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Prologue

 

The Dead

 

 

The Worldspine surrounded them. Mountains like immense teeth, jagged and huge and white, reared up all around their little valley. Monsters overshadowing the dense dark greens and blacks of the pine forest surrounding a lake of glacier water, the brightest purest blue that Kemir had ever seen.

Very slowly, they were dying. Nadira couldn't see it yet and Kemir didn't have the heart to tell her, but it was true. He'd kept them alive for five days now, since Snow had vanished beneath the frozen waters of the lake, but it couldn't last. The weather had been kind to them, but wind and rain were always fickle in the Worldspine. One day he'd run out of arrows, or his bowstring would break. Or one of them would get hurt or fall ill. He wasn't catching enough food, and they didn't have the clothes or the shelter to stay properly warm. A hundred things could go wrong, and sooner or later one of them would.

They had to move. He tried to break it to Nadira, to make her understand that Snow wasn't coming back, that their only chance was to leave and head for lower ground. A boat, he thought. Or at least a raft. Water always found the quickest way down the mountains.

She screamed in his face. Shrieked at him that Snow was coming back. He backed away. One more day, he promised himself. One more day and then he'd leave, with or without her. He could force her to come, he knew that, but he'd let her choose. She could stay and die if she wanted. That's what Sollos would have done.

As that last day began to fade he made his weary way back to the lake, carrying with him what little food he'd been able to hunt and gather. The forests here were harsh and hostile and yielded little. He was hungry. They were both hungry. They'd eat and they'd still be hungry.

He reached what passed for their camp at the edge of the lake

and the hairs on the back of his neck bristled. He couldn't see Nadira. The forest was silent except for the wind and the ever-present creaking and groaning of the glacier. He stared out across the lake. And suddenly he felt the fire and iron of the dragon's presence, a moment before the water began to churn. Little One Kemir, I am hungry.

Kemir froze, rooted to the spot. The dragon was rising out of the lake as white as the glacier ice, clouds of steam billowing around her.

And she was hungry. Five days lying at the bottom of a frozen lake would do that, I suppose.

She was probably going to eat him then. Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to be properly terrified. In some ways it would be a relief.

'Right. So you're not dead,' he growled. It was just as well, he decided, that Nadira wasn't anywhere nearby. As last words went, those definitely weren't the best.

That's when her absence hit him right in the chest. Nadira. Where was she?

No.

'Alchemist's poisons didn't kill you then. Freezing water did the trick, eh?' Why wasn't she there?

Yes. And no, I do not intend to eat you. I am ... grateful ...to you for showing me this place.

If dragons had expressions, Kemir hadn't learned to read them yet. The dragon's name was Snow, and as far as Kemir could tell, she always looked like she was about to eat him. Come on, woman, where are you? You should be here. Your dragon's back.

'Hurrah for me, then.' He sat down. 'So you're hungry. So go eat something.' He couldn't keep it in any more. 'You didn't eat Nadira, did you?' He felt almost stupid asking. Of course she hadn't.

There was a long silence. She was not your mate.

'No! She's not my mate! She's my ...' Yes, now that was a good question. She was his what, exactly? His friend? Don't be ridiculous. His companion? He grimaced. That made him sound like an old widow.

Your nest-sister.

Which made him laugh. Since he couldn't think of anything better, he nodded. 'Yes. My nest-sister. So, did you eat her?'

Yes.

Kemir didn't move. Snow was joking. She had to be. Even though dragons had no sense of humour, even though Snow had never said anything funny about anything, this had to be a joke.

I was hungry. He could feel something in her, though. The same feeling as had been inside her when her Scales had disappeared. Shame, perhaps.

No, she wasn't joking.

The rage started in his face. At the end of his nose. A heat that washed slowly into his cheeks. 'And that's what you do when you're hungry.' Down his neck, growing hotter and stronger. He picked up a stone from the lakeside, jumped to his feet and threw it at the dragon in the water. It bounced off her scales.

Yes. And I am hungry still, Kemir.

Across his shoulders. 'Whoever happens to be there. Whoever is closest. You couldn't wait. You couldn't hold it in. You couldn't go hungry. You just ...' Through his arms. He hurled another stone at her and then threw up his hands in exasperation. 'Bang. Gone. Whatever happens to be there. She was your ...' She was what? What could you be to a dragon?

Food is food, Kemir.

There weren't any stones big enough to answer that. Or rather there were, but Kemir couldn't lift them. 'What?' Oh yes, that really told her.

She was not your mate, Kemir.

The heat reached his hands, oozing down his fingers like lava until it reached the very tips. Then it all came rushing back. From everywhere. From his fingers, from his toes, from his arms and legs and chest and exploded all together in his head. He roared with rage and loss and sheer disbelief and hurled himself into the water, clutching his hatchet. 'Why did you do that?' He stopped, He had to stop. He was already floundering in freezing water up to his waist. Snow was too deep to reach. He threw the axe at her as hard as he could and watched as it it too bounced off her scales and vanished into the water. He screamed at her again. 'Why? Why did you do that?'

His words echoed off the mountainsides. Snow didn't move. Kemir pounded the water with his fists.

'Come here! Come here where I can reach you!'

If it is any help to you, she did not particularly mind.

'What? She didn't ... ? She didn't what?' He clutched at his head and surged back to the shore, slipping, falling, lurching out of the water. There had to be something, somewhere. Anything. A weapon. Something to batter a dragon. He'd rip her apart with his bare hands if he had to.

She did not particularly mind.

He picked up another stone. Snow was coming towards him, very slowly, one careful step at a time. He threw the stone, then another and another, as fast as he could until Snow reached the shore. Then he let out a mad shriek and ran at her, hacking at her legs and claws with his knife. But no matter how hard he stabbed, her scales turned his blade. He beat on her with his fists and howled. 'Why? Why did you do that?'

Because she was hungry. That was all. She didn't even have to say it. And now she was just letting him vent his anger.

Kemir backed away.

'Eat me!'  he roared, and threw down the knife. He stood in front of her head. 'Come on then! Eat me!' No.

'Why not? She was all I had left. My last. Come on, dragon, eat me too!' He picked up another stone and then put it down again and reached for an arrow. 'Curse you, dragon. She didn't particularly mind being eaten?' He pulled back the bowstring. Maybe if I aim for the eye ...

No, Kemir, she did not.

He looked down the length of the arrow to aim and met Snow, eyeball to eyeball at the other end of it. What am I doing? I was wondering that myself.

He took a deep breath. 'You tell me, dragon, how do you know that she didn't particularly mind? Did you ask before you ate her?'

An arrow in the eye will hardly kill me, Kemir, but it would leave an unpleasant sting.

Slowly, Kemir lowered the bow. He could almost believe it. Nadira had been the one who'd made them wait while Snow lay deep in the lake. If it hadn't been for her he'd have left days ago, She'd made them stay because she couldn't let go ... And he'd seen her, after they'd failed, after Snow had vanished into the lake. He'd seen her curled up when she thought he wasn't near, sobbing softly, talking to the children she no longer had as though they were still there, to the husband she'd seen murdered. The fight had gone out of her and with it all the light, all the life. Was that it? Were the memories too much? Was that why she wouldn't let go? Were you just waiting to die?

Waiting for her next cycle, Kemir.

He had tears in his eyes now. Now he thought about it, he could almost believe that Snow was right, that Nadira really didn't mind at all. 'We don't get a next one, Snow. We're not like you.'

And how is it that you are so sure, Kemir? She stretched her wings and looked up at the sky. She was thinking of leaving. Just like that.

'What if I don't want to come? Do I get eaten too?' The thought scared him. Not the thought of being eaten. The thought of being alone.

Would you mind?

'Yes, I'd fucking mind!' He put the arrow back in his quiver and then shuddered, shaking the dread and the emptiness away, back into the bottle he carried deep inside him. Anger was better, much better. He threw another stone at Snow instead, then another and another. 'Why, dragon? Why did you kill her? Why did you do that? She wasn't much, maybe, but she was all I had. She was the closest thing I had to a friend. Shit!' The worst of the rage was gone, though, and he couldn't find the will to rekindle it. What was left behind was only sadness.

Why?

'She was your friend. Holy sun! That could have been me! What?'

Why? Why would you mind, Kemir?

'What?' He shook himself and then held his head in his hands. 'Are you soft in the head, dragon? What sort of question is that? Why would I mind? Why would I mind if you ate me?'

Yes. Why would you mind, Kemir?

'Because it would fucking hurt!'

It can be very quick.

'Well then because I'd like to he alive, thank you.

And why do you wish to be alive, Kemir? What will you do with this existence?

'I don't know!' He turned away and stamped his foot. 'Get shit-faced, fuck whores and kill dragon-knights, that's what. Just as soon as I'm shot of you.'

I know where your alchemists live, Kemir. I know how they make us weak. I will go now and I will consider how things should best be done. When I return, I will make a proper end of it. You will come with me. Your knowledge will be of use.

'Uh uh. You go, dragon. I can't stop you but I'm not helping you. Not now.' Kemir pursed his lips. He looked around the lake, at the thick walls of snow-speckled trees, at the frozen glacier, at the whiteness of the peaks above. 'I think I'd rather stay here and slowly die of cold while I mourn. Tagging along, waiting for the day when it's my turn to be food? No, that's not my choice.' Really though? Could I bear that? To be left out here? Alone?

Do not pretend, Kemir. Remember that I see inside you. I see fear. I see horror and surprise and a great deal of vengeance. Mostly I see loneliness. That is something I understand, Kemir, for I too am alone. I do not see much regret. You will not mourn for long.

Kemir sat down, shook his head and unstrung his bow. 'That's because I still don't quite believe you did it,' he said quietly, as much to himself as to Snow. He sighed. 'Do I have a choice, dragon?'

There is always choice, Kemir. The Embers have shown you that.

He spat out a bitter laugh. 'Yeah. Right. I can help you burn dragon-knights or I can die.' He sighed again. 'Well I'm not one for dying. So I'll come with you. As soon as we're out of the mountains, you do whatever you do and you leave me alone. Finished. Done. We go our separate ways. Find someone else.'

As you wish.

He took a deep breath. 'Snow?' Kemir?

'If you ever eat someone I call a friend again, I will find a way and I will kill you. I don't care how much they don't mind. I don't care if they're positively trying to claw their way down your throat. Never again. Am I clear?'

You are clear, Kemir.

She was laughing at him. He could tell.

 

 

One

 

The Red Riders

Out of the sun there shall come a white dragon, and with the white dragon a red rider. Thieves and liars shall quiver and weep, for the rider's name shall be Justice, and the dragon shall be

Vengeance.

 

1

 

The Prophet

 

 

He was running through a forest, between trees beside a river, wearing nothing more than a shirt. He was soaking wet and the water was icy. Here and there patches of snow lay on the ground but he didn't feel the cold. He was much more afraid of the heat. In the skies above the treetops, two dragons laced the world with fire. They were past rage, past fury. They were dying. He'd killed them and they knew it. They knew where he was too.

He'd tried to hide deep amid the darkness, beneath layer upon layer of leaf-shadow and branches, but they always found him. He'd tried to run, but the fire always followed him and the forest turned to flames and ash behind him. He'd tried the freezing waters of the river and the dragons had simply boiled it dry. Somehow they never quite caught him. He knew exactly why. They were slowly dying and so was he. When the trees ran out, they would all burn together. Was he afraid? He wasn't sure. Angry? Yes. Desperate? Yes. Willing to do almost anything to stay alive? Yes. But afraid? No. He'd done what needed to be done. Jaslyn would survive. The princess had been saved from the dragon. The knight had done his duty. Now the trees were running out and the end was coming, but no, he wasn't afraid.

'Stop!'

He felt the voice more than he heard it. It wasn't a real voice, not even a human voice. It boomed like a thunderclap, shaking mountains and felling trees. The air filled with ash shaken up from the ground and the dragons fell from the sky and were still. The forest and the river were suddenly gone. Where they'd been, only bare stone remained. Bare stone and a man, standing waiting for him not more than twenty paces away.

Semian stopped. He looked the man up and down. Long robes the colour of blood. A craggy face. Long white hair and a long white beard, braided, that reached almost to his waist. Every inch a dragon-priest. Except for his skin, as pale as ice, and his hands which were black and cracked, his fingers burned to stumps. And his eyes, which blazed with bloody fire.

'Stop!' said the priest again. This time the world didn't shake. Semian looked behind him. The old dragons were gone now. There was no sign of them or of the river or the trees, or even the smoking ruins of the alchemists' stronghold. Only the mountains were the same. Rising among them, taller than even the highest peak, a single massive crimson dragon filled half the sky. It lifted its head and stared lazily at him with eyes the size of lakes. Semian fell to one knee and bowed his head. The priest and the dragon were somehow the same. He didn't know how he knew, didn't know how that could be, but he knew it as surely as he knew the feel of his own sword in the palm of his hand.

'Rise, rider.'

Semian didn't move. 'I am dead, am I not?' The priest said nothing.

'You taught us that we would join the great dragon whose fire is the sun. That we would be taken into that fire and our souls would be forged anew.'

'You are not dead,' said the priest.

'I followed with the other Embers with dragon-poison in my blood, and in our dying we did what we left our caves to do. The dragons are slain.'

'No, they are not, and nor are you,' said the priest again. 'You drank the dragon-poison and you survived. You are one of us now. One dragon too survived. One and one, balanced against one another. A harmony of fire.'

'I ...' Joyful tears filled Semian's eyes. He felt the heat of passion explode inside him, filling him until there was no space for anything else and then growing still greater.

'You have always been a loyal servant of the church,' said the priest. 'You have always stayed true. Your heart is pure. Now you shall have your reward. Kneel. And remember. Remember the stories. Remember the myths. Remember the legends. Remember what only we priests and our faithful care to preserve. Remember the beginning and remember the end.'

The beginning and the end.

Before there was time there was the void. Into the void there came the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars. 'And each created life.'

The shifting stone-creatures of the earth. The moon-children made of liquid silver. The ghost forms of the star spirits. And us. The children of the sun.

'Of the Great Flame.'

The Great Flame.

'And each claimed to be the foremost of the gods.'

And war and strife and sorcery shattered the land.

'And in the cracks of creation the dragons were born.'

They tore the magic from the land. They scourged the earth with fire. They sought to return all things to the void from which they had come.

'For only then could they too return.'

And yet through blood-magic, the children of the sun cheated the end of the world. Through alchemy they called to them the Silver King, who chained the dragons and stilled the restless void.

'Thus spoke the prophet with the voice of the wind.'

Semian was already kneeling. He bowed his head again. The priest ran one ruined hand through the braids of his beard. It came out dripping red with blood. 'Your reward for your faith.' The bloody hand waved over Semian, spattering him, and then pressed against his forehead. Semian could feel the blood running slowly down his face. 'For then the prophet's face became terrible to behold and he spoke with the voice of the desert. All chains break. Fire will sweep the bones of the world. Out of flames there shall come a white dragon, and with the dragon a red rider. Thieves and liars shall quiver and weep, for the rider's name shall be Justice and the dragon shall be Vengeance.' The hand pressed harder against his brow. 'Arise, rider. The end-times are coming. You have been chosen. You have taken the poison and you have lived. The white dragon flies free. The flames of destruction have come, and out of the flames the red rider shall be born. Be Justice, Rider Semian. Be the red rider and find the dragon whose name is Vengeance. Cleanse the world of its wickedness. Burn it away. Justice and Vengeance, Rider Semian, Justice and Vengeance. For I am the Silver King and I have set you free.' The priest and the mountains slipped away into dust. Only the priest's hand remained, still there against his skin, and the voice.

Justice and Vengeance. Justice and Vengeance ...

The priest's words echoed for an eternity, yet even they decayed. Other voices, other words rose up, drowning the priest in mindless chatter. Familiar voices. People.

Friends?

Semian listened to them as best he could, but his mind was adrift and nothing made any sense. Nothing until three words pierced him like a lance.

The Red Riders.

 

 

2

 

Torchlight

 

 

'A rider without a dragon is a like a one-armed swordsman.' Jostan was drunk. He was slumped in the darkest corner he could find of the worst drinking hole within walking distance of Southwatch. His words were slurred. He glowered at the table in front of him. The wood was stained and on the stains there were more stains. Where there weren't stains there were letters or, more often, crude pictograms badly hacked into the wood by a hundred years of drunken knights determined to leave their mark. 'No. It's worse. It's like a no-armed swordsman. With no legs.'

Beside him a rider was weeping. He didn't even know her name. She'd found him there, glaring in the gloom, and simply sat beside him. She obviously knew the place well since she barely had to lift her eyes towards the tavern-keeper to summon another flagon of ale. She was already drunk when she'd sat down beside him and she showed no signs of slowing down.

'I've got a dragon,' she said suddenly. 'I didn't used to have a dragon, but I've got one now.'

'I used to have one.' Jostan sighed. 'Then the Embers poisoned it. Now I haven't got one any more. Princess Jaslyn was supposed to give me another one. But she's gone away.' Gone away having virtually dismissed Semian from her service. And, Jostan discovered, him as well, almost as an afterthought. Whatever Semian had said, apparently, had been spoken for them both.

Stupid little girl. That's what she was, after all. Almost a girl. To think he'd held a torch for her not long ago. And there was another thing. What was he thinking? A rider from a nothing family and a dragon-princess? I must have been wearing my stupid-cap.

'She used to look at me, though,' he mumbled. Little looks that made him wonder; and then Knight-Marshal Nastria had sent him with her to the alchemists and the dragons had come and burned everything and he'd held her in his arms, stopping her from running into the flames, and she'd liked it. For a moment at least, she'd liked it.

Or that's what he'd thought. Maybe he was fooling himself. Deluded. She was made of the same heartless flint as her mother. 'No dragon. Thrown away. Semian's no better. Spent days sitting with him trying to make him not die and now that he's come back, he's gone crazy. Had some stupid vision while he was in his coma and now all he talks about is the Great Flame and the Red Riders.'

The rider beside him lifted her head and turned towards him. 'Red Riders? You know where they are?' Jostan shook his head. 'No. No idea.'

The other rider slumped and promptly lost interest in him again.

'Semian says we have to find them and join them. Says that's where he's meant to be. Not that he's got a dragon either. Fat lot of use either of us would be. Justice and Vengeance without any dragons.' He spat on the floor. 'I suppose we could tend the camp fires while the real riders fly. I've done that before.'

'Hyrkallan leads the Red Riders,' slurred the other rider. 'He's the greatest there is. Was there too. He was.' Her head lolled sideways and she looked at him. 'Who flies with the Red Riders?'

