The adamantine palace

by Stephen Deas

  She wondered briefly whether any of what she'd seen between Jehal and Hyram had been real, whether it had all been an elaborate charade designed for that one moment of treachery. Hard to believe, but whenever Hyram was around, everything always came back to King Antros and his unfortunate demise. Was that what was behind this? Was that why he'd betrayed the pact between their clans?

  In the endless hours that followed, Queen Shezira let nothing show. Nastria wanted to take the queen and whisper in her ear: It can be undone. Zafir is named, but she's not crowned! Until High Priest Aruch hands her the Adamantine Spear in the Glass Cathedral in front of the full assembly of dragon-knights, it can be undone. But there was never a chance; they were never alone. So she watched Prince Jehal and she watched Queen Zafir. There were games and entertainments, a display of courage and skill from the Adamantine Guard, tournaments of horsemanship for the lesser knights and of flying skills for the dragon-riders. Queen Zafir watched them with the same blank mask she'd worn in the Hall of Speakers. Jehal, on the other hand, was animated, excited, intoxicated with his victory. The two of them never looked at each other. Not once.

  Jaslyn. Princess Jaslyn had the key. When she came back from the alchemists with the flask of liquid silver. With damning words, signed and sealed by the master alchemists of the redoubt, naming it as poison. One of Jehal's knights had gone with Tiachas. She would find him and bring him back for Master Kithyr, and then they'd uncover the true depths of Jehal's villainy. The queen would have to believe her, and then so would all the rest of them.

  And then she saw Jehal pass close to Queen Zafir and whisper something in her ear. For a moment Zafir's mask cracked, and something electric flashed in her eyes. It lasted an instant, and whatever Jehal said could only have been a word. But Nastria wasn't watching his mouth, she was watching his hands; and for that instant, in the press of knights and lords, Jehal's hand had alighted on Queen Zafir's thigh and stayed there for a blink of an eye longer than it should. And in that touch Nastria saw it all, and understood that Hyram was the biggest victim of all.

  She grinned. She had four more days before the ceremony in the Glass Cathedral. Quite long enough. Still smiling, she set herself to following Prince Jehal.

  56

  The Caves

  Dawn at the bottom of the ravine came late, and when it came, rained fire. Jaslyn stood in stupefied disbelief as the redoubt erupted around her. She glimpsed two dragons, a near-black and a perfect white, her perfect white, and then Rider Semian threw her to the ground and lay on top of her as the very air burst into flames. All she could think of was the white dragon, and how long she'd been looking for it, then a blinding heat seared her face. Her dragonscale armour kept her alive, and when she opened her eyes again, she could still see. She could see the two dragons burning down the alchemists' eyrie. Swallowing the three other dragons there in clouds of fire.

  Silence!

  She wanted to run, to hurl herself between them and her precious Silence, for what good it would have done. Rider Semian, though, was already dragging her back.

  'The caves,' she heard herself shout. 'We have to get to the caves!' She glanced back as she ran. Silence was still there, shielding his head with his wings, but otherwise immobile. While the attackers stayed in the air, that was all a trained dragon would do, and so she willed them down, willed them to bring it to teeth and claws and lashing tails. Then Silence would show them.

  The white had a rider. No, two riders. Jaslyn squinted, trying to make them out. She frowned. The dark one didn't seem to have any at all. Which wasn't possible. She must have made a mistake.

  They were coming back. This time Jaslyn didn't need any prompting to throw herself down, and this time she remembered to cover her face. For a second lime fire washed over them. As soon as the dragons had passed, they were up and running again. They reached the nearest cave.

  'Deeper,' she gasped. 'There will be markings on the wall when we're far enough to be safe. And lamps. Alchemist lamps.' They stumbled on into the darkness, groping for the walls. The floor of the cave was uneven and treacherous, but at last they reached a point where the cave narrowed. A little further on Jaslyn felt the marks on the wall that meant they were safe. Groping around on the floor she found a crate filled with lamps, and when she picked one up and gave it a hard shake, it slowly started to glow with a cold white light. She gave it to Semian, then took another for Jostan and another for herself.

