Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  ‘Then they will die but you may give them something to think they are still loved. Is that all you have? Give them to me. All of it.’

  He did, and he looked infinitely sad as she tipped them out onto the floor, one by one. When she was done, he held up another bottle. ‘And I, Holiness? May I keep the Hatchling Disease at bay?’

  She smiled at him. He was an old alchemist and so of course he carried it. ‘Yes. But keep it safe and keep it close.’ She tapped the gourd around her neck. ‘There will be others, you see. Taiytakei. And when they come to you with the Hatchling Disease, the potions you give them will do nothing at all; and when that comes to pass they will take whatever you have, for that is what desperate men do. Be ready for that day, Master Alchemist. I’m sure you’ll make more. I won’t forbid it, but hide it well.’ She turned to go and then turned back. ‘I almost forgot. I require another gift from you. A small thing, one that’s so far beneath you I hesitate to ask but I must. Dawn Torpor.’

  Dawn Torpor so I will not grow fat from you or your men, Shrin Chrias Kwen. She watched the alchemist’s face, watched his eyes go wide and his mouth hang open, his face blanch.

  ‘Holiness! What—’

  She cut him off with a fierce clenched fist. ‘They took what they wanted, Master Alchemist, as they took us from our homes and made us slaves. They did not ask, they were not kind, they are not dragons and you owe them nothing. When the Hatchling Disease begins to take them, they will come to you. You will do nothing to help them. They will all slowly die in lingering fear and agony and I will watch and spit in their faces. Do you understand, Grand Master Alchemist?’

  When she left, she was on Diamond Eye again, tearing the air, clouds of sand billowing in their wake as they burned the desert to glass. She was almost singing.

  56

  Dhar Thosis

  The Watcher appeared on the Divine Bridge a thousand feet above the sea. To his left, rising still higher, stood the Dul Matha, the Kraitu’s Bones, which rose half as high again from the sea below in rings of walls and steps with the gatehouses that guarded the Palace of Roses at its peak, the home and dwelling of the ninth sea lord Senxian. It had been a shrine once, in the very distant past before the enchanters had made the first glasships. Pilgrims had come thousands of miles from every city, from every fledging realm, to bring their offerings of hope to the Goddess of Fickle Fortune.

  Dhar Thosis. The City of Golems, they called it, although there were hardly any here and the name belonged better to Xican with its Stoneguard.

  The Watcher looked past Dul Matha to the larger but much lower island a little way beyond it, Vul Tara, known as the Pilgrims’ Island because visitors to the shrine always came that way if they arrived by ship. It was a fortress now, armed with bolt throwers and black-powder and lightning cannon, but the shelters remained, the refuges and the hostels. Unclean godliness remained scattered across Vul Tara, despite its weapons. He couldn’t see the seaward side from the top of the Divine Bridge, but that was where sheer-walled monasteries rested on the tops of low black cliffs, and on the lower parts of the island poor pilgrims still came to pray to the relics from the shrine that Ten Tazei once built on the top of the Kraitu’s Bones.

  The pilgrims’ ships would have anchored where ships still anchored now, in the sheltered open water between the shore, Dul Matha, Vul Tara, and the third and largest island, the Eye of the Sea Goddess where the sea titans slept and where Senxian’s administrators and sea captains now lived, each in their own palace with their own kwens and t’varrs and hsians, servants and soldiers and slaves. A whole island of palaces now, each striving to surpass its neighbours, but it had not been so back in the time of the shrine. They called the island the Eye of the Sea Goddess but they should have made it her nose because that was the shape of it from far away, rising gently from the sea beside the shore, curving up ever sharper to a rounded summit that fell away to a sudden sheer nothing from a thousand feet in the air. Sprawling stone villas loosely jostled one another down by the sea, while at the top rose a forest of gold-glass towers, packed together like slaves in a gondola. The towers were the richer palaces. Few could afford a home built by enchanters.

