Read The Splintered Gods Online
Authors: Stephen Deas
Liang huddled by the wall, cowering behind her makeshift shield. Cries and wails of despair rose over the howl of the wind. Men and women, slaves and soldiers alike, crowded around the entrances to the tunnels. From its perch atop the glasship the dragon looked on through the low ruddy light of sunrise. Cracks of thunder and lightning punctured the chaos, flashes of stark white light across panicked faces. The Vespinese bellowed, some trying to stop the exodus. Faces twisted with terror rushed past her, buffeting her as though she wasn’t even there. Slaves, kwens and t’varrs, men who’d been soldiers in Tsen’s service: none had eyes for anything save the tunnels and their illusion of safety.
Through them all, the Elemental Men flashed and flickered, appearing and vanishing, cutting down anyone foolish enough to raise a weapon against them. The crowds clustered around the tunnels were fighting to get inside. A few brave Vespinese remained out in the open, some by Mai’Choiro, their courage returning as the dragon simply watched. They lowered their wands and the futile lightning stopped. None of them seemed to know what to do.
‘STOP!’ The word ran like thunder through the air, as if the wind itself had spoken. As if with one will, all the Elemental Men vanished from the dragon yard and reappeared on the walls like dark sentinels. Dozens of them.
The dragon jumped from the back of the glasship with a lazy flare of its wings. Fresh panic gripped those still in the open. Sporadic cracks of lightning from the Vespinese wands lashed out. The dragon spiralled around the eyrie and settled on the wall, put Zafir down and dropped its head. Zafir climbed unsteadily onto its back. As soon as Liang saw that, she got up and walked quickly towards the tunnels herself. The dragon might not have burned everyone before, but it surely would now. Even the Vespinese
soldiers who’d had the courage to stand instead of run were edging away. A last flash of lightning struck the dragon’s neck. It turned its head slowly to stare at the soldier who’d thrown it.
‘STOP!’ As one, the Elemental Men vanished from the eyrie walls and appeared in a circle in the middle of the dragon yard. Others appeared at the entrances to the tunnels. The dragon reared onto its hind legs and stretched out its wings. Its vast bulk with the dawn sun behind it cast the whole eyrie into shadow. It looked out over them, its eyes roving among the Vespinese until they settled on Mai’Choiro Kwen. The dragon stretched its neck and bared its fangs, and that, Liang decided, was as much as she needed to see. She shaped her glass into a bigger shield, spread it out behind her and ran. Let them fight. As she glanced back, more Elemental Men shimmered out of the air onto the wall beside the dragon.
‘STOP!’ The whole eyrie quivered with the voice. A third warning, and the Elemental Men never gave more than three. The last Vespinese dropped their wands and ran. In the press of the crowd around the mouth of the hatchery tunnel someone reached out to catch Liang’s arm and pull her in but the crush dragged her away. Men and women swore and pushed, brands and rank all but forgotten. Someone stumbled and fell.
‘Li! Li!’ Bellepheros was pressed tight against the curve of the wall. In the tunnel someone let off a bolt of lightning. The noise was deafening and Liang gasped. Her ears screamed. Everyone around her shouted louder and pressed harder, barging each other out of the way. She gave up and backed off, crouching against the wall by the hatchery with the gold-glass shell around her, hugging the stone. Another lightning bolt and then another. She didn’t know what the Vespinese feared the most – the dragon or the sorcerous killers of the Elemental Men. She looked up to the walls. Several Vespinese soldiers were still up there, turning the remaining lightning cannon towards the dragon. At least someone had kept their wits then. She had a good mind to go up and join them.
The dragon hadn’t moved. And the Elemental Men hadn’t killed Zafir either. There were a handful around the monster but they were keeping a respectful distance. The rest flickered about the dragon yard, appearing and vanishing, making the terror even
worse. Everyone knew what happened when Elemental Men came. Blood. A lot of blood . . .
A last crush of slaves struggled past her. And, dear gods – she shook her head in disbelief – Belli had somehow managed to squeeze back out. He tapped on her shell and looked nervously at the dragon. Liang shrank the gold-glass back into a globe, yanked him to the ground beside her and then screamed at him a bit for being an idiot as she grew the shell around the two of them together. ‘What in Xibaiya do you think you’re doing? Get inside!’
