Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

The grey dead …

  … are coming …

  … with the golden knife.

  They are making …

  … the greatest of us …

  … whole again.

  They are calling …

  … the Black Moon …

  … to rise once more.

  Do …

  … what you do …

  … and watch.

  8

  Skyrie

  Skyrie. On a battlefield outside Tethis, four years before the Adamantine Palace would burn, the name slipped inside Berren’s head. It came with an explosion of light. When he opened his eyes again he was staring at the bright sky. Faces were looking down on him. Old friends. Faces he knew but he could feel himself falling away from them. And he could feel something coming the other way. Something from a dark place. It had a name.

  Skyrie …

  He caught a glimpse of other faces peering down at him too. Different faces. Dim shadows shrouded in grey.

  Berren! Crowntaker! Where are you wounded? The words of his soldiering friends, of Tallis One-Eye, grew distant. Hold the advance! Get him out of here! Gaunt, lead the wall!

  He barely heard. He was sinking. Falling fast while another streamed the other way. He reached out at the thing that passed him in the void and tore at it, sunk in his fingers and his teeth and his toes. He tore a piece away but it didn’t stop the falling.

  Skyrie. That was who he was. That was his name. He saw the Crowntaker coming, falling, screaming, flailing, clawing. They tasted one another as they passed through Xibaiya, through the path ripped by the warlock’s sigil, and then Skyrie saw the light. He saw the Bloody Judge fall away. Saw faces and the sun. Reached for them as the warlock’s rip began to close. He’d seen a tear like this before, he was sure of it. In a place full of water but he couldn’t remember where. He reached for the light, for the sun, full of urgency and victory, but now something was dragging him back. ‘Get me up!’ A voice that was his but wasn’t. ‘Get that off me! Now! Before it’s too … It’s doing …’ He scrabbled to fight his way on into the light and the noise of the battlefield but the rip was almost gone.

  Something seemed to push past him through the tear, clambering over him, squeezing him back. The faces and the sky dimmed and began to change and now Skyrie was falling too, away into somewhere else where the sky was black and the air was filled with smoke and the smell of earth and the faces that looked down on him were shrouded in cowls and he wasn’t on the battlefield any more, he was back where he’d been all along, in the pit under Tethis castle. He knew its dingy light and its rotten smell. He was lying flat on a table at the bottom of a hole in the floor of a cave deep underground.

  He slumped. Closed his eyes. They’d failed. He took a deep breath and let it out and then another. His heart was thumping as though he’d been the one in the middle of a battle, not the Crowntaker. He groaned. Four of his brothers in grey held him, peering at him. Warlocks, and he was one of them. Skyrie the marsh farmer, who’d come to Tethis with a hole in his soul and a vengeful heart, who’d taken the grey robes of the Dark Queen’s priests to wreak havoc and woe on the Bloody Judge who’d destroyed his home. He’d come here willingly, made his choices, and now they’d failed. He groaned, desolate, and tried to sit up.

  ‘Skyrie?’ The other warlocks still held him down. They were shaking, full of fear. In case it had worked and the body they held had the Crowntaker inside it now. Which gave them every reason to be afraid.

  Skyrie fell limp. ‘It didn’t work.’ He was too weak to move. Too ruined by despair. Their last gambit and he was still here and the Crowntaker, the Bloody Judge of Tethis, was still out there, still who he’d ever been. Vallas’s sigils had failed. But they’d been so close! For a moment he’d even seen through the Bloody Judge’s eyes before the rip had closed and something had torn him back.

  ‘Should we call Vallas?’ The warlock who held his left leg. Brother Scortas.

  Skyrie nodded. Vallas’s great scheme to bend defeat back to victory, to wrench the Bloody Judge out of his very own flesh and blood and replace him with another, and for a moment, for one blink of another’s eye, they’d been on the cusp of it. Maybe it wasn’t too late to try again …

  Where am I?

