Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  Another glasship came, this one with a ball of fire hung beneath it. Diamond Eye tore it down and hurled a murder of glass and flames into the seething ground below. He turned his eye to the last stone giant, shaking the earth as it walked, crushing the dead beneath it. Turned away again. Somewhere near! Whatever the dragon was looking for was close, but he couldn’t find it.

  A chance. ‘The stone man then!’ howled Zafir.

  Diamond Eye wheeled. With white burning towers of rage he fell on the last giant and snatched it up, pulled himself high and then dived, slamming the creature into the mass of towers and fighting Taiytakei and then followed it down, shrieking and burning, tail whipping in fury to tear down everything around him. And then on, half leaping, half flying in great bounds up the steepening sides of the island until he was in among the towers of glass and gold that grew together like a giant copse of gleaming trees. He barrelled into them, cracking and tearing until he brought them down, one by one crashing in shattered shards to the earth.

  ‘Enough! Enough!’ He’d forgotten she was there again. A spike of glass tore a great rent in his wing but Diamond Eye barely noticed. A broken splinter struck a hand’s breadth from where Zafir clung to his back, driving deep through his scales.

  ‘Stop!’ She summoned all that she was. I am the dragon-queen and you are mine to command. Enough, my deathbringer. ENOUGH!

  Enough? He rose, reluctant and sulking, spiralling back into the air. Torn and slashed by the glass, a trail of blood dripped behind him, a scorching red rain. His heat was burning her even through the dragon-scale between them, and so Zafir coaxed him away between the islands, down into the cooling sea. Clouds of salty steam billowed around them. She looked at the savaged city, at the devastation the dragon had wrought, yet felt nothing but more madness and rage. Enough? Never enough. And he was a dragon; and dragons did not tire.

  He rose from the sea, hers again for a moment, and she flew him high towards the palace now. The Palace of Roses they called it, a last cluster of towers on a single pinnacle of rock that reminded her of home. A glittering glass bridge reached across from the lower island. The road beyond wound up through three rings of stone walls, each with a gatehouse, and then to a small forest of dazzling towers. Each of the three towers at its heart was as tall again as the Tower of Air that had once been hers; around those stood six more, arranged in a ring and joined together by a curtain wall of golden glass. Out further still rose three black monoliths, the enchanters’ power stones for their glasships.

  ‘Burn it.’ She spoke calmly now, for this moment while Diamond Eye was hers again. ‘Burn it all.’

  They started with the bridge. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of Taiytakei were advancing through the rubble at its lower end. Others were waiting behind barricades at the far side to meet them with stones and arrows and lightning. Diamond Eye burned them until they were gone and everything was ash. Then on to the first gatehouse, pouring flame over the stone until it cracked in the heat. A lash of the tail and the gates flew apart. At the second the Taiytakei were already scattering. She let Diamond Eye burn them and then land among them, sweeping the ground clean, battering them high into the air or plucking them from the earth and devouring them. A few turned their lightning wands on her as the dragon came but their tiny bolts were little more than an insect’s sting. One struck her in the arm. Sparks ran over her armour, cracked and battered, but she felt nothing and then Diamond Eye’s fire incinerated them. When he was done he stepped between them, eating the charred remains.

  The third gatehouse was empty and abandoned by the time she reached it. She passed it by. On to the palace itself. The way it was built reminded her of the Crown of the Sea Lords in Khalishtor and the thought made her smile. Show them what a dragon can do. Tsen had asked for that, so they would understand how much they had to fear. And she would oblige them. The Taiytakei across this blighted world would understand her. What she could do, the dragon-queen. And we are but one. Think, my deathbringer, think what we would do to them if we flew in our hordes! From her throne in the Adamantine Palace the Taiytakei had seemed distant, barely even there, a perpetual splinter in her finger but nothing more. Now she knew them better. And weren’t there other realms too? Places she’d never seen. Places of which she’d never even heard until they’d taken her as their slave. And no dragons in any of them. Waiting to be plucked.

