by Stephen Deas
For some reason the disease was working faster on the Scales he'd made here, that or his potions were missing something. He gave them a year at most and probably a lot less. Alchemists? Some of them only lasted weeks before they showed the first symptoms, some of them years, some even longer but they all eventually caught it one way or another. It wasn't so bad if you took your potions every day and weren't exposed too often. If the disease found a way through his leathers and his mask today then it would get a little worse; but he'd take his potions and it would slow to its usual imperceptible crawl again and he'd lose his sleep each night to far more pressing troubles. Speakers, though? Dragon-kings and dragon-queens? They were kept away. The disease stayed within the order. Within those who'd been conditioned and trained and bred and fed potions since they were babies to control it. Kept to those who understood how dangerous it could be.
Zafir kept on coming. Bellepheros shook his head. Was she mad? He walked towards her quickly to keep her away from the dead hatchling. This was when they were at their absolute worst and surely she knew that!
‘Holiness!’ he gasped. He had to stand right in front of her to stop her.
‘Master Alchemist.’ She was smiling, peering at him, through him even, eyes as full of hunger as they always were and with a touch of madness too. Looking past him to the monstrous dragon perched up on the wall, quivering with want.
‘Holiness! Stay back! The hatchling is. .’ Zafir held out her arm and pulled back her sleeve and showed him her skin. In the crook of her elbow a tiny patch was rough where it should be smooth. No bigger than a fingernail but there was no mistaking what it was. Bellepheros looked at her agape.
‘Yes, Master Alchemist. I have the disease already. So your dead hatchling hardly matters to me. Now tell me-’
‘How?’ he blurted. She hadn't been near the eyrie. She hadn't been near the hatchling he'd brought with him to the Taiytakei city; and that one had been made clean, washed and washed and washed again until all residue of the egg must surely have been gone, and yet she had it, and if she had it then who else might have it too?
‘When the dragons hatched out at sea, Bellepheros. It was a hatchling minutes fresh from the egg and it was awake. It remembered. It. .’ She ran a finger over the red mark that ran down the length of her neck and looked at him for a long time. ‘Tell me you can stop it. Tell me you can make it go away.’
‘I. . I have potions, Holiness.’ Not ones to cure, though. Potions to arrest the disease, to slow it, to almost but not quite stop it. But to get rid of it? No. ‘There are. .’ He shook his head. Did she need to know? Perhaps she did. ‘There are. . there are consequences of the disease that I cannot treat, Holiness.’
Her face grew brittle. No, she didn't like that at all. ‘You'd best enlighten me.’
Not here. He looked around. The Taiytakei watchers were keeping their wary distance but he never knew for sure where the Elemental Man was hiding. He hadn't seen much of the Watcher in the last few days, but for all Bellepheros knew he was lurking in the stones right under their feet. He cast his eyes about, floundering for a place and a way to be sure they weren't overheard. He nodded to the dragon as he did. ‘Will you fly it, Holiness? They're all restless and agitated. Something here vexes them and they won't settle. It would be. .’ It would be a blessing to have someone fly that monster, just to burn some of its energy.
Zafir glared at him. ‘Of course I'll fly him! Tell me what I need to know!’
The glasship from Khalishtor! It was still hovering over the eyrie, its golden gondola resting up on the walls, open and empty. He nodded towards it. ‘Come, Holiness!’
Bellepheros hurried towards the wall. They wouldn't have much time. Zafir called after him, ‘Alchemist! Stop! I have asked you a question.’ Anger streaked her words. Bellepheros tore off his apron and his mask, left them on the ground and began to climb the steps carved into the inner face of the wall. They were steep and tall and went hard on his knees. He glanced back and at last Zafir turned and strode after him. At the top he walked straight for the gondola, praying to the Great Flame that she'd follow him in. He didn't dare run lest the Taiytakei start wondering what he was doing, and he couldn't bring himself to grab her and pull her with him either — she might be a slave but she was still the speaker of the nine realms and he was still her servant, still her master alchemist. But she did follow him, anger sharp as a knife written into every movement. As soon as he was inside the glasship's golden egg he touched a spot in the wall and the ramp closed behind them, sealing them in.
‘Alchemist!’ She was furious now.
