The Silver Kings (41 page)

But he is our maker.

He will take the spear.

He will force us.

Like his brother the Isul Aieha.

But he is the Black Moon!

We take the spear.

Why? To bargain?

To destroy.

To serve him.

We take it for our own.

We burn the little ones out of their caves.

We storm the seven worlds at his side.

As we should have done in the beginning.

We make the vision whole.

My end will be my own
, says the dragon Snow.
Not his. Not yours. Not anyone’s but mine.
She is the first to decide, and with her choice she flies away. Others follow. Others do not. Words grow to ­savagery. Dragon turns upon dragon. With fang and talon, in fire and flame, the storm begins.

The Black Moon howls in furious despair. He plunges his hands into the tomb’s white stone and ripples through the caves and mountains of the Worldspine, hunting for every single thing that might exist in this frigid stone, ripping life away, flesh to ash to dust, souls and memories torn to shreds, hunting the ghost of the Isul Aieha and finding nothing. He blunders through the echoes, the last lingerings of his brother half-god, but only spectres remain. Anguish and torment. The Isul Aieha, searching to undo what between them they have done, torment and penance and regret.

He sees the great betrayal. He sees the Black Mausoleum, the room of arches. He sees the alchemist called Kataros, and the Silver King’s essence inside her opening at last a way back to the Silver Sea, to their home, to the moon with the last of the eternal hundred thousand. He sees the Isul Aieha’s seed taken to where he can never reach it. His own trick, played against him.

One tiny piece remains. A fragment of a simulacrum, a fractured reflection.

Brother
, whispers the ghost.
Let it go.

Inside the Black Moon Berren feels the hunger, the crushing weight, the grieving bloody wound of longing for the Silver Sea that has cast him aside.

Bare your heart and plead your sorrows. The moon will forgive.

Tears of silver light streak the Black Moon’s face. Remorse and loss for a brother for ever gone, but wrapped inside them a hardness like flint, black and cold as the void.

No.

Under a mountain already dead the Black Moon grips the desiccated skull of his brother and crushes its glass-brittle substance to dust.

No
, he says again. He turns to Berren, the last flickering spark inside him, and snuffs the Crowntaker out, irresistible as a dragon breathing fire on a snowflake.

Merizikat

Unholy Merizikat, city of the setting sun, whose catacombs become the last home for the most wicked men embraced within the Sun King’s reach. For hundreds of years souls have been damned here, bound in chains, carried across sea and mountain range to be hanged in the dark where neither sun nor moon nor starlight, nor fire nor water nor wind, shall touch their decaying flesh. Souls damned to be trapped in Xibaiya, to mourn and wail for the dead goddess who once dwelt there, but now even her ghost is gone.

In Xibaiya the Nothing spills forth. Unlucky souls are consumed, annihilated, every memory and record wiped away, erased as though they had never been. Others flee the only way they can, infesting brittle old bones to walk again.

29

The Adamantine Legion

Five months before landfall

Rockets flew. The eyrie’s underside bloomed with fire, a wreath of flames enveloping its belly, but it came on regardless, dragged by three of the Black Moon’s dragons. The others skimmed in from the sea, wings clipping wave crests, tails lashing the water, leaving swirling hissing white-faced foam in their wake. They arrowed at the harbour. Fire and flames lit up the dawn as they shrieked, as they shot among bright-armoured solar exalts and temple-born armsmen and raked the harbour walls. Rockets fizzed and streaked to the air in their wake – out to sea, up the river, into the city, straight at the sky, haphazard and everywhere. Some zinged away on tails of smoke, others spiralled and looped, or simply disintegrated mid-air. They fell by the docks, among the ships moored in the estuary, on warehouses and shipyards, in open spaces full of wagons, amid warrens of huts and houses amid
streets so narrow they appeared little more than cracks in a sea of rooftops. Fire bloomed as each one fell, as their glass tips shattered and the fire trapped within exploded to freedom.

‘Hey, big man.’

Tuuran watched the rockets fall. From atop the dome of the Holy Basilica of the Unconquered Sun they looked far away, but he and Berren had been down in the middle of all that shit once, in Dhar Thosis, and he didn’t much fancy doing it again. Men were running this way and that along the harbour ramparts. Scorpions fired at the dragons as they wheeled. The dragons swooped, tore the scorpions out of the walls and hurled their mangled remains into the sea, then returned for their scattering crews, burning them, biting them in two, smashing their bones with the lash of a tail, picking men up in their claws and throwing them far across the sky. In the estuary the first ships already had wind in their sails, manoeuvring for the open sea. As Tuuran watched, Diamond Eye dropped from the eyrie rim, her Holiness and her dragon intent on persuading them otherwise.

‘You remember what it was like?’ Tuuran asked. Quietly he scowled at the scorpion crews. Idiot novices, panicked and hasty, who wouldn’t have lasted a day in the Adamantine Guard.

‘I remember, big man.’ Berren wore a strained look, flecks of silver deep in his eyes, the way he got when the Black Moon let him out but had him on a short leash. The half-god inside was wide awake, no doubting it.

‘Do you miss it sometimes? Dhar Thosis?’

