The Order Of The Scales Part 26

'What are you waiting for?' roared Vale, shattering the stillness and almost making Jehal jump out of his own skin.

I ought to run, Jehal thought. Right now. He glanced down towards the doors to the cathedral. A fit man, strong and agile, could get there in time. Pity that's not me.

The young dragon moved. Sprang down from the wall and streaked like lightning through the rubble. Jehal had never seen anything move so fast. Hunting cats, maybe. And maybe a fit man couldn't have reached the doors in time after all.

He was shaking. The dragon was a lot bigger than it had seemed over on the wall next to a full-grown adult. It ran up the side of a small half-toppled tower at the end of the wall in front of Vale, spread its wings and hissed.

Your fear is delicious, little one. The voice erupted out of nowhere inside Jehal's head. His heart tripped and then hammered in his chest, and a cold settled over him like a blanket of snow, suffocating, silent and deathly. He stared at the dragons and the dragons stared back. He could see something different in their eyes, in the way they held themselves, even across the distance between them. The hunger and the desire, the impatience and the sheer raw force, they were all there just like any other dragon. But these had something else. They fixed him with their eyes and held him fast. There was a coldness to them. An intelligence. A relentless determination. He could feel them, feel them in his head, reckoning him.

The dragons stared, and in their gazes they showed him exactly what he was. Small and shallow and worthless. Crippled and useless. With two working legs, he might have tried to run anyway. As it was, all he could do was . . . nothing.

Where are your words now? How will people remember you, Jehal? Jehal the great? Jehal the brave? Jehal the strong?

The young dragon jumped from the tower and swooped. The Night Watchman held up the Adamantine Spear, let out a howl and charged to meet it.

Jehal the wise? Jehal the good?

The dragon and the Night Watchman came together. At the last instant Vale shifted impossibly sideways and kicked off the battlements. He was flying almost sideways through the air as he reached the dragon.

How will people remember you, Jehal?

'Get out of my head!' he screamed, yet the voice wasn't anyone but himself.

The dragon's jaws snapped. The Night Watchman's spear flashed. And then they pa.s.sed one another and both crashed to the ground. A shock of air and light knocked Jehal stumbling back. His good leg caught on a piece of tortured metal that had once been a scorpion. His bad leg buckled and he went down.

Jehal the cripple? No, you can't hide behind that.

The Night Watchman's spear was buried in the dragon's skull. Just like the statue that had once stood in the centre of the City of Dragons. And, like the statue, the dragon was now stone. The Night Watchman was still moving. Just. He laboured ever so slowly to his feet. Jehal struggled to do the same.

If there's anyone left, they'll make jokes about you. Look at you, Jehal! Can't even get up.

Vale rose shakily. For a moment Jehal couldn't put his finger on what was wrong with him. Only for a moment, though, until he turned. The dragon had torn half of Vale's face off. Vale staggered and made a loud wet hooting sort of noise. He reached the spear and pulled it out of the now-stone dragon, then turned to face the others. They didn't move. Vale was swaying like a drunkard.

'Kill them!' Jehal screamed. 'Use it! Kill them!'

Vale turned back to Jehal again. You couldn't read much into his expression because his lower jaw wasn't there. His eyes were wild. For a moment Jehal thought Vale was going to kill him. Then the Night Watchman threw the spear as hard as he could, a mighty throw, right across Speaker's Yard and through the open gates of the Gla.s.s Cathedral. He staggered, lurched sideways, stepped off the edge of the wall and crashed into the rubble below.

Somewhere off to one side came the loose rattle of a ragged volley of scorpion bolts. In the haze the dragons launched themselves silently into the air all except the white one, which stayed there, watching him. Jehal couldn't move. Couldn't even stand. He was on his knees, shaking like a kitten.

Look at you. Think of all the people you've killed. Betrayed. Murdered. You know you're worth less than any of them. Deep down, you know that to be true.

Shut up shut up SHUT UP!

Two or three scorpions fired again. After that they were silent. The dragons moved sedately across the palace, slowly, calmly and methodically crushing anything that was alive. They didn't roar and they didn't breathe fire. Eventually the white one launched itself into the air. It glided across the distance between them and landed with a quiet grace where Jehal knelt. It reached out for him with its claws. Jehal let out a thin wail and scrabbled vainly away.