Bellepheros whipped around to face her. ‘We don't have much time, Holiness, before they come for us, so I ask you to please listen! The Watcher. The Elemental Man. He cannot enter here when the door is closed. Gold and silver and their golden glass — the Elemental Men cannot pass through them but if you are not encased in any of those then you must assume he's there, somewhere, in the walls or in the air, listening. We can speak freely here, Holiness. Here and now but nowhere else.’
‘Alchemist. .’ Dark clouds filled her eyes. But he needed this, needed to tell her these things and there might never be another chance.
‘Yes, yes. The Statue Plague.’ He bowed his head. ‘The disease is voracious among these Taiytakei. Worse than I've ever seen. They have no resistance to it. Or perhaps there's something to the nature of their world that encourages it to thrive. Or perhaps. . perhaps my potions are not as strong as they were.’
Zafir's eyes were savage. ‘You will keep it contained, alchemist. You will.’
‘Of course, Holiness.’ He bowed again. ‘There are other-’
‘Other what?’
‘Listen! Holiness! Please! I will treat your disease as best I can. It can be slowed — stopped, even, if you keep away from eggs and the youngest hatchlings — but it cannot be removed. Drink my potions and do as I say and it will not spread further. Do not share your blood or your bed with any other or the disease will pass to them.’ His shoulders drooped and he shook his head. ‘You cannot bear heirs. They will die. I'm so very sorry.’
Zafir looked aghast. ‘Heirs? That's the first thing you think I need to hear?’
Bellepheros was still shaking his head. ‘I'll warn Baros Tsen T'Varr if you wish. Perhaps that's for the best. But listen! Listen! I'll tell you more later, everything you want to know, you have my word. What matters now is this: the Elemental Man, he's the danger, to you most of all. I'll help you to fly, I'll help them to make whatever is needed — harnesses, armour, everything — but you'll have that man at your shoulder every moment of your life now and you must know that he's there. He'll hear every word and see every deed. Whenever the time comes and you turn on these men who have enslaved you, I will not stop you nor will I speak of it, but my duty above all, above either my freedom or yours, is here among these dragons now. I must keep them from waking. There is no one else who can. Do you understand what a woken dragon means, Holiness?’
‘I. .’ He could see straight away that she didn't. Someone had shown her the dragon they kept under the Purple Spur, the woken monster weighted down in chains. Every speaker was shown the same. A dragon, true and undimmed, and yet they rarely understood because the dragon was chained and held in a cavern too small for it to ever escape. It was a rare speaker who had the vision to see what it would become, free and in the sky and with its chains shattered.
‘No. It doesn't matter. The Elemental Man. Whatever you do, you must think his eyes are there. One slip and he will know. Enchanter's glass, gold, silver — he cannot penetrate those things and that's why they build with them. There may be others, but if there are I don't know of them.’ He glanced out of the windows. Taiytakei soldiers were hurrying towards the egg. They didn't have much time. ‘There's something else. The dragons. They're. .’ How to make her understand? ‘There's a reason why there are no Elemental Men in the realms, no enchanters, no artificers, no navigators, no sorcerers, no warlocks, no arcane prie
sts, mages or whatever else they like to call themselves. The dragons. . they eat their power. They drain it from the world. I've seen it already. The Elemental Man — when he comes here, the dragons make it hard for him. It might be a way to stop him. But it's making the dragons restless too. They have a vigour and an energy to them, more than I've ever seen. You must know this. Be wary when you ride them. .’ The soldiers had reached the egg. Bellepheros closed his eyes. There would be punishment for this. They wouldn't know what he'd said but they'd know he'd come here to deal in secrets and somehow defy them.
Zafir tore at her silk tunic and raked her hands through her hair. One hand snaked around his neck. For a moment her fingers dug into his throat and he felt how strong she was. She was quivering with anger. She hissed at him, ‘Never forget who I am, alchemist.’ Then she took his other hand and pulled it to her. As the egg split open once more, she pressed him to a wall, her face to his. She was hard and soft under his fingers. She held him exactly for the moment the ramp opened and the soldiers outside stared at them, then let out a little groan and breathed in his ear, ‘Let them think this is why. But do not forget this, alchemist. Any of it.’ She stepped away, shameless, licking her lips, all curves and shadows beneath the disarray of her silk, then stopped and looked at him again, puzzled. ‘What were you doing, alchemist, out there with that dead hatchling?’
