The adamantine palace

by Stephen Deas

  'Grand Master. A pleasure to see you.' Bellepheros jumped. He looked around. Queen Shezira was standing next to him, along with a lady knight he vaguely knew. Her knight-marshal, perhaps?

  He bowed, deeply. 'Your Holiness.'

  'How are you finding the entertainment?'

  'Most impressive, Your Holiness.' Of all the people here, Shezira was the one he least wanted to talk to. She would be the next speaker, and thus the one to whom the order answered, generally, history had taught that grand masters should keep a very low profile when a new speaker was imminent.

  'You seemed very sure of yourself when you reported to Prince Jehal. Up to a point. And then very unsure of yourself.'

  He bowed again. 'I am confident, Your Holiness, that no sabotage occurred in Prince Jehal's eyrie. What happened after Queen Aliphera left Clifftop, I cannot say.'

  'Well I'm quite sure that wasn't the answer Prince Jehal wanted to hear. Especially that nonsense at the end. Nor will it be what Speaker Hyram wants to hear, for that matter.'

  Bellepheros blinked. 'I do not understand, Your Holiness.'

  'Oh come, Grand Master. Prince Jehal wishes you to report that Queen Aliphera's death was an accident. Speaker Hyram wishes to hear that it was murder, preferably with Jehal found crouched over her bloody corpse with the knife still in his hand. You give us neither.'

  A chill ran down Bellepheros's spine. Even in his most informal reports he would never have been so direct. For the second time in as many hours he felt himself thoroughly cornered. He bowed once more. 'I give you the truth as well as I can uncover it, Your Holiness.'

  Shezira nodded, already losing interest. 'And let us make up our own minds, which we would have done anyway. I'm sure you tried your best, Grand Master.'

  Her tone was patronising, and Bellepheros had already taken a few cups of wine. 'I have a concern, Your Holiness, that I must share with you,' he said. There. The words were out. No going back now.

  'And what is that, Grand Master?'

  'I understand that one of your dragons is missing.'

  It took a moment for Queen Shezira to realise that they weren't talking about Queen Aliphera any more. Bellepheros savoured it. She gave a very slight nod. 'Yes. That is true.'

  'Your Holiness, you are a queen of a dragon realm, and so you know the true purpose of our order. We are in every eyrie. We keep meticulous records of the dragon bloodlines and mix the potions needed to make them grow into their different breeds. However, our most vital and most secret task concerning the dragons is somewhat different. Your Holiness, I do not concern myself with the politics of the realms, but from what I hear it is by no means clear that your dragon has found its way into another eyrie. I hear her keeper has not been found.'

  'Yes,' said Shezira sourly. 'One of yours.'

  'Your Holiness, the dragon-lords may play their games, but we alchemists are charged with the ancient duty of keeping the dragons in check. Even one dragon allowed to reach its full potential is a threat to every king and queen in the realm. I will be obliged to inform the speaker.'

  'Grand Master, what is your point? If the dragon has gone rogue, I have eyries filled with many scores more with which to hunt it down. Across the realms there are more than seventeen hundred, as you very well know. How is one wild dragon a threat to the realms?'

  Bellepheros bowed yet again. 'My point, Your Holiness, is that my order is at your disposal to help in any way that it can, and that I shall return shortly to the Adamantine Palace, but as I am bound to travel by land, there will be some delay before I arrive.'

  Queen Shezira nodded. 'Your offer is noted, Grand Master. I assure you, I am already conducting a quite thorough search. I will find my white, and when I do – and I find who took her there will be blood. Good day.'

  The queen moved away. Bellepheros wiped his brow. After that, he decided, he might as well start thinking about who his successor should be. It took him a few seconds to realise that the queen's knight-marshal hadn't followed her mistress away. She leaned into him and spoke quietly in his ear.

  'Grand Master. A private word, if you please?'

