by Stephen Deas
They had to go. Back where they came from. All of them. The balance must be preserved. These were his own thoughts, unshared as yet, and there would be a time to bring them to the minds of others, but not today. Today the Watcher waited. A sea lord had not fallen for nearly two hundred years. An Elemental Man had not struck in a gold-glass palace for even longer. They had forgotten the fire with which they played.
A glasship rose from the city below, drifting in its leisurely way across the water and up towards the palace. It floated higher and higher, beyond the Divine Bridge, and then arced closer. The golden egg of the gondola beneath gleamed in the sun, catching the light like fire. The ship came over the palace. It nestled itself into the needle of black stone that the enchanters had raised here to feed it. As it stopped, its gondola sank gently on silver chains until it came to rest deep among the roots of the towers. It opened and waiting men came to take whatever it carried inside — food, water, simple things that any palace would need.
The Watcher looked down on the slaves as they worked. Glasships were a marvel, the pinnacle of the enchanters’ arts, but often they were treated no better than a wagon and a few mules. Such was the way of a sea lord. He shifted from his perch. There was always a way through any shield of gold that the sea lords made. Men were men. They had to eat and they had to drink. He admired Baros Tsen T'Varr sometimes for not hiding himself away like the others, for seeing the futility of even trying, but then Tsen T'Varr had an Elemental Man of his own and Quai'Shu had always been different.
He chose a barrel filled with wine and a moment later was inside it. The men who carried it never knew he was there. They brushed through doors of beaten gold and the sea lord's shield was punctured. It was that easy.
Once inside, the Watcher shifted again, into the floor now, into the stone of Dul Matha itself. He felt his way towards the palace centre. There were more layers, more walls of gold and silver, animated sentinels of glass and jade like the Stoneguard of Xican. He passed through them one by one, always patient, always waiting until the moment came to move unseen.
In this slow methodical way he finally found the hsian. It would have been easy to strike in that first moment, to appear and open Nimpo Jima's throat and vanish again to leave his death a mystery, but there was a greater purpose to his being here and so he waited and watched for another day until Quai'Shu’s traitor of a hsian was called and walked alone into the inner sanctum of Sea Lord Senxian himself. The Watcher followed. He would kill the hsian in front of the sea lord. He would kill him so that the hsian's blood stained the sea lord's shoes. The message would be as clear as it could possibly be. It could have been you. But sea lords do not strike at one another. And Senxian would understand, and the plans that he and the hsian were laying against Baros Tsen T'Varr and Sea Lord Quai'Shu would fall quietly to nothing, and there would be no more to be done.
He merged with the air, following the hsian. Nimpo Jima sat down on the floor beside a low table. On the other side knelt Senxian in a robe of shimmering rainbows, large and strong but fat with age. On the walls hung cloaks of dazzling emerald feathers. Cups of crushed leaves sat on the table beside a coppery bowl of steaming water.
‘Hsian.’ The Watcher waited, one with the air until the moment when they were close enough for the hsian's blood to touch the sea lord himself. The song ran strong in his head here, the voices of the moon sorcerers. Mooncrown. Earthspear. Suncloak. Starknife.
Somehow — he would never understand how — he didn't see the tall pale-skinned slave who had no place at all being in the same room as a sea lord. Didn't see him until the man stepped behind the air that he had become and drove a gold-handled knife into the place where he was. The slave was dressed in grey with a tattooed face and the knife hilt was engraved with stars, and suddenly the Watcher was flesh and bone and the gold-hilted knife was inside him. He shuddered. How?
Grey robes. The grey dead men and making something. .
How didn't I see him?
The knife held him fast, paralysed. It didn't move but he felt three little cuts, three little pieces of his essence sucked away, and then a voice like thunder in his head, crushing and destroying, like the moon sorcerers had been but stronger by far. The knife withdrew and he fell to his knees. Terror welled up inside him and he had no idea what to do with it because Elemental Men had nothing to fear and so were never afraid, because nothing in any of the worlds of the Taiytakei could ever touch them.
