Silver Kings: The Splintered Gods Part 8

She woke late and found the truce, to her mild surprise, still holding. She spent the day helping Belli repair the hatchery, and also surrept.i.tiously testing her little gold-gla.s.s spy-dragon. Towards the middle of the afternoon an enormous gla.s.ship drifted in from the edge of the storm-dark. It carried beneath it, hanging from a dozen gleaming chains, a lenticular silver gondola three times the size of any Liang ever had seen before, decorated with emerald and jade. Etched into its sh.e.l.l were the three entwined dragons of Vespinarr. As it touched down on the white stone, Liang wondered for one wild moment whether this could be Lord Shonda himself but when the gondola opened there was no one inside. Over the rest of the afternoon a procession of tvarrs and kwens emerged into the dragon yard from the tunnels, two Elemental Men watching over them as they came and went. The gondola opened, swallowed them and spat them out again some time later. Liang kept stopping to watch until Belli almost lost his temper and snapped at her to concentrate. He had almost all his Scales desperately trying to hold up the chain net over the hatchery while she shaped gold-gla.s.s struts to keep it aloft.

They worked through the day until the sun was sinking and the dragon yard fell into grey shadow. The eyrie felt more peaceful than it had since the dragons first arrived, and yet beneath the calm Liang felt the tension. The peace was a phoney one, and her eyes kept straying to the eyrie wall. Lit up by the setting sun, Diamond Eyes fiery scales seemed to blaze. It had its back to them, and as far as Liang could tell had spent the entire day staring at the G.o.dspike again. When she put on her goggles, she could see Zafir propped against its hind claws, head drooping as though she was dozing, although how anyone could doze in the constant infernal wind, Liang had no idea.

An Elemental Man appeared out of the air beside her. Liang jumped, turned and swore.

'Chay-Liang of Hingwal Taktse! The killer bowed solemnly, gestured to the gondola in the middle of the dragon yard and, without another word, dissolved into nothing, vanishing into the air as he became the wind. He appeared again beside Belli. Liang waited to see what would happen. The Elemental Man shouted, gestured to the gondola a second time and vanished once more, reappearing this time by the open ramp. Liang hurried to take Bellis arm before he said something stupid he kept glancing at the hatchery, at the unfinished netting, but you didnt ignore a summons from the Elemental Men, not for anything.

The gondola ramp had been contrived with shapes and colours and contoured silver to look like a forked tongue, inviting them into the maw of a jade-fanged dragon. Liang supposed it was meant to be impressive, even awe-inspiring, and maybe it was until you saw a real dragon face to face. She paused nevertheless, because the working of the silver on the gondolas skin was impressive. From top to bottom, every elegant curve was carved into a series of reliefs, the history of Vespinarr from the first coming of the self-styled Emperor Vespin, his expeditions into the mountains, the terrible scourge of the Righteous Ones, the razing of the temples by the Elemental Men, the sorceress Abraxi and doubtless more further around the rim. The quality of the workmanship, particularly in the silver, was as fine as shed ever seen, and she doubted she could have worked gla.s.s any better. A little voice suggested she find the name of the artist so she could use him for her own work, then remembered that, whoever it was was in Vespinarr and unlikely to want to work with the enchantress who was about to ruin their city.

Bellepheros was getting impatient, fretting about his hatchery. Liang left the reliefs for another time and walked up the ramp. As soon as she stepped inside the gondola itself, she knew it belonged to MaiChoiro. The entire s.p.a.ce was a monument to his vanity. Three portraits hung between the windows; everything was wrought in Vespinese silver and studded with emeralds; dragons and lions peered at her from every nook and yet it was clearly the design of a kwen. The windows lining the curved silver walls were staggered, some of them looking down, others looking up. Much of the floor was gold-gla.s.s spoked with gold. Liang wondered for a moment if the gondola even had its own lightning cannon, but no, the gold-gla.s.s was simply to observe directly below. Fitted into the walls either side of the golem pilots cabinet, two small black-powder guns pointed out. Liang paused to run her fingers over them. The best Scythian steel. Vanity or did they really have the power to hurt another gla.s.ship? She knelt down beside them to see if she could discern any mechanism to turn them and then stopped short. Fascinated as she was, now was hardly the time or the place.

