He folded his arms. 'Let's just say I'm still a little irked that you dismissed me from Hyram's table two nights ago. One might have the impression that you think Hyram is right, and that I am poisoning King Tyan. Perhaps I've been poisoning Hyram as well, who knows? But if you did think such a thing, I would have to wonder as to the worth of your promises. Your word given to a prince may bind you, but your word given to a poisoner? I don't think that means very much to you.'

'If I had thought there was any truth to Hyram's suspicions, I would never have given you my daughter, Jehal.'

A warm feeling spread out from somewhere deep inside him. Jehal smiled again. 'Thank you, Your Holiness. I cannot describe how grateful I am to know that. You will declare me your successor when you make your challenge? In front of everyone?'

'Yes.'

Jehal bowed. 'Then King Tyan's vote will be yours, Your Holiness.'

'Good. Our business is done. Return with me to the feast, if you will.'

'Leave me here a while, Your Holiness. My mind is filled with ways to turn Silvallan and Narghon against Hyram and Zafir. Your victory would surely be even more pleasant if the two of them stood alone. I will rejoin you shortly, Your Holiness.'

Shezira hesitated, then nodded. Jehal watched her go, sinking slowly down the stairs into the guts of the tower. As soon as he was alone, his eyes shifted. He looked across the Tower of Dusk into the palace beyond, to the tall and slender Tower of Air, which looked down on everything. He was smiling.

'Speaker. At last. So sorry, Zafir. Nothing personal.'

Then he turned to look out to the mountains, leaning out over the stones, wondering what it would feel like to know that everything he could see was his.

He didn't look down. If he had, he might have seen a tiny pair of glittering ruby eyes.

48

The Eyrie of the Alchemists

 

Princess Jaslyn was the first to see the smoke. It hung, a slight haze staining the air, a mile or two ahead of them. When she waved at him and pointed, Semian saw it too. As they got closer, he made out the remains of the wagons on the ground, and the gleam, here and there, of shattered swords and armour.

The three dragons split smoothly. Semian and Jostan dived low, one to the left and one to the right. Silence and Princess Jaslyn powered up. While she circled overhead, the two knights swooped over the battle site from opposite angles. They made a second pass and then climbed back to Princess Jaslyn.

'Wagons and soldiers. All dead,' shouted Rider Semian at the top of his voice. 'Dragon attack.' He had no way of knowing whether Princess Jaslyn had heard him. There was a crude sign language that all dragon-riders learned, but it didn't cover things like this. The best he could do was: Friends. Dead. Dragon spoor.

He heard Jaslyn shout something back, but all her words were stolen by the wind. She signed: How long?

One hour. Two hours. 'Recent. Not long ago.'

Danger?

No. 'Whoever did this, they've gone.' Or at least he hoped so. There wasn't any sign of anything alive and moving on the ground, and whoever had burned these men could be miles away by now.

She told him to land and followed him down while Jostan circled overhead. They dismounted and picked their way through the wreckage. Parts of the wagons were recognisable — scorched axles and wheels. Most of the rest was charcoal and ashes, some of it still too hot to touch. There were a lot of bodies. No. Bits of bodies. Soldiers.

'These were the speaker's soldiers,' said Princess Jaslyn. With a start Semian realised she was right. Adamantine Guardsmen. Most had been eaten, and all that was left were hands and arms and legs and pieces of crushed armour chewed and spat out. The few bodies still in one piece had been burned and crushed. There was one impaled to the ground by one of the Guards' own scorpion bolts.

'They're all dead, Princess,' he said, and she nodded. 'Do we search for who did this? They cannot have long gone. They may be resting their dragons or letting them hunt.'

'Or they may be gone.' Jaslyn shook her head. 'We go on as we were. We'll tell the alchemists when we reach them. Once my mother is speaker, she'll put an end to these outrages.' She walked back to Silence and climbed onto his back. 'We fly at three levels now.'

Semian nodded. Three levels meant that one of them would fly close to the ground and the other two much higher, separated by thousands of feet and impossible to surprise all at once. Which was Jaslyn's way of saying she thought they were in some danger. They took to the air once more. Jostan stayed high, so Semian flew low, with Princess Jaslyn somewhere between them. Flying in the middle put her in the safest part of the formation, but also meant that they were relying on her eyes to spot any danger. Semian tried not to think about that and concentrated on following the rutted track leading to the alchemists' stronghold. In a lot of places it was almost invisible. It vanished into wooded vales, twisted over flat slabs of rock and skulked under overhangs, almost as if it had been designed to be difficult to find and almost impossible to follow.

Late in the afternoon the track led Semian over a high pass and down into a lush green valley. A village lay spread out beneath him nestled against a rushing river and surrounded by fields and cattle. The track followed the river, past the village and through a stretch of woodland. The sides of the valley grew steeper and closer together until he was flying between two sheer walls of rock hundreds of yards apart. The cliffs were pitted with fissures stained with streaks of black and dark green. Tiny trickles of frothing water bubbled over the cliff edge and dissolved into clouds of spray. In every possible crack stunted trees and bushes struggled to grow.

The cliffs came steadily closer together. Semian could feel Matanizkan's unease. She didn't like flying in such a confined place.

Abruptly, the cliffs closed completely. At the base where they joined, a loose collection of stone buildings hugged the rocks. Among them Semian could see the mouths of several caves, shafts of darkness disappearing into the earth. The river vanished into one of them; beside it was an eyrie, small but unmistakeable. There were no dragons.

Matanizkan pulled up. There was nowhere left for her to fly. The walls of rock spun wildly as she pitched over. For a moment, Semian was hanging upside down; and then she'd turned and was diving towards the valley floor. Semian gritted his teeth and gripped his harness. Somehow she found the space to spread her wings and levelled out, her claws skimming the ground.

'Down,' he told her, and she seemed almost grateful to land and catch her breath. He stayed in the saddle and walked her slowly back to the head of the valley, to the eyrie. By the time he got there, several alchemists were waiting for him. There were soldiers too, and several scorpions pointed in his direction. Cautiously he dismounted. He glanced up for Jostan and Princess Jaslyn but couldn't see either of them. Sandwiched between the walls of rock, he couldn't see much of the sky at all.

'Rider Semian in the service of Queen Shezira,' he called. The soldiers relaxed as he walked away from the dragon, and one of the alchemists approached.

'Keitos, senior alchemist.' He bowed. 'Apologies, Rider. We had no warning you were coming, and these are troubled times.'

Semian wasn't sure what Keitos meant by that but kept his silence. They walked away from Matanizkan. 'I'm riding escort to Princess Jaslyn. There is one other dragon-knight as well. Rider Jostan. They'll be arriving shortly.' He forced a grin. 'Interesting landing.'

Keitos nodded gravely. 'It was certainly an unusual approach. You haven't been here before, then. This is place is difficult for dragons. That's one of the reasons it became a stronghold for us in the old times, before our order mastered them.'

Back when you were blood-mages. But reminding the alchemist of his order's sordid origins would have been poor behaviour for a guest, so Semian held his tongue. They waited at the edge of the eyrie as Matanizkan was lured out of the way. Eventually, he saw Jaslyn and Jostan flying down the valley towards them. They'd clearly seen him almost crash into the cliff and even Jaslyn was coming in low and slow. They landed gracefully, one behind the other, and dismounted. Keitos left Semian and went to greet them. When the alchemist returned with Jostan and Princess Jaslyn, he looked grim. Jaslyn was telling him what they'd passed on their way.

'Everyone was dead,' she was saying, 'and it was clearly a dragon attack.' She looked at Semian. 'Would you not agree?'

Semian nodded. Keitos bowed his head. 'And the wagons, Your Highness?'

'Everything was destroyed. You know, I imagine, that several of my mother's knights were attacked some months ago.'

'We are aware, Your Highness. One of your dragons was never found.'

'A perfect white. We're still searching for her.'

Keitos nodded vigorously. He led them into a crumbling stone longhouse. Semian noticed that the roof leaked. Everything here was damp.

'We don't have much by way of lodgings, Your Highness. There are a few rooms but...'

Jaslyn waved him away. 'We won't be staying long, Master Keitos. I have something of a mystery to show you. When you can tell me what it is, we'll be on our way. I hope to leave at first light tomorrow.'

'A mystery?' Keitos paused and his eyes lit up. 'How unusual. I'm sure Your Highness will be most well received. Forgive me, Your Highness, but since many of our elder masters are now guests of the speaker for Queen Shezira's accession, might I ask why you came here? I'm sure their knowledge of potions would have sufficed.'

'It's not a potion, Master Keitos. It is something more like liquid metal.'

Keitos bowed. 'We shall do our best, Your Highness.'

'Good. And you will do it today, and then I will leave in the morning with all the proof I need to destroy Prince Jehal forever.'

For the first time since they'd left the palace Semian saw something like a smile flicker across Princess Jaslyn's face.

 

 

 

49

The Dragon-Priests

 

Hyram stood at the window of the Tower of Air. Over on the Tower of Dusk he could see two figures on the battlements and nothing more. Then Zafir wrapped the black strip of silk around his eyes and he was there, clinging to the stonework only a few feet from Jehal. He couldn't see much, until the end when Jehal leaned out and stared over at the City of Dragons. But that didn't matter. He heard it all. Every word. Even after Jehal had gone inside and there was nothing to see except the stars in the sky and nothing to hear but the wind, he stood there, silent and motionless. He felt as if his heart had been turned to stone. Very slowly he took off the silk.

'She's going to make the Viper speaker after her,' he said. He still didn't quite believe his own ears. Shezira was almost a part of his family. It was unthinkable that she'd do such a thing, and yet he'd seen it. He'd heard it.

'I told you she would plot against you.' Zafir's soft hands took his.

'But the Viper. How can she?' He shook his head in disbelief.

Zafir stood close beside him, close enough that he could feel her heat. She was wearing a thin silken shift that clung to her in the breeze from the window. 'Your family gave her their word that she would follow them. She's a proud and stubborn queen.' Zafir shook her head. 'And look at how much she's prepared to give him. She almost makes him king of her own realm while he waits.'

'I would have had one of her daughters succeed you as speaker. She herself, if she was still sound of body and mind.' Hyram wrung his hands. 'Why? Why did she have to betray me like this? With the Viper ...'

'It doesn't matter, my lover. Whatever you decide, I will be there for you, and surely you can rely on your own clan. What does Shezira have? King Valgar and King Tyan?' She snorted. 'Not enough.'

'Jehal will bring Silvallan and Narghon with him.' He shook his head. If Zafir hadn't been holding him, he would have been pacing back and forth. He should have thought of this. Stupid to let Shezira see what was coming, and now he was going to pay for it.

'No.' Zafir squeezed his shoulders and whispered in his ear. 'I can promise you at least one, if not both.'

'How?' Still, no decision was made. He could always name Shezira, as he'd first intended. He could still marry Zafir and live out his years as a king. Would that be so bad?

'Trust me, Speaker Hyram.' Zafir slipped the black silk out of his hands. 'I need to bring back my little spy.' She wrapped the silk around her eyes and moved to stand right in front of him, facing the window, leaning very slightly into him. 'Hold me,' she breathed. 'I lose myself sometimes when I do this. Don't let me fall.'

'Yes, of course.' One hard push and she'd fall out of the open window. The ground was a hundred feet below. She'd be smashed to pieces. Just like Aliphera.

No. He couldn't let Jehal win. He couldn't change his mind. Not now.

'Hold me tighter.' Zafir was pushing herself into him, swaying slightly, gently grinding against his groin. She might have been doing it deliberately or she might not; either way, he felt himself respond. His arms reached around her, pulling her closer still. His fingers caressed her skin through the gauze of her shift. She was shivering.

'Are you cold?'

'No.' She took one of his hands and moved it slowly over her until it reached her throat. She held it there. 'If you thwart Prince Jehal in this, you'll be the centre of his life. Everything he does will orbit around the hate he'll have for you.'

Hyram nuzzled her ear and whispered, 'Not for long. You'll hang him for the murderer that he is.'

'Will I? I steal the potions that keep you a man from Jehal, but he's the one who knows what they are, and only he knows where they come from. Tell me, Speaker, what means more to you? Is it me? Is it Jehal? Or is it the potions? Would you give them up for all this? Would it be worth it?'

Hyram didn't answer. A decade ago he might have said it was Jehal and vengeance that mattered the most. Two decades and he would have said Zafir and the smell of her skin. Now, though ... He closed his eyes. The potions. It was the potions.

Zafir gripped him tightly. 'I know. I understand. Just remember that we might need Jehal for a little while longer, until we can find out where he gets them.' As she spoke, a little golden dragon fluttered through the window on metal wings and settled on the bedpost. Zafir moved his hand down to her breasts. 'Close the shutters. What's done is done. Queen Fyon is Jehal's aunt. She'll try to sway King Narghon behind Jehal. I can do something about that. You make sure of Silvallan and your cousin. That will be enough for us.'

Hyram reached to untie the knot in the black silk around her face, but she turned deftly to face him and took his hands in hers.

'Let it stay there. I'd like to watch with the dragon's eyes.'

She pulled him onto the bed, and as he pulled back her gown and pushed his way inside her, he forgot about Jehal and about the potions and there was only her. With the silk covering her eyes, it was easier to see Aliphera's face gasping beneath him.

He tried to slip out of her bed in the middle of the night, but she pulled him back and made him forget himself until the sun was creeping over the horizon once more. Then she slept, and Hyram lay wide-eyed and awake, staring at the ceiling, and at the two pairs of ruby eyes that stared down from the bedposts. Hadn't there been only one mechanical dragon the night before? He tried to remember and found that he couldn't. When he looked at his hands they were shaking. Not a lot, but enough that he could see it. Fear gripped him. Potions! He needed another draught already.

He dressed quickly and hurried away to his own rooms. The potions were still where he'd left them, waiting for him. He gulped down a mouthful and looked at what was left. Slowly but surely they were running out. He was getting through them faster than he had at the start.

Best not to think about that. Once all this was done, once Zafir was the next speaker, he could concentrate his energies on the alchemists. Find out what these potions were and where they came from. Make as much as he'd ever need. Yes. That was the way it would be. And he'd have to make Zafir speaker, because if he didn't, what then? To lose her was to lose everything now.

The potion took hold of him. The shaking went away and he felt strong again. He dressed himself properly and hurried to the Glass Cathedral, then stood at the altar and waited. He tried not to remember being here months ago, at his weakest, with Queen Shezira standing over him, cold as ice and hard as stone.

'Lord Hyram.' Out of the dark recesses of the church, the dragon-priests filed towards the altar. They formed a circle around him and bowed as one. They never once spoke of it, but he could feel their hunger for him, urging him to go the way of the speakers of old, on a pyre lit by dragon fire, his charred remains to be carted to the eyrie as fodder for the beasts.

'High Priest Aruch.' Hyram didn't bow. As speaker he was bound to respect the traditions of the Glass Cathedral, but as plain Lord Hyram he would treat them with the disdain they deserved. 'I have not come to be reforged, if that's what you're hoping.'

Aruch didn't move. 'Your Lordship was so close to the ultimate mysteries,' he whispered. 'So close. Closer than any speaker since the time of the Narammed. You are fallen, Lord Hyram. Fallen by the hand of woman. So tragic. You could have been one with us.'

'Oh please, anything but that. Cut out my organs while I'm still alive and take them to the eyrie. Even that would be preferable.'

'Your words are meant to wound, but you cannot pierce our scales, Lord Hyram. We pity you, now and forever.'

'You can do something else for me, Aruch, if you can spare the time. I intend to marry the woman you so despise.'

'We know. We are prepared. And we do not despise Queen Zafir. We despise no one, and all are welcome within our walls. Always.'

'Well, there will be a lot of us within your walls and sooner than you might have thought. The wedding is to come forward. Tomorrow, at dawn. Everyone is already here, so why not.' Yes. It was an impulse, but it felt right. Bring it forward, if only by a day. Let everyone know. Let the battle lines be drawn. Let all his enemies array themselves out in the open where he could see them. Antros would have done the same, and Shezira too. So be it. Hyram turned and strode out of the circle of kneeling priests.

'Some even find comfort here, if you remember,' murmured Aruch as he passed.

Hyram snorted.

'Some will, some won't. It will be interesting to see, don't you think?'

'Thy will be done, Lord Hyram. Thy will be done.'

As he left, he felt the priests silently rising and returning to their shadows.

50

Rebirth

 

They left the wagons still burning, the soldiers all dead and broken. Nadira watched as they shrank away into nothing, until even the pall of smoke was gone. She was a survivor; she prided herself on that. She'd had a husband, four children, the pox; she'd lost herself in Soul Dust and been attacked by dragons, raped by their riders and she'd survived it all. She thought about surviving for a long time as the dragons flew, and she thought about the soldier she'd killed, hammering his head with a stone until there was nothing left of his face. It had left her with a strange feeling, an empty floating sensation that she didn't understand.

She had no idea where they were any more except somewhere in the Worldspine. The mountains she was used to were huge towering things that glowered at one another and kept their distance across deep wide valleys. Here, everything seemed all squashed together. The mountains were piled up right next to each other, sometimes on top of each other. The valleys were more like ravines. No one could live here. Or that's what she thought until she saw the village.

