Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  No matter. She shook the thought away. A curiosity for another day, and here and now she couldn’t be bothered with it. She had no time for the faraway vanishing of alchemists, not now, nor much for the ones in front of her. ‘My time is precious, Grand Master Jeiros.’ And yes, she meant it, filled as it was with dead kings and murdered queens and the Gateyard still littered with bodies and reeling in the ones that got away and what to do with the blood-mage under her feet, but most of all with the desperate urge to fly a while, alone with Onyx and a wind like a hurricane.

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ Jeiros spoke with a touch of acid as though he’d glimpsed her thoughts. Zafir let it go and followed the pair of them to the altar of the Great Flame and the stairs that burrowed into the ground beneath. A pair of Adamantine Men loomed from the shadows there to walk beside her. Why? In case her alchemists turned suddenly into assassins? Absurd! Absurd as thinking she couldn’t take a fight to two old men even if they did, and besides she wasn’t sure whom she should fear more just now – Jeiros and his alchemists or the Night Watchman and his guardsmen. She sent them away. It kept the frisson alive, the tension.

  ‘The tunnels here go deep, Holiness,’ whispered Vioros. ‘Deep into the Purple Spur. The caves are a realm in themselves. The ways to reach them are hidden to all but the senior alchemists of our order and to the speaker. That is the first thing we must show you.’

  They descended the steps. Tunnels riddled the earth beneath the Glass Cathedral – everyone knew that – but how far they ran was a mystery. They were old, far older than the rest of the palace. Before the coming of Narammed, the Glass Cathedral had been the most important landmark in the realms save the beating heart of her own home, the Pinnacles and the Silver City. No one knew who’d built the cathedral. It had been long abandoned, its stone burned glassy smooth long before the Silver King had tamed the dragons. Yet when the blood-mages had eventually torn him down they’d brought his spear – the Speaker’s Spear – straight to the cathedral within days of his fall. As if it belonged here.

  Her spear now. And there it was, beneath the altar at the bottom of the spiralling staircase, standing on a plinth of its own. Alone, where it had lived before Narammed had taken it; and now it was here again and it seemed to Zafir that it was waiting for her. It stood erect, its pointed haft buried six inches into the stone floor. The walls around it were lit by alchemical lamps and their cold white light glittered on the spear’s silver skin. She reached out to touch it again as they passed, almost couldn’t help herself, then drew back as the alchemists stiffened.

  ‘Yes, touch it, Holiness.’ The voice from the shadows made them all jump, but it was only Aruch, sitting still and quiet in his dark cowled robe. ‘Touch it. Claim it. Bleed for it and make it yours. Some speakers did and some speakers chose not to, but the ones who do are always the ones who are remembered.’

  All of a sudden Jeiros was as tight as a scorpion ready to fire. She could see the muscles standing out on his neck. He was shaking his head. ‘Holiness, it’s not necessary …’

  Good enough reason to do it right then. She stepped smartly to the spear and ran the tip of a finger along the closest of the spear’s four blades. The edge was wickedly sharp. A few drops of her blood dribbled over the bright silver and then, to her astonishment and alarm, shrank away and vanished as if drawn into the metal itself.

  ‘The spear has tasted you now,’ Aruch said. ‘It knows you. You belong to it.’

  ‘That was foolish, Aruch,’ snapped Jeiros and Zafir had never heard an alchemist sound so savage. ‘Come, Holiness, please. We have far to go.’ He turned away down another passageway of hewn stone worn smooth with age, lit by alchemical lamps. Zafir stared a moment longer at the bright silver of the spear. There was no sign of her blood. It hadn’t been an illusion or a mistake. It had been there, and then it had gone. She backed away, uncertain of herself and not sure what to do with the feeling and so she settled for following Jeiros and pretending it hadn’t happened for now. The tension she’d brought was still inside her but now it had an unpleasant edge, cold and clammy and nothing like the delight of before.

  ‘Why did the blood-mages bring it here?’ She cocked her head at Jeiros, who of all of them ought to know. ‘Why not keep it in the Silver City? It always seemed strange, what they did.’ Carried the spear as far away as could be. The end of the known world. ‘Not embraced in their victory, yet not destroyed nor buried nor hidden either. Why?’

