The King of the Crags

by Stephen Deas

  As they rushed toward her, she recognized them. Two of them at least. Dragons that she’d lost to the Red Riders only weeks ago. They could only be here for her. As they flew closer, she closed her eyes. They were huge. She was going to die in agony and fire . . . No! No no no!

  The fire didn’t come. When she opened her eyes again, the dragons were flying past right in front of her, nose to tail, their necks straining forward, their immense wings so wide and so close that they almost touched the stone at her feet. She still couldn’t move, but then Sirion grabbed her and hurled her to the ground away from the edge an instant before the wind of the dragons’ passing picked them both up and flung them around like a pair of dolls. The dragons dived over the falls toward the City of Dragons and the palace below. Zafir rose shakily to her feet and watched them go. She still could hardly move. She touched a finger to her brow where the skin was beginning to sting. She was bleeding. A scratch, that was all. If they’d seen me. If they’d known I was here . . .

  “You’re shaking, Your Holiness. You’re very pale.” King Sirion touched her shoulder lightly, awkwardly. She flinched away, ignored him, frantically waving her arms at her own riders already swooping out of the sky. Within seconds, a hunter thundered awkwardly in to land nearby. Zafir ran, screamed at the rider to move aside and hauled herself up onto the dragon’s back. Sirion was forgotten. Never mind that he might have saved her life only a moment ago—for all she knew or cared, the hunter might have crushed him or swept him over the cliff and into the river below. Before she’d even strapped herself into the rider’s harness, she commanded the dragon to fly. What mattered was her palace.

  The dragon felt her need and threw itself over the edge of the Diamond Cascade, soaring out into the immensity of the void below, into the skies above the City of Dragons.

  Streaks of flame flashed across the ground far below. What mattered was her palace, and her palace was burning.

  13

  JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE

  Rider Semian shot out of the mouth of the Diamond Cascade and into the void beyond. Vengeance, the dragon he’d stolen from the Usurper, tucked in his wings and fell out of the sky like a stone toward the city below. The wind roared and screamed in Semian’s ears and tore at his clothes. The wound in his leg hurt; there was a fever in his blood and when he closed his eyes all he saw was fire and endless burning plains. He whispered a prayer to the Great Flame. Drotan’s Top and three other eyries ringed the speaker’s domain and a fifth stood close to her palace gates. Today they would all burn. Let the kings and queens of the realms answer the speaker’s call and find only ash and embers. The Red Riders, his riders, had dispersed. They’d flown north and south and east to strike at all the speaker’s eyries at once. And while they do, I will find the heart and cut it out. Hyrkallan, when you hear of our deed, I wish you could know how I pitied you as I sent you away.

  He opened his eyes. The City of Dragons had grown enormous. Vengeance stretched his wings and opened his mouth wide. Scorching winds blasted Semian’s face even through his visor; the glorious smell of scorched air filled his nose and the city burned. He could feel the raw strength and power of Vengeance ripple through him and he knew the dragon felt the same. They were as one, burning bright with righteous fury. See how your ruler protects you. See how powerless she is? Three or four dragons were in pursuit of him now, guardians loitering up on the edge of the Purple Spur, but they were behind him. Too far away to reach him before he himself reached the palace. Fate and destiny had flown here with him and slipped him between the Usurper’s patrols. They were his shield and his armor and they would protect him from the scorpions of the Adamantine Men too, he was sure. As the walls of the palace came up to meet them, Shanzir and Nthandra peeled away to either side, striking at the eyrie and the barracks around it. He alone would have the glory. Vengeance smashed at the walls with his tail as they crossed, lashed a scar of cracked stone into the greens and blues of the Tower of Water and then let loose, spraying fire in all directions, cleansing the walls, the earth, the towers, everything within his reach. Men and women and horses all screamed and burned; servants and beasts, kings and lords, all were the same when they were made into ash.

