Authors: Stephen Deas
‘Oh really? Not a speaker?’
Blood-magic? Sealed doors?
And there was the damned fear again, reaching out of its pit to grab her. She slammed the lid on it and stamped it back. Dark places. Never again!
‘No, Holiness. Although a speaker can, of course, command that they
be
opened.’
‘How very interesting. How many more such doors do you have?’
Jeiros didn't answer, and she might have pressed him on it but the sight beyond the door changed her mind. Such questions could wait. Ahead a great cave swallowed the light, black as pitch but for a single lamp by the entrance. Zafir had no idea exactly how large the space was but it must have been immense; she could feel that much simply in the taste of the air. Enormous. A Flame-blessed relief from the claustrophobia of the tunnel.
‘Keep the door directly to your back, Holiness,’ said Jeiros, ‘should you ever need to come this way. There's always a light left here.’ Which threw up the thought of being stranded in a dark place that was huge instead of small and somehow that was worse.
She snapped back at him, ‘How am I to come this way if I cannot open the door, Master Jeiros?’ Shame about Bellepheros. His façade of fawning diplomacy had been exactly that but at least he tried.
They crossed the cave, flat and smooth and covered in sand. At one point Vioros stooped and put down his lantern. Zafir wondered why until she looked back and was shocked to see that the lamp by the door was a tiny speck, barely visible.
How
large was this cavern?
As they walked on, a whisper of rushing water touched the stillness and grew steadily louder until, when they stopped at a scaffold set in the sand, the whisper had risen to a roar and Vioros had to shout over the noise of it. ‘There used to be a lake here, Holiness. There are others. The Silver River flows through these caves under the Spur.’ Behind her, the lantern Vioros had left was a dim speck, a single lonely spark in the dark and she still couldn't see any sign of the cave walls. They
had
to be close, didn't they? The rush of the waterfall, somewhere nearby in the dark, was enough to shake the ground, but in the feeble light of the alchemical lamps she couldn't see it. The air tasted moist. She took a step forward alone and then stopped herself. Why had they brought her here? To test her? To pick on her weakness and see if she'd break? Well, she wouldn't.
A wooden platform descended slowly through the middle of the scaffold, lowered by ropes. When it reached the ground Jeiros climbed onto it. He offered his hand. Zafir disdained it. Another little strike against him. Would he have offered it if she'd been Hyram or Jehal? No. If it turned out one day that Jehal
had
disposed of Bellepheros then she was going to be angry with him, she decided, for leaving her with this stuffed shirt.
The platform rose. Pulleys and ropes, she supposed, not that she knew much about such things. It took a very long time and was very dull and very dark and the waterfall stayed very loud, but the wind of it and the stray specks of water on her face helped keep the dark in its pit inside her head. By the time she felt stone close in around her again, the lanterns that marked out their path were too dim to see. When they reached the top and she peered over the edge, the base of the scaffold was so far away that she couldn't tell if they'd risen a hundred paces or a thousand.
The rush of water was as close as before. ‘We are at the back of the caves behind the Diamond Cascade,’ Vioros told her. ‘The Zar Oratorium isn't far from here. There is another door—’
‘But we are going another way,’ said Jeiros curtly. He walked quickly now, leading the way through more tunnels, smooth things once bored by water, then down a rough-hewn passage to a small bronze door. Three heavy bolts held it shut. Jeiros pulled them back one by one. He beckoned her forward and stood aside as she opened it. Warm stale air washed over her, full of the smell of dragon, familiar and comfortable. The tension she'd carried all the way from the palace eased a little.
Why bring her to a dragon? What could there possibly be here that she didn't already know? Her heart jumped with anticipation. A gift for the new speaker? Surely not. But now she'd thought of it, she wanted it, and anything else would be a disappointment.
As well as the smell, a little dim light spilled out from behind the door but she couldn't see much more. When she stepped forward, she realised why. The door opened on to a balcony fifty feet up a sheer wall and the lights were all down below on the ground, alchemical lamps, hundreds of them. There were people moving down there too. She saw them, glimpses of shadows flitting here and there, three or four or maybe half a dozen. But what held her eye was the dragon in the middle of them, bound in chains. It was looking straight at her.
