The King of the Crags mof-2

by Stephen Deas

  The sword sang as it swung through the air. It cut through King Valgar's flesh as though his neck was made of cheese – a slight resistance but nothing more. Soldiers dragged the body away. Vale left the head and the basket where they were. Let the last thing Shezira saw be the severed head of her greatest ally.

  In a blink she was on the block, held still, ready for him. He lifted the sword.

  'I didn't push Hyram, Night Watchman.' That's what she'd been telling him for weeks. Months. He wasn't interested. Her voice was ragged. I ought to be silent. Whatever she says, it changes nothing.

  'That is not my concern. The council has spoken.'

  'He would have died without me, Night Watchman.'

  'But he didn't, Your Holiness. He died with you.'

  Her voice broke. Was she sobbing? Whatever her last words were, Vale didn't hear them. Something about alchemists and Jeiros and Hyram and poison, all spilling out of her mouth in a garbled mess.

  He brought down the sword, and after that Shezira had nothing more to say.

  23

  Watching Things Burn

  They slipped between the mountains of the Purple Spur in twilight. They were safe then, Semian thought, in the few short hours either side of darkness. In the daylight hours they hid from Zafir's dragons flying overhead, losing themselves among the cavernous valley forests, between trees that made even their dragons seem small. Mostly they slept. At night they loitered near streams, drinking and feeding, never staying in one place for long. They could move about at night. The speaker's riders would be in their cups, their dragons safely tucked up in their eyries when the sun went down. Only the day belonged to the enemy.

  When they were close to the eastern end of the Spur, the palace end, they slipped out only in the dark, flying down through the valleys, skimming the earth, a few miles every day, no more. The dragons hated it, flying low in the dark. Their restless anxiety suffused their riders but Semian drove them on. They forayed out to the plains and left the Picker and the blood-mage a day's walk from the City of Dragons. They could do that now, for the blood-mage had served his purpose. Then they slipped away again, back into the safety of the peaks. The speaker never knew how close they were.

  And there they waited. Semian sat quietly while his new acolytes fretted around him. The Great Flame had brought him here, he knew that. He could feel it. Taking the Picker and Kithyr to the city to be their spies was an excuse, a cloak of shadows obscuring something greater. In truth, he was sorry to be rid of the blood-mage. A strange understanding had grown between them as the magician had worked to save his leg. The man served the Flame with a deep and strange passion, and Semian felt stronger when he was around.

  The Flame had called him though. Called him here. His leg was far from healed, would probably never heal, but there was no poison in the wound any more. The magician had done what was needed, and so, with regrets, Semian had let him go. We both have a greater purpose. That's what the mage had said, and Semian understood him perfectly. In his dreams, the priest with the burned hands came to him night after night, always the same. Wait. Be strong. There is a thing you have to do.

  On the day their food ran out, a mosquito landed on Semian's arm. Semian raised his hand to squash it and then paused. The mosquito was already bloated.

  When blood comes to you, you must heed it…

  He let it settle and bite him. Knowledge flowed into his veins. Shezira and Valgar are dead…

  There was more, much more. King Tyan, Jehal, Valmeyan. All good. All speaking of chaos, of the realms bleeding and begging to be saved. When he knew it all, Semian slapped his arm, crushing the mosquito in a smear of blood. Not his blood. Kithyr's blood. Mage's blood. He thought it might burn his skin but it didn't.

  He savoured what he knew, picking and choosing what he would share with the other Red Riders. They'd sworn themselves to Hyrkallan to avenge Hyram's death and free Shezira. They'd failed, but that wasn't really the point any more. They served the Great Flame now. They were his. Sixteen dragons, twenty riders.

