The Alchemy.

'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.'

Out.w.a.tch.

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 Out.w.a.tch 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, Out.w.a.tch 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. .h.i.t 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 ent.i.tled 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?'

'Where she always is.' Isentine hung his head. 'Underground. With the abomination.'

'It must stop, Isentine.'

'Yes, but she is our queen. I can't force her. I need you to get her away from here.' Now, finally, Isentine turned and walked side by side with Hyrkallan. 'Or are you inclined to wonder, as I have heard others wonder, does it do such harm? The dragon is only a hatchling, after all.' But no. An abomination was an abomination. Hyrkallan had the right of it.

Hyrkallan growled. 'No, Eyrie-Master, I am not inclined to wonder. It must stop. She is a queen. She must behave as one.'

'Shezira used to joke that you must have come out of your mother with that glare of disapproval on your face.' Isentine tried to smile, but what came out was more of a wince. His hip this time.

'I disapprove of many things, Eyrie-Master. The last thing of which I disapproved was Speaker Zafir. Now that she's dead, I most strongly disapprove of her villainous lover Jehal sitting on her throne. I promised the Night Watchman that my dragons would not cross the Purple Spur and so they will not, but I will not watch from afar while the Viper triumphs. I have gone to war in the name of my queen and now I mean to marry her, just as she promised. I do not demand pomp and ceremony, old man, but I do demand that all do their duty. I have brought witnesses, from this realm and from King Sirion. You have priests here. We must strike while the ancestors favour us. Two weeks have pa.s.sed since the rout at Evenspire and we have done nothing. Jaslyn must go to the Adamantine Palace. She must go in strength but in peace and she must do it soon. Unless I have judged matters awry, the Lesser Council will be glad to rid themselves of Jehal. The Speaker's Throne is hers for the taking. Jehal may even keep his life if his queen demands it, although the Veid Palace of Furymouth shall become his prison.' He growled. 'The most gilded of prisons. But time is not on our side. Our strength is fragile, Isentine. Jaslyn must understand this. She must act or I must act for her, and I cannot rule alone as a prince. Then there is the matter of heirs.'

Isentine wiped his mouth. 'I hope you brought a plentiful supply of Maiden's Regret.'

'I have enough.'

'Jaslyn is . . .' Isentine made a face. 'I do not think she has ever had a lover, Your Highness.'

A tinge of red touched Hyrkallan's face. 'That is hard to believe, Eyrie-Master. Given her sisters . . .' Hyrkallan obviously hadn't looked where he was going before starting that sentence. Now he stopped, realising far too late what he was about to say.

'Nevertheless,' muttered Isentine when Hyrkallan had had enough time to feel suitably embarra.s.sed. 'I ask that you be gentle.'

'She has to stop this foolishness, whatever it is that she's doing. I don't understand the nonsense that has possessed her.'

No. You don't. The Order of the Scales had careful rules about which of their secrets they told to whom. Hard rules with harsh punishments for those who broke them. Princes learned more than dragon-lords. Kings and eyrie-masters more still.

'Then you will see it for yourself.' Even after twenty years, Shezira had never quite believed. Isentine had always seen it as a compliment, really, a tacit nod to the meticulous care with which he ran his eyrie. Now Hyrkallan would see it all for himself. A dragon untouched by alchemy. Aware and awake. Alive. Intelligent. He would feel a dragon read his thoughts and plant its own straight into his head. All these things without a word being said. No rules broken. Shezira never believed and left the dragons to me and to the alchemists. Antros? He simply didn't care. Almiri didn't need to. Lystra? I suppose I might never know whether she believed whatever she was told. Jaslyn saw half of it for herself before anyone told her anything. She was the only one. Did I even believe it myself, when I was first made into the master of Out.w.a.tch? I don't think I did.

He frowned at himself. No time for rambling, old man. Back to the present. 'The hatchling must be dulled,' he said sharply, 'and if that cannot be done, it must be killed.'

That got Hyrkallan's attention. 'You want to kill Jaslyn's hatch-ling?'

Too hard to explain until Hyrkallan saw the abomination for himself. Then he would understand. 'We can agree, Lord Hyrkallan, that Queen Jaslyn's place is not here. She must be persuaded of this. If our reasons differ, the result does not. When she is gone, I will do what I have always done, what needs to be done, both for this realm and for others.'

