He still didnt answer, though she could see it in his face. He understood.

'I dont know you. I have no quarrel with you. Dont die for that pig in there.

Nothing. Zafir sighed. Pin him.

It was a hard thing for a dragon to take a man in his talons and not crush him to death, and maybe Diamond Eye was still smarting from the battering hed taken from Shondas lightning cannon. His tail whipped in a silent arc and took the emerald-feathered man in the side and caved in half his chest. Zafir shrugged, crouched beside him, took his knife and finished him. A quick kill. A mercy stroke.

Back to the gondola. Shonda was on his feet. Backing away, he trod on a bottle, lost his footing and fell over as he fired at her again. Missed. He didnt get another chance. Zafir bent down and pulled the wand out of his hand.

A sharp warning from Diamond Eye. She ducked fast and low as a movement flickered from the top of the stairs and something came flying out and shot over her head and out through the ripped-open ramp. A gla.s.s sphere landed in the desert sand. In the blink of an eye it blew up into a huge sphere bigger than the gondola and as thin as paper. Diamond Eye smashed it and then flung the tip of his armoured tail like a spear straight through the gondolas silver skin, rattling everything. Two of the cabinets fell over and smashed. Zafir felt the spark of life from whoever had thrown the orb flicker and die.

She looked at Lord Shonda, wondering what to do. He was trembling but at least he wasnt begging. 'So youre the most powerful man in the world, are you?

'What do you want? What is your price to serve me? I have anything. Everything. You know that because you know who I am. Fly for me and I will give you worlds!

She would think afterwards that there were so many other things she could have done. Pacts that could have been made. Bargains struck. Words spoken. Maybe he had an enchanter to take the doll-womans circlet off her head. But in the end he was just another fat old man who thought he could own her, and what she remembered most of all was watching him turn away from her, tapping his arms to remind her that she was a slave and he was not. What then struck her eye was the brand lying on the floor, of three dragons and a lion entwined together, and the realisation that she had a fire-breathing monster outside who could heat it to a nice cherry-red in no time at all. And when she thought afterwards of all those other things and remembered how the most powerful man in the world had screamed and screamed and screamed as shed marked him, there was never even the slightest sliver of regret.

Except perhaps that she could have held the brand to his skin a little longer.

Sivan raced the sled back towards the eyrie. Tsen clung on as best he could. They were really going to do it. Sivan was really going to bring the whole eyrie down. One gla.s.ship, Chay-Liang had told him, one gla.s.ship was all they needed to hold it up, but with none it would fall. And he shouldnt do it, he knew that, but Kalaiya . . .

Or maybe he should do it . . .

They reached the rim. Sivan crept the sled to where the first gla.s.ship chains merged into gold-gla.s.s were welded into the stone. Tsen didnt even have to step off to release them.

'Do it! hissed Sivan.

Chay-Liang is probably here. Others. Good men, good women. The storm-dark will swallow them all. But hadnt he had the same thought himself, back before the Vespinese had come? Yes. But I was going to send them away first. MaiChoiro and I would have gone together. And alone.

Sivan gripped his arm. 'Do it! Put an end to dragons!

Chay-Liang could make a sled out of gla.s.s. There were other sleds too . . . Maybe people would get away . . . An end to dragons . . .

'Do it or never see your slave woman again!

Tsen touched his rod to the chains and watched them let go. They hung loose. The gla.s.ship stayed where it was and so did the eyrie. He did it not because it was right or wrong or because it would end the dragons or even because of Kalaiya; he did it because he knew that if he didnt then Sivan would kill him right there and then.

Stupid, weak, pathetic, cowardly tvarr.

Sivan dropped the sled beneath the eyrie and followed the underside of the rim to the next gla.s.ship. And the next and the next and the next; and as the last chains unravelled and the eyrie began to fall, Sivan turned the sled and hurtled off into the night as though the wind itself was chasing him.

Such a coward, Tsen. Such a pathetic coward.

Chay-Liang

44.

Not the Quietest Night Bellepheros almost missed Baros Tsen TVarr. Underneath the bland smile, the amiable facade of blissful ignorance and the cheerful slightly stupid tvarr manner, hed had the sense and the certainty in his own people to leave Bellepheros and his Scales and Li alone. Hed given them whatever they needed, trusted they had a good reason for everything they did and largely believed in Li to do what was right. MaiChoiro Kwen, on the other hand, hadnt even trusted his own tvarr, Perth Oran.

