'Do you—'

'I see it,' muttered Kemir. 'I was just thinking that the one good thing about this mud was that nothing big enough to eat us would be as daft as we are and try to walk through it.'

'It's on firm ground over there.'

'Oh good. Let's walk towards the half-ton man-eating ravening beast then.'

The snapper stepped into the mud again. This time it didn't withdraw. Instead it took another step, and then another. Sollos looked about, but trying to run away wasn't going to work. Most people faced with a snapper simply ended up eaten. The ones who survived usually did so by climbing a tree and managing not to starve to death before the snappers got bored.

Still, Sollos had a bow powerful enough to take down a dragon-knight. So if he hit the snapper in the right place ... Except it was going to charge, any second, and his bow still wasn't strung. His hands slipped towards his waist, and to the two long knives he carried there. Waste of time really, facing a snapper with anything short of a lance. He could forget about his armour too. A snapper could bite through anything short of steel plate, and its back claws were worse. Even so, he couldn't bring himself to simply roll over and die. There was always a chance. He could always get lucky ...

They hunt in packs, remember.

The mud would slow it down, though. From moving like lightning to merely very, very fast...

Shit. I'm going to die.

The snapper opened its jaws and charged, and time seemed to slow. Even through the mud, Sollos felt the ground shake with its each step. He dropped the bow and pulled out his knives. It was coming for him. For a split second he seemed completely unable to move.

At the last possible moment, his arms and legs finally remembered what they were for. He didn't bother trying to step out of the way, but let himself fall sideways, out of the monster's path. As he moved, he twisted. One knife jabbed straight at the snapper's face, trying to distract it. The other arced in a vicious backhand towards where he hoped the creature's throat would be.

All completely wasted. Maybe if it hadn't been for the mud ...

The first knife missed. The second hit something and was wrenched out of Sollos's hand, and then the snapper smashed into him, the sheer force ripping him out of the mud and tossing him into the air. Teeth tore at his shoulder. There was a sharp pain from one of his ankles, and then he landed on his back, hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs. The snapper was flying towards him, all teeth and claws. And yet there was something not quite right about it...

He thrust the knife up towards the monster with both hands and closed his eyes. The snapper fell onto him, jaws gaping. He felt a searing flash of pain, and then everything went mercifully black.

He was in a pool, deep in a cave, far beneath the Worldspine. In one of the secret places that only the Outsiders knew. The water was icy cold. The darkness was absolute and the silence immense. He was alone. He was alone because this was what his clan did when a boy became a man. Except his clan was gone, and he was more alone than anyone had ever been. Only him and Kemir ...

Something snatched his leg. He didn't feel it coming, and it dragged him down so fast that he didn 't even have time to breathe. He vanished

with barely a ripple and san\ like a stone. The water became colder and colder until it began to burn, and then the darkness blossomed into light, and the water wasn't water, but white hot fire, stripping his flesh and searing his bones to ash, and there was a face, the face of a dragon.

Something slammed into him. He opened his eyes and the world and the pain came flooding in. He was lying on a damp dirt floor. Everything hurt. His cheek was pressed into the toe of someone's boot.

'Morning,' said a voice that was both too loud and too far away. His head hurt. He started to retch, but that sent such spasms of pain through his ribs that he stopped. He'd seen someone once, in Queen Shezira's eyrie, caught by the idle swish of a dragon's tail. They'd flown about a hundred feet through the air and they hadn't got up again. If they had, Sollos thought, this is how they'd have felt.

Unless ...

What happened when you died? He remembered the snapper well enough, so that had to be what had happened. The dragon-priests said that everyone went to the great dragon in the sky to be forged into new souls in the great cosmic fire. But the dragon-priests were mad.

'Are you going to lie there all day?'

'Kemir?' He tried to move. Bad idea. 'The snapper ...'

'Got an arrow through its head. And so did its friend.'

'This really hurts.' For a moment Sollos had the almost overwhelming urge to get up and look himself over, just to make sure there were no bits missing. One bite was all it took to lose an arm or a leg, after all.

Even the thought of moving triggered fresh spasms of pain. 'My ribs ...'

'Best I could tell there's nothing broken. Nasty wound on your shoulder. That'll need seeing to. The rest of you looks all right. You took a mighty thump when that thing crashed into you, though. You're probably bruised all over. Lucky it didn't land on top of you.'

'It did. Didn't it?'

'Half and half. It sort of bounced off you and ended up lying to one side. Otherwise only the ancestors know how I'd have pulled you out of that mud. Bloody stuff.'

Very slowly, Sollos rolled onto his back. He started to take a deep breath and then quickly thought better of it. 'My head hurts. Got any water?' He frowned. Instinctively, his hands reached for his knives, if only to make sure they were still there. They weren't. 'Where are we?'

'We're in the Outsider settlement, my friend. Home sweet home.'

'Where are my knives?'

'All right. We're prisoners in the Outsider settlement. That would be more accurate.'

Sollos blinked. Carefully, he looked around. Walls made of ill-fitted planks of wood surrounded him. Soft sunlight filtered in through the cracks. 'Prisoners? Why?'

Kemir shuffled his feet. 'There were ... words.'

'What did you say?'

'Oh, nothing to get so upset about. I blundered into the place in the small hours of the morning, which probably didn't help, and since I had you slung over my back, I wasn't in much of a position to argue. And they asked if we had anything to do with the dragon they'd seen earlier, and I said yes, and they asked if the dragon-men were going to come back and burn the place, and so I said yes, probably, since that's what they usually do, either that or the rider was just scouting for a good place to buy dried fish, which, let's face it, was about the only thing this lot have to trade. They didn't take that too well.'

Sollos rolled his eyes. He could do that, he discovered, without anything hurting.

'Don't get all crotchety! Like I said, it was the middle of the night and I woke them all up, so they were pretty grumpy. All right, I might have shouted at them at bit as well, but I'd been carrying you through that lucking mud for hours. I'd lost count

of how many times I fell over and I'd had enough. Bloody stuff was bad enough when it was just me.'

'All right, all right.' Sollos forced himself to ignore the pain. He took a deep breath, sat up and then stood. And nearly fell down again.

Kemir caught him.

'Shit! You didn't tell me I'd broken my ankle.'

'Really?' Kemir bent down. 'I didn't spot that. Let me have a look.'

'No! Don't ...' He hopped back and forth, trying to keep his balance. 'Ow!'

'That's not broken. That's just a sprain.'

'How do you know? Ow! Stop that!'

'See. No grating bones. Strap that up and you'll be fine. Well, maybe in a couple of days.'

Standing on one leg wasn't working out. Sollos tried sitting down, but then his ribs shrieked at him. He ended up flat out across the floor, back where he'd started. 'So we found the settlement, and now we're stuck here.'

'That's it.' Kemir shrugged. He gave the walls a good shake. The hut seemed ready to fall apart. 'Not exactly stuck. We can leave whenever we want, and I doubt they'd stop us either. Of course, with no bows, no knives, no armour and you being in the state you're in, we wouldn't get very far. Not that we'd know which way to go in the first place.'

'That's fantastic, Kemir. Thank you.'

Kemir snorted. 'Better than being eaten by snappers, I thought.'

'One way to look at it, I suppose.'

'Not as dull as picking our arses back in the valley with those stuck-up knights, either.'

'Since you put it like that.'

Kemir lay on the floor next to Sollos. Together, they stared up at the ceiling. 'I did pick up one thing while we were all busy shouting at each other.'

'What's that?'

'Rider Semian wasn't the first dragon they've seen in these parts lately.'

'Really?'

'Could be they've seen another. Could be it was white.'

'Could be they want to give us our stuff back and then show us where it is?'

'Could be they don't.'

For a long time they lay in silence, looking up at the thatch of reeds.

'Lot of spiders up there,' said Kemir after a while. 'You know, we could

'No.'

'But there's always—'

'Certainly not!'

'Right.'

Sollos could hear men talking outside. Mostly they were the loud confident voices of people going about their normal business, but he could hear whispers too, much closer. Eavesdroppers. He knew exactly what Kemir was thinking, but that was a last resort, something to be kept to themselves until they truly needed it. When they were tying him to a stake and lighting the pyre around his ankles, then he might tell them about the dead dragon.

17

Bellepheros

 

Bellepheros, grand master alchemist, bowed low. Prince Jehal sat on King Tyan's throne. Queen Zafir was to one side of him and Queen Shezira to the other, and then King Narghon and King Silvallan. Both of Queen Shezira's daughters were there, and Bellepheros counted at least a dozen other princes and princesses, not to mention almost every lord or lady of any significance within King Tyan's realm. All here for the wedding.

And this is what passes for a discreet audience?

Strictly, Bellepheros answered only to the Speaker of the Realms. Strictly, no one in this room had any power over him. St rictly ...

'Your Holinesses.' He bowed to each king and queen in turn. 'Your Highnesses.' Now to the princes and princesses. 'I have been charged by the Speaker of the Realms to conduct my sacred duty. I have completed this charge, and now it is my duty to report to you, Your Highness,' another bow, this time for Jehal, 'on what I have found.'

Prince Jehal smiled and looked bored. 'We're all gagging to hear it, Master Bellepheros. Tell me first, though, so that we all might hear it — have you had every cooperation from my eyrie-master?'

Bellepheros bowed again. 'Yes, Your Highness. Every cooperation.'

'Have you been able to question every one of the men who serve him?'

'Yes, Your Highness.'

'Has anyone been missed? Has there been anyone you've sought and not found?'

'No, Your Highness.'

'And what of Queen Zafir's men? Her Holiness has remained here as our guest since her mother's death. She has not permitted a single one of her riders, her keepers or any of her men or dragons to return to her own eyrie. Has their cooperation also been complete? Have you been able to question every one of the men who serve her too?'

'Yes, Your Highness.'

Prince Jehal clasped his hands in front of him and leaned forward. 'So in short, Master Bellepheros, you have left no stone unturned, and no obstacle has been placed in your way?'

'The only people I have not questioned under the smoke are yourself and your eyrie-master.'

Jehal nodded. 'Those of royal blood. But you have questioned us yourself, without the smoke, and you have found nothing to contradict what we have told you.'

'That is the case, Your Highness.' Inside, Bellepheros felt the first pangs of unease. Jehal was backing him into a corner.

'So then. To your findings. The speaker sent you here because he believed that Queen Aliphera's death could not have been an accident. Was it?'

Bellepheros smiled. 'Now that I cannot say, Your Highness, for that is not what the speaker charged me to learn. My sacred charge here was to determine whether any other man or woman had a hand in her death.'

'There's a difference?'

'A subtle one, Your Highness. And I shall report to the speaker that Queen Aliphera harnessed and loaded her dragon herself on the day that she died. All her fixings and fastenings were checked by one of her own Scales. I have questioned that man myself under the truth-smoke, and he is innocent of any wrongdoing. I am convinced that no one tampered with Queen Aliphera's mount before she left. Indeed, it seems that the late queen was unusually involved in seeing to her dragon herself on that particular day.'

'Did someone kill her or not?' growled Prince Jehal.

'It is a conundrum, Your Highness. I have every reason to think that Queen Aliphera left Clifftop with her harness fully secured. If there was an accident or, for that matter, any malice, it did not originate within your eyrie, Your Highness. I assure you, I will make this very plain to the speaker. Also, there is no possibility that Queen Aliphera was attacked while in the air. The evidence is absolute on this. Her harness was not cut or torn or burned. It was simply undone.'

Jehal cocked his head. 'You haven't actually answered my question, Master Bellepheros. Did someone kill her?'

Bellepheros shrugged. 'I cannot say, one way or the other. No one saw her fall. She had sent her riders away. It is not my place to speculate as to why she would do such a thing, or what she was doing when she fell.' He'd given the truth-smoke to almost every man and woman in Clifftop and found out nothing, except that the queen had insisted on preparing her mount herself. He looked around the room, looking for clues in the faces of the assembled dragon-kings and -queens. Still nothing. Nothing at all. He sighed, and bowed again, this time to Queen Zafir. 'I am sorry, Your Holiness.'

Queen Zafir gave him a curt nod.

Prince Jehal was looking annoyed.

'So you will not say whether this was murder, or that it was an accident. So in fact you say nothing at all, and you have not discharged the duty placed upon you by our speaker despite every possible assistance.'

Bellepheros bowed deeply. 'My apologies, Your Highness.' Understandable, he supposed, that Prince Jehal wanted this to be over, for him to stand up and say it had been an accident. It would be the easy thing too, and yet he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Call me a perfectionist, but something is not quite as it should be. 'If the speaker is not satisfied and demands an opinion that I cannot substantiate, Your Highness, I will say that Queen Aliphera took her own life.'

Queen Zafir almost spat at him. 'And why would she do that?'

Bellepheros bowed again. 'I cannot say. What 1 can say is that the actions that Queen Aliphera took when leaving Clifftop lead me to suspect she took something with her and that she intended no one to know of it.' He glanced at Prince Jehal. 'Many riders took to the sky that day. Even your eyrie master, Your Highness, and eyrie masters, in my experience, do not leave their eyries when they have visitors. Not without a pressing reason. Eyrie-Master Lord Meteroa flew that day, and when he returned, he also took great pains to conceal something. One might speculate that Queen Aliphera meant to meet with someone in absolute secrecy, and that she took with her something of great value.'

Jehal sneered at him. 'And what might that have been, Grand Master Alchemist?'

'I cannot even speculate, Your Highness.'

'Then have a care with what you imply, alchemist. Trysts? Secret meetings? Suicide? You will find yourself suggesting that my uncle and Queen Aliphera were lovers next.' Which drew a laugh from some of the less civilised, since it was well understood that eyrie-master Lord Meteroa's preferences lay firmly elsewhere. Jehal waved him away, and Bellepheros was glad to go.

Although for now he couldn't go very far. Jehal's wedding was only days away, and the ritual litany of feasts and games and extravagance was already well under way. Bellepheros would have much preferred to disappear to Clifftop among the dragons, or else hire himself a carriage and get back to his laboratories in the Adamantine Palace. But he was grand master, and that meant that Prince Jehal had to invite him or risk being rude. Which meant he had to accept, lest he cause any offence. He had exactly long enough to change from one set of clothes into another, and then he was back among the same kings and queens and princes and princesses as before, only now they were in a completely different part of the palace and dancing. No one paid him any attention now, which suited him well enough. He would wait, he decided, until he could disengage and retire. Tomorrow, he would hire that carriage to take him back to the Adamantine Palace. He wasn't entirely sure whether he was invited to stay for

the wedding or not, but he could always cite his overriding duty to the speaker.

'Grand Master. A pleasure to see you.' Bellepheros jumped. He looked around. Queen Shezira was standing next to him, along with a lady knight he vaguely knew. Her knight-marshal, perhaps?

He bowed, deeply. 'Your Holiness.'

'How are you finding the entertainment?'

'Most impressive, Your Holiness.' Of all the people here, Shezira was the one he least wanted to talk to. She would be the next speaker, and thus the one to whom the order answered, (renerally, history had taught that grand masters should keep a very low profile when a new speaker was imminent.

'You seemed very sure of yourself when you reported to Prince Jehal. Up to a point. And then very unsure of yourself.'

He bowed again. 'I am confident, Your Holiness, that no sabotage occurred in Prince Jehal's eyrie. What happened after Queen Aliphera left Clifftop, I cannot say.'

'Well I'm quite sure that wasn't the answer Prince Jehal wanted to hear. Especially that nonsense at the end. Nor will it be what Speaker Hyram wants to hear, for that matter.'

Bellepheros blinked. 'I do not understand, Your Holiness.'