  Two hundred paces across the sea from the peak of the Eye of the Sea Goddess, the Dul Matha rose. The Divine Bridge crossed that space now, floating on enchanted gold-glass, but the Watcher wondered how it might have looked to those ancient pilgrims as they climbed down from their ships squeezed between the towering islands; as they rowed to the Vul Tara and their first night ashore, heads craned back to stare at the sky and the Divine Bridge high above them, searching for a first glimpse of the most famous shrine in the world – or so it had once been. They would have looked again as they rowed back the other way, across to the mainland and to what had once been a swamp, the salt marsh grown over time into the working rump of the city of Dhar Thosis. The swamps and the channels of brackish water were still there, some of them built over, others built around, others still slithering their way between the packed-stone streets of the shore city. There might have been jetties where the shore-side docks now stood, with a few little wooden huts perhaps sheltering sellers of slivers of wood or bone claimed to have come from the shrine. After that the pilgrims would have walked the swamp trails, now city streets with names like Pilgrim’s Path and Quicksand Alley. They would have turned their backs on Dul Matha at first, following the curve of the shore until the Kraitu’s Bones vanished behind the Eye of the Sea Goddess where they would have crossed the causeway, a treacherous tidal path now supplanted by the gleaming glass and gold spans of the Bridge of Eternity. They’d have climbed the winding paths up the Eye towards its peak, past temples and other shrines long since flattened to make way for palaces. All the way to the top of the Eye and they’d have come here, to where the Watcher stood now, to the start of the Divine Bridge.

  Like the Bridge of Eternity, the Divine Bridge was now a thing of gold and glass, one great magnificent span crossing the sea far below, but back when pilgrims had come to the shrine atop the Kraitu’s Bones the Crimson Sunburst had yet to be born and Hingwal Taktse and the Dralamut were just two warlord castles among many. There were no golems, no gold-glass, no enchanters, no navigators, no sea lords with their palaces and the Divine Bridge had been nothing more than two great ropes strung across the void. A place to be at one with the air, with the sea below and the unforgiving cliffs to either side. Bones still littered the rocks where the Goddess of Fickle Fortune had chosen not to cast her favour on her pilgrims. They said the ropes of the very first bridge were made from the hair of Ten Tazei, the first man to stand on Dul Matha’s peak; but then they also said that he’d been carried there by an eagle, that he’d lived for three years on top of the rock eating birds and eggs and fish brought to him by the gulls – who for some reason didn’t much like the eagles – until he’d grown his hair long enough to make the rope that would become the first bridge.

  They said a lot of things in Dhar Thosis, but the rope bridge was long gone and nothing of it now remained. The enchanters had come with their glass and gold and a sea lord had followed. Parts of the shrine were still there, walled within Senxian’s palace where only the greatest of men were allowed to see them. The Elemental Men had seen to the rest. The shrine was a curiosity from another time, a relic of ideas now forbidden.

  The Watcher, by his nature, had no time for gods. The Elemental Men had wiped out their religions long ago, casting out all but their most distant echoes. It seemed a shame, though, that the enchanters had built this bridge. The Watcher tried to picture it as it had been in the stories, two great strands of rope, a coming together of air and stone and sea when Dul Matha was untouched.

  The stories belonged to another time. The Palace of Roses had stood here for hundreds of years now and the sea lords had thrived as all sea lords did. Evidence perhaps that the Goddess of Fickle Fortune was nothing but a superstitio
n, for surely to wall away her shrine was nothing if not insulting and yet she had rained no great misfortunes upon the lords of Dhar Thosis to punish them for their hubris – at least not until now.

  Or perhaps that was simply why she was called fickle? The Watcher smiled to himself. He became the air and vanished and appeared again atop the highest of the gold-glass towers of the palace, looking down on the city so far below that even the ships were little more than specks in the grey rippled sea. There were no doors here of course, none that could be opened from the outside, no point of entry for an Elemental Man. The palace wore a shield of gold, armour against such killers. The Elemental Masters would never permit one sea lord to strike against another and so such armour should never be needed, but the sea lords dressed their palaces in it nonetheless, never quite trusting the Elemental Men as they never quite trusted their peers, their kin, their kwens and hsians and t’varrs. They built their world of opposing forces kept in carefully weighted balance to prevent any one from overwhelming the rest. An illusion, all of it, a fallacy. The Watcher knew this and the sea lords perhaps knew it too at their core, but for as long as the Elemental Men obeyed their masters and as long as the masters kept themselves to themselves, this tension of oppositions worked.