Jostan shrugged. 'I don't know their names. The riders who fought their way out of the Adamantine Palace on the Night of the Knives. Knights who served Hyram or Queen Shezira. Who see through the speaker's lies. Her and Jehal. We could have ... We could ...' The thought petered out in disarray. We could have what? Stopped Lady Nastria from trying to kill Queen Zafir? Stopped Queen Shezira from pushing Hyram off a balcony?

The other rider slowly slid sideways, slumping against him like a sack of potatoes. Her head lolled on his shoulder. Jostan sighed. That's all I need.

'Can I come too?' She sounded ready to pass out. Jostan pushed her away. She grumbled and groaned but managed to stay upright.

'Leave me alone.'

'But I want to come with you.'

'I don't even know you.' Jostan started to get up, but now the other rider grabbed hold of him and pulled him back down with all the fierce strength of the very drunk.

'Nthandra of the Vale.'

Jostan sat slowly back down. He looked the woman carefully up and down, wondering if she was lying. Nthandra of the Vale. Everyone in Southwatch knew the name. Nthandra of the Vale, whose father was King Valgar's knight-marshal, whose brothers and sisters were his honour guard, whose betrothed was his adjutant. Nthandra of the Vale, whose entire family had died at King Valgar's side on the Night of the Knives. Nthandra of the Vale, who was said to roam Southwatch like a ghost.

'Nthandra ... ?'

She fell across the table and then turned her head to leer at him. 'You know what they say about me?'

'Your brothers ... your father ... your husband ... They all died.'

'All dead, all dead, all dead. So what else do they say about me?' She reached out a languid arm and stroked his cheek. Jostan swallowed hard.

'I don't... I don't know.'

'Don't they say that I gave myself to the man I was to marry before we were wed?' 'I ...'

'Don't they say that I'm carrying his child inside me?' 'Urn ...'

'Don't they say I'm a drunk who'll give herself to any man who takes her fancy as freely as the autumn wind plucks leaves from the trees?'

A strange feeling crept over Jostan, starting from his feet and rising slowly. A numb sort of paralysis. 'I haven't heard such things ...' He couldn't take his eyes off her. That was the drunk inside him, throwing care and caution to the wind.

'Don't they say that I lay with three riders in one night on the day that I learned my betrothed was dead?'

'I ...' Jostan didn't know what to say, but that didn't seem to matter. Nthandra's face screwed up and she started to sob.

'When I'm alone, all I think of are the dead.' The hand on his cheek moved to his shoulder and gripped his shirt. 'Don't leave me alone. I can't be alone. Use me like a whore or hold me like a baby, I don't mind, but please, please don't let me be alone.'

Jostan's tongue seemed to have swollen so it didn't fit in his mouth any more. He had to work hard to make words come out. He took hold of her hand. 'There's a place we can go.'

The sobs went away and her eyes gleamed. 'There are lots of places we can go.'

'No. There's a place for forgetting.' He staggered to his feet and pulled her up after him. She could barely walk so he put one of her arms around his shoulders and half dragged her away to the door. Eyes watched him go. Other riders. He didn't care what they thought. All the time he'd spent serving one mistress and then another. He'd nearly died, back in the caves with Jaslyn. Yes, could easily have died. And what does she do? She throws me away. Whatever Semian said or did, I didn't do anything. I just held her when she needed to be held. When that mask of stone cracked for a moment. And the thanks I get?

He looked at Nthandra of the Vale, glassy-eyed, head flopping from side to side, barely even conscious. She didn't look much like a princess, but somehow he saw Jaslyn's face anyway.

'I'm not just going to hold you,' he muttered.

'I don't care.'

You should. So should I. But he didn't. He took her to the door of another place. A place where drunkards lay sprawled in the street and two heavy men in thick leather coats lounged by the door. A place where he knew, from the smell of the air, that they could both forget.

One of the men stepped away from the wall and blocked his path. 'Rider.' He nodded. Jostan nodded back, not knowing what he was supposed to say. The other one was standing straighter now, only pretending to be bored.

'Got gold ?' asked the first. Jostan nodded. He leaned forward and fumbled in his boot, where he kept a few gold dragons. Nthandra slipped off his shoulder and fell gracelessly into the dirt. The men in the leather coats both laughed.

'You sure you need to go in?' asked the second one. Jostan shot him a filthy look and gave the first one a coin. That wasn't enough, so he felt around and fished out a second one.

'Gold,' he said. The man nodded again and went back to propping up his wall. Jostan hauled Nthandra to her feet. She was gone now, completely gone. He took her in anyway. As soon as he walked through the door, the smell of Souldust hit him like a brick in the face. Souldust fresh from Evenspire where men freely offered it in the streets. Semian would never speak to him again if he found out, but as much as anything that was why Jostan was doing this. You can all screw yourselves. I don't have to do anything for any of you any more.

Inside, he could barely see a thing. A single dim candle lit each room. Bodies lay strewn about, some of them sleeping, some of them sitting, eyes glittering in the candle flame, open-mouthed and motionless. Some of them seemed to be naked, but in the darkness he couldn't be sure. From a few rooms deeper in came the grunts and moans of some couple. Here and there, as he stepped over legs and arms, faces glanced up at him. They were all empty. Empty, yes, and he wanted to be exactly like them.

He eventually found a room that was a bit less crowded than the rest, where there was space to sit down. This was where the sounds of the man and the woman were coming from, growing louder as they slowly approached their climax. The air smelled of sweat and musk. Only, as he realised after a few minutes, it wasn't a man and a woman but a man and another man. They ignored him, lost in their own world, and Jostan did the same. He propped Nthandra up beside him and held her tight, sucking in deep breaths of the dust-laden air. It didn't take long before the drug and the gallon of ale he had inside him took him away, far away.

Sometime in the night he became aware of something moving, and then a sensation of exquisite pleasure. He wasn't sure when he opened his eyes, for the candles had long gone out and the room was as black as pitch. Filled with snores too. Something soft brushed his lips. His skin was tingling, his heart thumping. He was intensely, painfully aroused. As he shifted, he realised that someone had their hand in his trousers.

He jumped, thinking of the two men who'd been there when they'd come in earlier.

'Shhh.'

Nthandra pressed her lips to his, while her hand continued to work. Jostan moaned.

'Did you mean what you said?' she whispered. 'About the Red Riders?'

His hand reached out and touched skin. As he explored her, he found she was almost naked, her clothes hanging loosely, every button and fastening open. He reached between her legs, but she batted him away.

'Did you mean what you said?'

'Yes,' he said. 'But I don't have a dragon.'

'But you can find them.'

'Yes.' He had no idea how, but it was the answer she wanted and that was enough.

'I have a dragon,' she breathed.

 

 

3

 

What a Dragon Costs

 

 

Deep among the dry pine valleys that edged up to the Worldspine north of the Purple Spur, Hyrkallan watched two dragons land. One of them he knew because it was his own: B'thannan, an immense war-dragon who could make the earth shake merely by looking at it. The other one was a stranger, a long slender hunter. An unexpected stranger at that. Hyrkallan watched from a distance, always cautious until he was sure there was no trick. He sniffed the air, sweet with resin and fallen needles. Then he crept cautiously out from the undergrowth. As he came closer, his back straightened, his strides grew longer and he lowered the heavy crossbow he had gripped to his chest.

'Knight-Marshal!' One of the riders on the back of B'thannan had spotted him. Hyrkallan squinted. There were two up on B'thannan's back, one tall, one short, and it was the short one who was waving at him. Shanzir. She always had sharp eyes.

He waved back. 'Shan! Did the queen give us everything we need?' B'thannan was loaded up with sacks and barrels that hadn't been there when he'd flown off the afternoon before. Obviously Queen Almiri had agreed to his offer. He wasn't surprised. She had little to lose and a great deal to gain.

'Food. Weapons. Blankets. Everything,' shouted the other rider. Deremis, his brother.

Hyrkallan peered up. Even though B'thannan was crouched on all fours, Deremis was still twenty feet up in the air. 'I don't see any alchemists.'

'Oh, they won't help us.' Deremis slid down from B'thannan's back and ran over to embrace Hyrkallan. 'Not their business, they say. In fact they wish us naught but ill and would have nothing to do with us.' He grinned. 'Good to see you, brother. I know it's only been a day, but it seemed it might be a very long one.'

Hyrkallan let his little brother go. 'These dragons have been more than a week away from any eyrie.' He tried to smile. 'I swear B'thannan has started talking in his sleep. Much longer and we have to go back. Almiri must know that. If we cannot shelter in any eyrie and we have no alchemists of our own ...' As if on cue, B'thannan lowered his head and swung it towards them. His head alone was as big as a horse, with teeth the size of shortswords. The dragon gave them a baleful look and then stared at its feet. The war-dragon's claws had already sunk a good foot into the soft earth. If it carelessly flicked its tail, trees would come crashing down.

Deremis punched Hyrkallan in the arm. 'And the gracious Queen Almiri does indeed know this, and so behold!' He waved at the crates and barrels. 'Enough of their potions to calm a dozen dragons for a month, taken in secret from the eyries of Evenspire!'

Smiling came easier now. Hyrkallan embraced his brother again. Then he looked at the other dragon and the three riders on her back. 'And these?'

'Nthandra of the Vale and her mount. She lost many of her family on the Night of the Knives.'

Hyrkallan nodded. 'She's too young, but I won't say np to another dragon. The other two?'

'You know them. Rider Jostan and Rider Semian. They were in South watch until about a week ago, and then they seem to have decided they should come here.. I found them prowling the eyries of Evenspire. They were with Princess Jaslyn at the battle of the alchemists' redoubt.'

'Yes.' Hyrkallan cocked his head. 'I thought Semian was dead. What are they doing here?'

'Been cast out.' Deremis chuckled. 'Said something they shouldn't to Princess Jaslyn and she threw them out.'

'Riders without dragons and one of them a stiff prick to boot. Still, I suppose they can make themselves useful. Right.' Hyrkallan hauled himself up onto B'thannan. 'I'll take us to today's camp then.'

'Is it far?'

Hyrkallan grinned. 'You'll have to wait and see ...' His words fell into silence. Shanzir was pointing up at the sky. Hyrkallan couldn't see what she was pointing at, but it could only be other dragons. 'How many?'

'One, I think.'

'Then we'll take it.' A lone dragon out here meant one thing. The Usurper, sending out her scouts. And still stupid enough to think she can send them out one at a time. Well I'll thank you later for the opportunity to bloody your nose. 'Are you sure there's only one.'

Shanzir shrugged. 'No. It's coming towards us though.'

'Right.' Hyrkallan nodded. 'Deremis, get the scorpion ready as soon as we're in the air. Shan, watch in case there are others. Hey!' he shouted across to the other dragon. Underneath all their dragon-scale armour, he had no idea which rider was which. Presumably the one sitting at the front was Nthandra of the Vale, if the dragon was truly hers.

The riders turned. They didn't seem to have much with them. Certainly no scorpion. Hyrkallan didn't bother shouting at them, but made a series of sweeping gestures, signs that any dragon-knight would understand. Up. Fight. You follow, we lead.

The rider at the front signed back. Understood. They must have seen the interloper too. Am I the only one who can't? Am I going blind? Best not to think about things like that or all the other fears of age, though, lest he start worrying about how long it would be before he couldn't climb onto B'thannan's back without taking his armour off first and having it handed up to him, piece by piece. He shouted at the war-dragon instead. B'thannan turned on surly feet and lumbered into a run, rattling the trees with each step until he launched himself into the reluctant air.

There! He could see it now. A war-dragon. A big one, still coming towards him. Someone either brave enough and stupid enough to fight outnumbered, or else someone with a friend lurking. He wondered if he should have let the hunter make its own choices, let it fly low beneath him and take the enemy from a different angle.

No. I haven't seen their faces. I don't even know who they are. It might be Nthandra of the Vale under that helm or it might be one of the Usurper's spies. No no, you stay close where I can see you. He shouted to Deremis: 'Keep an eye on Nthandra's hunter too.' B'thannan was in his prime, though, one of the best dragons in the realms. Hyrkallan was one of the best riders and Deremis was one of the best scorpioncers. He shouldn't worry. The Usurper's riders, they were the ones who should be afraid.

They came closer and closer. Abruptly, the unknown war-dragon turned and started to climb. Hyrkallan made as if to follow it up. B'thannan's nose came up ...

'Hunter!' shouted Shanzir. Hyrkallan still didn't see it but he wasn't surprised. The Usurper's war-dragon did have a friend after all.

... and dived down again. Shanzir was wrong; there wasn't just one hunter with the war-dragon, there were two, both shooting up from the trees. An ambush, exactly as Prince Lai laid out in his Principles of War, Except Hyrkallan was supposed to be flying up right now, blissfully unaware of what was coming from below, instead of down, straight towards the ambushers.

'Go for the one on the left!' he roared at Deremis and veered B'thannan towards the hunter on the right. Hunters were faster and more agile, but not when struggling to climb against a war-dragon diving towards them. A war-dragon more than twice their size ... Hyrkallan grinned. He could almost feel their surprise and their fear. The hunters both turned and started to dive back towards the ground but they were too late. All they managed to do was to expose their riders even more. He felt the saddle and harness shudder as Deremis fired the scorpion, and then B'thannan, all fifty tonnes of him, slammed into the back of the nearest hunter. Both dragons shrieked and then pulled apart. Except now the hunter's riders were in B'thannan's jaws.

And that's the end of you. Hyrkallan spared a glance for the riderless dragon as it spiralled down, looking forlornly for its riders and a place to land. Then he looked for the war-dragon. It was above and behind him, wings tucked in, hurtling towards him. Trying to do to him what he'd done to the hunters.

Except that doesn't work when my dragon's bigger than yours. Doubtless whoever was on the war-dragon expected B'thannan to dive and run and for the fight to turn into a chase, but Hyrkallan was having none of that. He turned B'thannan sharply in the air, facing his enemy head on. He didn't have time to pick up much speed, but even war-dragons had some sense of self-preservation. They both swerved and passed each other close enough to touch, belly to belly; claws and jaws and tails reached around each other, trying and failing to get at the other's riders.

They flew apart. Hyrkallan glanced over his shoulder. First I ruin your ambush, then I even the odds and now I have the heights. You must be wondering who it is you're facing. I am Hyrkallan, dragon-master of the north! Winner of the tournament a decade ago when Hyram took the Speaker's King. And a decade before that as well, when it was Iyanza. He felt his harness shudder again as Deremis loosed another scorpion. B'thannan turned and Hyrkallan saw Nthandra of the Vale swoop past the enemy dragon. She raked it with fire, and then her hunter managed to wrap its tail around one of the war-dragon's riders and pull, and its whole harness fell apart. For a moment everything that had been on the back of the war-dragon hung in the air, one end still held fast, the other hanging from the hunting-dragon's tail. Riders, scorpions, saddle, everything, all of it stretched out in a line, dangling in the air.

For a moment. Then the dragons pulled apart, the line went taut and snapped, and everything fell in a lazy cloud of pieces towards the ground.

That's that then. The last of the enemy dragons, the second hunter, was already skimming away. B'thannan would never catch it and he wasn't about to risk Nthandra. Not after a victory like this. Let the Usurper hear all about it. Let her send out ever more scouts to look for him.

The war-dragon was heading for the ground now. Nthandra was following it down. She had every right, since she'd made the kill. Hyrkallan tipped B'thannan skywards once more. Let her pick up the grounded dragons while he flew circles overhead, watching in case the hunter came back.

'It's a good day!' he bellowed back to Deremis. 'Three new riders and now three new dragons. That's twenty wings we have now. We'll have to start our own eyrie soon!' He laughed. Deremis and Shanzir didn't answer, but that was probably because they hadn't heard him over the noise of the wind. Or else they had, and he hadn't heard them. He let his eyes scan the skies one last time, then turned back to them.

Not the wind. Deremis was sprawled away from the scorpion, speared by a shaft half the length of a man. It had gone right through him and nicked at Shanzir as well, caught her in the top of the thigh. Blood was everywhere. Hyrkallan blinked, as if that might somehow make the blood and the scorpion bolt go away. Deremis? My brother? He couldn't see properly. For a moment he didn't know why. Then he understood. His brother was dead. He couldn't see because his eyes had filled with tears.

'Shanzir!' He put a hand on her shoulder and shook.

He didn't hear her, but she moved an arm, made a jerky gesture to tell him that she was hurt, and badly, but that she wasn't about to die. He promptly forgot about her and stretched out past her for his brother.

'Deremis!' Their harnesses held them both too tightly for him to reach. He couldn't even see his brother's face, hidden behind his helm.

He hadn't seen the enemy riders fire their scorpion. Couldn't even think when it had happened. He shook his head. They must have fired as the two dragons passed and pulled apart. He'd felt the shudder as Deremis had fired. They must have fired back.

He shivered. A foot to the left and Deremis would have been alive and Shanzir dead. A foot the other way and perhaps he himself would have been hit. Two or three feet and they'd all be alive. Two dragons passing at speed, in such a way ... A desperate piece of luck to hit a rider like that, and yet there was his brother, right in front of him. Dead.

Below, Nthandra of the Vale circled over the riderless war-dragon. Someone was going to have to bring that one home without a harness. Most riders tried that once, when they were young and stupid and thought they were immortal. Most of them didn't try it again.

I'd do it. Hyrkallan reached out for his brother again. I'd do it for you. But Shanzir was hurt and someone had to fly B'thannan. As he watched, Nthandra looped her hunter through the air, dived and almost landed on the war-dragon's back. She pulled up at the last possible moment, and as she did, one of the riders with her jumped. He landed on the war-dragon's back and somehow managed to stay there. Nthandra made one more pass and then flew on, chasing the fallen hunter.

You'd do that would you, old man? He could almost hear Deremis laughing at him. You'd do that? I seem to remember you tried the same thing twenty-five years ago, before you went fat and half blind.

You slid off, broke one arm and three ribs and almost got trampled if I remember it right. We were all very impressed. After we'd finished laughing at you.

'I didn't see any of the rest of you try.' Hyrkallan swallowed hard. Up here, where no one could see, he could afford to shed a tear and whisper words to the dead. Up here, but not on the ground. There will be a pyre, my brother. We'll send you on your way as though you were a king. We'll sing your name and send you to the ancestors, and then I swear to you, one way or the other, I'll bring this Usurper to her knees.

Later, back among the rest of the Red Riders, Hyrkallan took his brother's armour. They burned his body and sang old songs of battle and victory and loss. After that, Hyrkallan gave them leave to celebrate what they'd gained. Three dragons, three riders, an alliance with Almiri's eyries and a bloody nose for Zafir. Enough to make any young rider drunk with excitement.