He was shaking his head. ‘They have to stop! They have to stop!’
‘Yes.’ Liang let out a laugh. Couldn’t help herself. ‘Yes, at some point they have to stop, but when?’ They’d stop when everyone was dead. The miracle, if there was one, was that they hadn’t really started, though Liang couldn’t imagine a single reason why Zafir hadn’t scoured the eyrie clean and was slightly surprised that the Elemental Men hadn’t set about that too.
Maybe they’re trying to agree on who has the privilege . . .
Mai’Choiro had tried to hang Zafir. He’d got as far as putting rope around her neck so he could hardly pretend that he hadn’t meant it, yet Zafir did nothing. The Elemental Men were moving closer to her now. ‘Why in the name of Charin don’t they just kill her, for pity’s sake?! Before she burns everything!’
‘They mustn’t!’ Belli tugged her arm. His voice rang with alarm. ‘Li, they mustn’t! You have to stop them! We need her and we need Diamond Eye to find the hatchling!’
‘What?’
Inside their shell Chay-Liang twisted, grabbed Belli by his robes and pinned him to the wall. She shook her head, glancing at the dragon, at the Elemental Men, at Mai’Choiro still out in the dragon yard, at the Vespinese manning the lightning cannon. And he wanted to stand in the middle of them and make them stop?! ‘No, Belli. This ends here and now. Mai’Choiro Kwen, Zafir, all your monsters, we rid ourselves of all of them.’ Assassins who could shift their form to become the earth or the air or fire or water or light or shadow or ice as they willed it: the Elemental Men were hunters. Killers of sorcerers. Executioners of monsters, and what was a dragon if not a monster?
And its rider too.
Belli was shaking with desperation. He tried to push his way
past her. ‘It will hide from them!’ he wailed. ‘Without Diamond Eye, they will never find it. Without Zafir, you have no dragon!’
‘Good!’ Liang almost yelled in his face. She pulled him back. ‘No dragon is
good
! And
you
need to stay right here with your head down and try very hard not to be noticed!’ Because what was an alchemist if not a sorcerer? ‘The Elemental Men keep the peace, Belli. They always have. They are the blade on a thin string that hangs over the heads of the sea lords and is now about to fall on all of us. Dhar Thosis burned. They’re here to make sure that such a thing never happens again. Ever. They will make an example of everyone who had anything to do with it. Lord Shonda is the most powerful man in all the many worlds, yet they will hang him without hesitation if they are sure of his guilt, right next to your rider-slave, high and in front of everyone and in his own city. They won’t blink or hesitate and no one will try to stop them.’ She let him go. ‘And I will see to it that they
are
sure, but if they mistake you for a sorcerer then they will hang you too. You must be
careful
! And that means staying very quiet. Particularly now!’
‘If they kill her now, Shonda walks free, doesn’t he?’
Liang took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. Counted to three. ‘No, Belli. I was there too. Hiding. I heard it all. I heard Mai’Choiro Kwen give his orders.’ She looked around. The last of the slaves and soldiers were pushing their way inside. The dragon yard was empty except for a cluster of Taiytakei and Elemental Men stood around the wreckage of the gallows. A hundred goggling eyes peered out from the tunnel entrances. Vespinese stood ready in the lightning cannon on the walls; more Elemental Men watched them and still more were around the dragon, and yet they hadn’t gone close and Zafir was still alive.
Why? Why aren’t you killing the murderous bitch?
‘Belli, look around you. Take a moment to consider: the dragon is about to burn Mai’Choiro. Mai’Choiro is about to set his lightning cannon on the dragon. The Elemental Men are about to kill them both and a great many more people besides just as soon as they can work out
which
people should die. And you want to go out and stand between them?’
‘If they kill her now, Shonda walks free,’ he said again. And the dragon
still
hadn’t moved. Liang didn’t understand it.
‘No!’ She shook him. ‘No, he doesn’t. I was there!
She was not
the only witness!’