  He left Furymouth the following morning, in a carriage supplied by Prince Jehal and escorted by a company of soldiers. The other alchemists at Clifftop would just have to find their own way back to the Adamantine Palace. Tucked under his seat, carefully packed in straw, was a spherical bottle made of glass, stoppered and sealed with wax. It fitted nicely into the palm of his hand, and from the way its weight shifted, was filled with some sort of liquid. A very heavy liquid. Unlike the knight-marshal, Bellepheros knew exactly what it was. What he didn't know was where it had come from, or how several such bottles would have found their way into the possession of one such as Shezira's knight-marshal. It would be a long journey home, though, with plenty of time to ponder and plenty of inns with wine to help him think.

  He didn't get the chance. Two days out of Furymouth his carriage was stopped. Masked men with knives tore open the door. Blood glistened on their blades. He could see bodies on the ground outside. He had time to open his mouth, but before he could shout, a hand clamped over his face.

  18

  The Price

  Twice a day the door to their hut opened and half a dozen Outsiders armed with spears and knives would be clustered outside. One of them would very gingerly place a bucket of water on the floor, together with some dried fish and half-rotten fruit. On the first day, Sollos told them that they had six days before the dragon-riders came. Every morning he reminded them that they had one fewer day to let him go. It took until he was down to two before the Outsiders made up their minds. In the middle of the day the door opened again, and this time there were nearly a score of them. One stepped forward, a heavyset man in his middle years with a thick curly black beard.

  'What do you want?'

  'Some food that doesn't give me the runs would be nice,' muttered Kemir. Sollos shushed him.

  'First of all to thank you for your hospitality.' Sollos smiled. 'Second, I'd like my bow and my knives and my armour back. Then I'd like to know about the white dragon.'

  'And what then?'

  'We find the dragon, we go away and leave you in peace.'

  'We've seen dragons every day since you came.' Curly Beard looked tired. He was frightened.

  'We're all looking for the white dragon. You weren't very friendly when they came by, so they sent us instead. When they find what they want, they'll go away. They don't fly for the King of the Crags and neither do we.'

  Kemir spat. 'Doesn't mean they won't burn you out if they don't find what they want.'

  'What if we help you find the white dragon. What's in it for us?'

  'Not being burned?'

  Sollos glared at his partner. 'What do you want?'

  'Money.' Curly Beard set his face hard. 'A hundred gold dragons.'

  'So you've seen one then.'

  Curly Beard nodded. 'Could be. Could be we know of someone who's seen one.'

  'All right. A hundred gold dragons. That had better buy me a lot of help.' Sollos could feel Kemir behind him, almost unable to contain himself.

  'Up front.'

  Sollos snorted. 'You must think I'm an idiot.'

  'There's been a white dragon seen a few times in these valleys. Not here but somewhere else. I can take you to where they've seen it. And that's all you're getting until I see gold.'

  'If you're lying, you know you're going to get burned.'

  'Could be that might be coming anyway. So I'll take the gold first if you please.'

  Sollos shrugged. 'All right. Not my gold anyway.'

  Ten minutes later they were free. Another half an hour and they were in a boat, rowing across the lake with Curly Beard and two of his friends. They were a bedraggled lot, these Outsiders, thought Sollos. Their clothes were ragged and crude, a mixture of animal pelts and cheap cloth that had gone rotten in the permanent damp. Everything they had looked worn and well used, the handles of their knives shiny and smooth and
moulded to the shapes of their hands. A few had belts, the leather hard and cracked, the buckles tarnished and bent. Others made do with string. Most of them, Sollos realised, were scarred or damaged; some were missing fingers, others had whole limbs or even faces that had broken and then healed out of shape. Apparently, life was hard as an Outsider. Harder than he remembered.

  Sollos had been born and raised somewhere out here. He ought to sympathise, and yet he didn't, because he didn't want to. What was the point, when it was all long gone and burned away?

  Curly Beard rowed them to the gravel flats a little way from the settlement, the place where Sollos and Kemir had first landed. They waited for half the morning, patiently standing in the steady rain, until around noon Curly Beard pointed. There was a dragon skimming across the lake towards them. A moment later the three Outsiders were off, fleeing into the safety of the trees. Sollos stood and watched the dragon. He waved.