The dragons passed over it and then turned and soared away. She could feel their excitement. No thoughts came to her but she knew they'd found what they were looking for. They spent the rest of the day hunting, gorged themselves, and when they were done they curled up on a tiny plateau to sleep. Nadira sat resting her back lightly against Snow's scales. The air up here was bitterly cold, but in places the dragon was almost too hot to touch. Kemir stood up, strung his bow and went off. She understood men like Kemir. He was strong. He brought food. He kept her alive and made her feel sale, and in return she would stay close to him. If he

asked, she would close her eyes and imagine herself somewhere far away and give herself to him. As far as Nadira knew, that was the way of the world for someone like her, as good as it could be. She should count herself lucky.

He came back an hour later empty-handed, looked at her and shrugged an apology, then walked off again. After a while she got up and followed him. He was standing at the edge of a precipice looking out at the mountains. Away from the dragons, the cold air quickly worked it way through her clothes to her skin. She shivered and huddled next to Kemir.

'There's no food up here,' he said. 'We go hungry tonight.'

He didn't speak much, and usually she was glad of that. The dragons spoke even less. The white one said things to her sometimes. The black one only spoke as though she wasn't there. Hearing them inside her head had been a terror at first. Now, when they flew into a rage she flew into one too; apart from that, she barely noticed. They were all quiet company. She liked that, but not tonight.

'I've been hungry before. This is it, isn't it? They've found what they're looking for.'

Kemir nodded.

'Good.' It ought to frighten her, but it didn't. Instead, she felt a sharp stab of anticipation.

'Might be. Might not be.' Kemir shrugged. 'When they've done what they've come to do, I don't know what happens to us. They might leave us here. They might eat us.'

'I don't think so. We'll find some way to be useful to them.'

'We should run away again. They might not look for us this time.'

Nadira put her arms around his shoulders. 'Come back to the dragons. I'm cold.' When he talked at all, Kemir mostly talked about running away. She wasn't sure how much he meant it. They'd tried it the once, and that was all.

He shook her off, so she went back to the dragons on her own and curled up beside them to sleep. Kemir came back a few minutes later. He lay next to her, wide awake, staring at the stars.

'I was born in a settlement,' he said. 'I lived there until I was fifteen. Then the King of the Crags came. He was only a prince then. I wasn't there. I should have been, but I was off larking about with one of my cousins. When we came back, it was all gone. Nothing but ash. All we had was each other. On the day that you first saw me, they'd just killed him too. I can't run away. Not now. I want to see it all burn. They know that too, Snow and Ash. They know I'll stay.'

Ash had started to snore. The sound was so deep that she didn't hear it so much as feel it gently shaking the mountainside.

'Riders came to my settlement too,' she said quietly. 'It was deep in the forest. Everyone thought we were safe. It was all trees. There was nowhere nearby for a dragon to land. Didn't help though. The trees weren't big enough. They found us and burned us through the leaves and branches, and then the dragons crashed into what was left and knocked it flat. The riders came after us, those they hadn't burned. Everyone was either killed or they took us as slaves. I wasn't good enough to be a slave. Too old, too ugly, too something. They took my boys though, the ones they didn't kill. I saw them.' Her eyes glistened. That was the one memory she hung on to, watching her two boys, one eight years grown, one ten and almost a man, being dragged away. They'd been weeping and cowering, but it was a happy memory in a way, because at least they might still be alive, even if they were chained to the oars of a Taiytakei galley somewhere.

'They did what they always do,' she said quietly. Kemir was still staring blankly at the sky, so she lay down next to him, forced herself to rest her head on his chest and run her fingers though his hair. 'When they were done with us, they killed all the other women too old to be sold. But not me. They took me back to their castle and helped themselves whenever they wanted. After a few days I must have bored them. They took me back to where they'd found me and left me there in the cold ashes to die. The others were still there, their corpses already chewed to the bone. I suppose they thought that some snapper would find me before I could reach another settlement.'

Kemir muttered something and draped an arm over her shoulder.

'The snappers must have eaten their fill. But it was all wrong after that.' All wrong because she was useless. She was too old and no one wanted her. Among the settlements a woman on her own could mean only one thing. She'd moved from one place to the next, never staying long, selling herself to stay alive, stealing when she could, until she got caught and sold to a Dust gang. She didn't remember too much for a while after that, just doing everything they asked. Anything.

'Whatever it took to get more Dust,' she breathed, and felt a pang of craving inside her. Even thinking about it, even after all this time ... 'And then they had enough too, and left me for the snappers again. Them or the cold.' She laughed bitterly. 'Snappers don't like me, I suppose. Too skinny. Not good eating. I thought I was seeing things. There was a huge white dragon. And then there was Kailin Scales. And then there was you, and then Kailin Scales went away, and I was still alive, and even the Soul Dust was gone, as much as it ever can be gone.'

And she'd survived.

She felt the rise and fall of Kemir's chest. He was sleeping. She rolled away and lay next to him, watching the stars, feeling the heat from the slumbering dragon on the other side of her. She ran a hand over Snow's scales. They should have run away. They both knew it. They should have left when Snow found Ash. Right then, when the dragons were so distracted they might have got away. Instead they'd waited too long. Now the dragons would never let them go, but it didn't bother her; if anything it made her feel special. There were worse places to be.

Snow was deliciously warm. She could feel the sense of purpose that filled the dragons now, even while they were sleeping. It hadn't been there the day before. It was infectious. She wanted to do something. She had no idea what. She'd never had a purpose before, never had time for it. Not starving, not being eaten, not dying of cold and exhaustion - all that had been purpose enough. Suddenly she didn't have to worry about those any more.

Kemir had a purpose. The dragons had a purpose.

She'd thought about that all through the day, as the mountains grew shorter and steeper and sharper and more pressed together.

'I want to help kill the dragon-knights,' she whispered. She wasn't sure if she'd meant it for Kemir or for Snow, or whether she was simply speaking to the wind. 'Every one of them,' she added. 'I want to kill them all.' This surprised her. It wasn't the purpose she'd expected. Maybe it wasn't her purpose at all. Maybe the dragons had made her want it, in the same way that when they grew angry she grew angry too. Or maybe she'd caught it from Kemir. In the end it didn't really matter, did it?.

Nadira hunched her shoulders and closed her eyes. She made herself small and snuggled next to Snow. The dragons were dreaming, and from their dreams she knew exactly what was coming.

Yes. There were far worse places to be.

 

 

 

 

Returning the Cinders

There is one last price a dragon-rider must pay. When a dragon

finally dies, it burns from the inside so that all that remains

beneath the scales is charcoal and ashes. The scales survive.

They are light and strong, and above all fire and heat will not

penetrate them. Thus they are much sought after as armour.

When a dragon dies and only the scales remain, the rider must

gather them and return them to the eyrie and the dragon-king

from whence they came. Thus the dragon returns to the place

of its birth. Only from the cinders, say the alchemists, can a new

dragon be born.

51

The Alchemists

 

Jaslyn had come to see the alchemists once before. She'd been thirteen years old. Lystra was eleven, Almiri sixteen and very soon to be wed to King Valgar. They'd come with their mother and Lady Nastria on the backs of two dragons, both dead now. Jaslyn's memories were of huge dark caves and wizened old men and damp stone, and of Almiri being unbearable. Their mother had taken them down through endless tunnels to a place that had never seen the sun, lit only by a few lamps. The rush of some underground river had echoed everywhere they went. They'd come out into a huge cavern, and her mother had pointed at the purple stains on the walls.

'This is where our power comes from,' she'd said. 'These tiny little plants. The alchemists make them into potions. The Scales feed the potions to our dragons. The dragons do as we command them. Without these little plants we are nothing. Remember that, always.'

Jaslyn had hated every minute of it, but what she had hated most was the thought that her dragons did as she asked of them because of some little plant. They were supposed to do it for her. For their love of her.

She was older and wiser now, but the feeling was still there, and it hit her in the pit of the stomach as soon as she landed. I hate this place. She looked at the cave mouths and trembled, and so it was a relief when Keitos led them through the jumble of stone houses instead. He bowed and nodded his head and mumbled platitudes, none of which she really heard, and took them into a squalid little hut where an old man sat at a bench squinting through a piece of coloured glass at a leaf. They stood in the doorway and waited, but the old man didn't seem to notice them. He just looked at his leaf. He was deathly pale, and all that was left of his hair were a few white wisps.

Eventually Keitos coughed.

'I know you're there, Master Keitos.' The old man didn't look up. 'I know you have visitors too. Three dragon-riders. I felt them land. Whoever you are, you'll just have to wait.'

'This is Princess Jaslyn, Master Feronos, daughter of Queen Shezira, our next speaker. Soon to be our mistress. With her, Rider Semian, also in Queen Shezira's service.' Jostan had stayed at the eyrie to see their dragons were well cared for.

The old man sighed. He stared at his leaf for another few seconds and then put it down and looked at them. 'Princess Jaslyn. Yes. You came once before with your mother. Five years ago, in the winter, when we were all covered in snow. Yes, yes. I remember.' He didn't get up or bow, or do any of the things Jaslyn was used to. 'Shouldn't you be at the palace?'

Jaslyn stared at him.

'Master Feronos is the wisest of us in the lore of stones and metals,' said Keitos nervously. He shuffled his feet and took a step into the room. 'Her Highness has brought something that she says is a mystery, Master. A liquid that is like metal.'

'A liquid that is like metal or a liquid that is metal?'

'Prince Jehal may be poisoning Speaker Hyram or King Tyan with it. Maybe both. And someone has used it to try and poison my mother,' snapped Jaslyn. She pushed Keitos out of the way and thrust the clay pot, still sealed with wax, in front of the ancient alchemist.

A gnarled, trembling hand reached out and took it from her. Feronos wasn't ready for how heavy it was. It tumbled from his fingers, and Jaslyn barely caught it before it smashed on the floor.

'Ahhh.' The old man nodded. 'I know this. It's been a long, long time since I've seen it. It doesn't surprise me that you don't know what this is. There aren't many that would. You have to be old Like me to remember.'

'You haven't opened it, old man.' Jaslyn clenched her fists. 'How can you know what it is when you haven't even opened it.'

Silently, Feronos put the pot on his table and broke the seal. Very carefully he opened it. 'A metal that gleams like silver and runs like water. Very heavy. Nothing quite like it. Very hard to find.'

'I know that.' Jaslyn stamped her foot. 'Where does it come from? Who made it?'

'No one made it, girl. You cannot mafye this. As for where it comes from ...' He shrugged. 'Not from within the realms we know, I can tell you that. We had some once. It came across the sea, I think.' His brow furrowed. 'Oh, now ... who was keeping it? Not here. Somewhere in the west. Old Irios had some in Shazal Dahn, but he's gone now. Long gone.'

The old man seemed to drift away.

Keitos bit his lip. 'Our stronghold in the western deserts,' he said reluctantly. 'We like to keep it a secret.'

'But that's ...' Jaslyn's gaze shifted to Semian. 'That's Speaker Hyram's realm!'

'It was a long time ago,' whispered the old man.

Jaslyn rounded on him.

'But it's poison, yes? It is poison?'

He shrugged. 'Drink enough of it and you'll sicken. Like a lot of things. Irios liked to work with it, but he went mad. They say the liquid metal did it to him. Sailors used to bring it to him. The alchemist's disease, they call it. Old age I say. Couldn't stop shaking. In the end he just walked out into the desert and never came back. Or that's what someone told me once, I think. Fumes in the air. But not a poison. Not unless you want to spend a decade waiting. No. Quicker to let age take its course, I would think.'

Jaslyn gripped the table. The world seemed to spin and rush around her. 'No. It is poison. Alchemist's disease. That's what Almiri called it too. And King Tyan, yes, he's been dying of it for nearly a decade, and Hyram, he's been ill for more than a year. Slowly getting worse. It is a poison. It is Jehal.' She clenched her fists. 'He's killing them so slowly that they don't know they're

being murdered. Hyram has the right of it, and no one else believes him!'

Master Feronos carefully sealed up the pot and put it on the floor. He seemed slightly disappointed. Jaslyn strode back out of the hut and filled her lungs with fresh air.

'Highness!'

'Rider Jostan!' She looked at him in surprise. 'You're supposed to be at the eyrie, seeing to it that Silence is cared for exactly as I requested.'

'Highness, there are other dragons nearby. The white has been seen.'

Jaslyn blinked. 'What? Here? With the alchemists?'

'No. But two dragons were seen near the village a few hours before we came. A black war-dragon and a white hunter. It can only be ours. There are no other whites.'

She snorted. 'And who told you this, Rider Jostan? A peasant already in his cups? A farmer? Or was it the village idiot?'

'Your Highness, a captain of the Adamantine Guard. A legion of them protects the alchemists' redoubt.'

'I've never heard of such a thing. Nor did I see any Guard as we flew in.'

'They camp within the forest, under the cover of the trees.'

laslyn shook her head. 'No matter. We must return to the palace at once. Go back to the eyrie and have our dragons readied. Queen Shezira is on the point of making a pact with Prince Jehal. We must be back before the speaker is named. So we must leave now.'

Jostan looked unhappy. 'Your Highness, by the time the dragons are fed and readied the sun will be almost set. I beg you, please do not camp in the wilds of the mountains in the middle of the night while there are other dragons nearby. We do not know if they are friends or enemies or what their purpose is, but if one is the white ... Remain here, Your Highness, in safety. We can leave at first light and still be back in time.'

'Rider Jostan is right,' said Semian from behind her. 'We will fly with you if we must and die to defend your life, but it is unwise to leave in such haste.'

Jaslyn growled and clenched her fists, but they were right and she knew it. She stamped back into the hut and snatched up the pot of poison. The Viper's venom.

'Very well. First light. Not a moment later.' She swept up her cloak and marched away, striding impatiently across the ground without knowing where she was going. Nastria should have come. Too many mysteries. Wait, wait, wait; we should leave now; I should be with mother. And what does ]ehal get from poisoning her ten years from now? Why would he do that?

And why is the white here?

52

First Light

 

A low droning hum filled the Glass Cathedral. Hyram and Queen Zafir stood on either side of the altar. They wore jewelled dragon masks and and long robes of gold and silver leaf that flowed and spilled across the floor. They were supposed to stand absolutely still, like statues, while the sun rose, until the first light of the day spilled in through the windows.

Shezira watched them carefully. She'd been through the same ordeal when she'd married Antros. She'd had to be still for nearly hall an hour, and apart from giving birth to their daughters it remained the hardest thing she'd ever done. Antros, of course, had fidgeted constantly. Now Zafir was so still that she might have been made of stone. Hyram, she thought, was trembling very slightly.

The droning of the priests grew very slightly louder. The sun was nearly at the window. Shezira glanced over her shoulder, fehal was sitting somewhere at the back with King Tyan. Tyan had gone into one of his moaning phases, and she could hear him even over the hum of the priests. If he was trying to say something, he'd long ago passed the point where anyone could understand him.

She'd made a point of going to see King Tyan and spending some time with him. He seemed to recognise her. He couldn't talk and hardly moved, and when he did, he trembled so violently that everything around him went flying. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling, when she looked into his eyes, that he was still in there somewhere, hopelessly alone and mad with despair. Afterwards she'd found it hard to be angry with Hyram any more. She'd even suggested to fehal that he should give Hyram some of his secret potions himself, that they should make peace, but Jehal had only shaken his head.

'Never,' he'd whispered. He was doing everything he could to discover how Queen Zafir had stolen them. It was all her doing. She had an iron wickedness inside her. A true dragon-queen.

Shezira looked at her, across the altar, trying to see it, but she could never get past how young Zafir was. Too young to be a speaker.

Finally, the first light spilled in and struck the altar. The priests stopped their moaning and closed in around Hyram and Zafir, waving their arms up and down, reaching for the sky and then the earth and then back to the sky. Whatever the symbolism of all these rituals, Shezira doubted that anyone but the priests understood it. No one cared about the dragon-priests any more.

They backed away and fell to the floor, leaving Hyram and Queen Zafir standing alone in the orange dawn light. The masks were gone. They each reached out one hand towards the other, their fingers touched, and it was done. They were bound together, joined as one in the Cathedral of Glass, never to be split apart. Hyram was a king again.

Afterwards, as the kings and queens walked amid a surfeit of petty princes towards the enormous breakfast feast that awaited them, Almiri fell in step beside Shezira.

'Is King Valgar well?' asked Shezira. They both knew she wasn't enquiring about his health.

'Resolute. King Tyan?'

'Bought.'

'King Narghon?'

'Will do whatever Fyon tells him to, and Fyon has always doted on her nephew. Silvallan's going to be the hard one. He has reasons to be friendly to both Hyram and Zafir, but if Hyram's cousins turn against him, Silvallan will go with the tide. What have Sirion and his court got to say for themselves?'

Almiri pursed her lips. 'They've said very little.'

'Yes.' Shezira glowered at Hyram's back, some yards ahead of them. 'He's put them in a difficult position. He was their king

before he became speaker, and acts as though he still is. But he's not the one who will suffer. If he gets his way and names Zafir, he'll stay at the palace. Sirion will remain on the throne and wear the crown, but Hyram's shadow will still be there. What does he do? He's an honourable man, I know that. Hyram's breaking a pact that their grandfather made. He needs to understand that I'll win without him and without Silvallan if need be. But it would be much better if the dragon-lords were united.'

