by Stephen Deas
“Rider Hyrkallan chose to call these men his Red Riders because it’s a common enough piece of folklore. Everyone knows the stories, little parts of the prophecies, handed from village to village, from generation to generation, a little more broken and warped with each telling. The red rider and the pale dragon. Justice and Vengeance. Mostly they forget the vengeance part. Yes, the red rider, who flies from town to town, bringing the wicked to justice for their crimes. Everyone knows that story.”
“But that’s not the true story,” whispered Semian, “is it?”
“Names have a power of their own, don’t they, Rider Semian.” The blood-mage smiled thinly. “In the original revelations the red rider is the herald of the end of the world. The burning of everything. I don’t think Rider Hyrkallan has quite such apocalyptic intent.”
Jostan jumped to his feet. “Semian, why are you even talking to this . . . this creature? You know what he is! He told you!”
“We saw some blood-magic once,” said Semian mildly. “Do you remember, Jostan? It was an alchemist who did it.”
“The queen outlawed its practice! On pain of death!”
“And yet this man worked for her knight-marshal.” Semian shifted closer to the blood-mage and gripped the man’s knee. “I drank dragon-venom and I survived.”
Kithyr nodded. “Most people do, actually.”
“I had a vision!”
“Also common, I understand.”
“I saw a priest. And a dragon.” Semian seemed to see Kithyr’s hands for the first time. “His hands were burned. Like yours, but worse! He told me what I had to do!”
“And what was that?” asked the magician.
Jostan had had enough. He was already half drunk and the last thing he needed was to listen to Semian going on about his vision again. “He thinks he’s the red rider.” Jostan spat. He expected the magician and Nthandra to both fall about laughing, but neither of them did. If anything, they both looked at Semian with even greater interest. “Did you hear me? He believes it. Prophecies, end of the world, he believes the lot. He thinks it’s him.” There. “He’s crazy. And if you don’t think he’s crazy, then you’re both crazy too.” He walked away and left them to it. Not just crazy crazy, either. Dangerous crazy. Cracked. Mad as a bag of spiders. That sort of crazy. He looked back over his shoulder at the tiny circle of light surrounded by a near-infinite darkness. The three of them were huddled together as if they hadn’t even noticed him go. Nthandra had draped both arms over Semian’s shoulders now. She’d had her eye on him since they’d arrived, but Semian seemed oblivious. Close by, other riders sat and stared at the fire; around them, looming mountain shapes reached up to gouge dead black holes from the starlit sky. Some drank, others sang softly to themselves. Jostan knew a few of them, recognized more. Several caught his eye and gave him a nod. One or two waved him over to sit with them and share their drink or their sorrow. They’d all known Deremis. He was the first of the Red Riders to fall, and none of them, it seemed, knew quite how to take the news that he was dead. Jostan went and sat among them for a while, but somehow they were still apart. The Night of the Knives had brought these riders together and he’d missed it. While the Night Watchman and his Adamantine Men had put their brothers and their fathers to the sword, while Queen Shezira and King Valgar had been taken to be tried for treason, Hyrkallan and these few had fought their way out of the speaker’s palace. With them, somehow, they’d taken Queen Almiri—Shezira’s eldest, Valgar’s queen, mistress of Evenspire and now, because of these few riders, the fulcrum to end Speaker Zafir’s rule if only the right lever could be found. And Jostan had missed it. Missed it because he was with Semian and Princess Jaslyn at the alchemists’ redoubt, facing something far worse, but he could hardly say that, could he? Hyrkallan’s riders had all lost friends or family or both, and what did he lose? Nothing. Nothing and everything. They knew, of course. They knew he and Semian had faced the rogue dragons. They knew about the caves and the smoke and fire and the alchemists and the Embers. They knew that he’d shielded Princess Jaslyn and that Semian had taken dragon-venom so that, in being eaten, he might kill one of the dragons. They knew, they just didn’t . . . understand.
They didn’t care. There. That was the truth of it. They only cared about Zafir and that she had tried to murder them. Them and their queen.
