Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  Zafir put her hands over her ears. Tsen made a gesture. The soldiers retreated, all except one who struck the base of the tube with a heavy hammer. A flash of flame burst from the mouth of the cannon. The entire castle shook beneath Zafir’s feet and then came a smell that reminded her of sickening dragon. The noise, though, that was a terror, worse than the lightning-throwers the Taiytakei soldiers carried on their belts. Even with her hands pressed to her ears it reached inside and filled her, and as it left it shook her bones so hard she thought she might never hear again.

  ‘The balls of iron fly into the air.’ Tsen’s voice sounded strange until Zafir realised he was shouting at her and it was the ringing in her own ears that made him sound so odd. ‘Hard enough to shatter the glass of a glasship. Did you see them?’

  Numb, Zafir shook her head. No, all she’d seen was the flame, and then the noise had devoured everything. And Diamond Eye, jerking on his wall across the eyrie, snapping round to stare, wings flared, fangs bare.

  ‘No. They travel very fast. These cannon, as you see, are tiresomely slow to prepare and desperately unwieldy. It is a delicate dance between sky and ground, slow and fatal. Sadly, unlike a lightning cannon, a weapon such as this cannot be placed on any ship. I wonder, though, how useful it might be against a dragon.’ He cocked his head but Zafir couldn’t even think yet. She closed her eyes and shook her head and staggered away and Tsen had to get one of his soldiers to help her. It took minutes before the ringing cleared enough for her to take a deep breath and turn and look back at the cannon. A slight haze of ugly brown smoke still hung around the end of its barrel.

  ‘No use at all, I would say,’ she said at last, as her mind found its sharpness again.

  ‘None?’ He laughed at her.

  ‘I’ve seen dragons carry stones and casks of fire and drop them from on high but that is not a rider’s way. Fire and tooth and tail and claw. I will come at you low and fast.’ She laughed at him. ‘Take me to my Diamond Eye, Baros Tsen T’Varr, and you will see.’ Her ears were still singing to the sound of the cannon but she could barely hold herself in now. The anticipation. The thrill. To ride a dragon again …

  The Scales were waiting for them, and Bellepheros and the usual Taiytakei black-cloaks with their spiked ashgars. The alchemist held up a thick and formless coat as Zafir came near. Like a rider’s dragon-scale riding coat except there was no dragon-scale and the coat was made of thick furs and looked as big as a tent. Two Scales stepped out in front of the alchemist and placed a pair of boots in front of Zafir’s feet. They were enormous, heavy leather and lined with more fur. She felt immediately clumsy with her feet inside them. ‘I look ridiculous.’

  ‘It is the best I can do with what is here.’ Bellepheros hung his head. ‘The dragon-scale will be another week before it’s ready. These will keep you safe from your own fire, though. The coat is clumsy too.’ Then he shook his head and looked even more ashamed. ‘The gauntlets are worse, I’m afraid.’

  He held them out to her after she’d wrapped the coat around her like a robe and the Scales had tied a steel chain around her waist. Mittens! She looked at the alchemist, horrified, but it was that or nothing, and on a dragon’s back the wind could flay the skin from your fingers and freeze your hands to your harness, while the wash of your own dragon’s fire could burn them to the bone. Still … Zafir shook her head. ‘This one time, Master Alchemist. I will not fly like this again.’