  And that, he knew, was why the sea lords of Vespinarr and Cashax and Dhar Thosis and all the other great cities feared Quai’Shu and his dragons. Quai’Shu had ruined his house to get them. None of the others knew quite what for, but the not knowing made them afraid, and through the visor of their fear all they saw was a crippled house ripe to be brought down and a corpse to be picked over. None of them even knew what these dragons would do to them, not even Baros Tsen T’Varr, to whom the beasts answered, but they were right to be afraid.

  They had to go. Back where they came from. All of them. The balance must be preserved. These were his own thoughts, unshared as yet, and there would be a time to bring them to the minds of others, but not today. Today the Watcher waited. A sea lord had not fallen for nearly two hundred years. An Elemental Man had not struck in a gold-glass palace for even longer. They had forgotten the fire with which they played.

  A glasship rose from the city below, drifting in its leisurely way across the water and up towards the palace. It floated higher and higher, beyond the Divine Bridge, and then arced closer. The golden egg of the gondola beneath gleamed in the sun, catching the light like fire. The ship came over the palace. It nestled itself into the needle of black stone that the enchanters had raised here to feed it. As it stopped, its gondola sank gently on silver chains until it came to rest deep among the roots of the towers. It opened and waiting men came to take whatever it carried inside – food, water, simple things that any palace would need.

  The Watcher looked down on the slaves as they worked. Glasships were a marvel, the pinnacle of the enchanters’ arts, but often they were treated no better than a wagon and a few mules. Such was the way of a sea lord. He shifted from his perch. There was always a way through any shield of gold that the sea lords made. Men were men. They had to eat and they had to drink. He admired Baros Tsen T’Varr sometimes for not hiding himself away like the others, for seeing the futility of even trying, but then Tsen T’Varr had an Elemental Man of his own and Quai’Shu had always been different.

  He chose a barrel filled with wine and a moment later was inside it. The men who carried it never knew he was there. They brushed through doors of beaten gold and the sea lord’s shield was punctured. It was that easy.

  Once inside, the Watcher shifted again, into the floor now, into the stone of Dul Matha itself. He felt his way towards the palace centre. There were more layers, more walls of gold and silver, animated sentinels of glass and jade like the Stoneguard of Xican. He passed through them one by one, always patient, always waiting until the moment came to move unseen.

  In this slow methodical way he finally found the hsian. It would have been easy to strike in that first moment, to appear and open Nimpo Jima’s throat and vanish again to leave his death a mystery, but there was a greater purpose to his being here and so he waited and watched for another day until Quai’Shu’s traitor of a hsian was called and walked alone into the inner sanctum of Sea Lord Senxian himself. The Watcher followed. He would kill the hsian in front of the sea lord. He would kill him so that the hsian’s blood stained the sea lord’s shoes. The message would be as clear as it could possibly be. It could have been you. But sea lords do not strike at one another. And Senxian would understand, and the plans that he and the hsian were laying against Baros Tsen T’Varr and Sea Lord Quai’Shu would fall quietly to nothing, and there would be no more to be done.

  He merged with the air, following the hsian. Nimpo Jima sat down on the floor beside a low table. On the other side knelt Senxian in a robe of shimmering rainbows, large and strong but fat with age. On the walls hung cloaks of dazzling emerald feathers. Cups of crushed leaves sat on the table beside a coppery bowl of steaming water.

  ‘Hsian.’ The Watcher waited, one with the air until the moment when they were close enough for the hsian’s blood to touch the sea lord himself. The song ran strong in his head here, the voices of the moon sorcerers. Mooncrown. Earthspear. Suncloak. Starknife.