‘A sky full of rockets? Men screaming and drowning? Smoke. Fire. Couldn’t see shit half the time. Crap falling out of the sky all over the bloody place, glass exploding everywhere, splintered stone flying through the air? Miss it?’ Berren wrinkled his nose. ‘Mostly what I remember is running from one place to the next like a demented monkey, not doing much useful except not dying. But we tore their palace down, big man.’

‘Sounds about right.’ Tuuran gazed over Merizikat. The Basilica of the Unconquered Sun marked a line across the city hillside where slums blurred to wealth, where alleys and squashed-up filth and wooden sprawl morphed into avenues and parks and the steeper upper slopes of grand stone and colonnades. Further out, the city was ringed by grand temples and palaces. ‘Going to be the same here, is it?’ he asked. Dhar Thosis. The first time he’d seen a dragon in ten years of slavery. Diamond Eye and Her Holiness had gutted that city, and the horde of ravening blood-crazed slaves let loose from Shrin Chrias Kwen’s ships had run through its corpse like maggots, leaving nothing but bones.

He looked hard at Berren. Dhar Thosis was the last time Crazy Mad had been just plain Crazy. Before the Black Moon. Before he’d started turning people into ash and stopping time and ripping his way through people’s heads and stabbing them with that shit-born knife of his. Back when the world had been right and proper.

Berren shrugged. ‘Going to put the world to rights, big man.’

‘Says Berren the Crowntaker or says the half-god inside him?’

Berren shook his head and turned away. They both knew this was the half-god’s doing. ‘He never touched you. You and her. Her because of the spear she’s bound to. You because of me. You’re both free to go whenever you want. Not like the rest.’

Tuuran’s eyes flicked to the Starknife on Berren’s belt.

‘He’ll keep doing it, big man, no matter what your dragon-queen says.’ Berren shrugged. ‘You know I tried to get her to cut him out of me?’

‘Oh? How’d that go?’

‘Not as well as I’d hoped.’

Tuuran got up. The heart of the basilica was a colossal dome of enchanted glass and Scythian steel, crowned by a second much smaller dome of beaten gold and with a walkway around it. From that upper balcony Tuuran could see everything. He turned to Berren and gripped his shoulder. ‘Whatever I have to do,’ he said. ‘One way or another. Anyone, anything.’ He cocked his head. ‘You in there, Black Moon? You listening? Why not a dragon? Wouldn’t that be better? Tell me what I need to do to get my friend back and I’ll do it …’

A dazzling light burst from the sky, a beam straight from the sun. It smashed into one of the hatchlings. The dragon screamed and dropped away, wreathed in dazzling white flames, crashing into the city below. Tuuran caught a glimpse of it, burning, rampaging through the streets and setting fire to everything it touched before it melted and died. The silver in Berren’s eyes flickered.

‘You remember I told you a story once, how I went fighting for the Sun King to earn the money for my slave girl?’ Berren looked out over Merizikat. ‘Was here. And that was the sun priests of the Dominion bringing down the fire of their god …’ His expression changed to something painful. ‘Got to put to an end to that ­malarkey. He’s coming, big man. You really should go now.’ Berren’s eyes flared silver.

The other hatchlings scattered across the city. A second blast of sunfire struck the eyrie. It raked back and forth. Where it touched the rim the black stone turned bright orange, to lava that ran over the edge and rained a second deluge of fire on the city below. Brilliant silver light burst from the Crowntaker’s eyes as the balcony door opened behind him. A solar priest stood frozen in the entrance. The Black Moon took two quick steps, touched him and turned him to ash. He did the same to another. A third priest erupted in a dazzling light of his own, golden and warm, but the silver of the Black Moon devoured and consumed him. The half-god pressed on past into the dome and calmly closed the door behind him, and after that Tuuran didn’t see what happened and didn’t much care to. Howled evocations echoed, commandments hurled like weapons, curtains of light sliding through one another to score the sky as the Basilica of the Unconquered Sun lit up brighter than a lighthouse.

Enough of that.
Didn’t look like a place for hanging about. He rode his sled across the rooftops to where his legion waited. Seventy-odd men and women, half survivors from the eyrie, half of them from the night-skin ship her Holiness and her dragon had sunk. Knife-stabbed and soul-cut, every last one of them as best he knew. Made to be loyal. Forced to obey. The only ones missing, the only ones left up on the eyrie, were the enchantress and the alchemist and Myst and Onyx. The rest were here, every last one of them, young and old. Most didn’t know which end of a sword was which, but they were all soldiers now, because the Black Moon simply didn’t care. Tuuran had kept the white witch busy to exhaustion as they’d crossed the sea. Every man and woman had a sled, each wore enchanted gold-glass armour, each carried a pair of lightning throwers and a huge glass shield. The rest was up to them. It might be enough, he hoped, at least to keep them alive.

