Dragon Hunters

by Marc Turner

  The next prisoner in line—a bare-chested man with a tattoo of a redback spider on his torso—was freed from his manacles. As he was jostled toward the plank, he stumbled. That stumble proved to be a ruse, however, for he pulled away from his minders before ducking under the spear of a female soldier and driving his shoulder into her midriff. She fell back. He tore her spear from her hands and jabbed its point at another guard, forcing the man to retreat. The people about Karmel must have known the prisoner, for they began chanting a name the priestess couldn’t make out.

  Three Natillian soldiers rushed to engage the tattooed man, while others moved to block his path to the stairways leading to the upper and lower terraces. Evidently the prisoner had no intention of escaping that way, though, for he dropped his spear and sprinted past the Beloved to the northern end of the terrace. Hurdling the rail there, he launched himself into the air and tumbled down, arms wheeling, until he hit the water below. His leap had taken him close to the cliff on the Natillian side where, he must have hoped, the dragons would find it more difficult to reach him. Karmel gauged the distance between the man and the Dragon Gate. Less than a hundred armspans. If he made it to the portcullis, he could pass through its bars to safety. The priestess never saw if he got that far, though, because her view was obstructed by the crush of people leaning forward to her left.

  Strangely, she found herself hoping he had.

  Karmel returned her gaze to the line of manacled prisoners. It struck her that she might be joining their ranks if she were caught trying to sneak into the citadel. Not that there seemed any imminent prospect of that. Within less than twenty-four bells she and Veran were supposed to have infiltrated the fortress and located the chamber housing the mechanism that raised the Dragon Gate, yet since entering Dian at dawn this was as close as they’d come to the Shroud-cursed place. Looking left, Karmel could see the citadel’s slender turrets rising into the sky, their dragon-scaled roofs flashing like mirrors in the morning sunshine. She should have been standing outside the gatehouse right now, trying to find a way inside. Instead, though, Veran had insisted on dragging her across the length of Dian to the terraces. He hadn’t explained why, of course. Maybe he wanted to soak up some of the carnival atmosphere.

  Turning to her companion, she tugged his sleeve.

  Veran ignored her.

  He was staring at the Dragon Gate. Karmel followed his gaze. With the dragon’s skull on the battlements now pointing away from her, the portcullis was not half the spectacle it had been last night. Immediately above the waterline its bars were rusted and tangled with fireweed, and in the sea about it bobbed a layer of scum and detritus Karmel could smell even from dozens of armspans above. Patrolling the battlements atop the gate were four soldiers, two on the Dianese side, two on the Natillian. As the priestess watched, the Dianese guards removed their full-face helmets and started walking along the fortifications toward the cliff where, Karmel knew, a door gave access to the citadel. She couldn’t see that door from her vantage point, however, much less look through it to the control room beyond, so what in the Chameleon’s name Veran thought he could learn here …

  She grabbed the priest’s sleeve again.

  At last Veran looked away from the gate. Then he began pushing through the crowds toward the stairwell leading to the upper terraces.

  Shaking her head in disgust, Karmel set off after him.

  It took them half a bell to climb to street level. Karmel had never seen so many people in one place. The roof of every building that offered a view of the dragons was groaning with people, as were the branches of the ketar trees along the edge of the cliff. Snowy-haired Maru, rusty-skinned Sartorians, flare-nosed Corinians, even a scattering of Melliki with their pierced cheeks and eyebrows: all had come to join in the festivities. A Mellikian with a pointed beard winked at Karmel as she passed, and the priestess scowled. Caval’s instructions had been to keep a low profile, so obviously Veran had brought them to the part of the city where the crowds were thickest. Admittedly there was little chance of a stranger remembering their faces, but what of the Olairians here? If just one of them recognized the Chameleons, the game would be up before it even started.

  A hunchbacked man approached holding skewers of runefish flavored with ganda spices. He thrust one of the skewers at Karmel, but she waved him away. She’d yet to break her fast this morning, yet for some reason the sight of the dragons breaking theirs had made her appetite fly. In any event she’d had her fill of fish. The journey in Veran’s boat had left her reeking like a fishmonger’s armpit. Before she entered the citadel she would have to find somewhere to scrub the stench from her skin. What use being able to move through the fortress unseen, after all, if the guards could simply follow their noses to her?

