by Stephen Deas
‘Come and fly with me tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I found some caves. I’m curious, but Diamond Eye is too large to go inside, and I’d prefer not to go alone.’
‘I found some caves too,’ said Tuuran, but when they flew on Diamond Eye’s back the next day across a few miles of water and up the hill at another island’s heart, the dragon didn’t fly them to the top. Zafir circled and pointed down into the trees. The mountain here had two massive hollows in the side of its dome, side by side and each far bigger than a dragon’s outstretched wings. They looked like eyes, Tuuran thought. Or at least old empty sockets.
Zafir flew around to the island’s dark side of cliffs and overhangs and creeper veils, its sheer behind where no one ever went. She landed Diamond Eye on a rocky outcrop.
‘You ride well for an Adamantine Man, Night Watchman.’ She slid down the mounting ladder.
‘I flew with Hyram’s riders when he went on his grand tour after he became speaker.’ Tuuran clambered after her. ‘We flew to Bloodsalt. Then the Silver City. The hard part is not shitting yourself at getting up so close. The rest …’ He shrugged, and then stopped as it struck him that Zafir was still the speaker of the nine realms, even if the nine realms were far away right now, and he was still Night Watchman of the Adamantine Guard even if his hotchpotch of guardsmen had largely turned into village farmers, and maybe he should be a bit more mindful of his tongue. He bowed as he landed in the grass, and then wondered if that was enough and dropped to his knees.
‘Oh, stop it!’ Zafir forced him to look at her. ‘We’re not speaker and Night Watchman here. I’m not sure either of us are those things anywhere any more. But certainly on this island where no one will know any better, you are Tuuran and I am Zafir, and that’s all there is.’
For a moment it seemed to Tuuran that they leaned towards one another and that she might kiss him again, but she didn’t. Her eyes stayed on him, though. Shining bright. Tuuran hesitated. Wasn’t sure he should trust himself. ‘From birth to death, speaker,’ he said. Zafir snorted and turned away.
The climb to the caves was hard, sheer in places, and dark and damp under the shadow of the summit’s overhang. They picked their way through tree roots and climbed up inside a cleft in the rock, and by the time they reached the cave mouth they were breathless. Zafir took a bag off her back, dropped it and gave him two glass rods, torches from Chay-Liang. She had lightning wands too, and more enchanted torches of her own, strapped to her arm, gifts while the truce between her and the witch remained. Another decade or so and Tuuran reckoned they might even get to thinking about liking each other.
Zafir slid a finger along a torch. A beam of light shone from it brighter than any lantern he’d ever seen. She looked at him and grinned.
‘Makes me wonder what else she can do,’ she said.
The entrance to the cave was narrow and wet. A steady trickle of water crept between Tuuran’s feet. More an extension of the cleft they’d climbed than a proper cave. He peered inside, wary.
‘I don’t suppose there’s anything interesting in here. But if we don’t look, we won’t know.’ Zafir strode ahead, quick and confident as if she’d been this way before, but with a brittle sharpness to her that Tuuran had never seen. He followed, stepping carefully. The cleft widened and the floor turned into a pool of water, shallow but cold. The cave cut several hundred yards straight into the island’s heart, and then stopped. A trickle of water ran down the end wall from a shaft in the roof above. The stone here was smooth and water-worn, but when Tuuran shone his torch it lit up with an oil-sheen of colours, bright rainbows of blues and greens and yellows and reds like the plumage of a strutting paradise bird. Everywhere his light touched danced with rainbows, not like the bleached-bone yellow-white outside. He ran a finger over the cave wall. It was dry though slick, not rough and porous, and it reminded him of the inside of a pretty shell. Mother of pearl or something like it. He looked back. The entrance was a bright white ball of light, everything else black or brilliant reflections of the sun and his lamp.
Zafir started into the shaft. She moved easily from stone to stone and disappeared upward. ‘It doesn’t go far,’ she called. ‘It opens out into another chamber.’ He watched her as she climbed. Maybe twenty feet up the shaft she disappeared. He saw her light flicker, dim and bright as her torch waved back and forth. When he took a deep breath and followed, he found her sitting at the top of the shaft on a stone shelf jutting out over flat still water at the lip of a second chamber, wide at first and high-ceilinged, though the witch’s light was strong enough that he could see how the cave narrowed as it led deeper into the island, how the roof dropped until it almost touched the water. Again the walls shimmered rainbows at him as he raked them.