  'I hope that's one of ours,' muttered Kemir with a glance towards where the Outsiders had gone. 'Now would be a fine time to run into whoever started all this.'

  The dragon circled over them once, close enough that Sollos could recognise it, and then landed, the wind from its wings spraying a cloud of gravel into the air. Rider Semian beckoned them over. He didn't bother to dismount.

  'I almost gave up on you,' he shouted through the rain. The dragon, Sollos saw, was steaming very slightly.

  'Well we're very glad you didn't,' shouted Sollos back. Belatedly, he remembered to bow.

  'And? What news?'

  'They claim to have seen her. They claim they know where she is.'

  'Where?'

  'Not here, but they claim they can take us to her.' Sollos hesitated. 'They want gold.'

  'How much?'

  'Two hundred dragons.'

  Rider Semian didn't flinch, but his dragon suddenly snorted and snapped at Sollos, who fell over in his haste to get out of the way. The dragon glared at him.

  'You ask a lot, sell-sword.'

  'I don't ask for anything, Rider,' yelled Sollos, picking himself up and warily watching the dragon. 'That's the price the people who live here are asking.'

  'Tell them no.'

  'Then you'll never find the queen's dragon, Rider Semian.'

  The dragon bared its teeth. Its tail was up in the air, flexing and flicking back and forth like a whip. Among their own kind, dragons usually lashed out with their tails when they were annoyed. It was meant as a warning. But when they did it to humans… Sollos closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

  'Tomorrow,' shouted Semian. 'Meet me back here tomorrow.' Abruptly, the dragon turned and began to run, launching itself across the flats. The stones hissed and danced with each colossal stride, and Sollos fancied he could see the whole lake ripple. Then the monster unfurled its wings and with a clap of thunder hurled itself into the air and was away. He watched it go. He could actually see it rise through the air with each beat of its wings, he realised, and then dip again between them.

  'You should have asked for a thousand,' said Kemir, suddenly standing beside him.

  'Apparently so.' Sollos shrugged. 'I suppose it's not his money either.'

  19

  The Taiytakei

  Any other dragon-lord, mused Jehal, wouldn't have these sorts of problems. Any other dragon-lord would simply have gone to their eyrie, looked at the dragons and then gone back to their palace again. Any other dragon-lord would have built their eyrie conveniently close to their palace. He, though, had to ride out to a field a little way outside the city to look at Queen Shezira's dragons. Not that he minded all that much, but the fact that he had to go meant that everyone else had to go too, and that meant shuffling everyone into carriages. What should have been a twenty-minute jaunt on the back of a horse had taken them an hour and a half, and now the whole wedding was running late. Knowing that the dragon he wanted wasn't going to be here didn't help either.

  He tried to keep himself amused by mentally undressing his guests. Zafir's little sister Princess Zara-Kiam was going to be worth undressing for real quite soon, he decided. There were a few cousins and other minor relatives out there who might be worth some attention too: Queen Fyon's youngest, Princess Lilytha, for example, if her brother Prince Tyrin hadn't got to her first. He narrowed his eyes, looking at them standing next to each other, trying to decide.

  He sighed. Everyone had been telling him how weddings were supposed to be wonderful days filled with joy and happiness, but looking around him he couldn't see much sign of either. His guests were grumbling and shifting on their feet, already overstuffed with a hundred pointless delicacies. Queen Shezira looked tense. She hadn't actually told him that the white wasn't here, so there was always the chance that no one else had told him either. Jehal had already decided to have some fun with that. Queen Zafir had a permanent angry scowl etched into her face. For himself, he couldn't shake the feeling that the whole exercise was a waste of time. The only person who seemed to be enjoying herself was Princess Lystra.

