Dragon Queen (10 page)

‘Deserts are suitable.’

His mind snapped back to the here and the now. To Quai'Shu
beside him and the alchemist of the dragon realms before him. It had begun. The Picker had completed the first of his tasks. Now there was an eyrie to be built, a flying castle fortress to be found and many things besides, and soon the dragons would come, all as Quai'Shu had been promised.

Yet Quai'Shu had not been alone on that island, and the half-gods had not shown him everything. By the time the dragons came, the Picker would be dead and Quai'Shu would be mad. The moon sorcerers had shown the Watcher these things, and when he asked why they had shown them to him and to him alone, the half-gods had laughed in mockery. Fate was fate and could not change. They'd shown him other things too and it would do no good to try and change any of it. Except for one thing that remained hanging in the balance.

The grey dead . . .

. . . are coming . . .

. . . with the golden knife
.

They are making . . .

. . . the greatest of us . . .

. . . whole again
.

They are calling . . .

. . . the Black Moon . . .

. . . to rise once more
.

Do . . .

. . . what you do . . .

. . . and watch
.

8

Skyrie

Skyrie
. On a battlefield outside Tethis, four years before the Adamantine Palace would burn, the name slipped inside Berren's head. It came with an explosion of light. When he opened his eyes again he was staring at the bright sky. Faces were looking down on him. Old friends. Faces he knew but he could feel himself falling away from them. And he could feel something coming the other way. Something from a dark place. It had a name.

Skyrie . . .

He caught a glimpse of other faces peering down at him too. Different faces. Dim shadows shrouded in grey.

Berren! Crowntaker! Where are you wounded?
The words of his soldiering friends, of Tallis One-Eye, grew distant.
Hold the advance! Get him out of here! Gaunt, lead the wall!

He barely heard. He was sinking. Falling fast while another streamed the other way. He reached out at the thing that passed him in the void and tore at it, sunk in his fingers and his teeth and his toes. He tore a piece away but it didn't stop the falling.

Skyrie
. That was who he was. That was his name. He saw the Crown-taker coming, falling, screaming, flailing, clawing. They tasted one another as they passed through Xibaiya, through the path ripped by the warlock's sigil, and then Skyrie saw the light. He saw the Bloody Judge fall away. Saw faces and the sun. Reached for them as the warlock's rip began to close. He'd seen a tear like this before, he was sure of it. In a place full of water but he couldn't remember where. He reached for the light, for the sun, full of urgency and victory, but now something was dragging him back. ‘Get me up!’ A voice that was his but wasn't. ‘Get that off me! Now! Before it's too . . . It's doing . . .’ He scrabbled to fight his way on into the light and the noise of the battlefield but the rip was almost gone.

Something seemed to push past him through the tear, clambering over him, squeezing him back. The faces and the sky dimmed and began to change and now Skyrie was falling too, away into somewhere else where the sky was black and the air was filled with smoke and the smell of earth and the faces that looked down on him were shrouded in cowls and he wasn't on the battlefield any more, he was back where he'd been all along, in the pit under Tethis castle. He knew its dingy light and its rotten smell. He was lying flat on a table at the bottom of a hole in the floor of a cave deep underground.

He slumped. Closed his eyes. They'd failed. He took a deep breath and let it out and then another. His heart was thumping as though
he'd
been the one in the middle of a battle, not the Crowntaker. He groaned. Four of his brothers in grey held him, peering at him. Warlocks, and he was one of them. Skyrie the marsh farmer, who'd come to Tethis with a hole in his soul and a vengeful heart, who'd taken the grey robes of the Dark Queen's priests to wreak havoc and woe on the Bloody Judge who'd destroyed his home. He'd come here willingly, made his choices, and now they'd failed. He groaned, desolate, and tried to sit up.

‘Skyrie?’ The other warlocks still held him down. They were shaking, full of fear. In case it
had
worked and the body they held had the Crowntaker inside it now. Which gave them every reason to be afraid.

Skyrie fell limp. ‘It didn't work.’ He was too weak to move. Too ruined by despair. Their last gambit and he was still here and the Crowntaker, the Bloody Judge of Tethis, was still out there, still who he'd ever been. Vallas's sigils had failed. But they'd been so close! For a moment he'd even seen through the Bloody Judge's eyes before the rip had closed and something had torn him back.

