by Stephen Deas
‘Three men clad in silver with eyes of blood and the faces of dead gods. Do you know why we are here?’ asked Quai'Shu suddenly.
‘I am to kill them?’
The answer seemed obvious, and then it was immediately every bit as obvious that it wasn't right. Quai'Shu’s smile seemed to chide him for his presumption. ‘No, servant, you are not their end. You are an offering.’
The Watcher bowed. ‘You mean to give me to the sorcerers who live here?’ For a moment he wondered if he might murder his master rather than be given up as a gift.
‘Perhaps.’ Quai'Shu gave an impatient frown. ‘But you are a treasure. Priceless. Why would I give you away? What could be worth so much?’
Elemental Men spoke with actions and deeds. Men like Quai'Shu, the Watcher had learned, spoke mostly for their own ears. He held his silence. The sea lord was playing with him.
‘What are we, we Taiytakei? We sail between worlds. We cross the storm-dark and what do we do? We find what they want and we give it to them.’ He smiled. ‘Do you know how many lands I've seen?’
The Watcher nodded. ‘All of them, master.’
‘No one has seen them all. Some have yet to be revealed. But I've seen many. Perhaps all of them that matter. Do you know what I've found?’
The Watcher shook his head.
‘I've led my family and my fleet for two decades and I've led them well. The City of Stone prospers. In the all-devouring duel between Cashax and the Vespinese, I've taken my side and ridden it with care. A good ally to one, never a dangerous enemy to the other. Small as we are, I've kept Xican's place in the Great Sea Council among the thirteen cities who quietly rule the six known worlds. Yet I am not satisfied. Another few years and I'll be too weak for these voyages. The mantle will pass to someone younger. One of my sons. I'll be remembered as a good captain but not a great one. Not yet.’ He turned and looked the Watcher in the eye for the first time since they'd reached the island. ‘What have I found? I've found whatever I wanted to find. That is what we do. It's what makes us what we are. Every desire but one I've sated. In the court of the immortal Sun King, who is revered as a god and who wears armour made of the very matter of the sun itself, I found something unexpected. I knelt in his presence. It was uncommonly bright but otherwise like that of any other man, king or otherwise. Yet what I found there was a desire I have not been able to sate.’
‘Do you wish him dead, master?’ asked the Picker. He frowned at once, at his own impertinence perhaps, but the Watcher understood perfectly. Killing for mere amusement? Elemental Men had done so before but such murders were shameful. And then he felt ashamed too, for Quai'Shu surely wouldn't stoop to such a thing.
‘Do I seem so little to you?’ Quai'Shu hacked up a gob of phlegm and spat it onto the white sand. ‘I want something that will not be given, not for anything in the world. Dragons. That was the desire the Sun King showed me in his palace. For a dragon, he said he would give me anything. I could not satisfy him. I promised myself I would not rest until I could, but later my thoughts wandered far. I am set on a new course. I will bring dragons to all our captains of the sea. They will change our world.’
‘Dragons, master?’
‘Dragons.’
The Watcher had seen dragons in pictures. Quai'Shu had seen dragons too. From a distance, but for real and with his own eyes. The princes of the dragon lands guarded them jealously. The Watcher knew this because Quai'Shu had said so.
‘As captain of my house I've been cautious and prudent and it has made me rich. For most of my life that's all that mattered, to keep the keepers of my coin content; now, in the twilight of my years, it's not enough. Does that seem strange to you men of the elements? Foolish? No matter. Here we are. Dragons cannot be bought and so I mean to steal one. A scheme worthy of an Elemental Man. I would see if these Diamond Men will help. I will buy them if I can, with the most precious thing I can offer.’
Looking for sorcerers who might not even exist. But if they did. .
‘The Key.’
The Watcher kept the key on a string around his neck, hidden under his shirt, kept against his skin so he would always know it was there. It didn't look much like a key, but Quai'Shu had promised it would work. It was a flawless diamond, cold, too cold to touch for long, and so he kept it wrapped in layers of soft cloth. Safe and close. It had cost Quai'Shu a year of profit, more than a dozen brand-new ships, and he would never tell a soul how he'd finally found it, though the Watcher knew it had come from mysterious Qeled. From the Scythians, perhaps? It said much that Quai'Shu had given it to him to be its guardian.
