by Stephen Deas
'That was pretty good, though.' The short one grinned again. Kemir. 'The white one forgot she had a rider for a moment there. If he'd been any slower jumping clear when she rolled…' He drew his finger across his throat. 'Pity, really. I would have pissed myself. Still, we don't want all our luggage crushed, do we.'
Huros shook himself. Words, he reminded himself. He was going to have words with someone. And these two were very rude. And he was Master Huros, thank you very much. They looked a bit big, though. And armed. He bit his tongue. 'Um. Of course. Although… Excuse me, but where have the rest of the dragons gone, exactly?'
'Their riders have taken them hunting,' said the tall one. Sollos. He gave Huros a pitying look and shook his head.
'For food,' added Kemir. Yes. When the knights came back, Huros would have words about these two as well. What are they even doing here?
'Can't have them getting hungry. Never know, they might set their minds to snacking on alchemists.' The two sell-swords were leering and shaking their heads. Every day Huros spent at least some of his time with ravenous monsters who could swallow him in a blink, kept only in check by their training and by the subtle potions that he dripped into their drinking troughs. These two, though, made him far more nervous that any dragon ever had.
'Um. Clearly. I meant the other ones. The rest of them. Where's the queen?'
The sell-swords looked at each other and shrugged. 'Keep an eye on the Scales,' said Sollos. 'That's what we were told. We keep an eye on the riders too. In case any of them get any bad ideas about stealing the queen's dragons.' He grinned and stuck out his bottom lip. 'Where the rest of them went…' He shrugged. 'Don't know, don't care. A clever man might hazard a guess that they flew off to the Adamantine Palace, just like they were supposed to. But you're an alchemist, so I suppose that must mean you're a clever man, and you'd already thought of that.'
'Well… But why… why didn't we?'
The tall one sniggered. 'I don't know. Maybe some unsettling news came of late. Maybe your queen doesn't trust your speaker further than she could throw him. I hear he's grown quite large of late. Or maybe we don't know shit.' The sell-swords looked at each other again.
'Did anyone say anything about keeping an eye on alchemists?' asked the short one. The tall one shook his head. Sollos, Huros reminded himself again. His name was Sollos. He seemed to be the one in charge.
'I don't think so.'
'No, I didn't think so either.'
Sollos smiled what was possibly the most menacing smile Huros had ever seen. 'We're just sell-swords. We do as we're told and go where we're sent. No one gives us reasons, and we don't ask for them. Why don't you bother that rider over there, once he's finished laying into your Scales. I'm sure he'll know more than us. As long as you don't expect him to help with the luggage. In the meantime do you think you might help us? I believe some of it could be yours.'
The short one nodded sagely. 'It's the stuff at the bottom, I think. It might have been a bit squashed. Crushed even.' He looked at the other sell-sword. 'Come to think of it, did you see something leaking out of one of those boxes?'
His potions!
Huros ran towards the river as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn't need to look back to know that the sell-swords were laughing at him.
A shadow crossed the sun. Huros stopped and looked up. There were dragons in the sky, diving towards the river. Four of them, which was at least one dragon more than there should have been. And they were hunting dragons, not war-dragons, which meant…
The lead dragon opened its mouth, and the river exploded in fire.
7
The Glass Cathedral
Being alone on Mistral's back was one of the nice things about being queen. All the dragon-knights had to share their mounts with the gaggle of courtiers from her palace, the mob of extra hedge-knights that Lady Nastria insisted on bringing and of course the alchemists and the Scales from the eyrie. Not to mention all the luggage.
Shezira sighed. Everything seemed so small from up in the sky. Over her shoulder, to the west of the realms, the volcanic Worldspine mountains ran from the sea to the desert and, as far as Shezira knew, on to the ends of the world. North of Shezira's eyrie, the dragon lands faded into the trackless Deserts of Sand, Stone and Salt. At the opposite end of the realms, King Tyan's capital was built on the shore of the endless Sea of Storms. When she stood among the mountains or in the emptiness of the desert, everything seemed so unimaginably vast. Yet from up here it was all nothing.
