The Order of the Scales

by Stephen Deas

  ‘How deep is deep, dragon?’

  They are few, Kemir. They are weak. They will not be able to hurt you.

  Kemir snorted. ‘You’d be amazed what even a weak man can do if you frighten him enough. So what’s in it for me?’

  If you cease to be useful, you become food.

  ‘Bollocks to you.’ He picked up a stone and threw it at her as hard as he could. It bounced off her nose. ‘Without me, dragon, you and yours would be throwing yourselves against one of the vast eyries of the plains. You’d be riddled with poison and scorpion bolts and wondering what went wrong. Just maybe, as you were burning from the inside, you’d be thinking that you should have listened to me, but probably not, because you’re all so blindly arrogant when it comes to that sort of thing. Without me, dragon, you wouldn’t even know these mountain eyries existed, much less have found any of them. I thought that’s why you tolerated me. Because without me your ignorance and your impatience make you so stupid that you might as well keep taking the alchemists’ potions.’

  Snow lowered her face until she was inches from Kemir’s nose. When she hissed, she smelled of warm blood. Her head seemed huge, even if she was small for a dragon. As large as a cart with a mouth big enough to swallow a horse and lined with a hundred dagger-like teeth as long as his forearm. Her eyes were as big as his head.

  The little one you brought to me had knowledge in the ways of this world, Kemir, more than yours. He knew many things that you do not. Events have happened since I awoke. I require to know more. I require an alchemist.

  Kemir took a step forward. He was nose to nose with the dragon now. ‘Maybe I just won’t, dragon. Has that thought occurred to you?’

  They have knowledge of the dragon-knight who killed your nest-brother. Shall I pluck it from their thoughts before I devour you, or do you prefer to die in ignorance? It matters little to me.

  A silence hung between them. The silence of a wound ripped open. Time stopped. The mountain and the eyrie and the sky all vanished. There was only him and the dragon. ‘What?’

  I require an alchemist, Kemir.

  ‘The Scales. Where is he?’ It had to be the Scales. He must have known something after all.

  For an answer, Snow licked her lips.

  ‘You ate him.’

  An alchemist, Kemir. You will bring me an alchemist.

  The Alchemy

  ‘What is the secret? they always ask. What is the secret?

  It is the Silver King, I sometimes say. The Isul Aieha, bound and tied in the deepest caverns of the Worldspine, held for ever in torment with a hollow spike driven into his still-living brain, from which drips an ichor of purest silver. That is the secret. They stare at me with wide eyes, lapping up every word, and then I laugh. Other times I say it is merely a plant, a common leaf, a happy chance of nature that renders our dragons dull. What is the secret? It is a thing I will hold in my heart like a lover and never let go. The secret is blood.’

  6

  Outwatch

  Isentine watched the four dragons circle his little oasis. The fact that three of them were hunters only made the fourth, the war-dragon B’thannan, seem even more immense than usual. They’d come from the south, over the hundred miles of empty burning dunes from Sand to the last outpost of the north. To his eyrie, built around the ancient tower of Outwatch and the fertile strip of land around it. The oasis he understood. A river ran underground, all the way from the Worldspine, right under his feet. It touched the surface here. Somehow, because of that water, Outwatch had grown to be the largest eyrie in the realms.

  The tower was another matter. Someone had built it long ago. They’d never quite finished, and they hadn’t been quite human, that much was clear to anyone who lived here.

  The ground shuddered as the weight of the dragons hit the earth; he could feel the impacts through his feet, all the way up to the aches in his knees. He cast a nervous glance behind him at the tower. In his dreams things kept falling apart.

  A tiny distant figure slid down from B’thannan’s back and strode across the hard blasted earth of the eyrie. Lord Hyrkallan, hero of Evenspire, prince of the north and King of Sand in all but name. A big man, but out here he looked small and insignificant. Against the immensity of the sky and the vast empty sands and the dragons sprawled basking in the desert sun, most things did. Kings, queens, riders, alchemists, they were all little more than oversized ants. At the head of his soldiers, standing stiffly erect, Isentine clenched his teeth. The pains in his knees and his back troubled him more every day. Age.