  Something hit Vengeance and the dragon shuddered and gave an angry snort. From the walls, soldiers were firing at him, shooting their handful of scorpions. In front of him, a company of Adamantine Men had formed up with their shields, turning the fire away. Vengeance lashed them with his tail as he flew overhead, but as Semian raced toward the Tower of Air and the Speaker’s Tower beyond, more and more Guardsmen emerged. A second scorpion bolt hit Vengeance, and then a third. The dragon shrieked and veered, straining to turn and strike back. Only Semian’s iron desire held him in check.

  There! There in front of him were the open doors to the great Chamber of Audience. If the speaker was anywhere, she should be there. Guards were closing in on them though, and now hundreds of soldiers were spilling onto the walls and into the yards, raising their shields, dragging their scorpions.

  It wasn’t to be. Another scorpion struck Vengeance in the back of the shoulders, barely a yard away from where Semian sat, and this time the dragon would not be denied. Flames washed across the soldiers closing the door and then Vengeance pivoted his head and sprayed the walls, veering toward them. A few scorpion bolts would never take a dragon out of the air but they still hurt, and by the time Semian had Vengeance under control again, the moment was gone. The doors flashed past, still half open, inviting him in, mocking him. With a howl of rage he urged Vengeance onward, upward. He pulled away from the palace, jaw clenched with frustration, and finally glanced over his shoulder to see how many of the speaker’s dragons were chasing him.

  And saw something wonderful. A miracle of the Great Flame. No dragons were after him; they were all converging on another. For a moment he thought it might be Shanzir, but no. Nthandra. Nthandra of the Vale had set fire to the speaker’s eyrie as he’d told her, but now, instead of flying away, she’d turned back into the palace. Semian felt a strange pang of jealousy and joy. He saw her dragon almost crash into the doors he’d so narrowly missed, landing among the soldiers, crushing and scattering them. He saw its head lunge through the doors, smashing them to splinters, and then he saw fire fill the tower, exploding out of every door and window.

  And he saw her die, shattered in her harness by three scorpion bolts at once and burned by her own fire, erupting back out of the tower. He closed his eyes and prayed for her, offering her soul to the oblivion of the Great Flame. The first martyr in two hundred years. Saint Nthandra of the Vale.

  He flew south and then west along the Fury Gorge. No one came after him. Kithyr had promised him that he would be invisible, and so it seemed he was.

  His head sang for the rest of that day, even as the other Red Riders returned with failure after failure. Samir’s Crossing north of the Purple Spur was filled with the speaker’s dragons and they’d turned away. Drotan’s Top—they’d found to their cost—had been much the same, and four riders and their dragons were lost. But none of that mattered, and when he told them what Nthandra of the Vale had done, the other riders all seemed to understand. So they should. The riders not fit to follow the Flame had returned to the north, or else, like poor Jostan, gone some other way, willing or not. The ones that were left were the ones that would serve the Flame to their deaths.

  The speaker is dead! The Usurper is slain, and by my command! Was that too much to think, too much to hope? When he turned to his tent as the sun sank below the hills, he lay in his bed and stared into the emptiness and prayed. Let her be gone. Let the victory be mine. Let the standard of the Great Flame burn across the realms! He closed his eyes and tried to think of the world as he would make it. Where the dragon-priests wielded the power that had once been theirs, with Semian at their head, the Knight of Fire of myth and legend. Justice and Vengeance. The visions filled his head as he drifted away.

  You cannot rest, whispered the Flame as he slept. You
cannot rest. All of it must burn. He tossed and turned in restless dreams and the sun was already high in the sky when he awoke. He’d missed dawn by hours. In his tent beside him sat the blood-mage, Kithyr.

  “You did well, prophet,” said the mage solemnly. He laid cool fingers on Semian’s brow.

  Semian gripped Kithyr’s hand. “It’s just the start. Just the beginning. We have to . . .” He tried to rise but Kithyr forced him to be still.

  “You have a fever again. I have told the others to rest for today and so will you.”

  Semian lay back on his bed. “You were right. Everything happened as you promised us it would. No one saw us until we reached the palace. The Adamantine Men were slow and half asleep. It was as though they didn’t see us until we were already past them.”

  Kithyr nodded. “Blood has power.”