  ‘They were afraid of it, Holiness,’ said Jeiros softly. ‘The blood-mages believe it carries its master’s power within it. Or something even greater. They were afraid of it because of what they’d done.’

  Zafir sucked at her finger. ‘Does it, Jeiros? Does it carry the power of the Silver King?’

  ‘No.’ The grand master alchemist of the realms shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Holiness. Aruch shouldn’t have misled you. He clings to old ways and not all of them are wise. I’m afraid I have little to say of the Speaker’s Spear except that it’s breathtakingly sharp and keeps its edge. I hope the cut isn’t deep.’

  Months later Jeiros would remember those words, his own, in bitter disbelief.

  18

  The Naked Dragon

  Little to say of the Speaker’s Spear except that it’s breathtakingly sharp and keeps its edge. But she’d seen her blood vanish into the silver – hadn’t Jeiros seen that too? It scared her and she’d have to face that; and there was a blood-mage down here somewhere, and blood-magic was stronger than alchemy. Yes, and there she’d been thinking of having Queen Shezira’s little pet exposed and executed for what he was. Foolishness when he could become her tool instead …

  Jeiros opened an iron-bound door and closed it behind them. ‘None may enter this way save the masters of the order, the great priests and the speaker,’ he said, as if she cared about such dry old rituals. ‘Had you brought your Adamantine Men they would have had a long wait for you here.’

  Zafir nodded, bored and getting impatient again. The spear had unsettled her and she’d been unsettled to start with, only now it was unsettled in a bad way. She wanted the wind in her hair and huge spaces all around her, not to be wrapped up in stone like this. Dark places brought back memories she preferred to forget. ‘It is far, Master Alchemist?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Holiness, but it is, and it must be done.’

  The alchemists led her this way and that along passages, smooth-worn and narrow, to a long hall lit with dozens of their lamps. It was a harsh light, casting shadows sharp enough to cut the eye. They made her uneasy. Jumpy. Nervous, and that was never good. She found herself wondering about Bellepheros and Furymouth and Jehal again, wondering what people knew and what they thought they knew and what they imagined. Whatever brilliance Jehal had contrived to have Shezira push Hyram off his own balcony, it would have been better if he was still alive. A few months and then he could have quietly gone away, fallen ill and died without a whiff of suspicion. But she couldn’t, couldn’t live with the lie for that long, not with everything it brought with it, the things she had to do to sustain it . He was old and fat and that reminded her far too much of—

  No. Not here. She could already feel the panic rising. Not in a place that’s already dark. A dragon-queen feared nothing but the shifting shadows were taking her there, back to the dark place of long ago. She pushed the panic away, closed her eyes and thought of racing among the clouds, warmth spreading up through her legs from the heat of the dragon beneath her, howling biting winds on her face. A dragon-queen was made of stone. A dragon-queen had no place for fear or doubt. She took deep breaths, snarling at herself. Closed her eyes and clung to the wind until the fear withdrew. Breathed slowly out as it did, a long sigh of relief. Better.

  They took her down yet more steps, wor
n and sandy, so many that she lost count. ‘Where are you leading us, Master Alchemist?’

  ‘You will see, Holiness.’ The walls pressed around her. The shadows ahead and behind filled with unkind mystery. The closeness of the two alchemists made her skin prickle and tense.

  Wind in her face, tugging at her hair. Wind in her face, tugging at her hair. ‘I understood the tunnels under the cathedral reach as far as the deep cellars of the gatehouse and elsewhere around the palace. I’ve heard they might even stretch to the City of Dragons itself. Yet it seems to me we’ve travelled in the wrong direction for that, and too far to be within the bounds of my palace. Vioros spoke of caves beneath the Spur. I think one of you must tell me a little more now we have gone so far.’ She had to work to keep the tension out of her voice. They’d chosen a bad day to bring her to a place like this.

