by Stephen Deas
He looked down at the ground far below. You couldn’t see much of it any more. The rain had hissed and fizzed off the dragons until the valley was filled with a warm mist. The rain had been a blessing for everyone really. The fires in the city had gone out. The dead dragons hadn’t ignited the plains grass. The rabble had been too busy with their own misery to get organised enough to storm the Fortress of Watchfulness. And the grand master alchemists of the realms was still alive. For the moment.
Yes, could have been a lot worse, and for now he was happy to take whatever he could get. He’d done what needed to be done. In the next few months the realms as he knew them would disappear. Did he really want to see that? Probably not.
Unless, unless . . .
The business with Vioros and the spear and the dragons turned to stone wouldn’t let him go. How had the sell-sword brought the spear to life, made it speak to him? What in the name of all the gods he’d never believed in was in that thing? And why had it awoken now? Why had it never spoken to him? But there was no point spending his last few hours cursing a piece of metal. He could have done more, but Vioros would have to do it now. Others could take up the mantle. Like I did when Bellepheros vanished.
Yes, it was comforting to think that, given where he was. Although, if he was honest with himself, it would have been nice to at least have a little glimpse into the future. See whether he’d done enough. See whether the realms would regrow from the ashes.
No, if he was really honest with himself, it would have been nice to be sitting in a comfy chair somewhere with a roof over his head, with a nice glass of wine and a good book, wrists and ankles intact and a vastly less agoraphobia-inducing view. That’s what would have been nice. He sighed. Maybe he shouldn’t have felt so grateful to the weather. What was the point thanking the rain when all it did was prolong his misery?
He looked around. Pointless really, since all he could see below was mist, but he did it anyway. It gave the muscles in his neck something to do. Water dripped out of his hair into his eyes. He blinked.
And then he blinked again. He could see specks in the distant sky, dark flecks against the brooding evening cloud. For a few seconds not being able to rub his eyes was suddenly the most irritating thing in the world. Then the specks grew bigger and he knew he wasn’t imagining them. They were coming from the south. Too many to be Zafir. Too many to be the rogue white . . .
Jehal.
He felt a sudden surge of . . . something. Hope? Anxiety? Fear? None of those made any sense, since Jehal couldn’t really do anything worse than Hyrkallan had already done, and wasn’t likely to do much better either. But the surge came anyway. That’s what comes of being a man, I suppose. There’s always hope, even if it doesn’t make the remotest jot of sense.
The dragons came closer. They circled high over the Pinnacles, something like a hundred of them, he thought. Why doesn’t he land at the eyrie? That was easy to answer. Because of the mist.
A few dragons started to spiral slowly towards the huge open yard in the middle of the fortress where perhaps six or seven could land, and Jeiros’ mind raced. Hope was a stupid and foolish thing but it had him firmly in its grasp. He wanted to live. Very, very badly.
‘Hey! Hello!’ Why am I shouting? Who’s going to hear me? Men up there on dragons? Don’t be daft. Perhaps whichever alchemist came to me yesterday? Because obviously, what with Hyrkallan howling murder on all of us, he’ll have nothing better to do than sit on the walls somewhere behind me for a couple of days in case I have any last messages to send.
Sure enough, no one answered. He couldn’t even wave his hands, tied as they were to the wheel. The dragons were close enough that he started to recognise them. Wraithwing – Jehal’s own – leading the way. He has no idea what’s happened here. Hyrkallan’s going to kill him in a blink and take his dragons. Which would be the right thing, wouldn’t it? Best for the realms. Give them the leader they’re going to need in the times to come. Or do I really believe what I said to Hyrkallan?
His heart was inclined to the latter. Hard to root for a man who’d strung you up to die.
The dragons didn’t land straight away. Rather, they made several passes over and around the fortress. Wondering where everyone is, no doubt. One of the riders flew right past him, looked straight at him. Jeiros tried to waggle his hands. Completely futile and hurt as if he’d set fire to himself, but he did it anyway. He shook his head and shouted, incoherently at first and then warnings. ‘Danger! Danger!’ Why? Why warn them? Don’t I want them to land? Don’t I want them on the ground so what’s left of us can put an end to a few more dragons while we still can?
