by Stephen Deas
‘I cannot allow that, My Lord.’
‘You cannot deny the realms would be better for it,’ growled Hyrkallan through gritted teeth.
Vale didn’t move. ‘I cannot allow that, My Lord,’ he said again. He spoke slowly and carefully. Jehal took a deep breath and muttered a prayer to thank whatever ancestors had made the Night Watchman so blindly committed to his duty.
‘Night Watchman, Lord Hyrkallan has raised a blade against the speaker,’ he gasped when he’d recovered enough composure to speak. ‘I believe that makes his life forfeit, does it not?’
‘No injury has been done,’ snapped Vale.
Jehal snorted. ‘I am flat on my back. I have bruises from my fall.’ Ah well. Not as blindly committed as you could be then.
‘You fell because you are a cripple.’
And whose fault is that? Fury helped Jehal find the strength to get back to his feet. ‘His intent was clear, Night Watchman.’ He could see Hyrkallan’s blood was up. The fool actually wanted to fight. With a bit of luck Vale would have to kill him if it came to blows. ‘See his face. He thinks he can beat you.’
‘No.’ Jeiros. ‘There will be no fighting here.’
Hyrkallan sneered. ‘Hyram named you Viper, but I am reminded more of our desert lizards whose bite is slow poison. They strike and then they must cower and hide for days as they track their prey to its death.’ He leaned a little closer.
Vale didn’t budge. ‘Where there is a crown there must be someone to wear it, My Lord. We can all think what we wish of King Jehal, but until a council of kings decrees otherwise, or until Speaker Zafir returns from the dead, he wears that crown. It is the crown I am sworn to defend, not whoever may wear it.’
Until Speaker Zafir returns from the dead . . . That was why Jeiros was being so secretive. He doesn’t want Vale to know! Oh my! How delicious!
Jehal’s head was spinning. For some reason, he had an ally. Why Jeiros was helping him was another matter entirely. He spat on the bridge in front of Hyrkallan’s feet. ‘Shall we have our dragons roar and shriek at each other until we are deaf as well as stupid, or are we done with waving swords and threats? If we are, then perhaps we should get on with what we all came here to do. Otherwise . . .’ He turned to face King Sirion. ‘You have been quiet, Your Holiness. Do you have anything you wish to add? I will be quite pleased to stand on this bridge and trade insults with anyone who cares to play for as long as you wish. I imagine I will quite enjoy it.’
‘Enough!’ Jeiros banged his staff on the bridge. Jehal froze, mid-thought. Even Hyrkallan flinched, if only with surprise because the alchemist usually spoke so quietly. Only Vale seemed unmoved.
Jeiros stood between Vale and Hyrkallan. Gingerly, he pushed both of their swords away. ‘I have words for you all. You will all listen to me now, because I am the Master of the Order of the Scales. We are the ones who tame your dragons. We are the ones who make them and we are the ones who, if we wish, can break them. What are you, any of you, My Lords, without your dragons?’ He looked at Jehal ‘What becomes of you, Your Holiness? What do you become without your dragons? Nothing.’ He spun to face Hyrkallan and Sirion before Jehal could answer. ‘What of you, my noble kings? How long will you rule with no dragons at your backs? There are rogue dragons loose in the realms again. My order lies crippled at their talons already. And all you can do is war among yourselves. Madness! You will doom us all. And so you will stop.’
Sirion snorted. ‘One rogue, barely even full grown, if she’s even still alive . . .’
‘One?’ Jeiros almost screamed in his face. ‘One rogue dragon, is it? I shudder at where Zafir has brought us. One became four more than two months ago, Sirion! You would know this if you ever attended council, even what passed for council under Zafir! Six weeks have passed since King Jehal broke the Red Riders, yet they were not completely destroyed. Where are the ones who survived?’ He pointed at Queen Almiri. ‘Did they return to you, Your Holiness, you whose greed for power and lust for revenge succoured them?’ He whirled towards Jehal. ‘Or you. Do you have them in your care, after betraying your lover and your speaker at Evenspire?’ Now Hyrkallan. ‘Does Queen Jaslyn have them in her eyries, the mad queen who awakens dragons for fun? Must I remind you of how the Syuss fell? You are all kings and queens. We have told you all there is to know of dragons. Yet you do not listen.’ He growled. ‘So I will tell you this: you will find a way to make a peace between you. There will be no more war. If you cannot do this, I will kill your dragons. All of them.’