  ‘Are those the only stories you’ve heard, Holiness?’ asked Jeiros. ‘I’ve heard far more. Stories that these tunnels reach the Fury, that they cross the realms as far as the Pinnacles and Bloodsalt and Bazim Crag. They don’t, but they go quite a way. This path will bring us to caves that lie beneath the Spur, as you have said. Behind the Diamond Cascade.’

  ‘That’s a very long way to walk under the ground, alchemist, when a horse might have carried us instead. I am displeased, Jeiros.’ Stop being scared! Stupid woman! It was done and finished long ago. They’re gone, all of them. Dead. You killed him, remember? The darkness has no hold on you now! But the darkness only laughed at her. All the gleeful joy of before, they’d leeched that from her, bringing her down here. Alchemists liked their caves and their small dark places. But not her. She gritted her teeth. Hated it, but they wouldn’t see it, none of them, not a flicker of it.

  ‘A horse could not have carried us where we are going, Holiness.’

  Down into the bowels of the earth: hours of the same rough-walled tunnel that ran straight to the heart of the mountains. At least the alchemists carried plenty of lamps. Zafir closed her eyes and summoned the wind to her face. Space. Space around her, below her and above her. And light. And no one for miles, no presence lurking right beside her. Caves were for alchemists, not for dragon-riders. Not for her. The panic gnawed at her but she’d lived for years with this foolish fear of the dark and had learned the tricks to hold it at bay. And he’s gone! Get over it!

  ‘There was a river here once,’ Jeiros told her. The alchemists were breathing heavily by now, both of them out of breath from so much walking. ‘Its course was changed to create this passage.’

  She had no idea how far they went but she was aching by the time the alchemists stopped, gasping, at yet another great door. As Jeiros struggled to open it, the wood two inches thick and bound in iron, pulling at it with all his strength, she saw a slash of blood across his palm.

  ‘You’re bleeding, Master Alchemist.’ As much as anything she wondered how he’d cut himself down here. She was a dragon-queen and the speaker now and knives were always a danger, and she’d spurned her two guardsmen from the Glass Cathedral …

  Jeiros flashed with anger. ‘The doors are bound closed, Holiness,’ he said. ‘Only an alchemist may open them.’

  ‘Oh really? Not a speaker?’ Blood-magic? Sealed doors? And there was the damned fear again, reaching out of its pit to grab her. She slammed the lid on it and stamped it back. Dark places. Never again!

  ‘No, Holiness. Although a speaker can, of course, command that they be opened.’

  ‘How very interesting. How many more such doors do you have?’

  Jeiros didn’t answer, and she might have pressed him on it but the sight beyond the door changed her mind. Such questions could wait. Ahead a great cave swallowed the light, black as pitch but for a single lamp by the entrance. Zafir had no idea exactly how large the space was but it must have been immense; she could feel that much simply in the taste of the air. Enormous. A Flame-blessed relief from the claustrophobia of the tunnel.

  ‘Keep the door directly to your back, Holiness,’ said Jeiros, ‘should you ever need to come this way. There’s always a light left here.’ Which threw up the thought of being stranded in a dark place that was huge instead of small and somehow that was worse.

  She snapped back at him, ‘How am I to come this way if I cannot open the door, Master Jeiros?’ Shame about Bellepheros. His façade of fawning diplomacy had been exactly that but at least he tried.

  They crossed the cave, flat and smooth and covered in sand. At one point Vioros stooped and put down his lantern. Zafir wondered why until she looked back and was shocked to see that the lamp by the door was a tiny speck, barely visible. How large was this cavern?

  As they walked on, a whisper of rushing water touched the stillness and grew steadily louder until, when they stopped at a scaffold set in the sand, the whisper had risen to a roar and Vioros had to shout over the noise of it. ‘There used to be a lake here, Holiness. There are others. The Silver River flows through these caves under the Spur.’ Behind her, the lantern Vioros had left was a dim speck, a single lonely spark in the dark and she still couldn’t see any sign of the cave walls. They had to be close, didn’t they? The rush of the waterfall, somewhere nearby in the dark, was enough to shake the ground, but in the feeble light of the alchemical lamps she couldn’t see it. The air tasted moist. She took a step forward alone and then stopped herself. Why had they brought her here? To test her? To pick on her weakness and see if she’d break? Well, she wouldn’t.