When he looked again, Semian and Nthandra and the blood-mage were all gone. He stayed with the others for as long as he could bear it and then slipped away, back to their tent. Deremis’ tent. He approached it slowly, quietly, not wanting to disturb anyone inside. If Nthandra was with Semian, well, then he didn’t much care either way, as long as she gave him some warmth as well once she was done. He was beginning to understand how she felt. Anything, anything not to be alone.
Sure enough, as he crept close, he heard whispered voices from inside.
“I can feel it. I know it’s there.”
“Yes.”
“I need to know. I need to know if I’m right.”
“Yes.” Jostan slipped closer. The first voice was certainly Nthandra. The second didn’t sound much like Semian.
“It is true.” Jostan had almost reached the flap of the tent. He froze. She was with the blood-mage. The thought made him want to be sick. He could almost see her, naked, straddling him while he pawed at her with his ruined fingers.
“Let me touch you.” No! Don’t let him touch you! “Yes. It is true. You carry a child within you. You carry a boy, Nthandra of the Vale. You carry your dead husband’s heir.”
“What do I tell the child when it’s born? That it has no father?”
“Have a few years of joy with him and then see if perhaps the alchemists would take him.”
“They won’t. He has a bloodline. Even if he doesn’t know it.”
“You could give him to the Adamantine Guard. No one will care whether he has one father or ten.”
“No! I’d rather cut his throat when he comes out of me than give him to Zafir.”
“The speaker will be long gone by then.”
“I said no!”
“Then tell him whatever you wish. You tell him that he carries all that is left of his father within him. Make him his father’s son. Sit him on whatever throne is his.”
“No one will believe me.”
“No.”
Jostan couldn’t move. He ought to slip away, come back later, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move forward either. He needed to see and yet was too afraid to look.
“Because behind your back they call you a whore, Nthandra of the Vale.”
“He’ll be a bastard. It’s not fair.” Suddenly she was shrieking. “We were to be wed as soon as he came back! I was unbroken! I never lay with another man.”
The magician’s voice softened. “It is unfair, but think of this son as a gift. Men such as he are often born to be great. Destiny has fingered your son, Nthandra of the Vale. Do you want him to be great?”
“Yes!”
“I can help with the hole inside too. With the helplessness, the hopelessness, the uselessness. I can help you make all that go away. If you want me to.”
“Yes.” Her voice was quiet now, sobbing. “Please.”
“Which one, Nthandra of the Vale? I can do only one.”
“The child then,” she said, her voice so broken that Jostan could barely understand her. “I owe it to him.”
“Greatness and happiness are rarely the same thing. You know that.”
Jostan didn’t hear what Nthandra said next. He wasn’t sure if she even said anything at all. Then he heard the magician again.
“So be it. Will you give yourself to me, Nthandra of the Vale? Your body and your soul must be mine.”
A real rider, he knew, would have heard enough. A rider like Hyrkallan or Deremis would burst in on them right now. He knew that. They’d kick the magician out of the tent and send him packing, either with a boot or with a sword. Nthandra might curse and wail and spit at them, but they’d do it anyway because it was
right. Not because it was wanted, but because it was right.
And I am not like them. He silently turned and moved a little way away. Too far to hear their whispers but close enough in case they turned to screams. They didn’t. After twenty minutes the blood-mage came out. He straightened his clothes, brushed himself down. He paused for a few seconds and looked straight at where Jostan was sitting, invisible, buried in shadows. Then he went away. Jostan stayed where he was—long enough, he thought, for the magician to be far away—but before he could bring himself to move, Kithyr was back and now he had Semian with him. They walked right past him.
“. . . with this,” said the magician.
“If I must.”
“You must. Unless you are a charlatan like Hyrkallan.”
“It seems wrong.”
“Needs must, Rider Semian. Hyrkallan wears the legend. You must live it. Once you have her, others will follow. I can see to that . . .”
They parted at the entrance to the tent. The magician walked away for a second time and Semian went inside. The noises that began soon after were easy enough to understand. Jostan waited for them to finish, and then waited a little more before he got up and slipped inside. The air was hot and stale and smelled of Nthandra. She was lying tight against Semian’s back. From the snores, they were both already asleep. Jostan curled up beside her, close to her because close felt better. When he woke later on in the small hours of the morning to find her pawing at him, he didn’t even think of turning her away.