‘Pretty,’ he muttered, ‘but I don’t like the look of this, your Holiness,’
‘No. Not much.’ Zafir waded out into the water anyway. It only reached her ankles at first, but as she went further she sank deeper. When she reached the part where the roof came down low, she was up to her hips.
‘Holiness?’
‘It’s just something to be done, Tuuran. Come, and please don’t question it.’ Her words sounded strained, and there was that brittleness again. Zafir headed on as soon as he started to follow, until the water was past her waist and the ceiling almost touched her head. The walls closed in hard from the sides and everything became narrow and tight. Now and then he did the stupid thing and let his hand with the glass torch dip into the water, and the world around him went dark. He settled to holding it between his teeth. By the time he caught up with Zafir he was having to stoop not to scrape his head, while the water was up to her chest and yet still she kept going. He could see where the tunnel closed ahead of them now, the top of the cave coming down to the water. Zafir kept on until the water was up to her neck. Bloody cold water too.
‘Holiness,’ he said as gently as he could manage, ‘it’s a dead end.’
‘I know.’
‘Then what are we doing?’
‘Are you afraid of the dark, Tuuran?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Then turn out your light.’
‘Holiness?’
‘Do it. Please. But don’t go anywhere.’
Tuuran ran his finger along Chay-Liang’s glass rod until the light dimmed and died inside. Zafir handed her own torch to him.
‘Take it.’
‘Holiness?’
‘Take it, Tuuran.’ She was breathing hard, gulping for air. And yes, it was cold and claustrophobic but it hadn’t been that hard to get here, yet Zafir looked on the edge of panic. Didn’t make any sense. Didn’t like it. Put him on edge.
Tuuran took her torch. ‘What is this place?’
‘An Adamantine Man should not be afraid of the dark,’ Zafir breathed, ‘and nor should a dragon-queen. But I am.’ He felt her fingers against his leg under the water, fumbling until she found his hand and held it a moment. ‘Now walk away. Go back to the top of the shaft. Put out the light when you get there and be silent. Do nothing but be there. Do not light either torch again until I reach you. Do not speak. Do nothing. Even if I beg. Do nothing! Do you understand me?’
Not really. He felt Zafir’s fingers tighten on his own and then she let go. He hesitated, desperate to speak but commanded to silence, then turned and ploughed back through the water. He looked once over his shoulder and shone the torch on her and saw her staring back at him, a head in the centre of rings of ripples. He sat on the stone shelf at the top of the shaft, and put out the light as she’d told him. The darkness was absolute.
Silence.
Then a quiet splash, and a movement in the water. A soft whimper that hardly carried. His eyes slowly adjusted to the blackness so he could see the faintest outline of the shaft, a tiny bit of light making its way out.
‘Tuuran?’ There was a high quiver to Zafir’s voice. Not the speaker he knew
but a frightened little girl. More splashes, faster and more frantic, and then a bigger splash and a yelp. ‘Tuuran?’ Another whimper, then more, coming in a steady rhythm. He could hear her getting closer. The whimpering stopped and a whispering took its place, laced with rasping breaths. ‘Kill him. Kill him!’
She was almost at the shaft. As she came past Tuuran reached out and caught her. She jerked away as though lashed by a whip, and howled and swung a fist that thumped into his shoulder hard enough to bruise. Tuuran lit his witch wand, just a little so as not to blind them, and saw Zafir stood in the water, hunched, fingers twisted like claws, breathing hard and harsh like she’d battled death and fought to the very end of her strength and yet, to her amazement, lived. She snarled and threw herself at him and pounded his chest with her fist as if driving an imagined dagger through his heart and out the other side, and then held on to to him, fingers wrapped around his shirt in a death grip, racked with heaving sobs. He wrapped his arms around her, gentle and uncertain, and she shuddered and pulled him into her like she was trying to climb inside his skin. He didn’t know how long they stayed that way. Probably not long, but in the darkness of the cave it felt like for ever. When she let go and sat beside him on the shelf she was shaking like a leaf in a storm. Maybe the cold, but Tuuran thought not. They stayed like that, her Holiness staring off across the cave slowly catching her breath, Tuuran wondering what the Flame that had all been about, until at last she took a deep breath and stood up.