At last two dragons swooped towards the middle of the fortress. He didn’t see them land but he felt it, the shock of the impacts trembling the whole mountain, setting his wheel swinging very slightly from side to side on its rope. Moments passed. He thought he heard voices raised. Then one of the dragons still in the air lurched, twisted and shot towards the fortress and belched fire. Jeiros twisted his head as far as it would go but he couldn’t see anything except the dragons dancing in the sky and the outer walls of the fortress. He saw a second dragon swoop, and then another one gave out an angry shriek.
Scorpions. Hyrkallan was firing scorpions.
He found, with a bit of wriggling, he could make the wheel swing from side to side. Not much, but enough that whenever it swung to the left he could see a little more of what was happening. Three dragons were on the ground now, roaring and stomping. He could feel their footfalls, tiny tremors that reached out and made his fingers tingle. A fourth dragon came down, and then a fifth and then finally Wraithwing and Jehal. Which had to mean that Hyrkallan had been driven back into the depths of the fortress and the tunnels that riddled the mountain. Trapped.
Jeiros began to giggle.
Time passed. He wasn’t sure how much. Too much. He tried shouting again, but no one came. The top of the fortress fell quiet. Hope, ever fickle, began to trickle away.
‘Hey there, Grand Master! Are you still alive out there?’
Jehal. Jeiros couldn’t help himself. He wept. He tried to speak but found he could only croak.
‘I know exactly what you did to get yourself strung up like this. I’ve got one of your people here. Very keen to tell me all about it. I think he thinks I’m going to cut you down. Have to say I’m quite tempted to leave you there and push your little friend here off the edge. I can quite see Hyrkallan’s point, you know. If you murdered my dragons, I dare say I’d be more than a little put out.’
‘It was . . .’ Cursed voice. Angrily Jeiros hacked and coughed. It didn’t help much. ‘It was for the good . . .’ The good of the realms, that’s what he was trying to say. The rest came out as an angry grating sound.
‘What was that? I can’t hear you.’
Jeiros tried again.
‘Nope. Still can’t. Look, I don’t think I can ask my riders to fly around in circles all night while I get some sleep, and I’m not sure this is the best place for that anyway. Shall I come back in the morning?’
‘Nargh!’ The worst of it was that he couldn’t even see Jehal. He was hanging with his feet towards the fortress and he couldn’t twist his head enough. He could almost feel Jehal turn and walk away. Bastard. Then the crane started to move. He had a moment of panic at first, thinking they were dropping him into the void below. Then an absurd sense of joy.
They swung him in slowly then lowered the wheel and turned it over so that Jeiros was staring up at the sky. Up at the man he’d made speaker.
‘Oh dear, look at you.’ Jehal wore his usual sneer of practised disdain. ‘If I let you go, are you going to kill my dragons too, Jeiros? Honestly now. Please don’t lie.’
Jeiros bit his tongue. The right answer was obvious. No. His lips shaped to say it.
‘Honestly now.’ Jehal’s expression didn’t flicker, but there was something hard in his eyes. A fierceness that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago.
‘Only if I h
ave to.’
Jehal frowned. ‘Well that’s not the answer I was looking for. A simple no would have gone down much better.’ He sighed.
‘You asked. . . for honesty.’
‘So I did. And you did help me after Shezira tried to un-man me. I suppose that should count for something.’
‘I saved your life,’ Jeiros croaked. Jehal snorted.
‘Oh I don’t know about that.’ He put his hands on his hips and struck a pose. His weight was all on one leg and he looked like an idiot, but he was presumably long past caring what a mere alchemist thought of him. ‘But since Hyrkallan put you there and since he’s such a tedious arse . . .’ He made a cutting gesture. Jeiros winced as hands touched his wrists. ‘If you do ever want to kill my dragons, Grand Master, I’d appreciate it if we could have a little chat about it first, eh?’