'Every dragon.' Hyrkallan wagged a finger in Isentine's face. 'You save every dragon and make it grow.'

Isentine smiled. 'You sound like her. Shezira.' Would it help to tell Hyrkallan that one hatchling in every three refused to eat? Starved itself to death rather than take the alchemists' potions? Probably not. Hyrkallan could have that later, when he was ready for it. When he was ready to know that the problem was getting worse too.

'I know.' They started to walk again, this time in silence, both of them lost in their memories of the dead queen they'd both admired and maybe loved. Isentine led them to the yawning shaft that formed the hub of the underground eyrie and started painfully on the stairs that circled downward.

'My legs aren't what they used to be.'

'Shezira came to me before she was made speaker. She wanted to replace you. I told her she was mad. I think that was what she wanted to hear.'

'She sent Jaslyn to me as my successor.' Isentine sighed. 'She would have made a good eyrie-mistress.'

'Let her. Once her duty to me is done.'

'She has to be a queen.'

Hyrkallan shook his head. 'No. I have to be a king. We both know that's why she offered to share her crown with me. That's a price I'll be happy to pay for this honour. Let Jaslyn live with her dragons if she wishes. I won't stop her. If anything it seems fitting for a dragon-queen. Perhaps others will see it that way.'

'Perhaps.' Half a year ago, the idea of Jaslyn becoming the heir to Out.w.a.tch had seemed perfect for both of them. Now he wasn't so sure. She understands the dragons well enough, if anything too well. She has seen what monsters they are and what terrors they can become, and yet she has awoken another one. Would I sleep easy at night knowing the realms were at her mercy? I'm not at all sure I would.

'Here.' Isentine stepped off the stairs and into one of the endless tunnels that burrowed into the stone under Out.w.a.tch. 'We keep the hatchling chained. Jaslyn is not quite herself either. I have to give her potions to hold the Hatchling Disease at bay every day, and that's another reason you should take her away. It's a battle that is always slowly lost and you wouldn't want her if she turned out looking like one of the Scales.'

'I would do my duty, Eyrie-Master.'

'Then let us say that I would not forgive myself if our queen could not retain the little beauty she has. I have given Jaslyn far more than the usual dose. It is starting to affect her thinking.' He sighed again. 'There is another thing you must know, Lord Hyrkallan. Queen Jaslyn does not like to be under the ground. She will ask you to force me to release the hatchling from its chains. You may say what you wish, Your Highness, but I will not do that. Not on your command or hers. You may bring dragon-knights and put us to the sword, but I will not give that monster its freedom and nor will any alchemist in my eyrie.'

He hobbled along the tunnels that led towards the caves on the cliff, the bright places where the sun poured in from the south and the hatchlings took their first tentative breaths. A mercurial tension lingered among these caves, the hatchling caves. Men died here, and often. Isentine shook his head. 'You never quite know what you're going to get with a hatchling. Some of them are dazed and confused and easily chained. Some of them seem not to mind at all. Many fight as though they know exactly what will happen to them. They come a spitting fury of teeth and claws and fire, right from the egg. I lose men, Hyrkallan, to try and save those. We fall on them, a dozen of us trying to pin one of the beasts down while others wrestle the chains around their wings and neck. Dressed up in the thickest dragon-scale. Always the biggest and strongest man gets the head. You have to press down with all your weight, wrap your arms around its mouth and squeeze. You would be a good choice, Your Highness. A good solid build and a smith's arms.' He smiled. 'I did it myself, many years ago. Look around any eyrie and you'll see it's the big men who are missing their arms or their hands. It's as though some dragons understand everything even before they hatch.'

Now he shook his head. Those were usually the ones that starved themselves, the fighters. 'And then Queen Jaslyn came and told us all that this one was her old dragon Silence and that we were to feed it with meat and water that had not been touched by any alchemist. When we wouldn't do that, she did it herself. And it ate and drank, but it will not touch anything that is put in front of it by anyone else. Her Holiness must hunt and kill for it. She must bring the food to the beast herself. I don't know how it knows, but it does. Her Holiness claims that the dragon speaks to her. That it remembers.' He stopped at a door in the tunnel and shuddered. 'I leave you to judge the truth of her claims.' The door was heavy, bound in iron. Small too. Small enough that a large man like Hyrkallan would have some trouble getting through it in all his armour. Small enough to keep all but a newborn hatchling out. Or in, which was more to the point. 'Here,' he said, with a twinge of sadness in his voice. 'Her Holiness is here. You will find her inside.'