'Oh come, Grand Master. Prince Jehal wishes you to report that Queen Aliphera's death was an accident. Speaker Hyram wishes to hear that it was murder, preferably with Jehal found crouched over her bloody corpse with the knife still in his hand. You give us neither.'

A chill ran down Bellepheros's spine. Even in his most informal reports he would never have been so direct. For the second time in as many hours he felt himself thoroughly cornered. He bowed once more. 'I give you the truth as well as I can uncover it, Your Holiness.'

Shezira nodded, already losing interest. 'And let us make up our own minds, which we would have done anyway. I'm sure you tried your best, Grand Master.'

Her tone was patronising, and Bellepheros had already taken a few cups of wine. 'I have a concern, Your Holiness, that I must share with you,' he said. There. The words were out. No going back now.

'And what is that, Grand Master?'

'I understand that one of your dragons is missing.'

It took a moment for Queen Shezira to realise that they weren't talking about Queen Aliphera any more. Bellepheros savoured it. She gave a very slight nod. 'Yes. That is true.'

'Your Holiness, you are a queen of a dragon realm, and so you know the true purpose of our order. We are in every eyrie. We keep meticulous records of the dragon bloodlines and mix the potions needed to make them grow into their different breeds. However, our most vital and most secret task concerning the dragons is somewhat different. Your Holiness, I do not concern myself with the politics of the realms, but from what I hear it is by no means clear that your dragon has found its way into another eyrie. I hear her keeper has not been found.'

'Yes,' said Shezira sourly. 'One of yours.'

'Your Holiness, the dragon-lords may play their games, but we alchemists are charged with the ancient duty of keeping the dragons in check. Even one dragon allowed to reach its full potential is a threat to every king and queen in the realm. I will be obliged to inform the speaker.'

'Grand Master, what is your point? If the dragon has gone rogue, I have eyries filled with many scores more with which to hunt it down. Across the realms there are more than seventeen hundred, as you very well know. How is one wild dragon a threat to the realms?'

Bellepheros bowed yet again. 'My point, Your Holiness, is that my order is at your disposal to help in any way that it can, and that I shall return shortly to the Adamantine Palace, but as I am bound to travel by land, there will be some delay before I arrive.'

Queen Shezira nodded. 'Your offer is noted, Grand Master. I assure you, I am already conducting a quite thorough search. I will find my white, and when I do — and I find who took her there will be blood. (rood day.'

The queen moved away. Bellepheros wiped his brow. After that, he decided, he might as well start thinking about who his successor should be. It took him a few seconds to realise that the queen's knight-marshal hadn't followed her mistress away. She leaned into him and spoke quietly in his ear.

'Grand Master. A private word, if you please?'

He left Furymouth the following morning, in a carriage supplied by Prince Jehal and escorted by a company of soldiers. The other alchemists at Clifftop would just have to find their own way back to the Adamantine Palace. Tucked under his seat, carefully packed in straw, was a spherical bottle made of glass, stoppered and sealed with wax. It fitted nicely into the palm of his hand, and from the way its weight shifted, was filled with some sort of liquid. A very heavy liquid. Unlike the knight-marshal, Bellepheros knew exactly what it was. What he didn't know was where it had come from, or how several such bottles would have found their way into the possession of one such as Shezira's knight-marshal. It would be a long journey home, though, with plenty of time to ponder and plenty of inns with wine to help him think.

He didn't get the chance. Two days out of Furymouth his carriage was stopped. Masked men with knives tore open the door. Blood glistened on their blades. He could see bodies on the ground outside. He had time to open his mouth, but before he could shout, a hand clamped over his face.

18

The Price

 

Twice a day the door to their hut opened and half a dozen Outsiders armed with spears and knives would be clustered outside. One of them would very gingerly place a bucket of water on the floor, together with some dried fish and half-rotten fruit. On the first day, Sollos told them that they had six days before the dragon-riders came. Every morning he reminded them that they had one fewer day to let him go. It took until he was down to two before the Outsiders made up their minds. In the middle of the day the door opened again, and this time there were nearly a score of them. One stepped forward, a heavyset man in his middle years with a thick curly black beard.

'What do you want?'

'Some food that doesn't give me the runs would be nice,' muttered Kemir. Sollos shushed him.

'First of all to thank you for your hospitality.' Sollos smiled. 'Second, I'd like my bow and my knives and my armour back. Then I'd like to know about the white dragon.'

'And what then ?'

'We find the dragon, we go away and leave you in peace.'

'We've seen dragons every day since you came.' Curly Beard looked tired. He was frightened.

'We're all looking for the white dragon. You weren't very friendly when they came by, so they sent us instead. When they find what they want, they'll go away. They don't fly for the King of the Crags and neither do we.'

Kemir spat. 'Doesn't mean they won't burn you out if they don't find what they want.'

'What if we help you find the white dragon. What's in it for us?'

'Not being burned?'

Sollos glared at his partner. 'What do you want?'

'Money.' Curly Beard set his face hard. 'A hundred gold dragons.'

'So you've seen one then.'

Curly Beard nodded. 'Could be. Could be we know of someone who's seen one.'

'All right. A hundred gold dragons. That had better buy me a lot of help.' Sollos could feel Kemir behind him, almost unable to contain himself.

'Up front.'

Sollos snorted. 'You must think I'm an idiot.'

'There's been a white dragon seen a few times in these valleys. Not here but somewhere else. I can take you to where they've seen it. And that's all you're getting until I see gold.'

'If you're lying, you know you're going to get burned.'

'Could be that might be coming anyway. So I'll take the gold first if you please.'

Sollos shrugged. 'All right. Not my gold anyway.'

Ten minutes later they were free. Another half an hour and they were in a boat, rowing across the lake with Curly Beard and two of his friends. They were a bedraggled lot, these Outsiders, thought Sollos. Their clothes were ragged and crude, a mixture of animal pelts and cheap cloth that had gone rotten in the permanent damp. Everything they had looked worn and well used, the handles of their knives shiny and smooth and moulded to the shapes of their hands. A few had belts, the leather hard and cracked, the buckles tarnished and bent. Others made do with string. Most of them, Sollos realised, were scarred or damaged; some were missing fingers, others had whole limbs or even faces that had broken and then healed out of shape. Apparently, life was hard as an Outsider. Harder than he remembered.

Sollos had been born and raised somewhere out here. He ought to sympathise, and yet he didn't, because he didn't want to. What was the point, when it was all long gone and burned away?

Curly Beard rowed them to the gravel flats a little way from the settlement, the place where Sollos and Kemir had first landed. They waited for half the morning, patiently standing in the steady rain, until around noon Curly Beard pointed. There was a dragon skimming across the lake towards them. A moment later the three Outsiders were off, fleeing into the safety of the trees. Sollos stood and watched the dragon. He waved.

'I hope that's one of ours,' muttered Kemir with a glance towards where the Outsiders had gone. 'Now would be a fine time to run into whoever started all this.'

The dragon circled over them once, close enough that Sollos could recognise it, and then landed, the wind from its wings spraying a cloud of gravel into the air. Rider Semian beckoned them over. He didn't bother to dismount.

'I almost gave up on you,' he shouted through the rain. The dragon, Sollos saw, was steaming very slightly.

'Well we're very glad you didn't,' shouted Sollos back. Belatedly, he remembered to bow.

'And? What news?'

'They claim to have seen her. They claim they know where she is.'

'Where?'

'Not here, but they claim they can take us to her.' Sollos hesitated. 'They want gold.'

'How much?'

'Two hundred dragons.'

Rider Semian didn't flinch, but his dragon suddenly snorted and snapped at Sollos, who fell over in his haste to get out of the way. The dragon glared at him.

'You ask a lot, sell-sword.'

'I don't ask for anything, Rider,' yelled Sollos, picking himself up and warily watching the dragon. 'That's the price the people who live here are asking.'

'Tell them no.'

'Then you'll never find the queen's dragon, Rider Semian.'

The dragon bared its teeth. Its tail was up in the air, flexing and flicking back and forth like a whip. Among their own kind, dragons usually lashed out with their tails when they were annoyed. It was meant as a warning. But when they did it to humans ... Sollos closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

'Tomorrow,' shouted Semian. 'Meet me back here tomorrow.' Abruptly, the dragon turned and began to run, launching itself across the flats. The stones hissed and danced with each colossal stride, and Sollos fancied he could see the whole lake ripple. Then the monster unfurled its wings and with a clap of thunder hurled itself into the air and was away. He watched it go. He could actually see it rise through the air with each beat of its wings, he realised, and then dip again between them.

'You should have asked for a thousand,' said Kemir, suddenly standing beside him.

'Apparently so.' Sollos shrugged. 'I suppose it's not his money either.'

19

The Taiytakei

 

Any other dragon-lord, mused Jehal, wouldn't have these sorts of problems. Any other dragon-lord would simply have gone to their eyrie, looked at the dragons and then gone back to their palace again. Any other dragon-lord would have built their eyrie conveniently close to their palace. He, though, had to ride out to a field a little way outside the city to look at Queen Shezira's dragons. Not that he minded all that much, but the fact that he had to go meant that everyone else had to go too, and that meant shuffling everyone into carriages. What should have been a twenty-minute jaunt on the back of a horse had taken them an hour and a half, and now the whole wedding was running late. Knowing that the dragon he wanted wasn't going to be here didn't help either.

He tried to keep himself amused by mentally undressing his guests. Zafir's little sister Princess Zara-Kiam was going to be worth undressing for real quite soon, he decided. There were a few cousins and other minor relatives out there who might be worth some attention too: Queen Fyon's youngest, Princess Lilytha, for example, if her brother Prince Tyrin hadn't got to her first. He narrowed his eyes, looking at them standing next to each other, trying to decide.

He sighed. Everyone had been telling him how weddings were supposed to be wonderful days filled with joy and happiness, but looking around him he couldn't see much sign of either. His guests were grumbling and shifting on their feet, already overstuffed with a hundred pointless delicacies. Queen Shezira looked tense. She hadn't actually told him that the white wasn't here, so there was always the chance that no one else had told him either. Jehal had already decided to have some fun with that. Queen Zafir had a permanent angry scowl etched into her face. For himself, he couldn't shake the feeling that the whole exercise was a waste of time. The only person who seemed to be enjoying herself was Princess Lystra.

They sat next to each other on their wedding thrones, shaded by a makeshift awning while everyone else burned up in the summer sun. If he wanted to, he could have reached out and taken his bride's hand, but apparently he wasn't supposed to do that yet. As best he could tell, they were in some sort of interim state between being not married and being married. They'd had a dawn ritual and then a morning feast. After that came the giving of gifts, and then everyone kicked their heels until the evening. There was another feast, a dusk ritual, then the whole humiliating bit about being drugged and stripped naked in front of all the wedding guests. What was that? Revenge for having to stand around and be bored all day ?

Finally, after the consummation, once the whole thing was over, they never had to look at each other again, if that was what they wanted. Maybe it was supposed to be an ordeal. A warning of things to come ? A test of strength ?

Someone was parading a pair of horses in front of him. Strictly speaking, they were parading them in front of King Tyan, who sat in his own throne next to Jehal's, drooling and snoring. He was still king after all. Jehal smiled. They were wonderful beasts, pure white, with gold and silver livery. A stallion and a mare. Jehal stifled a yawn.

'Very nice,' he said. 'They will be the most beautiful creatures in my stables. Tell...' Oh, now this was going to be a problem. He'd let his mind wander so far that he hadn't heard who they were from, and now he was going to look stupid and insult someone all at once. 'I am in awe. Bring them closer.' He glanced around in search of helpful clues. Horses. Who likes horses? People always give the sort of gift they'd like to receive.

'King Valgar is too kind,' said Princess Lystra quietly. For the first time since the wedding had begun she wasn't smiling. 'He meant them to go with the dragon. To take us to and from your eyrie.'

So she assumes I know. She doesn't know that her mother hasn't told me. He could have some fun with that too.

'King Valgar is too kind indeed.' He smiled, waving the horses away. Valgar wasn't here so there was no need to waste any time on flattering his presents. 'Let King Valgar know that they are the most beautiful horses in my realm, and that Princess Lystra and I shall ride them to and from Clifftop for a year, as a mark of our respect for his generosity.' He leaned towards Princess Lystra. 'Is the dragon as pure?'

She turned to him, startled, with a wonderful look of horror. 'You don't know?'

'What don't I know?' He smiled again, all innocence, as various shades of panic flew across her face.

Lystra turned towards her mother, sat on the other side of her, and started whispering.

Jehal tapped Lystra on the back of the hand. 'Sorry, did you mean the theft of your white dragon? I know about that. Terrible business. I'm sure it doesn't matter.' She was shaking, completely flustered, like a rabbit caught by a farmer's lantern. He kept his smile in place, warm and reassuring, glancing at her from time to time, making sure she caught his eye. Terrible business? That was putting it mildly. I'm sure it doesn't matter? Of course it bloody mattered. At the very least everyone who had anything to do with the theft was going to die. With a bit of luck, open warfare might break out. There would be trials and tribunals in the Adamantine Palace. It was quite easy to imagine an entire realm falling. Now that would be fun.

Somehow, though, tormenting Princess Lystra wasn't as satisfying as it ought to have been. She still looked pale and worried when her mother's dragons were finally brought down to the field and Jehal stood up to inspect them. He picked one quickly, said something nice about it and waved the rest away. He'd had his bride squirming in her seat, and instead of revelling in her discomfort, he found he felt ... well, vaguely guilty.

And that wasn't right. That wasn't how it was supposed to be at all.

Maybe it was the heat. He sighed, stood up and made a pretty speech about how this was the start of a new era, and how proud he was to be joined to such a great clan and yet humbled too. When he was done, he hoped that at least a few of his guests had paid more attention to it than he had.

Riding back towards the palace didn't help either. Having a wife had sounded like a simple enough business, and it had all been arranged so long ago that he'd never thought to question it. However, meeting her in the flesh was somehow ... disconcerting. She would be his queen one day, perhaps sooner rather than later. Which was fine, as long as she was the right queen. A simple queen with a demented obsession for needlework or embroidery or something like that, who stayed in her tower all day, had no interest in the world around her and paused only from her handicrafts to pop out a steady stream of heirs, preferably male ones. That was the sort of queen he needed.

'Terrible business,' muttered a voice beside him. Jehal snapped out of his reverie. Lord Meteroa was riding next to him. 'I'm sure it doesn't matter, Your Highness.'

'What do you want?'

'I'm afraid you have to attend a little diversion, Your Highness. After all, no one can leave the ceremony of gifts until you and King Tyan lead the way, and yet somehow everyone is required to be in place for the wedding feast before you arrive. In the normal course of things, this would simply oblige you to take a particularly tortuous path from one part of the palace to another, with perhaps a dalliance in the gardens to kill the time. As things are ...'

Jehal raised an eyebrow. 'What, with several hundred relatives all rushing back to the palace as fast as they can, all getting in each other's way? And that's just Aunt Fyon's family.'

Meteroa smiled and nodded. 'Your Highness must be delayed.'

'And do you have something in mind, Eyrie-Master?'

'I do indeed, Your Highness.' Meteroa flashed Jehal a knowing look and kicked his horse into a trot. After a moment Jehal followed him. They turned off the road and galloped down a narrow track lined with trees, then off into the fields. Behind them, a dozen of Jehal's dragon-knights followed, keeping at a discreet distance yet never too far away.

'You weren't thinking about the dragons at all when you picked one, were you?' shouted Meteroa.

