The dragon was more concerned with the immediate cause of its pain. It ducked its head in a futile attempt to escape the tormenting grapnel. Beyau seized his chance and flung a broad net over the beast’s head, the wide mesh weighted with pierced and polished stones. The dragon shook its head with a furious hiss, snapping at the weights dangling just out of reach. It licked at the net and the rope crumbled to dust at the touch of its freezing saliva. ‘Chazen!’ A second net came spinning out of the mist, the web black against the encircling pallor. It landed squarely on the dragon’s head and men followed it. Kheda knew some of them from the Gossamer Shark, and others who had volunteered as scouts. The rest he didn’t recognise. A double handful ran to lend their strength to Mezai’s rope, slipping over the icy ground. Their combined weight began inexorably dragging the dragon’s head downwards.
More ropes and nets appeared from all directions, everyone intent on snaring the dragon’s head. The creature roared with fury, fighting the binding cords and cables. It clawed frantically, first with one forelimb, then the other.
‘Let me get at its eyes!’ Kheda stood, watching and waiting, sword at the ready.
The dragon bellowed and reared upwards, dragging those closest off their feet as they clung to their ropes in frozen terror. It slashed at them with murderous talons and two men fell backwards, eviscerated in a single stroke. One rolled over to land at Kheda’s feet, the bloody void of his abdomen frozen solid before he came to rest.
‘Chazen!’ The men of the domain raised their vengeful cry. More rushed forward to haul on the ropes and grapnels tangled in the dragon’s spines. Nets smothered its muzzle, caught in its teeth. It tore at the mesh with a forefoot but only succeeded in ripping the lethal fangs from its own jaw.
‘Bring it down!’ Kheda yelled.
Mezai raised a breathless chant that the warlord recognised from the Gossamer Shark’s rowing deck. Hoarse with exhaustion, other mariners joined in. Fishermen picked up the rhythm in the next breath and the hunters and merchants weren’t slow to follow. With every man’s might brought to bear together in the rhythm of the gasping, tuneless song, the dragon’s head dipped. They drew it further down with every beat. The wheezing chorus took on a menacing, exultant note. Kheda watched the creature’s burning sapphire eye brought lower and lower. He gripped his sword and waited for the moment to strike. As the dragon’s scaly jaw dipped to touch the ground, hailstones fell so thickly that Kheda couldn’t see through them. Big as the most precious pearls, they bruised his head and face brutally. Gasping and squinting through the pain, Kheda stumbled forwards. He could barely keep his footing on the icy spheres and his feet were so numb he couldn’t feel them. All that mattered was that he could still see the dragon’s eye glowing blue through the mist.
Cries of distress rang through the fog and the coordinated assault dissolved in pain and panic. Kheda pushed past some nameless islander still clinging to a rope despite the jagged ice lacerating his bare hands. Drops of the man’s red blood were falling frozen to join the drifts of hailstones now ankle deep.
Kheda was close enough to see the dragon lashing with its blue tongue at the nets draped over its long face. The ropes tangled around its neck and forequarters were breaking and crumbling away as it clawed its way free. It had a dead body pinned beneath the other forepaw, its talons embedded in the man’s back, the corpse already half-buried beneath the hail.
Kheda grabbed at a twisted cord tangled in the spines above the dragon’s brow and hung on it with all his weight, levelling his sword. The dragon’s head darted down towards him, blue tongue seeking him like a serpent. Bracing himself as best he could, with all the strength he could muster, Kheda thrust the blade deep into the creature’s glowing eye. The sapphire orb shattered like crystal. Burning white fluid oozed along the sword, etching the steel like acid. Kheda held tight to the hilt and thrust again, leaning in with all his might, twisting the blade ever deeper. The burning whiteness ate away the sword’s guard and hissed against the fine chain mail of Kheda’s gauntlets. He held his ground as long as he dared then sprang away, tearing off his gloves and tossing them to the ground where they steamed with an acrid metallic stink. The dragon’s head slumped to the ground, long neck limp. The beast writhed in agony, convulsions rippling through its body to prompt shouts of alarm far away in the mist. Its long blue tongue curled around its muzzle, tentatively licking at its mined eye. A tormented moan escaped it, wretched and pitiful. ‘My lord?’ It was Beyau, offering Kheda a sword in a hand bloodied by rope burns and blackened by cold.