  Blood-magic was wrong. Wicked and evil. Or at least so he’d always thought. Before the Great Flame had spoken to him, Semian wouldn’t have suffered a blood-mage to live. Queen Shezira had outlawed them, as had many other kings. He’d even seen blood-magic once, wielded by an alchemist. Watching had made him queasy and uncomfortable. Yet that alchemist had been a servant of the Order, and the Order in its own way served the Great Flame. He knew better now. Kithyr had shown him. The men who’d first tamed the dragons, the very first alchemists, they had been blood-mages too. Blood and fire ran together.

  “Let me dress your wound again.” Kithyr helped him to sit up and started to unwrap the bandages on Semian’s leg. Semian almost pushed him away but relented at the last moment. The magician, it seemed, knew a great deal about dressing wounds.

  “It’s painful this morning.”

  The mage nodded. “It is festering and needs to bleed. I will suck out the corruption and dress it again.”

  Semian rubbed his eyes. He felt weary and lethargic. “It’s getting worse. I don’t even remember how I got it.”

  “It is not a deep wound but it is long and ragged and the flesh is torn. It was a sell-sword’s blade that cut you—a fool, coming to a fight with a dull edge on his blade.”

  “I don’t remember it.”

  “You fought with fury. We won. They died. Yours was the only wound we took. What else is there to remember?”

  Semian stretched his shoulders and fought against the growing fuzz in his head. Kithyr had the dressings open now. His leg throbbed and the air smelled rotten. “A man should remember every wound and the person who gives it to him. You never know which one might kill you.”

  Kithyr snorted. “The sell-swords are all dead and I doubt this wound will be your last.”

  “Are you sure? I can smell the air. The wound has gone bad.”

  “It’s been going bad for some time, Rider, but it will not kill you. While I am with you, no wound will kill you. Now hold your tongue. I have to cut the corruption away. This is going to hurt.”

  “I know. I am not afraid of the pain, Blood-Mage.” He closed his eyes. His belly filled with anticipation; the pain, when it came, transcended all his expectations. The world he knew fell away and he found himself engulfed in ice so cold that it burned. He was back in the valley of ash-covered stone, with the crimson dragon that dwarfed even the Worldspine. With the dragon-priest with his pale skin and his white hair and his long bloody robes, holding out the blackened stumps of his hands.

  Yes, said the priest. Yes. It is a start, a beginning, nothing more, but it is good. You have done well.

  He tried to talk to the priest, to ask him what he meant, but even as he opened his mouth the great crimson dragon lifted a wing and slowly blocked out the sun. The sky went dark, the moon turned black and the world followed and Semian’s head filled with the roar of rushing water.

  When he opened his eyes again he was lying on his back, looking up at the roof of his tent. His leg was in agony. Kithyr was bandaging it up.

  “I had a vision,” Semian said.

  “I’m not surprised.” The mage sounded as though he didn’t much care for visions. “You were right. The wound is getting worse. I had to drain a lot a pus out of it. I’ve done the best I can. It will heal now, but you’ll be weak and tired for a while.”

  “The Great Flame will fill me with its strength.”

  “Yes.” Kithyr stood up and nodded. “It will. It will fill us all. You may need to lean on someone to walk for a while. You can still ride though, so all is well.”

  Semian tried to get up, but the pain in his leg simply wouldn’t allow it. “Yes.” He winced. “All is well.”

  “The last of your Red Riders came back in the early light of the morning. They brought better news.”

  “Yes?” The riders he’d sent to the further eyries. “Did they burn?”

  “Yes. They burned. The speaker’s eastern eyries are reduced to ash. Narammed’s Bridge as well.”

  “Great Flame be praised!” Semian sank back to the ground. Those eyries weren’t much more than fields and huts—there probably weren’t even any soldiers there—but none of that mattered. His vision had been true. The kings of the east and the south would come to the speaker’s call. Where they stopped to rest their limbs and feed their mounts they would find nothing but destruction. They would see her weakness.

  He felt dizzy. He closed his eyes again and reached out. The mage took his hand and held it tight.

  “I must leave you soon. You know that, don’t you? The Great Flame calls me to a different destiny.”