Behind his own dull outrage at such an idea, Jehal amused himself watching Hyrkallan’s face. He almost choked. Sirion wasn’t any less shocked.
‘You will do no such thing,’ growled Sirion.
‘I can and I will, Your Holiness, if I am given no choice. And if the alternative is for dragons to awaken across the realms, you will all help me, and willingly too unless you are fools.’
‘They don’t look very willing.’ Jehal smirked.
‘Would you rather lose half your dragons or lose them all and everything else as well?’ Jeiros shrugged. ‘None of you are that blind.’
‘The duty of your order is to tame these dragons, alchemist,’ snapped Almiri.
‘No. The duty of my order is to preserve the realms. If I must slay dragons, that is what I will do.’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ said Vale very softly. ‘Your Holinesses, if Jeiros commands it done and you do not obey, I will send my men by stealth into your eyries. We may not understand potions, but we will bring hammers and we will smash every egg you own and any who stand in our way.’
Jeiros shook his head in frustration. ‘Enough, Night Watchman! Enough threats.’ He turned back to Sirion and Hyrkallan. ‘The damage done by the white rogue was bad enough. The Order lost many alchemists and much more besides. The caves where we make our potions were damaged by the smoke from their fires. We can barely make enough; our considerable stockpile was completely destroyed, and now from every eyrie in the realms my alchemists complain that they are slowly running out. Weeks of it were destroyed by the Red Riders. More was destroyed at Evenspire.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought we were finished with this madness, but now King Valmeyan has come out of the mountains and taken the Pinnacles. It must stop and it must stop now.’ The glint of murder in Hyrkallan’s face was a delight, but Jeiros met it with steel of his own. ‘Do what you will, but the order is already given. There will be no more sent to any of your eyries until this ends.’
Beside him, Vale grinned. ‘There’s always hammers,’ he said.
Jehal looked from one face to the next to the next. Almiri showed only outrage and violence. Hyrkallan’s jaw was set tight. Sirion’s face was pinched. Jehal smiled at them. ‘As speaker,’ he said with careful slowness, ‘I will agree to whatever our grand master suggests. If you will do so too.’
‘And who—’ Hyrkallan started to take a step forward, but Sirion put a hand on his shoulder.
‘You have given us a lot to think about, Grand Master – dragons roaming free, the Mountain King out from his crags. Does Valmeyan know you plan to murder his dragons? Does he acquiesce to this? I see from your face the answer is no. So. Here is what I will offer you. We have been here for three days and a fourth won’t trouble us. We will retire to consider what you’ve said. Go back to your palace. Return in two days. You will have our answer then.’ He looked at Jehal. ‘Since you call yourself speaker, you can act like one. Send this word to the other realms and call them to council. We will see this matter to its end.’
Sirion, Hyrkallan and Almiri turned and walked away towards their dragons. Jehal was left with Jeiros and Vale to watch them go.
‘Well,’ said Jehal, once they were gone. ‘That went well, don’t you think? In that they didn’t murder me out of hand. I suppose I’m quite surprised that you’re still alive too after that outburst. You don’t think they’re actually going to let you kill their dragons, do you?’ I’m the speaker of the nine realms, an
d I have to resort to being the court jester to be heard. Thank the Great Flame that Meteroa’s not here. I’d never hear the last of it.
Carefully, trying not to look at the water roaring beneath his feet, he hobbled back across the bridge. Slowly, one plank at a time. Getting back onto the solid ground, where Aruch and the dragons were waiting, he leaned against the charred trunk of a dead tree and caught his breath. His head was already filling with plots and schemes, with trajectories of possibilities. Not that he particularly wanted them; what he particularly wanted was to lie down somewhere in a dark room and chew on Dreamleaf until the pains running up and down the inside of his thigh went away.