Almiri smiled. 'Hyram's not quite himself. Ten years of peace and harmony shouldn't be ruined by one mistake of judgement. Let Zafir be the villainous witch that she is. Who can say what else she might put in the potions she feeds him? And she says she steals them from Prince Jehal, but does she?'

'King Tyan has hardly made a miraculous recovery, has he?' King Valgar was watching them. Shezira nudged Almiri away. 'Go back to your husband.'

'There is one thing, mother.'

'Yes?'

'Prince Dyalt needs a bride. I know Hyram asked after Lystra a year or more ago.'

'Yes, and I told him that Lystra was already taken. I thought 1 )yalt was supposed to marry some Syuss princess.'

'He was, but she died. Drowned in a lake. You know what the Syuss are like when they see water. Besides, Dyalt is the king's youngest son and so not far removed from the throne. His father thinks he ought to do better than one of the Syuss, and I think you should offer Jaslyn's hand for Dyalt.'

Shezira snorted. 'Would they have her? Just as well I sent her away.'

'You bought Valgar with me and Jehal with Lystra. Jaslyn is your daughter and your most likely heir. Dyalt could be marrying himself to your throne, and if you do become speaker, they will wonder which one of us will succeed you.'

'Will they?' Shezira tried not to laugh.

'They can always hope. Mother, they'll have her.'

'Dyalt is fourteen; Jaslyn is too old for him.'

Almiri laughed and shook her head. 'Mother, how old is Hyram? How old is Zafir? Make the offer.'

'No.' Shezira shook her head. 'No, I can't do that.'

'Why, mother? Why?'

'Because that would be far too direct and Hyram would be certain to learn of it.' She grimaced. 'You make the offer. I have made no decision as to who will succeed me, but by all means let them think it will be Jaslyn. For the peace of the realms. If they stand by the pact, and only if they stand by the pact.'

Almiri's eyes sparkled. She smiled and turned away to walk at her husband's side. Shezira went on alone. She wondered about her daughters sometimes. Were they all they seemed to be, or did they manage to hide some part of themselves, even from her? Offering Jaslyn to Dyalt was a clever ploy. Jaslyn would probably never speak to either of them again, but Dyalt could hardly say no.

My most likely heir? She chuckled to herself. You all have to get rid of me first.

53

The Fire Within

 

The dragons took off as soon as the sky was light enough to fly. The very tips of the mountains shone like they were on fire, while the slopes below were still dark with shadow. Snow and Ash knew exactly where they were going, which was more than Kemir did. He tried to spot the alchemists' valley, but the first he knew of it was when Snow flew between two mountains, over the top of a narrow cliff, and plunged vertically down.

Walls of rock raced past on either side. He tried to breathe, but the wind was icy; it ripped the breath out of his lungs and brought tears to his eyes. He could see the ground hurtling towards him, blurred shapes rushing at him, and then Snow shuddered and he closed his eyes as the wind suddenly stopped and the air became blistering. She shot over the ground, pouring fire over everything. Ramshackle buildings made of stone, trees, little yards, men running screaming to get away, the flames engulfed them all.

There were dragons on the ground. Snow banked sharply, heading towards them. Three figures hurled themselves flat as she flew over them, scorching the ground where they lay. As one, Snow and Ash spat fire at the three dragons below. The dragons shielded themselves with their wings.

'Do dragons burn?'

Only our eyes. Soon there will be three more of us that are free. Ash landed in the makeshift eyrie, smashing buildings with his tail and burning anything that came out of them. The three harnessed dragons all watched, alert and wary but otherwise still. Snow stayed in the air, circling back round.

I knew those dragons before I awoke. I remember them.

Kemir glanced down as Snow flew back over them. They were

hunting dragons, he could tell that much. Otherwise, they looked the same as any others: dark grey or black scales with occasional flashes of of deep metallic blues and greens, all three of them. Just like the dragons from the camp in the mountains.

He started in surprise as his eyes shot to the three figures Snow had burned. Instead of lying still and smouldering in the dirt, they had got up and were running. One of them seemed to have a slight limp.

'It can't be ...'

Snow strafed them once more, and again they threw themselves to the ground. This time Kemir got a better look at them. They were riders, all three of them. Dressed in their dragonscale armour, which explained why Snow's fire wasn't putting an end to them. Two of them had large shields which they held up to deflect the worst of the blast. Kemir kept his eyes on them as Snow passed. As soon as the dragon was overhead, the three riders got up and started to run again.

'Rider Rod!' Kemir felt breathless. 'Luck is with me today. Let me down, Snow. Let me down! Now!'

No. She flew back over the buildings. Most of what would burn was already ablaze. Kemir tried to keep his eyes on the three riders. Among the wreckage, men were still running about, most of them dashing for the shelter of a few large caves. Snow landed amid the ruins and Kemir lost sight of the riders behind a cloud of smoke. It was hard to do more than simply hold on as Snow bucked and lunged and lashed her tail and burned whatever lay before her until finally everything was still.

'Now let me down.'

The dragon ignored him. She trotted to the largest of the caves, where a river poured out of the cliff. She stepped slowly inside, splashing through the water. The entrance was large enough, but it quickly shrank. She squeezed in as far as she could and gushed fire into the depths.

Minds. I sense minds in here. Many of them. Many have escaped. Many are still alive.

They must all burn. The ground shook as Ash ran in from the eyrie. The two dragons surveyed the caves, then, one by one, burned them out.

They are still there. I feel them. Ash pawed at the ground. Let them taste our fire!

I cannot reach them.

Then we will wait, and sooner or later they will starve.

'Let me down! I'll go in there and get them out for you.' The last he'd seen of the three riders, they'd been heading for the cave closest to the eyrie. He couldn't see their bodies, which meant that they must have reached it. That or Ash had simply eaten them.

Snow stamped with frustration. She lowered herself onto all fours and let Kemir slide down to the ground. Nadira stayed where she was. She frowned at Kemir as if she disapproved. He ignored her and ran to the cave where he thought the riders must be, but then hesitated. Three of them and one of him. Poor odds.

He crept slowly in. The sun only reached the ground outside at its zenith; inside, the cave grew very dark very quickly. He touched the walls, feeling his way forward. They were warm and dry from Snow's breath. That would tell him how far her fire had reached. It would tell everyone inside as well. They'd know how deep they had to go.

About a hundred yards into the cave it became too narrow for a dragon. Another hundred yards and the walls weren't warm any more. Everything was pitch black except the circle of daylight behind him, yet when he squinted he thought he could see lights ahead of him, faint pinpricks of white light that looked more like stars than like lamps or torches. He moved slowly, feeling for each step with his feet, creeping silently forward. The pinpricks became brighter. They were lights, definitely lights. Which made him wonder how many other people might be hiding in this cave.

In the nearest of the lights he caught a faint glimpse of a face. He raised his bow, but the figure wasn't wearing the armour of a dragon-knight. The face vanished; the light bobbed and moved away.

Kemir moved faster, fumbling silently through the darkness

towards the light. Whoever he was following stopped by the next light and took that too. And the next and the next. Kemir was close enough to see that the lights were like little lamps, but their flame was a cold white and he didn't smell any smoke or oil. The man carrying them wasn't a soldier and didn't seem to be armed. Kemir drew a knife then sprinted the dozen yards between them. The man heard him at the last moment and turned around as Kemir bundled into him, knocking him down and sending the lamps flying. In an instant he had his knife at the man's throat.

'Please please please ...' The man was weeping with fear. There was a bad smell.

'Three dragon-knights came this way, didn't they?'

'Yes. Yes. I don't know who they are. Please, please don't kill me.'

'Where did they go?'

'I don't know.' Kemir pressed the knife harder against the man's skin. The man squealed. 'Deeper! I don't know. Into the gatehouse.'

'Gatehouse?' Kemir felt a sudden coldness inside him. 'How many other people are down here?'

'I don't know!'

'Then guess.'

'I don't know, I don't know. I'm just a servant. Please ...'

'One? Two? Ten? A hundred?'

'A hundred? More, I think. I don't know. Please.'

A hundred? Kemir's eyes grew wide. He slowly withdrew his knife. 'Soldiers?'

'Yes.'

'How many?'

'I don't know. A century? A legion? I don't know!'

A legion? In these caves? That can't be right. Still, a dozen, even half a dozen, was quite enough. Kemir gripped the man by the throat and hauled him to his feet. 'One of the dragon-knights is called Rider Semian. Tell him that Kemir, the sell-sword who ruined his leg, is outside waiting for him.'

He let the man go, picked up one of the lamps so he could see where he was going, and started back towards the entrance to the cave. He didn't run. In fact a part of him wasn't sure he wanted to go back at all. The dragons weren't going to like this. If they meant to starve this lot out, they were likely to be in for a long wait. And so far they hadn't exactly impressed him with their patience.

54

The Two Speakers

 

In the middle of the ten-sided table lay the Speaker's Spear and Ring. Hyram was on his feet; everyone else was watching him, waiting for him to sit down. Some of the dragon-lords looked bored, some looked impatient, some were simply annoyed that he was taking so long. He was shaking again this morning. Only a little bit, but Shezira could see it. Either the potions that held his sickness in check were losing their effect, or he was running out.

Opposite Hyram sat Acting Grand Master Jeiros and High Priest Aruch. On each other side of the table sat a dragon-king or -queen and one other knight. That was all. Two sides were empty. The Syuss had few dragons and were invited to the palace only as a courtesy, and the King of the Crags had held himself aloof from the rest of them for over a generation.

Shezira couldn't help but stare at the ring. Seven of us, then. Her hands gripped the table. She'd been waiting for this day for a decade. She'd done everything right; even this foolishness with Queen Zafir seemed nothing more than a last test to see if she was worthy of that ring. Sitting at the table, staring at it, she could almost believe that Hyram was testing her, nothing more, that Zafir wasn't even real.

Hyram finally sat down. Jeiros stood up and made a speech. Aruch followed him. They were the same speeches that were made every ten years. Jeiros spoke of responsibilities and burdens. Shezira knew all the words, yet now they were meant for her she found herself soaking up every one of them. When it had been Hyram, a decade ago, they'd simply been dull; this time they made her skin tingle. When Aruch spoke of humility and the grace of the dragon-god, she didn't roll her eyes as Jeiros did beside him but found herself wondering: Is it true? Could it be the priests who keep the dragons at bay? Do the potions only work because they will them to? Stupid thoughts that she would have laughed at on any other day seemed suddenly profound.

She pinched herself. You're the Queen of Sand and Stone, the Queen of the North, not an idiot princess seeing her first dragon.

When it was Hyram's turn again, he spoke of everything he'd done in his time at the palace. He spoke of peace and prosperity, of the unsurpassed strength of the Adamantine Guard, of the value of continuity. Then, in the same voice he'd used to inventory the armoury of the Guard, he named Queen Zafir as his declared successor and sat down. It took Shezira a second to realise what he'd just said, that he'd actually done it and broken their pact, that it wasn't a test after all.

Sirion will back me. Valgar too. And Jehal and King Narghon. Silvallan if he knows Zafir's cause is lost. The silence lasted for a second, then another. Everyone was looking at her. Hyram's mouth was slightly open. Anticipation shone in his eyes. With a start she realised that she still hadn't said anything. At the end of the table Jeiros was staring at his feet. He had two rolled-up scrolls in front of him. He reached for one.

'No,' she whispered. It took her another second to fully find her voice. When she did, she rose smoothly to her feet. There would be nothing hurried or angry about her. Her voice would be calm when she spoke. Almost gentle. As though she was chiding an errant child. Jeiros looked at her. He had the scroll in his hand now, the words to anoint the next speaker. She met his eye and shook her head.

With a sigh Jeiros put down the scroll in his hand and picked up the other one. Aruch rose beside him. They looked tired, Shezira thought. Almost bored. She suddenly realised that everyone had known this was going to happen. They might as well have rehearsed it. In a way, wasn't that what they'd all been doing for the last few days?

'Are there any other challenges?' asked Jeiros. When no one spoke, he went on. 'Seven times the anointing of a speaker has been challenged. Three times the challenge failed. Of the four that succeeded, three threw the realms into turmoil. Queen Shezira, for the good of the realms, will you withdraw your challenge?'

'No, Grand Master, I will not.'

'Then, Your Holiness, what is your challenge?'

'Hyram, there is a pact between our clans that was made generations ago. If you violate that, you sully us all. Wiser men and women than I decreed long ago that only a reigning king or queen may take the office of speaker. They decided this because they understood that to govern the nine realms a speaker must first prove themselves worthy. Queen Zafir does indeed sit on a throne and may make an excellent speaker — twenty years from now, when she has proved herself. I call on you to honour the pact between our clans and name me as your successor.'

'And who would be yours, Shezira?' hissed Hyram, glaring at Prince Jehal.

Jehal smiled back at him. 'Someone who is wise and able, Hyram, and who does more to earn the honour than spread their legs.'

Hyram shot to his feet. 'Viper!'

Shezira glared at them both. 'Prince Jehal, this is a sacred time. Show some respect.'

Jehal lolled his head. 'For what?'

Hastily, in the moment of silence that followed, Jeiros unfurled the scroll and read the text aloud: 'As was written in the time of Narammed, the word of the speaker has been challenged before the assembled Kings and Queens of the Nine Realms. This council will disperse and reform one day from now, at dawn, when a new speaker shall be chosen, by the word of the speaker, or by the vote of the Kings and Queens of the Nine Realms should the challenge remain.'

Jehal groaned and slumped across the table. Shezira wondered for one startled moment whether he'd somehow been poisoned, but then he raised his head. 'Do we have to? Another day of acting like startled rabbits? Not daring to eat anything, keeping away from high places, constantly being surrounded by our armoured dragon-knights.' He bowed at Shezira. 'As you say, Your Holiness, this is a sacred time, and I apologise for my previous words. But let us end this now, while we are all here and unquestionably alive. No more childishness. We all know where we stand.'

Shezira frowned. 'I sympathise, but there is a proper way, Prince Jehal.'

Lady Nastria leaned into her and whispered. 'You should agree with him, Holiness.'

Shezira looked at her. She cocked her head. Why?

Nastria drew closer. Her words were so quiet that Shezira could barely hear them. 'Because Princess Jaslyn will return from the alchemists at any moment, and when she does, Prince Jehal is finished. Use him now, Your Holiness, and then throw him away.'

'Are you sure of this?' she mouthed back.

'As sure as I am of anything, Holiness.' Nastria straightened and turned back to the table.

Shezira did the same. Perfect. It was hard not to smile. She looked at Hyram and then at Jeiros. 'I am agreeable.'

Hyram smiled back at her. 'No. I say we wait.'

Jeiros was looking at Queen Zafir. And Zafir was nodding. Jeiros appeared uncomfortable. 'Apologies, Lord Hyram, but this is a matter for the Kings and Queens of the Nine Realms. You no longer have a voice in this.' He avoided Hyram's gaze. 'Do any object?' When everyone was silent, he sighed. 'Very well. Queen Shezira, Queen Zafir, one by one you shall each call a monarch to your cause. Whoever the kings and queens decree shall be speaker.' As he finished, Shezira glanced at Zafir. This is your last chance to end this, to avoid making a fool of yourself. But Zafir's face was a mask. She met Shezira's eye for a moment and her expression didn't flicker at all. She walked slowly to stand in front of Hyram. Shezira took her place by the alchemist and the priest.

Jeiros bowed to her. 'Queen Shezira, you have issued the challenge. Which king or queen do you call to your side?'

'I call King Valgar.'

Valgar didn't bother to say anything. He simply got up and

walked to stand with Shezira. Jeiros bowed across the table to Queen Zafir. 'Which king or queen do you call to your side?'

Zafir stayed silent; it was Hyram who answered. 'King Sirion. My cousin.'

Sirion was standing right next to Hyram, which meant that Hyram couldn't see what Shezira could. He couldn't see the tautness in Sirion's face, the whiteness of his knuckles. When he didn't speak, Hyram turned slowly to look at him.

'I'm sorry, cousin. I've always felt this crown wasn't really mine, that I was taking care of it for you, waiting for this day. But a pact is a pact. I must declare for Queen Shezira.'

The warmth of victory blossomed in the pit of Queen Shezira's stomach. Two out of two. Hyram looked aghast, his face frozen in horror. Even Jeiros looked stunned; in fact, the only one around the table who didn't seem surprised at all was Queen Zafir. Thank you, Jaslyn. At last you've done something useful.

'King Tyan,' she said. As hard as she tried to avoid it, her voice held a tremor of victory.

Jeiros bowed to Prince Jehal. 'As King Tyan's regent, you have the right to speak with his voice.'

'Yes, I do.' Jehal grinned. He stood up, leaned over the table and looked straight at Hyram. 'Old man, you've slandered me, you've even tortured me. I'd like nothing more than to see everything you value turn to ash before your eyes.' He glanced at Shezira. 'Your Holiness, will you name someone to follow you in turn? Here and now? A pact, such as the one Hyram here seeks to break? For what they're worth.'

Shezira nodded. 'You, Prince Jehal. I name you as my chosen successor.' It left a sour taste in her mouth. But if Nastria is right, I can relieve myself of that obligation. When I go, Valgar can have it; Almiri will take his throne and Jaslyn and Lystra could yet be queens. Antros, if you're watching, I hope you're smiling.