The centrepiece of the gondola was a huge round table of polished obsidian. The gondola had been empty as she and Bellepheros entered but now she heard the air pop and felt the touch of a breeze. When she looked back, seven Elemental Men sat around the table, all in identical black robes edged with entwined strands of red, blue and white and impossible to tell apart. They beckoned to her to sit, and for the rest of the evening they asked about the dragons, on and on, what they were and where they came from and what they did. They pressed Bellepheros for everything he knew on their nature. Had there always been dragons? He didnt know. Where had they come from? He didnt know that either, but they continued on into the night until Liang thought she knew as much about the history of Bellis world as he did himself. The killers asked how dragons were restrained, about the potions he made, about what a dragon would become without them Belli couldnt help himself when they got to that and ranted for some time about the hatchling that had gone missing and the dire threat of it and how everything else must stop until it had been found and destroyed, but the Elemental Men seemed barely interested. They let him exhaust himself with pleas and threats and exhortations and then calmly asked how much poison he would need to kill all the dragons and how long it would take to make it. One of the Elemental Men spent the entire time furiously writing down everything that was said.

A tvarr and some slaves came with food and water, but the Elemental Men touched nothing. When Bellepheros and Liang had eaten, they told her to go out and make a gold-gla.s.s shelter for Zafir up on the wall so she could live beside her dragon for now. After that they sent the two of them to rest for the night but the questions resumed in the morning, this time about dragons, their nature and their origins and the taming and keeping of them. For a while they asked about alchemy and blood-magic; and when it came to the Silver King, the half-G.o.d whod tamed the dragons in the first place, they asked about nothing else for two straight hours.

On their way out that second day, Liang and Belli pa.s.sed Tsens slave Kalaiya walking across the dragon yard to take their place in the gondola. She looked shrivelled and smaller than Liang remembered. Her face was puffed but she held herself stiffly straight. Liang tried to catch her eye but Kalaiya stared pointedly into the far distance until the gondola swallowed her up. When the Elemental Men were done with her, the dragon-riders slaves came next. Liang had stayed in the yard to watch and glanced across at the dragon. It wasnt looking at the G.o.dspike any more. It was looking at the gondola.

'Kalaiya! Liang called. Kalaiya stopped. She turned and took a deep breath and then slowly lowered herself to her knees. She must have been younger than Liang but she moved like an old woman. Tsens death had done that to her.

'Mistress.

Liang shook her head and quickly pulled Kalaiya back to her feet. 'No, no. None of that. She offered an embrace but Kalaiya simply stood wrapped in Liangs arms like a lump of dough. 'I told Tsen that Id look after you, Liang said. 'When they came for him. If theres anything- 'Hes dead. Her voice was flat and lifeless.

'I know, and- 'Theyre going to take Sea Lord QuaiShu to Khalishtor for trial. Theyll hold him in the Elemental Palace at the foot of Mount Solence. Were not allowed to talk to him. Hes forbidden to speak to anyone.

Liang snorted. 'QuaiShu lost the last bits of his mind months ago. Hes as mad as Zaklat the Death Bat. Whats the point of talking to him, for pitys sake?

'Theyll hang the rest of us here. Kalaiya turned away and then looked back. 'Tsen said you would be a friend. They killed him days ago. A sob shook her. 'I heard them talking. They said it was poison. They think he killed himself but he didnt. Her face set hard. 'He was going to face them. He knew theyd hang him anyway but he was going to face them 'I know. Poison. Thats why Liang hadnt seen any wound.