The Elemental Men had cleared out his study. They were watching him as though they knew hed done something terrible; and Liang had as good as told him to keep his mouth shut and his head down. He trusted her, so he was following her advice. He missed her. He missed having someone to talk to.

Lord Shonda had made his exit with all the subtlety of a monkey kicking over a hornets nest. The killers were buzzing after him, her Holiness was off on some night flight, and between the two of them that left him with a little peace and quiet for once, a rarity these days.

On his desk was what would be a book if he was ever allowed to finish it. In earlier years hed travelled the length and breadth of the nine kingdoms of the dragon-realms and written about what hed seen so other alchemists could learn about their lands without the indignity and discomfort that came from having to go and look with their own eyes. It was better that way for most. Dragon-riders called him mad, but he really did prefer to read about faraway places in the comfort of a warm fireside than see them for himself in the freezing rain through a haze of hypothermia. Writing a book about the Taiytakei was a little different but hed been reading whatever he could and boiling it down into one account. For that he appreciated quiet nights like these.

'The Konsidar. He kept coming back to the same page, the one he read every night before he started work again. It was where Li had gone.

The Konsidar mountain range runs northsouth along the western side of TakeiTarr and divides the continent into the narrow but wet and fertile Western Coast and the arid interior. Largely unexplored. A few pa.s.ses exist in the far north, which provide once-vital but now little-used land routes between the cities of Cashax and Zinzarra. Other routes existed before the Splintering, an event which considerably changed the landscape of the Konsidar. The city of Vespinarr lies on a plateau at the southern tip of the range, along with the silver mines that give it its famous wealth . . .

And the thoughtless self-serving b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who lord themselves over it.

The thought made him blink. He wasnt used to thinking things like that. It was only a short step away from saying the same about dragon-kings and dragon-queens, and hed long ago decided he knew better than to have any thoughts at all when it came to them. He served. That was his purpose. He served whoever needed to be served in order to keep the dragons from flying free.

A gla.s.s globe, a present from Chay-Liang, shifted on his desk. It started to roll sideways. He caught it and put it back but for some reason it just started to roll again. He frowned at it hard. For the last several days it had been perfectly happy sitting still and now it wasnt?

There was a tapping at the door. He ignored it. The Elemental Men and Perth Oran would both just barge right in; Li wasnt here and so this had to be a slave. He didnt want a slave. He tried to settle the globe but the sphere wasnt having it.

The tapping on his door came again.

'Go away! he shouted. He tossed the globe onto his bed and went back to his notes.

The central ma.s.sif of the mountains is inhospitable and largely unknown even among the Taiytakei. A prohibition on entering is ruthlessly enforced by the Elemental Men. Within live the so-called Righteous Ones, a mysterious group whose existence is not widely known. Some texts allude to deep complexes of caves and tunnels running through the Konsidar in much the same way as they are said to exist under the Desert of Thieves. If true, it is conjectured that these tunnels and caves interconnect under the expanse of the Empty Sands.

Every night he read it and finished with the same thought: that what hed written was a dry and long-winded and slightly dull way of saying, 'Range of mountains. Do not enter. No one knows why.

The tapping on his door came again. 'Master Alchemist sir! He recognised the voice now. A Scales. Which was odd because the Scales never came here to bother him. Never.

He got up, lurched sideways and almost fell over as if he was drunk. He steadied himself on the desk. Frowned. There was something odd. The room was . . . tilted? Except that surely couldnt be right, could it? He rubbed his eyes.

'Master Alchemist, sir!

'What? He walked to the door slowly, an old man a little unsure of his footing. When he opened it, the Scales looked terrified.

'Master Alchemist, the eyries falling!

'What?

'The eyries falling!

Scales werent the cleverest slaves. The potions he gave them did that. He hurried up to the dragon yard, and on the way found that he kept drifting towards the pa.s.sageway walls as he did. By the time he got outside, there was no doubt. He could see the G.o.dspike and feel the change in the wind. The eyrie was dropping steadily through the air. Falling more like a feather than a stone, but falling nevertheless. It was also tipping slowly sideways. He looked up. The gla.s.ships that once held the eyrie aloft were high above, five tiny specks of light.

A momentary chill ran through him.