  'That was our white,' she said once they'd got their bearings. 'The white for Lystra's wedding. What's it doing here?' She looked expectantly at her two knights, but they were clearly bemused. 'What about the other one? That wasn't one of ours. Whose was it?'

  Still no answer.

  Who was riding them? Who was on the back of the black? I saw two riders on the white but none on the black. Who were they?'

  Semian grunted. 'Last anyone saw the white, she was with her Scales.'

  'A Scales would not attack his own order.' Jaslyn held up her lamp and peered into the darkness. As she did so, the tunnel back to the cave entrance lit up with an orange glow and a blast of hot wind slammed into them. 'We need to go back out. We need to get to Silence and Matanizkan and Levanter. There are three of us and only two of them. We'll kill the riders and force them down.'

  'Your Highness, it would be death to go back out there.' Jostan's voice was flat.

  'Coward!' Jaslyn took an angry step towards him.

  'Rider Jostan has the right of it.' At least Semian had the grace to avert his eyes from her. 'The alchemists have their own defences. If we go out there alone, the dragons will kill us before we can reach our own mounts.'

  'They were attacking Silence!'

  'They were burning the saddles and harnesses so that we couldn't ride them, Your Highness. Silence will not have been harmed. She is too precious.'

  For a long time Jaslyn stared back towards the cave entrance. She could hear noises from outside now, but they seemed very far away, as though the dragons were occupied elsewhere. Surely there was a chance? She tried to think about how far they'd have to run to get from the cave to the eyrie. Even in dragonscale it could be done, couldn't it?

  But not if their saddles and harnesses were destroyed, and Semian was probably right about that. She would have done the same if it had been her riding the attack. She breathed a long sigh and turned around.

  'Very well. We continue. The caves all come together. We'll find the alchemists and the soldiers they keep here.' Prince Jehal has done this. He must know why I'm here. He knows I've found out about his poisons. Well, I'll let the whole world know what he's been doing, and then no one will stand with him. Mother will be made speaker. She'll destroy him, and then Lystra will come home again.

  Walking through the caves was slow and tedious. The lamps gave off barely enough light for them to see their own feet, and though the floor and the walls were smooth, the tunnels sloped steeply up in places. At times the cave became almost a chimney, rising vertically. Metal rungs had been hammered into the rock, but in dragonscale climbing them was almost impossible. Jostan dropped his lamp, which smashed to pieces on the floor. Then they reached a place so narrow that they had to abandon most of their armour. Jaslyn tried not to think how she must look, still in her gauntlets and helm and boots, the rest of her in plain doeskin, a bright red stripe across her face where the flamestrike had penetrated her visor.

  It seemed like they spent half a day wandering through the cave, but at last, stopping to listen, they heard the rush of water somewhere ahead and she knew they were close. A few bends

  later they saw light, the sound of the water grew louder, and the next thing she knew she almost pitched over the edge of a chasm. Semian's hand on her shoulder caught her just in time.

  The alchemists had built their tunnels along the underground river, she knew that much. She got down onto her hands and knees and felt over the lip of the chasm until her fingers found what she was looking for: a ladder secured into the stone. The wat
er was more than a hundred feet below, and the cleft in the rock so narrow that her back sometimes touched the other side as she climbed down the ladder.

  At the bottom a walkway of wooden boards hung over the swirling river. Little niches were cut into the walls, and after ten minutes of walking, the niches had lamps in them, filling the chasm with their ghostly white light. Rider Jostan stopped at the first lit niche and took the lamp.

  'Someone must have come this way to light these,' he said. 'We must be close.' Then he wrinkled his nose. 'Does anyone else smell something?'

  |aslyn and Semian paused and sniffed the air. 'Smoke,' they both said. Jaslyn wasn't sure what to make of that. Smoke meant lire, and her first thought was dragons, but after all this walking they couldn't be so close to the entrances to the caves, could they?

  The second thing she thought of was a kitchen firepit. She was hungry.

  At a narrow point in the chasm, a little further on, they found the alchemists. The lamps stopped, the wooden walkway ended abruptly, and a voice from the darkness above challenged them.