He let Hyrkallan go in first, since the prince was wearing armour and sometimes the hatchling was in a foul mood. When there were no shrieks or bursts of fire, he peered around the door himself. Jaslyn was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. The dragon was curled up beside her, sleeping. She was stroking its scales.

'He likes this,' she said distantly.

Isentine shook his head. 'I'll leave you to it then. I'd rather be away from that thing. Watch it if it wakes, My Lord. The two of them seem to have an accommodation, but I wouldn't trust it not to bite your arm off. She says it reads your thoughts, so I advise you to guard them.'

He slowly climbed back up to the surface and waited. Half an hour pa.s.sed, and then Hyrkallan emerged. His face was dark with fury. Isentine knew exactly how things had gone. Whatever Hyrkallan had said, he'd already tried it all himself.

'I know, I know,' he said, as Hyrkallan stormed towards him.

'She refused me! Will nothing sway her?'

'Nothing even reaches her, My Lord. I see little choice left but to drag her, kicking and screaming, out of there. A thing I cannot do.'

'She is our queen, Isentine.' Hyrkallan's expression didn't change. Lost in thought mixed with a heavy tinge of anger. 'This is not how a queen should behave. Not at any time and especially not now.' He sat down beside Isentine and scratched his nose. For the first time Isentine could remember, Hyrkallan looked lost. 'Curse her. I need her. I need her with me at the Adamantine Palace.'

Isentine pursed his lips. 'Then force her. That would be your right as her husband. Get her away from that abomination and her mind will clear. Or give the word and I will do it. Let her blame me. It's time I took the dragon's fall.' It cost him a lot to say such things. Jaslyn was the closest of Shezira's daughters to her mother and the one he loved the most. But they had to be said. He sighed. 'I never thought to see days like these.'

Hyrkallan took a deep breath and levered himself back to his feet. 'If neither reason nor duty will persuade her, perhaps she will listen to her sister.'

'To Queen Almiri?' Isentine chuckled. 'After Evenspire, I don't think Almiri's cooperation is something you can rely on.' No. Not Almiri. Lystra?'

Hyrkallan nodded. 'Queen Lystra.' Then he laughed. 'You spend too much time with your dragons, old man.'

A Siege of Dragons.

They had half a day before Prince Tichane came back at them. When he did, he came with everything. Dragons, hundreds of them, wheeling and circling Meteroa's spire of stone, bathing it in flames until it must have seemed a column of fire, a bright shining thing seen across half the realms. Tichane came with riders, hundreds of them too, decked in dragon-scale. With scorpions that rained like hail on the unyielding stone. With barrels of lamp oil that turned the Reflecting Garden into an inferno and flowed in burning rivers down the sheer cliffs of the mountain. With endless hordes of slave-soldiers, carried in cages to mill in useless impotence on the wrong side of Meteroa's walls. Tichane could bury the Pinnacles in burned bodies and shattered scorpion bolts for all Meteroa cared. Impotent, all of them. All of them except the dragons. It was almost enough to make him laugh, even if he'd lost a dozen riders in that first hour and most of the scorpions in the upper caves had been ruined.

A learning experience. All because we didn't know how to work them. At least, not properly. But now . . . now we know better.

Three dragons flew straight at the cave. Meteroa gritted his teeth. They can't reach me, they can't reach me. Beside him, Gaizal calmly cranked the scorpion a little to the left and a little up. He fired. The recoil was vicious, rattling Meteroa's bones as he tried to watch the bolt to its target. The air tasted of iron.

Scorpions. Meteroa had hundreds and hundreds of them. Tichane had destroyed dozens, and it simply didn't matter. Meteroa was more likely to run out of people to shoot them.

'You missed.'

'Hit the dragon,' said Gaizal calmly. 'Now he's an angry dragon. These scorpions are really hurting them. Bolt please.'

