Authors: Stephen Deas
Dragons were not afraid.
The dragon chose one and slipped inside the waiting flesh as a man might slip on an old shoe. The sensation was a familiar comfort, yet always new. Every skin was different.
What colours will I be? Will my tail be long? My neck? How many fangs shall I have?
All these things a new discovery with each hatching. Another joy the little ones had taken away.
It eased into its new flesh like a ghost and opened its brand-new eyes still inside the egg. The urge to smash its way to freedom was strong but it let its senses roam instead, searching for sorcery, searching for thoughts. Things to which the little ones were blind.
It found much of both, and so it stayed quiet and looked at all the things in the strange and wonderful place where it would be born that was filled with alien thoughts and a very few that felt oddly familiar, and with many sorceries that were strange and fresh and one that was colossal and overwhelming and as ancient as the dragon itself. Something made before its first ever dawn.
It looked at all these things and chose its time with care. There were men with ropes and chains always watching. It slid inside their thoughts and sang songs of faraway dreams that lulled them, but they were clever and careful and the alchemist who watched over them was wise to such trickery. So it waited, hidden in its egg, day after day after day, until a change came – more men with more sorceries – and chaos and killing erupted around and above it and the watchers finally looked away. Then it bunched its muscles and clenched its claws; it built the fire inside it as high as its new body
would allow, and when it was as ready as it could be, it burst its shell apart and leaped and spread its wings, and the last few men with their chains were too slow and frightened to reach it and it was free. It burst into a night full of thunder and lightning and little ones’ screams as they died.
I am Silence
, the dragon whispered amid the chaos around it,
and I am hungry
.
With thanks to Simon Spanton, devourer of unnecessary prologues, who asked for dragons and got more than he bargained for. To Marcus Gipps for his editorial work and Gillian Redfearn for saying Some Useful Things. To the copy-editors and proofreaders, whose names I've rarely known. To Stephen Youll for his gorgeous covers. To Jon Weir, who wanted more Zafir.
With thanks to all the people who read
A Memory of Flames
and talked about it and were open and honest about what they liked and what they didn't. You have told me what to keep and you have told me what might be made better, and
Dragon-Queen
is a different book from the one it might have been because of you. Don't let it go to your heads, mind.
It's still very true that none of this would have happened without the trust and faith of the same special few as last time. Thank you again. Thank you to lovers of dragons everywhere. Thank you to all the alchemists out there. Thank
you
, for reading this.
To 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
. There are other goodies there from time to time too.
Lastly, if you liked this book, please say so. Loudly and to lots of people.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Stephen Deas 2013
All rights reserved.
The right of Stephen Deas to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin's Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10055 8
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.stephendeas.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk
www.gollancz.co.uk