Dragon Queen sk-2

by Stephen Deas

  She turned and walked to the dragon, waving it down, head cocked, arms outstretched, clucking her tongue, gestures any trained dragon should understand. It responded, lowering its shoulders and its neck, bending its head down to the ground.

  ‘I remember you, Diamond Eye,’ she said, quietly and to no one but the dragon. ‘I watched you grow. I picked you out to be one of my own. You were never as huge as Onyx or as fast as Glory but I never forgot you. You must be getting old now.’ Of course the dragon couldn't hear her, couldn't understand her, not if Bellepheros was feeding it his potions. But it was watching her. It had its head turned towards her and its eyes followed her steps. Potions or no, you do understand at least a little, don't you?

  Diamond Eye bared his teeth. He flared his wings, sending a wind across the yard.

  ‘Frisky today!’ She smiled. Good. We both need this. We both want the same thing.

  Behind her she felt the air pop.

  ‘Do not forget I am watching,’ said a voice, and when she turned he was there, the Watcher standing rigid behind her, stony-faced and teeth gritted, taut with tension and breathing hard. He nodded to her and there was another pop of air as he went rigid and vanished again.

  ‘Oh, but I will,’ she whispered. ‘For a little while I will forget everything.’

  The mounting ropes were in a terrible state but at least they were there. She climbed up onto Diamond Eye's back and began looking for the buckles. The last time the dragon had flown, it had flown to war. The harness was meant for battle where it would become a part of the rider's armour from the waist down. Which was a blessed relief, because it meant she could throw away at least the boots. She struggled to fit inside with Bellepheros's bulky coat around her, had to lift it up and balloon it around the saddle. But she did, and if she'd had to she would have thrown away the coat and ridden in silks to be on a dragon's back once more. With the last strap done she sighed into the harness and smiled at the sky and closed her eyes.

  ‘Everything,’ she whispered. ‘Now fly, my winged half-god, my deathbringer. Fly and show them who you are.’

  Diamond Eye leaped into the air. He was flying in a single bound and one mighty pull of his wings and with such strength that Zafir pitched backwards and would have fallen off if it hadn't been for the harness. He drove into the air, strong and urgent and powerful, exultant in his freedom from the earth. On other days Zafir might have felt a twinge of caution, for the Diamond Eye she'd known had never been so strong, nor had any dragon she'd ever flown, but the dragon's joy of simply being aloft once more flooded through her, merged with her own and drove all other thoughts away. To fly! To be free! Up and up and up until the castle below was a dark speck in a sea of orange waves. The wind was a hurricane over her. It tore at her face and at her furs, but the helm held and she could see as she'd never seen before. If there had been clouds then she would have gone on higher still, up above them and into the deep and endless blue above, to the holy sky where only a dragon-rider could fly and sometimes the ancestors and even the gods themselves would send their visions. But there were no clouds in the desert and so she turned Diamond Eye and dived towards the ground once more, wings tucked in, legs pressed back, her own head squeezed into the dragon's shoulders as the hurricane became something more and the roar of it was as loud as Tsen's cannon in her ear.

  The ground hurtled back at them. Diamond Eye spread his wings. A monstrous hand crushed Zafir into his back, pressing so hard she thought she must snap into pieces. The world went grey and narrowed to a single spot of brightness and then she must have passed out for a few seconds, for the next thing she knew they were hurtling straight at the eyrie, sideways on, faster than she'd ever flown before, and the perfect helm was such a weight that she thought her neck might snap rather then keep her head pressed down into Diamond Eye's scales.

  Straight at the eyrie wall. At the last second Diamond Eye dropped his nose and rolled. He shot beneath it. Purple light filled the air and a bright flash of violet. Zafir had a moment to see the lightning and then Diamond Eye twisted and stretched out his wings and flipped onto his back between the castle and the sand. He shot upside down between them with the sand howling past a few spans beneath Zafir's head and a part of her wanted to scream at the pain as her muscles wrenched her down against the wind, to cry out in alarm, for a dragon had never flown on its back for her before and she couldn't remember the last time she'd had so little control; and at the same time she was whooping with joy at the madness, the power, the freedom, the unfettered joy. Out from under the castle Diamond Eye rolled again. ‘Up, up!’ she cried, and so he climbed and they spiralled high once more until he found what she was looking for. A dozen miles away, deep in the sands on the edge of a black tar lake, far out of her own meagre sight. A tented town of nomads, of dark-skinned Taiytakei, of their horses and their Linxia, and the hunger was like a sharp spike through her belly and she wanted to feed, to hunt, to burn! NOW!