'On the contrary,' called Jehal. 'My thoughts were entirely devoted to how none of them was white.'

'Really? I could have sworn your mind was somewhere else. I certainly wouldn't have made the same choice as you did.'

Jehal felt a flash of irritation. Lord Meteroa was clever and loyal and ran Clifftop like a precise machine, and his frankness was usually a refreshing change from the sycophancy that infested the rest of King Tyan's court. Sometimes, though, the eyrie-master seemed to forget that Jehal wasn't King Tyan's little boy any more.

'Well it was mine to choose. Queen Shezira can thank me for not taking the best she had to offer.' Mentally, Jehal kicked himself. He'd meant to choose the ash-grey, the dragon that Princess Lystra's elder sister rode. He'd completely forgotten about that, and now he had no idea which one of Shezira's knights would be flying home without a mount of his own. He sighed. He ought to find out. Doubtless he'd made himself another enemy there.

The ground was starting to get rocky. Lord Meteroa dived down another track, where the trees and undergrowth pressed in so close that Jehal kept having to duck while thorns tore at his cloak. Better change into a new one as soon as we get to the palace. That'll keep everyone waiting another few minutes. After a little while the wood gave way to great slabs of rock, and the mud below became sand. They were in the Stone Forest, a maze of spikes and spires and walls of rock woven with tracks and trails and clearings, caves and tunnels. Jehal knew it like the back of his hand. It was the perfect place for a secret meeting.

A perfect place for an ambush too.

He slowed and stopped, then glanced over his shoulder. 'What is this diversion of yours, eyrie-master? I'm not so sure I shall like it.'

'Wait here if you will, Your Highness. I will fetch them to you.'

'And who will you fetch?' Something about Meteroa's manner made Jehal uneasy.

'No one who means you any harm, Your Highness.'

Jehal looked behind him again. His knights were emerging from the woods, funnelling into the cleft between the rocks.

'This is not a good place to stop, eyrie-mas—' He broke off. Emerging from the shadows between the stones, three riders approached, their horses stepping slowly in the sand. They were strange folk, dark-skinned with overly ornate clothes studded with gold and jewels and dazzling rainbows of feathers. They stopped a dozen paces short of where Lord Meteroa waited, dismounted and bowed.

Taiytakei.

The middle one, who wore the brightest clothes, came a few paces closer and then carefully knelt in the sand.

'Your Holiness,' he said. 'We pay homage on this auspicious day.'

With slow deliberate movements, like a cat stalking its prey, Jehal dismounted. He drew nearer, never taking his eyes off the man.

'Sea traders,' he whispered. He glanced at Meteroa. 'What is this?'

'We bring you a gift,' said the dark man. 'A gift for you, O mightiest of princes, to honour your wedding day.'

Jehal forced a smile. 'Forgive me, but it is said that the Taiytakei do not deal in gifts, only trade, and that what may appear at first as a gift will always turn out to have a price.'

The kneeling man beckoned one of his fellows, who brought over something under a cloth and then quickly withdrew. 'We wish nothing more than to bring to you what you desire, and take from you that for which you have no need.' Slowly, the man placed the object on the ground and then backed away, still on his knees. When he reached the others, he rose and turned. All three of them mounted and rode slowly away.

Jehal watched them go, and only when they were long gone did his eyes move slowly to what they had left behind. He took a step towards it.

Meteroa jumped off his horse.

'Let me, Your Highness.'

'Why did you bring me here?'

'Forgive me, my Prince, but I will show you. The Taiytakei wished to give this to you in person and in private. You will see why.' Meteroa tore away the cloth. Underneath was an exquisite box carved from black wood, inlaid with vermilion and gold.

'Open it.'

Meteroa lifted the lid. Inside lay three strips of plain silk, two black and one white, and two tiny golden dragons with ruby eyes.

'Pretty.' Jehal shrugged. He would have said more, but one of the golden dragons turned its head and looked at him.

Meteroa pulled out one of the silks and snapped the box shut. 'Best that others do not see,' he murmured. 'Here.' He handed Jehal a strip of black silk. 'Wear it around your eyes. You will not be disappointed.'

Jehal smiled. Meteroa seemed to be in deadly earnest, and so he wrapped the black silk across his eyes. Immediately the world seemed to shift and shimmer. Voices spoke inside his head: You are the speaker in waiting, and we are the gift of the Taiytakei.

For a moment he thought he saw himself, as if looking through another's eyes. He ripped away the silk. Meteroa was still holding the box, but now he had it slightly open again. Four glittering ruby eyes peered up at him.

'In the sunlight they can fly. Or when you will them to,' murmured Meteroa. 'Wear the silk and they will obey your thoughts. They will see and they will listen and you will have their eyes and ears. There will be no secrets you cannot unlock.' He closed the box again and smiled. 'Was I wrong, Your Highness, to bring you to the Taiytakei, so that you might receive their gift?'

'No.' Jehal shook his head in wonder. 'No, Eyrie-Master, you were not wrong.'

He looked at the box and grinned to himself. You are the speaker

in waiting ...

20

Knights

 

Rider Semian, when he came back the next day, didn't bring only gold. Three more dragons arrived with him, and on the back of each dragon were three knights. Semian himself brought the alchemist. They landed on the same gravel flats in a flurry of wings and spray. Sollos watched while the alchemist and the riders dismounted and rearranged themselves. Most of the knights stayed on the ground, crouching cautiously behind a protective wall of shields with the alchemist in the middle, while the dragons took to the sky again.

Archers. They're afraid of archers. Which made Sollos think of the last time he'd watched a dragon-knight hand over a purse full of gold to a mysterious stranger.

He stood his ground, out in the open, waiting. Kemir was beside him. Curly Beard and his friends had scuttled off to hide among the trees and watch. Semian emerged from the midst of his men and advanced slowly, looking around, scanning the shore of the lake. Up above, the dragons circled.

Sollos bowed. 'Riders,' he acknowledged. He knew some of the other dragon-knights only by their faces. Despite two weeks of sharing a camp together, they'd never asked his name, never called him anything except sell-sword. Not one had spoken to him other than to order him around.

Semian gave him a disdainful look. 'Where are your outlaw friends, sell-sword?'

'Hiding and waiting to see what you do. Did you bring the gold, Rider?'

'One hundred coins. They may have the other half when we have found the dragon.'

Sollos silently clenched his fists. 'That's not going to work, Rider. They know perfectly well that you'll simply burn their village if they try to steal from you. They expect you to burn it anyway, before you leave.'

'I will honour our bargain if they do the same.'

'I don't doubt it, Rider, but these people are used to King Valmeyan's men, and the King of the Crags is hated here. They expect nothing but treachery and betrayal, and they're not wise enough in the ways of the world to know the different between one knight and another. They probably haven't even heard of Queen Shezira.' Sollos sighed. 'I suppose we'll have to wait until tomorrow for the dragons to come back, and then another day for the rest of the gold.'

'Sell-sword, they will either take us to the dragon today or they will burn. That's the only offer I will make. A hundred gold is a fortune for most men.'

Sollos gritted his teeth. Yes, it would have been. He shook his head and held out his hand. 'Then give me the gold and I'll see what I can do.'

'No, sell-sword, I will give it to them myself, when they have taken us back to their settlement.'

'With all respect, Rider, that isn't the arrangement.'

'Then change it.'

Sollos shrugged. 'If that's what you wish, but I certainly won't be coming with you. I say again, Rider: these people fully expect your dragons to burn their village whether they honour our bargain or not. Once they've got your gold, I can't see why they shouldn't simply murder us all in our sleep. Either way, your dragons will burn their homes.'

Semian seemed to consider this. 'Then what arrangement do you suggest?'

'These men and women have not seen your white dragon, Rider, but they have heard of others who have and they will take us there. We have to go to another settlement, a smaller one, about ten miles from here. We go directly there. They'll come with us to show us the way. Tomorrow morning, when we're somewhere

between here and there, you give them the gold. One or two of them will stay to take us to the man who's seen the white.' It had taken almost an entire day of arguing with Curly Beard to find an arrangement they could agree on.

Rider Semian narrowed his eyes. 'And this other man, will he too demand a hundred gold dragons?'

He will if I have anything to do with it, thought Sollos. 'I'm sure you'll find a way to convince him, Rider.' Yes. With the point of your swords, no doubt.

With a curt nod, the dragon-knight turned away. 'Tell them we agree. But I will give them the gold, not you, and it will be one hundred dragons, not two. And sell-sword?'

'Rider?'

'We travel in the open, where we can be seen from the skies. Make sure they understand that. Make sure they understand that every step we take will be watched from above.'

'They're not stupid, Rider.'

As Sollos and Kemir walked away towards the woods where Curly Beard was hiding, the knights retreated as far from the woods as they could. Sollos looked up. The dragons were still there, distant specks high in the sky. Which was a pity, because even five minutes of Rider Semian's company was already making him wonder if there was some deal he could cut with Curly Beard that would result in six dead knights and his pockets full of gold.

Probably not, though. Curly Beard would kill him and Kemir as happily as he'd murder a dragon-knight. You were either an Outsider or you weren't, and that was that.

'Well that went well,' muttered Kemir. 'I thought you said he was an idiot. Are you going to tell Curly Beard he can only have fifty?'

'He won't take it. No, he'll get his hundred.'

'Nothing for us then. Hurrah. You should definitely have asked for a thousand.'

Sollos shrugged. 'There's still the dragonscale too. Let's not lorget that.'

'Give up. We're never going to get our hands on that.'

'And a reward for finding the white.'

'If we find it,' grumbled Kemir. 'If they pay it.' He snorted. 'Why did they bring the alchemist?'

Sollos shrugged. 'Don't know, don't care. All we have to do is make sure that Curly Beard and Rider Rod-Up-My-Arse stick to the agreement and don't start trying to kill each other. Should keep us busy enough, don't you think?'

'Let them kill each other. I'll help if you like. When they're done, we can have the gold. Suits me.'

Sollos twitched his lips. 'Don't tempt me.'

'You know, we did make an oath, a long time ago. We could always—'

'No!' Sollos stopped and took a deep breath. 'No, Kemir. These riders serve Queen Shezira, not the King of the Crags.'

Kemir shrugged. 'A knight's a knight. They all think they're little gods. We could—'

'I said no!' Sollos stamped his foot.

'Look, I'm not saying we should try and overthrow Valmeyan; I'm just saying that sticking a knife into a few dragon-knights would give me a sense of fulfilment, that's all.'

'Those days are gone, Kemir. That oath ...' He shrugged. 'It was a stupid oath. Besides, there are six of them and two of us, and their dragons are watching us.'

He saw Kemir look up at the sky and wince. 'They have to sleep, you know.'

They do. Yes, they do. Sollos shook his head. However much a part of him agreed with Kemir, murdering one dragon-knight or even ten wouldn't change the world at all. As long as there were dragons, there would be men and women who rode them.

As long as there are dragons.

21

The Wedding

 

Meteroa, of course, timed it perfectly. When Jehal returned to the palace, everyone was waiting for him. He walked briskly into the feasting hall with Princess Lystra at his side and a spring in his step. You are the speaker in waiting...

'Drink!' he cried before he'd even reached the throne at his lolling father's side. 'Drink! A toast! Not to us, but to everyone! To each other! To life!' Then he spun Princess Lystra to face him, kissed her, and then shot a glance along the tables and made sure he caught Zafir's eye. 'Drink!' he shouted again, into the shocked quiet. 'Drink to the pounding of hearts! To the thunder of wings and the wash of fire! To the clash of swords, to the moment of the kill, to the drunken passion of lovers! Drink and shout for joy or shout with rage, I care not which, but do not fill my feasting hall with silence!'

He sat down and thumped his goblet on the table. Everyone was looking at him. This wasn't how a wedding feast was supposed to start, but he simply didn't have the stomach for hours of tedious politeness. Far better that everyone got roaring drunk.

He peered past Princess Lystra at her mother. 'Isn't this more what you're used to, Your Holiness?' He grinned.

Queen Shezira's face remained carefully blank. 'Your exuberance would, perhaps, be more appreciated in my halls than in your own.'

'I mean to make your daughter feel welcome here.'

Shezira said nothing.

'Am I a monster?' he asked her, much later, when the food was almost gone and he'd drunk too much wine. 'Is that what you think of me?'

She met his eyes. 'In another few hours you will be my son,' she said coolly. And that was all.

After everyone had gorged themselves, a troupe of musicians struck up and the dancing started. Princess Lystra came first of course, with her big wide eyes and drooping lashes and that startled look she'd worn since the day had started. Then her mother, which was like dancing with a iron statue, cumbersome and awkward and with nothing to recommend it. And then, out of nowhere, Zafir slid into his arms, sinuous and sensual, pressing herself close and filling his nose with her perfume. Jehal felt himself stir. Her hand slid up his back to the skin of his neck, and he felt a slight pricking sting. He jerked.

'What are you doing?'

Zafir looked at her hand. On one of the rings she wore was a tiny spike, and on that spike the slightest drop of blood. She touched it to her tongue and then wrapped her arm around him again. 'Reminding you that you're not immortal,' she whispered.

'I feel immortal.' He pulled her even closer, but this time she resisted.

'I am a dragon-queen, Prince Jehal, not some courtesan, and eyes are watching us.'

'Is that a poison ring you're wearing?'

'Of course.'

'Am I about to die?'

Zafir smiled. This time, when he tried to pull her closer, she didn't resist. 'Not today, my love.' She leaned into him for a second and he felt her breath on his ear. 'I saw the way you looked at her today, your little starling-bride,' she murmured. 'Enjoy the novelty, but remember that it's me who can give you what you want. If you plan to toss me aside for her, you may as well take your dagger and run me through and let us both die here and now.'

Jealous? She was jealous? For a second he thought about it. 'If you want to see which of you I want, then let us slip away and I will show you,' he said huskily.

She pushed him sharply away with a brittle smile. 'Your starling

can have you today. Afterwards ... we shall see.' She waved her fingers at him, letting him see the ring again, still wet with a drop of his blood.

You are the speaker in waiting ...

He watched her go. Before he could launch himself after her, another pair of arms took hold of him.

'Princess Jaslyn!' Jehal forced a smile.

'Prince Jehal.'

'I cannot say why, but I did not think you to be much for dancing.' Her movements were sharp and aggressive, not like her sister, and as far away from Zafir's as it was possible to be.

'I prefer to dance in the air.'

'With a somewhat more scaly partner, no doubt.' Jehal smiled. 'So do I. So we have something in common.'

Jaslyn looked at him with scorn. 'We have my sister in common now. I am only dancing with you so I can say this quietly, where no one else will hear: whatever hurt you bring her, I will return to you tenfold.'

'And if I bring her joy?'

'Then I will have misjudged you.' She bowed and spun away.

'That hardly seems an equitable arrangement,' he called after her, but she didn't turn back. Poor Lystra. He'd expected to see her weep at the prospect of leaving her family and being forced to give herself to a man who she'd doubtless been taught to believe was a monster. Yet she hadn't. If anything, she almost seemed excited.

And now I begin to see why.

Another princess appeared in front of him. Jehal screwed up his face, trying to remember who she was. One of King Silvallan's brood, he thought, as they swept through the crush of bodies. Over in one corner, over the music, he could hear some sort of commotion. Drink had got the better of a pair of his knights. Others were quickly pulling them apart. He thought he heard the scrape of a sword being drawn, but there were no screams and the music didn't stop, so presumably nothing came of it. He tried to dance his way to Zafir's sister, to start laying a few foundations there, but all he got was an endless stream of distant relatives, and they all wanted something.