'They stabbed him in the back. Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Abruptly Kalaiya burst into tears, and this time when Liang held her she shook and shuddered with her grief until she pulled away and for a moment her eyes blazed. 'You were a friend to him, Chay-Liang. Give me a wand. They mean to bring MaiChoiro Kwen to the dragon yard to hear their orders for the eyrie. Give me a wand that a slave can use and Ill see he never hears them. Or a knife to make him bleed.

'Youll never get close. Theyll kill you.

'I dont care! I have nothing left!

'I cant, Kalaiya. Go back inside. It almost crushed Liang to send her away without giving her some sort of hope.

MaiChoiro, though . . .

Liang ran back inside, ignoring Bellis indignant protests about the hatchery. She wrapped black silk across her eyes, the silk that let her see through the eyes of her little enchanted gla.s.s dragon, and waited to see what would happen.

18.

Warlocks and Other Things Best Forgotten At night the dragon Silence watched. Through the day it flew along the coast for hundreds of miles. It found the edge of the desert where it blurred into smudges of green that grew and then sprawled into a thick jungle of emerald trees laced through with silver ribbons of water. It found clouds and lush hills that drew the rain out of them before they could reach the desert beyond. All these things but no cities of the little ones.

It hunted and returned, perched on a rock in the night and listened to the thoughts and memories of the little one who carried the splinter of the Black Moon. It poked a little and prodded, but only with the lightest touch. Before the sun rose it flew away, out to sea until it found another curtain of the storm-dark, stretched out, endless to the eye. It dived beneath the water, down until it reached the bottom, and in the depths there purple lightning flashed, dim and distant and full of sullen purpose, lighting the black water. There were no fish, no crawling things on many legs scuttling in the darkness, no glow-eyed jelly creatures. Life knew better than to be close to the Nothing. The dragon Silence rose again and burst into the air, long and sharp and hard in glittering spray, and returned to seek the little ones once more. It drew out their thoughts and divined their destination the Queverra and when the dragon sought to see this place in their memories, it saw a scar across the earth, the bottomless chasm it had crossed some days before.

It found the Crowntaker once more. It dug into his thoughts, peeling the layers of his life like an onion.

'Did I ever tell you about Utthen of Merizikat? Berren walked with his hands tied to a pole. Five other slaves had their hands tied to the same pole in front of him and three more followed behind. Tuuran was on another pole beside him. Their feet were tied too, with ropes loose enough for walking but too short to run.

'Im not listening to you. Tuuran made a big show of looking somewhere else.

'Utthen of Merizikat! Name not mean anything? They walked like that, night after night over hard-baked earth, dry and dusty. Tufts of hostile spiny gra.s.s and stunted thorn bushes ambushed them in the twilight now and then, tearing at legs and feet.

'I think I am hearing some noises. Might it be a large dangerous animal? I hope so then it might eat someone.

'Merizikat. In the Dominion. They have some catacombs there. They hang people under the ground. The worst sorts. They take them from all across the provinces. Thousands of miles some of them come. They hang them underground and then leave their bodies in the catacombs so their souls can never reach the sun. They walked in the mornings as the sun rose and the heat of the day began to build, rested and hid in what shade they could find from midday until late in the afternoon, then walked again until long after dark and then slept, the same every day.

'Or is that noise the wind? Come to think of it, it does sound like a lot of hot air.

'Utthen of Merizikat. Pretended to be a necromancer. Came from somewhere in the far south. Claimed hed murdered more than a hundred souls. Entire villages. So they locked him up and took him a thousand miles to be hanged in Merizikat. But it turned out he wasnt a necromancer at all. He just had business there and was too tight to pay for pa.s.sage. Berrens legs ached. He was hungry and tired and thirsty but most of all he was numb inside, as though all the colour had drained out of him and every memory was a washed-out grey. Fasha stayed, a slowly dimming pain, the memory of her face blurring, the sharpness of remembered feeling leaching out every day.

'Did they hang him anyway?