‘Should we call Vallas?’ The warlock who held his left leg. Brother Scortas.

Skyrie nodded. Vallas's great scheme to bend defeat back to victory, to wrench the Bloody Judge out of his very own flesh and blood and replace him with another, and for a moment, for one blink of another's eye, they'd been on the cusp of it. Maybe it wasn't too late to try again . . .

Where am I?

Skyrie froze. Horror turned his bones to ice. He had an instant, that was all, to realise that he hadn't come back alone, for utter dread to drench his every thought, before an alien presence ripped through him, hurling him tumbling head over heels into nothing, stranding him far away where all he could do was watch and listen and scream in silence as . . .

I am the Bloody Judge of Tethis. I am Berren the Crowntaker! What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?
The warlock to his left had a knife. Skyrie's arm jerked up. Smashed its fist into his face and sprawled him to the floor. He kicked the pair who stood by his feet. One stumbled forward. He sank his fingers into a fleshy neck and practically tore out the warlock's throat. The last one scrabbled away. ‘Skyrie!’
Skyrie?
Who was that? Not him. A battlefield. Full armour, wading through mud, blood and the limbs of his enemies. Only a moment ago and now he was here, mad-eyed, riven by terror-fuelled fury . . .

A silent prisoner, helpless behind his own eyes, Skyrie shrieked and howled and wailed and tore at himself. His brothers. His comrades. He knew their names. He knew their laughter. They'd shared bread and water. They were the ones who'd brought him here, all of them come willingly for the ritual that would turn the world on its head and he was killing them and he couldn't stop, couldn't even close his eyes, couldn't even look away . . .

He leaped off the table, The Crowntaker, consumed with irresistible fury. Onto the warlock who still held the knife. Filling the air with savage snarls. Both hands to the warlock's wrist. Knee smash to the groin, hard enough to make the warlock cough out his own balls. Stamped on his ankle and smashed his face against the wall of the pit. The warlock doubled up and retched and the knife was his for the taking.
Ritual?
For a moment the fury faltered like sun through a break between thunderclouds and light poured in. He felt strange, lost, then grabbed hold of the fury again and tugged it hard, the only thing he had to cling to. The knife came free. He caught it. Brought it straight back up and buried it in the warlock's guts. One dead.
Ritual?
He knew where he was. Not where he was supposed to be.
What ritual?
Remembered the battlefield. The warlock. The one who'd stuck him with that strip of cursed sigils. A cold wind brushed through him. Knowledge hammered his
head and then fell away like sand hurled at a steel wall. This body wasn't his!
What did you do to me? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Fear rose again through the fury and choked him . . .

The thing inside him faltered. Skyrie groped for a memory that was truly his, a blind man fishing in the dark depths of a swamp for something he'd once held. Water. And stars. A momentary flash of
elsewhere . . .
He threw himself at the
thing
inside him . . .

Too late. Too slow. The Crowntaker found his rage again and hurled Skyrie screaming away. One warlock dead. Three left. Had to kill them. Had to keep killing. Had to keep the fury fuelled or he'd slip away. The warlocks backed away. Shouted for help. He sprang at them. They weren't soldiers. They got in each other's way. He swept the legs out from one. Flipped him up and crashed him to the floor. Stamped down. Neck bones crunched and cracked. His lips drew back, a grimace of vicious glee . . .

Dear gods, dear gods and holy Xibaiya!
Skyrie wrapped himself around the memory of water and of the stars that winked out one by one. It gave him strength even as he felt himself unravelling. An anchor. For a moment it even found him his voice. ‘My brothers! Help me! I am . . .’ And then it was gone again, lost to the snarling other . . .

‘. . . Berren the Crowntaker. The Bloody Judge.’ Fingers caught hold of a flapping cowl. He pulled. Slashed the knife. Warm blood showered his hand. The warlock jerked back. Opened his mouth to scream and vomited blood and a few gargling gasps. Last one now. Backed against the far wall. Whimpering and shrieking. The Crowntaker tossed the knife from hand to hand. Movement, corner of his eye, up on the rim of the pit. Soldier. But he'd stood up there himself once and he knew how dark it was down here. They could hear but they couldn't see. He pressed his knife to the last necromancer's throat. Hatred pulsed through him. ‘
What have you done to me
. . .
?’

