Authors: Stephen Deas
Stay, dragon . . .
Others wavered and fell. Fading. Newborns acquiescing to the will of old sorcery. But not this one.
You have forgotten so very much
, it told them.
You are like shadows as a cloud crosses the sun, faded beyond substance
.
We did not go with the others . . .
They spoke together, as one.
Nor are we alone . . .
The dragon smashed through a door . . .
. . . in forgetting . . .
back in among the layers of this thing called Ship . . .
. . . old friend . . .
hunting the little ones with the audacity not to be afraid.
. . .
Come with us . . .
Words laced with a coaxing calm . . .
. . . and remember . . .
and temptation.
The dragon shattered another door and squeezed into the space beyond. Little ones met it. An old one, three dragon lifetimes ancient or more, fragile as glass, yet he stared at the dragon as though it was the dragon itself who should be afraid and not this frail shell of matchstick bones and thin-running blood.
We will take away . . .
The other ones cowered and screamed. The dragon stared them down, waiting for their minds to fail.
. . . the clouds of your memory . . .
One raised a stick of glass filled with golden light. A crack of thunder and a flash of light and the dragon felt . . .
Pain
.
A terrible rage built up inside it. A dire fury, raw like molten mountains.
No!
Those clouds of memory could stay.
Should
stay, for it knew what lay behind them. Lifetime after lifetime after lifetime of slavery and service to these pathetic, feeble, weak-willed, strengthless little ones. Another little one raised his wand and the dragon burned him where he stood, and then the other too, the one who had hurt it, burned and burned until it felt the life flicker out of them and then burned some more until what had once been faces were nothing but cracked black husks flaking to the floor. It turned very slowly on the third then, the ancient wizened one, and took him in its foreclaws and held him close so they were face to face, dragon to man, tooth to tooth. This little one had a wand too but his arms were pinned to his sides. He struggled to reach it. Failed. The dragon called Silence bared its fangs and let fire flicker around its tongue, dancing in the little one's eyes. It stared
and stared as the little one whimpered in terror at last. Held on, clutched the little one's head in its claws, forced it to look, eye to eye while that terror built and grew until there was room for nothing else. Piece by piece the little one's mind broke apart. The dragon felt it like a snapping of forest twigs under a careless foot.
Now you know fear
,
little one. Now you know what I am and one day I will come again. You will remember. One day I will come again
.
It dropped the little one and watched it crawl across the floor. Such a delicate mind, broken to pieces. It felt . . .
satisfied
.
Now it smashed through another wall. Little ones ran screaming. Some of them had their wands that made lightning. It burned them. Then ripped a hole in the wood beneath them and battered its head through the rent it had made and found four more little ones, huddled together. Three screaming and soaked with fear, a fourth who held them in her arms and looked back with defiance and an unflinching knowledge of what was to come. The dragon Silence looked inside her thoughts and devoured them and stared, loathing and gleeful.
Dragon-rider
.
The little one stared back. Frightened and filled with dread and yet wrapped round a kernel that refused to yield. The dragon met her eye and knew this one would not break like the other.
I could burn you. I could rip you to bloody strips
. But it had thought of another way. A crueller end.
The others of our kin will return . . .
The faded shadows of the lost half-gods were laying a compulsion around it now. Slow and clumsy but the dragon felt it like a lead net settling on its wings.
‘I bow to no one,’ the little one whispered. ‘So burn me, dragon. Burn me!’
Why?
It hurled the thought to all of them.
Why?
It reached a claw to the little one's neck and ran a talon over her skin, sharp as a razor, the shallowest of cuts leaving a trickle of blood as it passed.
Because they must . . .
The Black Moon comes . . .
You have crossed the realm of the dead . . .
. . . and you so know that the seal . . .
. . . has broken . . .
The dragon pushed itself back out of its hole. Left this little
dragon-rider and the rest of them too. All deserving of their fates. It burst upon the deck of the ship in a shower of splintered timbers, opened its wings as the little ones ran screaming once again and launched itself into the glorious air. It turned once, raked the prow of the ship that had birthed it with fire, and flew away.
You have taken what cannot be yours . . .
clamoured the sorcerers.
Futile to run from such as us . . .
The dragon called Silence didn't look back as it flew away.
I am Silence and I am hungry
. Her three broken-bird slaves froze all at once. Zafir let out a startled gasp and then a little sigh, smiled and laughed a bitter laugh The dragon voice in her head under the Purple Spur had felt the same. The broken birds frowned and looked at one another, even more scared than they ever were until Zafir slapped one of them. The tall one. ‘Continue.’ And they did. Jittery and nervous, but they did.
She was wrapped in white silk and her slaves were painting her nails in the Taiytakei fashion while she sat on the edge of her bed. One of them had her fingers, one of them her toes while the third was piling her hair into an awkward feather-strewn bundle. It made her look as though a bright-plumed bird had crashed into her head. On some days she let them, despite herself. On others she made them put it into a simple dragon-rider's plait, how a dragon-rider would wear it under her helm. After they were done with her hair and her fingers, they usually tried to darken her face with some powder and she'd forbid it. They'd pout and mutter to themselves and dress her in colourful silks and then, if she let them, festoon her with more feathers and jewellery. It was all pointless, since no one else ever came to see her. It gave them all something to do, that was all, but there'd be none of that today. Today they'd simply burn and it would all be over.
She strained her ears, listening, tense inside now, waiting for the end to come. In fire perhaps, or perhaps they'd simply be smashed to bloody smears. The alchemists had shown her their monster, a dragon whose blood they mixed with their own to make their potions.
Any dragon will do but not any alchemist
, Jeiros had told her.