  They would have to do something, he decided. He wanted to hurt Zafir again but that was getting difficult. She was becoming cautious. Her dragons were everywhere and so were the Adamantine Men. Drotan's Top, maybe. That was always a weak point. If he threw everything he had against it, perhaps…

  No. He smiled to himself as he realised what he must do, what he now knew he had come here to do. He ordered his riders into the air at dawn, but he didn't take them west and back towards the sanctuary of the Worldspine. He took them north, out over the Great Cliff at the Emerald Cascade and high over the arid plains beyond, into the Stone Desert and Queen Almiri's lands and to the Evenspire Road. They flew all day, closer to the sky than the earth, or so it seemed. The Great Flame watched over them and none of Zafir's riders happened their way. As the sun sank, he dipped low, so the tiny dots and lines on the land below grew into monstrous outcrops of dark red stone in the dusty earth and the shadows that stretched for miles behind them. And there, on the Evenspire Road, he saw what he was looking for. A great column of soldiers and wagons. Lots and lots of wagons.

  He led his riders in with the sun at their backs against a full legion of the Adamantine Men. Enough, if Prince Lai was right, to defeat more dragons than he had; but then Prince Lai had been talking about a pitched battle, a fight to take and hold ground where one side either fled or was destroyed. Semian had no interest in land. He didn't want the wagons or their precious cargo. All he wanted was to watch them burn.

  No, that wasn't right either. As he skimmed the flat and lifeless earth, as the beating of Vengeance's wings threw up great clouds of dust behind him, as the soldiers bellowed their alarms and ran to form their shield walls, he no longer cared. The wagons could burn unwatched as long as they burned. What he wanted was to fly, to fight, to rain fire from the sky. Nothing, nothing felt like this, to sit on the back of a monster whose wings reached out a hundred feet on either side yet who could turn like a swallow. Whose claws and teeth could crush men like eggs, whose tail could smash castles and swat horses as though they were flies. And yet who could pick up their shattered riders when they fell and then guard them with gentle patience.

  A scorpion bolt hissed over Vengeance's shoulder. A second hit the dragon in the chest, and Semian felt a surge of anger, anger that bloomed into exultation as he closed on his enemy. More bolts arrowed past him. Another pieced Vengeance's wing, more struck the riders behind him, but none came for him. He was charmed. Blessed. Shielded by the Great Flame.

  Teeth and claws and tail, but above and beyond all that…

  He flicked down the visor on his helm at the last second. He felt Vengeance tremble and heard the roar of fire. He tasted the air turn hot and scorched and he breathed deeply, sucking in the smell of war, of charred wood and seared flesh. He pressed himself flat on Vengeance's neck, closed his eyes and savoured it while Vengeance passed close over the heads of the soldiers, lashing them with his tail. As the dragon rose, Semian lifted his visor again. Vengeance wanted more, wanted to turn and strike and burn and strike and burn until everything was crushed, but Semian checked him. No.

  He looked over his shoulder as they flew away. At least four of his riders were dead, their dragons pulled to the ground by the weight of the training they were given as hatchlings, conditioned to defend their fallen riders no matter how broken they became. He had no idea how many Adamantine Men he'd slain. Not many, probably. But most of the wagons were smashed and ablaze, that was what mattered. The wagons carried potions. He knew that from the way they were guarded, knew that from his days at the alchemists' redoubt, the place where he'd been reborn.

  No more potions for the speaker. That would do very nicely. He led his dragons away.

  But it wasn't perfect. He hadn't counted the wagons. There had been perhaps as many as a dozen. A few had likely survived. Even one, it suddenly struck him, was too many.

  So after half an hour had passed, as the sun drooped across the horizon
, he led his dragons back across the desert and they did it all again. As things turned out, he did want to watch things burn after all.

  Three

  The White Dragon

  24

  The Worldspine and the Hills Beyond

  The deeper they flew into the Worldspine, the taller the mountains became. Jagged spikes and streaks of rock stuck out, black and brutal, from the monotony of snow below. The trees fell away, then the lakes, and then everything except the glacial ice and stone. They had nothing to eat and only melted snow and ice to drink. Each day they flew higher, until the air grew so thin that Kemir could barely lift an arm before he was out of breath. If he hadn't had Snow to keep him warm, the cold would have frozen him hard in an hour. After the first day, the wind of Snow's flight was so biting that he could hardly raise his face to see where they were going; when he did, even through the dragon-rider's visor he wore, he felt as though the skin was being flayed from his flesh by a thousand razors dipped in acid. After the first day he had cramps from clenching his muscles, from hugging Snow so tightly. By the end of the second he could barely move. And then there were the nights. If the days were cold, what were the nights?