Kheda looked at the dragon. The creature was now motionless.
‘Wait.’ He gave head and foreclaws a wide berth as he skirted warily around it, to get a clear sight of its unwounded eye.
The glow of white fire in the sapphire depths was growing fainter. Kheda watched it fade to little more than a candle flame. The hailstones began to melt. The incandescence shrank to a mere pinprick. The fog dissolved to no more than a frail memory, misty around the treetops.
The men around him were exclaiming in relief or giving way to grief as they saw their fallen comrades. Kheda kept his attention fixed on the dragon’s eye. The light finally died and a warm breeze rolled up the valley.
‘Is it dead?’ Zicre looked at Kheda for confirmation, hugging an arm wrenched bodily out of its shoulder socket. Fearful faces all around begged for the same reassurance.
Kheda walked forward and laid a hand on the creature’s muzzle. The twilight-blue scales were cold but not with the burning chill of magic. No breath issued from the wide nostrils and the lolling blue tongue didn’t so much as twitch when he pushed it with a tentative foot. He looked again at the creature’s unwounded eye, now dull and clouded beneath a drooping eyelid. ‘Yes.’
Someone raised a shaky cheer of celebration and others soon joined in. Men pressed close all around Kheda, shoving at the dead dragon as if they needed to touch it to convince themselves it was truly defeated.
‘My lord?’ Mezai looked to Kheda for permission, his knife poised over one of the spines behind the dragon’s neck. Kheda nodded and watched the shipmaster dig out the needle-sharp scale. ‘How’s this for a talisman, my lord?’ Mezai grinned, exultant. ‘The Gossamer Shark won’t go down like the Mist DoveV
A group of huntsmen began disentangling the corpse of their friend from the dragon’s dead foreclaws, ripping out the talons for their own prize as they did so. Out of the corner of his eye, Kheda saw a troop of Chazen warriors set about hacking off the spiked tip of the dragon’s tail, brushing aside the dead flies and carrion beetles that the sudden cold had killed. Emboldened, others used the ropes to scramble up the creature’s sides, intent on digging their knives into the wounds already splitting its hide. The mountain hollow grew loud with congratulation, speculation and the heady joking of men who’d half-expected to die instead of see victory. The youth Ridu’s hysterical laughter rang out at some inane jest. Kheda smiled wordlessly and walked away. Men who had fled the fearful fog in the first place or broken beneath the murderous hailstorm emerged from the trees, shamefaced. Some looked hopefully to Kheda for permission to claim their share of the fallen creature’s teeth and scales. Others fell to their knees, faces in the dirt, begging for his forgiveness. He ignored them all.
‘My lord?’ Beyau caught up with the warlord, face anxious.
‘Don’t you want to claim a trophy?’ Kheda gestured back towards the plundered corpse. ‘Before the day warms up enough to start it stinking?’
‘There’s fewer dead than I feared, my lord,’ Beyau said stoutly.
‘Still too many for comfort.’ Kheda slowed reluctantly, seeing that Beyau was limping painfully. This creature would have died without their blood being shed. Didn’t I just bring these men to a meaningless death?
‘They made the choices that brought them to such a fate, my lord.’ Beyau’s face twisted with emotion. ‘And this is a victory for Chazen over magic and malice, at last.’
‘And a victory must be
bought at a price if it is to have any lasting value.’ Kheda tried to keep the desolation out of his voice. He stared down at the ground for a moment, before lifting his eyes to the trees and the sky now clearing above them. ‘I want a tower of silence built on the beach,’ he said slowly. ‘Two, if needs be. The men who died here died for the whole domain. Let’s hope that gives some value to their families’ losses. And those who lived through this slaughter must remember those who didn’t, when they’re praised as heroes the length and breadth of these islands. See to it, Beyau.’