The Picker, he reminded himself. The Picker died too. And the one before.
He couldn't move. Not a muscle.
‘You're not going to die,’ said the grey dead man. ‘None of this has happened. I was never here and no one ever touched you. You will never see me, as these men never see me, even when I am right in front of you, for your eyes will simply look elsewhere, but now and then you will hear my voice. Do what you came to do and return with the knowledge that Sea Lord Senxian will make war on Sea Lord Quai'Shu for his dragons no matter what warning is sent. When that war comes, you will find a way to steal one of your master's dragon eggs and you will take it to those who dwell beneath the Konsidar. When that is done, you will go to some place so remote that you will never be found and you will cut out your own heart.’
The knife vanished and with it every memory of what had happened, and all the Watcher knew was that he was no longer the air but flesh and bone and the two men in the room in front of him had turned to stare, horror covering their faces.
He blinked. Shifted. The bladeless knife flashed and the hsian's blood sprayed across the plates and the steaming water and spattered Senxian's arm. The Watcher stood for a moment, let the sea lord drink him in, let him understand, and then was gone, slipping slowly and steadily back through the layers of Senxian's palace with the same care with which he had come.
57
Shades of Entanglement
The shade of the dragon called Silence slipped among the ghosts and fleeting spirits of men. It closed its thoughts to the siren calls of waiting eggs and opened wary eyes to the slowly awakening things that now moved among the ruins of what the little ones called Xibaiya. It moved with careful speed and purpose back to the edges of the hole and the oozing spread of That Which Came Before. The door of its prison was gone, the door that had once been the Earth Goddess frozen at the moment of her death, mingled with the essence of the half-god who'd slain her. The dragon had known this already but now it sat and watched, pondering the open hole and the Nothing beyond. There was no hurry to the void and the chaos. It crept hither and yon around the rip in creation that the Earthspear had made, devouring what it touched but touching with no purpose. It was easy to stay away from those wandering tendrils of nothingness, slow and blind as they were. It would be less easy later, when everything was unravelled and only those tendrils remained.
How long will it take?
It tried to catch a passing little one but the shade fluttered away. They were such ephemeral things, these children of the sun. It would be interesting, the dragon thought, to feed one of their souls to the Nothing and watch it be consumed. Perhaps there was an insight to be gained into the nature of things. Or perhaps not, but either way it couldn't catch them. They winked into the underworld and quickly sped away, and when the dragon chased them it was slow and they were quickly beyond its senses.
Silence.
The little ones had given it that name. It had snarled against such a crude word when it had first woken, but other dragons had kept their human names and its own thoughts had subtly changed. Silence was a blissful thing. Death was silent. Here was silent. In the living realms with the little ones all around, their thoughts gibbered and jabbered constantly. Silence was beautiful.
I will keep it. I will become it. I will bring it and I will surround myself with it.
After a time it tired of watching the mindless Nothing grow, inch by tiny inch, the cancer of creation. How long will it take? Lifetimes, and the dragon was too impatient for such things. It felt the cal
l of eggs, here and there and everywhere, scattered in places unfamiliar as well as those well known. The little ones with the ships, they had taken eggs. Perhaps it would be amusing to bring some silence to them?
It moved, but not yet towards the eggs. There was another thing, close to the bleeding wound of the underworld. Something else that lingered. A familiar taste.
Sister? Brother?
But it wasn't a dragon. Something like a dragon, but not. Something more. A silver half-god, nothing less, and the dragon wondered how one of the makers was here. The half-gods didn't pass through Xibaiya and never had. They'd had their own ways, even before they were banished by the earth.
Curious then that one of them should be here, and more curious too that it was close to That Which Came Before. Did you come to see, old one? But this is not your domain and you should know better than to be here.