  Veran led the way as they skirted a marketplace. Today the stalls were gone, and in their place were fire throwers and acrobats, doomcriers and snake charmers, musicians and mirage weavers. On a stage, a group of performers was acting out the Drowning of Tomaney. Beyond them a troupe of dragon-masked dancers spun and leapt and stamped time to a breathless jig played by two ashpipers. Karmel’s gaze lingered. For years she’d longed to take part in the Dragon Day celebrations, yet now she was here amid the noise and the color, she barely noticed them. But then she needed all her attention just to keep Veran in her sights. He had reached the far side of the square a few steps ahead of her and now ducked into an alley. The priestess broke into a jog to catch up to him.

  She tapped him on the shoulder. “The citadel is over there,” she said, gesturing behind.

  “We ain’t going to the citadel.”

  “I can see that,” Karmel snapped. “The question is why?”

  Veran did not respond.

  The priestess searched his eyes for some clue to his thoughts. His expression betrayed no hint of agitation. It was almost as if …

  As if he already knows how we’re going to get inside the citadel.

  A light went off in her head.

  And suddenly she understood why her companion hadn’t shown any interest in the fortress’s gatehouse.

  “You mean to climb the Dragon Gate, don’t you. That’s how we’re going to get into the citadel.”

  Veran looked along the alley toward a man retching in the shadows. “Not here,” he said, spinning on his heel and moving away.

  Karmel stared after him, fighting an urge to turn and walk in the opposite direction.

  Then she whispered an oath and set off in pursuit.

  * * *

  The morning sunshine was bright in Senar’s eyes as he accompanied Mazana through the palace gates and into the streets of Olaire.

  Following the arrival yesterday night of Gensu’s son, Polin, Senar had been ordered from the throne room—along with Pernay, Caval, and the executioner—so the Storm Lords could quiz the young man in private. With no other demands on Senar’s time he had retired to his quarters. When he returned the next morning he was surprised to find the doors to the throne room still shut and guarded by the executioner. A whole night the Storm Lords had spent in there, much of it waiting for Imerle’s pet mage, Orsan, to appear and give his take on things. It was not until the eighth bell that they had finally emerged from their deliberations, grim-faced and bleary-eyed.

  Except for Mazana, of course—her step as she now led Senar up Kalin’s Hill was as light as if she were walking on her enemies’ corpses. She told him what the Storm Lords had learned from Polin the night before. Apparently Gensu had set sail for Olaire two days ago. His family was only alerted to his disappearance when Orsan arrived. Search parties were sent out, and one of them found Gensu’s flagship smoldering in a sheltered cove on the southern side of his home island. His burned body was nailed to the mainmast.

  “According to Polin,” Mazana said, “the summons Gensu received ordered him to Olaire a day earlier than the rest of us, meaning—”

  “Meaning his killer was most likely another Storm Lord.”

  “Very good. That e
xtra day gave whoever sent the summonses time to lay a trap for Gensu, clean up afterward, and still arrive in Olaire on the same day as the other Storm Lords so as not to arouse suspicion.”

  Even without that extra day, it would have been clear to Senar the killer was a Storm Lord, for who else would have dared to take on a water-mage of Gensu’s power on the open seas? “Did Gensu’s son say anything that might help identify the killer?”

  “Sadly, no. As you can imagine, there is no shortage of suspects. The emira, obviously. Thane, as we only have his word regarding what he discussed with Gensu at their meeting. Then there is Cauroy, since with Gensu’s demise, he has now become our emir apparent.”

  “You are forgetting yourself,” Senar pointed out helpfully.

  Mazana’s eyes slid sideways. “Yes, Imerle did have the gall to mention that my island’s proximity to Gensu’s gave me the ideal opportunity to lay a trap. As yet, though, we don’t know whether the ambush took place in Gensu’s waters or mine, or even if he was lured ashore before he was killed and only later nailed to his ship’s mast.” She slowed to make way for a sedan chair. “In the end we agreed our gilled comrade Mokinda should go to Gensu’s island to find out what he can.”