'I hear whispers of lands across the seas,' she whispered to Mistral. 'So do you suppose those are King Tyan's secrets, just like the mystery of what lies beyond the Desert of Stone is ours, eh?'
She sighed again and tried to peer around Mistral's enormous head. Somewhere down there…
South of King Valgar's eyrie the peaks of the Purple Spur reached out into the heart of the dragon realms. Nestled in their far foothills, surrounded by the waters of the Mirror Lakes, lay the Adamantine Palace. Shezira had landed among its ramparts often enough; still, even now, the first sight of it, gleaming and sparkling like distant treasure in the summer sun, was enough to make her heart skip a beat whenever she saw it.
There! A twinkle, right at the foot of the last mountain. And sure enough a thrill ran through her, as though she was twenty years younger.
Sparkle it might, she thought to herself. For it was a treasure. It was a prize, a symbol of power. It was a place where marriages were brokered and alliances sealed, where kings and queens plotted their paths to greatness. It was the centre, the beating heart of the realms.
Above all, it would be hers. Soon.
She led her flight to circle around the palace eyrie, waiting for the signal to land. She'd forgotten how immense it all was.
'Do you like it?' She patted Mistral on the neck.
A gout of fire from below told her they were ready. She let Mistral plunge through the air. Like most dragons, he seemed to like that, dropping like a stone from among the clouds. Every time, she was sure he'd misjudge and they'd smash into the stone, but always, just as she screwed up her face and closed her eyes, there would be a clap of thunder as he spread his wings. The force crushed the air out of her lungs and made the ground quiver. She loved it.
As she slid from Mistral's shoulder, Hyram was there to greet her. His shaking, she noticed, had become much worse over the months since she'd last seen him.
'Y-You're going to h-have an accident one d-day.'
It was hard not to grin, but the business of being queen was a serious one, and moments of levity were strictly out of the question. In public at least. She bowed. Hyram held out a trembling hand and Shezira kissed the ring on his middle finger. Her ring, soon.
'Speaker Hyram. It is a delight to be in your presence again.'
He nodded brusquely and waved over some of his attendants. He and Shezira walked in silence away from the eyrie, the attendants following. Mouth-watering words gushed from their lips, describing the pleasures of the mind and of the flesh that awaited her, but Shezira barely heard them. It should be Hyram telling me these things, not his courtiers. Has the sickness become so bad that it s robbing him of his speech? How long before he can t even walk any more?
Carriages were waiting to take them to the palace. Then they had to wait for Jaslyn and Lystra and Lady Nastria and the other riders Shezira had brought with her, and after that there were endless rituals and formalities to observe, and then the obligatory feast to honour guests, none of which interested Shezira at all. At least Hyram had put some effort into it. Tiny alchemical lamps festooned the vast spaces of the Chamber of Audience. There were hundreds of them, thousands, strung out on lines like little glow-worms, hundreds more studding the vaults of the ceiling like stars so that it seemed they were feasting outside under the sky. Statues surrounded them, larger than life, silent guardians carved in granite. All the speakers who had ever ruled the realms, watching over them. Above them, marble dragon heads reached out fro
m the walls, peering down from the shadows, sullen and brooding. Little lamps were hidden in their mouths to make them glow. As they entered, voices hushed to whispers or stopped altogether, awed by the Speaker's hall. Then the feast began, the noise resumed and the hall filled with servants running to and fro with cups of wine, platters of roasted meat, huge pies and colourful glazed pastries twisted into the shapes of dragons and men.
An adequate effort.
She sat or stood next to Hyram for the entire time, yet she couldn't talk to him. At least not about what she wanted. At the end of the feast, when Hyram stood up and wobbled and declared that he was retiring to his bed, Shezira watched him go, then slipped away to follow him. The Hyram she remembered would almost always slip away to bed early after a feast, it was simply a question of whose bed. This time, though, as she watched, he staggered and meandered his way towards the Glass Cathedral. She followed him inside, half expecting to find him locked in an embrace with some dragon-priestess. Instead, she found him prostrate at prayer.