As it came so close that they might have touched, it tasted a second shade, a little one, and now it understood. The two were locked together, each held fast by the other so that neither could move, a tiny mirror of the Earth Goddess and her slayer wrapped in their prison.
Old one?
The shades writhed and screamed together. The dragon turned away, sorrow and disgust all at once. Yes, an old one, one of the silver half-gods, a maker, but diminished to almost nothing, a barely flickering ember of the bright light it had once been long, long ago.
Old one?
The little one had trapped it and almost unravelled it so that only the barest essence remained. The dragon wondered how a little one could do such a thing but it had no answer to that. The half-god was all but gone, not enough left for it to know what was happening to it, much less talk. The dragon took the two shades in its claws and picked them patiently apart until they were separate things, each straining to be released. One for the sun, one for the moon.
Old one? It tried one last time but the half-god was too damaged to understand. Perhaps the night lord would make it whole again, perhaps not. There was a sense of recognition though. This was one of the half-gods who'd turned with old wise Seturakah for whom the dragons had first flown. One of the few who'd stayed and fought, who had turned against the old gods and failed and lost and been broken.
Were you too close when the end came? Is that what happened to you? It looked at the mangled shrivelled shade. So few, and yet you were so great and so close. It let the old one go. Be with your creator. Make your penance and your peace. Is he merciful in his victory, the night lord? The dragon had little idea what such things meant. Mercy, revenge, forgiveness, spite? Those were not dragon thoughts — for dragons there was only what was food and what was not. It had learned these other words from the little ones. They seemed to think them somehow important. The dragon couldn't see why they should matter. Mostly what it understood was the rage, the wild impatient fury that always undid them. Why are we this way? Why are we made to be so quick of thought and claw and yet so fleeting? It mused on this for a minute or two, and when it saw that there was no answer to be had to that either, its thoughts moved on. It did not understand resentment either.
It still held the little one. The little one wasn't damaged at all.
Who are you? It began to move back to the broken prison. The little one squirmed and tried to get away but the dragon held it fast. Nor did it answer; but little ones, as the dragon had often observed, could rarely control their thinking. All the dragon had to do was to listen.
You were a lord among your kind? The little one had a name, but the dragon had no interest. I have never heard of your home. If I find it I will burn it. No, I will not let you go. I mean to feed you to the Nothing to see what will happen.
The little one struggled but it had no hope of escape. The dragon reached out as close as it dared to the hole and its questing devouring tongues. It dropped the little one inside.
How? How did this come to pass? How was the old seal broken? Where did the dead goddess and her slayer go? Did they flee or has the Nothing consumed them? Not that, it thought, for the two of them had held the Nothing at bay for an age and more. No, they had gone somewhere.
A weight of understanding closed over Silence then. If they truly had gone somewhere then they could be found and they could be returned, and That Which Came Before could be locked away once more.
I do not want the burden of this knowledge.
The little one flickered as the Nothing closed around it and then it darted through a tiny space the dragon hadn't seen and flashed away, gone towards its creator, the Lord of Light and Warmth. The dragon lunged, annoyed, but it was slow and the little one had already vanished. As it went, the dragon caught a fractured fragment of a thought.
I was there. I saw it happen.
And with that a flicker of something else. Of pride and a place and a face.
The dragon snarled. If the little one had seen it then so had the old one; and if the little one was gone to the sun, so the old one was gone to the moon and the night lord. And the night lord was known to dragons.
So, Gods, I have sent these souls with their knowledge and their memories back to you. What will you do?
What gods always did. Nothing.
