spray of black flew out like acid, burning gouging holes in Diamond Eye’s side. A streak flashed past Zafir and glanced her. Where it touched, glass and gold and dragonscale disintegrated into black dust and nothingness. It burned her skin to scars.