by Stephen Deas
The second time she began to cough, he did it again, and she realised that a part of her liked the closeness of it. Instead of fighting him off, she found herself wanting to pull him to her, to have someone to hold on to at last, if only for the last hours of her life. Eventually she pushed him away, firmly but gently this time. After that she made sure that she didn't cough any more. In the end she lay beside the river, eyes closed, listlessly splashing her face whenever they started to sting again. The water tasted delicious. She tried to pretend that Jostan wasn't there and think only about that.
'Princess! There is a breeze,' he said at last. 'Do you feel it?'
She lifted her head. He was right. A gentle wind whispered along the river from the depths of the caves.
'What does it mean?' she asked.
'It means that the fires are drawing air out of the caves. It means the dragons are no longer tending them, Your Highness.' He could barely contain himself. 'The Embers have won!'
Jaslyn wanted to cry. Coming down here had been stupidity. Her stupidity. 'I'm sorry, Jostan. I know we should have stayed with the alchemists.' The Embers were dead. She hadn't seen it with her own eyes, but the shouts and the screams and the roars of the dragons had echoed far into the tunnels.
'No, Princess. This means the dragons are gone. The Embers have won.'
'The Embers are dead, Jostan.' Speaking was a trial. Her throat was raw and burning, and every word was a battle against the smoke.
'Yes.' He was smiling, she realised. 'And the dragons ate them.'
She was missing something. She struggled upright. 'Why is that a cause for happiness, Rider Jostan?'
He frowned and peered at her. Twice he opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. At the third attempt words finally came out. 'I'm sorry, Your Highness. I thought you knew.'
'Knew what, Rider?'
'That the Embers…' He wouldn't look at her. 'Highness, the Embers took poison. The bottle that Rider Semian had around his neck, that was poison too. Dragon poison.'
'What are you talking about?' Dragon poison? No such thing. I would have known.
'The Embers, Your Highness, they went out there to die. They knew what awaited them.'
'Poison?' Would she have known?
He bowed his head.
And then it hit her – far, far later than it should have. 'Silence!'
Jostan stared at the ground. 'And Matanizkan and Levanter. I am sorry, Your Highness.'
'Sorry?' For a moment even the smoke didn't matter. Sorry? What use is sorry? My Silence! You've poisoned my Silence. Graceful, elegant, beautiful, perfect-
And trying to kill us, she reminded herself. Or was. No, best not to think about it. Would she ever have sacrificed Silence to save her own life? No. To save Jostan? Semian? No. To save anyone at all? She didn't know.
'I have to see!' She was already getting to her feet.
'No, Your Highness. Wait. It's not safe.'
She screamed at him. 'You've poisoned my Silence! I want to see him.'
'We have to wait.'
'Wait for what?'
'Wait for Rider Semian, Your Highness. He went out to watch. When they're all dead, he will come back and tell us.'
'When they're dead?!' She was rigid with fury. If she'd had claws, she would have torn Jostan to pieces. 'So they're still alive?' She pressed her face up close to his. 'There must be something to take this poison out of them. Poison the white if that's the only way, but not Silence. Not my Silence!' But there wasn't something. The alchemists wouldn't have an antidote. Why would they? And even if they did, it would take hours to walk back to where they were hiding, and hours more to get back to the mouth of the caves.
She turned and ran towards the entrance, heedless of the smoke, but Jostan pulled her down. 'Your Highness!'
'Silence!' She screamed and fought and tore at him. 'My Silence! Don't eat them! Don't!' But Jostan was strong, much too strong, and he wouldn't let her go. She ordered him, cursed him, berated him as best she could before the next coughing fit seized her, but his arms stayed wrapped around her and all her struggles were useless. 'Silence,' she whispered. Tears streamed down her face. Jostan still held her, but his arms were gentle now, and suddenly welcome. She rested her head on his chest and wept. Here in the murderous choking dark she didn't want to be a princess any more.
