The Dead and the Dying

The heat in the fields around the eyrie was blistering. Hundreds of dragons lay dead, roasting, cooking from the inside. Jeiros felt a pang of satisfaction. Short-lived perhaps, as the northern riders dragged him to where Hyrkallan and Sirion would tell him how he was going to die. But satisfaction nonetheless. He’d got more than half the realm’s dragons in a stroke. Two thirds, probably. There must have been nearly a thousand of them here after the battle. Less than a hundred were still alive. Probably more like fifty. They’d come back, of course. All over the realms, in the weeks to come, eggs that had been dormant for years would hatch. By then he’d be dead and that would be somebody else’s problem. While he was dying he could console himself with how easy he’d made it for them. Hatchlings were manageable. Hatchlings needed far less potion to keep them tame. A man could kill a hatchling if he set his mind to it with care. If Vioros had taken his message and Vale had understood it, the Night Watchman would be seeing to that right away. Soldiers would be sent. Riders on horseback, riders on dragons if there were any left. All across the realms the Adamantine Men would roam, and they’d be carrying hammers with their spears. Even if they didn’t, what he’d done here was probably enough. Probably.

Which left it down to Jehal, to Vale and his Adamantine Men and to the rogue dragons. When they came out from wherever they were hiding, probably the best anyone could hope for was to hide long enough for them to get bored and go somewhere else. Eggs and hatchlings would call to them. Jeiros didn’t know how that worked exactly, but that was the history he knew. That was how they’d lured the dragons in the first place. Eggs and hatchlings and other dragons. Get rid of those and wait for the rogues to die out. Maybe turn a few into stone. That, as far as Jeiros could see, was the best chance any of them had. Except me, of course. I don’t get to watch. I’m not sure, but I think I’m glad.

The riders stopped dragging him when they reached some of the few dragons left alive. There they tied Jeiros’ hands and feet. He didn’t bother to resist. They hauled him onto the back of a dragon and flew him to the top of the the Fortress of Watchfulness, where Hyrkallan and Sirion had set up their court. There wasn’t much ceremony there either. Hyrkallan hadn’t had time to make a cage but that was clearly what was on his mind. They broke his ankles and his wrists with a bored and sullen rage and then tied him to a wheel. Hyrkallan must have hauled that up on the back of one of the few dragons left that same morning. They tied the wheel to one of the cranes that lined the battlements of the fortress and swung him over the edge to hang there, face down, staring at the eyrie far below. The height didn’t bother him. Even the pain in his ankles and his wrists wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Mostly he just felt tired. As deaths go, this could be worse, I suppose. At least I get to see my handiwork. We can see who lasts longest.

‘Do you know what you’ve done?’ shouted Hyrkallan from the fortress wall. ‘Stupid alchemist! Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve given it all to Jehal.’

There wasn’t much to say to that. Yes. I’ve given him the world so he can watch it burn. I’ve given him ash. I’ve given him the duty of staying alive, of keeping tame the few dragons we have left. Of fighting the awakened ones. And why did I do that? Because none of you will stop the fire when it comes, but Jehal might just have the cunning and the guile to survive it. Unlike you. Is he going to thank me, do you think? He laughed bitterly. No. Not very likely, is it.

‘Don’t think the rest of your kind will escape! You were all in this together. You must have been. I’ll have you all broken on the wheel!’

He had to answer that, at least. ‘They knew nothing.’

‘Liar! Give me names, alchemist, and I will spare the rest. Otherwise they all die.’

‘There are no names, Lord Hyrkallan.’

‘Am I suppose to believe you did this alone?’

Yes, you are, and actually I did, but don’t suppose you will. What am I supposed to do about it? They know their duty. I tried to spare them any complicity, but I don’t imagine you care about that one way or the other. They did nothing wrong, but then neither did I. I did what was needed.

‘You have ruined us all! Do you imagine Jehal will spare any of us?’

Do you imagine I care?

‘How much did he pay you, alchemist? What did he promise you?’

Jeiros’ patience broke. ‘Don’t you think that if he’d paid me I might have run away?’ he shouted back in fury. Think, dragon-lord. Use your head. Oh, but you already are, and you still can’t see beyond who gets to sit on the Speaker’s Throne. You don’t see what’s coming. You can thank my ghost later, Vioros, that I sent you back when I did.