He left them to it and slipped away. Without Deremis, their victories felt hollow. Others might have drunk themselves into a stupor or lost themselves in Souldust, but Hyrkallan had no use for such things. Instead he sat alone in his tent, still and straight, and recited the names of all the riders who had died on the Night of the Knives, all the riders killed by the Adamantine Men on the Usurper's order. He added his brother's name to the list, and then did what he did every night. Planned Speaker Zafir's downfall in fierce detail, step by step by step by bloody step.

 

 

4

 

The Blood-Mage

 

 

Jostan hadn't brought a tent with him. He hadn't brought a bedroll or any blankets either, or indeed anything that might have been useful. Semian was no better off. Nthandra had some blankets but no tent. They ended up, all three of them, in the tent that had belonged to Hyrkallan's brother simply because it was there, and because Deremis didn't need it any more. They watched Deremis burn. Hyrkallan and some of the other riders sang songs and Jostan sang with them. Nthandra stared at the fire. On and off she wept. Thinking of Deremis perhaps, but more likely of all the menfolk she'd lost. From time to time Jostan wondered where he was. He had almost no idea. They'd crossed the Great Cliff and the Silver River valley and then veered west and then south again. Somewhere near the merging of the Purple Spur and the Worldspine. That was about as close as he could guess. Somewhere in the mountains.

Semian stared at the fire as well. Jostan had no idea what he was thinking at all.

When the first flash of the burning was done, Hyrkallan stood up and with a simple gesture he silenced them all. He raised a drinking horn. 'To Deremis, my brother. Another brave and noble and honest rider slain.' He emptied his horn. 'I will mourn him as a kinsman should, but you should not. We are at war, and in war the noble and the brave die. We will be the spark that ignites the realms. We have a victory today. Three dragons gained and three new riders too. That is how my brother should be remembered. So I give you another toast, one to celebrate. I give you Queen Shezira and King Valgar, freed from the dungeons of the Adamantine Palace. I give you Speaker Zafir's headless corpse rotting on a rope!' He raised his horn a second time. 'So warm yourselves at my brother's pyre. Know that he died a fine death and that he would be proud of what we have done, of what we will do tomorrow, and of what we will do every day after that.'

Hyrkallan threw his drinking horn into the fire, turned his back and vanished into the darkness. Nthandra started to sob. Semian stared at the flames.

'It's a strange day,' Jostan muttered.

'He doesn't believe,' whispered Semian. Jostan didn't know what to say to that. Doesn't believe what? It was hard to feel much of anything except bewildered, and perhaps a little pleased that he found himself with a dragon again.

Nthandra reached out a hand and rested it on Semian's shoulders. T believe,' she said.

'Oh, believe what?' complained Jostan. When Semian turned to look at him, Jostan wished he'd kept his mouth shut. In the flickering firelight, Semian looked demonic.

'Rider Hyrkallan does not believe in the name he has given to the men who follow him,' said another voice, standing behind them. Jostan twisted around and found himself looking up at a nondescript man leaning on a staff. About the only thing Jostan really noticed was that the man's hands were scarred and burned and that some of his fingers seemed to be missing. The man with the staff was looking at Semian, and Semian's face had changed. The expression on his face was suddenly one of shock, and even awe. Jostan frowned.

'You do though, don't you?' said the man with the staff to Semian. Semian nodded. 'The problem,' the man went on, 'is that Hyrkallan has no faith.' He crouched between Semian and Jostan. Now the man's face was closer, it seemed familiar.

'I've seen you before,' said Jostan.

'Yes. We both served the same mistress. I am Kithyr. I served Lady Nastria. I was her blood-mage.'

Jostan felt himself turn rigid with a mixture of distaste and fear and anger. Blood-mage. Abomination. He half expected Semian to jump to his feet and reach for a sword, but Semian didn't even blink.

'Rider Hyrkallan chose to call these men his Red Riders because its a common enough piece of folklore. Everyone knows the stories, little parts of the prophecies, handed from village to village, from generation to generation, a little more broken and warped with each telling. The red rider and the pale dragon. Justice and Vengeance. Mostly they forget the vengeance part. Yes, the red rider, who flies from town to town, bringing the wicked to justice for their crimes. Everyone knows that story.'

'But that's not the true story,' whispered Semian, 'is it?'

'Names have a power of their own, don't they, Rider Semian.' The blood-mage smiled thinly. 'In the original revelations the red rider is the herald of the end of the world. The burning of everything. I don't think Rider Hyrkallan has quite such apocalyptic intent.'

Jostan jumped to his feet. 'Semian, why are you even talking to this ... this creature. You know what he is! He told you!'

'We saw some blood-magic once,' said Semian mildly. 'Do you remember, Jostan? It was an alchemist who did it.'

'The queen outlawed its practice! On pain of death!'

'And yet this man worked for her knight-marshal.' Semian shifted closer to the blood-mage and gripped the man's knee. 'I drank dragon-venom and I survived.'

Kithyr nodded. 'Most people do, actually.'

'I had a vision!'

'Also common, I understand.'

'I saw a priest. And a dragon.' Semian seemed to see Kithyr's hands for the first time. 'His hands were burned. Like yours, but worse! He told me what I had to do!'

'And what was that?' asked the magician.

Jostan had had enough. He was already half drunk and the last thing he needed was to listen to Semian going on about his vision again. 'He thinks he's the red rider.' Jostan spat. He expected the magician and Nthandra to both fall about laughing, but neither of them did. If anything, they both looked at Semian with even greater interest. 'Did you hear me? He believes it. Prophecies, end of the world, he believes the lot. He thinks it's him.' There. 'He's crazy. And if you don't think he's crazy, then you're both crazy too.' He walked away and left them to it. Not just crazy crazy, either. Dangerous crazy, Cracked. Mad as a bag of spiders. That sort of crazy. He looked back over his shoulder at the tiny circle of light surrounded by a near-infinite darkness. The three of them were huddled together as if they hadn't even noticed him go. Nthandra had draped both arms over Semian's shoulders now. She'd had her eye on him since they'd arrived, but Semian seemed oblivious. Close by, other riders sat and stared at the fire; around them, looming mountain shapes reached up to gouge dead black holes from the starlit sky. Some drank, others sang softly to themselves. Jostan knew a few of them, recognised more. Several caught his eye and gave him a nod. One or two waved him over to sit with them and share their drink or their sorrow. They'd all known Deremis. He was the first of the Red Riders to fall, and none of them, it seemed, knew quite how to take the news that he was dead. Jostan went and sat among them for a while, but somehow they were still apart. The Night of the Knives, had brought these riders together and he'd missed it. While the Night Watchman and his Adamantine Men had put their brothers and their fathers to the sword, while Queen Shezira and King Valgar had been taken to be tried for treason, Hyrkallan and these few had fought their way out of the speaker's palace. With them, somehow, they'd taken Queen Almiri - Shezira's eldest, Valgar's queen, mistress of Evenspire and now, because of these few riders, the fulcrum to end Speaker Zafir's rule if only the right lever could be found. And Jostan had missed it. Missed it because he was with Semian and Princess Jaslyn at the alchemists' redoubt, facing something far worse, but he could hardly say that, could he? Hyrkallan's riders had all lost friends or family or both, and what did he lose? Nothing. Nothing and everything. They knew, of course. They knew he and Semian had faced the rogue dragons. They knew about the caves and the smoke and fire and the alchemists and the Embers. They knew that he'd shielded Princess Jaslyn and that Semian had taken dragon-venom so that, in being eaten, he might kill one of the dragons. They knew, they just didn't... understand.

They didn't care. There. That was the truth of it. They only cared about Zafir and that she had tried to murder them. Them and their queen.

When he looked again, Semian and Nthandra and the blood-mage were all gone. He stayed with the others for as long as he could bear it and then slipped away, back to their tent. Deremis' tent. He approached it slowly, quietly, not wanting to disturb anyone inside. If Nthandra was with Semian well then he didn't much care either way, as long as she gave him some warmth as well once she was done. He was beginning to understand how she felt. Anything, anything not to be alone.

Sure enough, as he crept close, he heard whispered voices from inside.

'I can feel it. I know it's there.'

'Yes.'

'I need to know. I need to know if I'm right.'

'Yes.' Jostan slipped closer. The first voice was certainly Nthandra. The second didn't sound much like Semian.

'It is true.' Jostan had almost reached the flap of the tent. He froze. She was with the blood-mage. The thought made him want to be sick. He could almost see her, naked, straddling him while he pawed at her with his ruined fingers.

'Let me touch you.' No! Don't let him touch you! 'Yes. It is true. You carry a child within you. You carry a boy, Nthandra of the Vale. You carry your dead husband's heir.'

'What do I tell the child when it's born? That it has no father?'

'Have a few years of joy with him and then see if perhaps the alchemists would take him.'

'They won't. He has a bloodline. Even if he doesn't know it.'

'You could give him to the Adamantine Guard. No one will care whether he has one father or ten.'

'No! I'd rather cut his throat when he comes out of me than give him to Zafir.'

'The speaker will be long gone by then.'

'I said no!'

'Then tell him whatever you wish. You tell him that he carries all that is left of his father within him. Make him his father's son. Sit him on whatever throne is his.'

No one will believe me.'

'No.'

Jostan couldn't move. He ought to slip away, come back later, but he couldn't. He couldn't move forward either. He needed to see and yet was too afraid to look.

'Because behind your back they call you a whore, Nthandra of the Vale.'

'He'll be a bastard. It's not fair.' Suddenly she was shrieking. 'We were to be wed as soon as he came back! I was unbroken! I never lay with another man.'

The magician's voice softened. 'It is unfair, but think of this son as a gift. Men such as he are often born to be great. Destiny has fingered your son, Nthandra of the Vale. Do you want him to be great?'

'Yes!'

'I can help with the hole inside too. With the helplessness, the hopelessness, the uselessness. I can help you make all that go away. If you want me to.'

'Yes.' Her voice was quiet now, sobbing. 'Please.'

'Which one, Nthandra of the Vale? I can do only one.'

'The child then,' she said, her voice so broken that Jostan could barely understand her. 'I owe it to him.'

'Greatness and happiness are rarely the same thing. You know that.'

Jostan didn't hear what Nthandra said next. He wasn't sure if she even said anything at all. Then he heard the magician again.

'So be it. Will you give yourself to me, Nthandra of the Vale. Your body and your soul must be mine.'

A real rider, he knew, would have heard enough. A rider like Hyrkallan or Deremis would burst in on them right now. He knew that. They'd kick the magician out of the tent and send him packing, either with a boot or with a sword. Nthandra might curse and wail and spit at them, but they'd do it anyway because it was right. Not because it was wanted, but because it was right.

And I am not like them. He silently turned and moved a little way away. Too far to hear their whispers but close enough in case they turned to screams. They didn't. After twenty minutes the blood-mage came out. He straightened his clothes, brushed himself down. He paused for a few seconds and looked straight at where Jostan was sitting, invisible, buried in shadows. Then he went away. Jostan stayed where he was — long enough, he thought, for the magician to be far away — but before he could bring himself to move, Kithyr was back and now he had Semian with him. They walked right past him.

'... with this,' said the magician.

'If I must.'

'You must. Unless you are a charlatan like Hyrkallan.' 'It seems wrong.'

'Needs must, Rider Semian. Hyrkallan wears the legend. You must live it. Once you have her, others will follow. I can see to that...'

They parted at the entrance to the tent. The magician walked away for a second time and Semian went inside. The noises that began soon after were easy enough to understand. Jostan waited for them to finish, and then waited a little more before he got up and slipped inside. The air was hot and stale and smelled of Nthandra. She was lying tight against Semian's back. From the snores, they were both already asleep. Jostan curled up beside her, close to her because close felt better. When he woke later on in the small hours of the morning to find her pawing at him, he didn't even think of turning her away.

 

 

5

 

Drotan's Top

 

 

'We need a harness for the war-dragon.' Hyrkallan's face was a mask of stone. Semian watched him carefully. The other riders had been up late, celebrating or mourning or both. He couldn't blame them for that; they'd all lost friends; brothers, fathers or lovers. Some of them were barely awake. Some had wept when they'd burned Hyrkallan's brother, but as for Hyrkallan himself, his eyes had stayed dry then and they stayed dry now. That deserved respect, Semian thought, to lose a brother and still stay true to your purpose. In a way, Semian was glad that someone had died. Not that he had anything against Deremis; he barely knew the man's name. But yesterday had mixed triumph and tragedy and spared him from more attention. He didn't want that. Not yet.

'We need ammunition for our scorpions and food for us. And potions,' Hyrkallan continued.

Semian glanced at the piles of barrels and crates that he'd brought from Almiri's eyrie. Good for a week or two, perhaps, but they needed to fend for themselves.

We need to fend for ourselves, he reminded himself. He was one of them now. For better or for worse, he wasn't sure. But he had to start somewhere. He was already slowly turning Nthandra. Others would follow.

'Since none of these things are going to make themselves, we're going to steal them. The Usurper owns a tiny eyrie on the edge of the Spur. Drotan's Top. Understand this, though. There's to be no burning, no slaughter unless there has to be.'

Semian pursed his lips and clenched his toes at that. No burning?

'We take what we want and we leave everyone alive when we go. We take their dragons, their weapons, their food, their potions, everything we can possibly use, but we do not take lives. Let the Usurper's servants live to tell of us. Let them spread fear.'

That, at least, Semian could agree with. The Great Flame was coming. Let them tell of us indeed.

Hyrkallan had already turned his back, heading towards the monster B'thannan. Semian knew of Hyrkallan's beast — every rider in the north had probably heard of it — but he'd never seen it until they'd reached King Valgar's eyrie; then Deremis had come for his secret meeting with the queen, pledging Hyrkallan's support to her if she would pledge hers to him, and B'thannan's landing had shaken Evenspire to its roots. B'thannan was enormous, by far and away the biggest war-dragon Semian had ever seen, almost as long as a hunter but three times as massive. He felt small enough as it was, surrounded by a score of dragons that could crush him with a careless step.

A pity it's not white. The war-dragon he'd stolen from Speaker Zafir's riders wasn't white either. There weren't any white dragons. Queen Shezira had managed to breed one as a present for the viper Jehal but somehow it had broken free. Eventually the Embers had killed it by poisoning themselves and then being eaten. Or at least that was what people believed. The white dragon flies free. The flames of destruction have come, and out of the flame, the red rider shall be born. It will come to me, somehow. Vengeance. And I will ride it.

Any dragon was better than no dragon for now. He and Jostan had left Valgar's eyrie without mounts of their own and fate or destiny or perhaps sheer blind luck had provided for them. Fate would provide again, when it was ready. He mounted his stolen dragon and launched into the air with the rest of the Red Riders. This one would be called Vengeance too.

Hyrkallan led them straight to Drotan's Top. They shot between the white-capped mountains of the Worldspine, among sharp narrow valleys filled with trees until they reached the Silver River, a dozen dazzling threads of water knotted and twisted together and gleaming in the sun. Hyrkallan led them low, the wind wet with spray thrown up by the sheer force of B'thannan's wings, screaming past Semian's face. As the valley grew wider and the mountains either side shrank to hills, they began to climb again. In the distance to his right, Semian saw the faint outline of the Great Cliff, the sheer walls of stone that marked the start of the Purple Spur.

Hyrkallan changed course now, leaving the river behind to rush on to its doom in the caves of the Silver King's Tomb. They turned south, straight at the Great Cliff, climbing ever higher until they were a full mile above the ground and the hills of the Blackwind Dales stretched out below like the wrinkled old skin of some ancient desert mystic. Then the Great Cliff rushed to meet them. It ripped away the space below and suddenly they were shooting between jagged peaks of white-capped stone again. Through the neck of the Spur for an hour or more, skimming over thick carpets of trees and racing rushing water until the mountains fell away and so did the rivers, and they emerged the other side into the Maze. Here they flew lower still, sinking among the narrow pillars and canyons carved from dry barren stone. No trees grew here in the warrens of the Maze, and as they followed the helter-skelter waters from the Spur downwards, the air grew dusty and warm. Walls and columns of stone flashed by in streaks of yellows and oranges and reds, punctured now and then by black pits of shadow. Piece by piece, the stone walls fell away, first one layer, then another, then faster and faster in a blur until the whole landscape collapsed away and spat them and the waters below into the abyss that was the Gliding Dragon Gorge, the great rent in the land torn by the might Fury River below. They crossed the gorge, using it as cover, climbing steadily, creeping up to the cliffs on the other side so low that the tails and talons of their dragons scraped the stone. When they emerged on the other side, there it was. Drotan's Top, perched on a long flat hilltop overlooking the fringes of the gorge. Half a day of flight and then to war with no warning. That was the dragon-rider's way and it filled Semian with joy.

True to his word, Hyrkallan didn't burn it. Instead he brought the riders in to land. A small company of Adamantine Guardsmen saw what was coming and fled the landing fields for the sanctuary of Hyram's Tor, and that was that. No blood shed. Not even a sword drawn. Semian was disappointed and vaguely disgusted. The Adamantine Guard was supposed to fight to the last man to defend the speaker and the realms. The last ones he'd met, the Embers in the alchemists' redoubt, had understood that. They'd understood that even throwing yourself naked into a dragon's maw could be a victory.

He was still standing at the edge of the landing fields, scowling to himself, when a hand slapped him on the shoulder.

'Drotan's Top is ours. Not bad for your first day, eh?' Semian turned around. The hand belonged to an older rider. One with a very slightly familiar face, but no name to go with it.

'I know you,' said Semian slowly.

'GarHannas.' The rider bowed. 'I served Speaker Hyram before he died. I know you too. Semian. You were at Princess Jaslyn's side at the alchemists' redoubt. You missed the Night of the Knives, but they say you nearly died anyway.'

'But not quite. I was reborn.'

'Lucky for you!' GarHannas grinned. He obviously had no idea what Semian was talking about. 'There are a couple of riders and a score of the Adamantine Guard who've locked themselves in Hyram's Tor. They're trapped and they know it. The alchemist is in there as well. Everyone else is busy taking everything we can carry from the landing fields, but Hyrkallan's gone to get the guard out of the Tor. We need the alchemist, or at least his help, and Hyrkallan doesn't want to burn them.' He grinned again. 'They don't know that, of course. We'll threaten them with fire and offer them their lives if they surrender. Want to hear the old man? He's good for this sort of thing.'

Semian shook his head, absently staring up at the tower. Slowly he dropped to one knee. 'Praise to the Great Flame.' He closed his eyes and murmured a short prayer. He felt GarHannas shift uncomfortably beside him. 'Let the riders standing watch over our captives hear Hyrkallan speak. I will take their duty.'