The Watcher peeled away the black silk cloth and held the diamond up to the sun. Even here in the heat the cold burned his fingers. The chill crept along his arm, down his spine and all the way to his feet. He was used to doing things that couldn't be undone, to taking journeys into places that were little more than myth or rumour; after all, that's what Elemental Men did, why they were made, but still . . He could feel the magic humming through the key. Something alien, something different, something greater even than the sorceries of his masters. He held the diamond up to the sun until his fingers screamed at him and he let it go, holding the silver chain that bound it instead.
‘Let it fall.’
The Watcher dropped the key in the sand. He didn't know what he should expect now. For the sand to grow into a vast bridge across the jungle canopy? To part and reveal dim winding steps twisting down a black hole into the ground?
But not nothing.
Quai'Shu waited for another minute and then plucked the diamond off the sand by its chain. The Watcher wrapped it in its black silk and put it back under his shirt. A part of him wasn't surprised. If any of the stories were true, the moon sorcerers were nothing short of gods, beyond the understanding of even an Elemental Man. If none of them were true then Quai'Shu had come a very long way to leave with nothing; yet the sea lord's face looked calm.
The Watcher took a deep breath and turned around. The second boat coming from the ship was almost at the beach now, filled with men to carve a path through the jungle if they were needed. He'd do that for his master if he was asked. He'd become the wind and scale the mountains and the towers themselves and ride the earth to the sorcerers who lived there, if they truly lived there at all. But in his heart he knew that if the moon sorcerers were real and the key had failed then it was because, as offerings went, he wasn't enough.
Your desires.
He jumped and spun around. The ship was gone. Everything was gone except the beach and the jungle and the mighty hands of black rock that clawed at the sea and his master beside him. The Picker was gone too. In his place stood three men.
Men? No.
Their hair was long and white. They wore armour that glittered and gleamed as though made of pure polished silver, shaped and faceted like the eyes of an insect. Their faces were those of young men, handsome and strong, fast but pale as the dead, and their eyes. . their eyes were the colour of fresh blood and as old as the world.
Three of them. Three towers.
Yes. Their lips didn't move but their words rang inside his head. They spoke together, three voices into one alien melody.
‘I brought. .’ Quai'Shu’s voice was, for the first and only time the Watcher would hear, hesitant. ‘I brought an offering.’
The Watcher fell to his knees and bowed.
This? Now the voices spoke in his head one at a time, alternating one after the other.
What knowledge of this. .
. . do you think we do not possess?
They were laughing at him. He could feel their amusement at this little creature who had the audacity to disturb them. To think he was important. Quai'Shu’s voice didn't falter, though. ‘I will take the master alchemist from the dragon lands. I can bring you the secrets of dragons. .’
We know. .
. . everything there is to know. .
. . about dragons.
The Watcher kept his head bowed. Quai'S
hu, the great sea lord of Xican. A man whose voice rang across the whole might of Takei'Tarr when he spoke in the Crown of the Sea Lords in Khalishtor; a man who had negotiated trades in every world the Taiytakei could reach for forty years, twenty as the captain of his house and some with men who'd begun by trying to kill him. That was what sea captains did. It was his life. Yet here and now he was at last lost for words.
He was the offering and he wasn't good enough. He would find a way to repay his master for his failure.
Our answer. .
. . is yes.
Your offering. .
. . is nothing.
You will give us. .
. . something other.
Even in front of three half-gods, some instincts ran too deep. The Watcher heard the familiar sly lilt to his master's voice. ‘Something other? What is it you desire?’
You will not understand. They didn't smile but there was a mocking laughter in their words, and then they were gone.