Suddenly, he was immensely glad that the day was nearly over. Tomorrow the dragon-lords and their courtiers would be on their way back to Clifftop, where they could be Lord Meteroa's problem for a night before they finally left for palaces of their own. He slipped away from the dancing and made his way outside. His head was foggy, and when he tried to shake it clear, it only got worse. Too much wine? Or had Zafir poisoned him after all?

Meteroa appeared at his elbow. 'It's nearly time, Your Highness.'

'I'll be glad when this is done.'

'I would have thought you'd be enjoying this, Your Highness. Prince Tyrin and Princess Jesska have vanished, one suspects to one of your solars; Prince Loatan and Princess Kalista got as far as drawing knives on each other before your guards intervened, and those are merely the highlights. I shall of course have a detailed report waiting for you at your convenience, once you are free of your bride.'

My bride. 'Tell me, eyrie-master, about my bride. How do I look at her?'

Meteroa frowned. 'I would say, with an expression of intrigued interest. Magnificently played.'

Except I wasn't playing. 'Mmm. And how many queens and princesses have been unable to resist the temptation to fondle a drunken prince when he's naked?'

'Queens Shezira and Zafir have both politely declined and will be attending Princess Lystra. Queen Fyon, however, accepted with great enthusiasm. I believe she forbade her daughters from joining her.'

Jehal groaned. Queen Fyon —Aunt Fyon — was Narghon's wife. She was grey and sagging, at least ten years older than Aliphera had been. Rumours had once abounded in both palaces that she and King Tyan had been lovers as well as brother and sister. The number of heirs she'd borne for King Narghon certainly spoke of her enthusiasm.

'Princess Jaslyn will also attend you, I believe.'

Jehal almost choked. 'I think you must be mistaken.'

Meteroa looked hurt. 'I am an imperfect servant, Your Highness. On occasion.'

'She made it quite clear in there that she hates me.'

'I'll see to it that she doesn't poison you, Your Highness.'

Jehal snorted. 'See to it that Queen Zafir doesn't poison my bride, if you please. I want Lystra wide awake when I take her. Zafir has an assassin's ring on. Keep an eye on her.' He thought he saw Meteroa smirk, but before he could launch a rebuke a bell began to toll. Meteroa clapped him on the back.

'It's time.'

'A long time ago kings and queens married in the same way as everyone else.' Jehal took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. His head still felt fuzzy. In the sky above, the stars shone brightly. A silver crescent moon hung on the horizon, out over the sea. A breeze blew up from the harbour, bringing a strange mixture of smells: of the sea and rotting fish and ammonia, and of rose and myrrh and sandalwood from the incense burners strewn across the palace gardens.

'That was before the Seven Princes and the War of Thorns.' Meteroa started to guide Jehal back towards the feasting hall.

'I know, I know, and Speaker Vishmir finally locked Prince Halim and Queen Lira in the Tower of Air and refused to let them out until Lira was pregnant with an heir, and that was the end of the matter. Much as I admire Vishmir's no-nonsense approach, I don't think he meant it to become standard practice.'

'Heirs are important.' For a moment Meteroa's face went as blank as a mask. Then he smiled politely. 'Ask Hyram.'

Jehal laughed. 'Heirs are dangerous. Ask Aliphera. Oh, wait, you can't. She's dead.' He sniffed the air again. 'Whoever arranged the incense burners should be whipped; they're not doing their job at all. Did you put the scent vines around the east window of the bridal bedchamber as I asked?'

Meteroa nodded. He pushed Jehal back towards the feasting hall. The dancing had stopped. Princess Lystra was standing in the middle of the floor. Everyone was looking at him, but he didn't have time to see any more before a gang of knights launched themselves at him. The next thing he knew, he was whisked off his feet and being carried high in the air. People were shouting and cheering. When he strained his neck to look, he could just about see Princess Lystra being escorted away by two queens, her mother on one side, Zafir on the other.

He closed his eyes. They weren't even out of the feasting hall before groping hands started to tear his clothes away. Over the ribald jokes of his riders he could hear Queen Fyon laughing. He shuddered. The women were always the worst.

They carried him high over their heads, parading him in front of everyone they could find, until they reached the Sun Tower in the centre of the palace. They almost dropped him there, trying to carry him up the narrow spiral stairs, but apparently they were quite prepared to risk that rather than let him walk. By the time they got him to the top he was dizzy, but he wasn't given any time to think about that. Someone was already pressing a goblet into his hands. One of Silvallan's nieces. What was her name?

'Maiden's Regret!' shouted a voice to a chorus of laughter. 'The Maiden!'

He drank it down as he was obliged to do, and prayed silently that the riders around him weren't as drunk as they seemed. Mentally, one part of him listed all the dragon-kings and -queens who'd been poisoned on their wedding nights. Another part slowly started counting, ticking off the seconds before the Maiden's Regret took hold of him. It would be longer than most, he'd made sure of that.

They finished stripping him and put him into his wedding shift, a pointless wrapping of cloth designed to fall apart at the lightest touch. By now the room was spinning, but he still had a few minutes before the potion took him completely.

One by one, the riders, the princes, the princesses came to him with ritual offerings of advice for the night to come, and then left.

'Maiden's Regret loosens the tongue!' shouted a voice. True, he thought. That's what the alchemists were using in my eyrie, with their truth-smoke. On my Scales and on my soldiers. He grinned. What a waste. All those men and women left half-mad with lust.

'It loosens everything.' More laughter.

Meteroa must have been beside himself. I must write to Hyram, thanking him on behalf of Cliff top's whores. He started to laugh.

'Are you murdering your father?' Jehal blinked. The question seeped into his consciousness like honey dripping off a spoon. Jaslyn. That's who the voice was. Princess Jaslyn. Because hadn't Lord Meteroa said she was coming? And he didn't remember seeing her before.

Why not? urged a voice inside him. Why not tell her the truth and be done with it. Everyone wants to know. Make her go away.

He opened his mouth, but a hand shut it for him. 'Get out of here, you little witch. How dare you! Shoo! Shoo!' The hand let go of him. 'I'm so sorry, nephew. Treat your bride kindly but not too kindly. I'll wager she likes a little roughness that one. Most of us do.'

Jehal looked up and smiled. Queen Fyon, but she was going now, turning away. Hadn't he been about to say something? Whatever it was, it was gone.

It seemed that he blinked, and his knights were gone too. That's right. Maiden's Regret fools with your sense of time. You haven't got long before it takes you now. Not long at all.

There was a door. That's what he was supposed to do. Go through the door. And before he'd even finished thinking it, it was done, and up another spiral of stairs, and the stupid wedding shift was already falling off, and then he was naked and standing in a room with eight sides, with windows in all the walls, every one open, with a floor strewn with pillows and blankets and mattresses stuffed with everything from down to straw, and Lystra was standing in front of him. She was far gone with the Maiden, swaying slightly from side to side, and her eyes were black and immense.

A little droplet of fire seemed to fall inside him and gently explode. Princess Lystra opened her mouth and reached for him. He swayed towards her.

Not yet not yet not yet!

He had seconds before he lost any idea of what he was doing. With all that was left of his will he started counting windows. Second on the left from the door. Faces east. That one ...

He pushed Princess Lystra towards that window. 'Stars,' he murmured. 'Look up at the stars.' He stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her, and peered through the air to another tower and another window. The window was still dark. Queen Shezira wouldn't have had time to get back to her rooms yet. A pity, because he'd wanted her to see him take her daughter. A sort of prelude to everything else he was going to take, and she wasn't even there.

But then the Maiden came, and Lystra was grinding herself against him, and there could be no more waiting.

22

Scorched Earth

 

It took the rest of that day and most of the next to reach their destination, picking their tortuous way along the floor of a valley, among hundreds of rivulets that bubbled and splashed among a sea of strewn rocks and streaks of sand and gravel. On either side of them forested slopes rose sharply towards rocky peaks. It rained relentlessly. Every now and then one or other of the riders missed his footing and slipped. By the end of the first day all of them were limping.

Which serves them right for trying to hi\e in heavy armour, Sollos thought.

In the evening Curly Beard and the other Outsiders sat sullenly silent, huddled under the thickest of the trees, seeking what shelter they could get from the rain. When they looked at the dragon-knights, their eyes glittered with a mixture of greed and hate. The knights glowered back. Sollos and Kemir took it in turns to snooze, but no one else got much sleep. Strangely, the alchemist seemed the most anxious of them all.

As soon as dawn broke, Curly Beard jumped to his feet and declared it was time to move on. With great reluctance, Rider Semian handed over the promised gold. Curly Beard disappeared back down the river with three of his friends and the sack of coins, leaving two of the Outsiders to guide the knights onwards.

'If we went after them, we could still catch them,' muttered Kemir.

It took barely an hour for the other two Outsiders to abandon them. The first slipped away in the woods when one of the knights fell and broke his hand. The other one, when he saw that he was the last, simply ran, trusting the sureness of his feet on the rocks, knowing the knights could never catch him. Rider Semian declared the man a traitor and ordered him shot, but by the time Sollos had his bow strung, the Outsider was too far away. He sent a couple of arrows after the man to keep Semian happy and then pretended to listen while the knight told him how poor a shot he was.

Slowly, Sollos realised that the knights didn't know what to do. He watched them dither and wondered what profit there might be from leaving them to their fate. Six riders and one alchemist, alone in the mountains ...

He looked up. Sure enough, high above, he saw a speck in the sky. The knights had someone to watch over them.

'You! Sell-sword!'

Sollos looked around. He assumed it must be one of the knights, but it was the alchemist, pointing a finger at him.

'Master Huros. Enjoying yourself?'

'I, urn ... Certainly not. I require your help. It is clear that the correct course of action is to proceed in the direction we were being led. Please explain this to Rider Semian.'

Sollos cocked his head. 'Why don't you explain it to him yourself, Master Huros?'

'Because Lady Nastria made it quite plain that you two had knowledge of these mountains.' The alchemist made a noise in his throat. 'Um. He will listen to you, and we must press on.'

'Must we? I thought we might go back. Burn those naughty Outsiders for being so ill-mannered.'

'No, Sword-Master Sollos, we must press on. If, uh ... if those men were telling us the truth, we cannot be far from the dragon. Turning back will waste days. I repeat, we must press on, before—'

'Before what, Master Alchemist?'

'Um. None of your concern. All that matters is that we reach the dragon quickly.'

Sollos thought about that. There didn't seem much to gain from leaving the riders to fend for themselves, but in the end what made up his mind was that the alchemist had actually bothered to call him by his name. With a sigh, he hauled himself to his feet. He didn't bother telling the riders where he was going and didn't bother looking back when they shouted at him, simply gestured at them to follow. Eventually they did.

Kemir was the first to notice the smell. The rain had stopped in the middle of the day, and for the last few hours they'd walked on in glorious sunshine. Apart from his feet, Sollos was feeling almost dry when Kemir abruptly stopped and sniffed the air.

Sollos stopped as well. He wrinkled his nose. There was ... something, something slightly familiar.

'Soul Dust,' muttered Kemir, keeping his voice low so the dragon-knights, a few dozen yards behind them, wouldn't hear.

Sollos shook his head. 'No. There's something right enough, but it's not Dust. Dust doesn't smell like that.'

'It does when you burn it.'

Sollos shrugged. 'It can't be. No one here burns Dust.' He swept his hand across the empty landscape. 'Do you see anyone burning Dust?'

Kemir glared at him. 'No, obviously I don't, because if I did, I'd be pointing at them. Just because you can't see the shit on the bottom of your boot doesn't mean it doesn't stink, and I'm telling you, that's the smell of burning Dust.'

Five minutes later Sollos sniffed again. This time he smelled smoke.

They looked at each other. Then Kemir started to run as best he could over the scattered rocks. The riders shouted. Sollos paused for long enough to yell at them to smell the air, and then set off after Kemir. Around the next bend of the river they skidded to a stop.

Kemir pointed to the scorched scar at the edge of the forest. 'Do you think that's the settlement we were supposed to be finding?' A few charred pieces of wood were still smouldering. The rest of whatever had been here was ash, but that wasn't what caught Sollos's eye.

'Hugger the settlement.' I \v pointed up the river.

At first glance it might have been a huge white boulder, but there was something too regular about it, too smooth. The boulder, when Sollos looked closely, had eyes that looked back. As he watched, the boulder slowly unfurled its legs, wings and tail and turned into a dragon.

Kemir gave a little whoop of joy. 'Finder's fee!'

Sollos touched Kemir on the arm, a gesture of caution. 'Something isn't right about this. There's no rider.'

'Of course there isn't. We were there, remember. When the other dragons attacked? Fire, shouting, running for our lives? Am I ringing any bells?'

Sollos edged sideways, out of the middle of the river bed, heading for the cover of the forest. The dragon was watching, and there was something altogether too intelligent in the way it was looking at him. 'We never found the Scales.'

'That's because he's dead.'

'Then why this?' Sollos began to step faster. 'Dragons never flamestrike unless someone tells them to.'

'Maybe it was hungry.'

'Maybe it still is.'

The dragon moved. Sollos grabbed Kemir and ran.

Tipping the Scales

For ten years, as the dragon is matured, the gifts must continue, and those whose gifts are found wanting will find their dragon,

when they take it, perhaps a little dull in its scales, not as

vigorous in its flight or as tight in its turns as they had hoped.

When his dragon has finally matured, the rider will visit the

eyrie for one last time. A final round of gifts is made, and then

rider and dragon are introduced. The dragon is his.

Before the rider leaves, it is customary for one last payment to be

made: a small gift to the Scales, the man or woman who has fed

and watered and nurtured the dragon since it was an egg. The

dragon-princes call this gift Tipping the Scales

23

Snow

 

A torrent of flames poured from the sky, swallowing her and the Little One beside her in its fury. The river waters steamed. Stones cracked in the heat.

She felt the presence of the other dragons in the sky long before she saw them. Different minds, different thoughts made up of different sounds and colours, but that didn't bother her at first. Other dragons came and went all the time, and the Little Ones never seemed afraid. And then she'd felt their thoughts change, the colours darken and sharpen and fill with fire. She knew what was coming.

An instant before the flames struck, she spread out her wings, tenting them over her head and over the Little One beside her. Instinctively. Protecting her eyes and the Little One. The other Little One, the one who'd been angry and shouting, the one who rode on her back and told her what to do, he was too far away for her to save. She felt his thoughts snuff out, and that made her a little sad. Little Ones burned so easily.

A second flamestrike engulfed her. The fire warmed her, but didn't frighten her. The Little One was afraid, though. Sharply, suddenly filled with fear. She felt it from all of them, but especially from the one beside her. And pain. The Little One was in pain. And panic. And terror. The emotions rolled into her from the Little One. She didn't know what to do with them. She'd never felt these things before. Bad things that made her want to run away.

The newcomer dragons were still close. She could still feel their thoughts, hot and fierce. They were circling around. They meant to come back.

She seized the Little One gently in her left foreclaws and hurled herself down the river, picking up speed with each stride. One of the other dragons swooped over her. She felt its thoughts and held the Little One close as the dragon above raked her with fire.

It passed over her head. As it did, she launched herself into the air and snapped at its tail. She still clasped the Little One tight to her breast. It was out of its mind, screaming and thrashing. Its thoughts were a jumble, disconcerting and incoherent. They made her feel strange. When another dragon swooped past her, she snapped at that one too and lashed it with her tail. She felt its surprise as it veered away.

Up, up, up. Faster and faster. Away. Sometimes she thought the Little One was trying to tell her to let it go, but its thoughts were chaos, broken and messy, and it kept contradicting itself. Three of the new dragons were following her. They were bigger than she was. They felt older. They had Little Ones to tell them what to do too. She could feel their determination, their hostility.