'There used to be six . . . He shook himself. Falling. And what in the name of the Great Flame was he supposed to do about that?

Someone had let loose the gla.s.ships. Hed warned her Holiness, but whoever it was had done it without telling anyone. How long do we have? They werent falling all that fast . . . Long enough to get everyone up and away . . . A surge of panic shot through him. He forced himself to be calm and looked around for Diamond Eye but the great dragon hadnt come back. 'Well go and wake everyone up! He shook himself again. No. No need. There were already men up on the walls and other men coming running out of the tunnels and pa.s.sages dressed in their nightclothes. 'We need an enchanter. Did they even have one any more? Now that Chay-Liang had gone and all the Vespinese? 'Sleds! We need sleds! Get them! Load the eggs!

Really? Load the eggs? When he could simply let them go?

A kwen came running. 'You have a sled! Where?

They kept one in the hatchery. Bellepheros looked about wildly. 'Yes. He poked the Scales. 'Show him. Take him to it! Let the eggs fall into the storm-dark, but hed need his potions, and a single sled wouldnt be enough for all his Scales anyway .

Other sleds were rising from the rim, heading fast towards the floating gla.s.ships. Bellepheros watched them go, helpless, then ran to his secret larder of corpses and started to pack a bag.

Zafir flew with Shondas gondola in Diamond Eyes claws. She had Shonda trapped inside and the corpse of the Elemental Man to keep him company. At the edge of the storm-dark she dropped the gondola towards the maelstrom. She watched it fall and then thought better of it, swooping to s.n.a.t.c.h it out of the sky. She turned Diamond Eye towards the G.o.dspike but the eyrie wasnt where she expected to find it. There was a moment of disorientation then, but only a moment before she spotted it. Not so much falling, she thought. More adrift. Slipping slowly downward, half a mile lower than when shed left it and half a mile and steadily less from the violet churning clouds below.

Specks of light rose from the stricken eyrie. Sleds were heading for the gla.s.ships floating high above. She watched, carefully distant, considering. If the eyrie fell into the storm-dark, that was the end of the alchemist. No more potions. No more dragon poison. No more eggs or hatchlings. Just her and Diamond Eye, and in time Diamond Eye would wake up. The Elemental Men would survive, of course. Theyd hunt her.

Or she could do something?

Theyd kill her either way. Just maybe later.

Bellepheros came outside, huffing and out of breath and with a satchel over his shoulder. He seized the first Scales he found by the arm. 'Get everyone together. All the Scales. More and more sleds were taking to the air now. Bellepheros couldnt tell whether the Taiytakei were abandoning the eyrie to its fate or trying to do something to save it. A bit of both, perhaps?

The Scales hed sent to get the sled for the kwen was tugging at his sleeve. 'The sled isnt there, Master Alchemist. It went with the gla.s.ship like you told us.

'What? What gla.s.ship? What are you talking about? He had a second sled hidden in his room of corpses. Not that he could fly it. Not that hed want to, but better that than falling into the storm-dark. 'Speak! What gla.s.ship?

The shriek of Diamond Eye thundered over the rushing wind. The dragon crashed onto the wall and the whole eyrie shivered. It was holding something that looked like a battered gondola in its foreclaws, clutching it as though it was precious. It grabbed the wall with its ma.s.sive hind talons, dug in and started to flap its wings. Bellepheros watched, paralysed with amazement. He staggered as the wind of each wingbeat shuddered across the dragon yard, but even for a dragon, lifting the whole eyrie was too much. It let go and disappeared up into the sky. Bellepheros grasped the Scales by his shoulders.

'In the larder where the corpses hang is another sled. Get it and get the rest of you together. It wouldnt be big enough for all of them but he didnt know what else to do.

And when it isnt? Who stays and who goes?

There wasnt a comfortable answer to that. How could he leave another man to die, even a Scales?

Li . . .

In his study, underneath the page on the Konsidar, was another he knew by heart. The Righteous Ones are a mystery among the Taiytakei . . . Truth was, he had nothing, nothing that made any sense. Another race of men, or a race of something different, not creatures of flesh and bone at all but beings of the spirit or of something else, or else arcane constructs like the golems of the Crimson Sunburst.

Li . . . That was where she was, in the Konsidar. Hed told her hed be safe. Hed told her not to worry. And now he needed her more than anything.

