The Silver Kings (47 page)

‘Your alchemist would have made something for the sickness, wouldn’t he?’

Liang closed her eyes. Yes. He would. And he would have sat with her for as long as it took and never left her side.

The clouds and the wind and the lashing rain didn’t relent, and so Liang didn’t see Lin Feyn go, flying on her sled through tumult and gale to her own ship. But she forced herself up to the deck and watched as the two ships sailed one after the other into the storm-dark, and whispered her farewells until the silence came, the blessed stillness of the Nothing at the storm-dark’s heart, where they would part, each to their own other world, Lin Feyn to stand before an army and the might of her own people to stop a holy war before it could start, and Liang to go alone into the dragon-lands while her borrowed ship turned back for whence it had come. She wasn’t sure which one of them was the bigger fool.

Alone, but Belli would be there, and she would find him; and together they would bring the Black Moon down and his dragon-queen too. Whatever it took.

Half-gods and dragons. They’re the same, Liang. The same!
Now there was a thing. Through the knotting snakes writhing in her belly, Chay-Liang smiled, picturing Belli’s face as she told him.

The Black Moon

There are tunnels under the Purple Spur. There are palaces bored into stone, made by the first men before the fall of the Silver Kings. When dragons flew wild and unchecked they were a shelter, a sanctuary in which to eke out a life. Abandoned when the dragons were tamed by the Isul Aieha, they became home to alchemists and the most dread of their secrets, but now they once more offer shelter from fire and claw that come from the sky. The last alchemists fade here, and dragon-riders too under the rule of their queen and their grand master alchemist. Lystra, last of Shezira’s daughters, King Jehal’s bride. And Jeiros, crippled by King Hyrkallan for his last desperate poisoning of a thousand dragons. For both, one name conjures all their spite, one name mothering all they have lost.

Zafir, the dragon-queen.

33

Hide-and-Seek and Alchemy

Forty days after landfall

Bellepheros had no idea whether the Black Moon knew he was still on the eyrie, or whether the half-god even cared. Zafir had left the Merizikat sell-swords and most of the exalts back in the Pinnacles. She’d taken her Adamantine Men down to the Spur and the ruin of her old palace, and Queen Jaslyn’s riders too. A dozen abandoned souls wandered the eyrie, that was all, bemused and wondering what to do with themselves – solar exalts cut by the Black Moon’s knife, mostly – and Bellepheros hid from them in Li’s old workshop while Myst and Onyx brought him food. No one paid much attention to Zafir’s handmaidens except to court them for the dragon-queen’s favour, but they’d come to see him as a friend because he’d midwifed them both through the births of their sons. Kept him busy, at least.

He drank the last of Kataros’s potion to hide his thoughts from the Black Moon’s dragons, and then kept out of sight as best he could, flitting, lurking and forgotten, between his laboratory and his study and Li’s workshop, surrounded by all the things Li had made, all the scatter of half-built ideas and discarded shapes of metal and glass whose purpose he couldn’t decipher. He looked at them all, wishing she was here so she could tell him what to do. Stop the Black Moon? Take his power and use it to tame the dragons, not that he knew how? Or let the Black Moon tame the dragons himself as the Isul Aieha had done, if that was what the Black Moon planned, and then somehow bring him down? History repeating itself, except a few hundred years ago it had taken a thousand blood-mages to silence a half-god. This time there was only him.

At dawn he crept to the dragon yard to see the sun rise. They were deep within the mountains and the sky was filled with ­dragons. The Black Moon seemed oblivious, but Bellepheros didn’t dare stay; he slipped away again and stayed hidden after that. Perhaps, in the end, because he was most comfortable in a quiet cosy place with walls and a roof and solid stone to every side, and with the memories of Chay-Liang all around him. When the eyrie stopped he didn’t even know it until Myst came to tell him, in her own gentle words, that they had reached somewhere, and that the Black Moon was gone.

When he peeked outside to see, he knew at once where he was. The Valley of Alchemy. The old secret redoubt that was the source of every alchemist’s power. So the Black Moon had found it then.

