‘Don’t be so ambitious, Richney. I do not want to hear of foolhardy attacks and the needless sacrifice of our men. Do as I command, though, and I can always think upon what you have
asked.’
Richney smiled at him. ‘As you wish, my Lord, that is exactly what I shall do.’
‘Good, I can ill afford more disasters, especially as I will be leaving here tomorrow.’
‘Leaving here, my Lord?’ Duneck and Richney spoke in unison.
‘Yes, I am returning to Tanaren and then visiting the heart of my country. If the peasants see me as distant, then I shall try talking to them. If the lands around the capital turn on me
wholesale, then the entire country is lost.’
Richney was incredulous. ‘A grand duke does not talk to peasants!’
‘What am I supposed to do? If things continue as they are, I will not be Grand Duke for much longer anyway. And I have no heir. If I am deposed, the civil war that will follow will make
what we have at the moment look like two children fighting over a bowl of sweets. I will return as soon as I can.’
‘My Lord, if you were to marry, that may help things considerably.’
Leontius smirked. ‘I have someone in mind. When I come back from Tanaren I may be bringing good news with me as far as that is concerned.’
They left the house and returned to their horses. As yet, the news from Osperitsan had still to reach them. If it had, then Leontius’s melancholic state of mind might have been a thousand
times worse.
Hundreds of miles away, the object of his ardour had finished her ride. She was at the selfsame brake of trees where she and Jon Skellar had rested all that time ago, before
she had ridden on alone and discovered the ship of the black priests for the first time. She set the horse free; even-tempered or no it seemed to be getting distressed by being close to her, so she
jumped off and said to her softly, ‘Go home.’ She then watched, standing still as a statue, as the creature half trotted, half galloped, back the way she came.
She was alone here. She could not even hear any birds, just the sea clashing against the rocks nearby. In the other direction away from the sea was a country of rough grass and low hills and it
was towards this that she now walked. Some half a mile inland she passed one of these small hills to find herself in a broad shallow dell dotted with furze and spiny bushes. As she walked into it,
she checked behind her. She was now completely obscured from the road. It was just what she wanted.
She found a comfortable spot on a thick tussock of grass and weed and sat down. She noticed small patches of snow lying around and about and for the first time realised that she was not cold.
Dismissing such thoughts, Ceriana shut her eyes and allowed her mind to roam free. Pictures, flashbacks had been coming to her as she rode, but she forced herself to ignore them, to concentrate on
the road ahead. Now, though, it was time. She reached out and accepted the strange unbidden images that drifted her way.
She saw the city under the mountain again – the river running past the strange, square, blocky buildings, the dust and the bizarre squat statues of men, or something approximating men,
that stood around the wide pool into which the waterfall emptied. Light still filtered through shafts in the cave roof, but she could see quite well enough even without them.
And then came the connection, the touching of two minds irrevocably alien to each other and yet somehow connected; understanding each other’s motives and desires. But there was something
new that Ceriana had only partially noticed before. Two minds maybe but one was ever the dominant over the other. She felt the creature calling to her, asking what it was that it, no, she, could do
for her. She hesitated for a second – what exactly did she want of the creature?
‘Come to me,’ she breathed softly, finally.
There was an immediate response. A long jet of flame, a spray of incandescence, shot forth. White, blue and orange were its colours as it sped skyward in a place with no sky and its edges
shimmered with the heat, the haze blurring the buildings she could see beyond it. And then it roared, a deep subterranean rumble like an avalanche on distant slopes that gradually came nearer and
nearer until the very ground shook and dust and rock fell about her, fit to cause lungs to choke, filling as they were with its impenetrable cloud. She heard the powerful beating of wings flexed
for only the second time in aeons.
‘Come to me!’ she said again.
And the great beast was flying. Up it flew towards the cave ceiling, to the largest of the shafts of pale light that told of a world outside that it could not remember entering. There was rock
about it as it entered the shaft, which itself was barely wide enough to accommodate the impossible span of the creature’s wings. Ceriana felt what the creature felt; her creature; her
sister
– for were they even separate anymore? And she felt the wind, the brittle, icy wind hitting her face, and she exulted in the feeling – she had never felt more vibrant,
more vital, more alive.