  “Mokinda? The Untarian?”

  “Indeed. As last in line to the throne, he is the most trusted—or should I say the least mistrusted—among us. His abilities as an Untarian will also enable him to sniff out any trails the killer may have left in the water.”

  A note of amusement in Mazana’s voice gave Senar pause. “You don’t think he will find anything?”

  “Of course not. Whoever carried out the ambush is unlikely to have left a calling card. And even if Mokinda should discover something incriminating, anyone he points the finger at will claim the accusations are politically motivated or have been fabricated to conceal Mokinda’s own guilt.”

  “But if one of the Storm Lords is found responsible…”

  “Then he or she will be trussed up, blinded, and tossed to the dragons on Dragon Day.”

  High stakes indeed.

  The avenue Senar and Mazana were following cut across the flank of Kalin’s Hill, and having reached the road’s high point, they began the descent to the Commercial District. Last night’s quake had opened cracks in the plaster of some of the buildings to either side. When Senar looked down on Olaire he saw other parts of the city had suffered more extensive damage, notably the Shallows, where waves foamed along alleys choked with the debris of fallen buildings.

  Between the houses to Senar’s left he caught glimpses of the sea. Rectangular metal frames—blue oyster fields, Mazana told him—protruded from the water, and beyond them a flotilla of boats bobbed on the sparkling waves. The Guardian shielded his eyes. For all of the Sabian Sea’s tranquil allure, it lacked the soul of the gray, ill-tempered waters that thundered against Erin Elal’s shores. But then the Sabian was not his sea, Senar reminded himself, any more than Olaire was his city. True, there was a languid elegance to the Storm Isles’ capital, with its sun-drenched avenues and its white-plastered buildings, but it had none of the brooding majesty of Erin Elal’s first city, Arkarbour.

  Senar looked south. “Is that Dian I can see?” he asked Mazana, pointing to a smudge on the horizon.

  The Storm Lady shrugged. “You have been there before?”

  “Once, many years ago, in the lead-up to Avallon’s attack on Cenan. The then governor, Tatin, was selling blayfire oil to Cenan’s sacristens. Li Benir and I were sent to encourage him to stop.”

  “And you succeeded?”

  Senar smiled. “My master could be very persuasive when he had to be.”

  The Round loomed ahead of them, with its rooftop of glass and its façade of arches stacked one on top of another. It stood at the center of a square decorated with a mosaic that stretched to the doorways of the courts and embassies round it. The people in the square obscured much of the mosaic’s design, but Senar could still make out images of hydras and denkrakils and other creatures of the deep amid splashes of gold, silver, and blue. The crowd was as colorful as the mosaic’s stones. Senar saw a white-haired Maru woman with arms covered in fish-bone bracelets, a barefooted man in orange robes carrying an armload of scrolls so large he could not see over it, an Untarian woman blowing air through her gills as she harangued a crowd from atop an upturned crate.

  Mazana led him across the square before turning into a road that passed between the Mercantile Court and the Mercerien embassy. A stone’s throw from Mazana’s house they found their way blocked by a line of Storm Guards. Ahead the road had collapsed, bringing down the walls of the houses to either side. A few armspans below, Senar saw a gloomy subterranean chamber buried in rubble. Amid the debris were human bones, piled knee-high, and at the opposite end of the chamber was the shrunken body of a man—little more than a skeleton—seated on a throne of skulls.

  Beside the throne crouched a black-robed figure, and Senar recognized the Remnerol shaman Jambar. The old man looked up. His thoughtful expression was quickly replaced by the customary inane smile. The shaman was the only person Senar knew who left him wanting to see what his scowl looked like.

  “Hunting for treasure?” Senar asked him.

  “One does not find treasure in the ground, Guardian, unless one shares the vulgar notion that treasure comprises wealth and luxury. I, on the other hand, consider the virtues of prudence, temperance, and justice to be the real treasures of this decadent world.”

  Senar glanced at the skeleton seated on the throne of bones. Long, dark hair hung down in a tangle from his skull, and there was a crack along his left temple. “Who was he?”