Myst, beside him, pointed at the sky. There were dragons every­where. Hundreds, perched on the cliffs. Quietly waiting. He’d never seen so many.

‘What do they want, Grand Master?’

‘To eat us,’ Bellepheros said flatly and wondered why they didn’t. Wary, he climbed the eyrie wall. A few Merizikat men Zafir had left behind sat out on the rim, carefree and untroubled, legs dangling over the drop, kicking their heels beside one of the cranes. They were looking down at something, not bothered by the dragons at all, and Bellepheros wondered if he might walk to join them and peer over the edge. Maybe he should. Whatever they were looking at, he ought to see it for himself, oughtn’t he? But the drop already made him dizzy just thinking about it. Standing on the wall was bad enough, out in the open under the gaze of so many dragons. He wondered idly why they paid the eyrie so little thought.

The alchemists’ redoubt. The place the blood-mages had brought the body of the Silver King. If he had a home, one where he truly felt in his heart that he was safe, here it was.

‘Where are we?’ asked Myst.

Bellepheros looked at the dragons. Kataros’s potion hid his thoughts, but it didn’t blind the dragons’ eyes. ‘This is where we make our alchemists,’ he said. ‘The key and the heart to everything we are. The Black Moon went inside, did he?’
Why else come all this way?
‘Then I need to follow.’ He was talking to himself, not to Myst. Telling himself because he knew that it mattered and that he needed to know, and yet the thought left him petrified. To go out there alone … He’d have to go out to the edge. Dragons everywhere, looking on. The vertiginous drop to the valley below. The creaking wood and rope as someone lowered him down. It terrified him, every drop of every thought. Of being surrounded by the sky, of falling, of a dragon tipping off its perch and swooping in some lazy arc across the valley sky to snatch him as he dangled. Of so much naked space; and as paralysing as all those things were, none wrenched his insides as much as what he knew must come after. Walking away from the eyrie into those familiar old caves, alone, leaving every comfort behind and knowing that the Black Moon lay in wait.

‘Zafir would do it,’ he murmured. ‘Tuuran would do it. Li too.’ He had no idea how they found the courage.

‘Do what?’ asked Myst.

He turned to her. She’d always been a strong one. ‘Will you help me?’

‘How?’ He saw how she hesitated.

‘It’s stupid, when you look at everything. Dragons all around us, a half-god … Will you come with me to the ground? Just that far. I’ll have my senses back when I have the earth under my feet again, but I fear I need a little more courage for what comes after. Will you?’

Myst climbed down the wall. She walked across the rim to the men around the crane, smiled and whispered in their ears. She came back and took Bellepheros by his hands.

‘Don’t the dragons terrify you?’ he asked.

‘I think they’re magnificent,’ she whispered. ‘I wish her Holiness would take me into the sky with her just once.’

You know they’re going to eat us, don’t you?
But he couldn’t say that. Not to such a shining honest face full of hope and light, that bizarre unshakeable belief both Zafir’s handmaidens had in their mistress and in the Adamantine armour of her protection. He wanted to shout at her that it was all an illusion, that the Black Moon kept them alive by the most slender and tenuous thread … but why? Why do that? It would only hurt her. It certainly wouldn’t save her.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘They’re not scared either.’ She pointed at the men by the crane, how they idled and paid no mind to the dragons above. ‘They’ll lower you down.’

Bellepheros could only imagine the Black Moon had put some sort of spell on them to make them so fearless, or more likely he’d cut them with his wicked knife and they had no choices any more, or perhaps he’d simply cut all the fear right out of them.
Three little cuts.
Don’t be afraid of dragons.
And so they weren’t. Was it that easy?

Three little cuts. Don’t be afraid to fall …

Myst put a hand on his arm.

‘Come.’ She led him with care down the outer slope of the wall and onto the rim. He was shaking and he hadn’t even looked over the edge yet. Pathetic. He wished Tuuran was there. Or even her Holiness. Didn’t see eye to eye much with one and could barely stand the other, but their fearlessness was infectious. They would have stood with him for this without a moment of hesitation if they thought it was right. They would have come inside the caves. They would have faced the Black Moon …

And they would have died, like he was going to die. Or worse.