Another dragon dived from the sky above. A dragon she knew, one of the strong ones. One of the dragons that had come from her nest place. It shot down like an arrow and smashed into the closest dragon behind her, sending them both tumbling towards the ground. She heard the shrieks of other dragons echoing around the valleys, and with them came a surge of excitement. The dragons behind her were all gone, spiralling down together, snapping and lashing at her nest-mate.

She felt a shriek of terror from one of the Little Ones, abruptly cut to nothing. Then they were all gone, too far behind for her to hear their thoughts any more.

The excitement faded. The Little One held in her claws was calmer now, and her own thoughts were less confused. A part of her wanted to go back and play with these new dragons, but the Little One's thoughts were clear: it wanted to get away. Far, far away. It didn't know which way she should go and it didn't care, so she flew whichever way caught her eye, along valleys, between mountains, over lakes. She'd never seen this land before, or anything like it, with all its strange shapes and colours and so much sparkling rushing water. She dragged the tip of her tail through shimmering mirrors, soared and dived and snapped at waterfalls, and spiralled around mountains, riding the currents of rising air. Eventually the light faded, the sun set and the Little One's thoughts went quiet. She could feel herself slowly getting too warm, but the landscape was simply too fresh and exciting to ignore, and so she flew on, playing with it until the heat inside her was positively uncomfortable. Then she landed by a lake. She carefully put the Little One down on the ground, out in the open where she could see him, and bounded into the delicious ice-cold water. She splashed and played under the stars until she was cool again, and then curled up around the Little One and went to sleep.

She dreamed. Far, far away, things were happening. Immense things. Somehow she was a part of them, but they were so far away, she couldn't see them, couldn't hear them, couldn't remember them. She tried to fly towards them, but they kept moving away, eluding her, darting out of the way when she lunged for them.

Abruptly the sun was in the sky again, creeping over the surrounding peaks. She yawned and stretched out her tail and arched her back. The Little One was awake again. She could feel its thoughts. It was hungry.

Yes. Hungry. She was hungry too. She looked at the Little One and bared her teeth, as she always did when it was feeding time.

Tm sorry, Snow. You'll have to find your own breakfast.'

She looked around. She didn't understand most of the noises that the Little Ones made, but sometimes their thoughts were enough. He didn't have any food for her. He was in pain too. And he was afraid. She didn't like those thoughts. They made her feel anxious, and so she stopped listening to them. She thought about being hungry instead, waiting for the Little One to do something about it. When he didn't, she bared her teeth at him again.

'Hunt,' he said. 'You have to hunt.'

Hunt. She knew that noise. It meant flying and chasing and, yes! Catching and killing and eating.

She rose onto all fours and then lowered her neck, inviting the Little One to climb onto her back.

'I can't, Snow. I'm a Scales, not a rider. I'm not allowed.'

The noises made no sense. Hunt meant that a Little One sat on her back and told her where to go. She lowered her neck even more, rubbing it against the stones on the ground.

'They'd put me to death if they knew.' The Little One started to walk in circles. Its thoughts were confused, still laced with pain, Still frightened. 'Only riders ride dragons. That's the law. We should go back. What happened? Were we attacked?' It shook its head. 'Oh, I wish you could speak. What if they're still there? The queen won't be back yet, will she? Oh, what to do? I can't ride with you, Snow. There's no saddle; I'd fall. But we can't stay here, and you can't find your way home on your own. I don't even know where we are. Do you know where we are?'

She rubbed her neck against the ground again and bared her teeth once more. Hunt. Hungry.

'You want to eat. Yes, you must be hungry. Oh, but there aren't any alchemists here. You have to drink the water they make for you. You'll get sick otherwise. We'll have to go back.'

Hunt. Hungry. She made the gestures again. She was starting to get frustrated, and the Little One's thoughts were confusing her. She couldn't make any sense of them.

'I can't climb on your back, Snow. There's no harness. I can't reach.' The Little One walked to her left foreclaws and tried to open them. She didn't understand what he wanted to do, then she caught a picture from his mind, of flying through the air at night, and she was carrying him.

Yes. The way they'd come here. Carefully she raised herself onto her back legs and held out her foreclaws. The Little One nodded and made noises, and in his thoughts she saw that she'd understood him. He climbed into her claws, and she gently closed them around him.

'Hunt!' he said.

Hunt. That was something she understood.

 

24

A Memory of Flames

 

They hunted. She ate. The Little One ate too, and then they climbed into the sky together again. The Little One wanted to go somewhere, but it didn't know which way to go, so she flew again as the fancy took her, into a wilderness of crags and broken stone and boulders the size of castles. She tried to hunt there too, but the land was barren and empty. When night fell, she found a place to land and went to sleep. The dreams came again, as distant as ever.

The next day they flew back out among the valleys and rivers. It rained. She liked that, liked the feel of it. The Little One started telling her which way to go. She understood its thoughts: Left, straight, right, up, down. She knew the noises too, but when they were racing through the air, the noises were all lost in the wind, and she had to pluck the thoughts out of the Little One's head. She began to wonder whether this Little One was somehow broken. The other Little Ones that sat on her back had thoughts that were much clearer.

'We're lost,' said the Little One. She didn't understand, but she could see in his thoughts that he was anxious. He was always anxious. Mostly she blocked him out.

They looked for dragons but they didn't find any. The next day was the same. And the next. But at night, when she slept, something was beginning to change. The dreams were coming closer. She didn't notice it at first, but after a few days a strange understanding came to her. She wanted the dreams. More than anything else, she wanted them. They were important. More important than food or shelter or even than the Little One. She didn't know why; they simply were. With that one revelation

came another. They would come to her as long as she stayed here, away from the others, alone.

The day after that she chose her own way to fly. Instinct drove her towards ever higher places. The Little One was even more upset than usual. It shouted at her. It was angry with her, and that made her feel very bad. She was supposed to do what the Little Ones wanted, and this Little One was the most special Little One of them all, the one who'd been with her since she'd first opened her eyes.

That night the dreams were even closer. She could almost smell them, almost touch them. They were filled with fire and ash and burning flesh. In the morning, when she woke up, she left the Little One behind and went to hunt alone. She felt its anguish and despair as it watched her fly away. It was still there when she came back. It felt joy to see her return and made lots of noises that she didn't understand. When she slept again, the dreams finally let her touch them.

She was a tiny part of something vast. She couldn't see or hear, but she could feel the thoughts of hundreds of dragons, bright and sharp and clear. She could feel other beings too, huge and powerful. Far beneath them she felt a hum of lesser thoughts. Little Ones, she realised with surprise, but that didn't make any sense, because the Little Ones seemed so dull and dim next to the other dragons, and the truth she knew was the other way around.

She tried to grasp the dream, to unravel it, but it fluttered away only for another to come in its place.

She was flying. The air around her was thick with dragons, and on the back of each was a single rider clad in silver. She wheeled and dived and saw that the ground far below was alive. It was crawling, heaving, moving as far as she could see with Little Ones. Thousands upon thousands. Millions upon millions.

Arrows. She closed her eyes and felt them batter against her scales.

She flew over their heads as she would skim over a forest. Little Ones wrapped up in their crude skins of metal. Spears and axes rattled off her scales. She opened her mouth and let the fire burst out of her, filling the world with screams, filling her heart with joy. Everywhere other dragons were doing the same. She could feel the power from the man of silver on her back, driving her on, urging her to kill, kill...

The Little Ones were so many. She burned them by the hundred and they died, and the dead were swallowed up by the horde as though they'd never existed.

And then the dead rising back to life, burned and broken, turning on the living, grasping and clawing. The silver creature on her back was making it so. He laughed, and so did she.

And then something happened, and the silver creature on her back wasn't there any more, and her wings wouldn't fly, and she couldn't move or think, as though a giant claw had seized her mind and was slowly crushing her.

She remembered crashing into the ground, scattering Little Ones around her, as the claws in her mind sank deeper, and then she remembered nothing.

No. Not nothing. She was an egg again. She was a tiny part of something vast. She couldn't see or hear, but she could still feel the thoughts of hundreds of dragons, bright and sharp and clear.

She woke up. Most of the sky was still dark, although the first glimmers of dawn were peeking through between the mountains. The dreams were still there in her head, hundreds of them. They didn't feel like dreams now; they felt like memories. But that couldn't be right. There weren't even a hundred other dragons in her nesting place, never mind a thousand. They didn't feel the same either. The dragons in her dreams had thoughts that shone like cut diamond. The dragons of her nesting place were simple and dull.

She'd never flown far from her nesting place. She knew that. She hadn't been to the places she was remembering. She'd never felt the presence of one of these silver men whose minds burned like the sun. As for flying over a sea of Little Ones, burning them ...

Above all the rest, that memory stayed in her mind. She'd enjoyed it. More than that; it was the most exhilarating thing she'd ever done.

But she hadn't done it. She couldn't have done it. They were dreams, not memories, and they couldn't be real. She struggled to make sense of it, but it was far too difficult, and she was already hungry again. She got hungry a lot out here in the mountains. There was plenty to eat, though, if you knew where to look.

She launched herself into the sky as soon as the sun was up, leaving the Little One behind again. She felt his sadness as she went. He didn't like to be left on his own. She didn't understand that. In her nesting place there were always other dragons nearby, and Little Ones too. Even at night in the dark she felt the presence of their thoughts. She'd never been as alone as she was here, and yet she'd never felt so strangely wonderful.

Without the Little One to slow her, she roamed far on her hunts. She looked for river valleys and then followed them, soaring high in the sky, watching and waiting for prey to emerge from the forests to drink. Sometimes it would be a bear, sometimes a few deer, sometimes a herd of snappers. She had to be careful because the animals were never far from the edge of the forest, and once they got among the trees they were as good as lost. So she'd watch them for a while until she was sure they were coming out to drink, and then she'd tuck in her wings and dive. If she could, she'd seize them with her claws and bite off their heads. If they saw her coming and ran, she'd lash at them with her tail, wrapping it around them or sending them flying through the air to pounce on while they were still stunned. If she had to, she'd burn them. They tasted better raw, though.

Today the sky was grey and a steady rain was falling. Rain and cloud were good. She could fly a lot lower before anyone would see her, and that meant they had less time to get out of the way when she fell out of the sky at them. She ate well, and yet something drew her on, further and further down the valleys, as if a part of her knew that something was waiting for her.

There was. She'd flown for half the day, perhaps a hundred miles, when she felt the tickle of stray thoughts. Little Ones. When she looked down, she couldn't see them, only the endless treetops and the little scar of the river flowing between them. She

circled down towards the trees and finally landed in the river, peering into the gloom of the forest. Her eyes found nothing, but she knew nonetheless. They were close enough that she could feel their thoughts, each one of them. And they didn't even know she was there.

For a while she wondered what to do. Then she launched herself up into the sky once more.

25

Cinders and Ashes

 

The dragon trotted a few paces down the river, sending boulders splashing and tumbling, and then stopped and watched them. The air stank of damp charcoal. Here and there, as they dashed for the shelter of the forest, Sollos had to step over charred remains that had once been men and women. Outsiders burned by a dragon. The sight brought back too many memories. It set him on edge.

'Bastard,' grunted Kemir.

Sollos shook his head. 'There has to be a rider. I told you, dragons don't flamestrike unless someone tells them to, and they don't burn their prey. They like their meat fresh.'

They peered through the trees. 'Should we go back and tell Rider Rod?' asked Kemir. 'Or would it be more fun to lurk here and see what happens?'

'No point.' Sollos clucked his tongue. 'It's leaving.' he ran back through the trees to the river. By the time he got there the dragon was already airborne. He watched it go, skimming along the bottom of the valley, barely above the treetops, until it vanished around a bend. South, he thought. It went south.

He looked behind him, back down the river. He could see the riders and their alchemist now, picking their way through the stones.

'Sollos!'

He couldn't see Kemir through the trees but he heard the urgency. He darted back into the shelter of the trees. 'What?'

'Survivor. Sort of.'

Kemir, when Sollos found him, was kneeling beside a tree. Propped up there with him was an Outsider. Given how badly the man was burned, it was a miracle the man wasn't dead.

'Shit! Give him some water!'

Kemir grunted. 'Done that. He's not going to last. His mind's already gone. He keeps wittering about the dragon talking to him.'

The man groaned and nodded. 'The dragon spoke. It spoke in my head.'

'See.' Kemir shrugged. 'Gone.'

'Go and get the alchemist. He might be able to do something.'

'You go and get the alchemist.'

'Get the alchemist!' Sollos pushed Kemir away and crouched beside the dying man. 'We saw the dragon. A white dragon. It left when we arrived. Did it do this?'

'No, it was a careless bloke with a pipe,' muttered Kemir. 'Daft bugger.'

Sollos stood up. This time he shoved Kemir towards the river, screaming at him. 'Go and get the fucking alchemist!'

Kemir jogged off grumbling. Sollos sat down beside the man again.

'We're getting help. Did the white dragon do this?'

The man nodded. He whispered something, too quietly for Sollos to hear, until Sollos bent over and almost pressed his ear to the burned man's lips. 'It spoke. I heard it speak.'

'Who was riding it?'

The man shook his head.

'Was it a dragon-knight?'

The man shook his head again. 'No rider,' he breathed.

'A man then. Not a knight but a man.' The Scales. We never found the body.

Another shake of the head. 'No ... rider ... just ... dragon ... on ... its ... own.'

Sollos had never heard of such a thing. Maybe Kemir was right. The man had to be in unbelievable pain judging from his burns. Maybe his mind had already gone.

'It spoke.' The man sighed and closed his eyes, and for a moment Sollos thought he was gone. Then his lips moved again. 'It spoke in my head. I heard it. It came lor Maryk.'

'Maryk? Who's Maryk?'

The man didn't answer. His chest was still rising and falling, but his breaths were fast and shallow and ragged. Sollos stood up. 'Kemir!' Where's that cursed alchemist?

The alchemist was too late, of course. Sollos watched the man's chest heave one last time and then he was still. He'd been gone a few minutes by the time Kemir returned with the alchemist and the dragon-knights.

'He's dead,' said Sollos. He looked at Kemir. 'You told them what we saw?'

'I told them they owe us a bag of gold.'

Semian sneered. 'All we've seen is the aftermath of a fire. For all I know you're lying and the white was never here.'

'If you'd been a bit quicker,' snapped Sollos, 'this man might have told you the same story.'

Kemir pointed up through the trees. 'If your dragon-riders up there didn't see it, they need new eyes.'

'Urn ... how long has this man been dead?' asked the alchemist.

'Our dragon-riders are elsewhere, as I'm sure you noticed. And as for this man, perhaps I should look him over for wounds, in case you slid a knife into him to make sure he couldn't contradict you.' Rider Semian cocked his head.

'So there's no one watching to see what happens to you?' Kemir looked ready to hit him. The alchemist was kneeling down beside the burned man now.

'Tread very carefully, sell-sword. Before you raise your hand against me, I would remind you that there are six of us and only two of you.'

Kemir gave him a nasty look. 'I wouldn't dream of sullying my sword with you, Rider. Why would I, when all I need to do is nothing at all?'

The alchemist picked up the dead man's hand by the wrist and held it to his cheek.

'You're a long way from your eyrie here, rider. All I need to do is watch and laugh from a distance while you—'

Sollos tugged sharply on Kemir's arm. 'Enough. Leave them.'

Kemir snorted. 'I'd like nothing better.'