  Skyrie froze. Horror turned his bones to ice. He had an instant, that was all, to realise that he hadn’t come back alone, for utter dread to drench his every thought, before an alien presence ripped through him, hurling him tumbling head over heels into nothing, stranding him far away where all he could do was watch and listen and scream in silence as …

  I am the Bloody Judge of Tethis. I am Berren the Crowntaker! What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? The warlock to his left had a knife. Skyrie’s arm jerked up. Smashed its fist into his face and sprawled him to the floor. He kicked the pair who stood by his feet. One stumbled forward. He sank his fingers into a fleshy neck and practically tore out the warlock’s throat. The last one scrabbled away. ‘Skyrie!’ Skyrie? Who was that? Not him. A battlefield. Full armour, wading through mud, blood and the limbs of his enemies. Only a moment ago and now he was here, mad-eyed, riven by terror-fuelled fury …

  A silent prisoner, helpless behind his own eyes, Skyrie shrieked and howled and wailed and tore at himself. His brothers. His comrades. He knew their names. He knew their laughter. They’d shared bread and water. They were the ones who’d brought him here, all of them come willingly for the ritual that would turn the world on its head and he was killing them and he couldn’t stop, couldn’t even close his eyes, couldn’t even look away …

  He leaped off the table, The Crowntaker, consumed with irresistible fury. Onto the warlock who still held the knife. Filling the air with savage snarls. Both hands to the warlock’s wrist. Knee smash to the groin, hard enough to make the warlock cough out his own balls. Stamped on his ankle and smashed his face against the wall of the pit. The warlock doubled up and retched and the knife was his for the taking. Ritual? For a moment the fury faltered like sun through a break between thunderclouds and light poured in. He felt strange, lost, then grabbed hold of the fury again and tugged it hard, the only thing he had to cling to. The knife came free. He caught it. Brought it straight back up and buried it in the warlock’s guts. One dead. Ritual? He knew where he was. Not where he was supposed to be. What ritual? Remembered the battlefield. The warlock. The one who’d stuck him with that strip of cursed sigils. A cold wind brushed through him. Knowledge hammered his head and then fell away like sand hurled at a steel wall. This body wasn’t his! What did you do to me? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? Fear rose again through the fury and choked him …

  The thing inside him faltered. Skyrie groped for a memory that was truly his, a blind man fishing in the dark depths of a swamp for something he’d once held. Water. And stars. A momentary flash of elsewhere … He threw himself at the thing inside him …

  Too late. Too slow. The Crowntaker found his rage again and hurled Skyrie screaming away. One warlock dead. Three left. Had to kill them. Had to keep killing. Had to keep the fury fuelled or he’d slip away. The warlocks backed away. Shouted for help. He sprang at them. They weren’t soldiers. They got in each other’s way. He swept the legs out from one. Flipped him up and crashed him to the floor. Stamped down. Neck bones crunched and cracked. His lips drew back, a grimace of vicious glee …

  Dear gods, dear gods and holy Xibaiya! Skyrie wrapped himself around the memory of water and of the stars that winked out one by one. It gave him strength even as he felt himself unravelling. An anchor. For a moment it even found him his voice. ‘My brothers! Help me! I am …’ And then it was gone again, lost to the snarling other …

  ‘… Berren the Crowntaker. The Bloody Judge.’ Fingers caught hold of a flapping cowl. He pulled. Slashed the knife. Warm blood showered his hand. The warlock jerked back. Opened his mouth to scream and vomited blood and a few gargling gasps. Last one now. Backed against the far wall. W
himpering and shrieking. The Crowntaker tossed the knife from hand to hand. Movement, corner of his eye, up on the rim of the pit. Soldier. But he’d stood up there himself once and he knew how dark it was down here. They could hear but they couldn’t see. He pressed his knife to the last necromancer’s throat. Hatred pulsed through him. ‘What have you done to me … ?’

  Skyrie clawed at fragments of himself, slowly drifting apart. For every one he pulled back another escaped and vanished. He was falling to pieces. He tried again to scream, to beg for help as his brother did, but the only words that came were from the other, the thing he’d brought back, the Crowntaker, the Bloody Judge himself. The whites of his brother’s eyes glistened in the darkness. Sicel, that was his name, and they slept in the same room, cots one beside the other. He would have wept if his tears had been his own to shed. I’m sorry, brother. I cannot stop him. In the darkness above someone lit a lantern, and Skyrie knew well what would happen next. The soldiers would peer in. They’d see what he’d done and remember clearly how precise and explicit their orders were. They’d take up their crossbows and they’d riddle him with iron and wood. They’d watch his blood leak across the ground and soak into the dirt and then they’d throw down oil and torches and burn whatever was left. He knew. He remembered the warnings. The Bloody Judge may find the body you leave behind. So they knew he might come and they were ready for it, but not like this, while the voice that wasn’t his snarled and snapped like a cornered wolf and Sicel’s eyes rolled in terror and dismay filled his words. Vallas wasn’t even here. Vallas was with their queen, facing the Bloody Judge’s Fighting Hawks to put an end to him at last. The Bloody Judge who was right here. And all the while the lantern was coming down on its rope and the end would quickly follow. Deep inside, Skyrie squirmed and writhed and fought and found no purchase to throw the Crowntaker aside. Sighed and stood ready to be released. I am Skyrie! I am your brother! Vallas help me …