  They sat next to each other on their wedding thrones, shaded by a makeshift awning while everyone else burned up in the summer sun. If he wanted to, he could have reached out and taken his bride's hand, but apparently he wasn't supposed to do that yet. As best he could tell, they were in some sort of interim state between being not married and being married. They'd had a dawn ritual and then a morning feast. After that came the giving of gifts, and then everyone kicked their heels until the evening. There was another feast, a dusk ritual, then the whole humiliating bit about being drugged and stripped naked in front of all the wedding guests. What was that? Revenge for having to stand around and be bored all day?

  Finally, after the consummation, once the whole thing was over, they never had to look at each other again, if that was what they wanted. Maybe it was supposed to be an ordeal. A warning of things to come? A test of strength?

  Someone was parading a pair of horses in front of him. Strictly speaking, they were parading them in front of King Tyan, who sat in his own throne next to Jehal's, drooling and snoring. He was still king after all. Jehal smiled. They were wonderful beasts, pure white, with gold and silver livery. A stallion and a mare. Jehal stifled a yawn.

  'Very nice,' he said. 'They will be the most beautiful creatures in my stables. Tell…' Oh, now this was going to be a problem. He'd let his mind wander so far that he hadn't heard who they were from, and now he was going to look stupid and insult someone all at once. 'I am in awe. Bring them closer.' He glanced around in search of helpful clues. Horses. Who likes horses? People always give the sort of gift they'd like to receive.

  'King Valgar is too kind,' said Princess Lystra quietly. For the first time since the wedding had begun she wasn't smiling. 'He meant them to go with the dragon. To take us to and from your eyrie.'

  So she assumes I know. She doesn't know that her mother hasn't told me. He could have some fun with that too.

  'King Valgar is too kind indeed.' He smiled, waving the horses away. Valgar wasn't here so there was no need to waste any time on flattering his presents. 'Let King Valgar know that they are the most beautiful horses in my realm, and that Princess Lystra and I shall ride them to and from Clifftop for a year, as a mark of our respect for his generosity.' He leaned towards Princess Lystra. 'Is the dragon as pure?'

  She turned to him, startled, with a wonderful look of horror. 'You don't know?'

  'What don't I know?' He smiled again, all innocence, as various shades of panic flew across her face.

  Lystra turned towards her mother, sat on the other side of her, and started whispering.

  Jehal tapped Lystra on the back of the hand. 'Sorry, did you mean the theft of your white dragon? I know about that. Terrible business. I'm sure it doesn't matter.' She was shaking, completely flustered, like a rabbit caught by a farmer's lantern. He kept his smile in place, warm and reassuring, glancing at her from time to time, making sure she caught his eye. Terrible business? That was putting it mildly. I'm sure it doesn'
t matter? Of course it bloody mattered. At the very least everyone who had anything to do with the theft was going to die. With a bit of luck, open warfare might break out. There would be trials and tribunals in the Adamantine Palace. It was quite easy to imagine an entire realm falling. Now that would be fun.

  Somehow, though, tormenting Princess Lystra wasn't as satisfying as it ought to have been. She still looked pale and worried when her mother's dragons were finally brought down to the field and Jehal stood up to inspect them. He picked one quickly, said something nice about it and waved the rest away. He'd had his bride squirming in her seat, and instead of revelling in her discomfort, he found he felt… well, vaguely guilty.

  And that wasn't right. That wasn't how it was supposed to be at all.

  Maybe it was the heat. He sighed, stood up and made a pretty speech about how this was the start of a new era, and how proud he was to be joined to such a great clan and yet humbled too. When he was done, he hoped that at least a few of his guests had paid more attention to it than he had.

  Riding back towards the palace didn't help either. Having a wife had sounded like a simple enough business, and it had all been arranged so long ago that he'd never thought to question it. However, meeting her in the flesh was somehow… disconcerting. She would be his queen one day, perhaps sooner rather than later. Which was fine, as long as she was the right queen. A simple queen with a demented obsession for needlework or embroidery or something like that, who stayed in her tower all day, had no interest in the world around her and paused only from her handicrafts to pop out a steady stream of heirs, preferably male ones. That was the sort of queen he needed.