GarHannas nodded. He started to move away, but Semian shot back to his feet and put a warning hand on the other knight's shoulder.

'I'll give you some words for the soldiers you've trapped, though,' he said. 'You can tell them that those who are devout will be spared. Tell them that those who aren't will be given the choice: turn their backs on the Usurper and serve the Great Flame or they burn.'

'That's not what — '

Semian ignored him and left GarHannas standing there. He waved to Jostan and Nthandra, calling them over. He walked to where the Scales and the other men who were now their prisoners sat, sullen, scared or simply bemused. 'This lot!' He pointed at the Scales. 'These ones serve the Order and the Order serves the Great Flame. They have nothing to do with our fight. Let them go. As for the rest ...' He scanned the prisoners. They were all little people. Huntsmen and craftsmen and labourers and the like. No one of any consequence.

But that was no excuse. He glanced around. The other riders were gone away now, off to the tower to hear Hyrkallan storm and bluster. These souls were his.

'As for the rest! You served the Usurper. You are sentenced to die.' He drew out his sword and counted them as he spoke. Eighteen men and women. Him and Jostan and Nthandra watching over them. Three riders. If they ran, some of them would escape. That's what you should do then, isn't it? Why do you stay?

'Hyrkallan said that we should let them go,' said Jostan.

Semian ignored him. 'Or you may choose a different master. Fall to your knees and pray to the Great Flame. Give yourselves to the fire and you may be reborn. You may live again. Refuse the fire and die now.'

Nthandra hadn't moved. Her hand was resting on her sword. He took another look around to be sure. No other rider was close enough to pay them any attention. They were all busy with whatever Hyrkallan had set them to do.

'Justice and Vengeance!' Semian roared. 'Fire or death!'

They didn't run. They begged and pleaded and cried and one by one fell to their knees, praying as Semian had told them to do. They were liars though. Semian walked among them, and as he passed each one, he laid a hand on their head and saw into their heart. One he found, only one who truly believed. The rest of them were liars, all liars. He wrenched the one soul worth saving to his feet, pulling him up by his hair, and pushed him towards Jostan.

'Take this one away. We'll deal with him later.'

Nthandra still didn't move. She didn't turn away either. She was here for revenge. They all were. And the Flame is with me. Masked as a blood-mage, but I know who you are really are, and you promised Nthandra would be the first. So we will see ...

He went back to walking among his prisoners, waiting until Jostan was out of sight. Two of us now. The rest of them thought they were saved. He could feel it. Liars. All liars. As soon as Jostan was gone, he lifted his sword. And now, truly, we will see ...

'Liars!' he screamed as his blade chopped down. 'You're all liars! Burn in the truth of the Great Flame!' For a split second, as Nthandra drew her own sword, he didn't know whether she meant it for him or for them. Then she stabbed a man as he started to his feet and chopped the legs out from another, screaming at them something that even Semian couldn't understand. The others ran, but not far. The rest of the Red Riders nearby saw to that with bows and swords, mistaking the rush of men for an attack. When they were all butchered, Semian dragged their bodies into a pile. The other riders watched now, faces mixed with curiosity, awe and horror. As much as anything, Semian knew, this was a lesson for them. They were young, most of them, the ones that Hyrkallan hadn't taken with him to the tower. Young and scared and angry. Perfect for his purpose. Some of them had just cut a man down for the first time. Now they were realising what they'd done. Justice, that was what it was. Hard, cold justice. They needed to learn that now, needed to learn what it would mean to follow the Great Flame.

When the pile was done, he called Vengeance. He climbed onto the dragon's back. From up there, he could see right across the eyrie. The bodies below seemed small and distant, not really human any more. Semian closed his visor and Vengeance set the bodies ablaze. 'The Great Flame reclaims its own,' he shouted out. He closed his eyes and let the sound of the fire wash over him.

'What in the name of Vishmir's cock are you doing?'

Semian lifted his visor and looked down from his saddle. Hyrkallan was back, puffed and out of breath. GarHannas was with him, and two other older riders that Semian didn't know.

'What happened?' GarHannas looked sickened. 'What did you do? They were common folk. They had no part in this.'

Semian could only laugh. 'We are all the same before the Flame. Did you take my words to the tower?'

'Are you mad? The alchemist, the servants and one of the riders have come out. The rest of them saw what you did and chose to stay inside.'

'Then you should kill the alchemist for serving the Usurper, and the rider too! The servants from the tower can have the same choice as those we caught outside!'

'And what choice was that? Get down here, Rider! If you claim to serve Princess Jaslyn then I am your lord and you will beg me for mercy.' Hyrkallan looked ready to climb up and rip Semian out of the saddle with his bare hands.

Semian spared him the trouble. He slid to* the ground and spat at the old dragon-knight's feet. 'We are the Red Riders, not some gang of bandits. You should know since you chose the name. If you don't have the stomach for holy work then step aside for someone who does. I'll lead them myself.'

'You will not.' Hyrkallan's fist landed on Semian's jaw, knocking him down. The other riders bowed their heads as Hyrkallan glared at them, one by one. Inside, Semian smiled. He'd seen their faces light up, if only for a moment. Here and there, embers smouldered inside them. Kithyr was right. He would have them. Today, tomorrow, the next day, the when didn't matter; he would have them.

He looked at Hyrkallan as the old knight walked away. And he knows too.

The common folk from the tower were as devious and insincere as the ones outside had been. Semian couldn't see even one worth saving, but Hyrkallan let them all go anyway. He let the alchemist go too. The rider though was one of Zafir's. One that Semian knew. One with nothing worth saving. Even Hyrkallan had to see that. Yet he was merely stripped and whipped and sent running naked away.

'We are the Red Riders,' Hyrkallan shouted at the tower. 'Take those words to the Usurper you serve! We will not rest until justice is served.'

'Justice and Vengeance!' shouted someone else.

'Justice and Vengeance!' came another. Hyrkallan spun around, and the riders fell silent. Slowly he nodded.

Aye,' he said, too quietly for the men in the tower to hear, but the words carried to Semian well enough. 'And vengeance, if justice alone will not serve.'

They finished looting the eyrie, taking everything they could carry and use and destroying what they couldn't. When they left, the tower was still intact. Let them live. Hyrkallan had said. Let them carry my words to where they need to be heard. Semian smiled to himself. Yours. And mine.

Hyrkallan led them back to their camp in the Spur, never straying far from Semian as they flew. As soon as they landed, he and GarHannas took Semian away out of sight of the others. Semian didn't try to resist.

'We've taken another three dragons.' Hyrkallan's voice was a low growl. 'Three more for the Red Riders, three fewer for the Usurper. Another victory. I will not mar it by a hanging. I know you, Rider Semian. I know you served Queen Shezira faithfully and well. I know what you did at the redoubt. So you will merely be flogged, in front of these riders who serve our cause, and we will cut you down in the morning and you will never disobey me again. If you do, you will hang. I'll tie the noose around your neck myself. Do you hear me?'

Semian met his stare. 'Justice and Vengeance, My Lord. For the Great Flame never rests and neither shall its servants.' Hyrkallan shook his head in disbelief and walked away. GarHannas and the two riders who flew at Hyrkallan's side took hold of Semian. He let them strip him and then lead him to a tree and bind him to it. He could feel the Flame, burning triumphant in his heart. The flogging, when it came, was only pain after all, and he was a man who'd been consumed by fire.

Late in the night when everyone was asleep, when it might only have been a dream, a voice whispered in his ear. A woman's voice. Nthandra of the Vale.

'I am with you, Rider Semian. I found the alchemist again, as we were leaving.' A bloodstained knife flashed in the starlight to cut his bonds. 'Justice and Vengeance, Rider Semian. I hear the words. Justice and Vengeance.'

 

 

6

 

The Unbeliever

 

 

Good things never last. Never did, never would. After Drotan's Top, the speaker had to answer. And answer she did. With dragons in the skies and ...

The last of the soldiers was on his knees, gasping. He had an arrow sticking out of his back. Hyrkallan snarled and casually kicked him over. Before the soldier could move, Hyrkallan drove the point of his sword down into the man's belly. The soldier gasped and rolled over. It would take him a good few minutes and a lot of pain to finish dying, but Hyrkallan didn't care too much about that. Sell-swords were scum. The realms would be better without them. At least that was something he could be sure of. As for everything else ...

Three weeks had passed since the heady victory of Drotan's Top. Three weeks of playing cat and mouse with the speaker's dragons. Three weeks of hiding among the mountains, achieving nothing, watching everything he'd aspired to slip away. Three weeks to wonder if he was wasting his time. To think that if he'd stayed in Southwatch, Deremis would still be alive. Three weeks and he'd lost three dragons back to Zafir's patrols and not one single rider had come over to his cause. Three good dragons too. Three weeks to wish the Red Riders had never been born. Three weeks to watch Semian's madness spread a little further every day. Nthandra, Shanzir, Jostan, Riok and the rest. The young ones who thought they could set the world on fire. He closed his eyes. Shanzir hurt the most. She was almost a daughter to him. She flew with him on B'thannan. She was his spotter. She was his scorpioneer now that Deremis was gone.

Best not to think about that. He kicked the dying man in the ribs and then left him to get on with it. Over on the far side of the clearing, Rider Hahzyan and the Picker had another pair of sell-swords and were stringing them up to one of the trees. As he drew closer, he could clearly see that the sell-swords were dead. One of them had had his belly slit open and his guts were trailing all over the ground, dirt and pine needles sticking to them. The other had had his head hacked half off. Hyrkallan was about to ask Hahzyan what he thought he was doing when another figure emerged from the nearby trees. Kithyr. The blood-mage. Hyrkallan stopped. He gave the mage a long hard look and a chill ran through him. Evil. We're driven to this. No wonder they were turning away from him. Now he turned away too. Best to let the mage get on with his business. Best not to watch.

Hahzyan clearly thought the same. Only the Picker stayed. The Picker was another strange one. Not a rider, like the rest of them, but he'd shown his mettle on the Night of the Knives. Hyrkallan had seen him kill two Adamantine Men. No mean feat for a man who didn't even have a sword.

He shuddered. The Picker was one of Knight-Marshal Nastria's curiosities. So was the blood-mage, and now the old knight-marshal was gone and he was left to pick up the pieces. Both the good and the bad.

They'd all fought and fled together. The Picker was a killer and the blood-mage was an abomination, but they were his killer, his abomination, and he was in no position to be choosy, no position at all. Except ... except, did it matter any more? The last news from Evenspire warned that the Usurper had called a council of kings. Zafir was putting King Valgar and Queen Shezira on trial. Hyrkallan had done what he'd done and changed nothing. He'd already failed, hadn't he?

The blood-mage set to work. Hyrkallan turned away and looked for a more comfortable face.

'Jostan!' Rider Jostan looked on the outside the way Hyrkallan felt on the inside. Disturbed. That came from spending too much time around Semian.

Jostan hurried over and gave a cursory bow. 'Knight-Marshal.'

'Take three dragons and search the area. There might be more of these shit-eaters. Take Semian and Nthandra up with you and keep your eyes peeled.' There. That would make life a little more pleasant for the next few hours. A few months ago, Semian had been one of those riders who had his head stuffed so far up his arse that he could see out of his own mouth. And how Hyrkallan missed that Semian. The last thing they needed on top of everything else was a madman. On the surface Semian had been quiet in the weeks since Drotan's Top and his flogging. Done as he was told and not spoken out of turn, but he still had the insane fire in his eyes. He had his converts now too. They gathered around when they thought Hyrkallan wasn't watching.

The Red Riders weren't doing any good. That was the long and the short of it. After the Night of the Knives they'd been heady with amazement at being still alive, flushed with the success of spiriting Queen Almiri out of the palace and back to the safety of her own eyrie. There was rage too, rage at the Usurper who wore the Speaker's Ring, her and her scheming lover Jehal. Justice needed to be done and they'd sworn, as riders of the realms, to do it. And what had they done? Nothing. Burned a few soldiers, stolen a few wagons and spent most of the time hiding. Drotan's Top, was that really such a victory? They weren't even worth the trouble of hunting down properly. Did Zafir the Usurper send riders? Did she dispatch the Adamantine Guard? No, she sent shit-eaters, and poor ones at that. That's what Hyrkallan's riders were worth. Nothing. Because that's what we've done. Nothing.

Nothing. Not because they were impotent, but because he didn't dare. Because Shezira was still alive, and he was too afraid to tip the balance of her fate.

He watched Jostan and the other two jog out of the trees towards their dragons. Semian was limping, almost hobbling. Someone had stabbed him in the leg. Quite a wound by the looks of it. He had been the only one hurt, but then, when they'd engaged the shit-eaters, he'd led the charge.

Hyrkallan sighed. The sell-swords hadn't had a chance. If it had been otherwise, he wouldn't have fought them on the ground. If they'd been at all dangerous then he'd have burned them from the air. They hadn't been anything more than sport. He clenched his fists. Maybe he should have burned them anyway. It would be no more than they deserved. But he'd needed something to fight and burning them from the air would have been too distant, too cold. He'd wanted to feel his steel crunch on the bones of his enemies for once. Because you sold your swords to the murdering bitch who calls herself the Speaker of the Realms and I wanted to see your faces before you died. Because I'm mad. Table-pounding, chair-smashing, see-red mad, and Drotan's Top was three weeks ago and now Zafir's winning and I need to do something, anything, to feel like we have a purpose.

They'd have to move their camp again. A nuisance but hardly a chore. With dragons to ride, they could find another place to hide that might be a hundred miles away. The Maze was huge, the Worldspine endless, and after a while all the mountains looked the same. No one would ever find them. They'd still be every bit as useless, though.

When the blood-mage was finished, Hyrkallan pretended he was too busy with his other riders and sent Hahzyan back to see what the mage had to say. In truth, he didn't know what to do with the abomination. Most likely what he ought to do was kill him out here in the woods. That would be the right thing to do with one like him, and most likely he was going to regret that he hadn't. The magician had been with them on the Night of the Knives but did that really give them anything in common? Likely as not he'd take the Usurper's gold if he knew what she was offering.

'What's the blood-mage got to say for himself?' he asked when Hahzyan returned. The rider looked pale. Was it bad then? Glad I sent someone else.

'The speaker has increased the price on our heads. Enough to draw in every sell-sword across the realms. She now offers her own weight in gold for every one of us. These are only the first. The Maze will be swarming with them before long.'

Hyrkallan nodded, frowning. He wasn't really interested. 'That's a lot of gold. Too much to be true.' But then this was Speaker Zafir. Going back on her word to a shit-eater was hardly likely to trouble her.

'They have to find us first.'

We should give it up. Go home, go back to our eyries. However much he tried to hide it, he'd lost his heart for this the moment Almiri had told him about the trial. Or perhaps it had gone when he'd lit the pyre to burn his brother. He could only see one future now. The Usurper would have her way. His queen would die and there would be war. He didn't belong here any more. None of them did.

Hahzyan seemed to read his mind. 'We're not wasting our time, Knight-Marshal. Every day, word of the Red Riders spreads further.'

'And so what if it does?' Red Riders. How I regret wearing that name.

'Others have already come to us: Semian, Jostan, Nthandra ...'

'Three riders, Hahzyan.' Two of them mad, the third fast heading towards it. Still, Hyrkallan had to smile, if only at the blind enthusiasm. He too had been young and bright-eyed once. A long time ago, before he'd come to see the full measure of spite in the lords and ladies that he served.

'Three is more than none, Knight-Marshal.'

'Semian and Jostan should have been with us in the first place. Semian has also quite possibly lost his mind.'

'But he is a leader. Like you.' And it was true. The more weary and cynical Hyrkallan became, the more Semian burned. When the time came, and it would be soon, he would tell the other riders what they wanted to hear. They would listen to him. That, if nothing else, was a good enough reason to end it while he still could.

They don't need me any more.

'There is GarHannas.'

'Aye.' That there was. GarHannas, who'd served Speaker Hyram. GarHannas was, when it came down to it, Hyrkallan's one cause for hope. An experienced rider, well known, well respected and well liked. There was always the dream that others would follow, that GarHannas was the first, that the trickle would become a flood and riders from across the realms would flock to the Purple Spur to bring Zafir down. Not much of a hope, but it had given him something to cling to. For a while.

Who am I fooling? Kings and queens tear down speakers, not riders. I should fly home. Give up on this charade. Deremis haunted him. His own brother. Killed because of this folly. My folly.

He wouldn't fly home though. They were all too young, these riders. They needed wisdom. If he left them and Zafir wiped them out, they'd be nothing except more souls on his conscience. So instead he watched them pack up their meagre belongings and mount their dragons and then he led them as he should, between the mountains. He look them north this time, away from the majestic dead canyons of the Maze. That's where the sell-swords would assume he was: on the south side where he could easily reach Drotan's Top and the edges of Zafir's realm. A dragon-knight would know better, but the sell-swords would think only of feet and boots and wagons and wheels, not of wings. Maybe that would buy him another week or two of peace and quiet. Long enough for the Usurper to have her council of kings and its aftermath. Long enough to see if anyone else would follow GarHannas. And when they didn't, long enough to talk Hahzyan and the others into going home.

So he took them away, a dozen dragons streaming in a line behind B'thannan, up into the high valleys where the pines grew thicker, higher still towards the snowline, skimming the treetops, keeping low to avoid the eyes of Zafir's scouts; then the dive over the Great Cliff, the mile-high sheer walls of stone that made the northern edge of the Spur, down into the valley of the Silver River below. Hyrkallan had been flying dragons for thirty years. He'd been to every part of the realms. He'd spent half his life soaring high above the endless Desert of Stone and among the dead peaks of the far north of the Worldspine. Even so, crossing the Great Cliff still took his breath away. The sudden absence of the world below gave him vertigo and in the dive that came after, the wind roared so fast it seemed it would tear him out of his saddle. Even behind his visor, he couldn't open his eyes but had to trust to B'thannan not to simply plough into the ground. B'thannan loved to dive, loved the speed. All dragons did.

He almost blacked out as B'thannan pulled out of his dive and arrowed above the water of the Silver River leaving a shock of spray in his wake. And then the moment was gone, the magic and the wonder, and he was left as he'd been before. Old and bitter. He led the way down the valley, back to a place they'd been before Drotan's Top, hardly even noticing the hills turn to mountains as they drifted past. He took them to the far end of the Purple Spur, to where it merged with the immensity of the Worldspine. Far enough away that the Adamantine Palace was a full day's flight away. That was enough. So distant that they were hardly a danger to anyone but themselves. Then he watched them make their camps there, walked among them, helping them where he could.