They crept down the river until they could see the massive pyre at the cave mouth, and there they waited for an hour, maybe longer, before she decided she couldn't bear any more. She was careful this time, waiting until Jostan was distracted before she ran, sprinting along the river bank and then diving into the water when the heat from the fire was too much. She heard Jostan shouting after her, but she didn't look back. By the time he finally caught her, they were already outside, thrashing in the river alongside the fires.
'Keep your head down!' shouted Jostan, and then they were past, and the air was suddenly cold and crisp and deliriously fresh. It felt so gloriously clean that she wanted to gulp it down as fast as she could. For a second she almost forgot about Silence.
And then she saw him. A hundred yards from the river, flat on his belly, eyes closed. Still.
'Your Highness! Wait!' But she didn't, and this time Jostan didn't try to stop her. She hauled herself out of the freezing river and ran as fast as she could, collapsing to the ground by the dragon's head. Silence was gone. She could already feel the heat burning him from the inside.
Jostan came towards her, then saw the look on her face and stopped dead in his tracks.
'Is he…'
Jaslyn shook her head. She couldn't speak.
'I… I should look for the others, Your Highness. Please be careful. The others… They might not…'
He should have taken her back into the cave, and they both knew it. She should have stayed there until all the other dragons had been found. He should never have let her escape in the first place, and her mother would probably have his head for being so careless. But for a moment Jaslyn loved him more than anyone in the world simply for leaving her alone.
67
The Balcony
Jehal watched through the eyes of one of the Taiytakei dragons. He saw the doors of the Tower of Dusk open and watched Shezira storm towards Hyram's keep. He grimaced. Like an arrow from the bow of a master archer, he mused. Straight and deadly and utterly predictable. And when Hyram cannot be roused, what then, mighty Queen? He took off one strip of silk and put on the other, to see through the eyes of the little dragon that he'd left watching over Hyram's bed. The Adamantine Guardsmen had taken Hyram from Zafir's rooms back to his own and put him to bed, just as their new mistress had ordered them. He should be snoring nicely by now. Everyone would assume he was drunk.
The bed was empty.
It took Jehal a couple of seconds and a close inspection to believe what he was seeing, but Hyram was gone. Despite all the poisons, somehow Hyram had woken up and got out of bed. The dragon found him a few minutes later, out on his balcony, leaning over the parapet. His face was slack and vacant and he was shaking; it was all Jehal could do not to laugh. Hyram could have ended up anywhere. As it was, it was a miracle that he hadn't simply tipped over the parapet and dashed himself to pieces on the ground below.
Now there's a thought.
He tore off the silk and fumbled for his boots. 'Kazah! Help me get dressed.' If Shezira got to Hyram and, Hyram could actually string a sentence together, there was just a chance that everything might unravel. He ought to feel afraid, he supposed. Or at least annoyed, alarmed, worried – something like that. Exhilarated though? Not good.
Which only made the feeling stronger. He grinned at Kazah. However this ended, he was definitely going to miss it once it was all over.
Shezira reached Hyram's keep expecting to have to take the place by storm and quite prepared to do so, single-handed if she had to. Instead, the doors were flung open for her, which made her pause. But Hyram was not a murderer. Whatever else he might do, despite all his betrayals, he wasn't a k
iller.
Nonetheless. She whispered to the two riders she'd brought with her, 'Stay close to me.'
Inside, an old man was waiting for her, so withered and bent he made even Isentine look young. She took a moment to recognise him.
'Wordmaster Herlian?'
He bowed, as best he could. 'Your Holiness.'
'I am here to see Hyram.' She could demand that now. Of course, the Guard might not see it that way.
'He's… Your Holiness, he's not himself.'
Shezira snorted. 'He's not the speaker and he's not a king. I can march straight into his bedchamber whenever it pleases me, Wordmaster. Whoever he is.'
Herlian bowed again. 'Your Holiness, I wouldn't dream of trying to stop you. He's been asking for you. Or at least he's said your name. But he's not well, Holiness. His mind has wandered. He talks of you and of Antros and of Aliphera and of dragons, and makes little sense.'
'He'd better make sense when I ask why his soldiers are hammering on my doors.'
Herlian shrugged. 'I will take you to him, Your Holiness.'