  Somehow – he would never understand how – he didn’t see the tall pale-skinned slave who had no place at all being in the same room as a sea lord. Didn’t see him until the man stepped behind the air that he had become and drove a gold-handled knife into the place where he was. The slave was dressed in grey with a tattooed face and the knife hilt was engraved with stars, and suddenly the Watcher was flesh and bone and the gold-hilted knife was inside him. He shuddered. How?

  Grey robes. The grey dead men and making something …

  How didn’t I see him?

  The knife held him fast, paralysed. It didn’t move but he felt three little cuts, three little pieces of his essence sucked away, and then a voice like thunder in his head, crushing and destroying, like the moon sorcerers had been but stronger by far. The knife withdrew and he fell to his knees. Terror welled up inside him and he had no idea what to do with it because Elemental Men had nothing to fear and so were never afraid, because nothing in any of the worlds of the Taiytakei could ever touch them.

  The Picker, he reminded himself. The Picker died too. And the one before.

  He couldn’t move. Not a muscle.

  ‘You’re not going to die,’ said the grey dead man. ‘None of this has happened. I was never here and no one ever touched you. You will never see me, as these men never see me, even when I am right in front of you, for your eyes will simply look elsewhere, but now and then you will hear my voice. Do what you came to do and return with the knowledge that Sea Lord Senxian will make war on Sea Lord Quai’Shu for his dragons no matter what warning is sent. When that war comes, you will find a way to steal one of your master’s dragon eggs and you will take it to those who dwell beneath the Konsidar. When that is done, you will go to some place so remote that you will never be found and you will cut out your own heart.’

  The knife vanished and with it every memory of what had happened, and all the Watcher knew was that he was no longer the air but flesh and bone and the two men in the room in front of him had turned to stare, horror covering their faces.

  He blinked. Shifted. The bladeless knife flashed and the hsian’s blood sprayed across the plates and the steaming water and spattered Senxian’s arm. The Watcher stood for a moment, let the sea lord drink him in, let him understand, and then was gone, slipping slowly and steadily back through the layers of Senxian’s palace with the same care with which he had come.

  57

  Shades of Entanglement

  The shade of the dragon called Silence slipped among the ghosts and fleeting spirits of men. It closed its thoughts to the siren calls of waiting eggs and opened wary eyes to the slowly awakening things that now moved among the ruins of what the little ones called Xibaiya. It moved with careful speed a
nd purpose back to the edges of the hole and the oozing spread of That Which Came Before. The door of its prison was gone, the door that had once been the Earth Goddess frozen at the moment of her death, mingled with the essence of the half-god who’d slain her. The dragon had known this already but now it sat and watched, pondering the open hole and the Nothing beyond. There was no hurry to the void and the chaos. It crept hither and yon around the rip in creation that the Earthspear had made, devouring what it touched but touching with no purpose. It was easy to stay away from those wandering tendrils of nothingness, slow and blind as they were. It would be less easy later, when everything was unravelled and only those tendrils remained.

  How long will it take?

  It tried to catch a passing little one but the shade fluttered away. They were such ephemeral things, these children of the sun. It would be interesting, the dragon thought, to feed one of their souls to the Nothing and watch it be consumed. Perhaps there was an insight to be gained into the nature of things. Or perhaps not, but either way it couldn’t catch them. They winked into the underworld and quickly sped away, and when the dragon chased them it was slow and they were quickly beyond its senses.

  Silence.

  The little ones had given it that name. It had snarled against such a crude word when it had first woken, but other dragons had kept their human names and its own thoughts had subtly changed. Silence was a blissful thing. Death was silent. Here was silent. In the living realms with the little ones all around, their thoughts gibbered and jabbered constantly. Silence was beautiful.

  I will keep it. I will become it. I will bring it and I will surround myself with it.

  After a time it tired of watching the mindless Nothing grow, inch by tiny inch, the cancer of creation. How long will it take? Lifetimes, and the dragon was too impatient for such things. It felt the call of eggs, here and there and everywhere, scattered in places unfamiliar as well as those well known. The little ones with the ships, they had taken eggs. Perhaps it would be amusing to bring some silence to them?