Myst walked him to the edge, to the crane and into the wooden cage that dangled from its arm. She came in with him, and he felt so stupid as the cage lifted into the air and swung out over the void below, but he was shaking like a leaf. He closed his eyes. Myst wrapped her arms around him. She cooed and whispered into his ear as though she was comforting a child or an animal – him, Bellepheros, grand master of the Order of the Scales, a blood-mage alchemist whose potions mastered dragons, whimpering like a whipped dog.

He kept his eyes closed until the cage bumped onto the ground. Took a few long deep breaths and then made himself let her go. He lifted the loop of rope that held the cage door closed, pushed it open and stepped out. The air smelled wrong. The sweetness he remembered scorched by a tang of ash …

The dark purple-veined underside of the eyrie glowered down. So huge. Overpowering. If he hadn’t been here a hundred times before and known this valley as well as he knew his own fingers, he might never have guessed that the smashed scattered stone around him had once been something else. Stores. Workshops. Homes for alchemists. And he should have been ready for this, he told himself, he should have known, after everything he’d seen, that of course the dragons would find this place. Of course they’d tear it down and smash it to pieces and stamp it to dust, yet the sight rocked him. Around the ruins and cave mouths the ground had been scorched black. Burned to the bedrock.

He turned to Myst in the cage, and it hit him right between the eyes then that he wasn’t coming back, a certainty as sure as the rising sun. He supposed he ought to say something, but he couldn’t think what. In truth he hardly even knew Myst. Hadn’t ever seen her as anything more than a conduit to her mistress, just like every­one else. He felt ashamed of that now.

‘Look after the little ones,’ he said in the end.

‘Is there anything I should tell my mistress?’

‘Nothing she doesn’t already know.’ Bellepheros shook his head. ‘Nothing that will make a difference. I know you love her. I wish I could love her too.’ He forced himself to turn away and start for the caves before he simply wilted into nothing. ‘Tell her the same as I told you,’ he called back. ‘Tell her to look after the little ones.’

Unsteady legs hurried him into the mouth of the nearest cave. With the comfort of walls around him and a roof over his head, he dared to look back. The cage had already risen halfway to the rim. If Myst was looking back at him, he couldn’t tell; and when it reached the top she was too far away for his old rheumy eyes to make out anything much at all. He stood and looked for a few seconds more anyway. A longing filled him. Li would have come with him. Stood beside him. The two of them together, maybe they might have stopped Zafir and the Black Moon from bringing down whatever end of the world the half-god had in mind. But Li wasn’t here, and it was just him, and he really didn’t think he could do it on his own.

‘I’m sorry, Li. I’m sorry I couldn’t wait.’ At the very least she’d have known how to make him stop feeling sorry for himself.

He turned his back on the eyrie, on the sun and the sky, on the lurking dragons who barely seemed to know he was there, on stone and air, on everything. He faced the darkness of the cave where the Black Moon had gone and walked slowly into the gloom. Every man had his fate, but he really would have quite liked a different one.

34

The Zar Oratorium

Forty-one days after landfall

Tuuran, if anyone had bothered asking, would have said that he didn’t much like traipsing up to the Zar Oratorium, not one bit, not with a dozen Adamantine Men herding a gaggle of riders he couldn’t even name and a queen everyone knew had a madness inside her. Didn’t know what to make of what they were doing, didn’t know what to make of any of it, but mostly what he didn’t like was the three miles of walking out in the open in bright daylight. First through the crippled ruined gates of the Adamantine Palace – maybe a little cover there if a dragon suddenly fell out of the sky and set about killing them, but not much. Then around the flattened scorched ash and rubble that had once been the City of Dragons, where the only place to cower was between broken-down walls and in ripped-open cellars. Dragons had spent a good long time here, that much was clear, tearing up everywhere a few guardsmen might hide. Then to the cliffs of the Purple Spur. Filing up the exposed winding steps to the Zar Oratorium, a narrow stair carved into the rock with nowhere else to go. Three hundred steps. If a dragon came by, he might as well jump up and down and wave his arms and shout, daring the dragon to eat him.