He'd keep them here, he decided. Waiting, watching, listening until they got bored. It was all in the hands of kings and queens now. Another week or so and he could put an end to this mistake and they could all go home.

He hadn't even put his tent up, hadn't even washed the sell-sword blood off his gloves, when the revolt began.

'Marshal.' Hyrkallan closed his eyes and wished for strength. Rider Semian.

'Rider.' He didn't turn around. He didn't want to even see Semian.

'Marshal, I think it's time you went home.'

Now Hyrkallan did turn around. His lips curled and he laughed bitterly. 'Really, Semian? You might be right, but you're the last person I expected to say such a thing. So what do you propose? Should we wait a little while until the others see the light, or has your little coven discussed this amongst yourselves already. Shall we all pack up and leave right now?'

Semian shook his head. 'No, Marshal. You should go home. The riders who followed you here hunger for justice and vengeance. That is what you promised them. Yet you have not led them against the speaker. We have done nothing except except flap our wings. The speaker barely knows we exist. Drotan's Top should have been a beginning and you have made it an end. Since then we've done nothing but wither.'

And you propose?' Why was he asking? Semian was as transparent as glass.

'Princess Jaslyn needs you. She needs a knight-marshal who will guide her with caution and wisdom. These men need fire and glory and death.' His face was solemn. He believed every word.

Hyrkallan laughed and shook his head. 'And do you mean to give it to them?'

Semian nodded. 'Yes, Knight-Marshal. I will lead them to glory. I will lead them to the Adamantine Palace itself.'

'No.' Hyrkallan wanted to slap Semian for being so stupid. 'You won't even get close. You will lead them to their deaths.'

'Then they will be glorious deaths, Hyrkallan. Better than this.'

'No, they will not. Rider Semian; they will be ignoble and barely remembered. You will all be gone and then you will be forgotten.'

And maybe the realms would be all the better for it He turned away from Semian and tried to put the man out of his mind. Madness. Madness and death. That should be his mantra, not justice and vengeance. That was the way of the dragon-priests. If someone set them on fire, they'd probably rejoice.

For a moment he smiled. Now there was a thought.

 

 

 

 

 

7

 

The Price of Asking

 

 

Jostan helped Semian out of his armour. Inside, his left leg was bloody down to his foot.

'It doesn't look too bad.' Jostan scratched his chin. The cut was ragged but didn't seem too deep and the bleeding had already stopped. Jostan pressed a wad of cloth over the wound and started to strap it to Semian's leg. 'It shouldn't give you any trouble when it heals. Not like the arrow that sell-sword left for you.'

That spawned a moment of tense silence. Semian still limped from that and Jostan knew it pained him sometimes too. Maybe that's why he'd been so keen for a taste of sell-sword blood.

Semian spat. 'This is absurd.' He clenched and unclenched his fists. He'd be pacing as soon as Jostan was finished. 'We should have burned those sell-swords. We could have burned them from the air or from the ground. Why did we have to fight them?'

'It felt good to do something at last.'

'Maybe so, but we should have been fighting Zafir's riders, not shit-eaters. We should have been fighting them weeks ago.' Jostan tied off the bandage and sure enough, Semian shot to his feet and started to pace. 'We have a calling, Jostan. We must answer it.'

'You know there's going to be a council of kings and queens. You know he's waiting for that.'

'Which is wrong' Semian stamped his foot and then winced. 'We should be burning the speaker's eyries. All of them. We should be showing the kings and queens of the realms who we are. They should fear us. Hyrkallan has to go.'

Jostan looked down. 'Even the Syuss have more dragons then we do,' he said quietly. 'What's to fear?'

'Hyrkallan needs to go,' said Semian again. He pulled on a light riding shirt. 'Princess Jaslyn will need him for the war. I told him that. I need to find Kithyr. Wait here for me.'

Semian didn't wait for Jostan to say anything. He pushed his way out of their tent and limped into the twilight. Jostan watched him go. Hyrkallan won't listen to you. He fyiows you're mad. He knows you don't give a fig about what happens to Queen Shezira any more. This is something else for you now. You and all the others who've forgotten why we fly together. He could have said it too, and it wouldn't have made a jot of difference.

Nthandra ducked into the tent. At least Jostan could understand why she followed Semian. He'd given her a new family, something to fill the hole.

'Where's Semian?'

'Gone looking for the blood-mage.' Even the word left a sour taste in his mouth. 'He was hurt.'

'Nothing serious. The wound's already closed.' Shanzir and Riok followed her in, and then Leistar and Mallizan and Joen. Semian's coven. No, they were the blood-mage's coven. Semian just gave him a voice.

'Is he here? Is he all right?'

'Yes, yes,' Jostan mumbled and watched them sit down. They were all here for Semian not for him. But why? What do you see in him? Why do you believe in him so? Shanzir still looked pale from the wound she'd taken when Deremis had died. She was lucky. If a scorpion hit you, you were dead, and that was that. Almost no one ever got injured by a scorpion. Jostan had seen the wound in her leg, and it was huge, even though Deremis had taken the worst of the impact for her.

The Picker and Kithyr came in last. They were at the heart of this, but Jostan didn't have time to think about that before Semian followed them in.

Kithyr cocked his head. 'So?'

'I told him we should be burning the speaker's palace instead of her filthy hirelings. He said we wouldn't get close. You will lead them to their deaths, ignoble and barely remembered. That's what he said.' Semian spat. 'He's too old and too cautious. He doesn't belong here any more.'

'Is that what you would do, Semian, if you led us?' asked Shanzir. 'Would you lead us against the palace itself?'

'Yes!' Semian's eyes flared for a moment. 'Yes! Yes, we'd burn her on her own throne.'

'The palace is defended by the Adamantine Guard,' Jostan heard himself say. 'With so few dragons we'd never get close enough. They would shoot us down.'

The blood-mage closed his eyes. 'Not if they didn't see you.'

'And how could they ...' How could they ndt see us? But no one was listening to Jostan. He wasn't one of them and they all knew it. They were all looking at the mage.

'How?'

'Is it possible?'

'Could it be done?'

Ripples of wonder spread among them.

Kithyr pursed his lips. Jostan felt a sickening smugness radiate out from the magician, but none of the others seemed to notice. 'Do you know,' he asked, 'how the dragons were tamed?'

'By potions brewed by the alchemists,' snapped Semian. 'Could it be done or not?'

'You are wrong about that,' said Kithyr softly. 'The alchemists came later. When the dragons were tamed, there was only blood-magic. In the stories I was taught there were other magics once, but they went when the dragons came. After that there was blood or there was nothing. There were no cities of men, no great armies, not even towns. All that existed among what we called the realms were frightened bands of wild men who were little more than animals, hiding in the fringes of the world, in the caves and the hills and the mountains and the forests where the dragons didn't find them. And there were lost places, places left behind by the sorcerers who had once taught us our craft before they abandoned the world. The greatest among them were the three fortresses of the Pinnacles. And that is where the dragons were tamed.'

'The Pinnacles?' Kithyr had their rapt attention now. The Pinnacles were Zafir's palace now.

'That was the greatest of our strongholds. Encased within the stone, the dragons could not reach us. We laboured always, day and night to find a way to tame them. For as long as we could remember, we had failed, and yet we laboured anyway and always to no avail. Until the white sorcerer came to us, that is. He had no name that we could understand, for he was the last of his kind. He wore armour of quicksilver. He carried the Adamantine Spear. Where he walked, the dragons obeyed him. He did not ask our consent to rule us. He simply did. His commands were few, but if they were not carried out above all other things, he would turn a hundred men to dust with a flick of his finger. We called him the Silver King. It was the Silver King, not any mortal human, who tamed the dragons.'

Kithyr paused. He fixed his gaze on Rider Semian. 'There is always a way. In time, the Silver King took us to a place, to what has become the alchemists' redoubt. To the caves there.' He smiled. 'What do you know of the alchemists' secrets? There are certain moulds and mosses and lichens that grow in the caves there, yes. The sorcerer showed us how to make potions from those that would tame the dragons. But there was more to it than that. It needed a sacrifice, you see. Blood. Death. A soul.' He smiled again, this time at Jostan. 'You've been there, Rider. Perhaps you know. The alchemists don't need blood any more. Do you know why?'

Jostan, despite himself, shook his head.

'No. Because that is where the Silver King taught us his greatest secret, that anything and everything was possible if the sacrifice was right. Because we blood-mages learned that lesson well and there and then made a pact. We all gave of our blood and we bound the demon-sorcerer to our will and took his blood instead. We held him down and split open his skull and took out his spirit, which was like a luminous silver snake. I imagine he's still there, still bound by our blood-magic, still pouring his life energies into the potions the alchemists make to keep the likes of you in the skies. It was hard, the hardest thing we ever did. It cost us a great deal of our power, all of us. Look at us. Reviled and hated while our little brothers the alchemists, who were once our apprentices, rule over everything.' He grinned. 'I suppose you think that it is the speaker who wields the power ...'

Semian stood up and loomed over the mage. 'Can. It. Be. Done?'

Kithyr didn't flinch. He met Semian's eye with a lazy gaze. 'My point, Rider Semian, if you must have it so soon, is this: If blood-magic can be made to tame dragons and to enslave gods, why then ves, it can do a little thing such as make men blind. Yes, it can be done. But there would have to be a ...' Kithyr pursed his lips. 'There would have to be a sacrifice.'

And here it comes. Jostan sat back to see what would happen. How many of you are actually ready to die for whatever this is? Because it's certainly not going to be me.

Semian gave a decisive nod. 'Whatever it takes.' He looked at Nthandra, who nodded, and then the others. They nodded as well. Then he clasped Kithyr's hand. 'Whatever it takes, Kithyr, we will do. We will bring the speaker to her knees and burn her on her throne.'

One by one they got up and left for their beds. Jostan watched them go in disbelief. Maybe the ease of today's victory had gone to their heads. Maybe that was it. Maybe that's why they weren't thinking. The speaker's palace was guarded by two hundred dragons and ten thousand Adamantine Men. In times of war, the walls and towers could be be lined with five score scorpions on every side, exactly according to the rules of Prince Lai's Principles. Even a hundred dragons wouldn't be enough, and the Red Riders had what? Twenty?

'Jostan, walk with me.' Semian was offering Jostan his hand, Jostan stood up. He glanced uneasily at Nthandra and Kithyr, the last left in the tent. He never felt comfortable leaving them alone. The blood-mage had had a sickening interest in Nthandra from the very day they'd arrived.

Semian was tugging him away. 'Leave them, Jostan. I know you mean well but she doesn't need your protection.'

'She's not even old enough to be called a rider, not really.' But he didn't resist. He let Semian push him gently outside.

'That's war for you.'

'Are we at war?'

'Yes.' Semian put an arm around Jostan's shoulder, something the old Semian would never have done. 'We all loved Queen Shezira, but there's nothing we can do for her. We have to look past that. Zafir will execute her and nothing we do will change that.'

As if you cared. 'Rider Hyrkallan doesn't agree.'

'I lyrkallan should go home. Jaslyn will need riders like him for the war. She needs riders like you too. And there will be a war, Jostan. The Great flame has shown it to me.'

Jostan felt something inside him break. 'Are you sending me away, Semian? Are you telling me you don't want me here with you ?'

Semian shrugged. 'You only came because Jaslyn sent us both away. I know how you used to look at her. I felt the same way for a while. And yes, she's a princess, soon to be a queen, but in war who knows what could happen? The Red Riders don't mean anything to you, Jostan. You came because you had no dragon and nowhere else to go. Well now you have a dragon, and if you go with Hyrkallan then I'm sure Jaslyn will have you back. She will need every rider she can get. Please understand: I don't want you to go if your heart is here, but it isn't, and I don't want you to stay while your heart is elsewhere.'

Jostan looked back. Semian was walking them steadily away from the tent.

'Don't tell me you want to be with Nthandra.' Semian shook his head. 'She's not right for you, Jostan. She's one of us. She's given herself to the Great Flame. She embraces the fire and the fire brings her joy. Have you given yourself to the Flame?'

Jostan shook his head. 'I don't even begin to understand it.'

'You see. You belong with Hyrkallan and Princess Jaslyn and the riders of the north. What we're doing here is ...' He frowned, reaching for something. 'It's something special. You were a good friend, Jostan, almost a brother to me, but do you see how our paths must move apart? And Nthandra has chosen too. I'm sorry for you that she didn't choose you.'

Jostan closed his eyes. 'She's a girl, Semian.' Even more than Princess Jaslyn was. He wasn't sure which one he feared for the most.

'Yes. And I will look after her.'

'That's not what I mean. I mean that's not why I'm going to stay, Semian. I'm not going back to the north, and I doubt you'll rid yourself of Hyrkallan so easily either. But even if you do, I'm staying with you because I remember who you are and because of what we endured together. Because you are almost a brother. Because I don't trust your new friend the blood-mage, and I think someone should stay to look after you. Besides, who knows, maybe the Great Flame will touch even me given time, eh?'

Semian stopped. He shook his head and looked Jostan up and down, and for a moment Jostan thought he was going to get a rebuke, but then Semian smiled. 'Then you're as good a friend as I'm likely to find and I shall be proud to fly with you. There may come a time when you wish to change your mind. You know you can leave whenever you want. We'll give you everything you need to get back to one of our queen's eyries. I'll even give you a dragon.'

Jostan laughed too. He couldn't help himself. 'You realise you're talking as though the Red Riders are already yours.'

'Oh, they are.' Semian was still smiling. 'Hyrkallan just doesn't know it yet. He and the others who haven't been touched by the fire, they'll leave soon enough. But you can stay. I still have hope for you. Come.' He tugged Jostan into motion again. 'Whatever Kithyr and Nthandra had to say to each other, I'm sure it's said.'

He was right: the blood-mage was gone when they returned. Nthandra was almost asleep, and as Jostan and Semian lay down one either side of her, she made no move to go to either of them. Jostan felt the weight of his arms and his legs and his head pressing him into the ground. A good fight was always a guarantee of a good night's sleep. The last thing he remembered was Nthandra's hand, snaking between the blankets, reaching out and holding his own, squeezing tight. She almost seemed happy. And then the darkness engulfed him and sucked him down into a place so dark and so deep that he thought he might never escape; and as he sank he dreamed, and in his dreams he saw his friend Semian, crying out against the tyrannies of the speaker. He saw riders rally around him, a few at first, then dozens, then thousands, and among those laces were riders he knew were his friends. He saw the riders rise as one and descend upon the Adamantine Palace from all sides, an irresistible tide of fire and scales. He saw the speaker and her lover caught naked and whipped: he saw Queen Shezira freed and given the Speaker's Ring. He saw the realms rejoice and sleep in peace. And amid the teeming happy crowds, through the endless celebra-tion, he saw Princess Jaslyn, smiling at him, reaching out her hand. He saw everything that he wanted to see and he felt a presence at his shoulder, an old and wise and respected mentor whose name he couldn't quite remember, whispering softly in his ear.

Do you see? This is how the world should be ...

The dream stayed with him, more real than the waking world, when Semian shook his shoulder an hour before dawn and told him to get dressed and put on his armour.

'I had a dream,' he said. 'I dreamed that we set the realms to rights.'

In the moonlight he saw Semian smile, no trace of surprise on his face, as if he'd seen it all too. 'Yes. And that is how it shall be.'

He dressed and then reached out to wake Nthandra but Semian stopped him.

'No, Jostan. Let her lie. Let her sleep. Come. It's time to wake the others.'

In a daze he followed Semian from tent to tent. Everywhere riders awoke with a happy puzzlement in their eyes and spoke of dreams. They dressed as Semian asked and followed him until they all stood outside Hyrkallan's tent, waiting patiently. I know what this is, Jostan thought, and yet it was a dreamy thought, and one that didn't seem to have much weight. He half noticed Kithyr sidle in among the crowd, the last of them, pale and shaking and yet with a hungry gleam in his eyes. His head felt full of clouds. Am I drunk?

As Hyrkallan emerged, the riders watched him in silence. Twenty pairs of eyes followed him as he moved among them. Semian was in the middle, standing awkwardly, tipped slightly to one side from the wound that Zafir's mercenaries had given him.

'What?' Hyrkallan shouted, when he couldn't bear their stares any more. 'What?'

They were looking at him, not at Rider Semian, but somehow he was their heart. Jostan could feel it, even in himself. And the blood-mage, standing next to Semian now. Shanzir, Hahzyan, even GarHannas, who really ought to have known better. Hyrkallan was looking at them all, sizing them up. Jostan could almost read his thoughts. Why did I do this? Why did I even start this stupid, doomed crusade?

For Queen Shezira, Jostan wanted to say, to him, but his mouth stayed firmly closed. For the queen you served for all your life, the queen you love more than anyone can know. Except me. I know.

Hyrkallan threw his helm to the ground. 'You want glory?' he screamed at them all. 'Then do what riders have done since time began and serve your queen. You!' He pointed at one of King Valgar's men. 'Go home. Serve your queen. When Speaker Zafir turns her eyes to the north, Almiri will need every dragon Valgar had. You!' He was pointing straight at Jostan. 'Go home and serve yours. Serve Queen Jaslyn.' Jostan blinked and tried to listen, and yet the words seemed slide over him like water over a stone, never sticking in his mind, never quite heard. Hyrkallan clenched his teeth and a shiver of fury ran through him. 'You!' He stabbed at GarHannas. 'Why are you even here?'

GarHannas turned a dangerous shade of red, but he didn't move. Didn't speak.

Jostan bowed his head. Hyrkallan had gone too far. Even he knew it. Screaming and shouting at young blades like Jostan and Shanzir was one thing. Screaming at someone like GarHannas only made him look stupid. He'd lost them.

'Lead us, Rider Hyrkallan.' It was GarHannas who spoke. None of the rest wanted him.

Hyrkallan shook his head. 'No. I'm leaving you. I'm going back where I belong. Where we all belong. I'm going home, and I'm going to serve my queen by making the north so bloody dangerous that Zafir won't dare lift a finger against a single hair on Queen Shezira's holy head. You should join me.' He looked straight at GarHannas now. 'You can piss about in the mountains all you like, but twenty dragons aimlessly burning peasants in the Spur won't even get Zafir's attention. I'm going, and if I ever have to come back, I'll have the whole fucking horde of the north with me, five hundred dragons and fifty thousand men. That's where I should be and so should all of you.'

Jostan was barely listening now. Hyrkallan shook his head in disgust.

Semian spoke so softly that it seemed he was whispering, yet his voice was clear. 'Jaslyn needs a knight-marshal. Shezira needed a knight-marshal, a proper one, not one who could barely hold a sword. A marshal who would lead and conquer, not one filled with so much guile that she was strangled by her own schemes. Lady Nastria is dead, and now you're going to have what should have been yours a long time ago. You would never have let this happen.'