Jehal's smile, when he looked at Hyram, was so broad it almost split his face in two. 'Does that please you? Without your treachery I would never have had this. You've betrayed your allies. Your own cousins have turned against you. What possible reason could

I have to ally myself with you? Think about that for a moment. Because that is what I choose. I choose Queen Zafir.'

Shezira didn't move a muscle. She couldn't; Jehal's words had frozen her solid. She heard King Silvallan declare for Zafir as well, and then King Narghon, but it all seemed so far away that she barely heard their words. She couldn't think. For a moment the world seemed to fade completely; when it finally returned, Jeiros was halfway through another speech. He'd opened the second of his two scrolls, and Zafir was the next Speaker of the Realms.

55

Undone

 

When he was done, Jeiros took the ring from the centre of the table. He bowed before Zafir and put it on her finger. One by one, the monarchs knelt before her and kissed the ring.

Nastria watched as her queen knelt and kissed like the rest of them. With calm and dignity, as a queen should. It was the most inspiring thing she'd ever seen. To be so noble even in defeat.

More noble than she could ever be.

There would be a reckoning for this, she decided. No matter what Queen Shezira ordered her to do, there would be a reckoning. If she'd been a man, with a man's strength, she might have tried to kill Prince Jehal with her bare hands there and then. As it was, it would have to be something more subtle.

She wondered briefly whether any of what she'd seen between Jehal and Hyram had been real, whether it had all been an elaborate charade designed for that one moment of treachery. Hard to believe, but whenever Hyram was around, everything always came back to King Antros and his unfortunate demise. Was that what was behind this? Was that why he'd betrayed the pact between their clans?

In the endless hours that followed, Queen Shezira let nothing show. Nastria wanted to take the queen and whisper in her ear: It can be undone. Zafir is named, but she's not crowned! Until High Priest Aruch hands her the Adamantine Spear in the Glass Cathedral in front of the full assembly of dragon-knights, it can be undone. But there was never a chance; they were never alone. So she watched Prince Jehal and she watched Queen Zafir. There were games and entertainments, a display of courage and skill from the Adamantine Guard, tournaments of horsemanship for the lesser knights and of flying skills for the dragon-riders. Queen Zafir watched them with the same blank mask she'd worn in the Hall of Speakers. Jehal, on the other hand, was animated, excited, intoxicated with his victory. The two of them never looked at each other. Not once.

Jaslyn. Princess Jaslyn had the key. When she came back from the alchemists with the flask of liquid silver. With damning words, signed and sealed by the master alchemists of the redoubt, naming it as poison. One of Jehal's knights had gone with Tiachas. She would find him and bring him back for Master Kithyr, and then they'd uncover the true depths of Jehal's villainy. The queen would have to believe her, and then so would all the rest of them.

And then she saw Jehal pass close to Queen Zafir and whisper something in her ear. For a moment Zafir's mask cracked, and something electric flashed in her eyes. It lasted an instant, and whatever Jehal said could only have been a word. But Nastria wasn't watching his mouth, she was watching his hands; and for that instant, in the press of knights and lords, Jehal's hand had alighted on Queen Zafir's thigh and stayed there for a blink of an eye longer than it should. And in that touch Nastria saw it all, and understood that Hyram was the biggest victim of all.

She grinned. She had four more days before the ceremony in the Glass Cathedral. Quite long enough. Still smiling, she set herself to following Prince Jehal.

56

The Caves

 

Dawn at the bottom of the ravine came late, and when it came, rained fire. Jaslyn stood in stupefied disbelief as the redoubt erupted around her. She glimpsed two dragons, a near-black and a perfect white, her perfect white, and then Rider Semian threw her to the ground and lay on top of her as the very air burst into flames. All she could think of was the white dragon, and how long she'd been looking for it, then a blinding heat seared her face. Her dragonscale armour kept her alive, and when she opened her eyes again, she could still see. She could see the two dragons burning down the alchemists' eyrie. Swallowing the three other dragons there in clouds of fire.

Silence!

She wanted to run, to hurl herself between them and her precious Silence, for what good it would have done. Rider Semian, though, was already dragging her back.

'The caves,' she heard herself shout. 'We have to get to the caves!' She glanced back as she ran. Silence was still there, shielding his head with his wings, but otherwise immobile. While the attackers stayed in the air, that was all a trained dragon would do, and so she willed them down, willed them to bring it to teeth and claws and lashing tails. Then Silence would show them.

The white had a rider. No, two riders. Jaslyn squinted, trying to make them out. She frowned. The dark one didn't seem to have any at all. Which wasn't possible. She must have made a mistake.

They were coming back. This time Jaslyn didn't need any prompting to throw herself down, and this time she remembered to cover her face. For a second lime fire washed over them. As

soon as the dragons had passed, they were up and running again. They reached the nearest cave.

'Deeper,' she gasped. 'There will be markings on the wall when we're far enough to be safe. And lamps. Alchemist lamps.' They stumbled on into the darkness, groping for the walls. The floor of the cave was uneven and treacherous, but at last they reached a point where the cave narrowed. A little further on Jaslyn felt the marks on the wall that meant they were safe. Groping around on the floor she found a crate filled with lamps, and when she picked one up and gave it a hard shake, it slowly started to glow with a cold white light. She gave it to Semian, then took another for Jostan and another for herself.

'That was our white,' she said once they'd got their bearings. 'The white for Lystra's wedding. What's it doing here?' She looked expectantly at her two knights, but they were clearly bemused. 'What about the other one? That wasn't one of ours. Whose was it?'

Still no answer.

Who was riding them? Who was on the back of the black? I saw two riders on the white but none on the black. Who were they?'

Semian grunted. 'Last anyone saw the white, she was with her Scales.'

'A Scales would not attack his own order.' Jaslyn held up her lamp and peered into the darkness. As she did so, the tunnel back to the cave entrance lit up with an orange glow and a blast of hot wind slammed into them. 'We need to go back out. We need to get to Silence and Matanizkan and Levanter. There are three of us and only two of them. We'll kill the riders and force them down.'

'Your Highness, it would be death to go back out there.' Jostan's voice was flat.

'Coward!' Jaslyn took an angry step towards him.

'Rider Jostan has the right of it.' At least Semian had the grace to avert his eyes from her. 'The alchemists have their own defences. If we go out there alone, the dragons will kill us before we can reach our own mounts.'

'They were attacking Silence!'

'They were burning the saddles and harnesses so that we couldn't ride them, Your Highness. Silence will not have been harmed. She is too precious.'

For a long time Jaslyn stared back towards the cave entrance. She could hear noises from outside now, but they seemed very far away, as though the dragons were occupied elsewhere. Surely there was a chance? She tried to think about how far they'd have to run to get from the cave to the eyrie. Even in dragonscale it could be done, couldn't it?

But not if their saddles and harnesses were destroyed, and Semian was probably right about that. She would have done the same if it had been her riding the attack. She breathed a long sigh and turned around.

'Very well. We continue. The caves all come together. We'll find the alchemists and the soldiers they keep here.' Prince Jehal has done this. He must know why I'm here. He knows I've found out about his poisons. Well, I'll let the whole world know what he's been doing, and then no one will stand with him. Mother will be made speaker. She'll destroy him, and then Lystra will come home again.

Walking through the caves was slow and tedious. The lamps gave off barely enough light for them to see their own feet, and though the floor and the walls were smooth, the tunnels sloped steeply up in places. At times the cave became almost a chimney, rising vertically. Metal rungs had been hammered into the rock, but in dragonscale climbing them was almost impossible. Jostan dropped his lamp, which smashed to pieces on the floor. Then they reached a place so narrow that they had to abandon most of their armour. Jaslyn tried not to think how she must look, still in her gauntlets and helm and boots, the rest of her in plain doeskin, a bright red stripe across her face where the flamestrike had penetrated her visor.

It seemed like they spent half a day wandering through the cave, but at last, stopping to listen, they heard the rush of water somewhere ahead and she knew they were close. A few bends

later they saw light, the sound of the water grew louder, and the next thing she knew she almost pitched over the edge of a chasm. Semian's hand on her shoulder caught her just in time.

The alchemists had built their tunnels along the underground river, she knew that much. She got down onto her hands and knees and felt over the lip of the chasm until her fingers found what she was looking for: a ladder secured into the stone. The water was more than a hundred feet below, and the cleft in the rock so narrow that her back sometimes touched the other side as she climbed down the ladder.

At the bottom a walkway of wooden boards hung over the swirling river. Little niches were cut into the walls, and after ten minutes of walking, the niches had lamps in them, filling the chasm with their ghostly white light. Rider Jostan stopped at the first lit niche and took the lamp.

'Someone must have come this way to light these,' he said. 'We must be close.' Then he wrinkled his nose. 'Does anyone else smell something?'

|aslyn and Semian paused and sniffed the air. 'Smoke,' they both said. Jaslyn wasn't sure what to make of that. Smoke meant lire, and her first thought was dragons, but after all this walking they couldn't be so close to the entrances to the caves, could they?

The second thing she thought of was a kitchen firepit. She was hungry.

At a narrow point in the chasm, a little further on, they found the alchemists. The lamps stopped, the wooden walkway ended abruptly, and a voice from the darkness above challenged them.

'Who are you?'

'Rider Semian, Rider Jostan and Her Highness Princess Jaslyn, in the service of Queen Shezira,' shouted Semian. His voice echoed around the caves.

'Hold the lamps up so we can see your faces.'

Jaslyn hoisted her lamp. Her tongue twitched, prepared to lash out at these idiots who were getting in her way, but she stilled it. She was tired, hungry, covered in bruises and scrapes from countless stumbles and falls, and the burn across her face was hurting.

The smell of smoke was stronger.

After a second, lights appeared above them and she could see a cluster of armoured soldiers on a wooden platform. They threw down a rope ladder. When Jaslyn reached the top, she saw that they weren't just any soldiers; they were Adamantine Guardsmen.

'Your Highness.' Their captain bowed. Til send a man ahead of you so there are no more mistakes.' So that everyone knew she was coming, he meant.

'How many of the Guard are here?' she asked.

The captain bowed again. 'Before the attack there were close on a hundred of us, Your Highness. Now I'm not so sure.'

'A hundred? Then why are you here and not outside seeing off these dragons? There were only two of them!'

'Your Highness, we did fight, but the rider of the white dragon was too clever, and the black dragon ...' He took a deep breath. 'Your Highness, there was no rider on the war-dragon. We formed shield walls against their fire, but they didn't stay in the air. The black one came down and smashed our walls. It was killing with tooth and claw and that murderous tail. We lost between a third and a half our number.'

'I had three dragons out there.'

The captain shook his head. He didn't say anything, but his eyes said that the dragons were lost to her now.

'What is it, Captain?'

The soldier sighed. 'Your Highness, your dragons are with the others now. They're trying to smoke us out.'

57

 Turning the Knife

 

Sometimes Jehal felt he would burst. Sometimes his own cleverness seemed overwhelming. Hyram, Shezira, he'd played them both, and they still didn't even know how.

He dressed himself carefully. Two layers. On the outside he looked like an Adamantine Guardsman, with his heavy quilted coat and his colours and his helmet. If he took all that off, he might pass, in the dark, as a pot-boy. Pot-boys often ran errands at night. He knew; he'd sent Kazah off on enough of them, after all.

The moon was setting. He didn't know how late it was, except that he'd waited for more than half the night, and if he waited much longer he wouldn't have time to do what he wanted to do and be back before dawn.

He wrapped the white silk across his eyes for one last time and looked at Zafir, sleeping, through the tiny ruby eyes of his Taiytakei dragon. She was alone. Good enough.

No. He stared at her and then slowly undressed again. Too dangerous. Not until after tomorrow. Not until all the other kings and queens have gone. He didn't take the silk off, even once he was naked. Instead, he made the little metal dragon flutter across Zafir's room and settle beside her head. It pecked gently at her lace until she stirred. When she saw the dragon, she smiled.

'It's the middle of the night.'

The dragon nodded. As Zafir reached under her pillow for her own strip of silk, Jehal looked over his shoulder. Two ruby eyes glowed at him in the dark.

'You're naked,' she whispered.

'I wish you were.'

'I wish I could touch you.'

Jehal sighed. 'Soon, lover. When Hyram's out of the way.'

The smile faded from her face. 'The potions are already losing their effect.'

'That's not right. There should have been enough to keep him going for another month.'

'Yes. You gave him too much, so I've been stealing them and watering them down.'

'What?

Zafir rolled her eyes. 'I want it done and over, Jehal.'

Jehal growled. He started to pace the room. 'Why did you do that? He wasn't supposed to get sick again until this was all long done.'

'You ask me why?' Zafir sounded scornful. 'Do you have any idea how dirty all of this make me feel? Sometimes, after he's finished with me and goes back to his own bed, I make myself sick to force the nausea away.'

'But now you're speaker — unless you fuck it up in the next couple of days. Isn't that what you wanted?'

'No, Jehal, it's what you wanted. What I wanted was you. Hyram disgusts me. I have to writhe and groan and call him the king of my bed when all I want to do is break his neck. And he knows something now. I don't know how, but he knows something.' She frowned. 'Something he didn't know this morning. He was asking questions.'

'Questions?'

'About you. Someone's put it into his head that we might be lovers, Jehal. Of course he doesn't believe it, but he won't quite let go of it either. He's put men on my door. He was enough of a bore before; now he's intolerable. Get rid of him, my prince. I've had enough. You've got what you wanted, so now give me what I want.'

Jehal leered at the little ruby eyes that watched him from the corner of his bed. 'I would like nothing more, lover. Nothing more at all. Even thinking about it ...' He glanced down. 'Well, you can see for yourself.'

'Don't you want to be here? Next to me, feeling my skin?'

'I'd like to feel more than your skin.'

'Sliding under silken sheets together?'

'You know I would.'

'Then come! Now!' She pushed back the covers of her bed, slowly revealing herself to him. When they were at her feet, she lay back and ran one hand slowly from her neck down to the soft hair between her legs. 'Do I have to show you what to do?' she breathed, and then laughed as Jehal's Taiytakei dragon fluttered up into the air and flew erratically around in circles for a better view.

'We have to wait, lover. Wait until it's safe'

'No.' Zafir suddenly sat up and snatched Jehal's mechanical dragon out of the air. She blew Jehal a kiss and then everything went dark and muffled.

'What are you doing?'

'If I can't have you, you can't have me. I'm done with this. I'm lying your little toy up and putting him under my pillow. Then I'm going to take this silk off my eyes and go back to sleep, and if you want to see any of this again, you get rid of Hyram and your stupid starling-wife. And you do it soon, lover, or I'll do it myself.'

Jehal waited for a while, but all he heard was Zafir's breathing. After another minute he pulled the silk away from his eyes and took a deep breath. His heart was racing and his head spinning, and he wasn't sure whether it came more from lust or fury.

(Jet rid of Hyram. She's too impatient.

Could it be done? If she does it herself, she'll botch it and everything will be for nothing.

Could it be done?

He climbed back into bed and tried to sleep, but his head wouldn't stop. Thoughts blossomed and died faster than he could keep count of them. Could it be done?

And then it came to him, and he realised that yes, it could; and moments later he was asleep.

58

Patience

 

Kemir sat slowly whittling a stick into an arrow shaft. Somewhere nearby Nadira was pacing impatiently. Even from here he could feel the dragons' determination. Their focus on what they were doing was frightening.

When the alchemists had scuttled away into their caves, the dragons had been furious for a while, raging up and down outside, smashing the few buildings that remained intact, flying around the cliff face, searching for other ways in. Then they'd calmed down. Now they'd built enormous pyres at the mouth of each cave, set them alight, and were methodically blowing the smoke down into the tunnels. The frightening bit was that they'd been at it for two days, all five of them, without a pause for breath. Two of the new dragons moved from fire to fire, blowing the smoke. The other three went to and from the woods, tearing down trees to burn. Every few hours Snow soared up out of the valley. Sometimes Kemir and Nadira went with her. They flew above and beyond the ravine, looking for wisps of smoke leaking up through cracks in the ground. Whenever she found one, Snow sealed it shut, and then she'd circle for hours, looking for more. Kemir understood exactly what she was doing. He'd done it himself, except his victims had been rats and rabbits.

Ash lumbered past, dragging a fifty-foot tree towards the caves with his tail. The dragon looked at him greedily. Kemir, I am hungry. Which one of you has more meat on you?

'Me.' Kemir didn't bother to look up.

There's nothing left in the village, Kemir, and we need to eat.

'Then go and hunt.' When the dragons weren't tending to the fires, they were eating. In the first two days they'd eaten all the animals from the eyrie and the bodies of the men they'd killed. Today they'd gone back to the village at the mouth of the ravine. It seemed to surprise them that they'd found it deserted. The villagers couldn't have got far, but they had clearly had the sense to run and hide, and had even taken most of their animals with them.

'Hey, Ash,' shouted Kemir. 'You know, I'm hungry too. What does dragon taste like?'

The dragon paused in his labours and turned to look at Kemir. It was impossible to read anything from a dragon's face, but Kemir got the impression he was laughing.

Suddenly, the dragon froze. He dropped the tree and rose onto his back legs, staring intently towards the caves.

Kemir stood up as well, but he couldn't see anything through the rubble and the smoke. 'What?'

Ash began to run. The smoke has worked. They're coming out!

