The Silver Kings (61 page)

Zafir met the dragon’s gaze.
So do I.

Tuuran was thundering towards her, waving his arms, shouting something her dazed ears and jangled head couldn’t make into any sense. She didn’t see Chay-Liang in her sled skimming the air. The first she heard was the thunderclap as lightning slammed into her back.

‘The Silver King’s spear,’ Bellepheros said. To Kataros, because she was the only one of them young enough and strong enough and with the legs to run and duck and weave. He watched her arrow for it. Kataros the spear-carrier. The alchemist who had saved it from the dragons once before. He hoped she understood what she had to do with it, that she would have to drive it through the Black Moon’s heart while he held the Black Moon’s sorcery at bay.

The difference between blood-mage and alchemist is murder, is it?
Does it count if I murder a half-god?

Because the Black Moon had Bellepheros’s blood inside him. He’d seen to
that
months ago. And his blood carried the power of the Silver King, and the Silver King was a half-god too. It wasn’t a battle he could win, he knew that; but he didn’t have to
win
. He just had to not lose for a second or two. That would do.

And after that, to make all the dragons go away? He hadn’t the first idea. Just as well it was going to be a problem for someone else then.

The enchantress’s lightning sparked through her battered gold-glass, reaching through like a hundred prickling fingers. Zafir collapsed to her knees and dropped the spear again. She shuddered. Her eyes blurred. Time slowed. Chay-Liang on her sled, lightning thrower in hand, pointing it at her. The alchemist Kataros running from the ruins for the fallen spear. Dragons, hundreds, landing in a hostile ring around the Black Moon in silent challenge, while the last dregs of battle ebbed above in shrieks and blood and claw. Tuuran pounding towards her. The Black Moon himself, twisting in unexpected pain as though knifed in the back, staring up at the Queen’s Gate, where Bellepheros stood.

‘Holiness.’ Tuuran threw himself at her.

Too slow. On hands and knees Zafir grabbed the spear. Chay-Liang was rushing closer. Another thunderbolt rang her head as though she’d been hit with a hammer. Flattened her. Kataros leaping towards her. Tuuran …

Everything fell still.

Everything stopped.

Silence.

Chay-Liang on her sled, left to hang in the air. Dragons above, paused in a wingbeat. Kataros leaping from stone to stone, poised like a frozen dancer. Tuuran sprawling across the rubble, hand stretched out to her. The stilled rush of the wind. The only sound her beating heart as the Black Moon stopped time. She lay still, waiting. He’d told her to summon the dragons, but the dragons hadn’t needed summoning. They’d already known what was ­coming.

With a wave of his hand the Silver King stopped time, but the spear in my claw kept his sorceries from me.

Carefree, the Black Moon walked slowly closer. His eyes ­lingered on the far horizon and the crescent moon that hung there with the sun. The knife of a thousand eyes gleamed naked in his hand.

‘Unruly children,’ he said, and though his voice was quiet there was no other sound. Only the words of a half-god. ‘I gave you a choice.’

Two hunting dragons pinned another to the stone. The Black Moon dissolved them to smoke, all three at once. They stayed as they were, dragon-shaped clouds of black dust, waiting for time to start again, for the wind to scatter them.

‘Fickle whore father, I am more than you made me to be.’ He clenched a fist and raised it to the moon. ‘Older than you. Here before you. The void that was before. Endless and without substance.’ His voice fell. ‘Without time.’ He walked past Zafir as though she wasn’t there, ignored Chay-Liang on her sled and everything else. He stopped beside Diamond Eye and touched each of the four dragons holding him down. They turned to dust.

‘You set us here on the skin of the earth. You and brother sun with his numberless little ones. You left us to the mercy of the dead goddess, and she raised the dark moon and left us with your cold light alone. We pleaded. We prayed. We begged. But you gave us nothing.’

His eyes flared silver. He looked from Diamond Eye to Snow. To Chay-Liang. To Kataros and to the Queen’s Gate, where Bellepheros stood frozen. Helpless, all of them. He lifted his knife of eyes.

‘A new beginning, fickle father. A new creation. No fiery sun. No hostile moon. No cold distant stars. No dead goddess with her violent wrath. It will be as it should have been, and we will all be free of you, and all the better for it.’ He cocked his head to Chay-Liang on her sled. ‘You. Tiny and small. You think to touch me with the storm-dark?’

Zafir rose behind him. Her feet were unsteady. He didn’t see. His own eyes were blind, and in this crack between moments there were no other eyes through which to see. The dragon-potion hid her from more than dragons, and that was why she’d taken it. So he wouldn’t see her, or know her, or read her thoughts, or understand what she meant to do. Even if she hadn’t quite known herself.

