The Adamantine Palace (44 page)

Hyram lurched violently and stumbled towards the parapet of the balcony. Shezira caught him, stopped him from falling to the ground, and then let go as he fought her away.

'If it's not you, then who's doing this?' But she could see in his eyes that he was somewhere else, somewhere far, far away.

'Get off my dragon,' he shouted at her. 'Get off it! Stay on your own!' She backed away from him. 'Yes, that's right. Back where you belong. Stay away!'

The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She'd seen Hyram drunk often enough. This was something else. 'Hyram? If you didn't send the Guard, then who did? Zafir?'

'Zafir?' he looked at her blankly, as though he'd never heard the name. 'Prince Tyan, that's who did this to me. And that little bitch Aliphera, with her flashing eyes and her stone-cold heart. She did this. And Antros, always blocking out the sun, wherever I stand. You're welcome to him. Take him away and leave me be, all of you.' He lurched again.

'Aliphera's dead, Hyram. Tyan's mad. Antros has been gone for fifteen years. What are you talking about?'

'Death.' For a moment his eyes focused on her. 'Death, Shezira. Life is like a wheel rolling through time, and sometimes little pieces stick to it. They stick to it all the way round and come back again when you least expect them. I'm sorry I betrayed you to them. Aliphera and Tyan.' He reached out to her, and then his eyes went wide and she could see him fall away back to whatever place held him. A door closed behind his face. He wasn't coming back.

Shezira shook her head and pursed her lips. 'You mean Jehal and Zafir, don't you? I'm sorry too, Hyram. Sorry for you, but I don't have time for this. Whatever they're--' Hyram's face had gone rigid with terror. He was looking past her.

'Get away! Get away!'

Something fluttered past her and flew at Hyram. In the darkness she couldn't see what it was. Some sort of bird perhaps, but it glittered like gold and made a strange sound as it flew, more a clattering of metal than the fluttering of feathers. It buzzed at Hyram's head.

'Get away!' He flailed at it, stumbling towards the parapet.

Shezira took a step towards him. Somewhere inside the keep a commotion had started. It was rapidly getting closer.

'Get away! Get off my dragon!'

He was going to fall.

'Hyram!' She lunged at him, trying to grab his arm. He shrieked and hurled himself away from her, straight into the parapet. His head and arms kept going, tipping over into the emptiness beyond. His legs flew up. It all seemed to happen very slowly, so slowly that Shezira couldn't understand why she couldn't do anything about it. And then he was gone. He didn't scream at all, but she heard the thud, a few seconds later, as he hit the ground.

There were people running into Hyram's bedchamber behind her.

'Murder!' shouted a woman's voice. It was Queen Zaflr. 'She's murdered my husband!'

For the first time in many years Shezira didn't know what to do. She stood staring over the edge. Behind her she could hear her riders trying to defend her. There were only two of them, though, and Zafir had come in force. It didn't last long.

Jehal unwrapped the silk from his eyes. Then he lay back on his bed while Kazah pulled his boots off again. He stared at the ceiling filled with immeasurable satisfaction.

I win.

68

The Glacier

She was getting hotter. Kemir felt it. They hadn't gone very far before Snow's back grew first uncomfortable, then painful and finally almost unbearable. He'd made a mistake, he thought. She was dying, and there wasn't much to be done about it.

At least we'll be far from the alchemists when they finally come out of their caves. We can just die slowly from cold and hunger instead.

He could live with that, he decided. Better to die out here, fighting to survive in these harsh lands, than rot in some dungeon. Nadira probably wouldn't see it that way, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. They'd tried, him and Snow. They'd tried and they'd failed, and that felt so much better than not having tried at all. He could die happy with that.

Snow flew higher and higher, arrowing deep into the World-spine. The mountains and valleys grew more wild and broken, the peaks higher, until they arced into a narrow valley filled with an azure lake. Snow dropped through the air until she was skimming the water. Her flying had become erratic. She was aiming for the end of the lake, where a glacier stretched down from the mountainside and immense chunks of grey ice drifted lazily in the brilliant blue water. As she reached it, she crash-landed close to the shore. Even as Kemir and Nadira were struggling out of the freezing water, Snow was backing away into the deeper parts of the lake, towards the ice cliff of the glacier. There was madness in her thoughts now, mixed in with the fury. She wasn't afraid, though. She was sure she was dying, but she wasn't afraid.

Goodbye, Little One Kemir.

Kemir spat and shook as much water as he could from his clothes. The air up here was so cold the wet furs were already starting to freeze. 'Live, dragon,' he hissed. 'If you live, you can free as many dragons as you want. But if you're gone, who else will do it?' Never mind that there's little chance of us surviving on our own up here.

She was sinking beneath the freezing water. When she finally lifted her head and looked up, she was instantly wreathed in steam. She must have read his thoughts, though, for with one last gasp, she spat a stream of fire at the trees nearby, setting them ablaze. Giving him warmth and fire and a chance, at least, to survive. Then she gave Kemir a look and cocked her head. Her thoughts felt distant and vague, and also a little confused, as if the answer to his question was obvious. You, Kemir. You will do it.

Kemir laughed. 'I don't think so, dragon.'

He pulled Nadira after him into the forest and didn't look back. Behind him, the dragon sank with barely a ripple and was gone.

Epilogue - The Perfect White

'Where is she?' Almiri had barely landed. She wore full armour and had nearly fifty dragons with her: Shezira's from the encampment in the Purple Spur, and a detachment of Valgar's riders. She started to take the armour off. The weight of it left her almost unable to walk.