'I require an, um, assistant,' said the alchemist. He was squatting by the dead man now, and was pulling things out of his pack.

'You would, would you?' sneered Rider Semian. 'Then let us part ways. You clearly have nothing to contribute after all. We will simply return to our search from the air. It'll be us watching you.'

'Your, um, help, sell-sword.'

The alchemist was offering Sollos a short curved knife, the sort he might have used for paring fruit. Sollos took it. 'What do you want?'

The alchemist tore open a square of waxed paper. Inside was some black powder, which he sprinkled into small clay cup. He held it out to Sollos. 'Knife.'

Sollos took the cup and gave him the knife. With a grimace the alchemist drew the edge along the flesh of his arm.

'Hold the cup so that it catches the blood.' The alchemist clenched his fist. Blood ran down his arm to his elbow. When it dripped into the cup, the powder hissed.

'What is this?' Sollos frowned.

'None of, um, your concern, sell-sword, that's what.'

'Looks like witchcraft to me,' muttered Kemir. He took a step away. Even the dragon-knights had fallen silent.

'He's dead,' said Sollos. 'Potions can't help him. If you'd come sooner ...'

The alchemist glared at him. 'Where did you get your name, sell-sword? Sollos. It's an, er, alchemist's name, not a soldier's. Clearly a, ah, mistake. Or did you choose it yourself?' Inside the cup the powder and the blood had mixed into a paste. The alchemist lifted his arm and wrapped a strip of white linen tightly around his wound. 'Um. You're right that it's too late to help him live. But not too late to help him talk.'

'Master Huros?' Semian sounded edgy. 'I am not easy with this. Blood magic is—'

'Is what?'

'The queen does not favour such practices. They are outlawed.'

'In, er, her realm perhaps. Not here.' The alchemist gave a little sigh. 'If I smear this on his tongue, he will speak. Um ... if my means don't please you, rider, I am sorry.' He tugged the cup from Sollos's fingers. 'Take this and burn it, if you prefer.'

Semian fidgeted. After a few seconds, when he didn't take the cup, the alchemist shrugged. He dipped his finger into the paste and, before anyone could stop him, smeared it in the dead man's mouth.

25

Awakening

 

Day by day, Kailin watched Snow change. Dragons, he'd been told, were like little children. If that was so then Snow was growing up fast right in front of him. She was frightening, and yet he felt a strange pride and a sense of wonder watching her. There had never been a dragon like her, not with her purity of colour. She was sleek and perfect, and now she was becoming something else as well. Often she terrified him, but at the same time he was her Scales. He'd been waiting for her since she first started tapping her way out of her egg and into the world, and he'd been with her for nearly ten years now. Slowly he understood. Their roles had changed. He'd cared for her, nurtured her, fed her, and now she was doing the same for him.

They developed a routine. Each morning as the sun rose over the mountains, Snow uncurled and launched herself into the air. Kailin watched her go, peering into the sky long after she'd vanished. Then he sat by his fire, drank some warm water and ate some leftover meat. After that there really wasn't much to do but wait for Snow and wonder if today was the day when she wouldn't come back. Usually he made his way across the mountain, through the snows, to the nearest stand of trees and collected some more wood. When the wind blew, cold enough to flay the skin off his flesh, he huddled up in the lee of some nearby rocks and simply waited. When Snow came back, she always knew where to find him. She would be almost too hot to touch, and her warmth melted the snows, dried his clothes and the firewood, and slopped him from freezing in the night. Each day she brought him food to eat, the headless remains of some animal she'd caught. He'd cook it over his fire, and she'd watch him. When he was done, she'd swallow what was left in a single gulp. He knew perfectly well that without her he'd quickly starve or freeze to death.

He talked to her when she was there. Not expecting any answer, but simply because the mountain was so cold and lonely and he felt better hearing the sound of his own voice. Sometimes, from the way she looked at him, he wondered if she was listening.

He got his answer to that when he trod on a loose stone. The first thing he knew, one of his feet was sliding out from under him. The world tumbled, hit him on the head and wound up lying on its side, dim and blurry.

Hurt? asked a voice inside his head.

He tried to move, but for a moment that didn't work. Yes, he decided. I am hurt.

The next thing he knew, Snow was standing over him, the tip of her face inches from his own, blotting out the sky, the scorching-hot wind of her breath almost pinning him to the ground. He put up a hand, flinched away, and she retreated.

Is it hurt? asked the voice again.

He groaned and sat up. His head was starting to throb. When he touched it, his fingers came away with blood on them. Slowly, he looked up at Snow.

'Did you speak?' He laughed and then winced. Dragons Couldn't speak except in myth.

Its head is broken. Is it going to—

Am I going to what? The thought formed inside his head, but the last part of it didn't make any sense. Something to do with getting hotter and hotter and fading away and then waking up wrapped up tight inside an egg.

Snow peered at him and cocked her head. Die?

To Kailin, it seemed as though a giant hand had slapped him in the lace. He went numb. The pain in his head washed away. He stood up and staggered away from Snow. 'You ... you ... I heard you thinking.'

Snow snorted and shook her head, the way she did when she was excited. It hears! Understands!

Kailin was trembling. 'You understand me! You understand Kailin!'

Kailin? He got a sense of incomprehension.

'That's my name.'

Name? What is a name?

Kailin didn't know how to answer that, but Snow didn't seem to mind. She seemed to pluck the answer out of his head.

All Little Ones have names. Do I have a name?

'Snow.'

Snow. Why?

Kailin picked up a handful of snow. 'Because you're white.' He held it up to show her and then pressed it against the wound on his head.

Hurt? He could feel the tension in her thought.

'A little bit.'

They tried to talk, on into the night until the sun was long gone and stars filled the sky. Most of the time Kailin couldn't make sense of the images that flashed in his head, nor did Snow seem to understand him, no matter how ferociously he thought. He would feel her frustration build up inside her, and then something would burst and their thoughts would somehow align. It would last for a few seconds, maybe a little more before they drifted apart. Eventually he fell asleep, drained. The last thing he felt from Snow was how awake she was, how filled with wonder and awe.

For days afterwards the thoughts that appeared in his head were strange and alien. They rarely made sense, and he would have to ask again and again what Snow was trying to tell him. As time went by, though, they grew sharper, brighter, clearer. He talked to Snow whenever she was there, and she responded. Every day she was changed, filled with new discoveries. Clearer, more articulate, more intelligent than she'd been the day before. A voracious sense of amazement and adventure infected her every thought, and his as well. No Scales had ever experienced what he was seeing, this blossoming.

It is like a veil is lifted in my mind each night, she told him one day as she left to hunt. He spent the rest of the day wondering what use a dragon would have for a veil, until he understood: she wasn't hearing his words any more, she was seeing into his mind. And when she answered him, she was looking inside him for things that he would understand.

'We have to go home,' he told her when she came back from her hunt with fresh blood still on her claws. 'I have to show you to the others.'

/ am different. Why?

'I don't know, Snow. It's a miracle.'

Miracle? He felt her confusion. No. Little One Kailin, I feel as if I have awoken from a sleep that has lasted a hundred lifetimes. I do not understand how I have awoken, nor do I understand how I fell into such a slumber. Nor even how much more is to come.

'We'll go back home. We can ask Master Huros or one of the other alchemists, or even Eyrie-Master Isentine—'

NO! She snapped her jaws. Kailin scrabbled away from her in sudden terror, before she bowed her head to the ground, a dragon gesture of submission. / did not mean to frighten you, Little One Kailin. I will not hurt you, but nor will I go bac\ to that place.

'Why?' Kailin watched warily.

My brothers and sisters there are awake yet asleep. I could not bear to be that way again.

'Hut all dragons are like that. Except you. You're the miracle.'

No, Little One Kailin. I do not thinly so. I think we were all this way, a long time ago. I have dreams. Memories of other lives I've lived. Many, many lives, but all of them long ago. I remember when my kjnd flew in our hundreds. I remember the silver gods and the breaking of the very earth itself then a hundred lives of bright thoughts and flying free. And then, Little One Kailin, something changed, and everything since has faded into an eternal dull blur, dim and impenetrable. Out of reach. All my kin are still sleepwalking their lives. Somehow, you have awoken me. How, Little One Kailin? How did you awaken me? I will not return to my kind until I have that answer. Until I can bring that knowledge back to them.

'I don't know.'

I know. Your thoughts speak far themselves. There are Little Ones who know far more, who may have the answers. You know of them. You wish to take me before them.

'You would be the wonder of the realms.'

I am not so sure, Little One Kailin. Would you like to see the memories I have of your kind from my lives long ago?

'Of course.'

Visions burst into his head. He saw armies of men, hundreds of thousands, more than anything he could have imagined. He saw himself land among them, lashing with his tail, scattering them like leaves, scores of them, smashing them to pulp in their little metal shells. He felt the fire build in his throat and burst forth. The air grew heavy with the stench of scorched flesh. And he felt the appetite growing inside him. For more, more, more ...

He screamed. The vision abruptly vanished.

Do you understand? In my dream your kind were never anything more than prey, and your thoughts were always filled with hopeless terror. Why would you wish to return to such a world?

'No, no, no!' Kailin shook his head. 'Dragons and men have lived together for hundreds of years. We helped you. You were dying. We looked after you. We've always looked after you. No.' He shook his head again. 'Go back to the eyrie, Snow. Our queen is good and wise. She'll know what to do.'

The dragon cocked her head. You have seen what we were, and yet you are more afraid of this queen ? Curious. I can see that you truly believe everything you say. Perhaps ... Snow lifted her head off the ground. She rose onto her back legs and flapped her wings a few times. A sign of warning.

No, she said at last. I will not go back to the place you call the eyrie, Little One Kailin. Not yet.

26

The Burned Man

 

The dead man's lips began to move. He gave a soft sigh. The dragon-knights shifted away, shuffling uncomfortably. Sollos heard them muttering under their breath.

'He's all, um, yours,' said the alchemist. 'I don't know, um, how long he'll last. He hasn't been dead for long, so you've probably got at least, um, half an hour.'

Rider Semian was looking at the dead man with a mixture of horror and disgust. 'Ask him what happened here.'

'You can ask him yourself, if you wish, rider.'

Semian's lips curled in distaste. 'No, Master Huros. You made this abomination. It's yours now. The sell-swords will guard you. We will return to the river.'

The alchemist shrugged and turned his attention to the dead man.

'He kept on about the dragon speaking to him,' said Sollos, when the knights had gone. 'It was the white. He said there wasn't a rider. And something about someone called Maryk. I don't know what that was.'

'Leave me with him, Sword-Master Sollos. This isn't for your ears.'

Sollos snorted. 'You heard Rider Semian. We're to watch over you.'

'Thank you, but that's not necessary.'

'Master Huros, there probably aren't any snappers or wolves lurking around after a dragon's been here, but you never know. I don't overly mind if you get yourself eaten, but I'm quite sure that Rider Semian would delight in holding us to account for it.'

The alchemist shrugged. 'Stay if you must.' He settled himself and turned to the dead man. 'Um. What's your name, corpse?'

'Biyr,' said the dead man. Sollos shivered. The dead man spoke perfectly normally. He sounded much better than when he'd actually been alive and racked with the agony of his burns.

'Well, Biyr, what happened here?'

'A dragon came out of nowhere. We had no warning. It burned us. I was walking away from our tree shelters when the fire came.'

'Did you see the dragon?'

'Yes.'

'And, er, what colour was it?'

'White.'

The alchemist nodded, pleased. 'Did you see who was riding it?'

'No one was riding it.'

Huros frowned and shook his head. 'Ah. There must have been a, um, rider. Perhaps you missed it? Um ... When did you see the dragon? When it was in the air? Did it land?'

'It came down in the river after it burned us. I saw it then, between the trees.'

'Did you see it in the air?'

'No.'

The alchemist nodded. 'There, you see. Um ... whoever was riding her had probably already dismounted. Besides, it's not a good view from here through the trees to the river. I'm sure you could see something the size of a, ah, dragon clearly enough, but it would be very easy to miss a man.'

'I didn't see anyone get on its back before it went,' said Sollos quietly.

'That's because it didn't have a harness on,' grumbled Kemir. 'I kept telling—'

'It spoke,' murmured the dead man.

Huros shook his head. 'Dragons don't speak.'

'It spoke in my head. I heard it. It came for Maryk.'

'Um, no. You must be mistaken. That cannot be. Dragons do not speak.'

The alchemist's knuckles had gone very white.

Sollos asked, 'Who's Maryk?'

'One of us,' said the dead man. 'The dragon came after him.'

'How do you know?'

'That's what it said. It had come for Maryk. I heard its voice inside me, full of hate and fury.'

The alchemist shifted uncomfortably and frowned.

'Was this Maryk here?' asked Kemir.

'Yes. He was in the shelters,' said the dead man.

The alchemist raised a hand. 'Enough. Um ... sell-sword, go and bring Rider Semian to me.'

'So he's probably dead then.' Sollos made a face. 'Pity.'

'You should leave now,' said the alchemist.

Kemir grunted. 'I want to know about this Maryk. Where did he come from? Why did the dragon want him?'

'I want you to, um, leave us now, sell-sword. Bring Rider Semian. Um, right now.' The alchemist was chewing his lip in agitation.

'Do dead men lie?'

The alchemist turned and looked at Kemir. For a timid man, there was something very fierce in his eyes. And frightened too. 'About as much as living ones do, sell-sword. I said go!'

Kemir rolled his eyes. 'I'm only asking. Maybe when Rider Rod comes back, you could ask Crispy here whether we stabbed him. Just to make sure, you know.'

'There are no, er, wounds,' said Huros, between gritted teeth. 'It is patently obvious that you did not kill him. Now go!'

Sollos turned and left, pulling Kemir away with him.

Kemir chuckled to himself.

'Well he didn't seem very happy.'

'Do you have to annoy them so much?'

'Do I annoy them?'

'Does the sun rise in the morning? One day, one of those dragon-knights is going to lose his temper with you.'

'Let him. I'll put an arrow through him before he can remember which side he buckled his sword.'

'Yes. And what will you do about the other five?'

'Run like buggery, I expect.' Kemir laughed again and slapped Sollos on the back.

'I'm not finding this funny.' Sollos wrinkled his nose and loosened his shoulders. 'Something isn't right about this.'

'You keep saying that. As far as I'm concerned, what's not right is that we're helping dragon-knights.'

'We've been helping dragon-knights for months, remember?'

'Then let's just say I liked this work much better when we were helping dragon-knights by killing other dragon-knights. They're so stupid. They deserve to die.'

Sollos shook his head and pulled away, walking briskly towards the river.

'Well they are,' Kemir shouted after him. 'No obvious wounds? That's easy. Force open a man's mouth, drive a skewer up into the soft bit in the roof of his mouth and wiggle it about a bit. Or in through his nose, if he's totally out of it. Or up his arse, like Rider Rod. Need a bigger skewer for that, of course.'

'Will you shut up!' Sollos shook himself in exasperation. Whatever they both thought of dragon-knights, a fight wasn't going to help anyone, and Kemir was going to have to understand that sooner or later. Preferably sooner.

'Sell-sword!' Sollos emerged from the trees. Rider Semian was there, waiting for him. Sollos sighed. He couldn't bring himself to bow, so he settled for a slight nod.

'Rider. Master Huros has requested your presence. I suppose he has information he thinks you should hear.'

Semian looked at him askance and Sollos braced himself for the inevitable scornful tirade, but it didn't come. 'Very well, sell-sword. You can make yourself useful here instead. I require a fire.'