Meteroa handed him another bolt. Together they put their weight behind the c.o.c.king mechanism and levered it open again. In steady calm movements, the way we always trained. Paying as little attention as we can to the dragon that's about to kill us.

The mechanism clacked into place and the new bolt dropped home. Gaizal spun wheels that turned the scorpion back to the right and up some more. The dragons were a few hundred yards away now and closing fast. Any moment now.

The bolt fired. One rider on the closest dragon lurched as a six-foot rod of sharpened steel struck him in the hip and speared him to his mount. Meteroa had just enough time to see a second rider have his head torn clean off by another bolt before the dragons opened their mouths. He must have sensed it coming, somehow, because he was already pulling the fire shield down over himself and the scorpion and cranking the lever that propelled them away from the light and towards the back of the cave. It took us an hour of being slaughtered to realise how to do that. He cringed and muttered a prayer to his ancestors.

Prince Lai built these scorpions. The realisation reached him at much the same time as a wall of fire shook the cave, scouring its walls. Each cave had three scorpions. Each scorpion was on an iron rail that ran from the front of its cave to the back. At the front, it had an open field of view and a wide arc of fire. When a dragon came close, the scorpion withdrew to the back, out of reach of tooth and claw.

But not out of reach of fire. For that there was the shield. It hadn't taken long at all to discover those hinged slabs of dragon-scale that wrapped the scorpion in a fireproof coc.o.o.n. Meteroa had never seen scorpions as big as these. Big enough to make a dragon scream.

The stifling scorched air drained away. Meteroa was vaguely surprised to find that he was still alive and in fact unhurt. Cautiously he lifted the fire shield up. The cave entrance was clear.

Prince Lai got it right. Meteroa couldn't help but smile. You've got more dragons out there than I have riders. I'm really supposed to have lost already. Yet here I am in an impregnable fortress armed with the weapons designed by the Prince of War himself. Here I am, Tichane! Come and take me, if you can. Vishmir and Prince Lai had fought the first Valmeyan here, around the the Pinnacles, during the War of Thorns. The most famous battle in history, between the greatest dragon-knights the world had ever seen. And here I am, with another Valmeyan outside, gifted these presents by my ancestors . . .

'Bolt please.' The scorpion was already riding forward on its rail. Meteroa lifted another bolt they were surprisingly heavy from the crate slung at the back of the weapon and started on the arming lever. That took both of them with all of their strength to crank back ready to fire again. Two dragons flashed across the mouth of the cave right in front of them. The scorpion shook as Gaizal fired. Missed. In the middle distance another dragon bucked and screamed and veered towards them. The other two scorpions in the cave fired in unison. The noise was like a thunderclap.

'Missed.'

'Are you sure?' Meteroa felt his skin tingle. The dragon-fury was like lightning in the air.

Gaizal shrugged. 'Bolt.' Meteroa reached for another and then changed his mind. Another dragon was coming in, straight at them. No time. He pulled down the fire shield and sent the scorpion back along its rail instead. A moment later the whole cave shook. Fire filled the air again. Meteroa closed his eyes and clutched his hands to his head against the sheer noise as the dragon roared. It must have been right at the mouth of the cave when it let loose.

The cave shook again, so hard that it almost knocked the scorpion off its rail. Meteroa staggered, grabbing at the fire shield, almost falling out into the cave. He had his visor down and could barely see. Gaizal fell sideways off the scorpion and disappeared. There was another roar. Meteroa slipped into the firing seat simply to steady himself. He looked sideways for Gaizal but that was a waste of time. Through tiny slits lined with blurred gla.s.s, he'd be lucky to see a dragon standing right in front of him. The world wasn't bright though, which meant the flames were gone.

He lifted the visor. He could see Gaizal now, lying on the floor beside the scorpion. He was very still. His helmet had fallen off and he was staring wide-eyed at the mouth of the cave.

'Bolt,' he mouthed. Mechanically, Meteroa loaded another bolt into the scorpion. He lifted the fire shield up by a few inches and peered out.

There was a dragon right in front of him, its head and one clawed limb jammed in through the mouth of the cave, blocking the entrance, thrashing for purchase. The other two scorpions that had been in the cave were gone. It took Meteroa a moment to realise, but a substantial chunk of the cave was gone too.