‘More eggs are hatching, Holiness. I need their blood for my potions.’
‘Every dragon, alchemist.’ She shook her head as though they were back in the realms. ‘Every egg that hatches is a dragon and every dragon is precious. If you were my eyrie master and this was my eyrie, I'd have you hung to die in a cage for that.’ She smiled at him, smiled at the Taiytakei soldiers, straightened her tunic and strode out of the egg, swinging her hips. The soldiers’ eyes followed her along the wall.
‘But you are not my eyrie master, Holiness,’ he whispered. Did she know how many hatchlings were lost every week and every month in every eyrie across the realms? Did she know about the dragons who hatched and snapped and hissed and wouldn't eat because they'd already woken in some previous life and knew exactly what awaited them? Who starved themselves rather than take his alchemists’ potions, who wilfully withered and died and were reborn again, over and over and over? One egg in four failed but they were the same handful of dragons, again and again. Did she know?
Beside Bellepheros the air popped and there he was, as expected. ‘I had understood that alchemists were celibate.’ The Elemental Man's voice was flat and empty of either feeling or judgement. His face was flushed and he was out of breath.
‘You understood very wrong then.’ Bellepheros blinked. ‘We prefer our own kind, that's all.’ Because we carry the disease and so we keep to ourselves, because we know what it would mean to spread the plague. But he couldn't say that because then they'd know it wasn't just the Scales who would catch it. Sooner or later it would spread. The Elemental Man would be busy that day. He shrugged. ‘We have the same needs and urges as everyone else.’ Apparently more than he'd thought. The feel of Zafir's skin against his fingers wouldn't leave him alone. He was a man after all. Old, perhaps, but it had been a very long time since he'd felt a woman's touch.
‘Do not come here again, alchemist,’ said the Watcher.
Bellepheros laughed suddenly. ‘Actually I came here to summon you, assassin. I have need of something.’
‘Then ask a t'varr.’
‘This is not a t'varr’s work.’ He stared hard at the Elemental Man. Ridiculous really, but he always hoped that he might see, somehow and simply by looking, what made such a creature work. A man on the outside, but under the skin? What was he in there? Something else. Something more. Something. . other? He was almost sure, but all the books that might have told him, all the ancient scrolls that might have held the clues to put together, they were lost to him now, far away in the dragon realms, deep in the archives under the Purple Spur and the monastery of Sand. ‘What I need is knowledge.’
‘Then you need a hsian.’
‘I need to know what your moon sorcerers know about dragons.’
The Elemental Man shook his head. There might have been the start of a smile as he looked away. ‘You will get no answers, old slave, not from them. No one ever does.’ He looked Bellepheros up and down. ‘Should I send a woman to your study tonight? I do not think the Hands of the Sea Lord will allow you to have his dragon-rider.’
Bellepheros snorted. Idiot. ‘Who are they, assassin, these Moon Sorcerers?’ Men of silver, when every man, woman and child who lived in the nine realms knew the name of the silver half-god who'd tamed the dragons. Isul Aieha. The Silver King.
The Watcher walked away and Bellepheros was left to stare at the three Taiytakei guards who'd opened the egg. He was about to follow but something made him pause. Some thought that for a moment he couldn't pin to the floor of his mind to dissect. But only for a moment.
Walked. The Watcher had walked.
45
The Hsian
A HSIAN IS NOT BORN AND A HSIAN IS NOT MADE. A HSIAN IS BOTH. The words written across the entrance to the Palace of Forever where every hsian who ever served a sea lord was trained. It was called the Palace of Forever because, while a t'varr concerned himself with matter and the moving of it to be at the right place at the right time and a kwen concerned himself with the minds of men, with spirit and courage, a hsian concerned himself with time itself. All you have to do is think further ahead than any other and you will be the greatest among us. It was a simple and yet impossible creed.
The thinking that had brought him to this day had started twenty three-years ago when a new star lit up the sky above the Godspike. It first bloomed like a new moon on the night of midsummer, the last night of the year. It had lasted for a week, and every hsian across Takei'Tarr had seen it.
What does it mean?