The dragon powered up towards the gla.s.ships and he lost track of it in the darkness. The first sleds were already coming back. Taiytakei ran back and forth, yelling at each other. They were on the edge of panic. The gla.s.ships werent getting any closer. If anything, they were further away. Bellepheros stared up into the night sky. The writings of the Rava are whispered to describe men who change both flesh and bone . . . Not that that meant much since even having seen a copy of the Rava was punishable by death. Hed come across whispers that said the Rava was pretty much anything you could imagine, from a manual to summon demons to an excessively lewd collection of erotic poetry. But men who changed both flesh and bone? They were skin-shifters surely?

Specks of light darted back and forth high above like rising embers dancing in the smoke of a camp fire. Frantic sleds in the moonlight, rushing to the receding gla.s.ships. Bellepheros had no idea whether the gla.s.ships could descend fast enough to catch the eyrie anyway. He thought probably not.

Li . . . Of all of them, of everyone here, shed have been the one who would have known what to do, and he really couldnt fly away on a sled and leave a man behind, not even a Scales. After everything he had done to them, especially not a Scales.

The eyrie was too much. Diamond Eyes talons dug into the stone but after a few heavy beats of his wings, they both knew it wasnt going to work.

Why are you trying to help them? The thought was her own, not the dragons, and she didnt know the answer, but she was beginning to think it had to do with the Adamantine Man from Dhar Thosis. Seeing him again after so many years had changed something. She wasnt sure what, but it had started then. Started when shed knocked the poison from Baros Tsen TVarrs own lips. She wasnt as . . . certain of things as shed once been.

Up! She tore Diamond Eye loose from the wall and shot straight for the gla.s.ships. Taiytakei on sleds were milling about them. Several of the gondolas had open ramps, men inside now, trying to get the gla.s.ships to move. Diamond Eye picked at the sense of their thoughts. Not working. Not moving. Cant make them obey. Fear and frustration and despair; they didnt understand. And then the whisper of an Elemental Man among them who did. Doomed. Regret. Anger. The gla.s.ships had been locked with an enchanted key. They flew at the command of the black rod of Baros Tsen TVarr or the enchantress Chay-Liang. No one else. One of them had done this. Baros Tsen was dead. The enchantress then.

The witch abandon her alchemist? Zafir laughed at that. Not likely. But none of them knew what to do . . .

None of them but her. She showed Diamond Eye, picturing it in her mind, and the dragon wheeled in the air and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the chains of the nearest gla.s.ship, seizing them in his teeth. He dived, powering towards the falling eyrie, dragging the gla.s.ship after him. The gla.s.ship fought him stubbornly through every beat of his wings, adjusting the harmonics of its rotations to fight for its place in the air. A chaos of sleds whirled around her. An Elemental Man appeared in the air ahead of them, gestured and shouted words that were lost in the wind as Diamond Eye hauled the gla.s.ship down. The eyrie fell steadily lower, sinking towards the storm-dark. Halfway there and someone lit a torch out on the rim, and then another and then a whole ring of them, and Zafir understood they were guiding her in. As Diamond Eye came closer, she saw the lanterns formed a circle around the wreckage of a black-powder cannon blown to bits by the Vespinese not so many days before. She urged him on towards the violet clouds.

Bellepheros was on the wall as Zafir and the dragon came in. Half the Taiytakei of the eyrie were there now too, all of them holding their breath. The other half were out around the ruined cannon, waving lamps, or else up in the air on their sleds. Lots and lots of sleds. A couple of tvarrs had been trying to organise the evacuation, but even they had stopped to watch.

Diamond Eye reached the eyrie rim and seized it with his hind claws, tearing rents in the solid stone. The dragon still held a gondola in its forelimbs; now it leaned forward, the gla.s.ship chains clamped between its teeth, dangling limp. Bellepheros could see it, even from so far away, quivering with the effort. Before the Vespinese had blown it up with their lightning, the black powder cannon had been mounted on ma.s.sive iron plinths set into the stone of the rim. The iron was still there, warped and twisted. Enough to wrap a chain around it, perhaps.