Hyrkallan's brow furrowed and for a moment he looked lost and confused. Then he shook it off. 'Sell-swords. Shit-eaters. That's what we're worth to Zafir. She probably doesn't even know we exist.' He grinned then and laughed. 'If you really want to sting her, burn her eyries.' He spat. 'Yes, Rider Semian. Go burn her palace. If you can.' They were all still looking at him in silence. 'A pox on all of you.'

They watched as Hyrkallan left them, great in his day yet now old and worn. No one said a word. Or maybe GarHannas had said something. Jostan wasn't sure. They all watched B'thannan fly away into the dawn sky and vanish, and then they stared, lost in thought perhaps, or lost in wonder, or simply lost.

'Riders!' The crack of Semian's voice jerked Jostan awake. He felt as though he'd been sleeping and someone had tipped a bucket of water over him. He shook himself and looked around.

Next to him, Shanzir almost fell over.

'What happened?' she whispered. She looked confused.

A dozen yards away, GarHannas held his head in his hands.

'What have we done?'

'Riders!' shouted Semian again. 'Red Riders! Hyrkallan is gone. He has left us, but we remain. We are the Red Riders! We were forged together and we will follow our purpose to our death if that is what the fates demand. I say again, we alone remain! I will lead those who will have me, and we will take the fight to where it belongs. We will fly our dragons to the walls of the speaker's palace and we will make her burn! Stay or go, but do it now.'

Most of them stayed. All except GarHannas and a couple of others, who milled around aimlessly, confused and desolate, only to be herded towards their dragons and sent on their way with rude haste. Semian couldn't hide his glee once they were gone. He stood with the blood-mage beside him and smiled, nodding. It made Jostan feel sick. And yet I stay. Why?

He couldn't listen to another of Semian's speeches so he stumbled back towards their tent to find Nthandra, only to be met by a scream. As he drew near, she staggered out, wearing only a shirt, her hands pressed between her legs. There was blood running down her thighs. Jostan froze; his stomach turned to lead. His face and his hands went numb. He felt distant tears roll down his cheeks. In a flash, he knew exactly what this was. This was the sacrifice Kithyr had demanded.

'Oh ...' He couldn't speak. His lips were made of wood and his tongue tasted of ash. He reached for her and she recoiled, shrieking and wailing like an animal. Then she looked at him as though he was mad. He wasn't sure, through her grief, that she even knew who he was.

'The blood-mage. He did this.' He shook his head. Any moment now he was going to be sick. She's just a girl. 'I am so sorry. I knew ...' He was shaking, horror and rage flooding together. She's too young to be a rider. 'I should have ...' He was after her right from the start, from the moment we came ... 'I'm sorry, Nthandra of the Vale. It's too late, I know, but I'll stop him, Nthandra. Whatever it is, I'll stop him.' He sighed and held his head in his hands, then screwed up his face and screamed at the sky.

No, you won't,' said a voice behind him. An edge burned across his throat. His mouth filled with something hot and salty and he started to choke. He staggered and coughed and blood gushed out of his mouth. He turned and then fell over. He could hear singing. The Picker was standing over him, holding a knife so thin that you could see right through it. Or you could have, if it hadn't had Jostan's blood all over it.

'Suppose you should have gone with the others.' The Picker shrugged and walked away, and all Jostan could see was the sky, fierce and bright. The singing was getting louder. He heard Semian somewhere far away, bellowing promises of blood and fire and victory, and then the singing swallowed everything.

And then it stopped and there was nothing.

 

 

Two

 

Of Princes and Queens

 

8

 

The Lovers

 

 

'Can I kill your bride yet?' Speaker Zafir curled her arm around Prince Jehal and stretched her long neck, tilting back her head, inviting Jehal to sink his teeth into her throat. He duly obliged, nibbling gently at her skin. A few feet to one side of him was a bed. Their bed, high up in the topmost room of the Tower of Air, scattered with silk sheets from the silkworm farms on Tyan's Peninsula. His farms.

'That would hardly be wise, my love.' A few feet the other way was a gaping open arch. More silk fluttered in the breeze. Beyond that, a tiny balcony; then nothing but air and the hard ground of the Speaker's Yard a hundred feet below. He liked it up here. For the view across the palace and the City of Dragons beyond and then the sheer dark cliffs of the Purple Spur and the glittering rain from the Diamond Cascade.

And yes, for the bed too. Although sometimes, when push came to shove as it always did when they were alone, he wondered what would happen if he pushed for the window instead. Two speakers lulling to their death in such quick succession would show such a lack of imagination though ...

'I was wondering whether to have her poisoned, or whether I should simply slit her throat.'

Tedious, tedious. Jehal put on his best smile. How many times had they talked about this? He gave a petulant little sigh and stepped away from her, a little closer to the arch and the empty air. 'Must we go over this again? Lystra is Queen Shezira's daughter. Her other two daughters are already riled enough. They have well over three hundred dragons between them and they want your head. The speaker is supposed to weld the realms into a unity of peace and harmony, not start a war. You should let Shezira and King Valgar go.'

Zafir snorted and turned away from him. 'Let them go, let them go — that's all you ever say. I'm beginning to think you're far too attached to this new family of yours. Let them go? Why? So Shezira can wage war on me? I'd rather face the skinny little rag of a daughter that rests so uncomfortably on her throne. So Valgar can stir trouble on my borders? Let his feeble-minded wife be the thorn in my side.'

She was flaunting herself, letting him see the slit of her under-gown, the long gash of naked skin beneath, all the way to the small of her back. She knew exactly what she was doing, of course. He felt himself stir. 'Not so feeble, my love. She is undoubtedly supporting the Red Riders.'

Zafir threw back her head and laughed and brushed her fingers over the silk sheets on the bed. 'The Red Riders? Twenty dragons loose on my borders, and so far all they've done is burn a few peasants. If that's the best she can do then I've no fear of her. No, they're just loose ends that our idiot Night Watchman failed to clean up when Shezira murdered my husband. Let them brood in the Worldspine for a few weeks. They'll go home soon enough.'

'They stole five of your dragons and they burned Drotan's Top.'

'And I've already taken three of them back. They tickled my feet, Jehal, that's all. Drotan's Top was some huts on a hill. And they didn't burn it. They didn't dare.'

'I remember your face when you first heard the news, my love. Dark and stormy as the Endless Sea.'

She pouted at him. 'They won't be allowed to do it again. The Red Riders are barely even a nuisance now. I'm inclined to let them be for a while. We can make some sport with them after I kill their queen.'

Jehal shifted on his feet. 'They make me nervous.' If I were you, I'd stamp on them. But I'm not, and sometimes it amuses me to watch you falter. He smiled at her. 'Hyrkallan leads them and he's no fool'

Now she yawned. 'Then he'll know to give up and go home.' 'Don't be so sure, my love. He might just burn something that matters first.' He moved behind her and ran his fingers along the skin of her spine. 'Show some grace. Let Shezira go. Let the cloud of suspicion hang over her for the rest of her reign. Let everyone wonder whether Hyram fell or whether he was pushed. The longer you hold her, the more your enemies will rally under her banner. Let her go and some will start to question her. Your Red Riders will quietly fade and disperse.'

Zafir waved him away. 'The world thinks* Valgar tried to have me killed. I'd look laughably weak if I let him go.'

Here we go again. 'Fine, fine. Hang Valgar if you have to hang someone. But let Shezira go.'

'She pushed my husband off a balcony.'

'No, she didn't. He was drunk and he fell, and you were glad to be rid of him. Not only is that something that most of the kings and queens will believe, it happens to be true.' Not quite true, actually, but that's one little secret I'll keep to myself.

'I want Lystra gone, Jehal. Before she gives birth to your heir. Otherwise I'll have to get rid of both of them, and that means two assassins and paying twice as much money. Better to get them both together, eh?'

On some days the window called more loudly than on others. He growled, a mixture of frustration and desire, pushing the thought away. Not yet. 'I am here, my love. Lystra is far away, pining for me no doubt, as any woman would, but not actually having me. I am here, I am yours and only yours. I haven't even touched another woman since you took the Adamantine Spear in the Glass Cathedral and became mistress of the realms.' Although the ancestors know how I've been tempted. More and more of late. I might start with your vapid little sister.

She turned back to him and smiled. It always worked, appealing to her vanity. A hand reached out and stroked his cheek. 'O Jehal, I find that very hard to believe. Is it really true?'

'You know it is, my love.' He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close again. 'I have eyes only for you, no matter how far away you are.'

'Mmm. Don't I know it.' She had a lecherous look on now. Almost done.

'If Lystra dies, her sisters will see your hand in it, guilty or not. You've taken their mother, whom they feared. They grumble and moan and rattle their swords, but that's all. Take the sister they love and they'll fly straight for your throat.'

'My throat or yours?' Zafir tipped her head back again. She shivered as Jehal wrapped his fingers around her neck.

'Both.' He pushed her back, hard and fast enough to startle her, until she was pressed against the bedroom wall. An arch to either side. See, that's how easy it could have been. His other hand felt for her knee and then started upward, pushing its way between the silken layers of her gown. She gave a little gasp and pushed herself into him as he found the heat between her legs.

'I know how much you like to talk of murder.'

'No. This is just the only way I know to shut you up.' He tugged at the drawstrings of his trousers. Her hands moved to his, eager to help.

'Then I'm sure we'll talk of murdering your starling-bride again,' she murmured. After that she didn't say much for quite a while. Not unless the squeals and moans carried some veiled meaning beyond the obvious.

Afterwards, when Zafir fell asleep in his' arms, Jehal lay awake. He stared at the ceiling of the great open chamber at the top of the Tower of Air. The walls around them were little more than a ring of huge arches opening out onto the balcony that encircled the upper level of the tower. He got up and went to stand in one, naked, teased by the wispy gauze of silk that hung rippling in the warm breaths of wind that puffed off the plains. Spread below lay the Adamantine Palace, the heart of the speaker's power. Four huge open yards, each large enough to assemble two thousand men, and overlooking each yard was a massive tower. The Gatehouse first, the oldest, the strongest and the largest tower in the palace, where the alchemists and the Night Watchman and the other senior servants made their beds. Then the vast space of the Gateyard, lined with stables and barracks. After that, the elegant Towers of Dusk and Dawn, black granite and white marble, the Fountain Court and the squat bulk of the Speaker's Tower, the place where the speaker and his or her servants traditionally made their home. Then the largest space of all, the Speaker's Yard, wrapped around the hulking misshapen tumour of glassy stone that was the Glass Cathedral. After that, the palace became a little smaller. The Tower of Air was the tallest tower in the palace, but it was slender and lacking in space, a fitting monument to the vanity of the speakers. Finally there was the Circle Court, the azure Tower of Water and the City Tower. Proper towers again, fit for visiting kings and queens.

Around them all lay the palace walls. Not particularly tall, but they were wide enough to drive a horse and cart right around them. In fact there were several ramps to allow the Adamantine Men to do just that when they were putting their scorpions up. More than anything else, that was what the walls were for: to mount the hundreds upon hundreds of scorpions that would defend the speaker from the dragons of her enemies. The walls, as of now, were empty. Zafir hadn't seen fit to deploy her arsenal. That would show the realms that I am afraid, Jehal...

Jehal stood in the wind and chuckled to himself while his gaze wandered and explored the world outside the palace. Below the low slopes of the Palace Hill, the City of Dragons fed and decorated itself with the wealth and power that oozed from the speaker's presence. Somewhere down there too were the barracks of the ten thousand men of the Adamantine Guard. Past the city, the Diamond Cascade falls poured out from the peaks of the Purple Spur, the water falling so far that it never quite reached the ground but instead filled the city with a perpetual misty haze. The bottomless Mirror Lakes glittered and gleamed and rippled in the breeze. Beside them, the Adamantine Eyrie was currently filled to bursting with riders and dragons from the realms to the south. Very empty of dragons from the north. Through a different arch, the Hungry Mountain Plain stretched away to the south, to the chasm of the Fury River and Gliding Dragon Gorge. Beyond that, far away, lay the warm hills and valleys and meadows of Zafir's home, and then his own, Furymouth, and the sea, and beyond that, perhaps, the lands of the Taiytakei sailors and other places Jehal had never seen. To the east, the plains rolled and twisted into the foothills of the Worldspine, the dominion of the King of the Crags. To the west, they grew slowly more broken and wooded until they reached the Sapphire River and then rose sharply to meet the moors and bogs of King Silvallan's realm. To north, beyond the wall of the Purple Spur, the plains became the great deserts of sand and stone and salt that wrapped the northern realms.

He looked back at Zafir. I stood here naked once, at the windows, when Hyram was about to make you a queen, hooking down at all that was going to be mine. If anyone had seen me here they would have known we were lovers, you and I, and all would have been lost. But they didn't. He tried to look away but it was hard. Too hard. For all her flaws, she was still beautiful. I watched you so many times, through the eyes of the Taiytakei dragon. I watched you writhing and moaning under Hyram, drawing him in to you, and I watched you make yourself sick each time he left. And I watched you writhing and moaning alone, just for me, knowing my eyes were there.

So many fond memories. Below them was the room where he'd watched Zafir poison Hyram and then destroy him as cruelly as she could. Where he'd finished what she'd started and broken Hyram's mind. Where he'd struggled with himself not to throw Hyram off one of the balconies when he was done. Here, from this arch, was where he'd watched, that same night, as Hyram had thrown himself off another one right in front of Queen Shezira, spouting gibberish about kings and queens who'd been dead for decades.

And now ...

And now he was slowly getting bored. He sighed and his eyes fell away from Zafir's skin. The Night of the Knives, they called it behind Zafir's back and to her face too. The night Valgar tried to have her assassinated and Shezira pushed Hyram off his tower, if you were inclined to believe Zafir's version of events. The night that Zafir imprisoned a king and a queen, the first time that a speaker had done such a thing in nearly a hundred years. The night that the riders of the north had fought with the Adamantine Guard and left more than a hundred corpses strewn across the palace. The night that the Red Riders had been born.

That had been a month ago. The next day, High Priest Aruch had placed the flawless shaft of the Adamantine Spear into Zafir's hands and her reign had begun. And then ...

And then? And then nothing, that's what. More than a month of kick-ing my heels around the palace when I should be back in Furymouth, watching over my realm. A month of listening to Zafir bellyache about Lystra. A whole month of nothing to do except...

Jehal looked at Zafir's naked shape, sprawled out before him.

Well it could be a lot worse, and one must confess to having found a few diversions, I suppose.

Above the bed, two pairs of ruby eyes looked down at him from the rafters. Jehal stared back at them. Two golden mechanical dragons, wedding gifts of the Taiytakei, imbued with magics that let him look through their eyes. Perfect spies and yet now he had no one to spy on. He had to wonder, sometimes, why they'd given him such precious things, and why he'd given one of them to Zafir.

No, that wasn't right. He knew exactly why he'd given one to the Speaker of the Realms.

He took another step forward, out onto the balcony until his toes curled over the edge. This time, if anyone saw him, what would it matter? The whole palace knew they were lovers.

This isn't what I wanted. I thought I did, but I was wrong. He glanced back at Zafir, watching her chest slowly rise and fall. If I was speaker, what would I do? Bathe in the power, in the glory, in the knowledge that there was no higher place to be? Yet I see now that the view from up here was far better when it was forbidden.

Shit.

Of all the things that might have happened, of all the things he'd planned for, of all the fates that might have befallen him on his path to this place, here was an outcome he'd never foreseen. He was bored.

Jehal walked back to the bed. He let his eyes linger on Zafir for one last time and listened to her breathing, slow and untroubled. You understand, don't you? That's why you can't simply let Shezira go. Because then it would be over. He leaned down and gently kissed her hair. 'Have a care, my lover,' he whispered. 'Listen to your advisers, for they're no fools. And please let us not become enemies.'

He picked up his clothes, quietly dressed, and slipped away.

 

 

9

 

A Question of Priorities

 

 

Vale Tassan, Night Watchman, commander of the Adamantine Men, most feared soldier in the realms, bowed his head and waited.

'What do you mean, he's gone?' For a moment Speaker Zafir went rigid. Vale thought she might be about to throw something at him. Speakers came and went and Queen Zafir was the fourth that Vale Tassan had lived to see. If he'd been permitted an opinion, it might have been that the others had been immeasurably better. Since he wasn't, he did exactly as tradition and the law demanded. He bowed precisely as low as was required, ready for whatever orders would come his way.

'He has left the palace, Your Holiness,' he said calmly and quietly.

'Idiot. Where did he go?'

Vale bowed again. The action was mechanical, a reflex honed over years. He didn't have to think about it any more. 'To the eyrie, Your Holiness. He went with most of his riders to the eyrie, woke up Eyrie-Master Copas, demanded his dragons be roused and they all flew away, Your Holiness. I believe they flew west, towards the Worldspine and Drotan's Top. What's left of it.' Which put him heading towards the Red Riders, but Vale saw no need to mention something so obvious.

If anything, the speaker's anger grew. Vale watched, calmly indifferent. Adamantine Men were chosen almost before they could talk. Usually they were orphans or unwanted children of poor folk who couldn't afford another mouth to feed. Some were bastard by-blows of higher-born men, conveniently pushed away to a place where they wouldn't cause any trouble. In the Guard, blood didn't matter. Everyone was the same. Vale might have been the son of a king or a fool, but in his own mind he was a son of the Guard, nothing more and nothing less. He'd stood in shield walls with his brothers, the ones who managed to stay alive, for more than twenty years. Together they defied the strength and fire of the dragons. He might have been alone before the speaker's throne but he always felt his brothers at their posts and at their work, not far away. Queen Zafir's anger meant nothing to him. He waited, silent and still, for her to send him away.

'In the middle of the night.' Zafir shook her head.

'At dawn, Your Holiness. They flew at dawn. As soon as there was enough light for the dragons to fly.'

'He hasn't gone west, Tassan. He's gone south. Back to his home and his starling ...' She hesitated. Vale saw it. Other words had been lining themselves up to come out and she'd bitten them back. Vale stood motionless and thought about Speaker Hyram. Hyram the clever and wise. Hyram, who had presided over a decade of peace and prosperity throughout the realms. Hyram, who for reasons Vale would never know had named Zafir, the least worthy candidate by far, to succeed him. And who'd been pushed off a balcony for his trouble. He should have named the King of the Crags. That would have stirred up these fat soft kings we have nowadays. A proper speaker.