There were old gods. Forbidden gods now, and not to be spoken of, but a hsian knew of these things because a hsian was nothing without knowledge. Probably every single one of the great savants of the thirteen cities had their own secret copy of the Rava, carefully hidden and always denied lest the Elemental Men kill them for simply knowing the old gods’ names. They'd met in secret in their Palace of Forever to wonder what this new star, born so bright and yet already dead, could mean. An omen, they agreed. Something was coming. Something to do with the ancient mistress of the night sky, most forgotten and least understood of the old gods. And then they'd looked at one another askance and each had gone their own separate way.
Jima Hsian had thought long and hard and deep, and all that thinking had brought dragons to Takei'Tarr, and now it was taking him to the far corner of the sea lords’ empire, to Dhar Thosis and the Sea Lord Senxian, Quai'Shu’s greatest rival. Not an easy journey, even for a hsian with a glasship. He'd be missed, no doubt about it. A week away from Khalishtor could never pass without comment even at the quietest of times, and Quai'Shu’s monsters were anything but quiet. For most of the journey there weren't even any places to stop. From Khalishtor he flew beneath the perpetual clouds around Mount Solence, mountain of the Elemental Masters, then over the rolling plains and hills to the high peaks of the Konsidar where the Righteous Ones still dwelt in their endless tunnels and caves, guarded from intrusion by the wrath and fear of the Elemental Men. He made a stop there, high among the Konsidar, too high for the Righteous Ones to mind or even notice he was there. The enchanters had built a mountaintop retreat, a quiet and comfortable place for sea lords and hsians and kwens and t'varrs who desired a few days of peaceful rest and tranquil meditation. It was spartan in its luxuries but kinder than the cramped living aboard an egg beneath a glasship. They shouldn't have built it, not really, not in the Konsidar, but the Elemental Men had turned a blind eye for once. Perhaps Senxian and his predecessors had found a way to twist their arms, for it was a long hard flight across the deserts to the Kraitu's Bones.
The place was rife with spies, of course, and everyone would know h
e was there. He put it about that he was doing exactly what he really was doing — crossing the deserts to the far coast and Dhar Thosis. No one would believe that he'd simply told the truth for long enough for it not to matter any more.
Past the enchanters’ retreat he flew alone again, trapped in a golden cage for eight days and a thousand miles. The Konsidar became bleak and dry. A little ice capped some of the mountains but the sky was blue and there were no clouds in sight and the sun was remorseless. The Righteous Ones lived far below, in tunnels so deep that they didn't care about rain or sun, night and day. Throwbacks. An Elemental Man had called them that once, but throwbacks to what Jima had never been sure. What he did know was that something had happened to make them restless. It had happened about six years ago but he had no idea what it was; nor, to the best of his knowledge, did anyone else.
After a day the peaks sank away beneath the glasship, although Jima Hsian kept it high, so far above the ground now that any prying eyes down in the desert would never see him, not that anyone could live in the waterless inferno below. A lot of it was bare rock, so hot it burned the skin. Gravel flats rose gently away from the mountains and then fell sharply in their turn into the broken cliffs and cracked valleys of the Tzwayg. Another day took him deep into the boundless expanse of the Empty Sands, dunes ruddy and immense, a thousand feet tall, on and on until they too sank into a shapeless flatness, stained by dark scars that might once have been lakes before the Splintering had cracked the world a millennium ago. The deserts were one huge space filled with heat and dead stone and nothing else.
No, not nothing else. There were things in the desert. Relics. The bones of ancient monsters as large as cities. The hsian had seen a few and knew there must be more yet to be found if anyone could be bothered with the effort of looking. A thousand miles by a thousand miles of nothing, though. . Too much trouble. Easier to trade with Aria, with the Dominion, with. . other places. But Quai'Shu’s eyrie had come from here, sitting abandoned for however many hundreds of years before someone found it, and even then for another fifty, doing nothing except floating impossibly above the ground on its cushion of violet light and its cracks of lightning that meant you couldn't help but think of the storm-dark. Enchanters had been and gone and none had been able to fathom its secrets, and no one had much use for a large floating rock when they had sleds and discs and gondolas and palaces of gold and glass, all so much brighter and prettier and less. . less frighteningly old; and so in the desert it had stayed until Quai'Shu had sent every glasship he possessed to drag it hundreds of miles and turn it into a nest for his dragons.