‘Again.’
‘Holiness?’
They did it again. All of it, and all the same except this time at least she didn’t take a swing at him. The third time she ended up sobbing into his chest.
‘Why doesn’t it get better?’ she howled. ‘Why doesn’t it get any better?’
He held her a bit more tightly this time. Might as well, since they’d both be desperately pretending none of this had ever happened as soon as they went back to the village. When she tried to go a fourth time he said no. Stubborn shits, dragon-riders, and she’d be doing it over and over and over until she gave herself hypothermia if he didn’t stop her. So he did, and was a bit surprised that she let him.
They were both shivering by the time they climbed down the shaft and got back outside. Clouds covered the setting sun. At least in the shelter at the bottom of the cleft there wasn’t much wind.
‘I’m freezing my bits off here,’ Tuuran grumbled. ‘That dragon of yours going to make a fire for us, Holiness?’ He looked at her and then wished he hadn’t. Silk and cotton, and all of it soaking wet and clinging to every curve. Wasn’t right a Night Watchman having those sorts of thoughts. Didn’t help when she picked up the bag and pulled out a dry tunic.
‘Not bring a nice warm dry cloak of your own?’ She pulled one out and tossed it at him and started to strip. Tuuran swore and looked away and swallowed hard. He looked for somewhere else to go and be out of sight, except they were near as damn it on a big ledge halfway up a cliff, with a few bushes clinging to crevices and that was about all, and there simply wasn’t anywhere. He swore again, then decided, damn it, he’d look if he wanted to, and so he did, and then wished he hadn’t and told himself he was an idiot and turned his back. He pulled his own tunic off and threw the cloak around his shoulders. Swore again and looked down at himself. Erection like a fucking sword. No cloak was going to hide that. Clenched his fists and turned back towards Zafir in her fresh silks, for all the good they did in keeping her modest, and found she was watching him back.
‘Great Flame, woman.’ He took a step towards her and then stopped when she put up a hand. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘I can certainly see what you want from me.’
Gritted teeth. ‘You are the speaker of the nine realms, Holiness, and I am yours, flesh and bone, body and spirit, from birth to death.’
‘Not here, Tuuran, and not now.’ She came and put a hand to his chest. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been that way between speaker and Night Watchman sometimes before, but not for us. I carry the Hatchling Disease. I don’t wish to share it.’
‘I don’t care.’ Desire got the better of him. He pulled her close, ran one hand to the back of her neck, dropped the other and pressed it between her buttocks, pushing her into him. She tipped back her head to look him in the eye and let out a little sigh.
‘But I do.’ He felt a poke just under his bottom rib, sharp but very gentle. He looked down. She had a knife. ‘Stab,’ she whispered. ‘Stab, stab.’ She dropped it. Tuuran let her go, and she drew back and ran a hand down his chest. Her fingernails scraped his belly and then pulled away. Her eyes followed her own motion and lingered a moment between his legs. ‘There are other reasons too. Do you need a moment to do something about that?’
Tuuran growled and turned away, pulling his cloak about himself. ‘Now that’s just rude, Holiness.’
They scrambled back down, one behind the other, until they reached the outcrop where Diamond Eye perched. Zafir stretched her clothes over the dragon’s scales to dry while Tuuran built a little fire. They didn’t need it with the dragon’s heat so close, but he liked to sit around a fire at night.
‘We going back now then?’ he asked.
