Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  Later he watched as the Elemental Man came and went. The killer had something wrong with him and it was never more obvious than today. By then most of the Taiytakei had gone and weren’t there to notice, but the Watcher was almost dead on his feet. He was struggling to shift, exhausted every time he did it, gasping for breath and wet with sweat. Even under the desert sun Bellepheros had never once seen the Elemental Man sweat until the dragons had come.

  When Zafir returned, the Taiytakei came back up to the walls to watch the dragon land. The dragon came slowly, with long leisurely beats of its wings. It pitched up and landed gently, towering over the white stone wall, the sun behind it so that when it reared up and stretched its wings it cast the whole of the yard into shadow. The air filled with a sweeping satisfaction. It oozed from the dragon like honey, a cloud of feeling spreading out across the eyrie to touch them all. Bellepheros had been around dragons for long enough to know it for what it was and brush it aside but its force unsettled him. Diamond Eye had an energy, a hunger, a need. Dragons always did, all of them, even back in the dragon realms, but not like this. Here all those things were somehow magnified. It wasn’t only Diamond Eye either – the hatchlings were the same. He had no idea why this world should be different but it was, and it left him with a deep and lingering unease that he could never quite shake. Dragons took the thoughts and emotions of their riders and mingled them with their own, even Zafir knew that, but they sensed other things too. Was it the eyrie? They could feel things that were beyond the senses of any rider or alchemist. Old things. Deep things. For all the discipline of the Order of the Scales, their potions, their lore, there was so much they didn’t know. So much lost when the Silver King was struck down.

  He watched Zafir slide down from the saddle and walk away from Diamond Eye, sashaying along the wall. Alchemists learned to wall away the hungers and desires that came from the dragons around them; riders did the opposite. They rode those desires, mingling them with their own, guiding and steering if they could, if they were strong enough, succumbing to them if they weren’t. Zafir, he could see, was on the edge. She was a like a lizard basking in the sun, a sleepy lioness sprawled with a full belly beside a fresh kill. She walked barefoot towards the watching Taiytakei, furs left Flame-knew-where, helm under her arm and swaying as she walked, swinging her hips in the afterglow of the dragon’s flight. As for the Taiytakei? He had no idea how the dragon’s desires would touch them or how deep they might reach.

  ‘And now you know,’ Zafir smiled at Tsen as she reached them and touched her finger to the tip of his nose, ‘what a dragon can be. I trust you are now pleased?’

  Bellepheros had seen the Taiytakei after she’d lashed the castle wall, the naked awe raw and impossible to hide, but that had been hours ago. Tsen had found his calm again. ‘You damaged my eyrie, slave,’ he said.

  ‘Because you wanted to see, Sea Lord Tsen.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘They are for war, these glorious creatures. Nothing else.’

  She was too wrapped up in her own satisfaction to see the tension in the t’varr. They each turned away from the other, Tsen back to his guests and soldiers, Zafir to Bellepheros. She lifted an arm towards him and for a moment he thought she meant to put it round his shoulder. She caught herself, frowned and then smiled.

  ‘Were our lords pleased?’ This close he could see her eyes were as wide as a dust-eater’s, drunk on the dragon’s joy. Dangerous. She was bright, flushed, face agleam with sweat, her hair matted and wet, damp patches where her silks clung to her skin.

  Bellepheros bowed, cautious. He took her by the arm and led her gently away, and for once she didn’t resist, didn’t slap him with her eyes for his audacity. She needed to be away from the dragon, he thought, as far away as he could take her. ‘They were, Holiness. And fearful, though they do not show it now.’ Perhaps if they were quick, there would be time to talk alone now. Distant eyes always kept watch on him, but Tsen liked to give his slaves the illusion that they were free, that they were his guests. It was a dangerous freedom and yet a cunning one. They make us a part of their own but the words we think we speak in secret are always overheard. Tuuran might have said that all those months ago, but perhaps while the Tsen and his generals and his Elemental Man were all together, engrossed …

  He stole a glance at the dragon purring on the wall. Is an alchemist ever free? No. We enslave one another, monster and man.