For a moment no one moved. Then a Taiytakei ran out and grabbed the end of one of the chains and started to pull on it, struggling to even lift it, to wrap it around the iron; and then more men ran forward, and in a moment a swarm of them were heaving beneath the dragons maw, slaves and Taiytakei alike, dragging the loose ends of the chains and wrapping them around the plinth, twisting them together, pinning them with the bent barrel of the ruined gun, shouting and cheering and swearing up a giddy frenzy of hope. The dragon terrified them to the core and yet they did it, and then they were finished and backed away and a cheer went up from the wall and Bellepheros found he was cheering too, but his heart was still racing because that was only the start.

The dragon let go. The chains snapped taut.

And held.

Bellepheros stayed on the wall, watching, as mesmerised as everyone else.

The first gla.s.ship stopped the eyries fall with its underbelly touching the cloud. Zafir arced Diamond Eye under the rim to look and see if the storm-dark devoured the stone but in the night it was all too dark to see. And maybe, just maybe, the eyrie was still very slowly sinking. She drove her dragon skyward again and one by one Diamond Eye hauled the gla.s.ships down. When she came with the second the men on the eyrie changed their plan and guided her to the white stone watchtowers, unbreakable by anything except a dragon, threading the chains through the windows of the towers to hold them fast.

Do I expect their grat.i.tude for this? It wouldnt make any difference. Shed burned and shattered Dhar Thosis to ash and splinters and in the end shed hang for that come what may.

Why do it then?

She really didnt know.

When the third gla.s.ship was secured to the eyrie and they were rising again, Bellepheros reckoned they were safe and he could probably go back to his room and get some sleep, or maybe go back to his book. But everyone else was out in the yard or up on the wall, slaves, soldiers and other Taiytakei, even his Scales, milling around and shouting at each other over the wind while they waited for the dragon to haul the next gla.s.ship down, so he stayed. He couldnt stop thinking about Li, about how shed have known what to do, the same thoughts running round in the same circles, staring blankly into s.p.a.ce until suddenly it was done and over. Five gla.s.ships floated overhead. The eyrie wasnt falling any more. Zafir, of all people, had saved them. Zafir, not Li.

He shook his head and turned away. He needed to think.

The dragon perched on the wall, hunched with its head almost resting on the battlements. It had carried the same dented silver gondola throughout, but now the gondola was lying in the dragon yard at the foot of the wall, discarded, and the dragon was holding something in its claws, looking hard at it. Not a something, Bellepheros saw as he came closer, heading for the tunnel back to his study. A someone. Her Holiness Zafir was on the wall, yelling, and the man in Diamond Eyes talons was screaming, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fear and outrage but unable to settle on one over the other. 'You cannot do this! That sort of thing, over and over with different words and an occasionally varying order, but it all amounted to much the same.

Bellepheros walked on past. Hed seen it too many times over the years the torture of a man who thought he couldnt be touched. That was dragon-kings for you. They always did it, even when they didnt need to. Even when they knew they didnt need to because theyd called the grand master alchemist of the Order of the Scales to their eyrie to make truth-smoke, and Bellepheros, given time, could get the truth out of creation itself spoken by the very stones of the earth. They all knew it, but dragon-kings tortured their prey anyway. Queens, apparently, were no different. No great surprise this was more the Zafir he knew. He paused, fought the wind and turned to see who the man was.

Shonda!? Dear Flame, she had Shonda! Even in the moonlight his robe gave the sea lord away. There was nothing else like it. Bellepheros sighed and hung his head. Truth-smoke was another thing hed chosen not to mention to Li or the Elemental Men, mostly in case they decided to have him make the stuff and then use it on himself. Maybe now was the time. Better that than let her Holiness kill a man and then have to make his corpse speak.

He walked back to his study, dragging his feet all the way, sat down at his desk, picked up the next page and tried to get excited about it. Vespinese sorceress Abraxi increased her interest in the mountains and their subterranean dwellers in the last years of her reign. The few of her writings to survive confirm the apocryphal Rava although they may simply be repeating it. The Elemental Men have at least once directly spoken of the existence of shape-shifters beneath the Konsidar . . . Zafir had told him that, and he had no idea why an Elemental Man might have said such a thing to her. Maybe shed made it up on a whim to tease him. He wouldnt put it past her. He wouldnt put anything past her any more. Abraxis writings suggest the Righteous Ones tamed dragons and now consort with them, keeping them as pets . . .

You picked a story and chose which one to believe. Some of the slaves from the desert claimed it was all a myth, that the Elemental Men were protecting some other secret from before the Splintering . . .