He took a moment to look at them.
His
legion. Not many of them yet, and most weren’t fighters and never would be, but it took his breath away thinking what it would be like to have a thousand men armed and armoured like this. A legion of true Adamantine Men with sleds and lightning. Unstoppable …

Most of them were scared witless. A handful couldn’t wait. That handful would do, and fate and luck would see to the rest, one way or another. He pointed to the palace at the top of the hill of Merizikat. They all knew what they had to do, so there was no point in some great speech. He looked at them instead, met the eyes of the ones he thought he could trust one by one, and then rode his sled as fast as he dared, low over the rooftops of the city, trusting the men who were truly soldiers to follow. Never mind the palace walls and its gates and its heavy iron doors and its hundred guards. Never mind everything the sun-born kings of the Dominion thought made them safe.
Here I come.
Tuuran grinned.
Death from above. Like a dragon, only worse
.

He spotted a balcony high over the front of the palace, the sort of place where a king stood to wave at his distant subjects, safe and out of reach of any harm. A set of gilded doors behind it beckoned him, and there was no one standing watch there with a bucket full of crossbows like there ought to be. He grinned, then glanced over his shoulder to the basilica and wished he hadn’t. An eerie light shone from every crack and window of the dome, a flickering brilliance of swirling silver and gold. It made his stomach churn.

Best not to think about it.

He shot over the outer palace walls. Kept his eyes on the waiting balcony as he skimmed a labyrinth of gardens and yards and stables, an archery field, a jousting circus, maybe a bear pit, other things that didn’t make much sense when all you had eyes for was racing through the sky as fast as you dared and praying not to fall off. Soldiers on the ground pointed up. Maybe they shouted something, but if they did then he couldn’t hear them over the rush of wind.
You’re all too slow, you lazy shits.
Archers came next. He saw a man stringing a bow. The first arrows flew, but only a handful, wild and hopelessly wide. He braced to hit the balcony, flipped the sled, trying to make it stop at the last moment, lost his balance, flailed horribly, and jumped as the sled hurled them both smashing into the doors. He made sure to hit them axe first. They burst open. He rolled and came up on his feet, battered and shaken but with all his bits still working, so that was something. He was at the end of a wide gallery. Thick carpet, mustard yellow. Panels of pale wood. Alcoves on both sides, neat and regular, all very pretty, each with a statue or a bust set just so, but more to the point were the six armed men at the far end. Decked out in fine golden armour and armed with halberds and short stabbing swords …

That
was the opposition? Flame, they might as well have set some kittens on guard for all the difference it would make. He pulled his axe out of the mangled door, took a deep breath and bared his teeth.
Right then.

‘Tuuraaaaaaaan!’

He had about a split second to throw himself flat as the next sleds reached the balcony. The first came hurtling way too fast, clipped the mashed doors and flipped into a spin. Halfteeth fell off and rolled across the carpet ahead. The next came a little slower. A woman half jumped, half fell, and landed beside him. Her sled smacked into Halfteeth as he was getting up and knocked him straight back down again. He swore. He was still moving though. Good stuff, that witch armour.

The men with the halberds were yelling their lungs out, but they were holding their ground, not charging like they ought to. Mistake. Tuuran took a moment. Checked behind, but the next sled riders were coming in more carefully. Not as brave or not as stupid, he wasn’t sure which. Should have practised this a bit more, but too late to be worrying about that now.

‘You two good?’ Halfway along the gallery the walls opened either side to a wide double flight of stairs that curved towards the back of the palace as they swept down. Soldiers were already running up them, yelling and howling, swords drawn. Not many, not yet, but there would be plenty more soon enough. Had to put an end to that. Cut them off, and fast.

The woman nodded. Flame, but she was so short he could have picked her up and thrown her. Halfteeth let out a volley of curses and drew his lightning wand, and that, Tuuran reckoned, would have to be enough. ‘Fast and brutal,’ he howled. ‘No quarter, no stopping.’ He took off down the gallery. The soldiers at the far end were exalts, the armour told him that much. The best the Dominion had to offer. Might even have been a fair fight one on one, hand to hand, but fuck that. Tuuran paused a moment, let Halfteeth and the woman run past him, and fired off a blast of lightning down each stairway, sending the men running up scurrying back for cover. More Adamantine Men were landing. They were strung out, each flying their sled at their own pace. Maybe he should have kept them together, shepherded them, but at least this way he knew the ones who got here first had the balls for a fight.

‘You!’ He levelled a finger at the next man along. ‘Hold these stairs. Twelve men either side then send the rest on through. Anyone tries to come up, let them chew on lightning.’

Halfteeth and the short woman had stopped, waiting for him, giving a wary eye to the six bellowing exalts. Flame! He bawled at them, ‘Need me to hold your hand, do you?’ He hit the exalt wearing a bigger golden plume in his helm with a bolt of lightning wound up as far as it would go. The exalt flew backwards, slammed into the door behind, jerked and spasmed a few times and fell twitching. ‘Like that, you dogs!’ Sod fair fights. He threw another bolt from his last wand and then fell on the others with his axe. Another explosion of lightning told him someone else had got the idea. The exalt in front of him swung. Tuuran caught the halberd with the shaft of his axe. Two more thunderclaps went off, felt like right beside his ear. The exalt in front of him flew back and smashed into the wall, knocking down a bust. His back arched and his arms and legs jerked up and down and then he was still. The air smelled of scorched skin and burned hair. That was more like it. No mercy, no quarter …