The Order of the Scales (6 page)

Tunnels. They have fled under the ground.

Behind Kemir the Scales let out a scream. It went on and on and on. For a few seconds Kemir thought it might never stop. Then the Scales took a deep breath. He looked as though he might be about to start again, so Kemir punched him in the stomach. The Scales went down. Kemir clutched his fist and swore. Either the Scales was wearing armour or he truly was well on his way to turning into stone.

‘I brought you this one,’ he said to Snow.

He followed you, Kemir.

‘He’s a Scales. Which means he’s stupid.’

A Scales. Like the one who was with me when I awoke. Kailin. He was the only one of your kind I have found who was not afraid of me.

‘Oh yes. Another one of the people who tried to help you and ended up eaten for their troubles.’ He’d forgotten the man’s name. Almost forgotten he even existed. He shrugged. ‘I think the potions they take for the Hatchling Disease means they can’t think properly.’ He hauled the Scales to his feet. ‘He might be useful; he might not. Hey! Scales!’

The Scales looked at him. He was white with fear.

‘Well,
this
one isn’t not afraid of you.’

This one understands.
Snow stamped on the ruins of the alchemist house and the whole mountain seemed to shake.
I feel them in there, Kemir. I will clear away one of their holes. You will go in and hunt them for me.

‘No, I bloody well won’t, dragon. I’m not going in any dark holes full of soldiers, thank you.’ He sniffed and looked at the quivering Scales. ‘When it’s daylight, maybe. After I’ve dealt with the riders up in the castle.’

Why do you seek to anger me?

‘I’m just not going to get killed for you. I don’t give a stuff whether that angers you or not. Live with it.’

She looked at him and he felt her wonder.
You fear me and so you defy me.

‘Don’t be daft, dragon.’

I see it in you. You fight your fear by defying me. It is a curious thing to do. It does not seem . . . wise.

He could almost feel her poking around inside his thoughts. The sensation was like having an itch in a place you couldn’t scratch. ‘You know what? I think I’m going to lie down somewhere and get some sleep. Maybe I’ll help you once it’s light again.’

Snow lowered her face towards him and bared her teeth.
Again you test me?

Kemir cringed. ‘You have
bad
breath, dragon. Take that away!’ He could see her tail begin to twitch. Not a good sign. With a quickness that belonged to a much smaller animal, Snow sprang across the stones. As she landed sideways, her tail lashed out into the darkness. There was a scream. When her tail emerged from the wreckage, something dangled from the tip. She tossed it up into the air. There was a limp flailing of limbs before the dragon caught it between her teeth and swallowed it down.

Shall I keep this one you have brought me alive? Shall I keep it as a means to persuade you, Kemir?

‘Clutching at straws, dragon. You’ll need a much better threat than that and you know it. Learn to wait. Your alchemists will still be cowering in their holes come the morning. They might be more interested in talking by then.’ He could feel the anger boiling inside her so he turned away, kept his steps slow and measured and didn’t look back. The dragon was right. He fought his fear by refusing to be afraid, no matter how bad it got. It was what he’d always done.

Didn’t need to have someone poke inside my head and point it out though.
He kept walking. The eyrie was littered with places to hide and away from the fires it was dark now. He made his way to the barracks where Snow had first landed. The end she’d smashed was still burning nicely and looked like it would be going for some time. The other end wasn’t much better, but not so shattered that it wouldn’t offer some shelter. In the middle of the floor he almost trod on what turned out to be a jewellery box, half covered in ash. The outside was scorched and ruined, but inside he found a small stash of coin and a pouch filled with Souldust. He stared at it, wondering what to do. What use it was.

Six months ago I’d be jumping for joy. That’s a month’s pay and never mind the dust. But now what? Coins I can’t spend and dust I don’t want?
He almost threw it away, but a lifetime of living from day to day got the better of him and put the coins and the dust in his belt bag instead. Then he propped himself up against a piece of stone wall in the middle that looked like it wasn’t going to fall down on top of him while he slept. He huddled down and tried to make himself comfortable, massaging his feet until he could feel his toes again. It was pleasantly warm from the fire and at least the ground here was dry.
Like a dead dragon, burning from the inside.

The dragon had changed since they’d been on the island. Since she’d awoken three more of her kind, one had become four. Maybe that was it, maybe having company of her own kind was what had made her more remote. Or maybe she’d always been that way and he simply hadn’t wanted to notice.

Or maybe it was something else. He caught a hint of something in the dragon’s thoughts sometimes. Something to do with the ships they’d seen when they left the island. The Taiytakei they were called, but the dragon had spoken of something else. Silver men. She wouldn’t talk to him about the silver men, whatever they were, but they were in the dragons’ thoughts and made them uncomfortable.

Which led him nowhere. If the dragons weren’t going to tell him then he wasn’t going to find out. That was that. End of. Time to get some sleep. Amazing how easy that still was, falling asleep, with the world on fire around him.

He woke up frozen stiff. A cold dawn was lighting up the peaks on the other side of the valley, making them shine like giant lanterns. Above, through the broken bones of the roof, he could see the sky, clear now, a deep violet blue, waiting for the sun to breach the mountaintops. The snow clouds had gone, off to bother someone else. Where he lay was still dark, wrapped in leftover shadows. The wall, so deliciously warm when he’d fallen asleep, was like ice, sucking the heat out of him, but what had woken him were screams. Long, piercing screams, over and over.

He tried to stand up. When that didn’t work, he settled for climbing as far as all fours. Every muscle in his body seemed frozen solid. Eventually he managed to get to his feet. He could have kicked himself. Amazing how easily he fell asleep, and just as amazing how quickly he’d forgotten how cold these mountains were when you had a dragon to keep you warm every night.