59

The Assassin

 

Side by side, two dragons shot across the Mirror Lakes. They barged and snapped at each other, looking for an advantage. Three more came after them, strung out in a line. Jehal squinted as they hurtled towards him, trying to work out which was which. Now and then he glanced sideways. Hyram was watching the dragons; so was Queen Zafir. In fact almost everyone was watching. The race was going all the way to the finish.

One person, though, wasn't watching the dragons. Among a group of messenger boys standing at the back among the guards, one wasn't jumping up and down and cheering. He was more interested in Zafir, and in him. Jehal smiled to himself. He wasn't sure who the boy was spying for, Hyram or Shezira. Both of them perhaps. In the end it didn't really matter. What mattered was who the boy really was.

The dragons were getting closer. An hour ago they'd launched themselves from the top of the Diamond Cascade. Ten immense wooden frames, each one a hundred feet high and a hundred feet wide, lay strung across the Hungry Mountain plains and around the lakes. Ten frames, one for each of the Kings and Queens of the Realms, and the last one for the speaker and her guests. Jehal was supposed to be out in the plains, at King Tyan's frame, but he'd quietly slipped away to be here instead. He'd made some effort not to be seen, but the boy had followed him here anyway.

Around him everyone was shouting. He peered over the water, trying to see whether there were any more dragons on their way, but there weren't. The point of the race was to fly through all ten frames. From the ground they seemed enormous; on the back of a speeding dragon  they became suddenly small. Accidents

happened. Sometimes a dragon would be lost, but more often a rider. Losing four, though ... Jehal felt briefly wistful. He'd ridden in these races and knew exactly how the riders fought for position. It must have been a particularly good battle over the plains, and for a moment he wished he'd been there to see it.

He shook himself. The two dragons fighting for the lead were still neck and neck heading for the last frame. They'd reach the finish in less than a minute. Time for him to go. He slipped away while everyone was watching the finish, and almost no one noticed him leave.

Almost. As he scurried away into the woods Jehal heard the roar of the crowd reach a peak and then a crash as one or both of the dragons hit the frame. He felt a flash of irritation. They'd be talking about this race for years, and he'd missed it.

He peered around among the trees. As he did, two figures began to rise from the undergrowth; hastily Jehal motioned to them to stay hidden. 'Another minute,' he whispered as he walked past them. 'Dressed as a messenger boy.' He stopped for a moment and held the white silk up to his eyes. Zafir was already on her way, walking quickly with a pair of her riders at her heels. Doing her best to seem furtive. He put the silk away and crouched down amid the ferns and brambles.

'I lave you got it?' he asked. One of the men handed him a large sack. He thought about reminding them all how dangerous their quarry was, but he could already hear Zafir coming along the forest path. She passed barely a yard from where Jehal was hiding. He held his breath and waited.

And waited.

He was on the point of reaching for the silk again when the messenger boy finally appeared, creeping silently down the path, Jehal tensed, ready to spring.

The boy must have had a sixth sense. As Jehal and his men launched themselves, he was already spinning around, jumping away with a knife in his hand. He lashed out and one of Jehal's nun grunted and staggered. Then Jehal had the sack over the boy's head.

'It's a woman!'

'I know that. Pin her down? Jehal hissed. She was deadly quick but no match for three strong men. 'Get her hands. And get that bloody knife off her!' For a few seconds the four of them wrestled in grim silence, and then Jehal punched at where he guessed the woman's face would be and the struggling stopped. Together they wrapped another sack around her waist, pinning her arms.

'Shit.' The wounded man was looking at himself, at his hands. His shirt was soaked in blood. He stood for another second and then slumped to the earth, lost among the bracken.

'Stay here,' growled Jehal. 'Deal with him.'

'He's dead, Your Highness.'

'Yes. Unfortunate. And he's a rider of Furymouth. We can hardly leave his body here, can we? Deal with him and then come back to me.' He searched the woman carefully for more knives, made sure her arms were properly pinned and tied a rope around her neck. Then he dragged her away through the trees. Whenever she seemed to be coming to her senses, he pulled on the rope and made her fall. I don't need you looking pretty, not that you ever were. Just alive and able to run, that's all.

He'd come to the woods the day before, looking to see how far he'd have to go. There was a long-abandoned forge not far from where the dragon race ended. With a cellar. At the time it had seemed perfect. It had also seemed a lot closer to the place he'd chosen for the ambush.

Finally, after it seemed he'd been dragging the woman for an hour or more, he reached it. He pulled her inside and threw her down the stairs to the cellar, then closed the door behind them. Finally he pulled the sack off her head and threw a bucket of water over her. He smiled and gave a little ironic bow.

'Lady Nastria. Queen Shezira's knight-marshal. What a pleasure to have your company at last. Shame about the circumstances.'

She looked at him. Her lips were broken, her face bloody and bruised. One of her eyes was already so swollen she could barely open it. She spat out a tooth and opened her mouth.

'Scream if you want, but no one will hear you. That's what all women do in the end, isn't it? Scream for help?'

Nastria closed her mouth. 'Traitor,' she slurred.

'Traitor? Me? Because I gave your queen my word and then didn't keep it? Just like Hyram, eh?' He laughed. 'Traitor? You don't know me, Knight-Marshal. Not at all. No, no treachery here. All I'm doing is righting a very old wrong.' He shook his head and sighed. 'I've been watching you. Would you like to see how?' Without waiting for an answer he took out the white silk and pressed it to her eyes. 'Look. Look hard. A little bit of sorcery that someone gave me. And don't pretend to be shocked. Does Queen Shezira know about your blood-mage?' He took the silk away. 'You understand, don't you, that I wouldn't have shown you that unless I was going to kill you?'

She looked at him, defiant and sullen at once. 'What do you want, Jehal?'

'Here.' He held out a cup of water. 'Water. I thought you might be a bit of a mess by the time I got you back. You know you killed one of my riders back there.'

Nastria looked at the cup and turned her face away.

'Lady, you and I both know that good poison is expensive and nowhere near as easy to come by as others may think. When I kill you, it'll be with steel.' He picked up a sword from the corner of the cellar and drew it from its scabbard. 'This was my father's, back when he could hold it.'

'Then get on and use it, Jehal. Your fate is already sealed and you can't change it.'

'I'd sooner destroy the palace itself than murder an artist such as yourself. But as I cannot have you following me... A lady knight-marshal. I've often wondered what it must be like for you, surrounded by riders who are all so much stronger. In full armour I imagine you can barely stand up. But you're quick, I'll give you that. And you can do something that almost no other rider could ever do: dress like a serving boy and slip through the palace, and no one gives you a second glance. Sometimes you're Lady Nastria, knight-marshal. Sometimes you're a pot-boy, a scullion, a maid, I admire you, I really do. You and I are alike.' He smiled. 'If you want to be sure that something is done properly, there's nothing like doing it yourself.'

'How long?'

'How long what?'

'You and Zafir.'

Jehal laughed. 'A long time, Knight-Marshal. Long enough that we glance at one another in a way that only lovers do, no matter how much we try not to. It pleases me that you're the one to see through it. I suppose you've already told Hyram.'

Nastria shrugged.

'Well I'm going to feel very silly if you haven't.' He held out the cup again. 'Please.'

She spat and looked at him with scorn.

'No, you have told Hyram, and I know you have. "Your wife and the Viper, Lord Hyram. Watch them closely." That's what you said. He didn't take it very well. It's all falling apart for him, isn't it? He's ill again. The potions aren't working any more. Zafir is young and he's old. And then there was the vote. I wish, I really do, that I could have read his mind just that once. Just to know what went through it right then.'

'I know things, Prince Jehal. Things about the Taiytakei. Things you don't. They're not the friends you think they are.'

Jehal laughed. 'Poor Knight-Marshal.' He held out the cup one more time. 'Are you going to drink this or not?'

'Not.'

He nodded. 'It would have been a disappointment if you had. I don't suppose there's anything I could offer you that would make you betray your queen and bow your knee to me. To have someone of your abilities I would give a great deal. I'd have to know you meant it of course.'

Nastria simply stared at him. He knew that look. It was hatred.

He sighed. It would have to be the hard way then, and yet, in a way, that made him feel better. As he forced open her mouth and tipped the cup down her throat, he knew that he'd have felt dissatisfied somehow, if she'd crumbled.

She fought and spat, but she couldn't stop herself swallowing at least a little of the water, and slowly her struggles subsided. Her head lolled onto her chest. Jehal waited until she started to snore, and then tipped the rest of the cup on the floor and put his father's sword away.

'I told you it wasn't poison, Knight-Marshal. Although you're going to wish it was.'

6o The Embers

Tears streamed down Jaslyn's face. However much she wiped her eyes, it never helped because the smoke was always there. Semian had shown her how to breathe through a damp cloth like the others, and yet she was still constantly coughing. Even in the vast space of the central cavern, the air was becoming unbearable. Unpleasantly warm too, despite the river of ice-cold water running though the caves. Sooner or later the dragons were going to work out how to foul that as well.

'Turn back, Your Highness,' rasped Rider Jostan. 'There really is no need for this. Go back to the higher caves. Stay there with the alchemists. This is soldiers' work.'

She knew he was right. She didn't even have most of her armour any more. Yet, watching the figures moving through the smoke around her, she knew she had to go. 'Do you want to die slowly in this smoke, Rider Jostan? I, if I must die, will do so quickly and with clean air in my lungs.'

'The Embers will defeat the dragons, Your Highness,' said Semian quietly. 'One way or another.' That's what they called themselves, these soldiers of the Adamantine Guard. Jaslyn had never heard of them before, but she recognised their weapons. No swords or axes or daggers, only huge shields as tall as a man and giant crossbows that fired bolts as long as her leg and needed three soldiers at a time to move them through the caves. Scorpions.

'How many soldiers are there, Rider Semian?'

'I don't know, Your Highness.'

'Then guess. Sixty? Seventy?' As they stumbled along, the smoke grew thicker and the air hotter. Jaslyn had no idea where she was going.   They were simply following the soldiers, and if they got lost they'd probably never find their way out. It wasn't a cheering thought.

'Around that number, yes.'

'Against five dragons. So twelve soldiers for each one. Do you think twelve men could ever defeat a dragon, Rider Semian? Never mind that there were a hundred of them and only two dragons in the first place, and they achieved very little then.' After their first meeting in the caves Jaslyn hadn't been allowed near the Guardsmen. They were a special legion, the alchemists said. The best of the best, trained from birth solely to defend the redoubt. They couldn't have a woman, even a princess, in their midst, she was told. And however much she insisted, the alchemists always found a way to stop her from talking to them. They never flatly refused, of course, but they might as well have done.

However special they are, they aren't going to win. Jaslyn's only hope was that she might be able to slip away in the confusion. Or get close enough for Silence to hear her voice.

'I suppose it is unlikely, Your Highness,' said Rider Semian reluctantly.

'They're not going to fight the dragons, Your Highness,' said Rider Jostan. 'They will kill the riders.'

Jaslyn shook her head. Rider Jostan hadn't quite understood what everyone else now knew, what the alchemists had explained with careful patience so there could be no confusion. That the dragons were acting on their own. That there were no rogue riders commanding Silence and Matanizkan and Levanter, but rogue dragons instead. Despite everything he'd been told, Jostan still firmly believed there were men outside, and all he had to do was kill those men and everything would be sorted out.

'()ne rider will do,' growled Semian. He understood perfectly; Jaslyn had seen his face when the message came to him. Someone was out there, and Semian clearly knew the man. Just a sell-sword, he said. One of the knight-marshal's more foolish ideas. He'd waved it away as unimportant, but his eyes were fierce.

They reached the river. The soldiers, apparently, were following it to get to the outside. As they left the vast space of the cavern

and entered the river tunnel, the smoke grew even thicker and the air became scorching. Jaslyn could feel the hot wind on her face, steadily blowing in from the outside. Before long they were wading up to their waists in the freezing water and splashing it over their arms and faces simply to keep from burning. They didn't need their lamps any more; the caves and the smoke here were lit up by a flickering orange glow.

'They've lit a fire at the cave mouth, haven't they?' The thought hadn't occurred to her before. 'How are we going to get out?'

'The river, Your Highness,' said Rider Semian.

'They're going to swim? In full dragonscale?' Despite herself she started to laugh, but her guffaws turned into a coughing fit as the smoke choked her.

'Highness, they're not wearing dragonscale.'

'What?' She sat down at the edge of the river and splashed water in her face and down her throat until the coughing stopped. When she looked up, they'd lost sight of the soldiers in the gloom. Not that they needed any help to find their way out now they had the river to guide them.

'They are not wearing their armour, Your Highness.'

'Then they'll be killed before they even climb out of the river! This is futile! Madness.' Jaslyn punched the water. They'd come all this way, gone through all this pain, and now they'd have to make their way back through the smoke. They'd probably get lost in the main cavern, and even if they didn't, the smoke would get them in the end. Without armour the soldiers wouldn't last long enough for anyone to slip away.

'Perhaps not as futile as you think.' Rider Semian started to strip off his armour. 'Your Highness, it seems we will have to swim.'

'Swim where, Semian?'

'Past the fire at the cave mouth, Your Highness.'

'And then? Perhaps you think we could float down the river without the dragons noticing us?'

'That's exactly what I think,' said Semian. He picked up his shield and poked two fingers through a hole that had been cut through it. Then he showed Jaslyn the two straps around it. 'When the time comes, lie on your back in the water, Your Highness. Hold the straps and press your mouth to the hole. The shield will float, and you will be able to breathe. Don't swim, just drift. Let the water carry you away.'

'When the time comes?'

Semian finished taking off his armour and waded deeper into the water. 'If the Embers somehow fail, I will try to distract the dragons. If I can get close enough that Matanizkan hears my voice, maybe she'll still obey me. You'll know if I've succeeded. That's when you should go.'

'They'll catch you.' Jaslyn peered at Semian. She could only make out the shape of him in the haze now, head and shoulders still clear of the water. He was doing this for her, she realised. This wasn't some plan the alchemists had devised, this was his plan. He was doing it to save her. The revelation left her feeling strange inside. She half rose to order him not to go and then stopped. Either way they were most likely all going to die.

'Better to die on my terms than someone else's,' he said. Those had been her own words when she'd insisted on coming down with the soldiers and somehow trying to escape. He was almost naked, armed only with a sword around his waist, a bottle of something on a string around his neck and a shield the size of a door. Jaslyn watched speechless as he lay back in the water and pulled the shield over him.

Madness. She bit her lip and watched him go dutifully to his death.

61

Disintegration

 

Climbing the stairs to the top of the Tower of Air was harder than it had been a week ago. Halfway up, Hyram paused to catch his breath. He looked at his hands. They were trembling. He could feel it in his legs too, and it was starting to affect his speech again.

Is it harder because of the sickness, or because of what I know?

No, that wasn't right. He didn't know anything. He only suspected.

No, that wasn't right either. He knew that Prince Jehal had given him his support. He knew that Jehal had betrayed his pact with Shezira and made Zafir speaker. And he knew what Jehal had said, there in the Hall of Speakers, as he did it.

He knew too what had been whispered in his ear, that Jehal and Zafir were lovers. At first he had simply refused to believe it. Then he'd sought the source of this whisper. He couldn't be sure who'd started it, but it seemed to originate from the Tower of Dusk, which meant it came from Shezira. Sour grapes then, besmirching Zafir in a last desperate attempt to overturn the decision of the kings and queens? It wouldn't work. Silvallan wouldn't care and Narghon would probably be pleased to hear it.

It's too late, Shezira. I couldn't change it now even if I wanted to.

He started on the stairs again and eventually reached the top. Usually the tower was loud and busy with servants running up and down between the levels, but today it was quiet and almost empty. The doors to the two topmost floors were guarded. The soldiers hurried to let him pass but they weren't usually here. I have to keep an eye on her. I have to know where she goes. I have to know what she does, who she sees.

'My lord.'

He stopped. He'd been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn't seen Zafir. She was sitting in the little anteroom that separated her private rooms from the stairs.

'W-What are you doing out here?'

Zafir stood up. She lowered her eyes demurely and showed him what she had in her hands. 'Embroidery, my lord.'

'Embroidery?' Hyram shook his head. 'And I-I don't have to be your 1-lord.' She'd taken to calling him that as soon as the wedding was over. He'd liked it at first, but now it seemed to make her into a servant. It was almost as though she was using it to build a wall between them.

'Isn't that what you want? Aren't I supposed to sit quietly in my nice airy tower, doing nothing very much while you rule the realms ?'

'One of those r-realms is yours, Zafir. You don't have to relinquish it.'

'The other kings and queens will expect it from me. It is what the speaker is supposed to do, after all.'

'Y-You could be d-different—' He stopped himself. This was nonsense. This wasn't why he'd climbed the tower. 'Y-You sent word to me, my queen. A-About the potions?'

'Yes.' Zafir smiled and beckoned him into her rooms. Past the anteroom was another staircase that led to the very top of the tower, to the queen's dressing room. Beyond that, most of the rest of the level was one large open audience room. Or bedroom, as it had lately become. Zafir snapped her fingers. A man came running with a pair of goblets. He seemed rather large and ungainly for a servant, Hyram thought, and the face was unfamiliar.

'Your manservant is n-new.'