  Look at us, Diamond Eye! Look at what we are! Nothing stood between the dragons and their desires but their riders and the alchemists, and they were all beholden to her, the speaker of the nine realms, and all she had to do was find a way to return. And then? No more Councils of Kings and Queens eyeing one another across a table, constantly seeking some advantage and always achieving nothing. Worlds waited, there to be taken! They could build an empire like Vishmir had done but unimaginably greater! An empire to put even these slavers to shame.

  She turned Diamond Eye towards the gleaming spires of the sea lord’s palace and set about their destruction. There would be a way. Somehow she would find it.

  80

  The Man in Grey

  Tuuran watched, crouched beside their broken wall, keeping Crazy Mad’s head pressed down. In the haze of dust and smoke, amid the ruined stone and the shattered glass, the dragon took to the sky at last. The air fell quiet and still, and then he heard sporadic shouts from off among the broken streets. He waited, eyes following the Taiytakei soldiers who’d survived the destruction of the sea titan as they scrambled through the debris, skirting spatters of still-liquid gold, the dull red glow of molten glass, the stones cracked and steaming by the dragon’s heat. He watched them climb the switch-backs of the road towards the near end of the Divine Bridge, the thread of gold across the abyss to the Palace of Roses. Crazy Mad kept trying to get up and Tuuran kept pulling him down.

  ‘Stupid slave! Wait! Let the night-skins kill each other.’ He looked up, trying to spot the dragon, but for the moment it was gone and so he waited, watching until the shouts moved on and the Taiytakei soldiers were all safely away. Finally he let Crazy Mad go and they started up the last part of the hill. The road to the island peak was littered with broken stone and shards of gold-glass. The walls from the little palaces around the top of the island were cracked and broken, the towers of glass and gold mostly smashed and toppled. Here and there in the few that still stood he saw people. Madmen. Idiots. Just staring numbly when the dragon might come back at any moment. Why don’t you run, you daft buggers? He shivered. Towers were meant to be made of stone. A man shouldn’t be able to look right through a castle’s walls at its innards and find people looking back at him.

  There were dead Taiytakei scattered where the dragon had been. Limp broken things, arms and legs twisted, their armour smashed to scattered pieces. That was dragons for you. There was something to be said for a good strong coat of steel and leather. It might not do much for the lightning that came out of the Taiytakei batons; it might scorch and burn when people started throwing fire-globes about, but at least it didn’t break. He crunched over the litter of golden glass. The sound was pleasing. Dead night-skins. The sound of dead slavers.

  He saw the dragon again, storming up from the sea with water showering off its back and wings and a trail of steam behind it. He grabbed Crazy Mad and pulled him down, but the dragon flew high over their heads and off to the far end of the bridge this time. A distant shock of flame rumbled through the air, that old familiar sound that made his heart skip a beat.

  The bridge drew him on, but when he got there he had to stop and marvel, just for a moment, even though there was still a dragon on the other side who might just smash it to bits. It was made of gold-glass over a skeleton of iron. The sun shone through its walls, through its steeply sloping roof and the delicate ornamentation carved at its peak. Below his feet lay glass as clear as water and then the island fell away towards the sea, a sheer craggy drop so great that the waves crashing against the cliffs far below se
emed like mere ripples. The air smelled of fire, of scorched skin and burned hair.

  A distant boom shook the earth. Tuuran stared down.

  ‘Trouble with heights? And you a sail-slave?’ Crazy Mad pushed past him. Tuuran didn’t move. Bodies lay strewn over the bridge. Some of them had been shot. Crossbows, by the look of it, big ones with bolts as long as his forearm. There were sword-slaves scorched by lightning too, but fire had done most of the work here. Dragon fire. He took a deep breath. One step at a time. Just enjoy the view.

  ‘I can hold your hand if you want.’ Crazy Mad laughed and pushed on.

  ‘Another word out of you, slave, and you can hold my axe with your skull! I’m a sail-slave. I was climbing ropes and masts when you were still hiding up your mother’s skirts!’ Looking up. Looking straight ahead. Anywhere, really, as long as it wasn’t down. Looking at the dragon, except the dragon had vanished again in among the towers and walls of the palace, and he saw it only in flashes and glimpses.