And then she saw why the light in the cave had such a pale, ghostly quality. The head of the shaft was blocked by snow. Harder did she beat her wings, the great downdraughts echoing on the cold
stone, a thumping cacophony fit to stun sensitive ears. Her speed increased along with her excitement as this great plug of snow, the only obstruction between her and whatever lay beyond it, was
finally reached.
And at last, in a fountain of wet ice and snow scattered hundreds of feet into the naked sky, the creature was born into this world. High on a virgin mountain side, pristine and silent, did she
emerge, a gout of exultant flame marking her joy at her ascendancy. And she was not alone, for behind her emerged dozens of smaller creatures, lesser than her but greater than most other beings on
this earth. And these drakes were different from her, with the tiniest of forelegs and thinner, more snake-like bodies, and where she roared they screeched, a piercing terrible noise as they
followed in their mistress’s wake. She sped from one mountain to the next, above the clouds and beyond the sight of man; ahead and an impossible distance below, a glittering sea –
looking as though it were studded with a thousand scattered white gems – stretched out before her and, unerringly, this was where she headed. For this world may have been new to her but she
had her destination; and she homed in on it as a beacon, getting ever closer to its source; the words, those barely audible words. ‘Come to me.’ For the first time in over a millennia
of war and conflict a dragon of fire was born into this world and even the mountains trembled at her passing.
And Ceriana lay down and slept, tired with her ride and feverish in her excitement. What have I done? she wondered as she drifted into her singular dream. Its wing beats, heavy, slow and
rhythmic, added to her torpor as she nuzzled into the grass as though it were a feather bed. She still did not feel the cold. As she dreamed, the sun started to sink in the western sky until
finally it disappeared in a great flare of burnt orange that seemed to set the very seas on fire.
Night had arrived. Ceriana finally came to again. A light dusting of frost coated the dell and the moisture of her breath almost mirrored the dragon’s flame in its intensity. Curious she
held her right hand in front of her face. Her glove was still on. She started to pull it off, finger by finger, a thrill of fear running over her skin, dancing over her taut nerves. At last the
glove was free and she beheld her delicate little hand.
It was as though a light more powerful than any man could create was shining directly through her skin. Her hand glowed, a sanguine, ambient radiance through which she could see a delicate web
of fine veins that to her almost replicated the branches of some great tree. She knelt and put her hand over the stiff white grass, almost but not quite touching it. She watched as the frost
dissolved into water in parts, both horrified and curious at what she could now do.
‘You expected this,’ she whispered, trying to calm herself down, to slow her heart which was thumping ever the faster within her thin frame. ‘You expected this!’ she said
again, replacing her glove and covering her face with the hood as if, by shrouding herself entirely, she could keep the truth at bay. The truth that she still would not admit to herself –
that she was no longer entirely human. Was she one of Keth’s demons now? She was almost as they were depicted on the paintings and tapestries in every holy house she had ever visited, a
creature of nascent flame bent on the destruction of man. No, not man in its entirety, just a select few – that was what she wanted. Perhaps she was different then; perhaps she was something
new, something unique. She did not feel comforted by this thought.
She started to walk a little to stretch her stiff legs, pacing back and forth over the unyielding ground. Suddenly, though, she froze and looked above her. What should have been a night sky with
its low cloud allowing only the most fitful starlight was in fact now something else. A shadow. As she watched open-mouthed, she saw it – a shape more massive than she had ever imagined was
crossing the heavens above her, silhouetted against the pallid, cloud-streaked moon.
And heading directly her way.
What filled her with awe more than anything was not the bulk of the thing but its agility. It moved with a lithe sinuous grace that she had not thought possible in such a creature; it reminded
her of hot summers in Erskon House when she used to watch grass snakes sunning themselves in the wild borders close to the ornamental lake. If she walked with too heavy a tread towards them, they
would disappear in a trice, coiling and slithering with a liquid fluidity as they sought sanctuary in the undergrowth. A distant memory, and one never recalled until now.