Sollos looked around at the smouldering embers all around him. 'That shouldn't be too difficult.' Even for a dragon-knight.

'I need smoke, sell-sword, and lots of it. No more walking through these cursed river beds. We're finishing this search as we should have started it. On dragonback.'

27

Nadira

The Outsiders came while Snow was hunting. She'd taken Kailin down from the snows of the mountainside into the rain and the constant damp of the mountain valleys. Water was everywhere. Tiny streams boiled down the forested slopes into wide rushing rivers and long still lakes. Whatever wasn't a river or a lake or a sheer piece of rock had a tree growing out of it. Vines grew on the trees and tufts of grass grew on the vines, and all of it was moving and alive.

Kailin was sunning himself on a boulder beside a river when he heard the first scream. He looked up and saw a woman running through the river towards him, leaping from one stone to the next. As he sat and stared at her, he saw that she wasn't alone. Half a dozen men were a little way behind her.

'Help me!' she shouted.

Heading straight for him, she reached his boulder and fell to her knees, clutching his hand. She looked exhausted and terrified. 'I don't know who you are, but help me, please. They're going to kill me.' Then she looked at him, saw him properly, saw his hard flaking skin and screamed.

Kailin screwed up his face and thought of Snow, but he felt nothing. The dragon must be miles away. He stood, paralysed. As the men came closer, they slowed down. There were six of them and they were armed with clubs and knives. Evil anticipation spread across their faces. He stared back, unable to move.

One of the men looked him up and down with obvious revulsion. 'What the fuck are you?' Then he jumped forward and swung a club at Kailin's head. Kailin raised his arms to fend off the blow. The club glanced off his elbow. Everything from his fingers to his shoulder erupted in pain and then went numb. He whimpered, and then the rest were on him, beating him down to the ground until everything faded away into a sea of pain. 'Nice one, Maryk,' he heard someone say.

Kailin returned to the world gradually, reluctantly. His arms felt as thought they were being wrenched out of their sockets. His ribs ached. His head was filled with thunder and lightning.

He opened his eyes. He was hanging from a branch by a rope tied around his wrists, about ten feet off the ground. A thick canopy of leaves and branches blotted out the sky above, filtering the sunlight to gloomy shadows. He was facing the river, overlooking the boulder where the men had beaten him senseless. They were still there, taking it in turns with the woman. Her face was puffy and swollen, and there were fresh scars on her back. They were cursing her, but they swore with such venomous hate that Kailin could barely understand them. Whore. Thief. That was all.

When they were finally finished with her, two of them held her down while a third pulled out a knotted length of rope and started to whip her. She spat and kicked at them then, but it was a short one-sided fight, and in the end all that was left were her screams. Eventually even those stopped. Her back was a bloody mess, but the man with the rope only stopped when one of the others put a hand on his arm.

'Leave her. She's almost dead already.'

The one with the rope wiped it clean, then used it to hog-tie the woman. Kailin closed his eyes as they turned away from her, looking up towards him.

'Enjoy watching did you, cripple?' shouted one of them.

'Hey! Thief! Wake up!' A stone hit him in the stomach, and then another one, this time in the shoulder. He managed not to flinch.

'Ah, leave him. He's not going anywhere.'

'Look at him! He's diseased.'

"Well I'm not touching him.'

'Was it worth it, thief? Thing? Whatever you are? Look! Look what she got you! Almost nothing. Here, you can have it. Make sure you give your whore her half. She worked for it.' Kailin had no idea what they were talking about.

'When the snappers come by, don't forget to pull your feet up. They can reach you if they're hungry enough to jump. Your whore's not going to be enough for them.'

'They probably wouldn't touch him. Look at him. Diseased, I tell you.'

They went away laughing. When the voices were long gone, Kailin opened his eyes. The woman was still there, tied up, motionless. His arms felt as though they were on fire.

'Hello? Hey?'

She didn't answer, but he saw her move, very slightly.

'Hey! Hey!'

After a while he gave up. He screwed up his face against the pain across his shoulders and tried to pretend he was somewhere else. Maybe that was what the woman was doing, why she was ignoring him. Not that either of them could help the other. All he could do was wait for Snow.

By the time she came, he was so consumed with his own misery he didn't even notice until she landed. Until he heard the woman's screams over his own whimpering.

Little One Kailin! She was crashing down the river, running on her hind legs, flapping her wings for extra speed, straight towards him. With her wings outstretched, Snow was almost as wide as the river, a hundred feet across and more.

The woman's shrieks grew louder and more hysterical, until they turned into a high-pitch keening wail.

You are hurt!

'Get me down from this tree!' shouted Kailin.

How did this happen? Snow skidded to a stop, flapping her wings and scattering boulders the size of Kailin's head. Her head darted forward; her teeth closed around the branch above Kailin's head. She bit through it as though it was putty and lowered Kailin carefully to the ground. Kailin hugged his arms to his chest. The relief was blissful.

I cannot untie you. Snow peered at Kailin, and then sniffed at the woman. Where did this one come from? Why is it bound? Is it food?

The woman's wailing subsided to whimpers.

'Snow, leave her alone. Don't hurt her. She's terrified.'

I know. It feels pleasant. It is the way I remember it.

'Talk to her.' Kailin struggled to his feet and started to walk back into the trees. 'Let her know you don't mean her any harm.'

You are in great pain, Little One Kailin. I feel it. I cannot help you. Why did you do this?

He could feel the confusion in Snow's thoughts. The dragon had no idea.

'Other men did this to us. Bad men, Snow. I don't know why.' He tilted his head towards the woman. 'She might.' He winced and walked gingerly among the stones until he found one sharp enough to cut the rope around his wrist. It was painstaking work, but at least when he was done the woman wasn't screaming any more. She was looking at Snow with an expression of bewildered terror. Kailin went over and unpicked the knots that bound her. Once she was free he slumped down against a boulder. The woman hugged her knees. She was shivering badly. He tried to give her his flying furs, but when he came close, she shrank away. He put them close by and then stepped away. Her back was still a bloody mess.

'I'm Kailin,' he said. 'This is Snow. She's my dragon.'

The woman looked at him as though he was mad. She seemed to be almost as afraid of him as she was of the dragon.

Her name is Nadira. She is terrified of you. She things you mean to hurt her. She sees you in armour, with a sword and a lance, as most men who ride dragons clothe themselves. And she things there is something wrong with you.

He sat down on a stone and watched her carefully. 'I'm not a rider; I'm just a Scales. Do you know what that means? It means I look after a dragon. I do the feeding and the grooming. Like a stable hand. I look the way 1 do because of her. When they come out of their eggs, dragons carry a disease. It did this to me. Even with the potions from the alchemists, it does this. Don't be afraid, though. This happened to me a long time ago. It's dormant now. Until the next hatchling I'm given to care for. I'm not allowed to ride her, by the way. She says your name is Nadira.'

She is confused. She doesn't understand how we got to be here. She still believes we will hurt her.

'We got lost,' said Kailin. 'We came from Queen Shezira's eyrie. I don't suppose you've heard of her ...'

No.

'Queen Shezira's daughter is marrying King Tyan's son. Snow and I were supposed to be wedding gifts. We were attacked by other dragon-knights. I don't know who they were. We escaped and ran away. We've been lost in these mountains for weeks. I don't suppose you know where we are?' Kailin stretched his shoulders and winced.

Very slightly, the woman shook her head.

Little One Kailin, what is Soul Dust?

'I don't know.' Kailin looked at the woman. 'What's Soul Dust?'

She flinched and looked away, and Kailin saw her eyes pause on something lying among the rocks. A tiny leather pouch.

Men who make it bought her for pleasure. She wants it. She needs it lik^ food or drink. She took some and ran away. She was being punished for this. Punishment. Revenge. Retribution. Yes, I understand this. It is wasteful. Foolish.

'They did this to her because she stole from them?'

That is what is in her mind. Another Little One, Maryk, he is the one who did this. I see that name in your thoughts too.

'They raped and beat her and left her to die. They left me to die too. Why?'

We are alike. We both miss our own kind in the same way. We miss what they could be, or should be, but not what they truly are. I have to go now, Little One Kailin. I have not finished hunting for the day. I will not be long.

Snow turned and Kailin watched her launch herself down the river, the same way the men had gone. That could have been coincidence, but something in the tenor of Snow's last thoughts said otherwise. She'd gone to find them. She didn't look back, and by the time he made himself stand up and call after her, she was too far away to hear his thoughts any more.

When she came back, he meant to ask her what she'd done and to tell her that it was wrong, but he never got a chance. Even as the thoughts were forming up in his head, she came crashing into his mind.

More dragons are coming.

28

The Hunters and the Hunted

 

When the white dragon came back, she caught them all by surprise. Sollos had barely started on the fire when a great shadow flashed over his head. The knights looked up and stared as the dragon wheeled overhead. She was clutching something in one claw, Sollos saw. She flared her wings and stretched out her massive hind claws, swooping down like an eagle towards them. When she landed in the river bed and took a few steps to steady herself, the mountains seemed to shake. Then she stood there, still, poised on her hind legs, wings not quite fully folded, head raised a little on her long neck, her massive tail stretched out straight behind her for balance.

Sollos retreated slowly from the beginnings of his fire towards the woods. He'd seen dragons stand like that before. So had the riders, who began to fan out across the river bed.

'How long before your own dragons get here, Rider Semian?' Sollos muttered. Semian wasn't there to answer, but Sollos already knew as much as he needed to. Not for some time.

Slowly, the dragon reached down with one forelimb. She opened her claws. There was a man curled up in there.

Holy Ancestors, Sollos thought when the man got up. It's the Scales. He looked well enough. A bit stiff and battered perhaps, and he walked a little awkwardly, but for a man stuck on his own in the Worldspine for a month he was remarkably alive. Maybe having skin as hard as stone that flakes like slate helps with that.

Rider Semian and Master Huros came running out of the trees. They ignored him and went straight towards the dragon. Kemir came after them and stopped at his shoulder.

'Oh well! That's going to make all this a lot easier.' He grinned.

'She's very tense.'

'Who?'

'The dragon, you idiot. Look at her.'

'Mmmm.' Kemir nodded. 'Ready to run. Wouldn't you be? Do you suppose she even remembers her knights after all this time. How do you know she's a she—'

Sollos shushed him. The Scales was walking towards the dragon-knights. He seemed very unsure of himself.

'That's enough!' Rider Semian held up a hand and stopped the Scales when they were still a good twenty feet apart. Semian had the alchemist beside him and one other knight. The rest of the riders were still slowly spreading out, edging towards the trees. Sollos did the same.

'Um, what is your name, Scales?' shouted the alchemist.

The Scales replied, but quietly. Sollos couldn't hear him.

'Scales Kailin. We, er, are here to take you home. You and your dragon.'

'Queen Shezira will congratulate you herself,' called Rider Semian. 'Her dragon is still intact, and has not been lost. She will be greatly pleased. There may be a reward.'

The Scales said something else. Sollos screwed up his eyes and strained forward, as if that might help him make out what the Scales was saying.

Then Kemir had a hand on his shoulder and was tugging him back towards the forest. 'I don't like the way this is going.'

'Did you hear him? What did he say?'

'He said no.'

Kemir was right; Sollos could see that by the way that the alchemist and Rider Semian were standing.

'This is not a request, Scales,' shouted Rider Semian. 'This is an order!'

Kemir was still edging back into the trees. He was stringing his bow.

The alchemist suddenly Stepped forward and walked up to the Scales. Sollos had no idea what they were saying, only that the alchemist looked very determined, and the Scales looked, well, if anything, he looked stunned. Aghast.

Something in the air changed. Sollos felt an irrational anger build up inside him. The Scales was gesturing frantically at the alchemist, trying to make him ... Trying to make him stop? The dragon had lowered itself to all fours. It was utterly still. Sollos could feel the tension radiating from it like waves of heat.

Kemir put a hand on his shoulder again. 'You know what? I think we should back off a little way further.'

'Yes.' He took a step backwards. Then another. 'Yes, I think we should.'

When the dragon moved, it was so quick that Sollos barely saw it. Its head and body stayed exactly where they were; its tail, all hundred feet of it, flicked like a whip. In the blink of an eye it flashed over the dragon's head. The tip coiled around the alchemist, lifted him up into the air and held him inches from the dragon's bared teeth. For long seconds everyone froze except for the Scales, who sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around his head. And then everything happened at once.

29

The Wordmaster

 

The City of Dragons stood behind the Adamantine Palace, squashed against the mountains of the Purple Spur and the Diamond Cascade Waterfalls. The city was a small one by the standards of the realms, but rich, filled with jewels and knights, lords and ladies. To either side of both the city and the palace lay the shimmering waters of the Mirror Lakes. To the south-west, the only open approach to the speaker's domain, were the Plains of the Hungry Mountain, the fertile grain basket of the central realms. On a good day a man in the palace looking out of the windows at the top of the Tower of Air could see all the way over them to the Fury River gorge, a hundred miles south of the city. Today, though, someone had built a very tall temporary wooden tower not very far from the palace gates, and the air beyond was hazy and tinged with grey. A keen pair of eyes might have made out two figures standing on the top of the tower. They might too have made out that the haze over the plains was the dust kicked up by the ten thousand marching men of the Adamantine Guard, preparing themselves for the ceremonies of the weeks to come.

It would have taken exceptional vision, though, to see that those figures on the tower top were the speaker himself, Speaker Hyram, and a master alchemist of the Order of the Scales. Or that the speaker's shaking was worse than usual, that his face was Hushed with what might have been excitement but was more probably rage, and that the master alchemist was looking decidedly pale.

'N-Nothing?'

The alchemist was Grand Master Jeiros, Second Lord of the Order of the Scales. The possibility that he might now be the first lord accounted for a good part of his discomfort. He bowed as low as he could without falling over.

'Nothing, Your Holiness. Grand Master Bellepheros stated his conviction before the the whole of King Tyan's court. No one tampered with Queen Aliphera's mount before she left and she was not attacked in the air. If there was murder, it did not originate within King Tyan's eyrie.'

'A-And that is all?'

'Prince Jehal pressed him hard in front of many witnesses. Master Bellepheros would not say whether Queen Aliphera's death was malice or misfortune, although he did allude to some sly goings-on between Aliphera and Tyan's brother. Prince Jehal was considerably displeased.'

The speaker spat. 'Tyan's brother? That gelding Meteroa? Nonsense! W-What of Q-Queen Zafir?'

'We have found nothing to implicate her.'

Hyram growled. 'A-And then B-Bellepheros disappears.'

The second lord scraped another bow. 'Taken by force. Prince Jehal reports that all his guards were found dead, most with their throats slit. Of the master himself...' Jeiros shrugged.

'P-Prince Jehal says!' Hyram spat. 'D-Don't believe a word f-from that viper.'

'Your Holiness, Master Bellepheros chose his words to the court of King Tyan with great care. Implications were presented, not in what he said but in what he did not say. He did not say that Queen Aliphera's death was an accident, Your Holiness.'

'Of c-course it wasn't!' Hyram stamped impatiently. 'D-Do what you need to f-find out who took him, Jeiros. N-Now, concerning the other matter? H-Have you got to the bottom of h-how Prince Jehal is k-killing King Tyan yet?'

Jeiros squirmed. 'Your Holiness, there is still no evidence that King Tyan is being poisoned at all.' He pursed his lips. 'We have learned, Your Holiness, that there may be some truth to the rumours that Prince Jehal has found something that improves his father's condition. It is a little ...' He frowned. 'It is unclear,

Your Holiness. There are ... there are hints of some potion he has acquired.'