  Hyrkallan ignored the soldiers. He walked straight to the eyrie-master and on, snapping his fingers at Isentine to follow him. Which was not something his rank entitled him to do, not until he was crowned. Isentine held his ground.

  ‘Your victories are sweet, but you’re not married to her yet, Your Highness,’ he said loudly.

  Hyrkallan stopped dead. For a second he didn’t move. He didn’t turn. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Where she always is.’ Isentine hung his head. ‘Underground. With the abomination.’

  ‘It must stop, Isentine.’

  ‘Yes, but she is our queen. I can’t force her. I need you to get her away from here.’ Now, finally, Isentine turned and walked side by side with Hyrkallan. ‘Or are you inclined to wonder, as I have heard others wonder, does it do such harm? The dragon is only a hatchling, after all.’ But no. An abomination was an abomination. Hyrkallan had the right of it.

  Hyrkallan growled. ‘No, Eyrie-Master, I am not inclined to wonder. It must stop. She is a queen. She must behave as one.’

  ‘Shezira used to joke that you must have come out of your mother with that glare of disapproval on your face.’ Isentine tried to smile, but what came out was more of a wince. His hip this time.

  ‘I disapprove of many things, Eyrie-Master. The last thing of which I disapproved was Speaker Zafir. Now that she’s dead, I most strongly disapprove of her villainous lover Jehal sitting on her throne. I promised the Night Watchman that my dragons would not cross the Purple Spur and so they will not, but I will not watch from afar while the Viper triumphs. I have gone to war in the name of my queen and now I mean to marry her, just as she promised. I do not demand pomp and ceremony, old man, but I do demand that all do their duty. I have brought witnesses, from this realm and from King Sirion. You have priests here. We must strike while the ancestors favour us. Two weeks have passed since the rout at Evenspire and we have done nothing. Jaslyn must go to the Adamantine Palace. She must go in strength but in peace and she must do it soon. Unless I have judged matters awry, the Lesser Council will be glad to rid themselves of Jehal. The Speaker’s Throne is hers for the taking. Jehal may even keep his life if his queen demands it, although the Veid Palace of Furymouth shall become his prison.’ He growled. ‘The most gilded of prisons. But time is not on our side. Our strength is fragile, Isentine. Jaslyn must understand this. She must act or I must act for her, and I cannot rule alone as a prince. Then there is the matter of heirs.’

  Isentine wiped his mouth. ‘I hope you brought a plentiful supply of Maiden’s Regret.’

  ‘I have enough.’

  ‘Jaslyn is . . .’ Isentine made a face. ‘I do not think she has ever had a lover, Your Highness.’

  A tinge of red touched Hyrkallan’s face. ‘That is hard to believe, Eyrie-Master. Given her sisters . . .’ Hyrkallan obviously hadn’t looked where he was going before starting that sentence. Now he stopped, realising far too late what he was about to say.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ muttered Isentine when Hyrkallan had had enough time to feel suitably embarrassed. ‘I ask that you be gentle.’

  ‘She has to stop this foolishness, whatever it is that she’s doing. I don’t understand the nonsense that has possessed her.’

  No. You don’t. The Order of the Scales had careful rules about which of their secrets they told to whom. Hard rules with harsh punishments for those who broke them. Princes learned more than dragon-lords. Kings and eyrie-maste
rs more still.

  ‘Then you will see it for yourself.’ Even after twenty years, Shezira had never quite believed. Isentine had always seen it as a compliment, really, a tacit nod to the meticulous care with which he ran his eyrie. Now Hyrkallan would see it all for himself. A dragon untouched by alchemy. Aware and awake. Alive. Intelligent. He would feel a dragon read his thoughts and plant its own straight into his head. All these things without a word being said. No rules broken. Shezira never believed and left the dragons to me and to the alchemists. Antros? He simply didn’t care. Almiri didn’t need to. Lystra? I suppose I might never know whether she believed whatever she was told. Jaslyn saw half of it for herself before anyone told her anything. She was the only one. Did I even believe it myself, when I was first made into the master of Outwatch? I don’t think I did.

  He frowned at himself. No time for rambling, old man. Back to the present. ‘The hatchling must be dulled,’ he said sharply, ‘and if that cannot be done, it must be killed.’