  The alchemist lifted his eyes to hers for a moment. ‘Holiness, I beg this may be a small compensation. The first part of your true rider’s armour.’ A Scales lifted some shapeless thing off the ground; Bellepheros pulled away the cloth that covered it, and underneath was the most perfect dragon helm that Zafir had ever seen. There was no wind visor, no fire visor, only a perfect curve of gold-glass. The cheeks were golden, puffed out and with a series of wide slits below the ear like the gills of a fish for breathing in the wind, and the crown and the sides and the back were yet more gold, ornate and carved with rampant dragons, yet swept back so as not to drag in the wind. The nosepiece was pointed like the beak of a bird, gold again, and the parts that covered the mouth and jaw pivoted open beneath the ear and were lined with more air slits. Fighting dragons entwined around one another, etched into the metal. She’d never seen anything like it, and when she put it on it felt so light on her head that she might almost have been wearing nothing at all. She closed the jaw piece. Breathing was effortless. And she could see. She could see as though she had nothing on at all. In all the dragon realms there had never been a helm so magnificent. A shiver ran through her. To see, finally to be able to see as Diamond Eye breathes his fire. No blurry-eyed wind visor, no blindness as the fire shield comes down! To see it all, all the terrible beauty … A shiver ran through her.

  ‘Liang made it to my design.’ Bellepheros looked pleased with himself and for once Zafir didn’t think to slap him down. For this even she would let him puff his chest. ‘Dragon-scale would be better than gold, but the glass will not melt until long after you no longer care and the gold is mostly decoration.’

  A helm of glass and gold. ‘It’s exquisite.’ A dragon-rider’s dream. Any one of them would sell their ancestors for a helm such as this. She bowed to him, something a speaker had never done to a grand master of the Order of the Scales since Narammed, but he deserved it for such a gift in this strange place. She smiled as he blanched and almost staggered in gratitude. ‘It’s a pity I can’t honour you for this as you deserve, Grand Master.’ She wiggled the jaw piece, locking it into place and then opening it again. It was perfect and it made her look once more at the glasships dragging them through the air. Do they make everything like this? No wonder we seem to them like barbarians.

  Barbarians with dragons, she reminded herself. She let out a deep sigh of pleasure and smiled, then turned to Tsen with the helm still on and was pleased to see him at least blink. What a sight I must be. You should see me with the dragon-scale armour I wear for war. A true dragon-queen to make you wet your precious silk pants. Pity it all went to the bottom of the Sea of Storms. ‘Shall I mount?’

  Tsen clicked his fingers. ‘Watcher!’

  ‘You don’t need him today. Today I’ll fly for you because I desire it, and for no other reason. And because you’ve both given me such a pretty helm, I’ll show off as best I can what my dragon might do for you.’ She cocked her head at Tsen. ‘Thank you, Sea Lord.’ He wasn’t that, of course, but she knew it both needled and flattered him.

  ‘The Watcher will be there, nonetheless.’

  She let her smile linger over his disdain. ‘When you ask me to fly to war, and you will, I would like a sword. Not much use for a dragon-rider, I know, but still it is a tradition. I think your enchanters must make quite exquisite blades.’

  Tsen snorted. ‘Mount, slave.’ He meant it as a slight, a retort to her refusal to address him as anything more than an equal and to the mocking she let slip into her voice. But that was good. Every little reminder of her fragile place in his order of the world added to the flames in her belly. I will have you. One way or the other I will get my fingers under your skin and you’ll be mine. Jehal, Hyram, Tichane, they all fell one way or the other. I’ll find your weakness, Baros Tsen, and then I will own you.

  She turned and walked to the dragon, waving it down, head cocked, arms outstretched, clucking her tongue, gestures any trained dragon should understand. It responded, lowering its shoulders and its neck, bending its head down to the ground.

  ‘I remember you, Diamond Eye,’ she said, quietly and to no one but the dragon. ‘I watched you grow. I picked you out to be one of my own. You were never as huge as Onyx or as fast as Glory but I never forgot you. You must be getting old now.’ Of course the dragon couldn’t hear her, couldn’t understand her, no
t if Bellepheros was feeding it his potions. But it was watching her. It had its head turned towards her and its eyes followed her steps. Potions or no, you do understand at least a little, don’t you?

  Diamond Eye bared his teeth. He flared his wings, sending a wind across the yard.

  ‘Frisky today!’ She smiled. Good. We both need this. We both want the same thing.

  Behind her she felt the air pop.