Hyram was flying. He was on the back of a dragon high in the sky with the wind streaming past his face. He didn't know the name of his dragon. It belonged to someone else; he wasn't sure who. His brother, perhaps. Antros. The giant of his life, always casting him into shadow.
Maybe it was the wind that was making him weep, or maybe not, for hadn't Aliphera ripped out his heart and torn it to pieces in front of his very eyes, flaunting herself with that dashing prince from the south, Tyan. She'd wanted Antros, but Antros wasn't for having. She should have wanted him instead, but no, no, she didn't, and now she'd left him with nothing, just an empty shell, devoid of feeling.
No, that wasn't right either. There hadn't been any feeling for a long time, but now it was back, all of it, decades and decades of pain, all at once.
'Hyram.'
The dragon was talking to him. That must be it. There couldn't be anyone else with him, up here in the sky. Except suddenly there was another dragon, flying alongside him, with that frightened young slip of a girl from the north that Antros was off to marry. Not much to look at, but they had dragons, lots of dragons.
'Are you drunk?'
That made him laugh. If only he was drunk. Now there was a way to take all that pain, round it up and throw it back into the box from where it had escaped. Back where you belong. No business being out here after all this time.
'You are, aren't you? Drunk again.'
'No!' he screamed at the stupid girl on her dragon, wishing she'd leave him alone. 'Go away!'
'I'll go away when you explain to me why your Adamantine Guard have taken Valgar, have killed his riders, and why they were hammering on my door.'
'Guards?' He didn't know anything about that. 'Ask the speaker. He must know. They're his men.' He grinned. 'My brother's going to be the speaker one day.' Then he looked away. That was a stupid thing to say. The girl was about to marry Antros. Of course she knew about the pact.
The dragon underneath him suddenly banked and sank through the air. Hyram swayed and clutched at the harness. For some reason he hadn't strapped himself in. He had no idea why he'd forget a thing like that. That was the sort of thing Antros would do, except Antros didn't forget; he did stupid things on purpose and then mocked Hyram for being a coward. And he always got away with it too.
The girl grabbed hold of him. He couldn't even remember her name, but she must have jumped off her own dragon and landed on the back of his, and now she was pulling at him.
Hyram lurched violently and stumbled towards the parapet of the balcony. Shezira caught him, stopped him from falling to the ground, and then let go as he fought her away.
'If it's not you, then who's doing this?' But she could see in his eyes that he was somewhere else, somewhere far, far away.
'Get off my dragon,' he shouted at her. 'Get off it! Stay on your own!' She backed away from him. 'Yes, that's right. Back where you belong. Stay away!'
The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She'd seen Hyram drunk often enough. This was something else. 'Hyram? If you didn't send the Guard, then who did? Zafir?'
'Zafir?' he looked at her blankly, as though he'd never heard the name. 'Prince Tyan, that's who did this to me. And that little bitch Aliphera, with her flashing eyes and her stone-cold heart. She did this. And Antros, always blocking out the sun, wherever I stand. You're welcome to him. Take him away and leave me be, all of you.' He lurched again.
'Aliphera's dead, Hyram. Tyan's mad. Antros has been gone for fifteen years. What are you talking about?'
'Death.' For a moment his eyes focused on her. 'Death, Shezira. Life is like a wheel rolling through time, and sometimes little pieces stick to it. They stick to it all the way round and come back again when you least expect them. I'm sorry I betrayed you to them. Aliphera and Tyan.' He reached out to her, and then his eyes went wide and she could see him fall away back to whatever place held him. A door closed behind his face. He wasn't coming back.
Shezira shook her head and pursed her lips. 'You mean Jehal and Zafir, don't you? I'm sorry too, Hyram. Sorry for you, but I don't have time for this. Whatever they're-' Hyram's face had gone rigid with terror. He was looking past her.
'Get away! Get away!'
Something fluttered past her and flew at Hyram. In the darkness she couldn't see what it was. Some sort of bird perhaps, but it glittered like gold and made a strange sound as it flew, more a clattering of metal than the fluttering of feathers. It buzzed at Hyram's head.
