The Adamantine Palace (14 page)

'Up front.'

Sollos snorted. 'You must think I'm an idiot.'

'There's been a white dragon seen a few times in these valleys. Not here but somewhere else. I can take you to where they've seen it. And that's all you're getting until I see gold.'

'If you're lying, you know you're going to get burned.'

'Could be that might be coming anyway. So I'll take the gold first if you please.'

Sollos shrugged. 'All right. Not my gold anyway.'

Ten minutes later they were free. Another half an hour and they were in a boat, rowing across the lake with Curly Beard and two of his friends. They were a bedraggled lot, these Outsiders, thought Sollos. Their clothes were ragged and crude, a mixture of animal pelts and cheap cloth that had gone rotten in the permanent damp. Everything they had looked worn and well used, the handles of their knives shiny and smooth and moulded to the shapes of their hands. A few had belts, the leather hard and cracked, the buckles tarnished and bent. Others made do with string. Most of them, Sollos realised, were scarred or damaged; some were missing fingers, others had whole limbs or even faces that had broken and then healed out of shape. Apparently, life was hard as an Outsider. Harder than he remembered.

Sollos had been born and raised somewhere out here. He ought to sympathise, and yet he didn't, because he didn't want to. What was the point, when it was all long gone and burned away?

Curly Beard rowed them to the gravel flats a little way from the settlement, the place where Sollos and Kemir had first landed. They waited for half the morning, patiently standing in the steady rain, until around noon Curly Beard pointed. There was a dragon skimming across the lake towards them. A moment later the three Outsiders were off, fleeing into the safety of the trees. Sollos stood and watched the dragon. He waved.

'I hope that's one of ours,' muttered Kemir with a glance towards where the Outsiders had gone. 'Now would be a fine time to run into whoever started all this.'

The dragon circled over them once, close enough that Sollos could recognise it, and then landed, the wind from its wings spraying a cloud of gravel into the air. Rider Semian beckoned them over. He didn't bother to dismount.

'I almost gave up on you,' he shouted through the rain. The dragon, Sollos saw, was steaming very slightly.

'Well we're very glad you didn't,' shouted Sollos back. Belatedly, he remembered to bow.

'And? What news?'

'They claim to have seen her. They claim they know where she is.'

'Where?'

'Not here, but they claim they can take us to her.' Sollos hesitated. 'They want gold.'

'How much?'

'Two hundred dragons.'

Rider Semian didn't flinch, but his dragon suddenly snorted and snapped at Sollos, who fell over in his haste to get out of the way. The dragon glared at him.

'You ask a lot, sell-sword.'

'I don't ask for anything, Rider,' yelled Sollos, picking himself up and warily watching the dragon. 'That's the price the people who live here are asking.'

'Tell them no.'

'Then you'll never find the queen's dragon, Rider Semian.'

The dragon bared its teeth. Its tail was up in the air, flexing and flicking back and forth like a whip. Among their own kind, dragons usually lashed out with their tails when they were annoyed. It was meant as a warning. But when they did it to humans ... Sollos closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

'Tomorrow,' shouted Semian. 'Meet me back here tomorrow.' Abruptly, the dragon turned and began to run, launching itself across the flats. The stones hissed and danced with each colossal stride, and Sollos fancied he could see the whole lake ripple. Then the monster unfurled its wings and with a clap of thunder hurled itself into the air and was away. He watched it go. He could actually see it rise through the air with each beat of its wings, he realised, and then dip again between them.

'You should have asked for a thousand,' said Kemir, suddenly standing beside him.

'Apparently so.' Sollos shrugged. 'I suppose it's not his money either.'

19

The Taiytakei

Any other dragon-lord, mused Jehal, wouldn't have these sorts of problems. Any other dragon-lord would simply have gone to their eyrie, looked at the dragons and then gone back to their palace again. Any other dragon-lord would have built their eyrie conveniently close to their palace. He, though, had to ride out to a field a little way outside the city to look at Queen Shezira's dragons. Not that he minded all that much, but the fact that he had to go meant that everyone else had to go too, and that meant shuffling everyone into carriages. What should have been a twenty-minute jaunt on the back of a horse had taken them an hour and a half, and now the whole wedding was running late. Knowing that the dragon he wanted wasn't going to be here didn't help either.