'He's hardly a manservant, my lord. He arrived very recently and brought a gift for you.' She took the goblets and offered one to Hyram, then sat down and picked up her needlework again.

A g-gift? I know of no riders r-reaching my eyrie in the night.'

'Your eyrie, my lord? And I did not say he came on the back of a dragon.'

Hyram sniffed the goblet that Zafir had given him. His eyes widened. 'S-So you do have more.'

'Yes, my lord. Drink. There's plenty more now. I have reached an arrangement with Prince Jehal.' She glanced up at Hyram from time to time as she spoke, but mostly her eyes were fixed on what her fingers were doing, on the stab and thrust of the needle through the cloth.

'The Viper.' Even hearing his name was like being stabbed. 'W-What arrangement have y-you reached, my lady?'

'One that suits me, my lord.'

'There have been w-w-whispers, Zafir.'

'Whispers, my lord?' She stopped and looked up at him, as innocent as a child. For a moment Hyram wondered what he was doing. He had everything, didn't he? Everything he wanted. Why sully it with baseless suspicion?

But it was the Viper, and so he had to know, even if it ruined everything. 'Yes, my lady. Whispers. About you and J-Jehal.'

'The Jehal who murdered my mother?' Her eyes held him fast.

'I-I had not forgotten, my lady.'

'Drink your potion, my lord. Recover your strength a little.' She smiled, stood up and came towards him. 'It is true I have an arrangement with Jehal. If you want to know, I will tell you everything about it.' She briefly touched his hand, then went to stand behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. Hyram sighed and drank deeply as her fingers kneaded his muscles. 'You must be exhausted.'

'Yes.' Hyram put the cup to his lips and drained it. He could feel the potion coursing through him almost at once, hot and fierce.

'So here is the arrangement I have with Jehal. There will be no more potions for you. Not ever.' Her hands stayed at their work. 'Your sickness will take its course, just like King Tyan's has. I will be speaker; Jehal will be my lover. In time he will follow me. And you, my lord, will be kept perfectly alive, trapped in the prison of your own body, to watch it all unfold.'

A numbness filled Hyram's head. He had to run the words through his mind two or three times before he understood that there hadn't been a mistake, and that she'd meant every word. He lurched out of his chair and staggered forward. Something was desperately wrong. The room was spinning. He could hardly feel his arms and legs. As though ... He reached for her and she sprang away from him, snarling and spitting like an angry cat.

'Don't touch me! Never touch me!'

'T-The s-sickness ...'

'Is getting worse, is it? Yes, my lord, this potion is a little different. It'll happen much more quickly now. I pray that the Ancestors leave you as useless as King Tyan, and quickly.'

He had a dagger on his belt. Somewhere. He had to reach for it three times before his hands closed on the hilt. 'Y-You ... y-you ...' he gasped, 'vile ... w-wicked ...' There was a chair between them, but he had the dagger in his hand now. A huge pressure was building in his head.

'Me? And what about you, my lord?' she hissed and darted away behind a table. 'You betrayed Queen Shezira, the most powerful friend you had. You've broken your clan's pact. And for what? Who do you think I am? You take me in my own bed and then you moan my mother's name in your sleep. I was never anything more to you than some thing to keep your memories burning. Oh, and the potions, let's not forget the potions.'

Hyram stumbled around the table and lunged. Zafir jumped nimbly out of the way. 'I-I ... l-loved—'

She sneered at him, dripping scorn: 'You loved yourself, my lord.'

'I l-loved A-A-Aliphera.' He felt obscenely drunk and his head was about to explode. Zafir's face swam in and out of focus. He wanted to reach out and grab it and destroy it, to smash her into bloody pulp, but his arms and legs felt as though they were made of lead. Sometimes it didn't seem to be Zafir's face at all that he saw, but Jehal's, laughing at him. He took another few steps and slashed the air with the dagger; Zafir was too quick for him.

'Well she never loved you, my lord. She despised you. You made her sick.' She darted forward and spat in his face at the same moment as he launched himself at her. He felt the dagger snag on her clothes and she gave a little yelp. He staggered a few steps forward as Zafir twisted away. She cursed and he heard the crash of something falling over. The pressure inside his head was crushing. The world was slowly losing its colour. He turned around. Zafir was scrabbling on the floor, trying to get up, clutching her side.

'You cut me,' she hissed.

Til do ... more th-than c-cut you, y-you w-whore.' He was made of stone, but inside was pure fire. His vision seemed to compress as he stepped over her, until all he could see was her face and everything else had dissolved away. He was splitting, falling away into elemental pieces. He raised the dagger to plunge into her flesh and brought it down, and then something crashed into him and everything went dark. He couldn't move and he couldn't see, but for some reason he could hear voices. He could hear Zafir shouting for her guards. And he could hear the Viper.

62

River Treasure

 

Kemir watched from a distance. Men were emerging from the river, clutching their enormous shields and struggling to pull their ridiculous crossbows from the water. They weren't wearing any armour. In fact, when he squinted he could see they weren't wearing anything at all. They were painted, however, covered in swirling patterns that had somehow resisted the water.

He frowned and idly strung his bow. They were mad. He wondered, for a second or two, whether the patterns painted onto them were some kind of blood-magic so that dragon fire wouldn't hurt them. Only for a second or two, though, before Snow felled a dozen of them with a single blast.

Then Ash was among them, and Snow backed away and left him to it. The other three dragons, the ones they'd found at the eyrie, stopped what they were doing and watched. Even as Ash was finishing off the soldiers one of them scuttled forward and snatched one of the bodies, gulping it down. Ash turned and roared. For a moment the last few Guardsmen were forgotten as the dragons squared up. Then the other dragon lowered its head and backed away.

In the space of a minute the soldiers all died. They didn't manage to erect a single one of their crossbows; Kemir wasn't even sure they'd tried. It was almost as though they knew they were doomed, and preferred to die quickly in battle than slowly choke to death. He stretched and ambled towards the aftermath in case any of them had had anything worth looting. Not likely, since they were all naked, but there might be a ring or a talisman on a chain. Pointless really, robbing the dead out here. Even if he did find anything, then what? He stared at the river, as bodies and shields floated past. So futile ...

One of the shields moved. At first Kemir thought his eyes had played a trick on him, but when he stopped and watched carefully, he could see feet sticking out from underneath. They were kicking.

Slowly he pulled an arrow from his quiver and drew back his bowstring. He fired the arrow into the middle of the shield. Even at such a short range, it didn't go in very far, but it went in far enough. The water thrashed and splashed, and suddenly there was a man scrambling to his feet on the far bank. Kemir drew out another arrow and then stared in amazement.

'You! Murderer!'

Rider Semian stared back at him. He was naked apart from a long thick shirt that reached his knees and a sword belt. He still held his shield and had a bottle hanging around his neck on a piece of string. Kemir held an arrow in one hand and his bow in the other. Semian was only a few yards away but the river was too wide to jump. Kemir grinned.

'You're a dead man.' Without looking away, he put the arrow to his bowstring. 'You can't reach me, and you need to be a lot further away before I'm going to miss. So what's the matter with you? Too much of a coward to die like the rest? Or is that what they were for? Were they all supposed to die, all the little soldiers, so that you, a rider, could live?' He drew back the bowstring.

Semian didn't move except to shift behind his shield so that Kemir could only see his head. 'Who are you working for, sell-sword. Who bought you?'

'No one.' Kemir laughed. 'For the first time in far too many years. Just settling an old score.' He might have gone on — tried to explain to the rider why he was helping Snow, how dragon-riders had destroyed his family, his friends and everyone he knew. There was a courtesy to killing a man, and part of that was making sure that he understood why he was marked to die.

Then again Semian hardly deserved any courtesy, so Kemir just released the arrow.

Semian yanked up his shield, which quivered as the arrow hit it exactly in front of his face.

Kemir's arm shot back for another arrow. At the same time Semian took a huge leap into the middle of the river. In mid-air he flipped his absurd shield sideways and hurled it at Kemir. As Kemir nocked his second arrow, he ducked and twisted sideways, but the shield was so big it caught the top of his bow, almost tearing it out of his hands. He dropped the arrow and nearly fell over.

By the time he'd regained his balance, Semian was scrambling up the near bank of the river.

'You'll have to do better than that, sell-sword.'

Kemir hesitated. Knives or arrow? Arrows were more certain, but Semian was maybe too close.

He went for another arrow anyway. No shield to hide behind this time. Semian drew his sword. He sprang the last few yards between them and swung. As Kemir let the arrow go, the tip of the sword clipped his bow. The arrow went went wide, and then the rider was on him. Kemir launched himself at Semian and the two of them tumbled to the ground, arms locked around each other, rolling back towards the river. Kemir had one hand around Semian's wrist, pinning his sword. His other hand went to the rider's throat. Semian let the sword go and punched Kemir in the face, hard enough to make his vision swim. They rolled apart. Kemir sprang to his feet and drew out his knives. Semian was up too. Unarmed. His sword lay between them.

'Last time you were the one surrounded by allies and dragons. Now it's me.' Kemir tipped back his head and roared, 'Hey, Snow!' then bared his teeth at Semian. 'Show me which dragon is yours, so I can feed you to him after I've killed you.'

'I don't see you surrounded by allies,' said Semian. He took a step back. He still had the bottle on a string around his neck; now he lifted that over his head. 'I see only you.'

'This time, I have the dragons.'

Semian kept his eyes on Kemir as he flicked the stopper out of the bottle. Kemir lunged forward. Semian skittered backwards.

Kemir shook his head.

'Ah ah! No special potions from your friends the alchemists. You should have drunk those before you came out.' Semian was even further from his sword now.

'This is poison, sell-sword.' He slowly put the bottle to his lips and tipped it back.

'Is it slow and painful?'

'I believe so, yes.'

'So I could still carve you up and watch you bleed slowly?'

'Oh, you misunderstand.' Semian glanced back towards the caves. 'It doesn't kill humans' He dropped into a fighting stance. 'I'm unarmed. Are you going to try your luck with those knives of yours, sell-sword? Or do you have something else you should be doing?'

63

Fangs of the Viper

 

Cold air brushed Hyram's face. He opened his eyes. He was flat on his back and Jehal was crouching over him. They were outside in the open air somewhere. It was night, and he was alive, barely. When he tried to throw out an arm to grab the Viper by his throat, he could barely move. His limbs tingled. They weren't really awake yet.

'You're shivering, old man.' Jehal spoke softly and quietly, as through someone was sleeping nearby. 'Are you cold? Or are you sick? Which is it, do you think?'

'I-I have n-nothing to s-say to you, V-Viper.'

Jehal smiled. 'That is a relief. If you'd got it in your head to make a long speech about what a terrible person I am, I might just have thrown myself off the balcony here. Anything to make it end.'

'Y-Y-You'll ...' He couldn't make his mouth work properly. His face was turning numb.

'Never get away with it? Is that what you were going to say? You must be losing your mind, old man. I already have. Do you know where we are? We're in your palace, old man. You're surrounded by your own guards.' Jehal frowned and shook his head. '"There goes our lord, so drunk he can't stand straight again." That's how easy it is.' He laughed. 'Of course we're friends ever since I backed your speaker, aren't we? I wonder if any of the soldiers I've just walked past were the same ones you had with you down under the Glass Cathedral when you tortured me.' Jehal reached down and picked up something from the shadows beside him. 'You've been wanting to know this for a long time.' He held up a small round bottle made of thick smoky glass. Then he pulled a sack out of the shadows as well. When he tipped the bottle over the sack, a glittering silver liquid dripped out. 'Yes, I have been poisoning you. You've got two very fine poisons in you already, in fact. A little Nightwatchman in your drink to start. Then a little prick from a needle dipped in Frogsback.' Jehal held a needle in front of Hyram's face. 'Gave you that just a couple of minutes ago, when you started to stir. It should be working by now. If you stop breathing, that means I've got the dose wrong, and I'm going to feel quite foolish. If you don't, well then you should recover from it in a few hours. I do like Frogsback. This though ...' Jehal stroked the bottle of silver liquid. 'This is special. It's the vapours. Even in tiny doses they slowly destroy your mind. Very, very slowly. Of course in bigger doses they act rather more quickly.'

With that, the Viper straddled Hyram and forced the sack over his head. Hyram tried to struggle, but he was so weak that he might as well not have bothered. He also tried not to breathe in, which was equally futile.

'You can't smell them,' said the Viper. Hyram felt the rest of the bottle being tipped over his head. 'A little pot of this in your bedroom for a year, that's all it took. That and someone to stir it up from time to time. A sort of scum forms on the top after a while which keeps the vapours from forming. Otherwise it's perfect, don't you think?

'Didn't you start to have a problem with your pot-boys about a year ago?' Hyram could tell that Jehal was grinning, simply from the sound of his voice. 'Kept disappearing, didn't they? I don't suppose you thought anything of it. A different one every few months. Did you even notice? No? Shame on you, old man. You should always pay attention to your pot-boys. They're almost invisible yet they know all your secrets. They know who you take to your bed; they know who you talk to in the middle of the night. They sleep in the same rooms as us. They know every nook and cranny and corner of our sleeping lives. They breathe the same air.' The Viper chuckled. 'So you had to keep having new ones, before the vapours could affect them. Don't worry, they've all

been well looked after. Oh, but then you probably don't care, do you, because you didn't even notice them. No, you're probably too worried about your own predicament just now. I suppose I can understand that.'

The Viper's voice receded, as though he was standing up.

'Don't bother trying to move or shout out, old man. I hope you've learned by now that a Viper's bite is poison.' He laughed. 'But you had one little victory. I assume it was you who stole Queen Shezira's white dragon. Since it wasn't me, and it wasn't Zafir, and I sincerely doubt that King Valgar would dare do such a thing. But you ... What was it? You couldn't bear the thought that I should own such a prize? And now Shezira's never going to know. Pity.' He patted Hyram on the shoulder. 'Goodnight, old man, and goodbye. I'm going to leave you now, surrounded by your Adamantine Guard. In a little while Zafir will come and take your hood off, and then she'll call in some of your loyal men, the ones you set to guard her door. They'll carry you back to your bed to sleep off the stink of wine that's on you. Sleep in peace. By tomorrow morning, when you see me again, you won't even know who I am.'

The Viper walked away. Hyram heard his footsteps fade to nothing. Inside the sack he tried to turn his head, twisting it as far as he could from the fumes that he couldn't even smell. When he tried to pull off the sack, it was like slapping himself with slabs of dead meat. His arms flailed with a will of their own. They wouldn't do what he wanted them to. He couldn't move his fingers at all. He tried shouting but all he could do was rasp. Out here on the balcony, no one would hear him.

Frogsback. He's paralysed me.

He kicked with his feet. He could do that at least. Hopelessly uncoordinated, but he could move them. After a few minutes he'd managed to push himself a few inches. Exhausted, he gave up. If anything, the numbness was getting worse, and the more he struggled, the more fumes he breathed.

Shezira. Time and space became a blur. He wasn't sure where he was any more. At some point he thought he felt strong arms take hold of him. They must have taken the sack off too, because he could see stars again. And faces.

Shezira. She was the only one left he could trust. The only one who could make it all go away. Even after everything they'd done to each other, after everything he'd done to her, she'd do the right thing. She'd have the strength that he lacked.

He tried to struggle, but the thoughts never got further than his mind, while the rest of his body slumbered in peaceful stupor.

'Shezira ...'

64

Smoke and Poison

 

Kemir turned and ran, sprinting towards the caves and the dragons. 'Don't!' he screamed. 'Stop! Don't eat the bodies!'

He was too late. Of course he was too late. Rider Rod wouldn't have told him if there was any danger he might stop it. All of the dragons had bloody muzzles. There were still a few corpses littered around the river, but there had clearly been a lot more. He clenched his fists in furious frustration. No armour, no sword, I should have carved him up.

And that was the point. That was why Rider Rod had told him. Because I had him. Because for a moment there, with no sword in his hand, he was mine for the taking. Because this time I could have carved him up. And now I'm too late and I let him go. Shit! The realisation made him clench his fists again and scream.

'They're poisoned,' he shouted when Snow and Ash both stopped and peered down at him. The other three dragons didn't understand. They still did what they were told, whether it was by a rider on their back or another dragon in their head.

Snow spat out half a knight. How are they poisoned?

'I don't know.' Kemir pointed back down the river. 'There was a rider. He got past you in the river. He told me.'

Ash lifted his head and snorted fire at the heavens. Perhaps he lied.

'Perhaps he did!' Kemir shrugged. 'Wait and find out if you like. Or go and find him and ask him. Last time I saw him he was a few hundred yards that way, behind those rocks and heading for the forest. He can't have got far.' He murdered Sollos.

The dragons didn't say anything else. Ash stamped a clawed foot, shaking the earth, then the whole valley trembled as he and Snow pounded away towards the trees. The other three dragons went back to the cave-mouth fires. Kemir cast a nervous glance at the cliffs towering over them, wondering if they were about to come crashing down. As soon as he convinced himself that they weren't, he ran after Snow. That's what they should have done. Not fire but stone. Shake the whole mountainside down and bury the place. Could they have done that?

He reached the place where he'd found Semian and picked up his bow. He left it strung, just in case. Ash and Snow were at the edge of the trees and launching themselves into the air.

He is in there. Not far. I can feel his thoughts. He is cold, very cold, that is all I can sense.