Months passed and turned to years. Quai'Shu grew old and frail before his time until he could barely walk. Much of his fleet passed on to his sons and daughters as he let them pitch themselves against one another while he watched, waiting to see if one would show themself more able than the others, but his dreams of dragons were not forgotten. His steps were assured, careful and precise, the piece-by-piece building of a machine that had come fully formed into his head that day on the beach of the Diamond Isles. The Watcher learned that there had indeed been another Elemental Man, the one that failed. He learned why. It was a strange thing, but in this land of dragons certain things that an Elemental Man took for granted simply didn't work.
‘Deserts are suitable.’
His mind snapped back to the here and the now. To Quai'Shu beside him and the alchemist of the dragon realms before him. It had begun. The Picker had completed the first of his tasks. Now there was an eyrie to be built, a flying castle fortress to be found and many things besides, and soon the dragons would come, all as Quai'Shu had been promised.
Yet Quai'Shu had not been alone on that island, and the half-gods had not shown him everything. By the time the dragons came, the Picker would be dead and Quai'Shu would be mad. The moon sorcerers had shown the Watcher these things, and when he asked why they had shown them to him and to him alone, the half-gods had laughed in mockery. Fate was fate and could not change. They'd shown him other things too and it would do no good to try and change any of it. Except for one thing that remained hanging in the balance.
The grey dead. .
. . are coming. .
. . with the golden knife.
They are making. .
. . the greatest of us. .
. . whole again.
They are calling. .
. . the Black Moon. .
. . to rise once more.
Do. .
. . what you do. .
. . and watch.
8
Skyrie
Skyrie. On a battlefield outside Tethis, four years before the Adamantine Palace would burn, the name slipped inside Berren's head. It came with an explosion of light. When he opened his eyes again he was staring at the bright sky. Faces were looking down on him. Old friends. Faces he knew but he could feel himself falling away from them. And he could feel something coming the other way. Something from a dark place. It had a name.
Skyrie. .
He caught a glimpse of other faces peering down at him too. Different faces. Dim shadows shrouded in grey.
Berren! Crowntaker! Where are you wounded? The words of his soldiering friends, of Tallis One-Eye, grew distant. Hold the advance! Get him out of here! Gaunt, lead the wall!
He barely heard. He was sinking. Falling fast while another streamed the other way. He reached out at the thing that passed him in the void and tore at it, sunk in his fingers and his teeth and his toes. He tore a piece away but it didn't stop the falling.
Skyrie. That was who he was. That was his name. He saw the Crown-taker coming, falling, screaming, flailing, clawing. They tasted one another as they passed through Xibaiya, through the path ripped by the warlock's sigil, and then Skyrie saw the light. He saw the Bloody Judge fall away. Saw faces and the sun. Reached for them as the warlock's rip began to close. He'd seen a tear like this before, he was sure of it. In a place full of water but he couldn't remember where. He reached for the light, for the sun, full of urgency and victory, but now something was dragging him back. ‘Get me up!’ A voice that was his but wasn't. ‘Get that off me! Now! Before it's too. . It's doing. .’ He scrabbled to fight his way on into the light and the noise of the battlefield but the rip was almost gone.
Something seemed to push past him through the tear, clambering over him, squeezing him back. The faces and the sky dimmed and began to change and now Skyrie was falling too, away into somewhere else where the sky was black and the air was filled with smoke and the smell of earth and the faces that looked down on him were shrouded in cowls and he wasn't on the battlefield any more, he was back where he'd been all along, in the pit under Tethis castle. He knew its dingy light and its rotten smell. He was lying flat on a table at the bottom of a hole in the floor of a cave deep underground.
He slumped. Closed his eyes. They'd failed. He took a deep breath and let it out and then another. His heart was thumping as though he'd been the one in the middle of a battle, not the Crowntaker. He groaned. Four of his brothers in grey held him, peering at him. Warlocks, and he was one of them. Skyrie the marsh farmer, who'd come to Tethis with a hole in his soul and a vengeful heart, who'd taken the grey robes of the Dark Queen's priests to wreak havoc and woe on the Bloody Judge who'd destroyed his home. He'd come here willingly, made his choices, and now they'd failed. He groaned, desolate, and tried to sit up.