  The Crowntaker slit the last warlock’s throat. Held him close. Let blood gush over his clothes, rich and heady. Couldn’t see much in the dark. Could feel his skin, though. Wasn’t the skin he knew. Arms were scrawny and thin like a boy’s. All the battle-corded muscle gone. He didn’t understand the how but he knew what they’d done to him. The memories were right there. Right there in front of him. For a moment he paused. Clenched that piece he’d seized as he fell out of the light of the battlefield and squeezed the memories out of it. HOW DO YOU TURN IT BACK?

  The lantern was almost down. For a moment, as the Crowntaker clawed at his memories, Skyrie felt a mastery of himself again. He ran a hand down his leg. The scar was still there, the huge axe cut he should never have survived. This is who I am! Skyrie! My body, my flesh, how it always was. Skyrie. He sank to his haunches, hugging himself. The lantern came to a stop a foot above the ground. It swung slowly back and forth. He knew what Vallas had told the queensguard here over the pit because he’d been there, standing beside them, and they’d put him down here for a reason, after all. If he finds a way back then nothing comes out of here alive. Throw oil and a torch until everything is scorched to ash. He opened his mouth to shout up at them to do it, to burn him. Nothing. And now he couldn’t move any more. And then he understood: he wasn’t free at all. The Crowntaker lurked behind him, seeing it as he remembered it. Too late. His gaping mouth slammed shut, his legs leaped, his arms reached out and there was not a thing he could do to stop it. He screamed in silence yet again, Do you as you were told! Burn me! Burn me before it’s too late!

  The lantern hung from a rope. A good thick one. He jumped, swift and sudden. Seized it. Pulled sharply. The soldier at the edge of the pit holding the other end cried out, teetered, toppled over the edge and landed hard. Stupid. The lantern smashed and its rope fell in loops and then hung taut, tied to the winch and crane they used to lower people down. The Crowntaker gripped the knife between his teeth. He had the soldier’s sword out of its scabbard in a flash. Hurled it up out of the pit and over the edge. Scampered up the wall, clinging to the rope, climbing like a monkey. All those years at sea. A skag. Never forgotten. At the top he picked out the other soldiers. They’d seen him. Were coming. Shouting. Didn’t matter. He took it all in. One glance. Where they were. What they carried. What they wore. Bared his teeth. They were too slow. Too late to stop him …

  Burn me! Please burn me!

  The first queensguard reached him. He danced past the thrust of a sword. His legs felt awkward, not his, not used to such sudden hard motion. He took the knife from between his teeth. Slammed its blade under the soldier’s chin. Felt a twinge from his arm. Switched hands and almost fumbled the knife, but not quite. Snatched up the sword from the ground. Almost lost his balance but still caught the next queensguard. Barged through him, tumbling him shrieking into the pit and almost fell back in himself. Stupid body didn’t do what it was supposed to. Arms and legs too long. Centre of balance in the wrong place. He looked up. Three queensguard still standing. He stopped. Opened his arms to them, soaked in blood, beckoning them forward. ‘Run if you want to live.’ Grinned wide at the new sound of his own voice. Savage like a wild animal.

  O Earth Goddess! Lords of Xibaiya! Help me! Help me now! Your acolyte pleads for your aid! Make it stop!