She stood tall on the edge of the dell to receive the creature as it landed. She pictured herself as of one day ago doing such a thing and running screaming in terror, hands over her ears,
begging the Gods to save her. Now, though, this was just what she wanted. So far everything was going as she had hoped.
At last the creature landed, its head not ten feet from Ceriana’s own. Lissa’s blood, but the thing was huge. Its narrow V-shaped head alone was three times her height. Teeth, nay
tusks, the length of her arm protruded either side of its immense jaw. The impact of its landing hit Ceriana with such force that she staggered and would have been thrown clean off her feet had she
not put her hand to the ground to steady herself. And finally the great dragon stood before her. It folded its vast leathery wings ribbed with veins over its ridged scaly back and watched her
through slitted yellow eyes, larger and wider than the deepest water well, the widest cartwheel. It did not move, inhaling and exhaling slowly, its breath rumbling with such a low frequency she
could feel it through her feet. Conquering her understandable nervousness, Ceriana slowly and deliberately came towards the dragon, catching its great unblinking eye as it stared at her. She walked
past its head, past the massive foreleg, one claw of which could split her in two, to its long torso on which the great scales glittered like cut rubies. She put out her hand to touch it – it
was warm, the muscle underneath so powerful it was like touching granite lying under a noonday sun. She gently placed her head against it, hearing the blood rushing through veins like saplings,
hearing the steady pounding of its heart. In the kitchens at Edgecliff she had seen the hearts of cattle being prepared for the feast and she pictured that now, extrapolating what she had seen and
multiplying it fifteen fold to give herself an idea of the scale of the heart of the beast now waiting before her. Finally, she walked back to the head and that giant eye again. Putting out her
hand she placed it on its broad neck, hard as iron, as enduring as adamant, stroking the smooth scales gently and lovingly.
‘By Elissa, you are so beautiful!’
Its breath rattled over its tongue like the purr of a great cat. It obviously liked what she was doing. So Ceriana did not stop. Stroking and caressing and even leaning close to whisper into the
pit of the ear. ‘So, so beautiful. I thank you so much for coming to my aid, for answering me and not forsaking me as others have. Thank you.’
As if in answer to her words came other wing beats, shallower but still evocative of great power and strength. She looked up to see the moon had cleared the clouds once more, and across it flew
the great drakes screeching their anger at the stars. Over her they flew, not stopping, not landing but heading west, over Thakholm harbour and out over the sea where Osperitsan Island lay waiting
for them. Ceriana watched them go and shut her eyes. She could still see them – her link with the dragon made it possible – and so she stayed as she was, the two of them watching
together, just waiting to see exactly what these creatures would do before the night came to an end.
She had never thought it possible before but Overseer Kherat could actually sneer with her eyes. She did so now, barely hiding her contempt as she gazed at Syalin lying on the
floor in a foetal position, bathed in sweat and grime and tasting the blood in her mouth after she had bitten her tongue to distract herself from the agony coursing through her body. It was all
part of her training, she knew that, so that she could serve the Emperor all the better, but it did little to assuage the hurt.
‘You are pathetic!’ the overseer hissed at Syalin. ‘Ten minutes with the orb and look at you, writhing on the floor like some snivelling cur. Get up!’
‘Yes, Overseer Kherat.’ Syalin eased herself to her feet. She was barely thirteen years old, yet even then, like the other trainees, she was only allowed to wear enough to barely
conceal her modesty. It was another part of the training, the humiliation, the stripping away of the human part of her, for a Strekha had no need for humanity – her body existed only as the
Emperor required it; it was not even hers to control.
‘You are doing passably well so far.’ Kherat grasped the girl’s jaw, firmly turning her head so that she stared directly into those cold black eyes. ‘I think one more
test for you and we are done for today. Tell me’ – she pushed her face close to Syalin’s own – ‘you were with the Emperor last night, were you not? How do you feel
when he touches you? Do you enjoy it, or does your skin crawl with loathing?’