5
DROTAN’S TOP
We need a harness for the war-dragon.” Hyrkallan’s face was a mask of stone. Semian watched him carefully. The other riders had been up late, celebrating or mourning or both. He couldn’t blame them for that; they’d all lost friends, brothers, fathers or lovers. Some of them were barely awake. Some had wept when they’d burned Hyrkallan’s brother, but as for Hyrkallan himself, his eyes had stayed dry then and they stayed dry now. That deserved respect, Semian thought, to lose a brother and still stay true to your purpose. In a way, Semian was glad that someone had died. Not that he had anything against Deremis; he barely knew the man’s name. But yesterday had mixed triumph and tragedy and spared him from more attention. He didn’t want that. Not yet.
“We need ammunition for our scorpions and food for us. And potions,” Hyrkallan continued.
Semian glanced at the piles of barrels and crates that he’d brought from Almiri’s eyrie. Good for a week or two, perhaps, but they needed to fend for themselves.
We need to fend for ourselves, he reminded himself. He was one of them now. For better or for worse, he wasn’t sure. But he had to start somewhere. He was already slowly turning Nthandra. Others would follow.
“Since none of these things are going to make themselves, we’re going to steal them. The Usurper owns a tiny eyrie on the edge of the Spur. Drotan’s Top. Understand this, though. There’s to be no burning, no slaughter unless there has to be.”
Semian pursed his lips and clenched his toes at that. No burning?
“We take what we want and we leave everyone alive when we go. We take their dragons, their weapons, their food, their potions, everything we can possibly use, but we do not take lives. Let the Usurper’s servants live to tell of us. Let them spread fear.”
That, at least, Semian could agree with. The Great Flame was coming. Let them tell of us indeed.
Hyrkallan had already turned his back, heading toward the monster B’thannan. Semian knew of Hyrkallan’s beast—every rider in the north had probably heard of it—but he’d never seen it until they’d reached King Valgar’s eyrie; then Deremis had come for his secret meeting with the queen, pledging Hyrkallan’s support to her if she would pledge hers to him, and B’thannan’s landing had shaken Evenspire to its roots. B’thannan was enormous, by far and away the biggest war-dragon Semian had ever seen, almost as long as a hunter but three times as massive. He felt small enough as it was, surrounded by a score of dragons that could crush him with a careless step.
A pity it’s not white. The war-dragon he’d stolen from Speaker Zafir’s riders wasn’t white either. There weren’t any white dragons. Queen Shezira had managed to breed one as a present for the viper Jehal but somehow it had broken free. Eventually the Embers had killed it by poisoning themselves and then being eaten. Or at least that was what people believed. The white dragon flies free. The flames of destruction have come, and out of the flame, the red rider shall be born. It will come to me, somehow. Vengeance. And I will ride it.
Any dragon was better than no dragon for now. He and Jostan had left Valgar’s eyrie without mounts of their own and fate or destiny or perhaps sheer blind luck had provided for them. Fate would provide again, when it was ready. He mounted his stolen dragon and launched into the air with the rest of the Red Riders. This one would be called Vengeance too.