Hyram snorted. 'I-If it's a potion, i-it's from one of you. G-Get to the point!'

'Your Holiness, that is the point. It does not come from the order. We ...' He hesitated, but there was no going back now. 'We think it comes from outside the realms.'

Hyram's face went dark; he started to cough and his tremors seemed to grow more pronounced. It took a while for Jeiros to realise that the speaker was laughing at him.

'Y-you have singularly f-failed, Master Jeiros. Y-You have no answers for me, a-and now this? S-So be it. Go, M-Master Jeiros. I will summon Queen Zafir and P-Prince Jehal and I will f-find out who murdered Aliphera, a-and then I will tell y-you which alchemist is making p-potions for Jehal.'

The alchemist backed away, bowing as he went. It was a long way to the bottom of the tower, down narrow stairs and rickety ladders. Hyram found himself hoping that the second lord might trip and fall. A broken wrist or some such inconvenience — that would do, nothing more. For all his blathering, Hyram preferred not to lose his second lord as well as his first.

He sighed, alone at last, and let his eyes drift out across the plain. His legions were formed up, twenty phalanxes each of five hundred men. They would be out there every day until the dragon kings and queens gathered at the palace to see him pass his mantle on. Part of the legacy that each speaker handed to the next: ten thousand exquisitely trained soldiers, raised from birth to fight. It struck him as strange, watching them, that so many men should dedicate every moment of their lives to such perfection, and yet be content never to fight. Their loyalty, he was assured, was total and unswerving, hammered into them from the moment they could speak. Their strength and their fearlessness too was total, forged in their relentless and brutal years of training, and then quenched in the alchemical potions that emptied their minds of any doubts that might remain; in their legends, even the dragons couldn't stop them. But didn't they secretly hate him? Didn't they despise him? Didn't they look at their own potency and then look at him and wonder, Who is this fading king? Who is he to leash us?

He looked away. A year ago he'd have laughed at such thoughts; then, a year ago he'd been a different man. Still strong, still fooling himself that he was younger than his years. Still with dreams that his days as speaker might go on and on, that he might compel Shezira to wed him as the price of naming her as his successor. Or, old treaties and dusty parchments be damned, marrying Aliphera and naming her instead. Still bedding women as the fancy took him, instead of lying helpless in his sheets, stinking of his own soil after one of the fits caught him unaware, screaming for his pot-boys to clean him.

Now Aliphera was dead, Shezira wouldn't have him, and even the pot-boys kept running away. In another year or two he'd be like King Tyan, dribbling and useless. How fitting that would be, the two of them, old foes that they were, side by side, forgotten, each lying in his own pool of drool. No, he'd rather die a quick death than that. Let them chop him up and feed him to his own dragons, like the speakers of old, before Speaker Narammed clipped the dragon-priests' wings.

He heard the stairs squeak behind him and turned to see a head emerging from the belly of the tower, up into the sunlight. The head didn't have much hair left, and what there was was white. The face beneath it looked pained and out of breath.

'You called for me, Your Holiness?'

Hyram shook his head. 'N-No, Wordmaster Herlian.'

'Then I shall take myself back down into the shade, Your Holiness, and you may tell our dear second lord that I shall corner him when he's sitting down one day and rap his ankles with my stick. I am too old to be climbing these stairs. He seemed to think you wished to issue a summons or two.'

'T-To Prince J-Jehal and to Queen Z-Zafir, but it could have waited. S-Since you're here, though, come and stand with me.'

'If I must, Your Holiness.' The wordmaster struggled out onto the roof. 'But you'd better tell me what there is to see. My eyes are as old as the rest of me.'

'I-I want to know, W-Wordmaster. What will your b-books say of me ?'

'Ha!' Herlian's cackle sounded like the snapping of old dry twigs. 'If I write them, they'll say you were a foul-tempered little boy who never attended to his lessons, didn't listen to a word his elders said to him and made his tutor's life an endless sea of misery.' The wordmaster hobbled to the edge of the tower and looked down. 'Long way. Heh. I suppose I might also mention how a headstrong dragon-knight took on the duty that should have fallen to his brother. I know you didn't want it. I don't mean being the speaker, either. I mean being the eldest.'

'H-History, Wordmaster, that's all.'

'History is all I am, young Master Hyram. If it's flattery you want, get yourself a flatterer to walk up all these stairs. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that there are books and books full of the stories of Vishmir and other speakers of old. Heh. I don't forget, you see. I still remember how your eyes used to light up when I'd finally consent to read to you about them. Your story will be much shorter, Your Holiness. Ten years of peace and prosperity in which nothing of any great significance happened to the realms, and all the little people were left to live their lives and get old and fat. That is what the story of a truly good speaker should be. Let that be enough.'

'I-Is it, though?'

Herlian shrugged. 'It is for the rest of us. If it's not enough for you, then tell me what is. I'll write wars for you if you want. Great victories, epic quests, strings of princesses fawning at your feet. Whatever you like. As much glory as you want.'

'N-No, Wordmaster, that won't b-be necessary.' Hyram shook his head, trying to push away the suffocating weight of hopelessness that seemed to press down on him these days. That's it, is it? I'll be remembered as a fine speaker, because no one has bothered to write anything else? But then why remember at all? He sat down, knowing that doing so would allow Herlian to sit as well. 'D-Do you have your q-quill? Let us start with a summons to P-Prince Jehal. M-Maybe you can add an execution as a f-footnote to my reign.'

30

Queen Aliphera's Garden

 

'I have a gift for you.' Jehal put on his best smile. Zafir glanced at him through her eyelashes. They were walking together, side by side, among many-coloured shrubs and rainbow flowerbeds. The summer sun was bright and warm and a faint breeze ticked Jehal's nose with strange scents, a heady mixture of perfumes and spices.

'Do you like my gardens?' asked Zafir. 'My mother grew them.' They walked just far enough apart to be sure they didn't touch, even by accident. Behind them a little knot of Zafir's ladies followed them around, not too close but never so far away that they were out of sight. In case they were needed to testify that nothing improper could possibly have happened.

'Indeed, Your Holiness.' He hated that, having to call her Holiness just because she was a queen now, and he was a mere prince. That would have to change. 'Queen Aliphera's Gardens are justly famous throughout the realms. Even as far north as ...' He let that hang.

'You mean even dear Princess Lystra has heard of them? It defies imagination.' Her words had edges like razors. 'Is she well, your wife?'

Jehal pretended not to notice Zafir's venom. 'When I left, she was a picture of health and very bored.'

'You should have brought her with you. It would have been a delight to welcome her as a guest within my walls.'

Yes. Especially now that she's carrying my heir. Of course, he didn't know for sure that Zafir knew this; in fact he didn't even know for sure himself, but the signs were there, and as far as he could tell Zafir's spies were making sure that she was at least as

well informed as he was. I should probably ask her whether it's going to be a boy or a girl.

He smiled again. 'She would have been overjoyed, I'm sure. Given her condition, however, I have had to order that she be confined to the palace. It is concern for her health, you see. The risk of miscarriage.' Zafir didn't blink. So that's that, then. She knows.

Zafir sniffed. 'I'm told that my mother was still flying three days before I was born. Queen Shezira probably gave birth to one of her daughters while still in the saddle.'

The ris\ of miscarriage that would come from letting you anywhere near her. 'Dear Queen Zafir, it should be plain to you that I've been seeking an excuse to lock my darling wife away since before I married her. Would you deny me my freedom?'

For a moment Zafir didn't answer. Then she stopped and turned to face him, and her face lit up. 'Is marriage so unhappy for you?'

'Deeply.'

'I'll help you get rid of her then,' she said quietly. 'I have a debt of that sort, after all.'

'In time, my love.' Jehal glanced back at the ladies-in-waiting. They were twenty, maybe thirty yards away, chatting among themselves, casting the occasional glance towards their queen. Well out of earshot.

'But not before she gives you an heir?'

'It does keep her out of the way, my sweet.'

'I suppose you, of all princes, can find a way to make sure she never gives birth. What a string of tragedies she has to look forward to.'

'Actually, I was thinking of birthing them in secret and then sending them away with the Taiytakei to be raised in secret in some far-off foreign land.'

She smiled. 'To come back in twenty years and challenge you for your throne? How romantic. And stupid. Get rid of them, Jehal. Them and her.'

'As soon as I can, my love. When I find the right potion.'

She drew a little closer, almost close enough to touch. 'Where do you get them from? Do you have a pet alchemist? He must be very good.'

Jehal bowed. 'Why, I make them myself, Your Holiness.'

'No you don't!' She laughed.

'I have a new one now. Something that makes my father's illness subside, at least for a while. I have a few flasks of it with me to dangle under Speaker Hyram's nose. Doubtless he intends to accuse me of killing your mother yet again, though without a shred of evidence. He's going to start sounding quite foolish soon. When he's done, I shall let him taste a little of my bottled salvation so that he can see how much better he might be, and then he'll never, ever taste any more.' He shook his head and laughed as well. 'Well, unless he makes me speaker, but I can't see that, can you?'

'I think he'd rather hand himself over to the dragon-priests.'

'Yes.' Jehal scratched his chin. 'Would he rather go slowly mad, though? I suppose he would, but it will be fun to find out.'

'Make him suffer. After he crowned me, he took me aside and asked if I'd killed her. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And then he asked whether it was you.'

Jehal put on a face. 'Well I hope you told him no.'

'Of course I did. Still, I think he had rather more of a secret desire for my mother than I realised.'

'I don't think it was that secret.' Not that secret at all. Just not reciprocated. 'Don't worry, my sweet, it's me that he wants to hang, not you. Smile him a pretty smile and he'll melt like butter.'

'Like this?'

'Exactly like that. I feel my blood quickening already.' He glanced back at the watching courtiers and sighed. 'Is there some way we could ...' he whispered.

Zafir's smile faded. She shook her head sadly. 'No. Not until this is done. That's what you said.'

'I know, but ...' He grinned and bared his teeth. 'Now I'm here, it is a physical pain that I can't touch you.'

She blushed and looked at her feet. 'Do you like this dress?' she asked.

'On you, it's perfection.'

'It was my mother's. I think she wore it on the day she first met Speaker Hyram. I had to make some adjustments, of course. I spoke to some of my mother's old servants and learned how she carried herself, how she dressed herself, how she wore her hair. When Hyram sees me, it won't be me he sees — it will be my mother, as she was when he fell in love with her. I shall drive that dagger in deep and then twist until the blade breaks.'

'Oh, that's cruel.' Jehal grinned. 'Between the two of us, we should have him weeping on his knees.'

Zafir shrugged. 'He accused me, moments after he crowned me.'

Jehal grinned some more. 'Well, he was right.'

She peered at him and pouted. 'You said something about a gift and then wandered off into all sorts of unpleasantness. Is it a nice gift? Shall I want it?'

'Oh yes, I think you shall want it very much.'

She wagged a finger at him. 'We agreed, remember.'

'My love, it's not me I'm offering. Well I am, but not here and now. Although ...' He glanced back at the courtiers again. 'I have a steel sword as well as the one you're after. I could butcher them all and then we could—'

'Jehal!'

'I'm sure they're all very tedious.'

Zafir laughed, and Jehal felt a tension inside him ease and fade away. He still had her. That was what mattered. However much she hated him for marrying Princess Lystra, he still had her. He handed her a strip of black silk.

'You have to put this on,' he said, 'like a blindfold. No! Not here!' He lowered his voice until he was absolutely sure that no one else would hear. 'But it's not a blindfold, my love. When you put it on, you will see things. You won't want anyone else to know, so do it when no one is watching you.' He offered her a box. It wasn't as pretty as the one the Taiytakei had given him, but it was close. This one, though, only had room for one little golden dragon with ruby eyes.

Zafir ran her fingers over the carved wood. He could see the hunger in her eyes. 'What is it?'

'Open it when you're alone. Take a good look at it, and then put on the blindfold. When you do, you'll understand. I could tell you a lot more, but where would be the fun in that?' He winked and his voice dropped even lower. 'Anticipation is often the greatest pleasure.'

'Oh really?' She was almost purring. 'Will you be staying in the City of Dragons after you've finished taunting poor old Hyram?' He could see the desire flashing through her. A real shame that we can't— He bit his lip. Not yet, not yet. Not while Hyram's watching us so closely.

'Of course. Though no one will know of it.'

'How can you be sure?'

'Leave that to me. Do you trust me, my love?'

He wasn't sure what to make of the look she gave him, but decided to take it as a cautious yes. He smiled as he felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. They'd dallied for too long, and the queen's chaperones were drawing closer. Slowly and cautiously and giving plenty of notice of their advance, but nevertheless with the same relentless purpose as a hostile army.

Later, when everyone was supposed to be asleep and he was alone in his carefully guarded and watched bedchamber, Jehal opened the shutters on his windows, slipped out the second strip of black silk and wrapped it across his eyes.

So, my love, let's see how far you've got.

31

The Adamantine Guard

 

Watching Zafir play with her new toy was far too much fun, and of course the first thing she did, as soon as she discovered she could make the little dragon fly, was to send it to spy through his window. He took off the black silk and then let her watch him for a while, tossing and turning in his sleep, then pretended to awaken. The tiny dragon flew up to his face as if to announce its presence. He tried to look sheepish.

'You are very wicked,' he whispered in the dragon's ear, 'and if you were here, I would show you how wicked you are.'

The tiny dragon danced around him, taunting him, and then darted back towards the window.

'Zafir,' he hissed, and the dragon paused and hovered. 'Nothing I've given Lystra comes near to this. Send it to watch us, if you want, and you will see.'

The dragon paused and then left. Jehal shuttered the windows behind it and then put the black silk back across his eyes.

Both of them rose late the next morning, and as Zafir rode with him to her eyrie, she seemed to glow.

'I'm sure you have another one,' she whispered in his ear as he prepared to mount his dragon, Wraithwing. 'We could watch each other when we're apart.'

Or I could tell her about the second silk, he thought. Tell her that I can share the eyes of her little spy with her, that I can watch her through its eyes whenever I want, if she keeps it near.

Tempting, very tempting, but that wasn't why he'd given it to her. 'Wait for me, my love,' he said thickly. 'I'll find you, after we're both done with Hyram.'

'Hmmm.' Her eyes flashed. 'You'd better.'

He climbed into the saddle and wiped his brow. Maybe the Taiytakei can get me some more. That made him laugh as he watched Zafir and her courtiers back away from his dragon. For all I know, these are the only two such creatures ever made, and I as\ for more simply so I can watch my lover when she's not in my bed? Not that they'd know, of course, but still.

'Fly!' he shouted, and immediately felt the huge muscles of the dragon stir beneath him. Wraithwing lifted his head, rose onto his hind legs and began to run across the flat ground. Jehal closed his eyes. He could feel every stride as the dragon accelerated. He knew exactly when it would make one last bound and unfurl its wings. He felt himself grow heavier as it rose up into the air, and he sighed. Nothing, but nothing, compared to that moment, the second that the ground let go. Such a pity that it only lasted for an instant; then it was gone, and everything that followed was tame and flat. He thought about getting out the black silk again and letting his eyes ride with one dragon while his body rode on another, but that was just a quick way to lose the silk to the wind. He tried to think about Hyram instead, but Zafir kept getting in the way. He wondered sometimes if he should have spurned Princess Lystra and taken Zafir to be his bride instead, but that would have ruined everything. It was a shame, though, because one day, because of what he'd done, Lystra was going to be in the way. Maybe he should have turned them both away. He could have done that. Rejected Lystra because Queen Shezira hadn't brought the perfect white dragon that she'd promised him.