  ‘Do not forget I am watching,’ said a voice, and when she turned he was there, the Watcher standing rigid behind her, stony-faced and teeth gritted, taut with tension and breathing hard. He nodded to her and there was another pop of air as he went rigid and vanished again.

  ‘Oh, but I will,’ she whispered. ‘For a little while I will forget everything.’

  The mounting ropes were in a terrible state but at least they were there. She climbed up onto Diamond Eye’s back and began looking for the buckles. The last time the dragon had flown, it had flown to war. The harness was meant for battle where it would become a part of the rider’s armour from the waist down. Which was a blessed relief, because it meant she could throw away at least the boots. She struggled to fit inside with Bellepheros’s bulky coat around her, had to lift it up and balloon it around the saddle. But she did, and if she’d had to she would have thrown away the coat and ridden in silks to be on a dragon’s back once more. With the last strap done she sighed into the harness and smiled at the sky and closed her eyes.

  ‘Everything,’ she whispered. ‘Now fly, my winged half-god, my deathbringer. Fly and show them who you are.’

  Diamond Eye leaped into the air. He was flying in a single bound and one mighty pull of his wings and with such strength that Zafir pitched backwards and would have fallen off if it hadn’t been for the harness. He drove into the air, strong and urgent and powerful, exultant in his freedom from the earth. On other days Zafir might have felt a twinge of caution, for the Diamond Eye she’d known had never been so strong, nor had any dragon she’d ever flown, but the dragon’s joy of simply being aloft once more flooded through her, merged with her own and drove all other thoughts away. To fly! To be free! Up and up and up until the castle below was a dark speck in a sea of orange waves. The wind was a hurricane over her. It tore at her face and at her furs, but the helm held and she could see as she’d never seen before. If there had been clouds then she would have gone on higher still, up above them and into the deep and endless blue above, to the holy sky where only a dragon-rider could fly and sometimes the ancestors and even the gods themselves would send their visions. But there were no clouds in the desert and so she turned Diamond Eye and dived towards the ground once more, wings tucked in, legs pressed back, her own head squeezed into the dragon’s shoulders as the hurricane became something more and the roar of it was as loud as Tsen’s cannon in her ear.

  The ground hurtled back at them. Diamond Eye spread his wings. A monstrous hand crushed Zafir into his back, pressing so hard she thought she must snap into pieces. The world went grey and narrowed to a single spot of brightness and then she must have passed out for a few seconds, for the next thing she knew they were hurtling straight at the eyrie, sideways on, faster than she’d ever flown before, and the perfect helm was such a weight that she thought her neck might snap rather then keep her head pressed down into Diamond Eye’s scales.

  Straight at the eyrie wall. At the last second Diamond Eye dropped his nose and rolled. He shot beneath it. Purple light filled the air and a bright flash of violet. Zafir had a moment to see the lightning and then Diamond Eye twisted and stretched out his wings and flipped onto his back between the castle and the sand. He shot upside down between them with the sand howling past a few spans beneath Zafir’s head and a part of her wanted to scream at the pain as her muscles wrenched her down against the wind, to cry out in alarm, for a dragon had never flown on its back for her before and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so little control; and at the same time she was whooping with joy at the madness, the power, the freedom, the unfettered joy. Out from under the castle Diamond Eye rolled again. ‘Up, up!’ she cried, and so he climbed and they spiralled high once more until he found what she was looking for. A dozen miles away, deep in the sands on the edge of a black tar lake, far out of her own meagre sight. A tented town of nomads, of dark-skinned Taiytakei, of their horses and their Linxia, and the hunger was like a sharp spike through her belly and she wanted to feed, to hunt, to burn! NOW!