Why hadn’t Zafir simply sent Diamond Eye to burn them all? The Elemental men would have had no choice but to kill her then and it would be done. Done and finished and the world a much better place. But for whatever reason, Zafir hadn’t.
Because
, Liang thought ruefully,
she’s actually clever. Or cunning at least. Clever is going too far.
And then a moment of understanding. Zafir had known the Elemental Men were there, even before they started to appear, probably even before the Vespinese took her to the noose. The dragon had warned her, as the dragon had tried to warn of the Vespinese coming in their glasships. Liang spat a furious curse. Zafir had known they were watching, right from the moment they’d arrived, however long ago that had been.
That
was why she stayed her hand. Performance, all of it!
Bitch.
An Elemental Man was close to the dragon now and Zafir was leaning towards him. They were talking. Liang ground her teeth in frustration. It wasn’t going to happen … She opened the gold-glass shell into a shield. ‘Fine, fine, fine.’ She looked around to see if anyone was paying attention and then reached her arms around Belli, a quick awkward embrace. Even if the rider-slave was a thorn between them, even if they were from different worlds, they were two minds alike, searching for the same answers and interested in the same questions. ‘I’m sorry, Belli. It always falls to us, doesn’t it? Go to her then. Keep the dragons quiet and keep you and her out of the way. I will go to the killers. I will tell them what you ask and why. But they
will
kill her when the time comes and I’ll sleep like a newborn when they do.’
And if she quietly hoped that that time would be sooner rather than later, Liang kept that to herself. She patted the alchemist on the back, hugged him again and shrank the gold-glass shell into a ball in her hand. For a few seconds she watched him go as he walked towards the dragon, so afraid for him, then pressed her hands to her mouth and blew through her fingers and took a deep breath and then another and began to walk as well, but the other way – out into the open and the roar of the wind towards the gallows, hands spread wide, palms out so anyone who cared could see there was no slave brand on her and that she came carrying
nothing. After a few steps though she changed her mind, turned and hurried after Bellepheros. She rushed past him, climbed the steps to the wall, pushed past the Elemental Men and walked right up to Diamond Eye’s feet, the closest she’d ever been to the monster. She wasn’t quite sure why she had all this courage all of a sudden, but judging from the way she was quivering, it was probably rage.
The dragon lowered itself, stretching out its neck and its tail. Zafir, sitting only a dozen feet above Liang, bent to look at her. She had that smirk on her face again, the one that made Liang want to punch her.
‘Chay-Liang,’ she shouted over the wind and cocked her head. The dragon, Liang noted, never stopped staring at Mai’Choiro Kwen.
‘There’s going to be a court and a trial,’ Liang shouted so she could be quite sure the Elemental Men would hear too. ‘You can die now or you can die later. Personally I’d like you to live exactly long enough to tell the truth of it all and then hang. I’m going inside now where it’s not so bloody windy. Stay here with your dragon if you like. With luck a gust will blow you over the edge. I’d like that, but my alchemist wants you to hunt the missing hatchling first. You choose.’ She turned her back and walked away, snatching Belli’s arm and taking him with her as she passed. Let the rest of them stand here for the whole morning, watching each other, staring and glaring and not quite daring if that’s what they wanted, but frankly she was sick of it all. Her eyes glittered as she threw Belli a glance.
‘Well I’ve done what I can. Qaffeh?’
The alchemist frowned. ‘Do you have any more of that sticky sweet spongy bread stuff? You know? What’s it called?’
‘Bolo bread. How would you like it? Drenched in brandy or absolutely soaked?’
After qaffeh, Bolo bread and rather more brandy than was sensible, Liang found herself calm again. An hour had passed and no one was dead. She sent Belli to get some rest, sat in her workshop wondering what to do and then, when she couldn’t conjure anything better, set to work on the rider-slave’s new suit of armour. Ridiculous really, since Zafir would surely hang before she had a chance to wear it, but it gave her hands something work on. Besides, Tsen had come up with some deliciously unpleasant notions as to what Liang could make this armour do to keep his slave in check.