  ‘No!’ She brought Diamond Eye back down, his resentment squirming through her like a knot of angry snakes, and flew him across the sands in front of the eyrie instead. She let loose his fire there, down in the open where the watchers from the eyrie would clearly see. The dragon ravaged the dunes, burned and burned and burned them in an endless stream of fire until the sand became glass and she could smell the smouldering of her furs amid the heat around her. As they passed the eyrie again, Diamond Eye lashed the empty wall with his tail, slashing out a great chunk of the white stone that even the enchantress couldn't mark. See! See what I cando! See what we can do! Find us with your cannon if you can, Baros Tsen!

  She let Diamond Eye have his way now and flew to the nomads and their tents. She let the dragon burn them black and eat his fill from the savaged remains and she couldn't have said which one of them it satisfied more. They were Taiytakei, and she was a slave.

  And when they were both done, when they'd gorged themselves and were finally sated and bloated with the exhilaration, when Diamond Eye came to rest and paced the ground, she climbed down and threw away Bellepheros's stupid furs and his stupid mittens and felt the sand under her feet, the first true earth since she'd flown to war above her beloved Silver City. She felt the wind on her skin and the eyrie was small and distant, a dozen miles away across the sand.

  Free.

  Behind her the air popped. She wondered, briefly, if the Elemental Man had come to kill her for what they'd done, and found that she simply didn't care. She'd laugh in his face as she died, and then Diamond Eye would eat him.

  ‘It would be best for you to return,’ he said. ‘They are becoming anxious.’

  Zafir laughed. When she climbed up into the harness, the Elemental Man came up and sat behind her. Diamond Eye launched himself into the air once more, fat and slow and languorous this time. ‘Are you impressed?’ she called as they rose into the sky, but he didn't answer and when she looked round the Elemental Man was gone again.

  A little frisky she would answer later, when Bellepheros asked how Diamond Eye had flown. The glorious truth was something that would for ever be hers alone. No dragon had ever flown like that for her before. Nor for anyone.

  53

  Stiff Around the Edges

  Bellepheros watched the dragon fly away, squinting into the brightness of the desert sky and the glare of the sands. He watched the faces of the soldiers and of Baros Tsen and of the Taiytakei from the silver gondola, the kwen from this other place of Vespinarr. If he believed Li, the whole day was staged for this man. The Taiytakei kept their awe well hidden, but now and then a twitch gave each of them away. A touch of amazement at the speed of the dragon's ascent — even Bellepheros was surprised by that. A twinge of fear as it flew so high that it vanished from sight and they stood with their heads tipped back, faces screwed up against the sun and vast blue sky — always the chance that Tsen had somehow misjudged, that Zafir would choose to flee, that the dragon would escape even from an Elemental Man. Staring up alongside them, hands doing their best to shi
eld his eyes from the sun, a part of Bellepheros hoped that Zafir did exactly that. Another part of him hoped she didn't, but with Zafir he simply couldn't be sure. Quietly, in the inner thoughts he never shared with anyone, it beggared belief that anyone had thought she'd make a good speaker.

  For a minute or two he really thought she'd gone, rocketed off across the desert never to return, but then she came back and boiled the sand into glowing glass, and not even the Taiytakei could hide their shock at that; and when the dragon lashed the wall with its tail and sliced a chunk away and the whole castle shook beneath their feet and pieces of stone as big as a man's head fizzed right across the dragon yard and soldiers and slaves and Scales ran screaming, the Taiytakei watching from the wall cried out too, a sharp dagger of fear through them all, their masks for a moment broken. In their part of the yard the hatchlings shrieked and flapped their wings and strained at their chains at the frightened Scales around them.