The screaming was still there, fading in and out until it eventually stopped. There were embers glowing in the far parts of the barracks. Kemir went and sat by them until he felt warm again. That took long enough for the sun to creep over the summits, for it to light up the eyrie and let him see what the dragons had done. Every building had been smashed flat and then burned. Barracks, storehouses, stables, the houses of the alchemists, everything. Where the little lake had been there was nothing but mud and the fractured remains of a vast sheet of ice. Higher up, the castle seemed more intact, although a pall of smoke hung over it. Snow was still prowling around where the alchemists had been, picking at the wreckage, lifting out the occasional fragment of wall and tossing it aside. He couldn’t see the other dragons.

Kemir sighed. Wearily, he walked over to her. All the snow was gone, melted by the heat of the dragons.

‘Well, dragon? I heard screaming. Did you get one?’

Snow stopped. She regarded him with a steady glare.
Does it matter, Kemir? Another human. I would have spared her, but you were not here and I was annoyed and bored, so I toyed with her and then ate her. Is that what you wished to hear?
Nothing about her thoughts suggested she was joking. Kemir shivered.
It is light. I require an al-chemist. I feel them, deep beneath the earth, on the edge of my thoughts. You will get one for me now, yes?

‘How deep is deep, dragon?’

They are few, Kemir. They are weak. They will not be able to hurt you.

Kemir snorted. ‘You’d be amazed what even a weak man can do if you frighten him enough. So what’s in it for me?’

If you cease to be useful, you become food.

‘Bollocks to you.’ He picked up a stone and threw it at her as hard as he could. It bounced off her nose. ‘Without me, dragon, you and yours would be throwing yourselves against one of the vast eyries of the plains. You’d be riddled with poison and scorpion bolts and wondering what went wrong. Just maybe, as you were burning from the inside, you’d be thinking that you should have listened to me, but probably not, because you’re all so blindly arrogant when it comes to that sort of thing. Without me, dragon, you wouldn’t even know these mountain eyries existed, much less have found any of them. I thought
that’s
why you tolerated me. Because without me your ignorance and your impatience make you so stupid that you might as well keep taking the alchemists’ potions.’

Snow lowered her face until she was inches from Kemir’s nose. When she hissed, she smelled of warm blood. Her head seemed huge, even if she was small for a dragon. As large as a cart with a mouth big enough to swallow a horse and lined with a hundred dagger-like teeth as long as his forearm. Her eyes were as big as his head.

The little one you brought to me had knowledge in the ways of this world, Kemir, more than yours. He knew many things that you do not. Events have happened since I awoke. I require to know more. I require an alchemist.

Kemir took a step forward. He was nose to nose with the dragon now. ‘Maybe I just won’t, dragon. Has that thought occurred to you?’

They have knowledge of the dragon-knight who killed your nest-brother. Shall I pluck it from their thoughts before I devour you, or do you prefer to die in ignorance? It matters little to me.

A silence hung between them. The silence of a wound ripped open. Time stopped. The mountain and the eyrie and the sky all vanished. There was only him and the dragon. ‘What?’

I require an alchemist, Kemir.

‘The Scales. Where is he?’ It had to be the Scales. He must have known something after all.

For an answer, Snow licked her lips.

‘You ate him.’

An alchemist, Kemir. You will bring me an alchemist.

‘What is the secret? they always ask. What is the secret?

It is the Silver King, I sometimes say. The Isul Aieha, bound and tied in the deepest caverns of the Worldspine, held for ever in torment with a hollow spike driven into his still-living brain, from which drips an ichor of purest silver. That is the secret. They stare at me with wide eyes, lapping up every word, and then I laugh. Other times I say it is merely a plant, a common leaf, a happy chance of nature that renders our dragons dull. What is the secret? It is a thing I will hold in my heart like a lover and never let go. The secret is blood.’

Isentine watched the four dragons circle his little oasis. The fact that three of them were hunters only made the fourth, the war-dragon B’thannan, seem even more immense than usual. They’d come from the south, over the hundred miles of empty burning dunes from Sand to the last outpost of the north. To his eyrie, built around the ancient tower of Outwatch and the fertile strip of land around it. The oasis he understood. A river ran underground, all the way from the Worldspine, right under his feet. It touched the surface here. Somehow, because of that water, Outwatch had grown to be the largest eyrie in the realms.

The tower was another matter. Someone had built it long ago. They’d never quite finished, and they hadn’t been quite human, that much was clear to anyone who lived here.

The ground shuddered as the weight of the dragons hit the earth; he could feel the impacts through his feet, all the way up to the aches in his knees. He cast a nervous glance behind him at the tower. In his dreams things kept falling apart.

A tiny distant figure slid down from B’thannan’s back and strode across the hard blasted earth of the eyrie. Lord Hyrkallan, hero of Evenspire, prince of the north and King of Sand in all but name. A big man, but out here he looked small and insignificant. Against the immensity of the sky and the vast empty sands and the dragons sprawled basking in the desert sun, most things did. Kings, queens, riders, alchemists, they were all little more than oversized ants. At the head of his soldiers, standing stiffly erect, Isentine clenched his teeth. The pains in his knees and his back troubled him more every day. Age.

Hyrkallan ignored the soldiers. He walked straight to the eyrie-master and on, snapping his fingers at Isentine to follow him. Which was not something his rank entitled him to do, not until he was crowned. Isentine held his ground.

‘Your victories are sweet, but you’re not married to her yet, Your Highness,’ he said loudly.

Hyrkallan stopped dead. For a second he didn’t move. He didn’t turn. ‘Where is she?’