'I dont know.

'Bit of a c.r.a.p story then.

Tuuran went back to ignoring him. The slavers made their next midday camp in the lee of a great cliff. They propped up shelters and walked among their captives, giving each a meagre cup of water and a wedge of dry stale bread. Berren dozed, woken again when it was time to go by sharp shouts and prodding feet. The slaves pulled wearily at each other, all having to get up at once along the pole that bound them together, tripping over the ropes around their feet. Some were close to the end of their endurance. Berren had no idea what would happen when the first one fell. It wouldnt be him. That was all that mattered.

They trudged on, the slavers exhorting them to a faster pace with threats and now and then the crack of a whip. They followed the base of a cliff, the sun behind them now as they headed ever eastward. The world around Berren narrowed to the heat on his back, the pain across his shoulders from the wooden pole, the aches in his legs and his feet and the cracked-dry earth in front of him where each next step would fall. The reluctant sun sank to the horizon, darkness fell and a full moon rose. They pa.s.sed the cliff and headed into open ground and a breeze swept across from the north. A light puff of wind but delicious nevertheless.

The dead of Merizikat. Stupid story, although that reminded him of even more stupid stories from the galley back when hed been a slave. Stories of how the dead men lying in the catacombs had started getting up and walking again these last few years. And that was simply ridiculous, or so hed thought until hed gone back to his old home of Deephaven and found the streets he used to know had become a necropolis, crawling with the walking talking b.a.s.t.a.r.d dead. He shuddered at the memory. With their eyes st.i.tched shut what was that about?

Deephaven and the dead. Made him think of warlocks, of Saffran and Vallas and Skyrie; out of nowhere they bloomed inside his thoughts, unexpected, unwanted and unwelcome. Skyrie had stopped fighting him years ago. The warlocks memories were dead things, pa.s.sive and still, but they remained. Memories of the memories of another man, now escaped somehow from the closets in which hed put them. He remembered walking into the Pit under the castle of Tethis, knowing what Vallas Kuy meant to do. He remembered being Berren on a field a few miles away with sigils scribed in blood pressed to his chest in the heat of battle. He remembered the horror as he was ripped out of himself and Skyries horror as they merged, for that wasnt how Vallas had meant it to be.

Hed never stopped to think much about this other man Skyrie. All that had counted back then was that they were trapped together, that only one of them could win and that it had to be him. Skyrie had been a warlock, a minion to the soap maker. Little else. It was all that mattered.

But no, there had to be more.

No. Nothing that mattered.

Remember it anyway.

A farmer then. A poor village boy from somewhere. Berren had never heard the name of the place, only knew that it was on the edge of a lake beside a swamp, surrounded by reed beds. Didnt even know what kingdom. Hed had a sister. Men had come to his village. Soldiers on horses. Raiders who took whatever caught their eye. One year they came twice and something bad had happened and . . .

He could see the scar on his leg. Cut to the bone across his thigh, it was a savage wound. The skin had closed in time, twisted and warped and folded but healed. The leg worked well enough now.

The second time they came, they killed every man, woman and child. They burned Skyries village to ash and he was the only one who lived because hed already crawled out into the reeds to die that night. The leg had gone bad. And yet he hadnt died after all and hed come back in the morning and found everything gone. Hed followed the tracks of the soldiers but lost them. Then he met an old man with a half-ruined face, scarred by pox or fire and with one blind milky eye, who claimed hed seen some soldiers come by not long ago, a villainous-looking lot, and he knew who they were too. The b.l.o.o.d.y Judges men.

A lie. A lie a lie a lie!

Something about the old man. Hed travelled with Skyrie a little way. Only a few days. The soldiers were long gone by then, beyond his reach, but there were men who would help him, the old man said. Men in Tethis. He should look for the soap maker. And so he did, and told his story and learned everything there was to learn about the wickedness of the b.l.o.o.d.y Judge, the mercenary lord who took his band of outlaws up and down the little kingdoms and answered to no one and left a trail of wailing women and fatherless children behind him. The greatest evil north of Kalda, but in Tethis something would be done. Queen Gelisya meant to bring an end to his reign of terror.