  'Who are you?'

  'Rider Semian, Rider Jostan and Her Highness Princess Jaslyn, in the service of Queen Shezira,' shouted Semian. His voice echoed around the caves.

  'Hold the lamps up so we can see your faces.'

  Jaslyn hoisted her lamp. Her tongue twitched, prepared to lash out at these idiots who were getting in her way, but she stilled it. She was tired, hungry, covered in bruises and scrapes from countless stumbles and falls, and the burn across her face was hurting.

  The smell of smoke was stronger.

  After a second, lights appeared above them and she could see a cluster of armoured soldiers on a wooden platform. They threw down a rope ladder. When Jaslyn reached the top, she saw that they weren't just any soldiers; they were Adamantine Guardsmen.

  'Your Highness.' Their captain bowed. Til send a man ahead of you so there are no more mistakes.' So that everyone knew she was coming, he meant.

  'How many of the Guard are here?' she asked.

  The captain bowed again. 'Before the attack there were close on a hundred of us, Your Highness. Now I'm not so sure.'

  'A hundred? Then why are you here and not outside seeing off these dragons? There were only two of them!'

  'Your Highness, we did fight, but the rider of the white dragon was too clever, and the black dragon…' He took a deep breath. 'Your Highness, there was no rider on the war-dragon. We formed shield walls against their fire, but they didn't stay in the air. The black one came down and smashed our walls. It was killing with tooth and claw and that murderous tail. We lost between a third and a half our number.'

  'I had three dragons out there.'

  The captain shook his head. He didn't say anything, but his eyes said that the dragons were lost to her now.

  'What is it, Captain?'

  The soldier sighed. 'Your Highness, your dragons are with the others now. They're trying to smoke us out.'

  57

  Turning the Knife

  Sometimes Jehal felt he would burst. Sometimes his own cleverness seemed overwhelming. Hyram, Shezira, he'd played them both, and they still didn't even know how.

  He dressed himself carefully. Two layers. On the outside he looked like an Adamantine Guardsman, with his heavy quilted coat and his colours and his helmet. If he took all that off, he might pass, in the dark, as a pot-boy. Pot-boys often ran errands at night. He knew; he'd sent Kazah off on enough of them, after all.

  The moon was setting. He didn't know how late it was, except that he'd waited for more than half the night, and if he waited much longer he wouldn't have time to do what he wanted to do and be back before dawn.

  He wrapped the white silk across his eyes for one last time and looked at Zafir, sleeping, through the tiny ruby eyes of his Taiytakei dragon. She was alone. Good enough.

  No. He stared at her and then slowly undressed again. Too dangerous. Not until after tomorrow. Not until all the other kings and queens have gone. He didn't take the silk off, even once he was naked. Instead, he made the little metal dragon flutter across Zafir's room and settle beside her head. It pecked gently at her lace until she stirred. When she saw the dragon, she smiled.

  'It's the middle of the night.'

  The dragon nodded. As Zafir reached under her pillow for her own strip of silk, Jehal looked over his shoulder. Two ruby eyes glowed at him in the dark.

  'You're naked,' she whispered.

  'I wish you were.'

  'I wish I could touch you.'

  Jehal sighed. 'Soon, lover. When Hyram's out of the way.'

  The smile faded from her face. 'The potions are already losing their effect.'

  'That's not right. There should have been enough to keep him going for another month.'

  'Yes. You gave him too much, so I've been stealing them and watering them down.'

  'What?

  Zafir rolled her eyes. 'I want it done and over, Jehal.'

  Jehal growled. He started to pace the room. 'Why did you do that? He wasn't supposed to get sick again until this was all long done.'

  'You ask me why?' Zafir sounded scornful. 'Do you have any idea how dirty all of this make me feel? Sometimes, after he's finished with me and goes back to his own bed, I make myself sick to force the nausea away.'

  'But now you're speaker – unless you fuck it up in the next couple of days. Isn't that what you wanted?'