  They crossed the dragon yard, past the hatchlings still chained to the walls. The hatchlings were furious – he could feel the rage as he passed them. Maybe Zafir could work with them soon. Maybe the bigger ones were ready. Perhaps it was time to start making harnesses for them.

  ‘They want to fly,’ Zafir said.

  ‘They do.’

  ‘They’re envious of me.’ She laughed. ‘And who wouldn’t be?’ She stopped him out there in the yard, right out in the open beside the snapping hatchlings, and pressed a hand to his chest. ‘There’s something about this place, Bellepheros. I’ve never known a dragon fly the way Diamond Eye flew for me today. Never such … passion!’ She dropped her hand and looked away. ‘You said it might be this way and you were right. Why, Master Alchemist? Why do they have such a hunger here? My skin tingles with it, my blood is hot. They have so much desire! I haven’t felt like this after flying for years!’

  Bellepheros shook his head and took a step away. ‘A mystery, Holiness. I cannot tell you why it is so, but yes, I have seen it.’ He tried to move her away from the hatchlings, further away from Diamond Eye. Get her down under the ground where at least they couldn’t see each other. ‘You shouldn’t stand here, Holiness. The Hatchling Disease …’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled at him again but now her eyes had changed. The wonder was gone. She was a predator. As he guided her towards their passageway beneath the eyrie, her feet dragged. On the steps into the cold white glow of the tunnels, she stopped again. Her gaze lingered on Diamond Eye and the dragon stared back, a look of shared secrets.

  ‘I have something for you,’ Bellepheros said, reaching for anything he could think of.

  Zafir’s eyes snapped to his, curious and eager. ‘What?’

  ‘Come, Holiness.’

  He took her down the spiralling tunnels. Zafir kept walking ahead, long strides, then turning, waving at him to hurry up until he was almost running at her heels. When they reached his study, Zafir closed his new iron-cased door behind them. Bellepheros never bothered. There was a lock too and he never used that either, because locks in this place were an illusion. Perhaps the Elemental Man could move through the white stone or perhaps he couldn’t but he could certainly move through the air. His ear might be anywhere, always.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Here.’ He gave her a fresh gourd. Zafir tossed half of it down with a careless lack of interest.

  ‘This?’ She snorted and hung the gourd around her neck. ‘You brought me down here for this?’

  ‘Not just that, Holiness.’ He turned and started to rummage through the papers and books and glass beakers on his workbench. He could have given her poison just then and how would she have known? But then dragon-kings and dragon-queens had always trusted their alchemists to do as they were told for the greater good of the realms. It was just that it was a little more complicated now. Whose greater good and which realms had never been problems for any master alchemist before.

  ‘Well?’ He could feel her impatient energy, even with his back to her. He just needed to keep her here a while, that was all.

  ‘I’m afraid that potion’s not as good as I could make were I in the Palace of Alchemy.’ He wondered how much to say, but in the end she was still his queen and more his mistress than Tsen or any of the Taiytakei. Trust. It all came to trust. Zafir trusted his potions and that he would k
eep the dragons calm so he must trust her to speak for the realm that had once been their home. ‘The dragons are restless here,’ he said, slow and unsure of how far to go. Do you even care? At last he found what he was looking for and mixed a little of the powder with a drop of his own blood, carefully so she wouldn’t see, and a cup of water. He offered it to her.

  ‘I could hardly not have noticed, Master Alchemist.’ She gave him a hungry smile. ‘Was that why you brought me down here, out of the sun and the light? To tell me that?’

  ‘Holiness …’ Were the Taiytakei somehow different too? Because they were different, from the colour of their skin onwards. Was that it? He put the cup on his workbench and pushed it towards her. ‘Please … This will help with the … to regain your composure, Holiness.’

  ‘What do you mean, alchemist?’ Her eyes narrowed and bored into him as though she already knew. Trust trust trust. And how much, really, should I trust you? For when I was taken from the realms you were barely a queen and Aliphera’s death was far too strange to ignore, and yet in a few short months you became ruler of us all. And so young! How, Dragon-Queen Zafir? May I ask how?