Rider Jostan glanced towards the caves and bowed. 'She's still with the body, Your Holiness.'

Almiri wrinkled her nose. The valley still stank of smoke. The alchemists were out of the caves now. Some of them had left; most had stayed to rebuild the ruins of their homes.

'Did you find all the others?'

'No.' Jostan sounded solemn. 'We found four dragons. The fifth is missing. The white.'

'The four you found, were all of them dead?'

'Yes, Your Holiness.' Then he smiled a little. 'We even found Rider Semian. Or he found us. Naked and half-dead from the cold, but he recovered quickly enough. It was hardly a problem to get him warm.'

'So one more to find. And the riders? The ones that brought the dragons here in the first place?'

Jostan shrugged. 'Left on the back of the white. Semian saw them go, heading into the deepest parts of the Worldspine. He says there were two of them. A man and a woman. The man used to work for--' He didn't finish, but Almiri knew what he had been going to say: Queen Shezira's knight-marshal. For the assassin who'd tried to murder Speaker Zafir, who'd died rather than be taken when she failed, and who might just have started a war.

Jostan bit his lip. 'I'm afraid Semian took the Ember poison, Your Holiness. His mind is--"

'I need to speak to her.'

Jostan looked uncomfortable. 'Yes, Your Holiness.'

He left her presence and headed for the caves.

Almiri took her time with her armour. They couldn't stay long; the alchemists' eyrie was tiny, and all the cattle they'd kept to feed visiting dragons were gone. She wasn't entirely sure what to say to her sister. She'd waited for a couple of days, hoping that Jaslyn would come to her, but she hadn't.

Eventually she couldn't put it off any longer. She walked towards the cave mouths and the dead dragons that lay there. The ground around them was already blackened from the heat. She could still recognise Matanizkan, Levanter and Silence, all three hatched and raised in Outwatch. Jaslyn was sitting, legs crossed, beside the river, as close to Silence as she could without being scorched. She was soaking wet. Sweat, Almiri thought, until she saw Jaslyn scoop handfuls of water from the river and splash it over herself.

She sat beside her sister. The air was burning hot and hard to breathe. There wasn't any wind.

'This is as close as I can get,' said Jaslyn quietly.

Almiri felt herself begin to cook under her flying clothes. 'You have to leave him,' she said uncomfortably. 'He's gone. We can make sure you get his scales.'

'I want to take them myself, when he's cooled enough.'

'I ...' Almiri stood up. The heat was intolerable. 'Can we go back to the eyrie ?'

'Have some water from the river.' Jaslyn splashed some over her own face. She made no move to stand. Almiri sighed and sat down again.

'We fought our way out of the Adamantine Palace, Jaslyn. After they took mother and Valgar. Out of a hundred riders, twenty of us reached the eyrie and our dragons. We took as many as we could. I have Mistral. They say our mother murdered Hyram, and that our knight-marshal tried to kill the speaker. They mean to put mother and Valgar on trial. They'll be executed. They won't even be given the Dragon's Fall.'

Jaslyn didn't move.

'Our mother is imprisoned, Jaslyn. King Valgar too. Valgar had less than a hundred dragons, but you--'

'You're the eldest. Mother's realm is yours.'

'No.' Almiri shook her head. It was hard, sometimes, not to be bitter. 'No, mother has made you her heir, and she has given you away. To Prince Dyalt, King Sirion's youngest. You have to use him. You and Sirion have five hundred dragons between you. You can fight them. Make them give mother back to us. The realms need you, Jaslyn. Mother needs you.'

'Mother never needed anyone.'

Almiri bit her lip. 'Then I need you, sister.'

For a long time Jaslyn didn't say anything. Then she took a deep breath. 'The dragons weren't dead when we found them. Did anyone tell you that?'

Almiri shook her head.

'They were still alive. In torpor. And you know what? Just before he died my Silence woke up. Somehow, he woke out of his torpor. He was nearly gone, and he woke up, and he spoke to me. He spoke to me, Almiri. I heard his thoughts in my head.'

'Dragons don't speak, Jaslyn.'

'Yes, they do. When we don't poison them. He spoke as though he'd plucked the words out of my head. He told me a lot of things that I didn't know. About our dragons. He was beautiful before all this, but when he spoke ... I would have saved him if I could. I would have done almost anything. Even if there was something to take this poison away, I would not go back to what I was. That's what he said.'

'You've seen what one rogue dragon can do. Look around you. We have to do what we do, Jaslyn.'

'You know, don't you? You know all about it. What we do to them. Why didn't anyone tell me?'

Almiri shuffled her feet. 'You're not a queen, Jaslyn. Only a princess. And there are secrets even queens do not hear.'

'He asked me why I was so sad. "Because you're dying," I said to him. And he lifted his head with what little strength he had and looked at me. And you will follow me, he said. One day. The difference between us is that I will die today and be reborn tomorrow. You will not. That was all. An hour later he was gone. Do you suppose that's true? Are dragons reborn when they die? Or is that another secret too dire for a princess ?'

'If it is, then it's too dire for this queen as well.' Almiri chewed her lip. 'I don't know, sister, but if they do come back, then one day there will be another Silence.'

'That's what I thought at first, when he died. Perhaps, at that moment, another dragon was born in some eyrie.' Jaslyn slowly got to her feet. 'But will he remember me, Almiri? I don't think so.' They walked away side by side, as sisters should.

'I don't want a war, Jaslyn. None of us wants that. But they can't do this.'

Jaslyn wasn't listening. 'If it's true, then the white will remember me. She will remember us all.'

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, 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 or 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 her presence, a moment before the water began to churn.