  The Remnerol shrugged. “I have only a passing familiarity with the history of these lands. The empire of the Storm Lords was born in the Sixth Age, so this tomb must date back to some earlier, more primitive civilization…”

  His voice trailed off as a tremor shook the street and set the bones in the chamber clacking together in a macabre cacophony. The edges of the crater crumbled with a patter of mortar, and the tomb belched up a cloud of dust. Senar reached out a hand to Mazana’s arm. Such was the heat of the day that sweat sprang up immediately at the contact.

  Jambar had returned to his study of the seated man.

  Mazana said, “You had best come out of there unless you want to be the tomb’s next occupant.”

  The way she said it, you’d have thought that would be a bad thing.

  “If there were a risk of that, don’t you think I would have foreseen it?” Jambar replied. He turned his body to obscure Mazana’s and Senar’s views of the skeletal figure, but the Guardian still saw him detach the little finger from each of the man’s hands and slip them into a pocket.

  “You are taking his fingers?” Senar said. “What makes you so sure his bones are worth adding to your collection?”

  “I am not. But knowing, as I do, which are the least efficacious of the bones in my possession, I can substitute those for these and compare the prophetic abilities of my collection before and after.”

  “And how will you do that? By rolling dice?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Senar caught a flash of white hairless legs as Jambar hitched up his robes and began wading through the bones toward him. When the old man reached the wall below the Guardian’s position, he clambered onto a block of rubble and stretched out a hand. Senar took it, then hauled him out of the chamber. For a heartbeat Jambar kept a grip on Senar’s hand, gazing at it intently as if he were picturing the knuckle bone of the Guardian’s little finger in his collection.

  Senar snatched his hand away. He’d lost enough fingers already, thank you very much.

  Mazana was staring along the street. As another ripple passed through the ground, she turned to Jambar. “These quakes, Shaman … How long have they been going on in Olaire?”

  “A few months. With each week that passes, the strength of the tremors increases.”

  “Has anyone discovered the cause?”

&nb
sp; Jambar held her gaze before shooting an unreadable look at Senar. “The cause? I fear not. But the origin?” He waved a hand at the fortress visible above the rooftops to the northwest. “Unquestionably the Founder’s Citadel yonder.”

  Senar glanced between them. There was a strange formality to their speech—almost as if they were reading from a script.

  “The citadel?” Mazana said to the Remnerol. “You are sure?”

  “Of course I am. I was walking past it when last night’s quake struck.”

  “Well then, if the citadel is linked to the tremors, don’t you think the emira should be told?”

  The old man stroked his chin, his simple smile fading. “Yes,” he said after a pause. “I suppose she should.”

  * * *

  Agenta stood on the first-floor balcony of the Gilgamarian embassy, squinting against the dust on the breeze. To the west, between the Round and the Mercantile Court, she could see a section of Olaire’s harbor where a number of ships rocked at quayside. Yet more vessels waited at anchor beyond the Causeway for a berth to become free. Among their flags Agenta saw the three stoneback scorpions of Nain Deep, the black and gold stripes of Hunte, Sealow’s hartfish impaled on the prongs of a trident, together with a host of others she did not recognize. Those unknown ships would belong to fortune hunters, she knew, come to take part in the Dragon Hunt in the hope of winning the riches bestowed on the crew that brought down the dragon. Though why anyone would choose to pick a fight with one of the creatures …

  This day six years ago Agenta had been in Gilgamar looking out over the harbor and the sea beyond. A southerly wind had blown in a storm, and along with the stinging rain had come a Rubyholt trader ship seeking shelter in Gilgamar’s harbor from the silver-scaled dragon pursuing it. With Dragon Day so close, the chains across the port’s entrance had been raised to prevent dragons getting in. It was too late to lower those chains even if the harbormaster had been minded to do so. Agenta had watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as the silver dragon overtook its prey and smashed the vessel to splinters with a flick of its tail. She had hardened her heart to the plight of the ship’s crew, telling herself only fools would set sail at the height of the dragon season. For days afterward, though, her dreams had been haunted by the cries of the sailors as the dragon dragged them down one by one.