Skyrie clawed at fragments of himself, slowly drifting apart. For every one he pulled back another escaped and vanished. He was falling to pieces. He tried again to scream, to beg for help as his brother did, but the only words that came were from the
other
, the
thing
he'd brought back, the Crowntaker, the Bloody Judge himself. The whites of his brother's eyes glistened in the darkness.
Sicel, that was his name, and they slept in the same room, cots one beside the other. He would have wept if his tears had been his own to shed.
I'm sorry, brother. I cannot stop him
. In the darkness above someone lit a lantern, and Skyrie knew well what would happen next. The soldiers would peer in. They'd see what he'd done and remember clearly how precise and explicit their orders were. They'd take up their crossbows and they'd riddle him with iron and wood. They'd watch his blood leak across the ground and soak into the dirt and then they'd throw down oil and torches and burn whatever was left. He knew. He remembered the warnings.
The Bloody Judge may find the body you leave behind
. So they knew he might come and they were ready for it, but not like this, while the voice that wasn't his snarled and snapped like a cornered wolf and Sicel's eyes rolled in terror and dismay filled his words. Vallas wasn't even here. Vallas was with their queen, facing the Bloody Judge's Fighting Hawks to put an end to him at last. The Bloody Judge who was right here. And all the while the lantern was coming down on its rope and the end would quickly follow. Deep inside, Skyrie squirmed and writhed and fought and found no purchase to throw the Crowntaker aside. Sighed and stood ready to be released.
I am Skyrie! I am your brother! Vallas help me . . .

The Crowntaker slit the last warlock's throat. Held him close. Let blood gush over his clothes, rich and heady. Couldn't see much in the dark. Could feel his skin, though. Wasn't the skin he knew. Arms were scrawny and thin like a boy's. All the battle-corded muscle gone. He didn't understand the how but he knew what they'd done to him. The memories were right there. Right there in front of him. For a moment he paused. Clenched that piece he'd seized as he fell out of the light of the battlefield and squeezed the memories out of it.
HOW DO YOU TURN IT BACK?

The lantern was almost down. For a moment, as the Crowntaker clawed at his memories, Skyrie felt a mastery of himself again. He ran a hand down his leg. The scar was still there, the huge axe cut he should never have survived.
This is who I am! Skyrie! My body, my flesh, how it always was. Skyrie
. He sank to his haunches, hugging himself. The lantern came to a stop a foot above the ground. It swung slowly back and forth. He knew what Vallas had told the
queensguard here over the pit because he'd been there, standing beside them, and they'd put him down here for a reason, after all.
If he finds a way back then nothing comes out of here alive. Throw oil and a torch until everything is scorched to ash
. He opened his mouth to shout up at them to do it, to burn him. Nothing. And now he couldn't move any more. And then he understood: he wasn't free at all. The Crowntaker lurked behind him, seeing it as he remembered it. Too late. His gaping mouth slammed shut, his legs leaped, his arms reached out and there was not a thing he could do to stop it. He screamed in silence yet again,
Do you as you were told! Burn me! Burn me before it's too late!

The lantern hung from a rope. A good thick one. He jumped, swift and sudden. Seized it. Pulled sharply. The soldier at the edge of the pit holding the other end cried out, teetered, toppled over the edge and landed hard. Stupid. The lantern smashed and its rope fell in loops and then hung taut, tied to the winch and crane they used to lower people down. The Crowntaker gripped the knife between his teeth. He had the soldier's sword out of its scabbard in a flash. Hurled it up out of the pit and over the edge. Scampered up the wall, clinging to the rope, climbing like a monkey. All those years at sea. A skag. Never forgotten. At the top he picked out the other soldiers. They'd seen him. Were coming. Shouting. Didn't matter. He took it all in. One glance. Where they were. What they carried. What they wore. Bared his teeth. They were too slow. Too late to stop him . . .