She knelt beside him at the altar and looked up at the face of the dragon glaring down at them. Hyram stank of wine.
'I should thank you for your hospitality,' she said. Hyram didn't seem to hear her. She shivered. Somehow, the Glass Cathedral was always cold.
'This p-place is a lie,' said Hyram suddenly.
'What?'
'The G-Glass Cathedral. It's a lie.' He turned to look at her. His face was flushed and he was either about to burst out laughing or fall about weeping.
'Are you drunk?'
'It makes the t-tremors better. Three bottles of wine and I c-can almost believe I am well again.'
Shezira raised an eyebrow. It was true that Hyram didn't seem to be shaking as badly now, but he couldn't keep his eyes focused on her while he was talking, either. 'Are you sure that's not the wine, lying to you?'
'Does it matter?'
'I suppose not.'
Hyram nodded, as though that was the end of their conversation. He lifted his face towards the stone dragon above them, closed his eyes and sighed. 'Please…'
Shezira shifted uncomfortably. This wasn't the Hyram she remembered at all, and she wasn't quite sure what to do with him, except maybe help him up and show him to his bed.
He started to climb unsteadily to his feet. Instinct made her offer a hand to help him, but he shied away from her as though she'd offered him a snake by mistake.
'I wouldn't even be here i-if my brother… if Antros hadn't died. It should have been Antros who got this place. You and him. H-He was supposed to be the new speaker, not me. That was the arrangement. I-I would have inherited my father's throne, not my cousin Sirion. I would have been a king. I was going to m-marry Aliphera. Did you know that?'
Aliphera? Shezira shook herself. She hadn't the first idea what Hyram was talking about. Did he even know what he was saying? She got up. 'You are drunk. Let us talk in the morning instead.'
'It had to be one of us, but everyone liked A Antros better, didn't they. Except you. And Aliphera.' He looked at her suddenly. 'I never quite worked out whether y-you had Antros killed or whether it really was an accident.'
She slapped him. He staggered back and fell over. 'You are too drunk, Hyram. You forget yourself.'
Hyram wiped his face and picked himself slowly to his feet. 'You liked Aliphera too.'
'I respected her.'
'Well I l-liked her. I was going to marry her once. But then…' His face grew distant. For a moment Shezira thought Hyram was simply going to fall asleep in front of her. 'Things happened. It would have b-been a good match, though. She was always the sensible one from that lot in the south. If I had married her, I'd have to have made her s-speaker after me, though, wouldn't I? And that wasn't the arrangement. S-So I did what I was supposed to do. I will honour the p-pact. That's what you c-came here to ask, isn't it?'
Shezira sighed. 'I came here to pay my respects to the Speaker of the Realms. I did not expect to find myself in a midnight tryst with a drunkard.'
Hyram peered at her. 'Promise m-me something.'
'Promise you what?'
'Promise m-me the truth. Tell me one thing, and I will p-promise that you will have this palace after me.'
'I am not, by habit, a liar, Hyram.'
'When Antros died, w-was it you who cut his harness?'
Shezira clenched her fists. 'Everyone who was there saw what happened. We were hunting snappers, as we often do. When we saw the pack, several of the dragons dived. His went with them. He always wore his harness too loose, and on that day, he wore it much too loose. He fell. He shouldn't have, but he did, and it wasn't the first time either. For some reason, his legbreaker rope was too long. It caught him all right, but he ended up hanging underneath his dragon. He was dragged along the ground and through the trees for about a mile before we could make his mount come to ground. I've never seen a dragon so agitated. Antros was dead when we reached him. It all happened in front of a dozen witnesses. No one pushed him and no one cut his harness.'
Hyram gave her a reproachful look. 'You n-never liked him, though.'
'Oh, I was young and he was well into his middle years!' Shezira stamped her foot. 'He was going to be the next speaker one day. He'd already had one wife and she hadn't given him any children. That's what he wanted me for. Heirs. I was a dutiful wife, Hyram, and he was a dutiful husband. I was in awe of him. I didn't have time to like him.' She sighed. 'It might have been a little different if I'd given him a son, but all I gave him were daughters, one after another. He never even saw Lystra.'