  Bellepheros hurried off the wall to restore some calm. She should have come back right then, he thought. Swerved in the air and crashed into the wall right in front of them before they assembled their faces again. She could have seen them as they truly were; but instead Zafir flew Diamond Eye away and for a long time there was nothing save a pall of smoke on the horizon. Even after he'd settled his Scales and the hatchlings, she still hadn't returned, and by then the Taiytakei had begun to lose interest.

  Later he watched as the Elemental Man came and went. The killer had something wrong with him and it was never more obvious than today. By then most of the Taiytakei had gone and weren't there to notice, but the Watcher was almost dead on his feet. He was struggling to shift, exhausted every time he did it, gasping for breath and wet with sweat. Even under the desert sun Bellepheros had never once seen the Elemental Man sweat until the dragons had come.

  When Zafir returned, the Taiytakei came back up to the walls to watch the dragon land. The dragon came slowly, with long leisurely beats of its wings. It pitched up and landed gently, towering over the white stone wall, the sun behind it so that when it reared up and stretched its wings it cast the whole of the yard into shadow. The air filled with a sweeping satisfaction. It oozed from the dragon like honey, a cloud of feeling spreading out across the eyrie to touch them all. Bellepheros had been around dragons for long enough to know it for what it was and brush it aside but its force unsettled him. Diamond Eye had an energy, a hunger, a need. Dragons always did, all of them, even back in the dragon realms, but not like this. Here all those things were somehow magnified. It wasn't only Diamond Eye either — the hatchlings were the same. He had no idea why this world should be different but it was, and it left him with a deep and lingering unease that he could never quite shake. Dragons took the thoughts and emotions of their riders and mingled them with their own, even Zafir knew that, but they sensed other things too. Was it the eyrie? They could feel things that were beyond the senses of any rider or alchemist. Old things. Deep things. For all the discipline of the Order of the Scales, their potions, their lore, there was so much they didn't know. So much lost when the Silver King was struck down.

  He watched Zafir slide down from the saddle and walk away from Diamond Eye, sashaying along the wall. Alchemists learned to wall away the hungers and desires that came from the dragons around them; riders did the opposite. They rode those desires, mingling them with their own, guiding and steering if they could, if they were strong enough, succumbing to them if they weren't. Zafir, he could see, was on the edge. She was a like a lizard basking in the sun, a sleepy lioness sprawled with a full belly beside a fresh kill. She walked barefoot towards the watching Taiytakei, furs left Flame-knew-where, helm under her arm and swaying as she walked, swinging her hips in the afterglow of the dragon's flight. As for the Taiytakei? He had no idea how the dragon's desires would touch them or how deep they might reach.

  ‘And now you know,’ Zafir smiled at Tsen as she reached them and touched her finger to the tip of his nose, ‘what a dragon can be. I trust you are now pleased?’

  Bellepheros had seen the Taiytakei after she'd lashed the castle wall, the naked awe raw and impossible to hide, but that had been hours ago. Tsen had found his calm again. ‘You damaged my eyrie, slave,’ he said.

  ‘Because you wanted to see, Sea Lord Tsen.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘They are for war, these glorious creatures. Nothing else.’

  She was too wrapped up in her own satisfaction to see the tension in the t'varr. They each turned away from the other, Tsen back to his guests and soldiers, Zafir to Bellepheros. She lifted an arm towards him and for a moment he thought she meant to put it round his shoulder. She caught herself, frowned and then smiled.

  ‘Were our lords pleased?’ This close he could see her eyes were as wide as a dust-eater's, drunk on the dragon's joy. Dangerous. She was bright, flushed, face agleam with sweat, her hair matted and wet, damp patches where her silks clung to her skin.

  Bellepheros bowed, cautious. He took her by the arm and led her gently away, and for once she didn't resist, didn't slap him with her eyes for his audacity. She needed to be away from the dragon, he thought, as far away as he could take her. ‘They were, Holiness. And fearful, though they do not show it now.’ Perhaps if they were quick, there would be time to talk alone now. Distant eyes always kept watch on him, but Tsen liked to give his slaves the illusion that they were free, that they were his guests. It was a dangerous freedom and yet a cunning one. They make us a part of their own but the words we think we speak in secret are always overheard. Tuuran might have said that all those months ago, but perhaps while the Tsen and his generals and his Elemental Man were all together, engrossed. .