  ‘Run, you lazy slave!’ yelled Crazy Mad from the other end. ‘I thought you Adamantine Men weren’t afraid of anything!’

  He walked faster. Still couldn’t look down. Ropes, ladders, masts, rigging, any of those, even in a howling wind and a thrashing storm, they were home. Easy. Even with the alchemist, flying on the glass disc up to the Palace of Leaves. But this? Standing on what looked like nothing at all over an abyss of stone and water …

  Halfway across the bridge a part of the roof had been staved in, nothing left but smashed iron bones. Chunks of glass lay scattered about. Somehow that made it easier. And then more bodies. The dragon. It had burned these so hard that the gold in their armour was smeared where it had melted. At the far side Crazy Mad was on his haunches, crouched beside something. An arm poked out from between pieces of broken stone, a strip of skin as pale as a ghost. Tuuran thought it must be covered in dust but then he saw the tattoos. Sharp shapes writhing through each other across the skin. The tattoos of the grey dead men. Crazy Mad looked up at him and Tuuran had to turn away. ‘You’re doing the eyes again.’

  ‘They’re here!’ The hunger in Crazy’s voice was a frightful thing, like the insatiable hunger of a dragon. He pulled at the stones, tearing them away from the body underneath. When they got the corpse out, Crazy Mad turned him over. The bodies lying in the open were black and charred for the most part, brittle as charcoal where their armour hadn’t shielded them, but the stones must have covered the warlock from the worst of the fire. His belly and face were pale. The tattoos on his arms ran up to his neck. The fragments of robe hanging in tatters around him were grey. No question as to what he was.

  ‘Is that him?’ Tuuran made himself look. ‘The one you’re after?’

  ‘No.’ Crazy Mad sat there staring. He looked strangely content. ‘But now I know they’re here.’

  Zafir made Diamond Eye fly between the outer towers and leave them be. Forced him straight for the inner ones, the tallest, and there she let him loose on the first one they passed, tooth and claw and tail, splintering great chunks of gold and glass from its side. Pieces fell into the open yard below among the milling Taiytakei and their slaves and exploded in a hail of deadly spears and knives. Screams echoed beneath her and joy surged inside – from Diamond Eye but also her own.

  Clusters of black-powder cannon. She saw them now, around the outer ring, close to each of the three black needles of the enchanters’ monoliths. More lightning too perhaps, although she spotted none of the rings of brilliant light she’d seen around the cannon on the fortress by the sea. She turned Diamond Eye towards them. They were moving, trying to bear on her, but they were uselessly slow, like the cannon that Tsen had shown her on the eyrie. Weapons to fire on glasships, clumsy and worthless against a dragon. Diamond Eye flew to the first and tore the cannon to pieces with his claws, hurling the metal tubes at the black monolith beside them, cracking it. Zafir laughed madly.

  ‘Burn them!’ she screamed into the wind and urged Diamond Eye on to the next. ‘Burn them!’ There was no lightning here. Lightning didn’t work against glasships, and what else could fly so high? ‘Burn them!’ They reached the next cluster of cannon. Fire raged out of the dragon all along the walls, up and over the metal and the stone, and then the wall blew apart beneath them and a mighty hand lifted them up, dragon and all. It tossed them into the air and she felt Diamond Eye convulse with pain, peppered by stones and shards of glass like scorpion bolts. Pain and then more rage and he banked and rolled and dived at the offending ground. Another explosion, smaller than the first. The dragon skimmed the wreckage, smashing the skeleton of iron beneath the glass and pouring flames into the gaping wound. Fire bloomed inside another piece of wall and burst through it like a fist through paper. More glass flew. The Taiytakei were little figures, running and screaming, frantic like ants. Anything to get away. The flying glass tore them to pieces before her eyes. It ripped them open and tore their limbs and sliced off their heads.

  A piece hit her in the face, right between the eyes like a stone from a sling.