  That got Hyrkallan’s attention. ‘You want to kill Jaslyn’s hatch-ling?’

  Too hard to explain until Hyrkallan saw the abomination for himself. Then he would understand. ‘We can agree, Lord Hyrkallan, that Queen Jaslyn’s place is not here. She must be persuaded of this. If our reasons differ, the result does not. When she is gone, I will do what I have always done, what needs to be done, both for this realm and for others.’

  ‘Every dragon.’ Hyrkallan wagged a finger in Isentine’s face. ‘You save every dragon and make it grow.’

  Isentine smiled. ‘You sound like her. Shezira.’ Would it help to tell Hyrkallan that one hatchling in every three refused to eat? Starved itself to death rather than take the alchemists’ potions? Probably not. Hyrkallan could have that later, when he was ready for it. When he was ready to know that the problem was getting worse too.

  ‘I know.’ They started to walk again, this time in silence, both of them lost in their memories of the dead queen they’d both admired and maybe loved. Isentine led them to the yawning shaft that formed the hub of the underground eyrie and started painfully on the stairs that circled downward.

  ‘My legs aren’t what they used to be.’

  ‘Shezira came to me before she was made speaker. She wanted to replace you. I told her she was mad. I think that was what she wanted to hear.’

  ‘She sent Jaslyn to me as my successor.’ Isentine sighed. ‘She would have made a good eyrie-mistress.’

  ‘Let her. Once her duty to me is done.’

  ‘She has to be a queen.’

  Hyrkallan shook his head. ‘No. I have to be a king. We both know that’s why she offered to share her crown with me. That’s a price I’ll be happy to pay for this honour. Let Jaslyn live with her dragons if she wishes. I won’t stop her. If anything it seems fitting for a dragon-queen. Perhaps others will see it that way.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Half a year ago, the idea of Jaslyn becoming the heir to Outwatch had seemed perfect for both of them. Now he wasn’t so sure. She understands the dragons well enough, if anything too well. She has seen what monsters they are and what terrors they can become, and yet she has awoken another one. Would I sleep easy at night knowing the realms were at her mercy? I’m not at all sure I would.

  ‘Here.’ Isentine stepped off the stairs and into one of the endless tunnels that burrowed into the stone under Outwatch. ‘We keep the hatchling chained. Jaslyn is not quite herself either. I have to give her potions to hold the Hatchling Disease at bay every day, and that’s another reason you should take her away. It’s a battle that is always slowly lost and you wouldn’t want her if she turned out looking like one of the Scales.’

  ‘I would do my duty, Eyrie-Master.’

  ‘Then let us say that I would not forgive myself if our queen could not retain the little beauty she has. I have given Jaslyn far more than the usual dose. It is starting to affect her thinking.’ He sighed again. ‘There is another thing you must know, Lord Hyrkallan. Queen Jaslyn does not like to be under the ground. She will ask you to force me to release the hatchling from its chains. You may say what you wish, Your Highness, but I will not do that. Not on your command or hers. You may bring dragon-knights and put us to the sword, but I will not give that monster its freedom and nor will any alchemist in my eyrie.’

  He hobbled along the tunnels that led towards the caves on the cliff, the bright places where the sun poured in from the south and the hatchlings took their first tentative breaths. A mercurial tension lingered among these caves, the hatchling caves. Men died here, and often. Isentine shook his head. ‘You never quite know what you’re going to get with a hatchling. Some of them are dazed and confused and easily chained. Some of them seem not to mind at all. Many fight as though they know exactly what will happen to them. They come a spitting fury of teeth and claws and fire, right from the egg. I lose men, Hyrkallan, to try and save those. We fall on them, a dozen of us trying to pin one of the beasts down while others wrestle the chains around their wings and neck. Dressed up in the thickest dragon-scale. Always the biggest and strongest man gets the head. You have to press down with all your weight, wrap your arms around its mouth and squeeze. You would be a good choice, Your Highness. A good solid build and a smith’s arms.’ He smiled. ‘I did it myself, many years ago. Look around any eyrie and you’ll see it’s the big men who are missing their arms or their hands. It’s as though some dragons understand everything even before they hatch.’