He took a deep breath. ‘When I was little and my father used to tell me stories about Vishmir and Narammed and of the first of the alchemists and the last of the blood mages, there was one story about Narammed’s spear. The spear used to belong to a wizard-king made of quicksilver . . .’
Jeiros looked at him. He seemed sad and drained. ‘The Silver King. A long time ago, when there were no alchemists and no mages and no kings and no queens, when all the world was just men and dragons, and the men lived in fear, and the dragons ate the men and burned their homes. Did your stories start like that?’
‘Yes.’ Despite himself, Jehal smiled at the memory. ‘Something like that. And then the silver wizard-king comes and promises to make everything right and save the men from the dragons. He says he has a magic potion that will make the dragons obey the commands of the men, if only the dragons can be made to drink it. The men ask the wizard how he will make the dragons come so that they can drink his magic spell, and the wizard shows them his spear, Narammed’s spear, the Adamantine Spear, and he bangs the end of it three times on the ground. All across the world every dragon hears him call and stops at once what it was doing and takes to wing to answer.’ He clapped his hands. ‘You have to admit that would make finding your rogues a lot easier, master Jeiros, if it happened to be true.’
The alchemist sighed. ‘And Narammed slew a dragon with a single blow from that same spear, they say, at Dragondale. Yes, if those stories were all true, that would a fine way to solve all our problems at once. A very handy spear that would be. Jehal, do you think we haven’t tried? Of course we have. Sadly, no one of the Order has ever wrung any magic from the Speaker’s Spear, not one little drop of it. If it was ever more than unusually sharp, those days are gone.’
‘And yet it’s gone missing. That makes me uneasy. You hadn’t forgotten, had you?’
‘Which is more likely, Jehal? That the spear was stolen from under our noses or that Zafir took it with her to war?’
‘I went down to where it should have been. I found a candle dropped on the floor.’
Jeiros shook his head. ‘Doubtless Zafir holds it even now.’ He walked away, back towards Wraithwing and the other dragons. Jehal watched him go.
I don’t think so. But I’ve told you who took it. And if it’s just a spear . . . There was no reason to think that Jeiros would be wrong about something like that. Yet a blood-mage had saved his life to bargain for the spear, and the life of a dragon-king was surely worth more than a piece of mere metal . . .
‘You missed a bit,’ said Vale at Jehal’s shoulder. ‘The men ask the wizard how he will make the dragons drink his potions. And the wizard tells them that he won’t. And then he throws up his arms and makes his spell and tells the men that it’s them who get to drink, so the magic will get into their blood. And all they have to do is wait until the dragons come, and then let the dragons eat them and the spell will became a part of the dragons for ever. That’s all. And if enough of them say yes and are willing to die, then the dragons will be enslaved, but if there’s not enough, it’s men who will be slaves. And the men who did say yes to that, Your Holiness, they were my ancestors.’
Jehal nodded. He pushed himself away from his tree. His hands came away black from the charred bark. Wherever he went, wherever he looked, the signs of dragons were never far away. He hobbled after Jeiros. Maybe the alchemist was right. A cull. Of all the dragons of his enemies. That would do nicely. ‘That doesn’t seem very likely, Night Watchman. What seems much more likely is that your ancestors weren’t daft enough to drink dragon poison or whatever it was and then get themselves eaten. Tricky, I imagine, to father a child after you’ve been eaten.’
Vale didn’t seem offended. He simply shook his head. ‘No. But I would not expect you to understand.’
Maybe he was right, though. After all, there was an old and mostly forgotten law that an Adamantine Man could help himself to any woman he could get hold of before he went into battle. Maybe that was how they survived. Or maybe there wasn’t a law, just an old drinking song. He whistled to himself as he limped across the black earth. As he did, he heard the Night Watchman singing quietly along.
‘I fight dragons, I have no name, but I’m a warrior so there’s no shame
Off to battle I’ll soon be dead, but while I live I’ll share my bed
Wife or daughter, maiden, crone, lie with me, I’ll make you moan
My spear is huge, its shaft is hard, its point is savage and battle-scarr’d
Squirm and scream and shout out loud, I’ll give you sons to make you proud.’