Hyrkallan came as close to the edge as he could. ‘Names, alchemist. Tell me who else or I swear I will take your order apart limb by limb.’

And you probably would too, if you have the chance. Jeiros sighed and reeled off a few names, alchemists that the order might survive without. Names given so that others might be spared. Not men and women against whom he bore any particular grudge, just the ones that maybe mattered a little less. There. And that’s me damned. Are we done now? ‘You want to know why I gave Jehal the Adamantine Throne? Because he’s cleverer than you, Hyrkallan. Whatever his faults, he’s sharper than the rest of you.’ Which might have been true or might not. But then Hyrkallan and even Sirion weren’t about to understand that this had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with Jehal, nothing to do with who wore what title and sat in which throne.

Hyrkallan shouted some more. Jeiros didn’t listen and eventually the dragon-lord went away. King Sirion never even came out to look. Jeiros was left there, hanging thousands of feet up in the air over a sea of dead dragons.

He probably lost consciousness at some point. It became hard to tell. His mind wandered over all the things he hadn’t managed to do, all the things left incomplete, the tasks undone. Thinking distracted him from the pain of his mangled hands and feet. Was there anything more he could have given of himself? Could he somehow have stopped the rogue dragons from waking? He couldn’t think how, but the nagging voice was there anyway. Bellepheros would have done better. But Bellepheros was dead. Best to face that. Dead as in not coming back. Not riding out of the sunset with barges loaded with potions and some clever way of drawing all the rogue dragons towards him and turning them into stone.

Turning them into stone with the Adamantine Spear. Absurd story, and not one that he or any other alchemist for a hundred years had believed. And yet there it was. Evidence. It had been right in front of him. Seen with his own eyes, heard with his own ears. What else could it do? Why didn’t I know? The Silver King was said to be able to summon dragons from the skies, but was that him or the spear? Not much point in that if we can’t kill more than one at a time. Maybe someone could call them and then run away to some other place and call them again. Maybe we could keep them penned up in one corner of the realms. Or maybe we could take the spear deep underground and keep calling them to a place they could never reach. Or out to sea, perhaps. Take it away on one of the Taiytakei ships and then summon them away?

Children’s stories. Which ones were real? Too late now, though. He’d never know. Not his problem. Vioros would have to find out for himself. Quickly too.

At some point it was dark. Not long after that it was light again. There weren’t any dragons moving about down on the plains any more. He saw a couple flying away from the Palace of Pleasure, and that was all.

The sun moved across the sky. No sign of any live dragons at all. There were fires though. The eyrie was on fire. And distant sounds, whispering up from the ground below. Shouting, fighting sounds. All too far away to see.

‘Master.’ Evening now. He heard the voice clearly enough, but he had no idea who it was and was in no position to turn and look. ‘Master,’ it called again.

‘I’m here,’ he croaked. His throat, he realised, was very dry. He wasn’t hungry yet, but then he’d been here not much more than a day. Thirsty, though. Yes, definitely thirsty. The realisation hit home, right then. Yes. You really are going to die up here.

‘Master, the last dragons here are all gone. We followed your orders.’

Orders? What orders? I didn’t give any orders. I just got potion and poison mixed up. Easy enough thing to do. Just muddle a letter or two. Jeiros chuckled. The movement jarred his wrists and ankles and turned his laugh into a cry of pain.

‘They took some of the others and hung them. They wouldn’t let the rest of us near the dragons, but we found a way. And now the people who stayed on in the ruins of the Silver City have turned on the riders. I heard most of them are dead. Some of them got into the fortress. There was fighting. There’s no food out there. I have to go. The riders will hang us all now if they find us. But it’s done, master. I thought you should know. It’s finished.’

‘Finished?’ He wanted to laugh. ‘It’s never finished with dragons.’

The voice didn’t say anything else. Jeiros assumed the alchemist had gone, vanished to hide from the wrath of the dragon-lords. They’ll have to call themselves something else now. Or maybe the alchemist was still there, watching. Jeiros had no way of telling.

‘Good luck,’ he rasped. Too late for me, but the rest of you will be needing it. The spear, Vioros. Take it under the ground. Or take it out to sea. He had to laugh at his own optimism. As though if he thought hard enough of the spear and all the things he want to try with it, Vioros would somehow hear him.

Dragons. They hear our thoughts. That’s how they know what their riders want them to do.

He wondered if Vioros had thought of that.