The Spear of the Earth

For someone like the Picker, following Kithyr and the spear had been a trivial thing. If the blood-mage thought that crossing water was some sort of problem for an Elemental Man, he was mistaken. Killing him, that was going to be more taxing. Cutting a man’s throat wide open was usually enough or, failing that, something sharp through the eye socket usually worked. Mages were another matter. They came in all sorts of different shapes and sizes for a start, and you never quite knew what each of them could do. As far as he understood it, even chopping them up and then burning the bits didn’t always finish them. He’d been thinking about that at Valleyford. Plenty of fire, plenty of ashes. No one would know. He’d hesitated, though. The blood-mage obviously had designs of his own on the spear. The Picker had expected that. But he’d felt something from the spear itself, something not expected. Still did, whenever he got too close, a feeling he struggled to understand. Hostility, that was the best way to describe it. So in Valleyford caution and the spear itself had kept him away. Besides, the mage was still taking it the way he wanted it to go. Let him, the Picker decided.

Now there were two dragons gliding in towards a little river town full of screaming people, with the blood-mage and his blood-bonded guards staring slack-jawed at the death flying towards them. This, the Picker decided, was the best opportunity he was going to get. He flickered away, vanishing from where he stood and popping up again only a scant dozen yards from the mage. He’d lied before. Flickering didn’t cost him a year of his life; it barely cost him anything at all.

He felt the spear at once, the venom held tight within it. The anger, the glowering resentment. Timing would be everything. The dragons would come. Everyone would burn. He would flicker in the moment the dragons had passed. He’d take the spear. And then he’d have to do something he almost couldn’t remember ever having to do before. He’d have to run, while the spear stifled every power he’d learned. That much he knew, that much his clan had already found to their cost. The spear took your power. All of it.

He wrapped a cloth around his hand. The spear would be hot after the dragons had done. Then he waited. Watched. Tensed, poised to go. The first dragon, a gleaming amber like honey or liquid gold, screamed overhead and poured fire over the part of the town away from the river, but the Picker wasn’t paying much attention to that one. The other was the one that mattered – the big one, black like night. It dived towards the waterfront, almost straight at Kithyr, and opened its mouth . . .

And its wings billowed out and it stopped almost dead in the air and then crashed to the ground. Its wings flapped twice, carelessly smashing riverside inns and houses. An angry flick of the tail shattered the jetties. It reared up on its hind legs and sprayed fire in an arc, cutting the blood-mage and his men off from the rest of the town, hosing down the screaming waterfront. Then, when all the screaming stopped, it folded its wings and stared at Kithyr. The blood-mage was holding out the spear. He hadn’t even flinched.

‘You cannot touch me, dragon!’ he shouted, waving it in the dragon’s face. ‘You can’t touch me. You know what this is. You know what this means.’

The black dragon lowered its head and peered at the mage. The Picker coiled, ready to flicker and spring. He didn’t dare move. Why wasn’t the mage dead? What was the dragon doing?

‘You know what this is!’ shouted the mage again. His voice sounded different. Stronger. Deeper. Not really his any more, but a chorus of many voices, all speaking in unison, all snarling with hate. ‘The Spear of the Earth, that’s what we are. The Pain of a Thousand Voices, and we know you. Do you remember us, brother? Do you remember what we are?’

The Picker dropped his cloth and chose a short, sharp sword. The blade was little longer than his forearm, but it was thick and heavy. For cutting limbs. People pruning, as we called it.

The dragon shifted closer until its nose was inches from Kithyr. Then its tail arced over its head. It snatched up three of Kithyr’s screaming men at once, tossed them into the air, caught them one by one in its mouth and ate them.

The rest broke and fled. The blood-mage might have bound them to him, but there were limits, even to that sort of power. The Picker didn’t wait. He flickered. He vanished from where he stood and for an instant became the wind and the air. A moment later he appeared behind Kithyr. The sword flashed and the blood-mage suddenly didn’t have an elbow any more.

‘Who was it told you all them stories, eh?’ he whispered. ‘Who was it told you about us, what we does and doesn’t do, eh? Was me and I lied.’ He snatched up the spear, meaning to hurl it towards the water and flicker away again. All too quick for the dragon to do anything about, leaving it with the blood-mage and whatever else took its fancy. Except even as he thought it, the simmering fury of the spear crashed into him like a great wave and he felt himself drown under its force. And then something wrapped around his waist and lifted him up into the air. The dragon had him.

I can still go, he thought. I can drop the spear and flicker away. The fury in the spear was like someone screaming in his ear, constant and relentless. The second dragon, the golden one, paused from its destruction of the town and thundered towards them, burning timbers tossed up into the air by its wake as though they were paper. The black dragon lifted him higher, holding him close, staring at him with amber eyes the size of a man’s head.

Why are you here, Elemental Man? Why have the silver ones come back?

The Picker squeezed his eyes shut.

We have felt them. Why have they come back?

Silver ones? The half-man, half-god wizards that the Taiytakei sea captains had brought with them, was that it? The Moon Sorcerers from the Diamond Isles. He shook himself. It didn’t matter. He was an Elemental Man. Even a dragon couldn’t kill him if he didn’t want to die. He tensed. This would have to be quick.

Do you know what you hold there, child of earth?

Enough. The Picker raised the spear and aimed straight at the dragon’s head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly, ‘what this spear will do to you.’ He threw the spear straight into the black dragon’s face and flickered away. The spear struck true, straight in the dragon’s eye. The dragon roared and screamed. The spear erupted in a flash of light so bright that the Picker had to turn away to shield his eyes. When he looked back, the dragon was still there, but now it wasn’t moving any more. The spear had turned it to stone.

He flickered again. Snatched the spear out of the dragon’s eye. It came away easily. His hands tingled. He dropped it, flickered, caught it before it hit the ground, turned towards the gold one and threw again with all his strength. ‘Die, monster!’ Flickered behind it . . .

Except the golden dragon jumped at him. It batted the spear aside, tumbling it away towards the river. The dragon’s tail lashed like a whip. As the Picker reappeared, it caught him square in the side, shattering one arm, caving in his chest and throwing him through the air like a rag doll.

‘How . . . ?’ He tried to say. How did you know where I was? How can you be so quick? He tried to flicker again, but it was a weak and futile effort. It didn’t work. Slowly he stood up. The golden dragon turned and gazed at him.

The Spear of the Earth, it mused. You are dying, earth-child. If you knew what you were, if you knew what you held, you would not have done this. Do you really not remember? The monster seemed truly puzzled. Do they poison you too, so that you forget what you are?

‘I don’t . . .’ Don’t know what you’re talking about. Breathing hurt far too much to talk. He coughed and his mouth filled with bloody foam. He tried to stand. His legs at least were still working.

Nothing can stand against the power of the spear. That was always its strength and its curse. Why do you seek it, earth-child? What is it to you?

The Picker couldn’t answer, but he could feel the dragon rifling his head, searching for the answers.

The silver ones. They want it back. Is that why they have returned? Why do they want it? Why now, after all this time?

He tried to flicker one last time. Instead of turning into air, though, he merely lurched forward and then slowly rose. He looked down. The last three feet of the dragon’s tail were sticking out of his belly. He felt himself gag and his limbs go slack. The dragon lifted him up, high into the air. He could feel himself sliding off the dragon’s tail towards its open maw below. The pain still hadn’t hit him when he fell.

How can you be so quick?

A voice spoke in his head. Because I can hear your thoughts, strange one, and so I know where you will go before you even move. And then there was a crunch and everything went black.