  'Dragon, do you even know where are you going?' he slurred, when he decided for the hundredth time that he'd had enough. The roar of the wind whipped his words away but the dragon heard him. He wasn't sure quite how it worked, but as far as Kemir could tell, Snow could hear him think.

  To the other side, Kemir. Snow's thoughts were far away, lost in distant memories that she kept carefully to herself. She wasn't really paying attention and Kemir was slowly starting to recognise the difference.

  'I know the realms backwards and forwards, top to bottom. I've never heard of an other side to the Worldspine.'

  Whatever you have heard, Kemir, that is where we are going. Everywhere has an other side.

  'And what if it doesn't, eh?' he grumbled. 'What if it goes on like this for ever, getting taller and taller?'

  Then you will die of hunger and I will eventually follow. But nothing goes on for ever, Kemir.

  That made him laugh. 'Except you. You go on for ever. And it's all very well you talking about dying. Even when you die, don't you just come back again?'

  That is true.

  'Well I don't. You might live for ever, but I've just got what I've got, and I'd quite like to make the most of it.'

  How are you so sure, Kemir? He could feel Snow's thoughts moving back to him, growing warmer and closer. When she tried, she could almost pretend that she wasn't a monster.

  We are different, that is all. And we are not eternal. We were made, long ago, by sorcerers as old as the world. When that world ends, we will end with it, just as everything else.

  'It doesn't look like it's ending any time soon to me.'

  Between our lives in flesh and bone we walk the realms of the dead. I have seen things there. Things that should not be. They have broken loose of the sorcery that held them still. There is a hole where one of the four pillars of creation once stood. Tell me, Kemir, would you know the end of the world if you saw it?

  'I don't know, but all I see right now is white down and blue up, with some more white and blue coming up in the middle distance, and far, far away, probably a hundred miles from here, guess what I can see? Can you guess? Yes! More of exactly the same. How far have we flown since that lake, eh?' He had to hiss the words out between clenched teeth, not daring to breathe too deep lest the cold strip the flesh from his lungs.

  Not far enough to have reached the other side.

  Kemir gave a frustrated groan and shifted to press himself face down onto the dragon's scales, trying to keep warm. 'That's a dragon answer, not a real answer. Whether there's another side or not, I definitely won't go on for ever if we keep going like this much further.' There was no getting off though. He was stuck here, for better or for worse. Which means there's really not much left to do but grumble and gripe about it, is there?

  You are right, I am getting hungry again.

  There was a pause, and then Kemir snarled 'Was that a joke, dragon? Was that humour? Because if it was, it was a long way from being funny.' It had only been two days, but the ever-present driving freezing wind had almost pushed Nadira from his mind.

  It is the answer as you would have given it.

  'Yes.' Now Kemir chuckled. 'I suppose it is. Well that's me told then.' His anger faded. 'I hope you're right, dragon. I hope there is an end to this. It would really piss me off to have saved you only to have you starve to death.' And Nadira deserves better than that too. That would make her death about as pointless as it's possible to be.

  You did not save me, Kemir.

  'No? So everything would have been just dandy if you'd done what you wanted to do and stayed to watch Ash and the others burn from the inside? You, for some reason, would have been spared?' For a brief moment he risked a glance down. The wind tore at his face and froze his tears to his cheeks and all he could see was an endless featureless white.

  No. But you did not save me, Kemir. The ice-water of the lake did that.

  'And who dragged you to the lake, dragon?'

  I have said I am grateful for your advice, Kemir.