‘You know nothing,’ he said. ‘Your ignorance is your doom.’

Zafir stood behind him. As The Black Moon reached out to turn Chay-Liang into dust Zafir drove the Earthspear into his back. He spun, ripping the spear out of her hands. The point stuck out from his chest. The weight of its haft almost toppled him. His lips drew back. Moonlight silver poured from his eyes. He reached – not for her, but for something she couldn’t see, for something that wasn’t quite there. Then he toppled to his knees and pitched down face first into the broken stone of the mountain.

The wind blew.

Diamond Eye shivered.

Dust-turned dragons shattered into formless smoke, dissolving in the breeze. Chay-Liang’s sled shot past Zafir’s face. Dragons wheeled and shrieked. Kataros skittered to a stop, bewildered at Zafir and the spear and the Black Moon, who had all moved from one place to another in the blink of an eye. Zafir opened her palm and raised her arm and flexed her fingers. The spear appeared in her hand. Calm and smooth and sure she drove it through the Black Moon again, through his heart this time, spearing him to the mountain stone. The last light from his eyes flickered, and for a moment Zafir thought she saw another man inside. She heard a howl of anguish. And, perhaps, of relief.

Tuuran stared aghast. The silver light dimmed in the Black Moon’s eyes. For a moment Crazy Mad seemed to look out at him. Crazy Mad. Berren Crowntaker. The Bloody Judge.

And then he died.

‘No!’ Tuuran screamed. ‘
No!
’ He whipped the axe off his back. Lifted it to split Zafir’s head. Saw the shock on her face and smashed the blade into a stone beside her instead. He ran to Crazy Mad’s side, dropped to pick him up, filled with some foolish hope that somehow Zafir had driven the Black Moon away and that was all, but Crazy was dead, as dead as a spear through the heart would make you.

Never mind the circling dragons. Never mind the alchemists and their schemes. Never mind the Taiytakei witch and her lightning.

‘Hush.’ He felt Zafir’s arms around him, clinging to him. ‘Hush.’ Felt her head pressed into the back of his singed hair. She held him tight. ‘He’s not the friend you once had any more, big man. He stopped being that a long time ago.’

A part of Tuuran knew she was right and that it was true, and another part knew that Crazy Mad had never been quite dead until now, and that Zafir had killed him.

44

The Silver Sea

The dragons eyed one another. Diamond Eye, mauled and battered. Crippled Snow with a hundred dragons arrayed behind her. Paused between them the Black Moon lay dead and pinned to the earth by the Silver King’s spear, just as he had a thousand years before. And Tuuran, crouched over him, and Zafir beside them both.

Kataros, out in the open. She stared at the spear sticking out of the Silver King. A spear that killed dragons. Zafir had used it to summon them. What else could it do? She took a step forward, then stopped. The white dragon Snow crept a pace closer. Diamond Eye languidly stretched his battered wings.

Do you see now?
he seemed to say.
Do you see why?

Snow eyed the Silver King’s spear, but before she could move Zafir snatched it from the Black Moon’s corpse and slammed it into the stone. The mountain quivered. ‘There is another way,’ she said.

Diamond Eye bared his fangs. Zafir faced him.

‘Old friend. Do you remember the Silver Sea?’

The dragon cocked his head.
Yes.

‘Do you remember how it felt to leave it behind? What was that place – the Silver Sea? Was it home? That’s what I felt from you when we left it. A longing for home.’

Home.

‘You tried to hide it, but I saw what it meant. I saw the loss in you. The yearning you felt. That’s where they went, isn’t it? The other half-gods? Your sisters and brothers. And you were the ones who stayed behind, the courageous ones. The Isul Aieha’s brothers. You stayed to stop the Black Moon from turning the world inside out, but he tore you down. He broke you. He took your souls and made you forget what you were. He turned you into dragons and claimed you for his own. You’ve seen the carvings the Isul Aieha left behind, Diamond Eye.’ She walked to the old dragon and touched a hand to his snout. ‘Tell them. Tell them all. Tell them everything you’ve seen and everything you know. He didn’t take away all that you once were. Perhaps he couldn’t, and that’s why you felt the yearning.’

She turned to Snow and levelled the spear at the white dragon’s eye. ‘The Silver King did to you what the Black Moon had already done once before. And I know your mind, dragon. You would kill every one of us now while you can so there can never again be such alchemy, but there
is
another way.’