  Tuuran and Crazy Mad passed the first gatehouse, which reeked with the stink of hot stone and burned flesh. There were bodies, dozens of them. Taiytakei soldiers dead at their posts, their armour melted on them by the dragon’s fire. Tuuran glanced at them and smiled. Dead slavers! A thing to make hearts sing. People were running the other way now, eyes mad with terror, fleeing from the palace of their unassailable sea lord. Slaves. A few were pale-skinned folk from the dragon lands or perhaps the little kingdoms and the northern edge of the Dominion. Mostly they were darker, Crazy Mad colour from the heart of the Dominion or the southern coast of Aria. There were Taiytakei too, slaves holding their hands high as they fled so that anyone who cared could see the brands they carried. Tuuran ignored them. Slaves were slaves and he had no grief with them, whatever skin they wore.

  The second gatehouse was empty. The road beyond was gouged, stone slabs ripped out of the ground in great long slashes. The dragon. Bloody limbs, spiked clubs, shields, batons: all lay strewn about amid streaks of sticky blood. More and more slaves ran past. A few here and there stooped to pick up discarded weapons. At the third a gang of sail-slaves had armed themselves from the fallen Taiytakei. They held up their hands to show their brands and Tuuran held up his own and they nodded to one another. They had a Taiytakei and they were killing him, slowly and with a great deal of relish. If it wasn’t for Crazy Mad Tuuran might have stopped to join them.

  An explosion shook the ground. Up around the edge of the palace a fireball bloomed and rose into the air. He saw the dragon, saw it lurch and then turn and vanish behind the higher walls. He could smell smoke again, drifting in on the breeze. The stream of slaves fleeing the palace became thicker. There were fights, short and sharp and vicious. Slaves of all colours beating down Taiytakei soldiers, swallowing them with their weight of numbers, tearing off their armour and pulling away their helms and battering them bloody. Lightning spat left and right. It was madness. Chaos. Whether the Taiytakei were attackers or those defending the palace, Tuuran had no idea. The slaves didn’t much care.

  And there, running straight at him with panic on his face, was one of the men he’d seen on the ship. The tall grey dead man, Crazy Mad’s Vallas Kuy, and Crazy had seen him too. The warlock was slow, old and feeble among the young muscle of the escaping slaves. His skin was as pale as the moon and his grey robes fluttered around his feet. Crazy Mad moved into his path; he took off his helm with slow and deliberate care, but the grey dead man was too busy running to look at faces. Vallas the warlock skittered sideways, eyes fixed on the road and his only escape from the dragon, and then at the very last his gaze flicked to Crazy Mad’s face and flicked away again. And then flicked back.

  Crazy Mad caught hold of him, eyes gleaming. Tuuran stopped to watch.

  81

  Who Am I?

  â
€˜Vallas Kuy!’

  ‘You!’ The grey dead man gaped. For a moment he looked truly afraid.

  ‘Me. Do you remember me, Vallas? Do you remember me from Tethis? Do you remember Gelisya and Syannis? Do you remember what your brother did to me?’ Crazy Mad threw Vallas to the ground, both oblivious to the slaves streaming past, the running battles, the shouting and the screaming and the cracks of lightning. Tuuran craned his neck to scan the sky, looking out for the dragon, but his ears were firmly with Crazy Mad. ‘Do you? Do you remember? Get up!’

  Vallas rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet, still gaping at Crazy Mad as though he’d seen a ghost. ‘You,’ he whispered. ‘Why are you here? How are you here?’ The earth shivered and Tuuran cringed as another explosion rocked the Kraitu’s Bones. The fleeing slaves had an urgent terror to them. For a moment Vallas stared at Tuuran instead. ‘And you! I knew we weren’t wrong.’

  ‘Get on your knees, soap maker!’ Vallas shook his head. The fear was leaving his eyes and a venom taking its place. From behind the palace the dragon soared high into the sky. The air crackled with energy as it shrieked its victory. Tuuran looked around for shelter. Crazy Mad pointed his sword at Vallas. ‘What did you do to me? Who am I? What did you do?’

  The dragon was going berserk: screaming, burning, smashing, throwing itself against the three great towers of glass and gold, lashing them with its tail, tearing at them with its claws. There was no telling when it might come their way, but when it did – if it did – it was clearly long past paying attention to things like who it was supposed to burn and who it wasn’t. It would kill them all. ‘Oi! Crazy! We don’t have time for this. Not in the open.’