Almost no one here had seen the Adamantine Palace burn. Kataros had. Big Vish and a couple of others, Adamantine Men who’d actually fought and survived. That was all. Queen Jaslyn and her riders had been in the Pinnacles. White Vish had been on his way to Furymouth. Jasaan had been in Sand, far in the sun-stricken desert of the north. Queen Jaslyn’s home. Way Jasaan told it, Sand had been one of the first places to fall when the dragon-rage was at its height. Ash and smoke hadn’t been enough; they’d burned it until the stones cracked in the heat, until even the deepest cellars turned to ovens. Later, after they’d gone, Jasaan said he’d found women and children cooked through. Tuuran reckoned he’d got a sense of how bad a dragon could be when her Holiness had sacked Dhar Thosis, but Sand sounded infinitely worse – the darkness, the screams, fire and flames, tooth and claw and talon and tail moving like whirlwinds through a city as it fell.

Not a thing he much wanted to see coming at him from the skies, all things considered, and so he kept watch like a hawk. Zafir circled overhead on Diamond Eye, watchful and obvious, but there were other dragons here, somewhere. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them lurking. Watching, waiting, and that wasn’t what dragons did. Set him on edge, thinking that, tense and ready at any moment for a shadow to plunge from the mountain cliffs, for the burning to start.

‘Adrunian Zar,’ muttered Big Vish beside him as they started up the steps. ‘Did you know he was an alchemist?’

The Diamond Cascade came over the lip of the Spur a ­hundred yards to the right of the Oratorium. Down this low it wasn’t anything more than spray and mist except on days when the air was as still as a mouse. ‘Doesn’t sound like an alchemist name.’ Tuuran looked up. Checked the sky again as they climbed the steps. ‘Dragon comes now, we’re dead,’ he said.

Big Vish sniffed. ‘All his own work. Him and the hundred or so men he hired.’ He grunted. ‘There used to be a lift. Pulleys and a platform to get people up. And the props for the stage. Dragons burned all that. But most of the rest is still there.’

For a moment Tuuran forgot about expecting dragons to fall on them at any moment. ‘You’re an Adamantine Man, Vish. You telling me you used to go to the theatre?’

‘Whenever I could.’ Vish frowned. ‘They used to put things on at different times throughout the year. Except in winter because of the sun being too close to the horizon behind the stage. Best time was an early-summer morning.’ He sighed. ‘Sun would come sideways across the stage from the east straight through the cascade. Made for the most vivid rainbows you can imagine.’

Tuuran tried to picture it. Big Vish, the scarred and battered Adamantine Man who’d killed a dozen men with his axe, who’d stood and faced and fought with dragons, standing on the edge of a cliff, mooning at rainbows. Tried but couldn’t make it work. ‘Really?’

‘Really did, boss. Dyton’s Narammed in
The First Speaker
. That was something special, that was. If he’d stood up here with that pretend spear and given his great soliloquy on the day the dragons came, he’d have turned them away, he would. Just with his voice.’

They reached the top of the steps. Tuuran looked back at the plodding trail of figures following him up. Checked the sky once again for the dragons that would surely come, but saw only Diamond Eye, circling over the ruined Adamantine Palace. When he was sure they weren’t all about to burn he spared a glance for the Oratorium itself. Granite terraces cut from the natural amphitheatre of the cliff, infilled with earth, small stones and pebbles shovelled down from the higher ledges and lined with marble slabs brought from Bazim Crag. Curved tiers of bench seats, steep concentric semicircles of scarred stained stone with numbers and letters carved into each. The cliffs of the Purple Spur rose behind them, an undulating curtain of striated stone.

‘Never came up here before,’ he muttered. ‘It’s smaller than I thought.’

‘Seats used to be covered with cypress wood before everything burned.’ Vish sounded almost like he was giving a eulogy.

Tuuran nudged him. ‘Wood,’ he growled, ‘is just wood.’

‘I know.’ Vish shook his head. ‘It’s just I never came up here after—’

‘Most people here had a good few friends who used to be covered with skin before everything burned,’ snapped Tuuran. Tension was making him waspish. ‘They walked and talked too, and sometimes I dare say they were even funny.’