The dragon picked him up and looked at him, the dragon that was supposed to have been his wedding present. It c.o.c.ked its head curiously as if wondering at what a sorry excuse for a king he was.

He tried to beg but all he managed was a whimper and a whine. His bladder emptied. See. You can't even die well.

Little one, enough.

'Zafir!'

The dragon squeezed. Jehal's ribs snapped like twigs. All the air in his lungs burst out of his mouth and then everything from his stomach too. He had a moment or two to feel his hips shatter and then his bowels ruptured, his guts spilled out down his useless legs and his heart was crushed to a stop.

The dragon tossed him aside and moved on.

Epilogue.

Silence and the Endless Sea.

In the stillness of the underworld the spirit of the dragon moved with wonder and deliberate purpose. So many dead dragons. Dulled things, moving without direction, looking for a new home. Even here the alchemical potions wove their magic. How? How did you poison the dead?

The spirit mused on that for a moment, then threw the thought away. It skirted around the hole where the dead earth G.o.ddess and her slayer had held the Nothing at bay for so long. They were gone now. The hole was getting bigger and the Nothing was seeping slowly through. Now there, there was something that could kill a dragon.

Yes, the spirit of the dragon kept well clear of that. It had found something else. Hatchling flesh, waiting for the spirit to wake it. Eggs. A few here, a handful there. And one great clutch of them. So many eggs. So many dragon souls searching for new skin.

Quai'Shu sat in his cabin, quietly staring out at the sea, at the waves rolling away from the back of his ship. He felt a warmth inside him, the quiet contentment of someone who had worked very hard for a very long time and who had finally got what they wanted.

'Sea-Lord? Sea-Lord?'

The dragon-spirit raced towards the clutch, dragging others in its wake. More had gone ahead, many more. The spirit felt them shimmer out of the underworld as they merged into the waiting bodies. It followed. It felt the moment, the pull of new life, dragging it away, and then it was born. Alive. With a single violent jerk, the dragon shattered the sh.e.l.l that held its new form.

Two hatchlings were already loose in the hatchery. One had a human in its mouth and was shaking him from side to side like a dog worrying a rabbit. The man was already dead. The hatchery was smaller than the ones the dragon remembered, much smaller. Cramped and smelly. Smelled of wood and tar and water.

In the doorway stood a silhouette. A silhouette of silver.

Be STILL!

The dragon hissed. No.

One hatchling sprang; the other dropped the dead man. The sorcerer who blocked their escape shifted, the silver he wrapped around him flowing like water into a long spike in front of him. It touched a scratch the first hatchling, and the dragon fell dead. The second hatchling ripped the sorcerer's head off. Even as it did, the silver flowed again. The hatchling shuddered and collapsed beside the sorcerer's corpse. They both lay still while the sorcerer's liquid silver turned hard and dull on the floor.

The dragon called Silence jumped on the corpse. Everyone else had fled. It seized the dead sorcerer's head between its jaws and bit down. Hard.

Free . . .

'Sea-Lord?'

With a sigh Quai'Shu eased his aching joints out of his comfortable chair and stood up. As he did, he happened to glance out of the stern windows at the end of his cabin.

Half his ships were burning.

Quai'Shu's jaw fell open. Before he could think, a voice thundered straight into his head, just like the moon-sorcerers had done.

I am Silence, it said, and I am hungry.

Acknowledgements.

With thanks to Simon Spanton, devourer of unnecessary prologues, who asked for dragons and got more than he bargained for. To John Jarrold, agent overlord. To the copy-editors and proofreaders, whose names I've rarely known. To Dominic Harman and Stephen Youll for their gorgeous dragons and the artists who turned them into covers. To Jon Weir, who demanded the duel.

To lovers of dragons. And to all alchemists everywhere, unseen, unrewarded, tirelessly working to keep our monsters at bay.

To you, for reading this.

For any who want to explore the world of the dragons for its own sake, you can do so at the online gazetteer at www.stephendeas.com/gazetteer.

And lastly, if you liked this book, please tell someone!

Also by Stephen Deas from Gollancz:.

The Adamantine Palace.

The King of the Crags.

The Thief-Taker's Apprentice.