  ‘No!’ She brought Diamond Eye back down, his resentment squirming through her like a knot of angry snakes, and flew him across the sands in front of the eyrie instead. She let loose his fire there, down in the open where the watchers from the eyrie would clearly see. The dragon ravaged the dunes, burned and burned and burned them in an endless stream of fire until the sand became glass and she could smell the smouldering of her furs amid the heat around her. As they passed the eyrie again, Diamond Eye lashed the empty wall with his tail, slashing out a great chunk of the white stone that even the enchantress couldn’t mark. See! See what I can do! See what we can do! Find us with your cannon if you can, Baros Tsen!

  She let Diamond Eye have his way now and flew to the nomads and their tents. She let the dragon burn them black and eat his fill from the savaged remains and she couldn’t have said which one of them it satisfied more. They were Taiytakei, and she was a slave.

  And when they were both done, when they’d gorged themselves and were finally sated and bloated with the exhilaration, when Diamond Eye came to rest and paced the ground, she climbed down and threw away Bellepheros’s stupid furs and his stupid mittens and felt the sand under her feet, the first true earth since she’d flown to war above her beloved Silver City. She felt the wind on her skin and the eyrie was small and distant, a dozen miles away across the sand.

  Free.

  Behind her the air popped. She wondered, briefly, if the Elemental Man had come to kill her for what they’d done, and found that she simply didn’t care. She’d laugh in his face as she died, and then Diamond Eye would eat him.

  ‘It would be best for you to return,’ he said. ‘They are becoming anxious.’

  Zafir laughed. When she climbed up into the harness, the Elemental Man came up and sat behind her. Diamond Eye launched himself into the air once more, fat and slow and languorous this time. ‘Are you impressed?’ she called as they rose into the sky, but he didn’t answer and when she looked round the Elemental Man was gone again.

  A little frisky she would answer later, when Bellepheros asked how Diamond Eye had flown. The glorious truth was something that would for ever be hers alone. No dragon had ever flown like that for her before. Nor for anyone.

  53

  Stiff Around the Edges

  Bellepheros watched the dragon fly away, squinting into the brightness of the desert sky and the glare of the sands. He watched the faces of the soldiers and of Baros Tsen and of the Taiytakei from the silver gondola, the kwen from this other place of Vespinarr. If he believed Li, the whole day was staged for this man. The Taiytakei kept their awe well hidden, but now and then a twitch gave each of them away. A touch of amazement at the speed of the dragon’s ascent – even Bellepheros was surprised by that. A twinge of fear as it flew so high that it vanished from sight and they stood with their heads tipped back, faces screwed up against the sun and vast blue sky – always the chance that Tsen had somehow misjudged, that Zafir would choose to flee, that the dragon would escape even from an Elemental Man. Staring up alongside them, hands doing their best to shield his eyes from the sun, a part of Bellepheros hoped that Zafir did exactly that. Another part of him hoped she didn’t, but with Zafir he simply couldn’t be sure. Quietly, in the inner thoughts he never shared with anyone, it beggared belief that anyone had thought she’d make a good speaker.

  For a minute or two he really thought she’d gone, rocketed off across the desert never to return, but then she
came back and boiled the sand into glowing glass, and not even the Taiytakei could hide their shock at that; and when the dragon lashed the wall with its tail and sliced a chunk away and the whole castle shook beneath their feet and pieces of stone as big as a man’s head fizzed right across the dragon yard and soldiers and slaves and Scales ran screaming, the Taiytakei watching from the wall cried out too, a sharp dagger of fear through them all, their masks for a moment broken. In their part of the yard the hatchlings shrieked and flapped their wings and strained at their chains at the frightened Scales around them.

  Bellepheros hurried off the wall to restore some calm. She should have come back right then, he thought. Swerved in the air and crashed into the wall right in front of them before they assembled their faces again. She could have seen them as they truly were; but instead Zafir flew Diamond Eye away and for a long time there was nothing save a pall of smoke on the horizon. Even after he’d settled his Scales and the hatchlings, she still hadn’t returned, and by then the Taiytakei had begun to lose interest.