She pottered between her various tables and shelves, rummaging around the litter of discarded half-made devices and leftover odds and ends, pieces of glass, strips of gold and lengths of copper wire, then stopped when she found a gold-glass dragon figurine about a foot long. She’d made it three years ago as a model to give to a goldsmith. He’d sent back two golden dragons and she’d enchanted them and given them to Quai’Shu, who’d given them in turn to a prince of the dragon-realms as a wedding present. Liang put the pieces of half-finished armour aside, cleared a space on one of the benches and set to work on the dragon. It wasn’t hard to remember the enchantments she’d devised for the golden ones, and glass took them much more readily than any metal; still, by the time she was finished, the whole day had passed and she hadn’t really noticed. The eyrie hadn’t quivered and there hadn’t been any screaming and shouting up and down the tunnels, and so she supposed the dragon and the Elemental Men and Mai’Choiro had temporarily settled their differences. That or they were all still out in the freezing wind, staring at each other.
Belli came to see her after dark, telling her that the Elemental Men had called everyone into the dragon yard earlier in the afternoon. From what he’d been able to make out over the wind, the
message was that no one was allowed to leave and everyone should carry on as they were. Mai’Choiro Kwen was confined to Baros Tsen T’Varr’s old rooms but they were letting his men visit freely. They didn’t seem to care whether one of Tsen’s t’varrs or kwens ran the eyrie or whether the Vespinese did it, as long as everything stayed exactly as it was until their precious Arbiter arrived. Liang shared some more qaffeh and Bolo, they very carefully didn’t talk about Zafir, and when Belli was gone, she went to bed and had her best night’s sleep for weeks.
She woke late and found the truce, to her mild surprise, still holding. She spent the day helping Belli repair the hatchery, and also surreptitiously testing her little gold-glass spy-dragon. Towards the middle of the afternoon an enormous glasship 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 shell 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 t’varrs 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-glass 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 Eye’s 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 Godspike 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 Belli’s arm before he said something stupid – he kept glancing at the hatchery, at the unfinished netting, but you didn’t 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 gondola’s 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 she’d ever seen, and she doubted she could have worked glass 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 Mai’Choiro. The entire space 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-glass spoked with gold. Liang wondered for a moment if the gondola even had its own lightning cannon, but no, the gold-glass was simply to observe directly below. Fitted into the walls either side of the golem pilot’s 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 glasship? 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 didn’t know. Where had they come from? He didn’t know that either, but they continued on into the night until Liang thought she knew as much about the history of Belli’s 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 couldn’t 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 t’varr 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-glass 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-god who’d 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 passed Tsen’s 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-rider’s slaves came next. Liang had stayed in the yard to watch and glanced across at the dragon. It wasn’t looking at the Godspike 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. Tsen’s 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 Liang’s arms like a lump of dough. ‘I told Tsen that I’d look after you,’ Liang said. ‘When they came for him. If there’s anything—’
‘He’s dead.’ Her voice was flat and lifeless.
‘I know, and—’
‘They’re going to take Sea Lord Quai’Shu to Khalishtor for trial. They’ll hold him in the Elemental Palace at the foot of Mount Solence. We’re not allowed to talk to him. He’s forbidden to speak to anyone.’
Liang snorted. ‘Quai’Shu lost the last bits of his mind months ago. He’s as mad as Zaklat the Death Bat. What’s the point of talking to him, for pity’s sake?’
‘They’ll 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 didn’t.’ Her face set hard. ‘He was going to face them. He knew they’d hang him anyway but he was going to face them’
‘I know.’ Poison. That’s why Liang hadn’t seen any wound.
‘They stabbed him in the back. Those bastards.’ 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 Mai’Choiro Kwen to the dragon yard to hear their orders for the eyrie. Give me a wand that a slave can use and I’ll see he never hears them. Or a knife to make him bleed.’
‘You’ll never get close. They’ll kill you.’
‘I don’t care! I have nothing left!’
‘I can’t, Kalaiya. Go back inside.’ It almost crushed Liang to send her away without giving her some sort of hope.
Mai’Choiro, though . . .
Liang ran back inside, ignoring Belli’s 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 glass dragon, and waited to see what would happen.