'Bolt,' mouthed Gaizal again. The dragon wasn't really looking at them. Meteroa could feel its rage growing every second. Is it stuck? He started to chuckle at the absurdity of it.

The dragon's eye, the one that Meteroa could see, swivelled to look straight at him. Golden, the size of a man's head, with a long vertical slit of a pupil, a thin black window to the dragon's soul, it stared at him.

'You are stuck, aren't you?' Meteroa threw back the fire shield and cranked the scorpion around. The dragon's struggles grew more urgent. It lunged forward, trying to get at him. Stupid thing was still trying to get in, not out.

'See now, if you were a hunting-dragon, that would have worked. But you're not. You're a war-dragon. Of course, if you were a hunting-dragon, you probably wouldn't have got stuck in the first place.' The scorpion was aimed straight at the dragon's eye. The one weak spot. Meteroa fired. The dragon's eye burst and a man's height of barbed wood and steel buried itself in the monster's head. All the struggles stopped. The dragon hung where it was, dangling by its head and claw for a moment. Meteroa tried to imagine how hard the dragon must have hit the cave to wedge itself in like that. Tried. Failed.

There was a cracking sound from the mouth of the cave and then a grinding, and then the dragon was gone, taking a chunk of the cave mouth with it. Meteroa couldn't help himself. He reached out a hand, helped Gaizal to his feet and then walked to the edge and peered down, watching the dragon fall towards the ground.

'I reckon that's that for those scorpions,' he said.

Gaizal stared beside him at the falling dragon. 'You killed a dragon,' he gasped, full of awe.

'Yes.' Meteroa frowned. 'I suppose I did.' Wasn't this the sort of thing they made into stories? Although he wasn't sure it would be much of one. What will it say? That the dragon walked up to within a dozen yards of my scorpion and then obligingly stood still for as long as it took for me to pick my spot and aim? Which is pretty much what happened. No, that won't do.

The other thought which came along with the first was that he'd better keep Gaizal alive for long enough to start telling people a better one, otherwise no one would ever know.

'Your Highness!' The world suddenly lurched and spun. For a moment he had no idea what had happened, then he was lying flat on the cave floor. Not falling the several thousand feet to the Silver City far below. That was good.

Gaizal was lying on top of him.

'What the . . .' What in the name of your unholy ancestors were you doing? That's what he'd been going to say, right up until he saw a hunting-dragon's wing arc past the cave. 'Tail?' he asked, shaken. Gaizal nodded. They both scrabbled away from the edge. At the back of the cave Meteroa stopped and looked over his shoulder. 'There's still one scorpion working here,' he said. He looked at the mangled ruins of the others. The riders who'd manned them lay about like broken dolls. He wasn't quite sure what had happened to them, except that they hadn't been quick enough to retreat from the cave mouth when the dragon crashed in.

Gaizal didn't say anything. Meteroa weighed up his options and then shrugged. Killing Tichane's riders and even his dragons was all well and good, but the point, he had to remind himself, was to defend the fortress. The only way in, as far as Meteroa could see, was either up through the tunnels or down from above. And if even Zafir didn't know the way in from below and the only way in from the Grand Stair was barred, then that left getting in through the scorpion caves. Meteroa couldn't quite see how they would do such a thing. Presumably on very long ropes, except most of the caves had overhanging roofs which would make attackers ridiculously easy to pick off one by one as they tried to swing inside. So far, no one had even tried.

I killed a dragon. The thought echoed in his head over and over, filling him with energy and purpose. He felt dangerously invincible. He turned back to the cave mouth in time to see another three dragons flying straight towards it. Two of them were carrying large cages in their back claws. The sky behind them was blue and clear and filled with sunlight. He suppressed a laugh. It was a nice day outside. Or would have been, if it wasn't filled with dragons, 'Bolt!' shouted Gaizal. Meteroa found himself jumping onto the scorpion in reflex. He had a bolt in his hands and Gaizal was already at the c.o.c.king crank. They weren't going to be able to move the scorpion up to the front of the cave any more. He could see that now. The rail was buckled from the impact of the dragon. Not that it mattered, since the dragons were coming straight in again. He couldn't help but wonder what the cages were for. They looked like slave cages, but he couldn't fathom what Tichane might be doing with his slave-soldiers up here.