He remembered Vallas, the soap maker. Remembered him both as Skyrie and as Berren the b.l.o.o.d.y Judge, years before on a ship and years later, a few days ago when Berren had finally found him in Dhar Thosis and killed him.

Aria, Skyrie, where the Ice Witch keeps him in a gilded cage. He gave you a gift. One that not even she knows. The warlocks last words. He had no idea what they meant.

A gift?

Hed never understood.

Saffran Kuys last apprentice. The man with one eye. The man with the half-ruined face.

You ask me who you are, Skyrie, but thats not the question. The question is what?

A man with a half-ruined face. Hed seen a man like that before. The old man whod sent him to the soap maker. But somewhere else as well.

Where?

In Skyries memories. The ones that came out in his dreams. He pushed deeper.

Bloodied and broken and crawling to his death in the swamps while the stars above winked out one by one. With a man standing over him in robes the colour of moonlight, his pale face scarred ragged by disease or fire, one blind eye milky white. Fingers that traced symbols over him. Air that split open like swollen flesh. Black shadow that oozed from the gashes left behind.

There was something out of place in Skyries memories. He hadnt seen it before because he hadnt looked or cared. But Skyrie had crawled away into a swamp to die with one leg festering and ruined beyond repair and in the morning hed walked out again. Walked out . . .

The wound in his leg. There were marks within the scar, impossibly intricate, silvery lines and whorls like runes. Like the sigils of the warlocks. The man with the one eye . . .

But hed met the old man with the one eye afterwards, not then. The one whod told him about the soldiers, whod sent him to Vallas . . .

Show me!

For a moment Berren stumbled. Show me?

It fills the hole, you see. Words Gelisya had spoken to him once. The Dark Queen before thats what she became. Like the Black Moon and the Dead G.o.ddess fill the hole in the world. He showed me. You have to keep it closed. Otherwise something will come through. Not yet but one day. Before you both come back for the very last time. You have to keep it closed. Even with her lips almost touching his ear, her whisper was so quiet he could barely hear her. Hes making us ready. To let it in when the Ice Witch brings down the Black Moon.

And then Skyrie again, that night in the swamp where everything changed. What will you give? the one-eyed stranger had asked.

Anything, he replied.

And everything?

Everything.

Anything and everything.

The hole was there. For the second time he looked inside and saw that he was not alone. He saw that something looked back.

The Black Moon.

The stranger with the half-ruined face and the milky eye had put it there. Inside Skyrie. Inside him. And he saw too that all along there had been other eyes behind his own, peering with a quiet hunger over his shoulder at every vision and every memory, pushing and nudging and guiding him towards revelation.

The Black Moon saw too.

I see you, little worm.

Destroyer! Who let you loose?

A flicker of a thought that didnt belong to any of the pieces he carried inside him. A child of the sun . . .

Crazy Mad muttering to himself wasnt anything new. Tuuran had mostly stopped listening, but this time he caught the last few words because something had changed. The voice wasnt Crazys any more.

'A child of the sun.

Crazys eyes burst into brilliant moonlight silver. All of a sudden Tuuran could see everything around him as though it was the middle of the day. He staggered as the other slaves on his pole lurched and lost their step. Crazy Mad stopped dead. The ropes around him simply ceased to be and the pole over his head was gone too. The slave behind stumbled into the back of him and dissolved into a cloud of black ash. Tuuran stared aghast. No pretending it hadnt happened, not this time.

A hundred yards off in the scrub among the loose rocks he saw a dragon. A hatchling. In the darkness it had been invisible. Now it was clear for everyone to see, except everyone was staring at Crazy Mad.