Big Vish gave him a sour look and stomped off to the tunnels under the stage that led into the depths of the Spur. There would be more Adamantine Men in there somewhere, keeping watch. Friends. What few Vish had left.

Queen Jaslyn came up the last steps. She reached the stage and stood there, unmoving, her back to the open sky, as exposed as you could possibly imagine. She kept staring out at Diamond Eye, and Tuuran didn’t much like the look on her. Too much longing. And all her dragon-riders kept stopping too, as they came up, and stood with her, looking out over the distant landscape peeling away towards Gliding Dragon Gorge. The ruin of the City of Dragons, tumbled stone and ash, part overgrown now. On the low hill beside it stood the palace with its sheared towers, only the walls looking much as they ever had, too massive and mighty for even dragons to destroy. Was a good view if you’d never seen it before. Question was: did you want to see it at all, all that loss?

Some of his men had set about lashing up a makeshift throne of wood and rope. It occurred to Tuuran then, far too late to do anything about it, that the riders under the Purple Spur were mostly men from Furymouth, while the riders in the Pinnacles were largely men from Sand and Bloodsalt, opposite ends of the realms who rarely managed to play nicely together even at the best of times. Which it certainly hadn’t been when the palace fell. And then there was Zafir and him, caught in the middle.

Vish came trotting back from the tunnels. ‘Boss?’

Tuuran sighed. Nodded. ‘They waiting for us, are they?’

‘Black Ayz has the gate. He’ll be the one leading Speaker Lystra’s vanguard.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

Vish laughed. ‘I told him he’d better let us in, didn’t I!’

‘Take that well, did he?’ Tuuran chuckled. ‘Come on, get that blasted throne built. Sooner we’re out of here the better.’ He paced the edge of the old stage and watched his men set up their stupid throne. When they thought they were done he went and stood on it and sat on it and jumped on it to make sure it was sturdy. They were still making the second when Queen Lystra’s vanguard emerged from the passages under the stage that led into the caves of the Spur. The one at the front, he supposed, must be Black Ayz. He was carrying an absurd crossbow, a murderous thing that would probably go right through a man, armour and all. Had had one of those himself, once. Made for killing dragons. Took the best part of a day to cock, but one well-placed shot could kill a hatchling dead, and that made it quite something. He watched it, calculating, as Black Ayz walked up to him.

‘I want to see my sister!’ Tuuran almost jumped out of his skin. Queen Jaslyn was right behind him. Her voice had a shrill edge of hysteria.

‘Well?’ Black Ayz stopped a few feet short. ‘You in charge?’

Tuuran shivered. ‘Queen Zafir comes with—’

‘Yes.’ Black Ayz sounded on the edge of exasperation. ‘Messages. The Pinnacles. Wonderful. Vish told me. But I don’t know who you are.’

‘I am Tuuran. Night Watchman to Speaker Za—’ He stopped. Black Ayz had levelled the crossbow at him. Just sort of done it without Tuuran seeing it happen. ‘What?’

‘I am Black Ayz, and
I
am Night Watchman here.’ He peered hard at Tuuran. ‘An Adamantine Man.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll grant you that much. But I still don’t know you.’ Black Ayz looked around the stage. ‘Big Vish I know. And is that Jasaan the Dragonslayer? And Bishak. Those too are men I know. I’ll raise a cup to you for bringing them back to me. But let fifty armed and armoured dragon-riders I’ve never seen before down into the Spur?’ Ayz shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. You stay here until my speaker says otherwise.’

Tuuran felt Jaslyn at his back. And they were still out in the open on a stage in the glaring sun, wedged between cliff faces and with nowhere to go if a dragon came.

‘I—’

A rider he didn’t know – not that that narrowed it down much – pushed past him and shook his fist at Black Ayz and his crossbow. ‘You stand before Queen Jaslyn, daughter of Queen Shezira of Sand, rightful speaker of the nine realms whom you should serve, Adamantine Man! Your disloyalty must—’

Tuuran winced as Ayz roared. The crossbow shifted. ‘Disloyalty? Rightful? You piece of shit! Where were you when the palace fell? Where were you when the dragons came?’