Still wracked with a chill that the hot sun couldn’t warm away, Kheda turned his back on the butchery of the dead dragon and began walking towards the coast. His sword scabbards hung empty in his belt. He realised he didn’t know if it had been his blade or Dev’s that had finally killed the beast. He decided it really didn’t matter.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The beach on Boal was a long bank of pale sand crowned with low tangles of midar. Violet flowers glowed among the long glossy leaves outspread to welcome the rains. Ragged furrows in the sand showed where the horn-backed turtles had crawled up the beach under cover of night to dig their nests and lay their eggs.
Kheda walked carefully down to the water’s edge to stroll along the firm, wet sand. Every now and then an adventurous ripple nudged at his toes. He looked down to see his feet still bruised where someone had trampled them in the chaos of the cloud dragon’s death. His face was still scabbed from the hail’s assault.
But everything is healing. Everyone is healing. And the families of those that died are honoured for the sake of those who fell fighting for Chazen’s future.
He looked along the gentle curve of the shore to the far headland where a solitary pinnacle of shaped white stone rose from a grove of nut palms.
I suppose it makes sense for Itrac to visit this particular tower of silence. Boal is where they were first attacked by the wild men and their magic, her and Chazen Saril and Olkai Chazen. I wonder what she will see in her dreams. Will echoes from those peaceful days offer her hope for an untroubled future? Or will any guidance from the past be lost in the chaos of recent events?
There’s not much I can do about that. But I can rid this domain of the last distortion of magic.
He walked towards Velindre, who was sitting some distance down the beach. Still dressed in her guise of zamorin scholar, she was leaning back on her hands with her long legs outstretched as she stared up into the sky, intent on the clouds scudding up from the south. A breeze tousled her fine blonde hair, now grown to a softness that nevertheless did little to threaten her imposture. The lines in her face were carved deeper than before, skin burned by sun and wind taut over her angular features.
‘There’ll be rain this afternoon.’ Kheda walked up the beach to the dry sand beyond the high-water mark. Mindful of the carved ironwood box he was carrying, he sat beside the magewoman.
‘Indeed.’ Velindre’s thoughts were on something else entirely.
‘You’ll be returning to your home soon, so I brought you this.’ Kheda placed the wooden box carefully on her lap.
‘What?’ Velindre dragged herself away from contemplating the skies and frowned. ‘What’s this? I want that dragon’s egg—’
‘And you’ll get it,’ said Kheda curtly. ‘This is something else.’
Velindre opened the lid of the box to reveal a plain casket of rock crystal. Iridescent dust inside sparkled in the sunlight. She went to lift the lid.
Kheda held her hand back. ‘Don’t open it.’
‘Why not?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s all that remains of Dev.’ Kheda stared out over the turquoise sea, far away across the deeper blue of the open ocean to the far horizon where the sea couldn’t be distinguished from the line of turbulent clouds presaging the next wave of rainstorms. ‘And I don’t want it blowing all over this beach. Come to that, the winds from the south could carry some part of him over the entire Archipelago.’
‘Which would not be a good thing.’ Velindre looked down at the casket. ‘All things considered.’
‘You burn your dead on the mainland, so Risala tells me,’ Kheda continued with distant courtesy. ‘We don’t do that here, we don’t know your rites—but I gathered what ashes I could, in case you wanted to inter them somewhere.’
‘Fire may be the ultimate purification but you still don’t want whatever remains of Dev making any claim on Chazen’s future.’ Velindre sounded bitter.
‘Whatever good he did for the domain is honoured in the tales of his death in my service that are being told around the evening fires,’ Kheda said slowly. ‘That will suffice for his legacy.’
Velindre carefully lifted the crystal casket up and studied the contents as best she could. ‘The gems that were crushed to powder, they’re all mixed in with the ash.’
‘I couldn’t see any way of separating them.’ Kheda shrugged. ‘Or any point, come to that. Magic was woven into his very being in life.’ Velindre smiled reluctantly. ‘What about those gems that were driven into the walls of the cave? Have you recovered those?’