'Get away!' He flailed at it, stumbling towards the parapet.
Shezira took a step towards him. Somewhere inside the keep a commotion had started. It was rapidly getting closer.
'Get away! Get off my dragon!'
He was going to fall.
'Hyram!' She lunged at him, trying to grab his arm. He shrieked and hurled himself away from her, straight into the parapet. His head and arms kept going, tipping over into the emptiness beyond. His legs flew up. It all seemed to happen very slowly, so slowly that Shezira couldn't understand why she couldn't do anything about it. And then he was gone. He didn't scream at all, but she heard the thud, a few seconds later, as he hit the ground.
There were people running into Hyram's bedchamber behind her.
'Murder!' shouted a woman's voice. It was Queen Zaflr. 'She's murdered my husband!'
For the first time in many years Shezira didn't know what to do. She stood staring over the edge. Behind her she could hear her riders trying to defend her. There were only two of them, though, and Zafir had come in force. It didn't last long.
Jehal unwrapped the silk from his eyes. Then he lay back on his bed while Kazah pulled his boots off again. He stared at the ceiling filled with immeasurable satisfaction.
I win.
68
The Glacier
She was getting hotter. Kemir felt it. They hadn't gone very far before Snow's back grew first uncomfortable, then painful and finally almost unbearable. He'd made a mistake, he thought. She was dying, and there wasn't much to be done about it.
At least we'll be far from the alchemists when they finally come out of their caves. We can just die slowly from cold and hunger instead.
He could live with that, he decided. Better to die out here, fighting to survive in these harsh lands, than rot in some dungeon. Nadira probably wouldn't see it that way, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. They'd tried, him and Snow. They'd tried and they'd failed, and that felt so much better than not having tried at all. He could die happy with that.
Snow flew higher and higher, arrowing deep into the World-spine. The mountains and valleys grew more wild and broken, the peaks higher, until they arced into a narrow valley filled with an azure lake. Snow dropped through the air until she was skimming the water. Her flying had become erratic. She was aiming for the end of the lake, where a glacier stretched down from the mountainside and immense chunks of grey ice drifted lazily in the brilliant blue water. As she rea
ched it, she crash-landed close to the shore. Even as Kemir and Nadira were struggling out of the freezing water, Snow was backing away into the deeper parts of the lake, towards the ice cliff of the glacier. There was madness in her thoughts now, mixed in with the fury. She wasn't afraid, though. She was sure she was dying, but she wasn't afraid.
Goodbye, Little One Kemir.
Kemir spat and shook as much water as he could from his clothes. The air up here was so cold the wet furs were already starting to freeze. 'Live, dragon,' he hissed. 'If you live, you can free as many dragons as you want. But if you're gone, who else will do it?' Never mind that there's little chance of us surviving on our own up here.
She was sinking beneath the freezing water. When she finally lifted her head and looked up, she was instantly wreathed in steam. She must have read his thoughts, though, for with one last gasp, she spat a stream of fire at the trees nearby, setting them ablaze. Giving him warmth and fire and a chance, at least, to survive. Then she gave Kemir a look and cocked her head. Her thoughts felt distant and vague, and also a little confused, as if the answer to his question was obvious. You, Kemir. You will do it.
Kemir laughed. 'I don't think so, dragon.'
He pulled Nadira after him into the forest and didn't look back. Behind him, the dragon sank with barely a ripple and was gone.
Epilogue – The Perfect White
'Where is she?' Almiri had barely landed. She wore full armour and had nearly fifty dragons with her: Shezira's from the encampment in the Purple Spur, and a detachment of Valgar's riders. She started to take the armour off. The weight of it left her almost unable to walk.
Rider Jostan glanced towards the caves and bowed. 'She's still with the body, Your Holiness.'
Almiri wrinkled her nose. The valley still stank of smoke. The alchemists were out of the caves now. Some of them had left; most had stayed to rebuild the ruins of their homes.
'Did you find all the others?'
'No.' Jostan sounded solemn. 'We found four dragons. The fifth is missing. The white.'