Little One!
The words roared in her head. A voice she'd never heard. She staggered and Jeiros was there, right behind her, ready to catch
her. She felt him touch her and flinched as if stung, whirled and almost hurled him over the edge.
‘I can stand on my own feet, alchemist!’ she hissed. The fear was a wild thing now, battering itself against the cage she'd made for it. ‘I don't need your hand. Stay away from me!’ As if he would have done such a thing for Hyram or for Jehal. No, just for her, because she was
weak
. She took a deep breath and quelled the quiver in her throat. She was rattled by that voice, that was all, and her old enemy the dark, but there was nothing to fear here. Steady breaths. Nothing to fear. ‘What is this place? What was that sound?’
Nothing to fear
. . .
‘Sound, Holiness?’ Jeiros had a smugness to him. She thought she'd probably never stop hating him after this. ‘There was no
sound
, Holiness.’
Could she have him sent away?
There
was a thought.
Little one!
It came again, a voice that thundered inside her. And the alchemist was right, there was no
sound
. Only words inside her head.
She reeled. ‘What have you brought me here to see, Jeiros? A dragon? I've seen plenty.’
Jeiros spoke patiently, as if to a child: ‘I've brought you here, Speaker, to see the thing that you cannot be told and must see for yourself, as every speaker before you.’ He drew himself up. ‘This is a dragon untouched by alchemy, Holiness. This is what they would become without us. That is what every alchemist stands against.’
The chained dragon turned its eyes and fixed her with them, alight with fury. It wanted to eat her. It wanted to burn her. It wanted to revel in her fear and dread before she died.
You are nothing, little one
.
She made herself stand there, then took two quick steps right to the edge and met its eye. She met its anger and took it inside her and turned it and smashed the fear back where it belonged. Smiled at the monster down below.
Thank you
.
Months passed from the day Zafir saw the dragon in its cave. The war came. Lovers died and were betrayed but she never forgot. Dragons flew free and cities burned as the schemes of the Taiytakei wrought their havoc, and the dragon's fury rode with her.
She lay sprawled flat, staring up at the sky. The silver man with the white face and the bloody eyes was looking down at her again. Other faces peered down around her. Dark-skins marked with tattoos. Taiytakei. The wooden deck was unforgiving and hard against her skin, bruising her to the bone. She felt crushed by her own weight. One by one a forest of little sounds touched her. Creaking wood. Straining ropes. The wind whistling through the rigging. The shuffle of feet on the deck. Distant voices, orders barked and the calls of seagulls wheeling overhead. The air smelled of salt and of the sea.
The faces didn't speak. They stroked their chins and looked at her. If there was anyone left to write a history of her reign, their words wouldn't be kind. They wouldn't say that Speaker Zafir of the Silver City had been wise or good or just and they certainly wouldn't speak of peace and glory. The miracle would be if there were any voices left to speak at all. But for now none of that mattered, for now she was about to die.
She rose shakily to her feet. Black-skinned Taiytakei sailors in their thin bright silks, yellows and pinks and pale greens and blues, stood around her. Beyond them, past the rocking of the ship, the sea shifted with a lazy swell, the water a deep blue under the summer sun. Around them half a hundred other ships rolled slowly back and forth.
Nausea stabbed at her. She coughed, vomiting up another mouthful of water, then glared at the men around her, ready to
fight if she had to, but a cautious thought held her back: of the dragon she had ridden with its vengeful flames, snuffed out in the air like you might snuff out a candle. Crashing dead to the water with her still strapped to its back. Sinking and pulling her under.
No
. She was a dragon-queen. She lived and flew and commanded monsters. She had a knife in her boot. She would cut through them like dragon fire or she would fall in the attempt.
She staggered as the pitching of the deck caught her unawares. Her ankle was still weak from her duel with Lystra. She dropped to one knee and found she couldn't rise again, that it was too breathlessly hard. Lystra. Stupid girl.