He pursed his lips. That was a thought he should not have had. Zafir wasn't looking at him though, so presumably she hadn't noticed. She was looking at Prince Tyrin instead. Tyrin was the fourth or fifth son of King Narghon and Queen Fyon, which made him a cousin of some sort to Jehal. So much had changed in the last month that Vale found himself alarmingly vague about who was who. Princes and princesses seemed to come and go and he was starting to lose track. He supposed he ought to care but somehow he didn't.

The speaker cocked her head. 'And do you know anything about this, Tyrin?' Tyrin was a decade younger than Jehal and clearly wanted to follow him in every possible way. He was looking at Zafir right now; his eyes were stripping her naked and he was wondering how long it would be, with Jehal gone, before she came looking for another lover.

A muscle twitched in Vale's cheek. Were they always so transparent?

Tyrin licked his lips. 'I went to the eyrie with him. He offered to let me ride with him back to the south but I declined. My place is here, Your Holiness, to serve you in any way I can.' He half-smiled, half-leered. If Zafir couldn't see what was on his mind then she was surely the only one in the room.

'Why, Prince Tyrin, did he go?' Her face changed. An almost imperceptible smile, perhaps. A slight change of posture, a slight widening of the eyes, the raising of an eyebrow. Vale couldn't say exactly what had changed but the effect was electric. Yes, she seemed to say. You might yet have me. Even Vale felt it, though the look wasn't meant for him. Tyrin's jaw hung open. If Tyrin hadn't been sitting down, Vale was sure he would have fallen over. Instantly, Speaker Zafir had made him her slave.

He felt a grudging admiration. That was what a speaker did. A speaker ruled. This is why we don't think, he reminded himself. We are the speaker's swords and spears, her shield and armour. Nothing less and nothing more.

'He may, ah, be gone for some time, I think, Your Holiness.' Which wasn't the question Zafir had asked at all but Tyrin's mind was too firmly set on one thing to be working properly any more.

Zafir's face didn't change. No twitch of anger or impatience, despite her rage of only a few minutes ago. 'Why, Prince Tyrin? What do you think will be keeping him in Furymouth.'

'He said he'd had a premonition, Your Holiness. Someone was going to die, someone very close to him, he said. He needed to go back, he said. To see if they could be saved.'

'And who was this someone, Prince Tyrin? Did he say?' Vale heard the slightest change in Zafir's voice. A brittleness beneath the seductive softness. To Vale the danger seemed obvious. Zafir had set a bear trap right right in front of Tyrin's feet. He wondered if the prince would manage to spot it.

'His father, King Tyan, I assume. They say he's been getting steadily worse ever since he returned home.' Vale kept his face still. Well done, little boy. But was that deftness or blind luck?

Zafir pursed her lips. She sat back into her throne, lounging there with the same affected boredom as Prince Jehal would have done. And Tyrin too, if he hadn't been so on edge. 'Very well. Let us begin then. Away, Night Watchman. Jeiros, dazzle us with news from the Order.'

Acting Grand Master Jeiros, acting head of the Order of the Scales and chief alchemist of the realms, stepped nervously out in front of the throne. He'd taken a long time to adjust to his position, Vale thought, but was just now starting to act the part. His predecessor, Bellepheros, who should have lasted a good few years more, had simply vanished one day nearly six months ago. Coincidentally, on his way back from Furymouth. Vale supposed that Grand Master Jeiros had spent most of the first few months expecting his former master to reappear.

'Your Holiness,' he began. He sounded confident these days. 'We are continuing to audit eyries in an attempt to ascertain whether—'

'Yes, yes, yes. You're still counting dragons, trying to work out whether the one that got away died or survived.' Zafir straightened and stamped her foot. 'When you have an answer, I'll be delighted to hear it. Until then, I do not wish to hear daily complaints about how difficult it is.'

'Your Holiness, if you would order a search of the Worldspine—'

'And give Jaslyn and Almiri an excuse to fly their dragons right up to my doors? They might say they were searching, Grand Master, but that would not be what they were doing. If the white dragon is dead then it has been reborn to an eyrie. If it isn't, it hasn't. As you are so fond of reminding us, the number of dragons in the world never changes, so if the white died of your poisons, you can answer your question by counting them. Counting, Grand Master, is surely not too great a challenge, is it? Even Prince Tyrin can count. So when you can tell me that one of them is still missing then I shall listen with more open ears. Until then, no more excuses, alchemist. Now bring me other news.'

Jeiros paused for a moment. He was angry, Vale saw. That's how far his confidence had grown. A month ago he would have been quivering. The speaker and her master alchemist were at odds. In their own different ways they were the two most powerful figures in the realms. Things like that made Vale uneasy. As Jeiros talked about the rebuilding of the alchemists' redoubt, Vale carefully catalogued all the other things that made him uneasy. The Red Riders.

Queen Shezira locked in the Tower of Dusk. Anything about Prince Jehal. The speaker's council — the council had long ago become a farce, that was worst of all. Three of the dragon-realms didn't even have a voice and Speaker Zafir was plainly bored by them. Now that Jehal was no longer present to entertain them with his wit, who would be first to abandon it? Prince Tichane, who spoke for the King of the Crags? Lord Eisal, who listened for King Sirion? Prince Sakabian, Zafir's own cousin? One of the others? The alchemists, perhaps? Or would the speaker herself be the first to go?

Vale, however, was the commander of the Night Watch, and so he would come as he was called and he would listen, even if it was to the empty walls. Today what he heard was the master alchemist of the realms explain how they were still rebuilding the redoubt where the Order made the potions that kept the dragons in check. He heard Jeiros describe in terse detail the damage that had been done by the smoke that the white dragon had blown into the caves, the current poor quality of the whatever it was that they harvested in there, their shortages of men and resources. In a very roundabout way, what he thought he heard was that the potions that kept the realms alive might soon run short. That a wise man would begin planning now for a cull of dragons. No one else though seemed to quite hear the same thing. When Jeiros was done, Zafir batted him away with some scalding remark. No more men would be forthcoming. The same answer as she'd given him day after day after day for weeks now. Vale, who had ten thousand soldiers sitting idle in their barracks, couldn't help but wonder why.

Other men came and went, most of them with little to say of any interest. Vale listened anyway. A war was coming. It was obvious, and yet no one seemed concerned. The council was split, Vale decided, into two equal halves. Those who were too stupid to see and those who simply didn't care.

And then there was him, who would likely be expected to fight it. Presumably none of the rest of them were that bothered if the odd city full of their own people burned, as long as they kept their precious eyries. A cull. His heart beat faster at the thought. Would that not be for the best? At the very least it would make them pause and think.

At last the one man who might have something interesting to say got to his feet. Zaster, the old palace spymaster. 'Your Holiness, there have been movements among the dragon-knights of the north.' Even Zafir straightened very slightly. Now she was only pretending to be bored.

'Go on.'

'Princess Jaslyn has left Outwatch and returned to Sand. Several dragons have been seen heading for the Desert of Salt. She may remain reluctant, but she is negotiating her marriage with King Sirion's son, Prince Dyalt.'

Zafir glanced at Lord Eisal, who shrugged. 'Shezira promised her to my lord in exchange for his support.'

'And then murdered Hyram, my husband and your lord, when that wasn't enough.' Zafir wrinkled her nose and turned back to Zaster. 'And what about Almiri and Evenspire?'

'My spies have seen several dragons flying from the Spur to Almiri's eyrie. And a war-dragon flying back again, heavily laden.'

'Is that it? You've seen a dragon? I could have told you that myself. My riders have eyes too, Zaster.'

'Yes. The war-dragon your riders saw, Your Holiness.' Zaster bowed low. 'B'thannan. Rider Hyrkallan's mount. It confirms that he is leading the rebellion, Your Holiness.'

'Pshaw!' Vale winced. The speaker had half a goblet of wine dangling from her fingers. She'd been known to throw it at councillors who annoyed her. 'What else? Will you dazzle us with the revelation that the sun rises in the morning and sets at night? Of course Hyrkallan leads this insurrection. And Almiri? How much is she helping them? What about Sirion? Does he send aid to them too? Tell me something useful or be silent. I want proof of these treasons, not hearsay!'

Zaster had always been too quick to take offence. His lips drew t ight together. He started to sit down; as he did, Vale found himself rising. It was such a surprise that he didn't quite understand what was happening at first, and then had to wonder whether some sorcery was at work. But no, his own legs, nothing more. He looked from face to face, suddenly uncertain. He wasn't supposed to have opinions, so what in the realms could he he needing to say?

His lcj>s seemed to know what they were doing though, so he extended the same trust to his mouth.

'Hyrkallan won the Speaker's Tournament a decade ago when Hyram took the Speaker's Ring, Your Holiness. And a decade before that as well, when it was Iyanza.'

Zafir gave him a scornful look. 'Since when do Guardsmen speak in the Speaker's Council?'

He bowed and fell silent, but he'd done enough. The spymaster nodded. 'When the talk is of warriors, Your Holiness,' he murmured. 'Hyrkallan is a clever man, a good rider, strong, brave, with all the best qualities. Most of all he has experience and respect. The other riders of the north will follow him. They are much more dangerous with him than without, Your Holiness. As they have already shown.' A thundercloud passed across Zafir's face. No one spoke about Drotan's Top, but it hung in the air throughout the palace. Hyrkallan had bloodied her nose there and it still stung, even if she'd bloodied him back since.

'Give me dragons!' shouted Prince Sakabian. 'Let me smash them!'

Zafir glared him into silence.

He's right though. Any other speaker would have summoned a hundred dragons, sent out the Guard and crushed this nonsense. Zafir does nothing. Why?

Vale felt he ought to have been sitting down but somehow he wasn't. Instead, there were more words coming out. 'Why is he doing this, Lord Zaster? Why did he not go north all along? He has the whole of the north as his weapon if he chooses to use it, for they would follow him. He could force Jaslyn off her throne and come at you with ten times the dragons that follow him now. Why does he not?'

Zafir glared at him. 'If you'd done what was asked of you, Guardsman, then Hyrkallan and his Red Riders wouldn't even exist, would they?' She spat the words out. The fingers holding her goblet were twitching. 'If you'd taken all of Shezira's riders. If you hadn't let Almiri, of all people, escape. I should have removed you from your post there and then.'

Vale bowed. He sat down.

'They need to be dealt with, Your Holiness,' snapped Zaster.

'You should send Watchman Tassan—' He didn't get any further. Zafir's goblet caught him on the side of his head. Hard. Zaster staggered and put his fingers to his temple. They came away bloody.

'You presume to tell me what I should do?' She waved a hand at Vale. 'Send this idiot to finish cleaning up the mess he should never have allowed in the first place? Now that they have their dragons? And how many of the Adamantine Guard shall I throw away into the Maze?' She snorted. 'Very well, Lord Zaster, if they must be dealt with, and if my dragon patrols are not enough to satisfy you, you deal with them. Hire more sell-swords. Put a bigger reward on Rider Hyrkallan's head. On all of them. My weight in gold for every one of them. And while you're at it, they must be getting their potions from somewhere. Get me proof That Almiri is sending them supplies and I will reduce Evenspire to ash. Let their dragons turn rogue and eat them!'

Jeiros jumped to his feet. 'Your Holiness, Evenspire is a city of thousands! As large as the City of Dragons itself! Your dispute—' He bit his lip. 'Our dispute is with Queen Almiri, not her subjects.'

Zafir snarled: 'Then why don't you find some way to lure her away from her defences, eh, alchemist? But after you have finished learning to count.' She turned back to Zaster. Her face softened a little. 'Spymaster, you have not answered the Watchman's question. Why is Hyrkallan pursuing this foolishness?'

Zaster licked his fingers and shook his head. The look he gave Zafir was venomous. 'Oh I dare say he'll tire of this soon enough. Without him, I'm sure the rest will disperse.' That would have earned him the goblet again, if Zafir hadn't already thrown it at him. The speaker bared her teeth.

'Sell-swords, Zaster. More sell-swords. They are cheap and expendable.'

'Wasn't Rider GarHannas among them?' asked Prince Tyrin suddenly. 'GarHannas of Bloodsalt?' He was looking at Lord Eisal. Eisal pretended he hadn't heard but the damage was done. The council slipped back to doing what it did best, sniping at one another and making sure that nothing useful ever got done. Vale closed his eyes for a moment. Ten thousand men and two hundred riders sat idle at the palace. If he'd been permitted an opinion, it might have been that they should be doing something.

 

 

10

 

Jaslyn

 

 

'Is there news, Your Holiness?'

Jaslyn sighed and slid off her dragon. Her new dragon with his glittering silvery black scales. A real prize. Morning Sun, Isentine had named him, but Jaslyn still thought of her old dragon, Silence, every time she flew. In her head, this new one had a different name. Not morning, but mourning. It felt much closer to her heart. They sounded the same too, which kept everybody happy. Her little secret.

She took off her helmet and dropped it on the packed, scorched earth of the landing field. One of the Scales would pick it up later. 'I wish you wouldn't call me that, Eyrie-Master.' She didn't even glance back at the dragon behind her. The sun was low and its bulk cast them both into shadow.

Eyrie-Master Isentine bowed as best his age and stiff back would let him. 'A thousand apologies, your ... Your Highness.'

'That's all I am, Eyrie-Master. For as long as my mother ... for as long as Queen Shezira is alive. Even imprisoned within the Adamantine Palace, she is your mistress. You should call me student and I should call you master.' That had been one of her mother's last commands. Isentine was getting old and they'd need a new eyrie-master before long. A master or perhaps a mistress.

She tried to smile but it seemed she didn't know how any more. Isentine stared at his feet.

'Not much,' she said after they'd stood in awkward silence for far too long. 'Hyrkallan has plundered Drotan's Top. The speaker's dragons have taken a couple of his riders but so far he evades her grasp. Everyone demands that I call him back and make him knight-marshal in Nastria's place.' She shook her head. 'We don't even know that Nastria is dead. Almiri begs and pleads for us to go to war. My husband-to-be is alive and still hasn't found his way to Sand. His father, King Sirion, continues to shout for revenge for Hyram's death but can't decide whether it's Zafir or Shezira who should feel his wrath. And I, I just feel that my time is running out. I want to climb onto Silence and fly away. Far, far away and never come back. Except Silence is gone.'

Isentine screwed up his face in horror. 'Holiness!'

'Highness!' Jaslyn scowled.

'Highness! You cannot—'

'Cannot speak like that, Eyrie-Master? If not to you then to whom? Our knight-marshal is dead and our queen is imprisoned for treason. I'm surrounded by men and women I barely know who wear long stern faces and expect me to be my mother when I'm not. My elder sister only wants my dragons and my younger sister Lystra is far away, married and a hostage to that monster Jehal.' She clenched her jaw. Sometimes when she thought of Lystra she wanted to cry, but that wasn't allowed, not even where only Isentine would see. 'I miss her most of all, Eyrie-Master. In her letters she, at least, sounds happy.'

'Perhaps, Your Highness, she will persuade ...'

'My— Queen Shezira and King Valgar have been in the speaker's dungeons for more than a month. Our knight-marshal plotted with King Valgar to murder Speaker Zafir, and our queen apparently pushed Lord Hyram off a balcony.'

'Lies, Your Highness. All lies.'

'Really ? I want to believe you, Eyrie-Master. But their accusers are not Zafir's servants or Jehal's. They are Adamantine Men. Perhaps they might be bribed to lie about Nastria, but about Hyram? They were his own Guardsmen. He died under their watch. They failed. Why would they lie? I cannot believe they would conspire against their own lord.'

'But surely you cannot believe—'

'What? Can't believe that my mother would have pushed Hyram to his death? After the way he betrayed her? I remind you, Isentine, of whom we are talking.'

Jaslyn tore herself away from Morning Sun, walking briskly towards the looming tower of Outwatch. Isentine struggled to match her pace. Walking meant he couldn't see her face. She wasn't like her mother. She couldn't hide it all away. She couldn't be strong all the time on the outside no matter what she felt on the inside.

She took a deep breath. 'That's not why I came here, Eyrie-Master, nor why you called me.' Although any excuse would do. She liked the bleakness of Outwatch, sitting on the top of its cliff, presiding over miles and miles of tunnels and caves where the dragons were kept. Liked the flight over endless miles of barren featureless burning sand and rust-coloured stone that brought her here. Liked this isolated and inexplicable oasis of green that just happened to be the greatest eyrie in the north. Now that Isentine knew better than to turn out the guard for her whenever she arrived, it was the windy, lonely, lost place it had always been meant to be, and it drew her in whenever it could.

'It feels empty here,' she murmured, as much to herself as to Isentine.

'Most of your dragons are at Southwatch,' huffed Isentine. Of course they were. She'd sent them there, after all, to stand guard over Almiri in case the speaker brought war across the Spur.

'Yes.' And the few she'd left here spent most of their time in the Worldspine. Wasting their time searching for the remains of the white dragon that had nearly killed her.

'I might have found the dragon you're looking for.'

The words grabbed hold of her as surely as a strong pair of hands. She froze. For a moment she thought he meant the white.

'What?'

'There's been another hatchling, Your Highness. A male. A hunter.'

Jaslyn's heart climbed into her mouth. 'What colour?' 'Deep blues and greens, Your Highness.'

Jaslyn started walking again. An overwhelming disappointment settled around her. Not the dragon she was looking for. Not her Silence.

'But he's a vicious one, Your Highness. He won't eat or drink anything we bring him. He attacks the Scales. He'll die before the end of the week. I've never met anything quite like it. We've always had hatchlings that wouldn't take and there have been a lot of them lately, but this ... this is exceptional. I might even have put him down if it wasn't for your order.'

'Does he speak?'

Isentine didn't reply. As far as the eyrie-master was concerned, it seemed that anyone who thought dragons could talk probably believed in ghosts and gods and all manner of other foolishness. It didn't help that the one time Silence had spoken to Jaslyn, as he lay dying, he hadn't spoken as such; rather, his thoughts had mingled with hers.

Or maybe she was going mad.

Silence had been ash-grey. He was dead now, but in his last thoughts he'd told her that he would be reborn. He'd told her that dragons lived in an eternal cycle of birth and death. No one had ever thought to mention this to Jaslyn before, but Isentine had confirmed, when she'd pushed him, that the alchemists believed this was true. It was a secret passed down among them, shared only with kings and queens. She was as good as a queen, he'd said, so now she could know. She'd nearly hit him for that.

They don't remember, though. They don't speak. He'd told her that too. Jaslyn didn't know whether she believed him or not but she didn't want to, and so she was looking, hoping that out of all the eyries across the realms, Silence would be reborn to one of hers.

One of my mother's ...