46
Long Live the King
Jehal leaned against a well near the edge of the Adamantine Eyrie. Jeiros sat with his back to it, his useless legs stretched out on the muddy ground. Finding chairs for two cripples was proving to be a problem.
‘The trouble with dragons,’ Jehal mused, ‘is never the monsters themselves.’ Keeping the weight off his damaged leg was making his back stiff. It was tempting to sit in the dirt with Jeiros, but that wasn’t what a speaker should do. Wasn’t what a grand master alchemist should do either, for that matter, but Jeiros didn’t have much of a choice. He’d be lucky to ever walk again. ‘The trouble always comes from the people who ride on the back of them.’ Jehal’s leg hurt whatever he did with it, a steady throbbing that never went away. The alchemists would have something for that, now they were here. Herbs, potions, anything, something that was stronger than Dreamleaf. He watched wearily as the last of his riders came in to land. The sky above the Mirror Lakes was a deep grey, like the slate roofs of the city. Evening rain clouds, carried up by the wind from the Raksheh and the sea beyond.
Eventually Eyrie-Master Copas conjured up a litter from somewhere. Jehal climbed in, slowly and laboriously. Jeiros sat beside him, lifted in by two of the bearers. The alchemist didn’t say anything and his eyes were closed. Most probably he was asleep.
‘We could have flown all through the night, straight from the Pinnacles, and been here in the morning, bright and early. The dragons wouldn’t have minded. I know they don’t much like flying in the dark but they’ll do it if you tell them. No, it’s the riders. Needing sleep and food and rest and to empty their bowels. We lost the whole day.’ He prodded Jeiros and waved a pouch of Dreamleaf at him. ‘Can dragons fly for ever? Do they actually need to rest at all? Does anyone know?’
Jeiros had a faraway look, either because his thoughts had been miles away or because he really had been asleep. ‘No. And yes and yes.’ He took a pinch of leaf and started to chew on it. ‘We did experiments on that sort of thing a long time ago. They don’t exactly wear out. But if they don’t rest and eat and drink, then eventually they overheat and then they burn up from the inside and die.’ His eyes came into focus on Jehal’s face. ‘The trouble with dragons, Jehal, is that they exist.’
Jehal. Not Your Holiness, just Jehal. After all they’d been through he couldn’t hold it against the alchemist. He watched the dragons. They were hungry and irritable and were tearing with zeal into the terrified animals that the Scales had herded out of their pens. Those like Wraithwing who’d sated themselves were already curled up to rest. ‘They do make a mess.’
‘A mess? Pray we don’t see what a mess they make.’ Jeiros stretched and then winced. Every movement was pain. Jehal knew how he felt. Look at us. A pair of cripples. ‘We should have wiped them out when we had the chance. It took a sorcerer, a true half-god sorcerer. Thousands and thousands of people died. Probably tens of thousands. We gave ourselves up with the poison in our veins. We killed them and we tamed them and we hunted out their nests and smashed their eggs. Perhaps we could have destroyed them. But no. We tamed them. We thought we were so clever.’ He spat bitterly. ‘Why did you keep me alive, Jehal? All I want to do now is kill every dragon here.’
‘Yes, well you won’t be doing that just yet. I kept you alive because you kept me alive. Besides, the realms need their alchemists whether I like it or not.’ And let’s not forget that you’re probably the one person who’ll stop the Night Watchman sticking my head on a spike the moment I hobble through the palace gates. But we won’t mention that, eh?
‘They won’t thank you for it.’
‘Yes, yes. The apocalypse is coming. Tell me, Jeiros, because it’s been bothering me for months, this potion of yours – why don’t you just make more?’
‘If only it was so easy. Truth is we’ve never been able to make quite enough. We get by. Now and then, when there is a strong speaker, we have a quiet cull, spread over two or three years. We don’t tell the kings and queens, just let them think it’s some sort of disease. It goes by unnoticed. We did it with Vishmir, Ayzalmir, a few others. So then most of the dragons are hatchlings, and we can stockpile potion. As they grow into adults, we very slowly start to run out. In time we have to do it again. The rogues who attacked the Redoubt didn’t affect what we could make, but they destroyed what we had stored. Ruined the lot. And then there was the war. The Red Riders. Evenspire.’ He wrinkled his nose.