  A wooden platform descended slowly through the middle of the scaffold, lowered by ropes. When it reached the ground Jeiros climbed onto it. He offered his hand. Zafir disdained it. Another little strike against him. Would he have offered it if she’d been Hyram or Jehal? No. If it turned out one day that Jehal had disposed of Bellepheros then she was going to be angry with him, she decided, for leaving her with this stuffed shirt.

  The platform rose. Pulleys and ropes, she supposed, not that she knew much about such things. It took a very long time and was very dull and very dark and the waterfall stayed very loud, but the wind of it and the stray specks of water on her face helped keep the dark in its pit inside her head. By the time she felt stone close in around her again, the lanterns that marked out their path were too dim to see. When they reached the top and she peered over the edge, the base of the scaffold was so far away that she couldn’t tell if they’d risen a hundred paces or a thousand.

  The rush of water was as close as before. ‘We are at the back of the caves behind the Diamond Cascade,’ Vioros told her. ‘The Zar Oratorium isn’t far from here. There is another door—’

  ‘But we are going another way,’ said Jeiros curtly. He walked quickly now, leading the way through more tunnels, smooth things once bored by water, then down a rough-hewn passage to a small bronze door. Three heavy bolts held it shut. Jeiros pulled them back one by one. He beckoned her forward and stood aside as she opened it. Warm stale air washed over her, full of the smell of dragon, familiar and comfortable. The tension she’d carried all the way from the palace eased a little.

  Why bring her to a dragon? What could there possibly be here that she didn’t already know? Her heart jumped with anticipation. A gift for the new speaker? Surely not. But now she’d thought of it, she wanted it, and anything else would be a disappointment.

  As well as the smell, a little dim light spilled out from behind the door but she couldn’t see much more. When she stepped forward, she realised why. The door opened on to a balcony fifty feet up a sheer wall and the lights were all down below on the ground, alchemical lamps, hundreds of them. There were people moving down there too. She saw them, glimpses of shadows flitting here and there, three or four or maybe half a dozen. But what held her eye was the dragon in the middle of them, bound in chains. It was looking straight at her.

  Little One!

>   The words roared in her head. A voice she’d never heard. She staggered and Jeiros was there, right behind her, ready to catch her. She felt him touch her and flinched as if stung, whirled and almost hurled him over the edge.

  ‘I can stand on my own feet, alchemist!’ she hissed. The fear was a wild thing now, battering itself against the cage she’d made for it. ‘I don’t need your hand. Stay away from me!’ As if he would have done such a thing for Hyram or for Jehal. No, just for her, because she was weak. She took a deep breath and quelled the quiver in her throat. She was rattled by that voice, that was all, and her old enemy the dark, but there was nothing to fear here. Steady breaths. Nothing to fear. ‘What is this place? What was that sound?’ Nothing to fear …

  ‘Sound, Holiness?’ Jeiros had a smugness to him. She thought she’d probably never stop hating him after this. ‘There was no sound, Holiness.’

  Could she have him sent away? There was a thought.

  Little one! It came again, a voice that thundered inside her. And the alchemist was right, there was no sound. Only words inside her head.

  She reeled. ‘What have you brought me here to see, Jeiros? A dragon? I’ve seen plenty.’

  Jeiros spoke patiently, as if to a child: ‘I’ve brought you here, Speaker, to see the thing that you cannot be told and must see for yourself, as every speaker before you.’ He drew himself up. ‘This is a dragon untouched by alchemy, Holiness. This is what they would become without us. That is what every alchemist stands against.’

  The chained dragon turned its eyes and fixed her with them, alight with fury. It wanted to eat her. It wanted to burn her. It wanted to revel in her fear and dread before she died.

  You are nothing, little one.

  She made herself stand there, then took two quick steps right to the edge and met its eye. She met its anger and took it inside her and turned it and smashed the fear back where it belonged. Smiled at the monster down below.