  Now he shook his head. Those were usually the ones that starved themselves, the fighters. ‘And then Queen Jaslyn came and told us all that this one was her old dragon Silence and that we were to feed it with meat and water that had not been touched by any alchemist. When we wouldn’t do that, she did it herself. And it ate and drank, but it will not touch anything that is put in front of it by anyone else. Her Holiness must hunt and kill for it. She must bring the food to the beast herself. I don’t know how it knows, but it does. Her Holiness claims that the dragon speaks to her. That it remembers.’ He stopped at a door in the tunnel and shuddered. ‘I leave you to judge the truth of her claims.’ The door was heavy, bound in iron. Small too. Small enough that a large man like Hyrkallan would have some trouble getting through it in all his armour. Small enough to keep all but a newborn hatchling out. Or in, which was more to the point. ‘Here,’ he said, with a twinge of sadness in his voice. ‘Her Holiness is here. You will find her inside.’

  He let Hyrkallan go in first, since the prince was wearing armour and sometimes the hatchling was in a foul mood. When there were no shrieks or bursts of fire, he peered around the door himself. Jaslyn was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. The dragon was curled up beside her, sleeping. She was stroking its scales.

  ‘He likes this,’ she said distantly.

  Isentine shook his head. ‘I’ll leave you to it then. I’d rather be away from that thing. Watch it if it wakes, My Lord. The two of them seem to have an accommodation, but I wouldn’t trust it not to bite your arm off. She says it reads your thoughts, so I advise you to guard them.’

  He slowly climbed back up to the surface and waited. Half an hour passed, and then Hyrkallan emerged. His face was dark with fury. Isentine knew exactly how things had gone. Whatever Hyrkallan had said, he’d already tried it all himself.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said, as Hyrkallan stormed towards him.

  ‘She refused me! Will nothing sway her?’

  ‘Nothing even reaches her, My Lord. I see little choice left but to drag her, kicking and screaming, out of there. A thing I cannot do.’

  ‘She is our queen, Isentine.’ Hyrkallan’s expression didn’t change. Lost in thought mixed with a heavy tinge of anger. ‘This is not how a queen should behave. Not at any time and especially not now.’ He sat down beside Isentine and scratched his nose. For the first time Isentine could remember, Hyrkallan looked lost. ‘Curse her. I need her. I need her with me at the Adamantine Palace.’

  Isentine pursed his lips. ‘Then force her. That
would be your right as her husband. Get her away from that abomination and her mind will clear. Or give the word and I will do it. Let her blame me. It’s time I took the dragon’s fall.’ It cost him a lot to say such things. Jaslyn was the closest of Shezira’s daughters to her mother and the one he loved the most. But they had to be said. He sighed. ‘I never thought to see days like these.’

  Hyrkallan took a deep breath and levered himself back to his feet. ‘If neither reason nor duty will persuade her, perhaps she will listen to her sister.’

  ‘To Queen Almiri?’ Isentine chuckled. ‘After Evenspire, I don’t think Almiri’s cooperation is something you can rely on.’ No. Not Almiri. Lystra?’

  Hyrkallan nodded. ‘Queen Lystra.’ Then he laughed. ‘You spend too much time with your dragons, old man.’

  7

  A Siege of Dragons

  They had half a day before Prince Tichane came back at them. When he did, he came with everything. Dragons, hundreds of them, wheeling and circling Meteroa’s spire of stone, bathing it in flames until it must have seemed a column of fire, a bright shining thing seen across half the realms. Tichane came with riders, hundreds of them too, decked in dragon-scale. With scorpions that rained like hail on the unyielding stone. With barrels of lamp oil that turned the Reflecting Garden into an inferno and flowed in burning rivers down the sheer cliffs of the mountain. With endless hordes of slave-soldiers, carried in cages to mill in useless impotence on the wrong side of Meteroa’s walls. Tichane could bury the Pinnacles in burned bodies and shattered scorpion bolts for all Meteroa cared. Impotent, all of them. All of them except the dragons. It was almost enough to make him laugh, even if he’d lost a dozen riders in that first hour and most of the scorpions in the upper caves had been ruined.