  ‘There is no shame, but …’ He stopped. She was nodding. He winced, half expecting her to strike him down where he stood. A slap, certainly … but no. She just looked at him, that hungry predator look she’d worn ever since she’d come down from the back of the dragon. Full of scorn and desire.

  And then burst out laughing. She took his cup and threw it away. ‘Alchemist! I am not some squealing virgin back from her first dragon. This hunger?’ She clasped a hand to her breast. ‘Do you think I don’t know it for what it is?’ She leaned over him, her face close to his, and he sank back into his chair. ‘I am a dragon-queen, alchemist, and I am mistress of both of us, and this … thing that you think you see? I am still its mistress even if I revel in riding it.’ She bared her teeth. ‘It is strong, though.’

  Like a dragon. Bellepheros swallowed hard. ‘The Taiytakei will listen to you,’ he said, ‘for a time. You have their minds. They have seen the possibilities and they will want to know more. Everything. Give them what it pleases you to give, Holiness. Tease them.’ He could feel the heat of her as she stared down at him, burning through her shifting silks. ‘Tsen had the Vespinarr man beside him to watch you but there were others. Many others. I couldn’t see them where they stood so I cannot speak for the faces they wore, but for any who saw you fly today, their world has changed.’

  ‘Shrin Chrias Kwen? Did he see?’ Her face lit up. He watched her hunger turn murderous. Prey.

  ‘I do not know, Holiness.’

  ‘No matter. I can’t imagine he missed it.’ She licked her lips and ran a finger along the skin of her neck, over the scar from the hatchling on Quai’Shu’s ship. Then held out the dragon helm Li had made. ‘A fine gift, Master Alchemist. You must tell me one day how I may reward you. Make the rest as you made this and I will be pleased.’

  He bowed. ‘Holiness.’

  Zafir tossed her head, turned for the door and then paused. ‘Bellepheros, the potions you make for your Scales, the ones to keep the Hatchling Disease at bay, have you told your mistress Chay-Liang the secrets of their preparation?’

  ‘Some but not all. I have been careful, Holiness. Besides, only those with the Silver King in their blood can make such potions.’ He bit his lip.

  ‘Keep that secret safe, Master Alchemist. Keep it very safe.’ Half a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. Perhaps he imagined it but there seemed a terrible purpose to her eyes. He bowed as she walked away.

  ‘Holiness …’

  She didn’t turn back. ‘Bellepheros?’

  Did you do it? Were you the one? Did you throw your mother from her dragon’s back? What did I see back there in Furymouth between you and Jehal? How did you come to be speaker when it should have been Shezira? What happened in the realms after I was gone? Subtle clues for the subtle mind here and there. And the not so subtle, for here was a dragon-queen, the speaker of the nine realms no less, taken as a slave; but the dragons had taken all his time and all his thoughts until now. What did you do, Speaker of the Nine Realms? What did you do?

  The words froze in his mouth, unsaid. They were here now and surrounded by enemies and so perhaps it shouldn’t matter any more. He bowed his head. ‘I serve you, Holiness. You above all.’

  Zafir laughed, a little singing sound. ‘Well that’s as you should, Master Alchemist, and very good to hear.’ And she was gone, and all he could do was wonder, Am I doing the right thing? I whose duty is to enslave monsters?

  54

  The Devourers

  The dragon was doing it. The Watcher blinked deep in the night under the desert stars, closer and closer to the monster’s side to be sure, but it was the dragon, its very presence. The closer he came, the harder it was, and that was the simple truth of it. In the dragon realms a windwalker had been killed by a man with a crossbow not long before Quai’Shu stole the dragons. Beneath his scorn the Watcher had been shaken by that. A man who could become the wind should never fall to a mere crossbow. The Picker used to swear the hardness of shifting his form in the dragon-realm came from the dragons themselves; now the Watcher knew he was right.

  He flew with the air to Khalishtor, where Nimpo Jima Hsian was supposed to be taking their sea lord’s place at the Great Sea Council, as a hsian often did, but of course he wasn’t there and had passed on the duty to his own t’varr. Another thing a hsian often did.