Zafir shook her head and shifted to sit beside him. ‘I’m sorry. You deserve better. I’m restless, Tuuran, and I don’t think we’ll be staying here much longer. And I’m afraid of the dark. I’ve always been afraid of the dark. The room where my stepfather used to put me when I’d done something he didn’t like was dark. Dark and small. Most places in the Pinnacles were lit by the same white stone as we have in the eyrie. You couldn’t get away from it. Sunlight in the day, moonlight or starlight at night, never truly dark. But there were a few places that were different, and that was one of them. It made me nervous the first time. Uneasy, but that was all. Once I learned what happened when the door opened and the darkness came to an end, it got worse. It wasn’t the dark I was afraid of, it was what was waiting at the end of it.’ She shifted and leaned away from him. ‘A dragon-queen shouldn’t be afraid of the dark, Tuuran. A dragon-queen shouldn’t be afraid of anything. I thought, if I could teach myself that what was waiting at the end of the dark was something else, something I could trust, something safe …’ She laughed. ‘That’s what you are. A rock that will never move or let me down. It’s taken me a long time to understand, but you have far more value to me as that than as a lover. ’
Tuuran stared into the flames, frowning. Mostly because he couldn’t make much sense of anything she’d just said, and in a good part because he was fairly sure he didn’t want to be someone’s rock when he rather fancied being something else. He had a notion he was being flattered, or at least that that was how it was meant, but that didn’t stop a part of him from sulking and leering at the same time, and thinking how he might take Myst and Onyx up on that offer they kept making to dress in her Holiness’s silks when she wasn’t there.
‘Here we are, far from anywhere, and yet I know you’ll be the greatest Night Watchman I could ever have. Tuuran, when the time comes, I’m not sure I’ll want to leave.’
They sat and watched the fire in silence. Zafir shared some water. They baked a couple of fish caught that morning, and sat about licking their fingers until Zafir stretched and yawned and curled up next to Diamond Eye’s massive flank. Tuuran kept to his fire, poking and prodding it while Zafir slept. By the time his head started to nod his tunic had dried, and so he put it back on and used the cloak as a blanket. Kept thinking over what her Holiness had said, trying to make sense of it and not much liking the answer. Making someone want something even more while saying they couldn’t have it, that’s what it was. He shifted to watch her sleeping, watch the rise and fall of her chest. To look at her face. She looked happy, he thought. And maybe a bit in awe, as though being happy was something new.
‘Flame.’ He sighed and shook his head and settled to sleep, and fervently hoped for some soft-skin
ned dreams of Myst and Onyx and no one else. Some people, he decided, were just too complicated for their own good.
They flew to the eyrie the next morning. Tuuran went back to doing what he did and Zafir went back to flying her dragon, and he couldn’t get her out of his head, the memory of her with her back to him, naked, and then of his hand on her arse. When she next flew away he went up to the eyrie to see if her handmaidens wouldn’t mind a bit of Adamantine Man to keep them company, thinking maybe that would give him something new to think about; and he took Crazy Mad with him too, thinking it would be a bit of the old times, maybe get Crazy to step out of himself a while, remember the whole idea of having some fun and go back to the way he’d been before Tuuran had seen that moonlight gleam; but when they got there Crazy went and sat on the eyrie rim instead, and stared out at the sea and wouldn’t talk until Tuuran left him to have his frolics with Myst and Onyx alone. And between one thing and another his heart wasn’t really in it, and it left him feeling worse than before. Empty and stupid and a bit shamed, which was probably a first for any Adamantine Man in the entire history of the legion when it came to something as straightforward as fucking.
He couldn’t sleep, but stared wide-eyed and bleary at the ceiling over his head on into the middle of the night and beyond, and that was how it was he was still awake when one of the dragon eggs hatched.
He heard the scream first. The wild shrieking challenge of new-hatched rage and hunger. Even while his head was spinning loops wondering how that could be, there were enough old instincts left to make him grab his axe. He ran out, yelling to Myst and Onyx to keep the door hard closed. Slap in front of him in the dragon yard was a hatchling he’d never seen, glistening, dripping fresh from the egg. Its flanks were salmon pink shading to almost white underneath with golden socks and claws and flashings of metallic green along the tips and trailing edges of its wings. Any eyrie master from back home would probably have gone into a conniption at colouring like that, but as far as Tuuran cared the dragon was simply an unusually gaudy way to die. Definitely not one of the two that had flown with them across the sea – those were much larger now, and kept themselves to themselves off on some other island, though they never quite flew away.