Jehal waited. ‘You didn’t actually answer my question,’ he said.
Jeiros actually laughed. ‘I won’t tell you what goes into it, Speaker. Even Vioros doesn’t know that. Outside those who actually live in those caves, there are three of us who know, and only because we’ve done it ourselves. I’ve made that potion, Jehal. It’s simple enough. There’s just one thing that goes into it that matters, but that one thing . . .’ He shook his head. ‘We bleed for it, Jehal, we alchemists, and if our blood was all that mattered we would bleed ourselves dry. Only then there would be no more alchemists. Some harvests only yield what they yield and there is simply nothing more to be done.’ He laughed again. ‘Perhaps we should have bled ourselves to death for the rest of you. Perhaps we have. Not that it would make any difference.’
Jehal shrugged. ‘Look on the bright side – when it happens, whatever it is, maybe no one will live long enough to form an opinion on how much of it is actually your fault.’ Or mine.
‘Your indifference is touching.’ Jeiros looked at his feet. Bent and useless. Someone had put splints on him, but ankles smashed like that would never set right.
‘And your relentless gloom is relentlessly tedious.’ The litter lurched into motion, heading towards the eyrie gates. Jehal cast his gaze around, looking for his wife and the carriage she’d promised to find for him to take him up the hill to the palace. Riding dragons was one thing. Riding horses was a pleasure he had to leave to others now. No great loss. They were dull, stupid, uninspiring creatures. A bit like most of the lords I have to look forward to now that I’m home. Yes, that was a much more cheery thought. Hyrkallan and Sirion trapped in the Pinnacles without a dragon between them. Shezira’s other daughters with them. Valmeyan and Tichane dead. Zafir most likely dead too. Let’s face it, who’s left? Silvallan is probably shitting bricks wondering whether he’s next. At this rate I’ll have to invite the Syuss back to the council. They’ll have more dragons than any of the rest of us soon. Another little nugget to chew on. The Syuss had always hated Hyram. They’d hated Antros and Shezira and Valgar. The names were different now, but the hate would still be there. With a bit of prodding and stirring all manner of troubles might arise there. Played right the north could be a lot of fun in the years to come. But that can wait. When you tidy your house, you start with the bits you actually live in. First things first. Vale Tassan here I come. Say one thing for dragons: once you’re on the back of one, it doesn’t matter how much of a cripple you are. Boy, woman, man, half-man, put us on a dragon and none of that matters. What matters is that the monster obeys. When that happens, we become gods.
The litter stopped. Jehal tumbled out, catching himself with his staff, and hobbled to
wards Lystra and his waiting carriage. He and Jeiros would each deal with their own rogues. A fair and equitable arrangement.
As he limped closer, soldiers on horseback converged on the carriage. Adamantine Men. For a moment his heart missed a beat, but when they drew their swords, it was to salute him. So Vale knows I’m coming. I suppose it’s probably easier to kill me in the palace than down here. Too many witnesses . . .
The carriage door flew open. Lystra threw her arms around his neck, almost strangling him. His bad leg buckled. For an instant it seemed he would fall, dragging her out of the carriage to roll around in the mud. A fine sight that would have been – the speaker and his queen grappling in the dirt – but she had enough strength to pull him in instead. He half sat, half fell on the seat beside her.
She smiled at him, eyes wide with excitement. ‘Do you know I’ve never been here. Not since I was a little girl. You have to show me everything. There must be so many marvellous—’
He shut her up by kissing her, which still usually worked. So many marvellous things. Yes. Pity that most of them want to kill me. In a pause for breath he glanced out the window. The still waters of the Mirror Lakes lay dull and flat under the evening sky. Behind them the City of Dragons sat in a shimmer of mist. Her towers sparkled, painted in silver and gold. Money, opulence, decadence, too much of all of them. My kind of place.