  The soldiers backed away. The knife in his hand dripped blood over his naked feet. He smiled at them one after the other. That was enough. They broke and ran, screaming alarms to anyone who might be left to listen. The Bloody Judge of Tethis let them go. Walked the other way and slipped through a half-hidden crack in the cave around the pit. Down a steep narrow slope, squeezing between the walls, inch by inch in a darkness that was absolute. He moved with purpose. Knew exactly where he was going because he’d been here before, a long time ago, with someone who’d once been a thief-taker, but now the others were all dead and there was no one left who knew this way but him. Crept carefully forward, looking for the pool that hid the sump and the secret path in and out. Found it …

  The cold touch of water on Skyrie’s feet jogged a memory. Something colossal but too fleeting to grasp. He chased it as the icy water rose around him, as it swallowed him, but the harder he reached, the more it slipped through his fingers, and then the water was falling away . .

  Out the other side of the sump. Gasping for air. Clawing his way into another cave. Familiar. Knife-rays of sunlight shining in from a narrow entrance. He’d come in the dark before. Dark was better. He crouched and waited. His arm hurt, and his knees, and all his muscles ached, twisted into unfamiliar action. Four warlocks. Three queensguard. As easy as snapping twigs. It helped in remembering. The Bloody Judge, that’s who I am. The Crowntaker. Had to hang on to that. Had to hold it tight. So he did, right on until the sun set and night fell. Then out. Into the gorge. Then what? Didn’t know. Didn’t dare think. Find who took his body, that’s what. Take it back. Kill him. Something. Didn’t know. All that hiding and waiting had left him with a thirst, though. Start with that. Afterwards a reckoning. A terrible one. Where and when and who, that was the question. Made him angry. Uncertainty and doubt? Didn’t have a place for those now. Didn’t dare. I am the Bloody Judge. He slipped down the slope of the gorge. Dark as shit. Moon hadn’t risen yet. Crept to the edge of the river and knelt down to drink. A face reflected back at him. A face that belonged to someone else and all he could do was stare as the horror surged through him …

  Water? He remembered the water. Me! It belongs to me! Mine! My face! Skyrie! Staring at himself, for a moment Skyrie threw off the horror. He screamed, and this time, finally, he had a voice.

  9

  The Empty Sands

  The Watcher stood atop the Palace of Leaves among the seventeen slowly turning discs of gold-tinged glass from which it hung, each thicker than a standing man and a hundred paces from edge to edge. Their motions were hypnotic. They drew novice eyes inside them and held them fast and sometimes didn’t let go for days. The core of each was more deeply tinged with gold, separate and still, held apart by bea
rings and a heavy frame of Scythian steel. More steel hung from the cores, chains laced with silver and gold carrying the weight of the jewelled pods and orbs of the upper palace. For most who came here, this was the marvel of the City of Stone. And it was magnificent, every part laced with power drawn up from the earth by the black monoliths below, a monument to the enchanters’ arts. But to the Watcher, the real glories of Xican were the earth and the sea and the sky, things that would remain long after the palace had fallen and shattered. There was a boundless joy to standing at such a height, with the clouds close enough to part them with his fingers, with Xican a warren of black and grey spires spread beneath his feet, a thousand termite mounds jammed together and transformed by some divine hand into a grand scale. The Grey Isle was made like this from end to end, this orderless tumble of stone on stone, yet across all the worlds he’d seen it was the place he loved the most, where air and earth and water mingled, their boundaries intertwined as closely as could be like lovers wrapped around one another, limbs tangled. It was a colourless landscape of deep blues and slate-greys, but he loved the stone, the wind, the rolling salty sea, the raw kaleidoscope of shapes and angles and changes that nature had made. A rare smile forced its way onto his face. Up here, alone, he belonged to no one. The freedom was joyous and the knowledge was exhilarating, the knowledge that he was all of this and more.

  As easily as another man might blink, the Watcher became a wind that blew across the Grey Isle’s great teeth. For no other reason than the sheer delight of it, he became the water as he reached the other side, a wave top skipping and surfing across the reach of sea between the Grey Isle and the coast of Takei’Tarr, the heartland of the Taiytakei. At the Hangpoor delta he leaped into foam and then to the air, hanging among the clouds, drinking the sight of the Hundred Rivers glittering in the morning sun, a giant tree laid out in silver across the plains. And Zinzarra too, City of a Thousand Bridges with her air harbour in the sky, higher and larger than even the Palace of Leaves, where the Zinzarrans stored the jade they took from the mountains of the Konsidar. They boasted of it, the greatest device the enchanters had ever made, but to the Watcher the beauty here was in the delta, in the water and the weaving maze of quicksilver threads, always shifting and changing.