  “I understand.”

  “We all serve the Flame in our own ways. I have done what I can for you. Semian, you must listen to the words of the Great Flame. It will speak to you in fire, but also in blood. When blood comes to you, you must heed it.”

  Semian screwed up his face. “I don’t understand.”

  “But you will. I’ll have to bleed you again,” the magician said.

  “If you must, but I cannot stay here. We have struck a blow, Kithyr, and many more must follow. It is a start, a beginning, nothing more.”

  The world was getting hazy and starting to spin. The mage squeezed his hand. “Yes it is. But it is good. You have done well.”

  As Rider Semian slipped away into unconsciousness once more, the blood-mage let his hand fall. He smiled. “You did not light the fires,” he whispered, “but you will fan their flames into an inferno that cannot be extinguished.”

  14

  A PRINCE HAS TO DO WHAT A PRINCE HAS TO DO

  Jehal took a deep breath, sighed, and sat down in the middle of the floor to see whether anyone would even notice. He’d been in Furymouth for two weeks and he was pacing his palace like an animal in a cage.

  Why can’t I be content? The coffers in his treasury were full. His city prospered and his dragons were strong. Cousin Iskan was steering himself comfortably toward a marriage alliance with one of King Silvallan’s brood. Furymouth was easy. A king could put his feet up here, indulge himself and watch the realm largely rule itself. If that wasn’t enough, Lystra was carrying his heir inside her and yet was still as eager and soft to touch as ever. So why can’t I be content? Why can’t I be happy?

  Approaching footsteps stopped behind him. Even from the sound of them, Jehal knew exactly whose they were. His uncle. Meteroa.

  “Are you unwell, Your Highness? Or simply meditating? Please don’t tell me you’ve gone mad. This family has had quite enough of that sort of thing.”

  “No, Eyrie-Master, I am trying not to be restless.”

  “And have traded that for disturbing your subjects with odd behavior?”

  “Zafir is hurling us all toward a war. I’ve been trying not to think about it but it’s not really working. She wasn’t listening to me. I thought it might be better if I wasn’t there to see it happening anymore. No more hammering my head against the stone walls of stupidity that most of the Speaker’s Council seemed to have erected around themselves.” Jeiros was far too clever not to see what was coming but he was powerless to do anything about it. Jehal was fairly sure that the Night Watchman,
Tassan, could see it too. The man was shrewd for a commander of the Adamantine Guard. But the rest of them . . . The rest of them simply refused to see it. He smirked to himself. Maybe that’s because the rest of them haven’t met Princess Jaslyn for long enough. He lazily stood up and turned around. “Not being there, I have discovered, is considerably worse. I lie awake at night and think of a hundred and one things that Zafir might do, and none of them are ever good. I find myself convinced that Zafir will turn everything we achieved to ruin. I ought to go back.” Why, though? Can’t I leave them be? Can’t I let Zafir drown in her own stupidity? He took a deep breath and growled, “I am bored here, Uncle. This realm runs itself too well.”

  Meteroa gave a little bow. “I shall take that as a compliment. But were you not bored when you left the speaker’s palace? Was that not why you came?” He raised an eyebrow but didn’t wait for an answer. “No matter; if you’re bored then this should please you. I have news.”

  Jehal shook himself. Meteroa had a gleam in his eye, one that always meant trouble. “You never bring good news, Eyrie-Master. I’m not sure I should listen to you. Lystra, I’m sure, will have sweeter words than yours.”

  Meteroa sounded bored too, but then he always sounded bored. “Oh, I’d like nothing more than for you to go and spend a few more days closeted away with your queen. Running this realm is so much easier when you’re not around to interfere.”

  “You’re supposed to run my eyries, not my realm, Meteroa. Still, if you wish me to scurry away then by all means tell me I have yet another ambassador from the Taiytakei pleading to speak with me.”

  “They have been a little busy of late.”

  “Haven’t they just.”

  “Always scheming.” Meteroa yawned. “Should I assume now, as a matter of course, that the Taiytakei are to be dealt with by the lord chamberlain or some such minor functionary?”