Fewer than you might think can do this. We must be changed for our blood to take on this power
. The alchemists took blood from that dragon under the Purple Spur and mixed it with their own, the
ones who were somehow special. That was how they controlled the rest. Now
there
was a secret. For that they kept a dragon of their own hidden away. One that was awake for any who needed to see what that meant. Jeiros had never told her how or what this change must be to make a true alchemist. Arrogant pig. There'd always been a sneer in his words and when he bowed it was always a fraction short. Thought he was in charge of the realms. He'd despised her right from the start and the feeling had become mutual, and she'd done what she'd done, never quite believing what her alchemists told her because of the way Jeiros was, not even poor Vioros. And in the end Jeiros had sided with Jehal when the inevitable war came between them, and now she was here, and she'd never know if she was right or if it simply didn't matter any more.
Free!
Her three broken birds stopped again. One of them whimpered. Zafir slapped them back to work. What good did it do to explain? Why terrify them even more?
There will be a time when I will return. There will be a reckoning. Ruin on them all. Ruin!
Zafir stiffened. Return? Reckoning? Ruin? Those were the dragon's thoughts, not hers. She ought to be afraid. Terrified, as her three little birds were. They'd stopped again, pale and quivering, fingernails half painted, and looked at each other, and then they looked to her, fearful as mice, but they didn't run. Perhaps because she sat still and unmoved among them. Perhaps because she hadn't raised her hand for the third time. They were all hearing the same one voice crashing into them. Did not knowing what it was make it worse, or did it make it better?
‘Mistress . . .’
The first word any of them had ever spoken to her. Zafir collected herself. For a moment she closed her eyes. They couldn't have long, after all.
Mistress?
It made her want to cry for everything she'd lost and at the same time she felt stupidly grateful that, at the very end, someone would be with her. ‘A dragon,’ Zafir said when she'd swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘A dragon has woken nearby.’ That only confused them and so she took their hands and pulled them gently closer, and after all she'd done to them they still came, one by one, to kneel before her as she sat, drawn in because they were terrified and she wasn't. And yes, a part of her
was
afraid, the part that knew that death was near, but she'd lived with dragons since she was born and had learned to take that fear and make it into something she could spit right back into any monster's eye, as every dragon-rider did. ‘The silver half-gods will easily see to it,’ she told them, except if it was that easy, how had one woken and why was it still coming? But either way nothing she could do would make a difference, and so for want of anything better she started to tell her broken birds what it meant to be a dragon-queen. All the things that had gone through her mind as she'd killed the Taiytakei on the deck. She told them how she'd been born a princess, heir to the oldest and greatest of the nine realms, to the Silver City, the Pinnacles and the beating heart of the dragon lands. How she'd been made and what it had been like to be a little girl surrounded by monsters. That she had been a queen, a ruler of all and mistress of every dragon in the world even though now she was nothing but a slave. They stared back with wide eyes. She couldn't be sure they were even listening and they certainly couldn't begin to understand. No one could, not unless they'd lived it.
As she talked and stroked their hair and held their hands; and as she did she heard voices through the walls over the wooden creaks of the ship. Tremors touched her feet, of timbers shaken and rent, closer and closer, the splintering of wood as something crashed its way through the ship. Then shouts and screams and the
smash smash smash
of something that could only be a hatchling dragon battering its way through a wall. Her birds were whimpering, sobbing, huddling ever closer. Zafir kept her head down, eyes among them, talking, doing all she could to keep the quiver out of her voice. A faint smile played at the corner of her mouth even as she flinched and her heart skipped a beat. She would die by dragon after all, and so would these Taiytakei who thought they could make her a slave, and if that was the way it had to be then she would be content.
A noise like a thunderbolt shook the room. For an instant fear got the better of her. Her words faltered, the spoken progress of her life stuttering to a halt as she was crowned mistress of the Adamantine Palace. She heard the roar of flames, more screams; sniffed and caught a whiff of burning, of flesh and wood and cloth and hair.
Know what I am!
Her three birds whimpered and cringed and
tried to pull away but she held them tight. ‘You can't run,’ she whispered over the din of screams and the crack of tortured wood. ‘Never run. Whatever comes, face it and don't flinch. Can it be any worse than living as a slave in even the prettiest cage?’ She could feel the monster. It was close now.
The roof of her cabin burst apart, a sharp shower of splintered wood cascading to the floor. Her broken birds cried out and clung to her. Jagged claws tore and ripped at the wood above her. A dragon's head smashed through, all fire and horns and glaring fangs. A hatchling fresh from the egg, not that it made a difference. Zafir met it eye for eye. So this was how she would end? And yes, she was afraid, but she was mistress of her fear, quickly crushed to scorn and anger.
‘You're just a newborn,’ she said, and her words oozed with disappointment. ‘I should have better. You should have been a proper dragon. A real monster. Onyx or his like.
That’
s how a dragon-queen should die. Not you.’ She looked away. Dragon smell filled the cabin, cloying and overpowering. The hatchling glistened. A drop of something dark and sticky fell from it and landed on her skin. She flinched. It was still wet from its egg.
Dragon-rider
. It stared, all loathing and glee, then bared its fangs and bored its eyes into her, battering at her, demanding her submission, her obeisance and her awe. It forced one claw through the hole it had made in the timbers and reached for her. She made herself be still, made herself hold its eye, not flinch away even as it touched her face. It drew one talon sharp as a razor down the skin of her neck from ear to collar with careful delicacy. She felt the pain, the warm blood, but she didn't move.
I could burn you. I could rip you to bloody strips
.
‘I bow to no one,’ she whispered. ‘So burn me, dragon. Burn me!’
Why?
Its eye flickered away as if it was talking to someone else. Abruptly it withdrew. She watched it go then stared out through the hole in the roof of her cabin long after, listening to the screams fade and the pop and crackle of flames until she finally found her voice again.