'Dragon! Tuuran would have pointed but his hands were tied to the pole. A flash of lightning dazzled him, brighter still than the light pouring out of Crazy Mads eyes. The thunderclap made him wince. Crazy staggered. Another lightning bolt hit him and then another, thrown by the slavers with their wands, each one strong enough to kill any man it touched and probably anyone unlucky enough to be standing next to him too. They ought to have hurled Crazy Mad through the air like a leaf in the wind. After the third Crazy didnt even flinch any more. He stood there, all that silver light pouring out of him, and simply didnt notice.

The slaves next to Crazy suddenly found themselves free. They bolted, only they werent running for freedom, they were running to get away. Everyone was suddenly shouting at once. The slaves bound to Tuuran tried to run too, except the pole and the tethers around their feet made it impossible. One tripped in his haste, lost his balance and fell, and his weight on the pole was enough to bring them all down in a tangled heap of arms and legs. Another pole of slaves was shuffling away as fast as possible; yet another had fallen; the slavers were screaming their heads off and dashing this way and that like crazed geese, bawling at everyone to get down on the ground while everything threw up crazy shadows, bathed in the eerie moonlight glow from Crazy Mads eyes.

A bolt of lightning hit the pole of slaves trying to get away. The slave at the back arched and threw himself into the rest and then hung, a deadweight among them, and down they went. When Tuuran looked again, the dragon had gone. Or maybe it was hiding. Hed never heard of a dragon hiding but then hed never heard of a mans eyes turning silver and lighting up the night as bright as day, nor of anyone who could swat aside lightning as though it was nothing. Or maybe he had, but only in stories that the soldiers of the guard used to tell each other around their fires late at night, tales of the Isul Aieha, the Silver King, the half-G.o.d whod come with his Adamantine Spear when the dragons had flown free, whod shown the first blood-mages and alchemists how to tame them.

'Crazy! Crazy Mad!

The air was awash with shouts and moans and wails. Crazy didnt move. He hadnt moved a single step since the moment this had started.

'Berren! Skyrie! Tuuran paused a moment because he was a simple man who saw the world in simple ways. 'Isul Aieha!

Crazy heard the name and spun round as though hed been stung. He took a step towards Tuuran and then stopped again. The slavers were still throwing lightning. Crazy shifted, caught three bolts in the palms of his hands in quick succession and threw them straight back the way theyd come, and after that the slavers gave up and slipped away into the shadows, fear getting the better of them as it should have right at the start. Through it all, Crazys eyes were locked on Tuuran. He came closer and crouched down. The wails from the men around grew louder. They tried to scrabble free. Futile, bound as they were, but they tried.

Stop.

The air fell still. All sound ceased. The slaves stopped their struggles. Everything froze. Everything. It took a moment for Tuuran to realise it. No rasping breaths, no hiss of the breeze, nothing, not even his own heartbeat. He couldnt even shift his eyes. It was as though Crazy Mad had stopped time itself and slipped them both outside it, and now those burning silver eyes bored into him. Neither of them spoke a word. Tuuran couldnt have, even if hed thought of something to say. Crazy Mad still moved as though nothing had changed, but this Crazy didnt need to speak. Tuuran felt something dive into him and take whatever it wanted.

Isul Aieha.

Abruptly the world began to move again. There was sound and Tuurans ears filled once more with wails of fear. He blinked. Crazy was crouched over him, only now the light had gone and Crazy Mad was just Crazy Mad, and Tuuran had never seen such a despair in any man.

'Crazy?

'There was a dragon in my head. It took my memories. It showed me everything.

'Crazy! Cut us loose!

'What am I, Tuuran? Crazy backed away. 'What am I? Theres no joy any more. No kindness. Nothing warm and nothing soft. Nothing.

He disappeared into the darkness. Tuuran yelled after him. 'Crazy! Crazy! Cut us loose, you mad daft b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You leave me here and Ill hunt you down, so help me you selfish piece of . . . But Crazy Mad was gone.