They fell to silence. For a second Jehal paused. He turned back and stared at Vale. The Night Watchman was miles away, lost in thought. When he saw Jehal looking at him, he bowed. Jehal shrugged and shook his head. As perks went, that didn’t sound bad at all. At least not until you considered the almost certain fiery death that followed.
‘I did not see Zafir carry the spear to war, Your Holiness,’ said Vale quietly.
‘Then perhaps you should look for it.’ Jehal climbed laboriously up the ladder onto Wraithwing’s back. ‘A blood-mage, Vale. Look for a blood-mage who calls himself Kithyr.’
He saw the Night Watchman’s eyes, saw that the name meant something. Typical. Everyone knows more than me.
He closed his eyes to doze as the dragon took him home. Where a second messenger from the Pinnacles was waiting.
18
Needs Must
A lesser man might have reached the top panting and gasping for breath, or else taken the hundred-odd steps at a more gentle pace. Vale Tassan, Night Watchman, commander of the Adamantine Men, took them briskly and arrived at the top pleasantly refreshed. Even before he reached the roof, the smells came down to greet him. Wet stone, hot steel, oil. On the flat space on top of the Gatehouse tower a score of scorpions stood to attention in the rain. He looked up at the grey iron sky, a habit all Adamantine Men learned. Always look up. Always look out for dragons. In this weather he could barely even see the City of Dragons at the bottom of the hill, but he looked up anyway. A perfect day for war.
The top of the tower was large enough that a dragon could have stood there and spread its wings, if the roof had had the strength to bear the weight. Dozens of his soldiers stood, still and stoic in the rain, close to their weapons. He cast his eyes across the scorpions, across the men around them. They were ready. As ready as you could be for dragons. He would have preferred a heavy stone roof, but the dragon-scale canopies erected over the weapons would have to do. When it came to tooth and claw and tail, they might as well have been made of paper, but they’d keep the fire at bay.
Satisfied with what he saw, the Night Watchman ambled across the roof to the observatory in the corner, a slender and ornate stone dome amid the machines of war. He knocked sharply and pushed open the door without waiting for an answer. This side of the tower belonged to the alchemists. On another day he might have paused, perhaps shown a little more respect. On another day he might have stopped inside the door and taken a moment to look around at the maps, the charts of the stars, the Taiytakei farscopes and other strange instruments he didn’t understand.
On another day. Today he simply shook the rain from his armour, sat down in the only chair in the room and growled a reluctant greeting at the man who had summoned him.
‘Y
ou’re in a surly mood.’ Jeiros looked tired. Drained. Vale had seen that look before. The look of a man engaged in battle and slowly but steadily losing. Speaker Hyram, towards the end he’d had that look. And others before him.
‘My mood is whatever the realms require of me.’ Vale tried to smile. It wasn’t easy after what he’d had to do today. Letting Hyrkallan gut Jehal on Narammed’s Bridge would have been the easiest thing in the world. I might have given him a round of applause. So why did I stop him? Duty, that’s why. Duty and nothing else. Of course I’m in a surly mood.
Jeiros winced. ‘Don’t, Vale. Now you look surly and constipated.’
‘Flying on the back of the Viper’s dragons leaves me queasy, master alchemist.’ Vale let his face fall sour again. ‘Never mind me. You look like a rabbit cornered by a pack of hungry foxes. You called me here. What do you want?’
Jeiros picked up a decanter and poured himself a glass of wine. ‘When Grand Master Bellepheros vanished, it fell to me to keep the realms safe. A light touch here, a few words there. A little guidance. That’s how we work. That’s all we’ve ever needed.’ He tossed something across the room. ‘I suppose you’d better read this for yourself. You’ll find out soon enough.’ Vale plucked it out of the air. Dragon bone, hollowed out into a case for maps or scrolls. Ornately carved.
‘A pretty present.’ He shrugged. ‘I imagine you don’t get many gifts. I certainly don’t.’ He smirked. ‘Speakers get lots of gifts, but I doubt Jehal much liked his last one. Jehal and Meteroa are two snakes from the same nest.’