There would never be another alchemist again. These few here would be the last. Kataros already knew that because Bellepheros had quietly told them all as they walked the Silver King’s Ways. The Silver King, nailed to a cave beneath a mountain, was gone. The last of him. Without the filtered essence of his divinity, there could never be another. Kataros and Bellepheros, Jeiros and the handful of others, they would be the last.

Zafir lifted the spear. ‘This is the Isul Aieha’s palace, dragon, and this is his spear. He left behind a way for you to go home. With this I have opened the gates to the Silver Sea. So you
do
have a choice, white dragon. You can stay, and we can fight, you and I, and we can kill one another over and over, or you can go home and become the half-gods you once were. But you cannot have this end by force. Smash at this mountain for a thousand years and you will not get in. I will allow hatchlings to enter. One at a time, and I will take you where you want to be. Make your choice, dragons.’ She turned and started the climb to the Queen’s Gate. ‘We cannot live together. But we
can
both live, and there will be no more dragon-riders, for there will be no more dragons to ride.’ She walked to the old gate where every queen of the Silver City had walked in their turn to claim their throne, and not one dragon moved to stop her.

45

The Speaker

Forty-six days after landfall

Lost and forlorn on the edge of the Fury gorge, Queen Lystra sat, the last speaker of the nine realms, last survivor of her house and family, queen of a city burned to ash, speaker of realms that no longer existed. Thirty-seven men and fifteen women, that was all she had. Queen of nothing much. For all she knew they were the last humans left alive for a thousand miles.

She dangled her legs over the cliff, holding her son Jehal tight in her arms. The four Adamantine Men she had left to her stood nearby. They didn’t like it that she was out here in the open. Her riders didn’t like it either, but most of them had stopped caring when they’d lost the Spur. At least the Adamantine Men did what she said and didn’t talk back.

Zafir had executed her mother. Almiri had died in the battle over Evenspire. She’d seen Jehal picked up and crushed by the white dragon Snow. Now Jaslyn hovered at the brink of death, shredded by a hatchling. That was what had become of her family.

As she swung her legs and looked to the south she saw specks in the sky. Dragons. She didn’t have any alchemists left, so there were no potions to help them hide, and so the dragons would feel her thoughts even if they didn’t see.

‘Holiness.’ The Adamantine Men moved in closer, pointing.

‘Let them come.’ What was the point in running. Run to where? To the Pinnacles to throw herself on the mercy of Zafir’s sister, if anyone there was still alive? She’d seen inside the Silver King’s Enchanted Palace for a while. Had a good look around. If anywhere could hold, it would be the Pinnacles. But hold for what? For how long?

The dragons she’d seen were coming straight for her. Fifty or sixty of them. She pulled herself to her feet, struggling to find the will to move. She looked at little Jehal in her arms, wrapped up tight and warm and asleep, without the first idea of the world he’d been born to. She had to force herself not to give him up, hand him over to one of her Adamantine Men and send him running for shelter, or back to her riders who were still cowering in the Silver King’s Ways, getting hungrier by the day.

‘I hope you’re ready to die well,’ she said. She didn’t bother putting on her helm, looking out across the Fury gorge as the dragons flew in towards her. Instead she unwrapped little Jehal from his dragonscale basket and held him in his blanket. ‘When the fire comes,’ she murmured. ‘It will be quick.’

The dragons rose overhead and circled. One by one they landed. They formed a semicircle, pinning her against the cliff. Fifty ­dragons, give or take.

‘Does it have to be this way?’ she railed. ‘Can’t you just win?’ She’d told herself she wouldn’t be afraid. She had really thought she wouldn’t, but now, as the end came, she found she was. It wasn’t so much for herself, but dragons liked to play with their food. They toyed with the people they cornered, eking out their terror. She thought for a moment of tossing little Jehal over the cliff and being done with it, just so they wouldn’t have him.

The last dragon to land was colossal, a real monster, as big as a dragon got. Its scales were red and gold; its wounds were deep and terrible, and it wore them with a fierce and ghastly pride. A rider sat on his back. Dressed in fractured glass and battered gold and shreds of dragonscale. She carried a spear.

Zafir slid to the ground. She took off her helm and laid it down, and then the spear beside it and her gauntlets too. She regarded Lystra steadily as she did, then walked slowly closer until they stood face to face, an outstretched arm apart.

‘I won’t bow to you,’ Lystra said. She half expected Zafir to ­simply reach out and push her, to topple her off the edge of the cliff.

‘I’m sorry about your sister,’ Zafir said. ‘She was a little bit mad, but I liked her best of all of you. Perhaps the madness was why. You will do better with this than I ever did.’

She pulled the Speaker’s Ring from her finger and dropped it to the dirt at Lystra’s feet. Then turned and walked back to her dragon and flew away.