The Bloody Judge
58
Never Forgotten
By the time the boats from the galley came ashore, the pain ran right from the top of Tuuran's head down his neck. His face felt like it was still on fire and it wasn't going to get any better in a hurry either. Adamantine Men knew all about fire. When old Hyram had taken the Speaker's Ring, he'd put on a tournament and games for the dragon-riders who came from across the nine realms to kiss it. They'd fought mock battles, strafing legions of the Adamantine Men with dragon fire while the soldiers hid behind their dragon-scale armour and walls of dragon-scale shields. It was supposed to show how fearless the speaker's army was, how they could stand up to anything. And it had, but they'd still lost fifty men over the space of the five days and a hundred more carried their burns proudly, scars to prove who they were. Tuuran reckoned the good soldiers were the ones who'd managed to get themselves and their brothers beside them properly behind their shields, but anyone who got burned got treated well enough. Burns hurt.
He growled and waved his sword at the slaves from the galley and turned them right around. ‘That's a ship, that is,’ he bellowed at the oar-slaves and the sail-slaves as they struggled in through the surf. ‘That's a ship, and we know how to sail it and that makes it our life. What are you going to do? Run into the woods barefoot? Do you even know where you are?’ The men from the cages in the hold came from up and down the coast here but the galley slaves came from everywhere, mostly the little kingdoms like the one Crazy Mad said he was from, all around the fringes of the Dominion. They'd be lost here, as lost as he would, so he rounded them up, sail-slaves, oar-slaves, the men from the cages, and made them have a good long look at what had happened on the beach. All those dead Taiytakei, that was the sort of sight a slave ought to see now and then. The sort to remember. No one questioned that he should be the one giving the orders now.
‘Any of our slave masters left on the galley?’ he asked. The pain across his face turned everything he said into an angry snarl. But no, the Fire Witch — or whatever she was — had burned every Taiytakei to ash. So he looked at all the slaves, standing there on the beach, shitting and pissing themselves and gawping at the mangled remains of their masters, and left them to wonder for a bit while he picked up one of the lightning wands and waved it about in case he could make it work. Everyone knew the wands only worked for the dark-skins but it seemed worth a go. Turned out everyone was right, but it didn't stop them from flinching when he pointed it at them. He'd keep it, he thought, and turned and waved it at the slaves and asked them, ‘You really want to stay here? Stay. The rest of you, we go back to the galley because it just became ours.’
About half stayed, mostly the ones from homes up and down the coast. Back on the galley, once the rest of them had scrambled aboard, it turned out
that not all the dark-skins were dead after all. The galley slave masters might all be burned to crispy ash and yes, the deck smelt like an eyrie from back home, but down among the oars they found a pair of Taiytakei oar-slaves cowering under the rowing benches. Tuuran had no idea what they were doing there — putting Taiytakei slaves in among the oars was just another way of killing them, everyone knew that — but there they were anyway, terrified. Tuuran dragged them out and gave the others a choice: kill the dark-skins or keep them and they voted almost to a man for keeping. It didn't surprise him. Slave or not-slave always counted more than the colour of a man's skin.
Flame but his face hurt! Cursed Fire Witch or whatever she was. And he still kept wanting to touch it and still kept having to stop himself. Burns. You had to keep them clean — every Adamantine Man knew that — and so you didn't touch them, didn't wrap them, just let the air do its work and maybe a little cold clear water for relief now and then. Damn but he'd have killed to get his hands on a decent alchemist now, or at least a bit of Dreamleaf.
It slowly dawned on them all that they were free. They broke into the hold and hauled out the Taiytakei food and the little barrels of wine and spirits and drank themselves stupid. Tuuran drank until he couldn't stand up any more. It took the edge off the pain. He passed out as the sun set, same as half the rest of them. He thought maybe he saw Crazy Mad's eyes burn silver again right as the sun turned the sea into a lake of orange fire, but afterwards he couldn't be sure and he'd been drunk enough to see faeries and dragons dancing on the moon too. In the morning, face still burning, head pounding, guts churning, he tried cleaning up the messes that the Fire Witch had left behind. Not that he particularly minded them, but it was something to do. Didn't get far though. The Taiytakei slavers — what was left of them — were little more than ash and charcoal burned into the galley's wooden hull. He tried to scrape them off but they were welded in as though wood and flesh had melted and then set again, merged together.