He tried to keep himself amused by mentally undressing his guests. Zafir's little sister Princess Zara-Kiam was going to be worth undressing for real quite soon, he decided. There were a few cousins and other minor relatives out there who might be worth some attention too: Queen Fyon's youngest, Princess Lilytha, for example, if her brother Prince Tyrin hadn't got to her first. He narrowed his eyes, looking at them standing next to each other, trying to decide.

He sighed. Everyone had been telling him how weddings were supposed to be wonderful days filled with joy and happiness, but looking around him he couldn't see much sign of either. His guests were grumbling and shifting on their feet, already overstuffed with a hundred pointless delicacies. Queen Shezira looked tense. She hadn't actually told him that the white wasn't here, so there was always the chance that no one else had told him either. Jehal had already decided to have some fun with that. Queen Zafir had a permanent angry scowl etched into her face. For himself, he couldn't shake the feeling that the whole exercise was a waste of time. The only person who seemed to be enjoying herself was Princess Lystra.

They sat next to each other on their wedding thrones, shaded by a makeshift awning while everyone else burned up in the summer sun. If he wanted to, he could have reached out and taken his bride's hand, but apparently he wasn't supposed to do that yet. As best he could tell, they were in some sort of interim state between being not married and being married. They'd had a dawn ritual and then a morning feast. After that came the giving of gifts, and then everyone kicked their heels until the evening. There was another feast, a dusk ritual, then the whole humiliating bit about being drugged and stripped naked in front of all the wedding guests. What was that? Revenge for having to stand around and be bored all day ?

Finally, after the consummation, once the whole thing was over, they never had to look at each other again, if that was what they wanted. Maybe it was supposed to be an ordeal. A warning of things to come ? A test of strength ?

Someone was parading a pair of horses in front of him. Strictly speaking, they were parading them in front of King Tyan, who sat in his own throne next to Jehal's, drooling and snoring. He was still king after all. Jehal smiled. They were wonderful beasts, pure white, with gold and silver livery. A stallion and a mare. Jehal stifled a yawn.

'Very nice,' he said. 'They will be the most beautiful creatures in my stables. Tell...' Oh, now this was going to be a problem. He'd let his mind wander so far that he hadn't heard who they were from, and now he was going to look stupid and insult someone all at once. 'I am in awe. Bring them closer.' He glanced around in search of helpful clues. Horses. Who likes horses? People always give the sort of gift they'd like to receive.

'King Valgar is too kind,' said Princess Lystra quietly. For the first time since the wedding had begun she wasn't smiling. 'He meant them to go with the dragon. To take us to and from your eyrie.'

So she assumes I know. She doesn't know that her mother hasn't told me. He could have some fun with that too.

'King Valgar is too kind indeed.' He smiled, waving the horses away. Valgar wasn't here so there was no need to waste any time on flattering his presents. 'Let King Valgar know that they are the most beautiful horses in my realm, and that Princess Lystra and I shall ride them to and from Clifftop for a year, as a mark of our respect for his generosity.' He leaned towards Princess Lystra. 'Is the dragon as pure?'

She turned to him, startled, with a wonderful look of horror. 'You don't know?'

'What don't I know?' He smiled again, all innocence, as various shades of panic flew across her face.

Lystra turned towards her mother, sat on the other side of her, and started whispering.

Jehal tapped Lystra on the back of the hand. 'Sorry, did you mean the theft of your white dragon? I know about that. Terrible business. I'm sure it doesn't matter.' She was shaking, completely flustered, like a rabbit caught by a farmer's lantern. He kept his smile in place, warm and reassuring, glancing at her from time to time, making sure she caught his eye. Terrible business? That was putting it mildly. I'm sure it doesn't matter? Of course it bloody mattered. At the very least everyone who had anything to do with the theft was going to die. With a bit of luck, open warfare might break out. There would be trials and tribunals in the Adamantine Palace. It was quite easy to imagine an entire realm falling. Now that would be fun.