We have.’ Kheda allowed himself a brief, ruthless smile. With them most likely wholly ill omened, as Dev said, we’re keeping them separate and they are only to be traded with domains like that of Ulla Safar. He’s long wished me ill, so I see no harm in sending him all the bad luck I can, in return for things we need to rebuild Chazen.’
‘Which is being rebuilt apace now that galleys have come from Redigal and Aedis and even Ritsem and Jahal,’ Velindre observed.
Now that word of our victory over the dragon is spreading,’ Kheda agreed. ‘And now we have pearls to trade and a fine harvest of turtleshell.’
‘And most prized of all, dragonhide,’ said Velindre pointedly. ‘And all the other talismans you won.’
‘Quite.’ Kheda continued staring out to the southern sea.
Doesn’t this prove I was following the right course, that Chazen’s trade is so quickly restored, with so many keen to share in our good fortune?
‘Has anyone remarked on the fact that the second dragon had no gem at its heart?’ Velindre’s voice was neutral as she nodded at the faceted ruby hanging from the golden chain in the open neck of Kheda’s russet silk tunic.
No,’ Kheda said slowly. ‘I don’t suppose anyone noticed, in all the confusion. If anyone does think of it, they’ll doubtless assume I hold it for the sake of the domain.’ He glanced at her. ‘I’m curious about the scales and teeth taken from the cloud dragon. When it was dying, it was all but disintegrating, but no one’s come to me saying their trophies have turned to dust. The lengths of hide sent to Itrac are as sturdy as any other lizardskin.’
‘I’m just as curious,’ Velindre admitted frankly, still holding up the crystal casket and studying the contents. ‘I imagined it would all crumble away to nothing. Perhaps I’ve stumbled across something Azazir didn’t know. Or he knows something he didn’t care to share with me.’ She sighed. ‘There’s so much we don’t know about dragons.’
Kheda did his best to hide his distaste. ‘Surely what you’ve learned and seen means you’ve valuable lore to take back to your island of Hadrumal, along with Dev’s ashes.’
‘And the dragon’s egg.’ Velindre looked quizzically at the warlord. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’
‘Yes,’ Kheda replied bluntly. ‘The sooner all magic and all trace of it are gone from Chazen, the better for all of us and our future.’
‘You certainly want Itrac’s child born under the most favourable auspices possible.’ Velindre nodded with understanding.
Kheda was surprised. ‘I am glad you appreciate that.’
‘I understand a good deal more about Aldabreshin ways than you realise, my lord Chazen.’ Velindre set the casket with Dev’s ashes carefully back in the ironwood box. ‘I had plenty of time to read on the voyage south and every domain has a tradition of fine scholarship, even if we in the north are ignorant of it.’
‘I’ll be happy to supply you with all the books you want for your journey home.’ Kheda smiled tightly. ‘As well as our fastest trireme.’
‘I don’t need any boat. I can return to Hadrumal in the blink of an eye.’ Velindre closed the intricately carved lid of the box gently. ‘And I’ll take this token of Dev’s life and death back with me. He had no family that he ever acknowledged and few enough friends in Hadrumal, but there are those who should know of his fate and some who could learn from it.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Kheda honestly. ‘You must know we believe a man’s life isn’t done when he dies. Much that he was lives on, as long as those who knew him live on after him.’
‘I don’t imagine many mages will think of Dev in those terms,’ Velindre said sardonically.
Kheda got to his feet. ‘Let me know when you’re planning to leave and I’ll make sure the egg is delivered to you.’ He hesitated. ‘You will be discreet. Perhaps you should set sail with Risala for some outlying island. If anyone asks we can say you took a merchant galley north.’
‘If she can spare the time from spreading your carefully rehearsed version of events around Chazen.’ Velindre looked up at him, hazel eyes like golden onyx in the sun. ‘Or canying it to trusted traders and her friends in other domains. As I said, Chazen Kheda, I know more than you think. And just what do you propose to do for Risala?’
Kheda was thrown by the abrupt change of subject. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The girl’s in love with you.’ Velindre lifted a hand to shade her narrowed eyes. ‘Can you give her anything better than some precisely calculated share in your favours? Are you capable of returning her love, with Itrac canying a child that will link you to Chazen for all your futures?’
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