‘Skyrie?’ The other warlocks still held him down. They were shaking, full of fear. In case it had worked and the body they held had the Crowntaker inside it now. Which gave them every reason to be afraid.
Skyrie fell limp. ‘It didn't work.’ He was too weak to move. Too ruined by despair. Their last gambit and he was still here and the Crowntaker, the Bloody Judge of Tethis, was still out there, still who he'd ever been. Vallas's sigils had failed. But they'd been so close! For a moment he'd even seen through the Bloody Judge's eyes before the rip had closed and something had torn him back.
‘Should we call Vallas?’ The warlock who held his left leg. Brother Scortas.
Skyrie nodded. Vallas's great scheme to bend defeat back to victory, to wrench the Bloody Judge out of his very own flesh and blood and replace him with another, and for a moment, for one blink of another's eye, they'd been on the cusp of it. Maybe it wasn't too late to try again. .
Where am I?
Skyrie froze. Horror turned his bones to ice. He had an instant, that was all, to realise that he hadn't come back alone, for utter dread to drench his every thought, before an alien presence ripped through him, hurling him tumbling head over heels into nothing, stranding him far away where all he could do was watch and listen and scream in silence as. .
I am the Bloody Judge of Tethis. I am Berren the Crowntaker! What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? The warlock to his left had a knife. Skyrie's arm jerked up. Smashed its fist into his face and sprawled him to the floor. He kicked the pair who stood by his feet. One stumbled forward. He sank his fingers into a fleshy neck and practically tore out the warlock's throat. The last one scrabbled away. ‘Skyrie!’ Skyrie? Who was that? Not him. A battlefield. Full armour, wading through mud, blood and the limbs of his enemies. Only a moment ago and now he was here, mad-eyed, riven by terror-fuelled fury. .
A silent prisoner, helpless behind his own eyes, Skyrie shrieked and howled and wailed and tore at himself. His brothers. His comrades. He knew their names. He knew their laughter. They'd shared bread and water. They were the ones who'd brought him here, all of them come willingly for the ritual that would turn the world on its head and he was killing them and he couldn't stop, couldn't even close his eyes,
couldn't even look away. .
He leaped off the table, The Crowntaker, consumed with irresistible fury. Onto the warlock who still held the knife. Filling the air with savage snarls. Both hands to the warlock's wrist. Knee smash to the groin, hard enough to make the warlock cough out his own balls. Stamped on his ankle and smashed his face against the wall of the pit. The warlock doubled up and retched and the knife was his for the taking. Ritual? For a moment the fury faltered like sun through a break between thunderclouds and light poured in. He felt strange, lost, then grabbed hold of the fury again and tugged it hard, the only thing he had to cling to. The knife came free. He caught it. Brought it straight back up and buried it in the warlock's guts. One dead. Ritual? He knew where he was. Not where he was supposed to be. What ritual? Remembered the battlefield. The warlock. The one who'd stuck him with that strip of cursed sigils. A cold wind brushed through him. Knowledge hammered his head and then fell away like sand hurled at a steel wall. This body wasn't his! What did you do to me? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? Fear rose again through the fury and choked him. .
The thing inside him faltered. Skyrie groped for a memory that was truly his, a blind man fishing in the dark depths of a swamp for something he'd once held. Water. And stars. A momentary flash of elsewhere. . He threw himself at the thing inside him. .
Too late. Too slow. The Crowntaker found his rage again and hurled Skyrie screaming away. One warlock dead. Three left. Had to kill them. Had to keep killing. Had to keep the fury fuelled or he'd slip away. The warlocks backed away. Shouted for help. He sprang at them. They weren't soldiers. They got in each other's way. He swept the legs out from one. Flipped him up and crashed him to the floor. Stamped down. Neck bones crunched and cracked. His lips drew back, a grimace of vicious glee. .
Dear gods, dear gods and holy Xibaiya! Skyrie wrapped himself around the memory of water and of the stars that winked out one by one. It gave him strength even as he felt himself unravelling. An anchor. For a moment it even found him his voice. ‘My brothers! Help me! I am. .’ And then it was gone again, lost to the snarling other. .