Somehow, though, tormenting Princess Lystra wasn't as satisfying as it ought to have been. She still looked pale and worried when her mother's dragons were finally brought down to the field and Jehal stood up to inspect them. He picked one quickly, said something nice about it and waved the rest away. He'd had his bride squirming in her seat, and instead of revelling in her discomfort, he found he felt ... well, vaguely guilty.

And that wasn't right. That wasn't how it was supposed to be at all.

Maybe it was the heat. He sighed, stood up and made a pretty speech about how this was the start of a new era, and how proud he was to be joined to such a great clan and yet humbled too. When he was done, he hoped that at least a few of his guests had paid more attention to it than he had.

Riding back towards the palace didn't help either. Having a wife had sounded like a simple enough business, and it had all been arranged so long ago that he'd never thought to question it. However, meeting her in the flesh was somehow ... disconcerting. She would be his queen one day, perhaps sooner rather than later. Which was fine, as long as she was the right queen. A simple queen with a demented obsession for needlework or embroidery or something like that, who stayed in her tower all day, had no interest in the world around her and paused only from her handicrafts to pop out a steady stream of heirs, preferably male ones. That was the sort of queen he needed.

'Terrible business,' muttered a voice beside him. Jehal snapped out of his reverie. Lord Meteroa was riding next to him. 'I'm sure it doesn't matter, Your Highness.'

'What do you want?'

'I'm afraid you have to attend a little diversion, Your Highness. After all, no one can leave the ceremony of gifts until you and King Tyan lead the way, and yet somehow everyone is required to be in place for the wedding feast before you arrive. In the normal course of things, this would simply oblige you to take a particularly tortuous path from one part of the palace to another, with perhaps a dalliance in the gardens to kill the time. As things are ...'

Jehal raised an eyebrow. 'What, with several hundred relatives all rushing back to the palace as fast as they can, all getting in each other's way? And that's just Aunt Fyon's family.'

Meteroa smiled and nodded. 'Your Highness must be delayed.'

'And do you have something in mind, Eyrie-Master?'

'I do indeed, Your Highness.' Meteroa flashed Jehal a knowing look and kicked his horse into a trot. After a moment Jehal followed him. They turned off the road and galloped down a narrow track lined with trees, then off into the fields. Behind them, a dozen of Jehal's dragon-knights followed, keeping at a discreet distance yet never too far away.

'You weren't thinking about the dragons at all when you picked one, were you?' shouted Meteroa.

'On the contrary,' called Jehal. 'My thoughts were entirely devoted to how none of them was white.'

'Really? I could have sworn your mind was somewhere else. I certainly wouldn't have made the same choice as you did.'

Jehal felt a flash of irritation. Lord Meteroa was clever and loyal and ran Clifftop like a precise machine, and his frankness was usually a refreshing change from the sycophancy that infested the rest of King Tyan's court. Sometimes, though, the eyrie-master seemed to forget that Jehal wasn't King Tyan's little boy any more.

'Well it was mine to choose. Queen Shezira can thank me for not taking the best she had to offer.' Mentally, Jehal kicked himself. He'd meant to choose the ash-grey, the dragon that Princess Lystra's elder sister rode. He'd completely forgotten about that, and now he had no idea which one of Shezira's knights would be flying home without a mount of his own. He sighed. He ought to find out. Doubtless he'd made himself another enemy there.

The ground was starting to get rocky. Lord Meteroa dived down another track, where the trees and undergrowth pressed in so close that Jehal kept having to duck while thorns tore at his cloak. Better change into a new one as soon as we get to the palace. That'll keep everyone waiting another few minutes. After a little while the wood gave way to great slabs of rock, and the mud below became sand. They were in the Stone Forest, a maze of spikes and spires and walls of rock woven with tracks and trails and clearings, caves and tunnels. Jehal knew it like the back of his hand. It was the perfect place for a secret meeting.

A perfect place for an ambush too.

He slowed and stopped, then glanced over his shoulder. 'What is this diversion of yours, eyrie-master? I'm not so sure I shall like it.'

'Wait here if you will, Your Highness. I will fetch them to you.'

'And who will you fetch?' Something about Meteroa's manner made Jehal uneasy.