  From one place to the next, then, one man and then another, holding the bladeless knife at their throats and asking where Quai’Shu’s hsian might be found. A tedium made bearable by the relief of shifting effortlessly from place to place within the City of Gold and Glass. It didn’t take long to find the answer. The hsian was in Dhar Thosis. The Watcher tried to see the reason behind such a defection, for there could be little doubt that was what it was. The lord of Vespinarr had already known and told the Hands of the Sea Lord where to look, in his own subtle way.

  Before he left for the long crossing of the desert, he stood at the edge of the sea and faced the city where no one ruled, shadowed by the mountain of the Septtych of the Elemental Masters. He bowed to both and stepped back over the edge of the harbour wall and fell in among the waves, and as he touched them he became the water. Currents. Temperatures. All too subtle for a man to see but the Watcher felt them. They were his guide, his map and compass. They took him a little way up the coast to the old Tomb of Ten Tazei where he walked past the shrine and into the cave and passed effortlessly through the wall of stones that barred its end and on to Ten Tazei’s path to Xibaiya and the land of the dead. Secrets lay here. Old ones best forgotten, and the Elemental Men were their guardians.

  ‘These dragons make me weak.’

  The sand and the stone took his words and ate them with silence. The Watcher closed his eyes and tasted the air, filled with salt and the sea. The distant hiss of waves on the sand kissed his ear. The cave was still. Time could stop in a place like this. He’d come here sometimes with the Picker. Now he came here alone, but it was still their place to speak together. He felt the Picker’s memories most closely here.

  The men here have their navigators and their enchanters. In Aria they have sorcerers of the old ways once more. Pale nothings beside the silver half-gods of the moon but they are learning at last. The priests of the Dominion call power from the old gods themselves. But in the realms of the dragons? Nothing. Alchemy. A dance with potions and a dabble with blood. There’s nothing there for the likes of us to hunt.

  Blood. The alchemist got his power from his own blood. The last refuge for a sorcerer’s power. The most potent place.

  Why? Why did the dragon realms alone have no true sorcerers? The answer had been s
taring at him. There were no sorcerers in the dragon realms because the dragons had devoured the nameless boundless flow of life from which all mages drew, even the Elemental Men.

  ‘How?’

  No answer.

  ‘Can they not be destroyed?’

  The cave and the endless tunnel downward mocked him with their stillness.

  55

  Need

  Zafir walked back out across the dragon yard, smiling at Diamond Eye and at the sun, Myst and Onyx trailing in her wake. She felt drunk. Tipsy with joy. Her skin tingled, hot in the desert heat. Her head still buzzed from the sheer ecstasy of the dragon. Maybe once, maybe the first time she’d ridden on a monster’s back with her mother in front of her to guide the beast, maybe then she’d felt this before. Or the first time she’d taken old Azure into the sky alone with no one to sit beside her and watch over her and tell her what to do, just weeks before Hyram had taken the throne she stole from him ten years later. The sheer unadulterated freedom. Azure, slow and small and old. He’d burned to ash from the inside not many years later but she remembered him as well as she remembered any of them. Pale blue scales that flashed in the sun, and if he was old and slow then he hadn’t seemed that way when she’d ridden him up above the three mountaintops of the Pinnacles, higher and higher until everything below was specks and streaks and had lost its colour, where the air was so thin she could barely breathe; and then they’d dived, three miles straight down, and her head had roared and swum and she’d known that nothing, nothing in the world, could possibly be like this, and for all the horror that awaited her, whatever they did to her when she came back to earth, none of that would matter any more, and the pain and rage and the fear of even being alive, they all became small things, a suffering that no longer had substance. They’d flown for hours, far longer than they were supposed to, and she’d been punished for that, but it had been worth it. She sometimes thought it was the greatest lesson her mother and her many lovers had taught her. They’d surely never meant to, they’d certainly very quickly regretted it, but she’d never, ever, forgotten. That sometimes there came a point where punishment didn’t matter any more.