'Hmmm.' Hyram suddenly sat down. He sounded sad. 'No sons for Antros, no s-sons for me. The end of our line.'
'You can still sire sons.'
The speaker looked up at her, shaking. Shezira couldn't tell whether he was laughing or sobbing. 'L-Look at me, woman. Who would have me? Would you have me? You should have done. By rights, you sh-should have. After Antros was gone, you should have married me in his p-place.'
Shezira sighed. 'Yes. But my childbearing ended with Lystra, as you were so keen to point out.' She looked down at Hyram and shook her head. Not the man she remembered. Not the man she wanted to remember. The old Hyram had reminded her of her dead husband. This one… She didn't know whether to despise him or pity him. She turned away. 'Besides, you blamed me for Antros. You still do. Somewhere in your heart, you think I had a hand in it.'
When Hyram spoke again, his words were so quiet that Shezira almost didn't hear them. ' Aliphera f-fell off her dragon too.'
She laughed. 'That's ridiculous.'
'If Antros could f-fall off, why not her?'
'Antros was arrogant. Aliphera was always meticulously careful.'
'I've sent B-Bellepheros to King T-Tyan's eyrie to find out.' He grimaced. 'Yes, th-that's where it happened, and that's where you're g-going. So I think I should w-warn you to have a care. P-People die around the Viper.'
'The Viper?'
'Prince Jehal. H-He's a snake, you see. A p-poisonous snake. A Viper.'
'Then I will be very careful. Some people seem to think he's poisoning his own father. Could that be true, do you think?'
'W-Why don't you find out? Because I'd very much 1-like to know. A g-gift for me.' He stood up and spread out his arms. 'In exchange for all this.'
'It's cold in here,' said Shezira. She was tired, and seeing Hyram like this had killed all the joy that the palace had given her. 'I shall retire. I will think on what you've said.'
'I-I remember the first time I came here. I thought the Glass Cathedral would be a palace of light and colour. But it isn't. It's old, cold dead stone, its skin burned glassy by dragon fire so long ago that no one can even remember how it happened.'
Shezira turned slowly away. 'Go to bed, Hyram. Get some sleep.' She walked away.
Hyram stayed where he was, staring up at the stone face of the dragon altar.
'Th-This place is a lie,' he said again.
8
The Attack
A t
orrent of flames poured from the sky, swallowing the white dragon and her Scales in its fury. The river waters steamed. Stones cracked in the heat. Huros stood stock still. He was fifty, sixty, maybe seventy yards away. A little part of him that wasn't paralysed with fear noted that this was too close. At the last instant he turned his face away, as a wall of hot air and steam seared his skin and slapped him back towards the woods. He caught a glimpse, as he did, of the stranded rider, the one who'd been shouting at the Scales, catapulted into the air, snatched from the ground by the dragon's tail. Of the Scales himself, there was no sign.
'Run! Get under the trees.'
The first of the attacking dragons was wheeling away. As Huros watched, it flipped the rider held in its tail high into the sky. Huros didn't stop to see where the man came down; a second dragon was already diving in. He caught a glimpse of the white, curled up amid the steaming stones, its wings spread over its head like a tent, shielding itself from the fire. When he looked at his hands, the skin on the back of them was bright red. It was already starting to sting. He could smell singed hair. His hair.
The second dragon opened its mouth. Huros didn't stay to watch, but turned and ran, hunching his shoulders, trying to shrink into his coat. Another blast of heat punched him in the back. Where his skin was already burned, his nerves shrieked with agony. Up in the sky, when he spared a glance that way, several more dragons were fighting.
'Come on! Come on!' The two sell-swords were waiting for him at the edge of the trees.
'What? What?' gasped Huros. The pain was coming now. He'd had burns before. Every alchemist had had burns. The backs of his hands, the side of his face and neck. He tried to tell himself they weren't deep, and that was what mattered. The skin would blister and peel, but it would heal…