'I'm looking for a sooty grey, Eyrie-Master.' It sounded like madness, but when she'd spoken to the alchemists, they'd looked at her with shifty eyes as though she'd uncovered some secret that she wasn't meant to know. Several secrets, in fact. They wouldn't tell her, and when her demands grew more threatening, they haughtily reminded her that, for now at least, she was a mere princess, and that the alchemists of the realms answered only to kings and queens. Only Isentine would answer her questions and she no longer trusted even him.

She walked past the yawning doors that led into the cavernous halls of Outwatch, on to the edge of the scarp slope. The wind was strong there, tugging at her hair. At the bottom of the slope was a lake. Above it, caves studded the cliffs, dark holes leading into the tunnels of the eyrie. She couldn't look at a cave now without a shudder of fear, without smelling smoke, without starting to cough and choke, but if she closed her eyes she could imagine herself at Clifftop, Jehal's eyrie in the southernmost corner of the realms. A place almost as far away from Outwatch as it was possible to be, but another eyrie built over underground caves and tunnels at the top of a cliff looking out over water. If she tried, she could bring back the smell and the sound of the sea, of the waves breaking at the foot of the cliff. Of Lystra, standing next to her, looking around at her new home with wonder in her eyes and laughter on her lips.

If you were here, I could do this. I miss you, little sister.

She opened her eyes again, dispelling the sound of the Sea of Storms and bringing back the hot dry desert winds that filled her mother's realm.

'You will take me to this hatchling, Eyrie-Master.' She had to see, after all, even if it wasn't her Silence. Probably he'd been born in another eyrie, far away. If he'd been reborn at all. If it wasn't a myth.

'He will try to eat you, Your Highness.'

Through the gloom-laden hall of Outwatch, Isentine led the way to an immense pit lit by hundreds of alchemical lamps, a hole in the earth fifty feet across with a spiralling staircase clinging to its side. They went down. He walked slowly, clutching at the guardrail bolted into the stone. Jaslyn had lost count of the number of times she'd come here, yet she'd never been all the way to the bottom. They reached the hatchling caves, but the stairs and the pit went on. She always found herself wondering how many people had slipped and plunged down into the inky blackness, and whether they were still there, still falling. When she asked Isentine what was down there, he only shrugged and told her it was flooded, that no one went down there any more.

He led her off the staircase towards one of the higher caves. Jaslyn clenched her fists until her knuckles went white and her fingernails gouged her palms. This used to feel like home. She'd pause and take a deep breath and fill her lungs with the smell of dragons. Now what she remembered was being trapped underground with dragons trying to kill her and all she ever smelled was the memory of choking in the smoke.

'The hatchery isn't far, Your Highness.' As if she didn't know. She'd told Isentine everything because Lystra wasn't here and she had to tell someone. She couldn't tell anyone else. If she closed her eyes that made things ten times worse; the stench of smoke in her mind grew so strong that she was almost sick. She tried thinking of cold mountains and running water but that didn't help either. Nothing helped. Nothing would. Except maybe if she found the reincarnation of one of the dragons that had nearly killed her. Maybe then. Maybe when she understood why.

'Here.' The eyrie-master stopped at the entrance to a cavern gouged out of the side of the cliff. The end of the cave was open to the sky. Jaslyn wanted to run to it, to embrace the sky and the freshness of the air, but Isentine had a hand on her shoulder. He was offering her something.

'What is this?'

'Against the Hatchling Disease, Your Highness.'

Which she should have known without having to ask. Cross with herself, she took the ointment from him and rubbed it over her hands and face. It was brown and smelled of mud. Then she went over to the opening. With the wind whistling around her, the claustrophobia and the smoke eased away.

A hatchling dragon was chained to one wall. It couldn't have been more than a few days old, skinny and sickly, but it must have been ten feet long already from the tip of its nose to the end of its whip of a tail. They came out like that, all scales and bones, usually dark-coloured. They uncoiled from their eggs like a flower opening from a bud, painfully and slowly. Sometimes it took them days to stretch themselves out. They'd lie there dozing as their skin dried and shrank. And then, usually, they'd wake up and eat everything in sight. Unless they were one of the difficult ones, like this one.

Jaslyn knew at once that this wasn't the dragon she was looking lor.

'It refuses to eat and attacks any who come close to it,' said Isentine. 'The usual for a hatchling that fails, though more aggressive than most.'

'It attacks them because it's hungry.' Jaslyn looked at the dragon curiously. It was curled up with its eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. She wasn't quite sure how she knew, but secretly it was watching them.

'No doubt. But we've had hatchlings like this much more often these last months. Since ...' Isentine trailed off, but Jaslyn knew what he would have said. Since the white dragon attacked the alchemists. Since Silence died. He clasped his hands and looked at the floor. 'They won't eat unless they've made the kill themselves.'

'This isn't Silence.' Jaslyn stepped closer, cautious but curious. The dragon knew she was there, she was sure of it. And she'd left her helmet up above. The rest of her was still covered in dragon-scale armour, but if the hatchling spat fire at her face-She didn't have time to finish the thought. The dragon lunged and snapped its jaws. Fire burst out between its teeth, aimed straight at her eyes. She ducked and raised her hands to shield herself, but the fire didn't even reach her and all she felt was a waft of hot air. The hatchling must have been desperately weak. Then the chain around its neck jerked tight and it collapsed on the floor, seemingly too drained to move.

'Did you read my mind, little one?' she asked, absently. 'Is that how you knew to strike at my head? Or was it simply obvious?' She turned to Isentine. 'This one's going to be dead in a few hours if it doesn't feed.'

The eyrie-master nodded sadly. Jaslyn looked back at the baby dragon. She wanted to stroke it and nurse it, but even as weak as it was, it was quite capable of biting her arm off. She crouched down and looked it in the eye, careful to keep her distance.

'Can you hear me in there? Can you understand? Do you remember?' What had Silence said to her as he was dying. I remember the flames. 'Do you remember the flames?'

The dragon cocked its head and gave her a quizzical look, surprise mixed with hatred. A look that said Yes. She waited to hear it speak inside her head, but nothing came. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then the dragon closed its eyes and laid its head down on the floor. Maybe she'd imagined it. Just seen what she so desperately wanted to see.

She turned away, away from the dragon and away from Isentine as well. She didn't want either of them to know of the despair that was welling up inside her. Instead she stared out of the cave, at the sky and the distant fields.

You delude yourself, little one. You do not understand.

Jaslyn almost jumped out of her skin. She whirled around, but the dragon hadn't moved. Isentine was looking at her curiously. 'Did you ...' Did you hear? But she could see the answer to that straight away. No.

'Did I?' He peered at her.

Did I imagine it? 'Bring it something, Eyrie-Master,' she said. 'Something alive that it can kill for itself.'

'We already have, Your Highness.' She sensed the reproach in his words. Of course they'd tried. They tried with every dragon, as hard as they could. 'Every—'

'I know, I know. Every hatchling is precious. Do it again. This time, don't let the alchemists near whatever you bring.'

She still couldn't bring herself to look at him. The tone of the silence was enough to tell her how much he disapproved of her order.

'They won't allow it,' he said at last.

'Then don't tell them.'.The alchemists would forbid it, she realised. They'd tell her, again, that she wasn't the queen of this realm and that they answered only to kings and queens. She didn't even rule her own eyrie. The thought didn't help her, but at least it gave her a little anger, anger that she could harness into motion. She swept out of the cave, past Isentine and back towards the pit, heading out to the fresh air and the open skies as fast as she could. The look the hatchling had given her would haunt her, she knew. Was it the look of a spirit that knew what was waiting for it, one prepared to die and die and die again, over and over, rather than become a slave to the eyrie alchemists? Or maybe she was imagining all that, and the look was simply one of hunger and despera-tion. She'd never know. Isentine would never defy the Order. By tomorrow, the hatchling would be dead.

When she reached the surface again, a messenger was waiting lor her. 'Your Holiness.' He bowed, and this time she couldn't be bothered to correct him. 'Rider Hyrkallan has returned to South-watch.'

 

 

11

 

Little Sister

 

 

Lystra stood at the window. This was her window, high in King Tyan's palace, at the top of one of the towers, in a solar where her husband had once bedded his lovers. The place where he'd brought her, on their wedding night. The room didn't have much to offer except a luxurious bed and an extravagant view. Most of the windows in the palace looked south towards the sea, but here Lystra had found a view that reached out over the walls of the city, over the sweeping breadth of the Fury River flood plain, and out towards the distant and invisible north. Sometimes she squinted, imagining that if she tried hard enough she might see all the way to the Adamantine Palace, to her lover, her husband, her lord, her prince. To the father of the child growing inside her. He'd been away for a long time. Too long. She was pining.

Sometimes when she'd had enough of thinking and wondering about Jehal, she'd think about her sisters instead. Almiri, who was strong and clever. Almiri, who Would always find a way, somehow, to make everyone happy again. And Jaslyn. She thought about Jaslyn most of all. Thin, hollow, mean Jaslyn, who burned on the inside with passions clenched tight and buried deep within her. Starved middle sister.

Jaslyn whom she missed more than anyone else.

She had ladies to keep her company and they amused her well enough. But when she came to this window she sent them away. Even Lord Meteroa, Jehal's strange uncle, the eyrie-master who ruled far more than an eyrie, knew better than to bother her when she was at her window.

She was surprised then when she heard footsteps shuffling slowly up the stairs. The tread was unfamiliar. Not Meteroa, who walked briskly and usually viewed a staircase as a challenge to be overcome as rapidly as possible. Not one of her ladies either; they would have coughed to warn her they were coming.

She let her eyes wander for a last few seconds, dreaming that she would see a speck in the sky that would be Wraithwing, Prince Jehal's dragon, bringing him home. Then she turned, facing the door.

The shuffling stopped outside. The world fell suddenly silent. All at once, Lystra was afraid. 'Who's there?' Silence.

With a fluttering heart, Lystra took a step towards the door and then stopped. She could hear breathing, low and rasping. 'Who is it?'

'Princess Lystra,' whispered a voice, 'do you love your husband ?'

'Who are you?'

'Do you love him, Princess Lystra?'

'Yes, of course.' She took another step towards the door. Lord Meteroa was forever forbidding her this and that, warning her of the constant dangers of assassins sent by the speaker, although why the speaker would want her dead was something he could never quite explain. She'd never paid his warnings much heed. Not until now.

'No,' growled the voice. 'Not the right answer. Do you love him? Does your heart yearn for him? Would you give yourself away for him, body and soul? Would you die for him?'

'Yes.' She bit her lip. She knew at once what Jehal would have said: Yes, but do I really have to? Or: Of course, but only when I'm very old, or something like that. He would have made her laugh. At that moment she wished he was there with her more than ever.

'And he for you.' A figure stepped into the doorway. He threw hack his hood and Lystra squealed and wept for joy.

'Jehal!' She threw herself into his arms, staggering him.

'Careful, careful!' She couldn't see him properly for happy tears. He held her tight, just the way she wanted him to. 'Ancestors! Next time I make a surprise return, I shall make sure I stand a little further from the top of a long and steep and winding stair before I reveal myself!'

'You've been gone for such a long time!'

'Now that is just so typical of your sex,' he chided. 'A prince has to work, you know. Weeks away without you, far from home, alone and friendless, toiling away for the good of my kin. Work, work, work, and when I finally limp home, exhausted and saddlesore, all I get are complaints about how long I've been gone.' His grip on her didn't loosen though, so she knew he was joking.

'I wasn't complaining.'

'No, well, Lord Meteroa got to me before I could find you hidden away up here, and he most certainly was. After that, I dare say you could have thrown daggers and chamberpots and screamed abuse at me and I would barely have noticed.' He pushed her back into the room, still crushing her to him. 'Oh look, a bed.' His voice turned sly. 'Or did you somehow know that I was coming back?'

She didn't bother to reply: she was too busy kissing him. And she couldn't have said whether she was pulling him or he was pulling her or whether the bed was somehow pulling both of them. She stopped him though, when they were nearly naked, and put his hand on the side of her belly.

'Feel!' she said, and watched his face. The baby inside was kicking, feeding from her own excitement perhaps. She watched his eyes light up, watched his mind working, frantically searching for words and, for once failing. Watched an amazed little smile creep across his lips.

'Your son,' she whispered.

 

 

12

 

Diplomacy in all its forms

 

 

'I'm grateful you came. This used to be Hyram's favourite place.' Zafir stood high above the City of Dragons, perched on a tiny shelf of rock overlooking the top of the Diamond Cascade Valley. Hyram had brought her here, before she'd become the speaker. Afterwards she'd come here with Prince Jehal. Today, she had a king beside her, watching the water rush by, hundreds of yards beneath their feet. Set back from the edge behind her was a tiny lodge, a single room squashed under an overhang. From the bottom of the cliff it was invisible; even from above it was almost impossible to spot unless you knew it was there. It had become a secret place passed clown from one speaker to the next. One of several, tucked away up here among the silent crags of the Spur.

T know. We came here often in the earlier days of his rule. Before the shaking sickness took him.' King Sirion, Hyram's cousin, stood beside and slightly behind her. Zafir made sure that she was right at the edge. The wind pulled at her. If Sirion wanted to push her over, it would hardly be any effort at all.

'Shezira came up here with Hyram a few days before she killed him. This is where he told her that we were to be wed. She must have stood here, beside him, like we are now. She must have known at that moment he would not name her to follow him. I wonder why she didn't push him over the edge there and then.'

'Perhaps because she is a true queen, born and bred, forged of steel and honour.' Sirion's words were stony. 'I do not easily believe these stories of murder.'

Zafir ignored him. 'Before I came here, I thought the Purple Spur was just another cluster of mountains, like the Worldspine only a bit smaller. It starts that way, over by the Spine. If you fly across the end of the Spur into the realms of the north, that's what it looks like. But here ...' She gestured around her. 'It's as though some god reached down and pulled this part of the world up by the roots. There's nowhere else in the realms like it. No gentle foothills and valleys, just a sheer cliff all the way around. And then on the top ... These aren't mountains. Anywhere else and we'd say they were hills. Canyons. Caves. Snow and waterfalls and gushing rivers. The Diamond Cascade here, the Emerald Cascade and the Sapphire Cascade. Cold forests. It's like a tiny realm all of its own, torn up out of the Hungry Mountain Plain. But not mountains, King Sirion. Sometimes, when you see something from a distance, you do not see it for what it truly is.' She leaned back, fractionally closer to Sirion. 'I would never have thought Shezira capable of such a murder either. That she might go to war, yes. I feared that, I admit it. But that she would kill Hyram with her own hands?' She tried to sound a little mournful, a faint tinge of wistful regret, but Sirion was having none of it.

'And very convenient for you that he should fall, eh? And I have known both the Purple Spur and Queen Shezira for many years and have found them both to be exactly what they seemed from a distance.'

'You are cruel, King Sirion.'

Sirion snorted. 'Don't pretend that your heart is broken, Speaker. You may have fooled Hyram but it is clear enough to me that you and Jehal were lovers before and are lovers still. I will not believe in illusions of any affection between you and my cousin. Say your piece, Speaker. Tell my why you have asked me here, alone and far away from prying eyes. I can think of only two things, so which is it to be? Do you plan to seduce me as you seduced my cousin? Or do you mean to murder me? Although I warn you, you will find neither easy.'

Zafir half turned, glancing over her shoulder, and met his eyes for a moment. 'Perhaps I mean to do both.' 'Then you will fail twice.'

'Very well, King Sirion. I will not trouble you with sentiment, but with cold pragmatism. Hyram and I had a simple trade.' She turned to face him. 'Am I young, King Sirion?'

'Very.'

'How many children have I carried?'

He took a step back. A frown shadowed his fair. He peered at her. 'None that are known. Why do you ask such a thing?' 'Do you suppose I am fertile?'

He looked distinctly uncomfortable now. Which, as far as Zafir was concerned, was perfectly fine. 'I do not know, Your Holiness.' 'Then guess.'

'I ... I suppose there is no reason to think otherwise.'

She took a step towards him, closing the distance between them. 'Am I deformed?'

'I would not say so.' He stepped back, and so Zafir stepped forward again.

'Am I beautiful?'

'Of course.' He tried to step away, but as he did, Zafir caught his hand and pressed it against her breast. 'Am I desirable?'

He pulled his hand away, but for an instant he'd hesitated. Her heart was beating strong and fast. She knew he'd felt it. His face coloured. 'I am not to be had, harlot.'

Zafir brushed the insult aside. She smiled. 'I would not presume such a thing, King Sirion, not from you. But look at me. Look at me with Hyram's eyes. Imagine for a moment that you are him. Am I desirable?'

'You may well be, Your Holiness. Although I can't imagine why you would ask such a thing.'

'Hyram made me speaker. In return I shared his bed. I would have made him heirs if he'd lived. He would have kept much of the power that he had. That was the nature of our arrangement. A simple contract, bound by a marriage. Are not all weddings for the same reasons? Heirs and power?' She laughed. 'You think I brought you here to bend your ear about Queen Shezira? No. The Adamantine Men have accused her. I've heard their evidence and to me it's strong enough to make her hang, but you can all make up your own minds about that. The kings and queens of the realms will hear the case against her and each of you will make your own decision. I do not care, King Sirion, what fate awaits her. Frankly, I will have as little part of it as my duty allows. I care only that a decision is reached, and that whatever is decided is decided by the rulers of the nine realms and not by me. What I care about, King Sirion, is making sure there is no dragon-war. I care about peace.'

'Peace?' Sirion snorted. 'You?'

'A happy coincidence of duty and self-interest, Your Holiness. You may make your own judgement as to how securely I sit on the speaker's throne now that Hyram is gone.'

Sirion was frowning. Obviously he hadn't expected such blunt-ness. 'Then why ... ?'

'Why did I bring you here? To ask you a question, Your Holiness. To ask your advice as a great king of a great realm. I am a queen and I am the speaker. I have carried no children. I am, as you have agreed, young, fertile and desirable.' She took another step close to him. 'My husband is dead. I should have the pick of all the princes across the realms. There is certainly no shortage of them, and more and more arrive at my court with every week that passes. You see that for yourself and doubtless find many of them as tedious as I do. But they are all southern princes, from the courts of King Narghon or King Silvallan or King Tyan. The peace of the realms requires that I marry to the north, not the south. I do not seek a war with Shezira's daughters, but nor can I marry them.'

Sirion frowned again. He shook his head. 'I cannot offer you any advice. If Queen Shezira had a son, that would be your answer. There are others who carry her blood.'

'Plenty of them. But I cannot marry into her line if she murdered Hyram. If she were to be found innocent then perhaps so, but not if she's guilty.'