‘Lapdogs for the viper Jehal, all of you!’ The rider took another step, which put the back of his head conveniently beside Tuuran’s left fist.

‘
Speaker
Jehal died when the Adamantine Palace fell.’ Ayz’s face was taut. ‘And if you fuckers from the Pinnacles hadn’t been sulking away there mooning about over your dead dragons, if you’d been here instead then—’

Tuuran fired a tiny flick of lightning into the back of the dragon-rider’s head. The man screamed and dropped like a sack of apples. Tuuran watched him fall. Dragons didn’t care, that was the thing. You could be heir to both the twin thrones of Xibaiya for all the difference it made; a dragon ate you just the same, and that was that.

Could see Black Ayz thinking much the same. Could see him having a good long think about Tuuran and his lightning and what he’d just seen too. Good. Two birds with one stone and all that. Tuuran turned back to the stage. ‘Jasaan! Big Vish!’ He beckoned them over. ‘Get this idiot dragon-rider out of the way.’ He gave Black Ayz a look. ‘No rush. You lot have a bit of a talk, eh?’

Kataros, trussed up, looked to the sky, scanning for dragons, but there was only Diamond Eye with the pretend-speaker Zafir on his back. Zafir who would murder them all. She remembered Jeiros telling her once, when she’d asked him why he hated his old speaker with such a venom,
You didn’t know her. You were off in the Worldspine, doing your duty in King Valmeyan’s eyries. You didn’t see what she was like. I was her grand master alchemist for the few months she held the Adamantine Throne. She brought this on us.
Under the Spur they all spat at the name Zafir.

Tuuran was still wrestling with his wooden throne when Jasaan came and touched a hand to her shoulder and then moved away, and then all Tuuran’s men were suddenly running and yelling, clearing the stage and looking for cover as the dragon Diamond Eye came down. They braced themselves against the whipping wind of its wings, but the dragon swooped past the Oratorium and soared away instead, while Zafir seemed to step off its back and glide through the air. When she landed on the stage Kataros saw the gold-glass disc she rode, another enchantment from the bastard night-skins. Zafir carried the Adamantine Spear. Her gold-glass armour was scarred, a hotchpotch of pieces taken from several suits, but it still made her fearsome, with golden dragons on helm and gauntlets, and if anything the dents and cracks made her even more terrible. She snapped her fingers at Tuuran and went and sat in her throne, ready or not. A dozen more soldiers in Taiytakei glass and gold hurried to flank her, Tuuran at their head. A handful of others dragged Kataros to kneel, bound, at Zafir’s feet.

She could bite her lip. That would be easy. A little blood smeared onto the ropes that bound her, turned to acid to burn them through. Spitting blood into all their faces to blind them … Perhaps Speaker Lystra would bring her other alchemists. Let loose their blood to run amok, wreaking havoc …

‘I will let you go, Kataros,’ said Zafir, ‘when Lystra comes. We’re too few for more killing. Give my regards to Jeiros when you see him. You and he might turn your thoughts from how you despise me to how we might usurp the dragons who now rule these realms that once were mine. You might turn them to our half-god too.’ She eased herself forward from her throne then and crouched between them. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Tell me, alchemist, what would
you
do in the face of the Silver King’s return?’

Kataros snarled. ‘This half-god is not the Silver King.’

‘No, that he’s not.’ The corner of Zafir’s lip curled in the flicker of a smile. ‘But what would you do if he was?’

‘Submit,’ Kataros said, ‘and accept the inevitability of his will.’

Zafir let out a little sigh. ‘I suppose that’s alchemists for you. When I leave here, tell Queen Lystra what you’ve seen with your own eyes, not the stories you’ve heard.’ She shifted and settled back into her wobbling throne. ‘Hyram did what he did, and Shezira pushed him off a balcony, and yes, I took her head for that, but Jehal was the poisoner, not I, while Jeiros hated me from the very moment Aruch put the Speaker’s Ring on my finger.’