Where?                        -

Distant. Exactly where I cannot be sure.

Then burn it. Burn it all.

Burn it all.

'The river,' shouted Kemir. Semian's shield was gone. 'He'll be in the river.' Except the river was so shrouded by trees that the dragons probably couldn't even see it from above. Kemir stood at the edge of the wood and watched. A part of him wanted to give chase himself. Let Sollos rest in peace at last.

'You want him alive, remember!' he shouted as the first lance of fire stabbed down into the trees. Semian would have his sword again and Kemir might not even see the knight until they stumbled into each other. And did he really want to hunt down a desperate rider while two dragons were raining fire down from above? No, probably not.

He took a deep breath. If Rider Rod had been telling the truth about the poison, and if all the dragons had eaten it, and if they all died, then what? Stuck in a valley full of angry soldiers and alchemists hadn't seemed too bad with two murderous dragons on his side. Stuck there without them he'd be the hunted one.

'Bugger.' He growled. 'Another day, Rider Rod. One day, if the dragons don't get you, I'll still be waiting for you in those shadows.' He sat down to watch as Snow and Ash burned the forest.  They'd  give  up  soon  enough.  That  was  the  trouble with the pair of them. No patience. Were all dragons like that?

Ash suddenly lurched in the air. He turned sharply, flew almost straight towards Kemir and landed heavily next to the river. Before he'd even come to a halt, he had rolled over into the water. Hot! Too hot! I am burning inside! Ash pressed his head into the ice-cold water, took a long swallow and then splashed more water over his back. A second later he was gently steaming.

Kemir backed away.

'It's the poison, you stupid greedy dragon. That's how dragons die. They burn from the inside.' He wrung his hands in frustration and looked around for Nadira. It was hardly a surprise that Ash was the first, since he'd probably eaten more than the rest of the dragons put together. But he hadn't thought it would happen so quickly. How long had it been? Ten minutes? The alchemists in the caves, though, they'd know exactly how long the poison would take. Exactly when to come rushing out to finish off anyone stupid enough to remain.

He jumped up onto a rock and glanced around the valley. 'Nadira!' he shouted. He couldn't see her. 'Snow!'

Ash. Here, I will cool you. Snow landed to squat beside Ash, pouring river water over him. Over by the cave mouths the other three dragons didn't seem troubled. Yet.

'Snow! Did you eat the bodies of the dead?'

Yes.

'How many?'

I did not count mouthfuls, Kemir. Does it matter? Their poison is in me.

'Not as many as Ash, though.'

Far, far fewer.

'Then perhaps not enough to do to you whatever it's done to him.' Kemir looked around the valley for Nadira again. This time he saw her, not far away, sitting with her back to a tree, brushing her hair. He wondered, for an instant, where she'd found the brush. 'Nadira!'

Ash! You must stay awake!  Kemir could   feel  frustration  in Snow's thoughts, and a deep sadness with it. Strangely little anger, though. Kemir, I begin to feel it too. I must destroy the alchemists quickly now, while I still have the strength.

'No! You should fly away, while you still can.' He waved Nadira towards him. By the caves, one of the dragons had gone to lie down in the water as well.

I cannot leave Ash. He is sinking into torpor. It is our way of stopping the heat inside when it grows too strong. If they find him alone like this, they will feed him their potions again and he will be lost.

'Or they might get both of you. Or you might die from the poison. You don't know what it does. You don't know anything. We have to go.'

I understand your fear, Little One, but I will not leave. There is too much undone.

'Then stay here and die! Or be enslaved again. For myself, I wish for neither.' Kemir got up. He trotted to Nadira and took her hand. 'Come on! We need to go. And quickly.'

The poison is in me, Kemir, and it will do what it will do. If I am to die, I will die in battle against my enemies. I am a dragon, and that is my nature.

'In battle?' Kemir threw up his head to the heavens. 'They're not going to come out and fight you, you stupid creature. They're going to wait and watch as you fail. They'll hide in their caves and come out when you're too weak to lift yourself off the ground. Is that battle?' He was shouting now, filled with a bitter sense of loss that he didn't understand. 'Fly up into the mountains! Find a lake by a glacier and immerse yourself in it! If that doesn't keep you cold, nothing will. If you want to fight, fight the poison.'

No, Kemir. I will stay with Ash.

Kemir stamped his foot. 'If the poison doesn't kill you, you can come back and try again! You can free Ash, free them all. If you die, you're dead, and everything you want dies with you.'

Snow stared at him. For a second he thought she was going to eat him. He could feel the thoughts in her head, the rivers of anger and desire, the knotting indecision. Then, slowly, she nodded.

It is not our nature to flee, Little One Kemir, and I do not understand why you would betray your own kind. But yes, then. Let us leave. She lowered her head and shoulders to the ground. Kemir scrambled onto her back and hauled Nadira after him.

65

The Night of the Knives

 

Almiri tiptoed across the floor. She was shaking, still sweating from running up the stairs. And from what had gone on before. She held a single candle, and the flame flickered restlessly, casting dancing shadows across the walls. Her hands were trembling. She approached her mother's bed and felt like a young girl again, a child looking for a comfort she rarely received.

Shezira tossed and turned. Almiri knew those dreams. She'd had her own dreams, of being at home in the far-off north. Of someone tapping on her window, of the tapping growing louder, and then the rooms shaking and swaying. Of pictures falling off the walls, candles tipping over, ceilings cracking, beams breaking. Of castles falling and of the earth splitting open.

She knelt by the bed and gave her mother a gentle nudge. 'Your Holiness ...'

Shezira twisted violently away. Someone in her bedchamber. In the middle of the night. Ill deeds ...

Almiri tried again. 'Mother!' This time Shezira heard her. She sat up, wild-eyed.

'Almiri?'

'Yes. Mother, you have to wake up.'

Shouts outside. Swords clashing. Men screaming. Hiding...

Shezira rubbed her eyes and squinted at her daughter, shielding her eyes from the candlelight. 'Almiri,' she said again. 'What are you doing here?'

'Mother, someone has tried to kill the speaker.'

'Hyram's dead?'

'No, mother.' Almiri tried to keep her voice steady, but she couldn't hide the tension. 'Queen Zafir. Someone has tried to kill Queen Zafir.'

Lying on the floor in the dark, trying not to breathe. Armoured feet in front of her eyes. Vicious words and bared, bloody swords...

'I don't suppose they succeeded?'

'No, mother. She was wounded but not killed.'

Shezira chuckled. 'Pity.'

'Mother! This is not a joke.' Almiri's voice sounded shrill to herself. She wanted to scream.

'Who did it?'

'They say it was a rider disguised as a messenger boy. They say it was your knight-marshal.' She could see the coldness blossom inside her mother and sweep across her face. How long has it been since you were afraid, mother?

Her own husband, a king, dragged from his bed and thrown to the floor with a sword to his neck.

'Nastria?'

'Yes, mother.'

'No!' Shezira threw off her blankets and got up. 'No, Nastria would never do such a thing. Not without my order.'

'Yes, mother. They say that too.'

'Servants!' Shezira peered at her. 'I ordered no such thing. You look frightened, daughter. Why?'

'Because ...'

The sword is lifted up ...

Because I am. Because I'm terrified. Petrified. Paralysed. But she could never say that. Not to her mother. Shezira couldn't begin to understand. She wouldn't even try.

'Because the Adamantine Guard have seized our tower, mother. Valgar's riders are either dead or taken. They dragged my husband out of his bed.' ... but never comes down. The feet march away and take him with them and she is alone in the dark, still silent and unbreathing. 'When he fought, they beat him like a common criminal. I hid under the bed. I heard them talking. They didn't see me in the dark.'

Servants were coming in now, sluggishly, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Shezira scowled at them. 'Dress me,' she snapped. 'Awake my riders. Awake everyone. Daughter, you're not making much sense. Why would Hyram's guards do such a thing?'

Almiri sat on the bed and held her head in her hands. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep it all clenched up inside her for much longer. 'They're Zafir's Guard now, mother. Your knight-marshal tried to kill her. They saw her. She fled, and they saw her come to our tower. But she's not there, mother. When they don't find her, they'll come here.'

'I'm quite sure you're right, especially if they saw you come here too.'

'What was I supposed to do, mother? It was dark. I wasn't asleep. I saw them take Valgar and so I ran. They killed our riders!'

Shezira held out her arms to be dressed. 'Yes, so you said.'

'Where is Lady Nastria, mother ?'

'Missing.'

What's that, mother? A touch of fear? It is, isn't it? So you do remember what it feels like from all those years ago.

'Missing,' Shezira said again. She frowned.

'Would she—'

'No, daughter, she would not. She would never be so mindlessly stupid.'

Someone ran into the room and grovelled at Shezira's feet.

'Your Holiness—'

'What?'

'The speaker's soldiers are hammering on the door, Your Holiness. They demand—'

Shezira waved him away. 'Tell them that I am dressing and that when I am ready they may enter. Tell them that the person they're looking for is not here, but I shall be happy to allow them to see that for themselves. Tell them that my riders shall not be the first to bare their swords. And remind them that I have a good few more than King Valgar did.'

Another servant approached. 'Your armour, Holiness?'

'Are we at war? Don't be foolish.' She waved that one away too.

'Mother—'

'Enough, Almiri. The Guard may take their orders from Queen Zafir today, but for the last ten years they've answered to Hyram, and old habits are not so easily forgotten. Does he think I plan to go to war with them? That would be absurd. I will speak to Hyram in person, and if he intends to imprison everyone who disagrees with his foolishness then he can do it himself. No, daughter, something else is afoot here. Hyram will release King Valgar and Zafir will pay compensation to the families of his dead riders. I will see to it.' Finally she was dressed. She shooed all her servants away and marched out and down into the body of the Tower of Dusk. She swept down the stairs into the great hall with Almiri on her heels. A dozen riders were already there, some of them armoured, some of them still in their nightclothes, but all armed. Most of them were pressed against the doors to the outside. A heavy bar was braced across both doors, and the riders were shouting at the soldiers outside, such a cacophony of cursing that Almiri couldn't make out a single word. When the queen reached the bottom of the stairs, she snatched a spear and banged it on the floor. 'Open the doors,' she shouted. 'Let them in.'

'Mother, don't go outside.' Almiri almost snatched at Shezira's sleeve, but that would have earned her nothing but contempt.

The riders fell silent. Shezira glared at them. 'What are you waiting for?' She pointed at the nearest two knights, who'd managed to scramble into their armour. 'You come with me. The rest of you—'

'Mother!' Almiri almost screamed. It was a mistake to shout at a queen, but she couldn't help herself any more.

Shezira rounded on her. 'Queen Almiri is our guest,' she said very clearly. 'See to it that the Adamantine Guardsmen understand that. And we are not King Valgar, but the Queen of the North, the Queen of Sand and Stone, with twelve score dragons at our beck and call. See they understand that too.' She swept her cloak around her and marched towards the door. 'Why is this door still closed? Must I open it myself?'

She would have lilted the bar with her own hands if some of her riders hadn't hastily removed it. The doors swung open. Outside, dozens of Adamantine men stood waiting, fully armoured and with bared steel in their hands. They paused and then parted as Shezira strode towards them, and after all the shouting an eerie silence fell. Almiri watched her go into the gloom of the night. Tears stung her eyes.

You're wrong. Mother, this time you're wrong.

She kept her thoughts to herself, though, and as Shezira vanished into the darkness, she quietly slipped away.

66

Jostan

 

For a time that felt like forever, the smoke was unbearable. In the caverns Jaslyn sat by the river, a wet cloth wrapped across her mouth, and tried not to cough herself to death. Not coughing was almost impossible, and whenever she succumbed, she inevitably took in lungfuls of hot smoke and that made it a hundred times worse. Jostan sat beside her. The first time she fell to coughing, he had wrapped his arms around her ribs and then pressed his lips to hers. She tried to fight, pushing him away, thinking he'd lost his mind, but he wasn't trying to kiss her. He blew air out of his lungs and into hers and then drew away. His air still reeked with smoke, but at least it was cool and moist, not bitter and dry. When she'd regained her composure, he had knelt at her feet.

'Forgive me,' he whispered.

'I should have your head,' she rasped. But the coughing fit had gone, and anyway the only person who could have defended her honour was Semian, and he was gone too.

The second time she began to cough, he did it again, and she realised that a part of her liked the closeness of it. Instead of fighting him off, she found herself wanting to pull him to her, to have someone to hold on to at last, if only for the last hours of her life. Eventually she pushed him away, firmly but gently this time. After that she made sure that she didn't cough any more. In the end she lay beside the river, eyes closed, listlessly splashing her face whenever they started to sting again. The water tasted delicious. She tried to pretend that Jostan wasn't there and think only about that.

'Princess! There is a breeze,' he said at last. 'Do you feel it?'

She lifted her head. He was right. A gentle wind whispered along the river from the depths of the caves.

'What does it mean?' she asked.

'It means that the fires are drawing air out of the caves. It means the dragons are no longer tending them, Your Highness.' He could barely contain himself. 'The Embers have won!'

Jaslyn wanted to cry. Coming down here had been stupidity. Her stupidity. 'I'm sorry, Jostan. I know we should have stayed with the alchemists.' The Embers were dead. She hadn't seen it with her own eyes, but the shouts and the screams and the roars of the dragons had echoed far into the tunnels.

'No, Princess. This means the dragons are gone. The Embers have won.'

'The Embers are dead, Jostan.' Speaking was a trial. Her throat was raw and burning, and every word was a battle against the smoke.

'Yes.' He was smiling, she realised. 'And the dragons ate them.'

She was missing something. She struggled upright. 'Why is that a cause for happiness, Rider Jostan?'

He frowned and peered at her. Twice he opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. At the third attempt words finally came out. 'I'm sorry, Your Highness. I thought you knew.'

'Knew what, Rider?'

'That the Embers ...' He wouldn't look at her. 'Highness, the Embers took poison. The bottle that Rider Semian had around his neck, that was poison too. Dragon poison.'

'What are you talking about?' Dragon poison? No such thing. I would have known.

'The Embers, Your Highness, they went out there to die. They knew what awaited them.'

'Poison?' Would she have known?

He bowed his head.

And then it hit her — far, far later than it should have. 'Silence!'

Jostan stared at the ground. 'And Matanizkan and Levanter. I am sorry, Your 1 Ugliness.'

'Sorry?' For a moment even the smoke didn't matter. Sorry? What use is sorry? My Silence! You've poisoned my Silence. Graceful, elegant, beautiful, perfect—

And trying to kill us, she reminded herself. Or was. No, best not to think about it. Would she ever have sacrificed Silence to save her own life? No. To save Jostan? Semian? No. To save anyone at all? She didn't know.

'I have to see!' She was already getting to her feet.

'No, Your Highness. Wait. It's not safe.'

She screamed at him. 'You've poisoned my Silence! I want to see him.'

'We have to wait.'

'Wait for what?'

'Wait for Rider Semian, Your Highness. He went out to watch. When they're all dead, he will come back and tell us.'

'When they're dead?!' She was rigid with fury. If she'd had claws, she would have torn Jostan to pieces. 'So they're still alive?' She pressed her face up close to his. 'There must be something to take this poison out of them. Poison the white if that's the only way, but not Silence. Not my Silence!' But there wasn't something. The alchemists wouldn't have an antidote. Why would they? And even if they did, it would take hours to walk back to where they were hiding, and hours more to get back to the mouth of the caves.

She turned and ran towards the entrance, heedless of the smoke, but Jostan pulled her down. 'Your Highness!'

'Silence!' She screamed and fought and tore at him. 'My Silence! Don't eat them! Don't!' But Jostan was strong, much too strong, and he wouldn't let her go. She ordered him, cursed him, berated him as best she could before the next coughing fit seized her, but his arms stayed wrapped around her and all her struggles were useless. 'Silence,' she whispered. Tears streamed down her face. Jostan still held her, but his arms were gentle now, and suddenly welcome. She rested her head on his chest and wept. Here in the murderous choking dark she didn't want to be a princess any more.

They crept down the river until they could see the massive pyre at the cave mouth, and there they waited for an hour, maybe longer, before she decided she couldn't bear any more. She was careful this time, waiting until Jostan was distracted before she ran, sprinting along the river bank and then diving into the water when the heat from the fire was too much. She heard Jostan shouting after her, but she didn't look back. By the time he finally caught her, they were already outside, thrashing in the river alongside the fires.

'Keep your head down!' shouted Jostan, and then they were past, and the air was suddenly cold and crisp and deliriously fresh. It felt so gloriously clean that she wanted to gulp it down as fast as she could. For a second she almost forgot about Silence.

And then she saw him. A hundred yards from the river, flat on his belly, eyes closed. Still.

'Your Highness! Wait!' But she didn't, and this time Jostan didn't try to stop her. She hauled herself out of the freezing river and ran as fast as she could, collapsing to the ground by the dragon's head. Silence was gone. She could already feel the heat burning him from the inside.

Jostan came towards her, then saw the look on her face and stopped dead in his tracks.

'Is he ...'

Jaslyn shook her head. She couldn't speak.

'I ... I should look for the others, Your Highness. Please be careful. The others ... They might not...'

He should have taken her back into the cave, and they both knew it. She should have stayed there until all the other dragons had been found. He should never have let her escape in the first place, and her mother would probably have his head for being so careless. But for a moment Jaslyn loved him more than anyone in the world simply for leaving her alone.