  He stole a glance at the dragon purring on the wall. Is an alchemist ever free? No. We enslave one another, monster and man.

  They crossed the dragon yard, past the hatchlings still chained to the walls. The hatchlings were furious — he could feel the rage as he passed them. Maybe Zafir could work with them soon. Maybe the bigger ones were ready. Perhaps it was time to start making harnesses for them.

  ‘They want to fly,’ Zafir said.

  ‘They do.’

  ‘They're envious of me.’ She laughed. ‘And who wouldn't be?’ She stopped him out there in the yard, right out in the open beside the snapping hatchlings, and pressed a hand to his chest. ‘There's something about this place, Bellepheros. I've never known a dragon fly the way Diamond Eye flew for me today. Never such. . passion!’ She dropped her hand and looked away. ‘You said it might be this way and you were right. Why, Master Alchemist? Why do they have such a hunger here? My skin tingles with it, my blood is hot. They have so much desire! I haven't felt like this after flying for years!’

  Bellepheros shook his head and took a step away. ‘A mystery, Holiness. I cannot tell you why it is so, but yes, I have seen it.’ He tried to move her away from the hatchlings, further away from Diamond Eye. Get her down under the ground where at least they couldn't see each other. ‘You shouldn't stand here, Holiness. The Hatchling Disease. .’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled at him again but now her eyes had changed. The wonder was gone. She was a predator. As he guided her towards their passageway beneath the eyrie, her feet dragged. On the steps into the cold white glow of the tunnels, she stopped again. Her gaze lingered on Diamond Eye and the dragon stared back, a look of shared secrets.

  ‘I have something for you,’ Bellepheros said, reaching for anything he could think of.

  Zafir's eyes snapped to his, curious and eager. ‘What?’

  ‘Come, Holiness.’

  He took her down the spiralling tunnels. Zafir kept walking ahead, long strides, then turning, waving at him to hurry up until he was almost running at her heels. When they reached his study, Zafir closed his new iron-cased door behind them. Bellepheros never bothered. There was a lock too and he never used that either, because locks in this place were an illusion. Perhaps the Elemental Man could move through the white stone or perhaps he couldn't but he could certainly move through the a
ir. His ear might be anywhere, always.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Here.’ He gave her a fresh gourd. Zafir tossed half of it down with a careless lack of interest.

  ‘This?’ She snorted and hung the gourd around her neck. ‘You brought me down here for this?’

  ‘Not just that, Holiness.’ He turned and started to rummage through the papers and books and glass beakers on his workbench. He could have given her poison just then and how would she have known? But then dragon-kings and dragon-queens had always trusted their alchemists to do as they were told for the greater good of the realms. It was just that it was a little more complicated now. Whose greater good and which realms had never been problems for any master alchemist before.

  ‘Well?’ He could feel her impatient energy, even with his back to her. He just needed to keep her here a while, that was all.

  ‘I'm afraid that potion's not as good as I could make were I in the Palace of Alchemy.’ He wondered how much to say, but in the end she was still his queen and more his mistress than Tsen or any of the Taiytakei. Trust. It all came to trust. Zafir trusted his potions and that he would keep the dragons calm so he must trust her to speak for the realm that had once been their home. ‘The dragons are restless here,’ he said, slow and unsure of how far to go. Do you even care? At last he found what he was looking for and mixed a little of the powder with a drop of his own blood, carefully so she wouldn't see, and a cup of water. He offered it to her.

  ‘I could hardly not have noticed, Master Alchemist.’ She gave him a hungry smile. ‘Was that why you brought me down here, out of the sun and the light? To tell me that?’

  ‘Holiness. .’ Were the Taiytakei somehow different too? Because they were different, from the colour of their skin onwards. Was that it? He put the cup on his workbench and pushed it towards her. ‘Please. . This will help with the. . to regain your composure, Holiness.’