  'You don't sound it.' Every conversation eventually came to this, mainly because Kemir couldn't stay away from it. He'd saved the dragon's life. He knew it; the dragon knew it; Nadira knew it-had known it; probably even the alchemists knew it, but the dragon was damned if she was going to admit it. Even gratitude came with grudging reluctance. The whole idea that she might have been even a bit helped by a mere 'little one' seemed to be a severe embarrassment. Did dragons feel embarrassed? Did dragons feel anything? He didn't know, but this one certainly acted like she did. Stupid, really. What am I going to do? Run to all the other dragons, point my finger at her and laugh?

  Very hungry indeed, Kemir.

  Oh. Yes. Reading thoughts. Well then you know I'm still terrified of you, dragon. In my own strange little way. And I still despise you for what you did.

  Snow, Kemir. The name your kind gave me is Snow. It is not my true name, but it will suffice.

  'Just don't waste me, Snow. You need me. Don't waste me like you wasted Nadira. You need what I know.' Yes, and I'll keep telling myself that. Eventually at least one of us might believe it. Ancestors! What am I doing here?

  Staying alive. That's what he was doing, even if he had to remind himself from time to time. Not taking his choice of either freezing or starving beside a glacier lake somewhere in the depths of the Worldspine, that's what he was doing. Living and breathing. Desperately existing. Just like he'd always done. Waiting for his first chance to get off and run away.

  You know I cannot let you go.

  He had no idea how far they flew. They might have been in the air for three days and nights, or else he might have missed one in the general numbness of cold and hunger and it might have been four. He was dizzy with fatigue by the time he noticed that the air was warmer again. When he next bothered to look, he saw that the mountains were shrinking. There were lakes and rivers below them again, dark little lines in the shadows of their valleys, bright flashes of light where they caught the sun. As the dragon let herself glide ever lower, gleaming white snowfields rose up to either side of them. They flew between tufts of cloud snagged on jagged black peaks that fell away into grey stone slopes and black valleys filled with trees. Snow flew on and the mountains shrank still more, fading into crumpled hills and then into an endless sea of rolling forest. Kemir, too exhausted and ravenous to think, felt the dragon's hunger mingling with his own. As the trees spread out further below them, he felt an irritation growing inside him, too. Snow again.

  Do you see anything for me to eat, Kemir?

  Kemir peered down over Snow's shoulder. 'All I see is trees.' His eyes were too tired to focus, so all he saw most of the time was a great big dark blob that was the ground.

  I do not like trees. It is hard to find prey.

  Kemir digested that.
'That's why we outsiders build our villages deep in the valley forests,' he told her. 'So you and your dragon-riders won't find us. And up on stilts so that the snappers won't eat us while we're sleeping.'

  They found a river. Snow dropped to follow it, still far above the treetops but close enough that Kemir could make out the individual trees. He looked wistfully to either side, out across the misty green expanse. Not just trees but a great forest like the Raksheh Forest of the realms. He saw deer too, coming out to drink at the edge of the water. Too small for Snow, but perfect for a man with a bow. He closed his eyes. I could live here. I could hunt and build a shelter and stay out in the wilderness. Just let me off here and leave me be. I don't mind being alone. Just let me rest and sleep and have something to eat. Leave me be with my ghosts.

  No. Snow flew on until the green hills petered away and the river drained into a lake.

  Look.

  Kemir leaned forward and peered down at the water. He could see the ripples of a tiny boat and, as Snow dropped closer, he made out a single person sitting in it. Excitement gripped him. 'Land!'

  Why? There is only one of them and they are small and skinny. Barely a mouthful.

  'It's a boat, dragon. And a person. Where there is one of us there will be more, and where you find people you'll find cattle.'

  Is that so? Your kjnd have changed then, for that is not how I remember the world.

  Without warning, Snow tucked in her wings. They plunged out of the sky and Kemir was suddenly too busy holding on to see what she was doing. He might have been strapped into a dragon-knight's saddle, but he still couldn't quite bring himself to trust the thing. He gripped Snow's scales, fingers rigid as they levelled out and skimmed across the lake. He caught a glimpse of the boat again, straight in front of them, then Snow suddenly started to climb. Kemir pitched forward, smacking his face into the dragon's back. He thought he heard a scream, but he couldn't be sure.