Hyrkallan led them straight to Drotan’s Top. They shot between the white-capped mountains of the Worldspine, among sharp narrow valleys filled with trees until they reached the Silver River, a dozen dazzling threads of water knotted and twisted together and gleaming in the sun. Hyrkallan led them low, the wind wet with spray thrown up by the sheer force of B’thannan’s wings, screaming past Semian’s face. As the valley grew wider and the mountains on either side shrank to hills, they began to climb again. In the distance to his right, Semian saw the faint outline of the Great Cliff, the sheer walls of stone that marked the start of the Purple Spur. Hyrkallan changed course now, leaving the river behind to rush on to its doom in the caves of the Silver King’s Tomb. They turned south, straight at the Great Cliff, climbing ever higher until they were a full mile above the ground and the hills of the Blackwind Dales stretched out below like the wrinkled old skin of some ancient desert mystic. Then the Great Cliff rushed to meet them. It ripped away the space below and suddenly they were shooting between jagged peaks of white-capped stone again. Through the neck of the Spur for an hour or more, skimming over thick carpets of trees and racing rushing water until the mountains fell away and so did the rivers, and they emerged on the other side into the Maze. Here they flew lower still, sinking among the narrow pillars and canyons carved from dry barren stone. No trees grew here in the warrens of the Maze, and as they followed the helter-skelter waters from the Spur downward, the air grew dusty and warm. Walls and columns of stone flashed by in streaks of yellows and oranges and reds, punctured now and then by black pits of shadow. Piece by piece, the stone walls fell away, first one layer, then another, then faster and faster in a blur until the whole landscape collapsed away and spat them and the waters below into the abyss that was the Gliding Dragon Gorge, the great rent in the land torn by the mighty Fury River below. They crossed the gorge, using it as cover, climbing steadily, creeping up to the cliffs on the other side so low that the tails and talons of their dragons scraped the stone. When they emerged on the other side, there it was. Drotan’s Top, perched on a long flat hilltop overlooking the fringes of the gorge. Half a day of flight and then to war with no warning. That was the dragon-rider’s way and it filled Semian with joy.
True to his word, Hyrkallan didn’t burn it. Instead he brought the riders in to land. A small company of Adamantine Guardsmen saw what was coming and fled the landing fields for the sanctuary of Hyram’s Tor, and that was that. No blood shed. Not even a sword drawn. Semian was disappointed and vaguely disgusted. The Adamantine Guard was supposed to fight to the last man to defend the speaker and the realms. The last ones he’d met, the Embers in the alchemists’ redoubt, had understood that. They’d understood that even throwing yourself naked into a dragon’s maw could be a victory.
He was still standing at the edge of the landing fields, scowling to himself, when a hand slapped him on the shoulder.
“Drotan’s Top is ours. Not bad for your first day, eh?” Semian turned around. The hand belonged to an older rider. One with a very slightly familiar face, but no name to go with it.
“I know you,” said Semian slowly.
> “GarHannas.” The rider bowed. “I served Speaker Hyram before he died. I know you too. Semian. You were at Princess Jaslyn’s side at the alchemists’ redoubt. You missed the Night of the Knives, but they say you nearly died anyway.”
“But not quite. I was reborn.”
“Lucky for you!” GarHannas grinned. He obviously had no idea what Semian was talking about. “There are a couple of riders and a score of the Adamantine Guard who’ve locked themselves in Hyram’s Tor. They’re trapped and they know it. The alchemist is in there as well. Everyone else is busy taking everything we can carry from the landing fields, but Hyrkallan’s gone to get the guard out of the Tor. We need the alchemist, or at least his help, and Hyrkallan doesn’t want to burn them.” He grinned again. “They don’t know that, of course. We’ll threaten them with fire and offer them their lives if they surrender. Want to hear the old man? He’s good for this sort of thing.”
Semian shook his head, absently staring up at the tower. Slowly he dropped to one knee. “Praise to the Great Flame.” He closed his eyes and murmured a short prayer. He felt GarHannas shift uncomfortably beside him. “Let the riders standing watch over our captives hear Hyrkallan speak. I will take their duty.”
GarHannas nodded. He started to move away, but Semian shot back to his feet and put a warning hand on the other knight’s shoulder.
“I’ll give you some words for the soldiers you’ve trapped, though,” he said. “You can tell them that those who are devout will be spared. Tell them that those who aren’t will be given the choice: turn their backs on the Usurper and serve the Great Flame or they burn.”
“That’s not what—”
Semian ignored him and left GarHannas standing there. He waved to Jostan and Nthandra, calling them over. He walked to where the Scales and the other men who were now their prisoners sat, sullen, scared or simply bemused. “This lot!” He pointed at the Scales. “These ones serve the Order and the Order serves the Great Flame. They have nothing to do with our fight. Let them go. As for the rest . . .” He scanned the prisoners. They were all little people. Huntsmen and craftsmen and laborers and the like. No one of any consequence.