The silver men dispersed into glittering mist and drifted into the air. She watched them go to the other dragons who had fled from the Pinnacles with her, three of them, motionless, frozen in the sky as though for them time had stopped. The silver mists wrapped around them. They seemed to whisper in the dragons’ ears. Even the Taiytakei stood transfixed, watching the alien sorcerers ascend to the sky.
The oldest of the Taiytakei turned away first and looked at her. He was shaking but it was only his age. Or maybe it was laughter. His face was wrinkled, so dark that his eyes seemed like lamps beneath the tight braids of his ghost-white hair. His fingers were knobbly, all skin and bone. His clothes, though . . . He wore bright silk from head to toe and was collared and cuffed with iridescent feathers, red and yellow and orange and gold, shimmering in the sun so that he looked almost aflame. The braids of his hair reached to his feet. A rich man among their kind, then. Very rich indeed.
He told her his name, Quai'Shu, and how he'd traded her for dragons. She let him, taking the time it gave her to find her strength again, to find the fury of the dragon inside. When he was done, another Taiytakei, taller and younger but just as skinny and frail-looking, whispered in the old man's ear. He had his feathers made into a cloak, and when the wind died down and it fell still she saw that the feathers formed a picture. The sea, and mountainous stones rising from the waves that reminded her of her home in the Pinnacles. A golden cloud rose above the scene and two bright bolts of lightning crossed it. His braids too almost touched the deck. She wondered how many times he tripped over them each day.
The old man frowned, shrugged, nodded and turned to walk slowly away. The younger Taiytakei smiled. His eyes felt like unwanted fingers over her skin, all greed and desire. She was cold, the wet soft leather under what was left of her dragon-scale clinging unpleasantly to her, seawater still dripping from her sleeves, trickling down her arms and legs. She knew what was on his mind. What was on the mind of most men when they saw her. She wasn't sure whether it made her want to laugh or cry. Men were so pathetically predictable.
And for one bizarre moment she found herself thinking of Jehal. Missing him. He'd made no pretence of being anything but himself. He'd lived up to his promises, at least until Evenspire.
She rose again, unsteady, slipping her boot knife into her sleeve. Above, her last three dragons snapped into motion again. No bodies fell splashing to the sea but she knew the riders who'd flown with her were gone. Snuffed out. Her last loyal few. These silver men, what were they? Not Taiytakei. The Silver Kings themselves? But a thought like that was too big for this moment, too laden with questions as large as the world.
This
moment was black and white, life and death.
‘Hold her!’
A sailor reached out and grabbed her and it was almost a relief to have something simple to deal with. She jumped straight at him, knocking him back, and the sailor gave a yelp of surprise and for a moment she was free. She had no doubts about what came next. The whole world narrowed down to the Taiytakei in the cloak, the one who presumed to own a dragon-queen. She sprang and knocked him over. They fell, locked together, and she had the knife in her hand before they hit the deck, sharp and free and already coming down. She'd waged wars, burned cities and called down fire from the skies; she'd stroked the hearts of men and taken lovers as she chose, she'd betrayed her own blood and her desire had betrayed her in its turn. Princess, queen, speaker, she'd been all these and she would not submit to anything, not any more. Never again. Certainly not to a man who'd traded her life and her ambition with King Valmeyan of the Worldspine for his stolen dragons.
‘Not.’ Stab. ‘Yours.’ Stab. ‘To give!’ Flecks of spittle flew from the corners of her mouth. He wanted her, and just for that, for the
mere thought that he could have her without begging to ask, she slit him open from his gut to his gullet and let his blood wash the deck of his own ship. Bodies piled on top of her – sailors – one, two, a dozen maybe – trying to pin her, trying to hold her still. Too late.
She wondered, as the whole ship hit her around the head, why she hadn't dived into the sea to drown and be with her riders instead of killing this Taiytakei. But the moment didn't give her an answer; everything was sharp and loud and then black and silent and still. She welcomed, at last, an end.
Yet the ghosts of the underworld didn't come. Perhaps the spirit hordes of those who'd died at Evenspire and the Pinnacles weren't waiting in wrathful judgement for her after all. Not the mother who'd betrayed her and whom she'd conspired to murder, nor the father who had made her what she was. The dark room she feared beyond all else didn't come to claim her after all, not yet.