  'No, Jehal, it's what you wanted. What I wanted was you. Hyram disgusts me. I have to writhe and groan and call him the king of my bed when all I want to do is break his neck. And he knows something now. I don't know how, but he knows something.' She frowned. 'Something he didn't know this morning. He was asking questions.'

  'Questions?'

  'About you. Someone's put it into his head that we might be lovers, Jehal. Of course he doesn't believe it, but he won't quite let go of it either. He's put men on my door. He was enough of a bore before; now he's intolerable. Get rid of him, my prince. I've had enough. You've got what you wanted, so now give me what I want.'

  Jehal leered at the little ruby eyes that watched him from the corner of his bed. 'I would like nothing more, lover. Nothing more at all. Even thinking about it…' He glanced down. 'Well, you can see for yourself.'

  'Don't you want to be here? Next to me, feeling my skin?'

  'I'd like to feel more than your skin.'

  'Sliding under silken sheets together?'

  'You know I would.'

  'Then come! Now!' She pushed back the covers of her bed, slowly revealing herself to him. When they were at her feet, she lay back and ran one hand slowly from her neck down to the soft hair between her legs. 'Do I have to show you what to do?' she breathed, and then laughed as Jehal's Taiytakei dragon fluttered up into the air and flew erratically around in circles for a better view.

  'We have to wait, lover. Wait until it's safe'

  'No.' Zafir suddenly sat up and snatched Jehal's mechanical dragon out of the air. She blew Jehal a kiss and then everything went dark and muffled.

  'What are you doing?'

  'If I can't have you, you can't have me. I'm done with this. I'm lying your little toy up and putting him under my pillow. Then I'm going to take this silk off my eyes and go back to sleep, and if you want to see any of this again, you get rid of Hyram and your stupid starling-wife. And you do it soon, lover, or I'll do it myself.'

  Jehal waited for a while, but all he heard was Zafir's breathing. After another minute he pulled the silk away from his eyes and took a deep breath. His heart was racing and his head spinning, and he wasn't sure whether it came more from lust or fury.

  Get rid of Hyram. She's too impatient.

  Could it be done? If she does it herself, she'll botch it and everything will be for nothing.

  Could it be done?

  He climbed back into bed and tried to sleep, but his head wouldn't stop. Thoughts blossomed and died faster than he could keep count of them. Could it be done?

  And t
hen it came to him, and he realised that yes, it could; and moments later he was asleep.

  58

  Patience

  Kemir sat slowly whittling a stick into an arrow shaft. Somewhere nearby Nadira was pacing impatiently. Even from here he could feel the dragons' determination. Their focus on what they were doing was frightening.

  When the alchemists had scuttled away into their caves, the dragons had been furious for a while, raging up and down outside, smashing the few buildings that remained intact, flying around the cliff face, searching for other ways in. Then they'd calmed down. Now they'd built enormous pyres at the mouth of each cave, set them alight, and were methodically blowing the smoke down into the tunnels. The frightening bit was that they'd been at it for two days, all five of them, without a pause for breath. Two of the new dragons moved from fire to fire, blowing the smoke. The other three went to and from the woods, tearing down trees to burn. Every few hours Snow soared up out of the valley. Sometimes Kemir and Nadira went with her. They flew above and beyond the ravine, looking for wisps of smoke leaking up through cracks in the ground. Whenever she found one, Snow sealed it shut, and then she'd circle for hours, looking for more. Kemir understood exactly what she was doing. He'd done it himself, except his victims had been rats and rabbits.

  Ash lumbered past, dragging a fifty-foot tree towards the caves with his tail. The dragon looked at him greedily. Kemir, I am hungry. Which one of you has more meat on you?

  'Me.' Kemir didn't bother to look up.

  There's nothing left in the village, Kemir, and we need to eat.

  'Then go and hunt.' When the dragons weren't tending to the fires, they were eating. In the first two days they'd eaten all the animals from the eyrie and the bodies of the men they'd killed. Today they'd gone back to the village at the mouth of the ravine. It seemed to surprise them that they'd found it deserted. The villagers couldn't have got far, but they had clearly had the sense to run and hide, and had even taken most of their animals with them.