 

67

 The Balcony

 

Jehal watched through the eyes of one of the Taiytakei dragons. He saw the doors of the Tower of Dusk open and watched Shezira storm towards Hyram's keep. He grimaced. Like an arrow from the bow of a master archer, he mused. Straight and deadly and utterly predictable. And when Hyram cannot be roused, what then, mighty Queen? He took off one strip of silk and put on the other, to see through the eyes of the little dragon that he'd left watching over Hyram's bed. The Adamantine Guardsmen had taken Hyram from Zafir's rooms back to his own and put him to bed, just as their new mistress had ordered them. He should be snoring nicely by now. Everyone would assume he was drunk.

The bed was empty.

It took Jehal a couple of seconds and a close inspection to believe what he was seeing, but Hyram was gone. Despite all the poisons, somehow Hyram had woken up and got out of bed. The dragon found him a few minutes later, out on his balcony, leaning over the parapet. His face was slack and vacant and he was shaking; it was all Jehal could do not to laugh. Hyram could have ended up anywhere. As it was, it was a miracle that he hadn't simply tipped over the parapet and dashed himself to pieces on the ground below.

Now there's a thought.

He tore off the silk and fumbled for his boots. 'Kazah! Help me get dressed.' If Shezira got to Hyram and, Hyram could actually string a sentence together, there was just a chance that everything might unravel. He ought to feel afraid, he supposed. Or at least annoyed, alarmed, worried — something like that. Exhilarated though? Not good.

Which only made the feeling stronger. He grinned at Kazah. However this ended, he was definitely going to miss it once it was all over.

Shezira reached Hyram's keep expecting to have to take the place by storm and quite prepared to do so, single-handed if she had to. Instead, the doors were flung open for her, which made her pause. But Hyram was not a murderer. Whatever else he might do, despite all his betrayals, he wasn't a killer.

Nonetheless. She whispered to the two riders she'd brought with her, 'Stay close to me.'

Inside, an old man was waiting for her, so withered and bent he made even Isentine look young. She took a moment to recognise him.

'Wordmaster Herlian?'

He bowed, as best he could. 'Your Holiness.'

'I am here to see Hyram.' She could demand that now. Of course, the Guard might not see it that way.

'He's ... Your Holiness, he's not himself.'

Shezira snorted. 'He's not the speaker and he's not a king. I can march straight into his bedchamber whenever it pleases me, Wordmaster. Whoever he is.'

Herlian bowed again. 'Your Holiness, I wouldn't dream of trying to stop you. He's been asking for you. Or at least he's said your name. But he's not well, Holiness. His mind has wandered. He talks of you and of Antros and of Aliphera and of dragons, and makes little sense.'

'He'd better make sense when I ask why his soldiers are hammering on my doors.'

Herlian shrugged. 'I will take you to him, Your Holiness.'

Hyram was flying. He was on the back of a dragon high in the sky with the wind streaming past his face. He didn't know the name of his dragon. It belonged to someone else; he wasn't sure who. His brother, perhaps. Antros. The giant of his life, always casting him into shadow.

Maybe it was the wind that was making him weep, or maybe not, for hadn't Aliphera ripped out his heart and torn it to pieces in front of his very eyes, flaunting herself with that dashing prince from the south, Tyan. She'd wanted Antros, but Antros wasn't for having. She should have wanted him instead, but no, no, she didn't, and now she'd left him with nothing, just an empty shell, devoid of feeling.

No, that wasn't right either. There hadn't been any feeling for a long time, but now it was back, all of it, decades and decades of pain, all at once.

'Hyram.'

The dragon was talking to him. That must be it. There couldn't be anyone else with him, up here in the sky. Except suddenly there was another dragon, flying alongside him, with that frightened young slip of a girl from the north that Antros was off to marry. Not much to look at, but they had dragons, lots of dragons.

'Are you drunk?'

That made him laugh. If only he was drunk. Now there was a way to take all that pain, round it up and throw it back into the box from where it had escaped. Back where you belong. No business being out here after all this time.

'You are, aren't you? Drunk again.'

'No!' he screamed at the stupid girl on her dragon, wishing she'd leave him alone. 'Go away!'

'I'll go away when you explain to me why your Adamantine Guard have taken Valgar, have killed his riders, and why they were hammering on my door.'

'Guards?' He didn't know anything about that. 'Ask the speaker. He must know. They're his men.' He grinned. 'My brother's going to be the speaker one day.' Then he looked away. That was a stupid thing to say. The girl was about to marry Antros. Of course she knew about the pact.

The dragon underneath him suddenly banked and sank through the air. Hyram swayed and clutched at the harness. For some reason he hadn't strapped himself in. He had no idea why he'd forget a thing like that. That was the sort of thing Antros would do, except Antros didn't forget; he did stupid things on purpose and then mocked Hyram for being a coward. And he always got away with it too.

The girl grabbed hold of him. He couldn't even remember her name, but she must have jumped off her own dragon and landed on the back of his, and now she was pulling at him.

Hyram lurched violently and stumbled towards the parapet of the balcony. Shezira caught him, stopped him from falling to the ground, and then let go as he fought her away.

'If it's not you, then who's doing this?' But she could see in his eyes that he was somewhere else, somewhere far, far away.

'Get off my dragon,' he shouted at her. 'Get off it! Stay on your own!' She backed away from him. 'Yes, that's right. Back where you belong. Stay away!'

The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She'd seen Hyram drunk often enough. This was something else. 'Hyram? If you didn't send the Guard, then who did? Zafir?'

'Zafir?' he looked at her blankly, as though he'd never heard the name. 'Prince Tyan, that's who did this to me. And that little bitch Aliphera, with her flashing eyes and her stone-cold heart. She did this. And Antros, always blocking out the sun, wherever I stand. You're welcome to him. Take him away and leave me be, all of you.' He lurched again.

'Aliphera's dead, Hyram. Tyan's mad. Antros has been gone for fifteen years. What are you talking about?'

'Death.' For a moment his eyes focused on her. 'Death, Shezira. Life is like a wheel rolling through time, and sometimes little pieces stick to it. They stick to it all the way round and come back again when you least expect them. I'm sorry I betrayed you to them. Aliphera and Tyan.' He reached out to her, and then his eyes went wide and she could see him fall away back to whatever place held him. A door closed behind his face. He wasn't coming back.

Shezira shook her head and pursed her lips. 'You mean Jehal and Zafir, don't you? I'm sorry too, Hyram. Sorry for you, but I

don't have time for this. Whatever they're—' Hyram's face had gone rigid with terror. He was looking past her.

'Get away! Get away!'

Something fluttered past her and flew at Hyram. In the darkness she couldn't see what it was. Some sort of bird perhaps, but it glittered like gold and made a strange sound as it flew, more a clattering of metal than the fluttering of feathers. It buzzed at Hyram's head.

'Get away!' He flailed at it, stumbling towards the parapet.

Shezira took a step towards him. Somewhere inside the keep a commotion had started. It was rapidly getting closer.

'Get away! Get off my dragon!'

He was going to fall.

'Hyram!' She lunged at him, trying to grab his arm. He shrieked and hurled himself away from her, straight into the parapet. His head and arms kept going, tipping over into the emptiness beyond. His legs flew up. It all seemed to happen very slowly, so slowly that Shezira couldn't understand why she couldn't do anything about it. And then he was gone. He didn't scream at all, but she heard the thud, a few seconds later, as he hit the ground.

There were people running into Hyram's bedchamber behind her.

'Murder!' shouted a woman's voice. It was Queen Zaflr. 'She's murdered my husband!'

For the first time in many years Shezira didn't know what to do. She stood staring over the edge. Behind her she could hear her riders trying to defend her. There were only two of them, though, and Zafir had come in force. It didn't last long.

Jehal unwrapped the silk from his eyes. Then he lay back on his bed while Kazah pulled his boots off again. He stared at the ceiling filled with immeasurable satisfaction.

I win.

68

The Glacier

She was getting hotter. Kemir felt it. They hadn't gone very far before Snow's back grew first uncomfortable, then painful and finally almost unbearable. He'd made a mistake, he thought. She was dying, and there wasn't much to be done about it.

At least we'll be far from the alchemists when they finally come out of their caves. We can just die slowly from cold and hunger instead.

He could live with that, he decided. Better to die out here, fighting to survive in these harsh lands, than rot in some dungeon. Nadira probably wouldn't see it that way, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. They'd tried, him and Snow. They'd tried and they'd failed, and that felt so much better than not having tried at all. He could die happy with that.

Snow flew higher and higher, arrowing deep into the World-spine. The mountains and valleys grew more wild and broken, the peaks higher, until they arced into a narrow valley filled with an azure lake. Snow dropped through the air until she was skimming the water. Her flying had become erratic. She was aiming for the end of the lake, where a glacier stretched down from the mountainside and immense chunks of grey ice drifted lazily in the brilliant blue water. As she reached it, she crash-landed close to the shore. Even as Kemir and Nadira were struggling out of the freezing water, Snow was backing away into the deeper parts of the lake, towards the ice cliff of the glacier. There was madness in her thoughts now, mixed in with the fury. She wasn't afraid, though. She was sure she was dying, but she wasn't afraid.

Goodbye, Little One Kemir.

Kemir spat and shook as much water as he could from his clothes. The air up here was so cold the wet furs were already starting to freeze. 'Live, dragon,' he hissed. 'If you live, you can free as many dragons as you want. But if you're gone, who else will do it?' Never mind that there's little chance of us surviving on our own up here.

She was sinking beneath the freezing water. When she finally lifted her head and looked up, she was instantly wreathed in steam. She must have read his thoughts, though, for with one last gasp, she spat a stream of fire at the trees nearby, setting them ablaze. Giving him warmth and fire and a chance, at least, to survive. Then she gave Kemir a look and cocked her head. Her thoughts felt distant and vague, and also a little confused, as if the answer to his question was obvious. You, Kemir. You will do it.

Kemir laughed. 'I don't think so, dragon.'

He pulled Nadira after him into the forest and didn't look back. Behind him, the dragon sank with barely a ripple and was gone.

Epilogue - The Perfect White

 

'Where is she?' Almiri had barely landed. She wore full armour and had nearly fifty dragons with her: Shezira's from the encampment in the Purple Spur, and a detachment of Valgar's riders. She started to take the armour off. The weight of it left her almost unable to walk.

Rider Jostan glanced towards the caves and bowed. 'She's still with the body, Your Holiness.'

Almiri wrinkled her nose. The valley still stank of smoke. The alchemists were out of the caves now. Some of them had left; most had stayed to rebuild the ruins of their homes.

'Did you find all the others?'

'No.' Jostan sounded solemn. 'We found four dragons. The fifth is missing. The white.'

'The four you found, were all of them dead?'

'Yes, Your Holiness.' Then he smiled a little. 'We even found Rider Semian. Or he found us. Naked and half-dead from the cold, but he recovered quickly enough. It was hardly a problem to get him warm.'

'So one more to find. And the riders? The ones that brought the dragons here in the first place?'

Jostan shrugged. 'Left on the back of the white. Semian saw them go, heading into the deepest parts of the Worldspine. He says there were two of them. A man and a woman. The man used to work for—' He didn't finish, but Almiri knew what he had been going to say: Queen Shezira's knight-marshal. For the assassin who'd tried to murder Speaker Zafir, who'd died rather than be taken when she failed, and who might just have started a war.

Jostan bit his lip. 'I'm afraid Semian took the Ember poison, Your Holiness. His mind is—"

'I need to speak to her.'

Jostan looked uncomfortable. 'Yes, Your Holiness.'

He left her presence and headed for the caves.

Almiri took her time with her armour. They couldn't stay long; the alchemists' eyrie was tiny, and all the cattle they'd kept to feed visiting dragons were gone. She wasn't entirely sure what to say to her sister. She'd waited for a couple of days, hoping that Jaslyn would come to her, but she hadn't.

Eventually she couldn't put it off any longer. She walked towards the cave mouths and the dead dragons that lay there. The ground around them was already blackened from the heat. She could still recognise Matanizkan, Levanter and Silence, all three hatched and raised in Outwatch. Jaslyn was sitting, legs crossed, beside the river, as close to Silence as she could without being scorched. She was soaking wet. Sweat, Almiri thought, until she saw Jaslyn scoop handfuls of water from the river and splash it over herself.

She sat beside her sister. The air was burning hot and hard to breathe. There wasn't any wind.

'This is as close as I can get,' said Jaslyn quietly.

Almiri felt herself begin to cook under her flying clothes. 'You have to leave him,' she said uncomfortably. 'He's gone. We can make sure you get his scales.'

'I want to take them myself, when he's cooled enough.'

'I ...' Almiri stood up. The heat was intolerable. 'Can we go back to the eyrie ?'

'Have some water from the river.' Jaslyn splashed some over her own face. She made no move to stand. Almiri sighed and sat down again.

'We fought our way out of the Adamantine Palace, Jaslyn. After they took mother and Valgar. Out of a hundred riders, twenty of us reached the eyrie and our dragons. We took as many as we could. I have Mistral. They say our mother murdered Hyram, and that our knight-marshal tried to kill the speaker. They mean to put mother and Valgar on trial. They'll be executed. They won't even be given the Dragon's Fall.'

Jaslyn didn't move.

'Our mother is imprisoned, Jaslyn. King Valgar too. Valgar had less than a hundred dragons, but you—'

'You're the eldest. Mother's realm is yours.'

'No.' Almiri shook her head. It was hard, sometimes, not to be bitter. 'No, mother has made you her heir, and she has given you away. To Prince Dyalt, King Sirion's youngest. You have to use him. You and Sirion have five hundred dragons between you. You can fight them. Make them give mother back to us. The realms need you, Jaslyn. Mother needs you.'

'Mother never needed anyone.'

Almiri bit her lip. 'Then I need you, sister.'

For a long time Jaslyn didn't say anything. Then she took a deep breath. 'The dragons weren't dead when we found them. Did anyone tell you that?'

Almiri shook her head.

'They were still alive. In torpor. And you know what? Just before he died my Silence woke up. Somehow, he woke out of his torpor. He was nearly gone, and he woke up, and he spoke to me. He spoke to me, Almiri. I heard his thoughts in my head.'

'Dragons don't speak, Jaslyn.'

'Yes, they do. When we don't poison them. He spoke as though he'd plucked the words out of my head. He told me a lot of things that I didn't know. About our dragons. He was beautiful before all this, but when he spoke ... I would have saved him if I could. I would have done almost anything. Even if there was something to take this poison away, I would not go bac\ to what I was. That's what he said.'

'You've seen what one rogue dragon can do. Look around you. We have to do what we do, Jaslyn.'

'You know, don't you? You know all about it. What we do to them. Why didn't anyone tell me?'

Almiri shuffled her feet. 'You're not a queen, Jaslyn. Only a princess. And there are secrets even queens do not hear.'

'He asked me why I was so sad. "Because you're dying," I said to him. And he lifted his head with what little strength he had

and looked at me. And you will follow me, he said. One day. The difference between us is that I will die today and be reborn tomorrow. You will not. That was all. An hour later he was gone. Do you suppose that's true? Are dragons reborn when they die? Or is that another secret too dire for a princess ?'

'If it is, then it's too dire for this queen as well.' Almiri chewed her lip. 'I don't know, sister, but if they do come back, then one day there will be another Silence.'

'That's what I thought at first, when he died. Perhaps, at that moment, another dragon was born in some eyrie.' Jaslyn slowly got to her feet. 'But will he remember me, Almiri? I don't think so.' They walked away side by side, as sisters should.

'I don't want a war, Jaslyn. None of us wants that. But they can't do this.'

Jaslyn wasn't listening. 'If it's true, then the white will remember me. She will remember us all.'

Very slowly, they were dying. Nadira couldn't see it yet and Kemir didn't have the heart to tell her, but it was true. He'd kept them alive for five days now, since Snow had vanished beneath the frozen waters of the lake, but it couldn't last. The weather had been kind to them, but wind and rain were always fickle in the Worldspine. One day he'd run out of arrows, or his bowstring would break. Or one of them would get hurt or fall ill. He wasn't catching enough food, and they didn't have the clothes or the shelter to stay properly warm. A hundred things could go wrong, and sooner or later one of them would.

They had to move. He tried to break it to Nadira, to make her understand that Snow wasn't coming back, that their only chance was to leave and head for lower ground. A boat, he thought. Or at least a raft. Water always found the quickest way down the mountains.

She screamed in his face. Shrieked at him that Snow was coming back. He backed away. One more day, he promised himself. One more day and then he'd leave, with or without her. He could force her to come, he knew, but he'd let her choose. She

could stay and die if she wanted. That's what Sollos would have done.

As that last day began to fade he made his weary way back to the lake, carrying with him what little food he'd been able to hunt or gather. The forests here were harsh and hostile, and yielded little. He was hungry. They were both hungry. They'd eat and they'd still be hungry.

He reached what passed for their camp at the edge of the lake, and the hairs on the back of his neck bristled. He couldn't see Nadira. The forest was silent except for the wind and the ever-present creaking and groaning of the glacier. He stared out across the lake. And suddenly he felt the fire and iron of her presence, a moment before the water began to churn.

Little One Kemir, I am hungry.