Read The Splintered Gods Online
Authors: Stephen Deas
Tsen stumbled to his feet. He could hardly see a thing but he knew the pavilion had been right in front of him, and behind it, in a cleft between two rocks, was the cave. Or maybe it wasn’t a cave; maybe the rocks were the old walls of some long-ruined tower and it was an entrance, but it didn’t matter, it really didn’t – a way out was a way out. He dragged Kalaiya, coughing and spluttering and never mind the Elemental Men – now was the time to run when none of them could find their own feet, none of them could see, these few seconds before the air cleared – and sprinted faster
than he ever thought he could. The cleft loomed out of the haze. They ran inside and a gloom fell over them. The passage sloped slightly down. When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a soft glow ahead from the rim of a shaft, lit from the bottom.
‘Tsen!’ Kalaiya was looking back. It took him a moment to realise what she was showing him: recessed into the stone either side of the entrance were two huge bronze doors. They were clearly ancient but at the same time pristine and shiny. He tugged at one to see what would happen and of course it wouldn’t move, exactly as he’d known it wouldn’t, except that when Kalaiya tugged too, it suddenly did, and once they got it going it swung easily as though the hinges had been oiled that very morning, and then it occurred to him that maybe they had, because maybe this had always been the skin-shifter’s way out, because glasships didn’t travel fast, and he was hardly going to get very far drifting out over the desert in full view of every Elemental Man who happened to pass by.
The other eggs. He’d said he only needed one really but more would be useful. They were decoys. Distractions . . .
The second door closed as easily as the first. It had a huge bronze bar across the back. Together, he and Kalaiya swung it in place. The strike of it rang like a bell as it slid home and locked the doors fast. For a moment he stood and looked into the blackness, wondering how he’d managed to get away and which of the gods he wasn’t supposed to believe in was favouring him right now. Had to be one of them, though knowing the luck he’d had of late it was only so he could find the dragon egg in time for it hatch and eat him.
The shaft with the light at the bottom was bigger than he’d realised, big enough for the sled with the egg to descend through it – that or the sled had vanished into thin air – and was lined with the same white stone as the passages inside his eyrie. Someone had built crude wooden steps held up by rickety scaffolding spiralling around the inner circumference.
Kalaiya took his hand. ‘Tsen . . .’
‘I know,’ he whispered, and squeezed. ‘I know. If Sivan was coming this way then perhaps he has someone waiting to meet him.’ He glanced at the doors. ‘But I can’t go back, not out there.’ He stopped to take a long look at her. ‘
You
can, though. They’re
not looking for you.’ But back to what if Sivan’s plan had worked and the eyrie was gone? ‘Perhaps you’d be safe?’ Couldn’t see how, though.
Kalaiya shook her head. Tsen took a deep breath and they started down.
There were fifteen of the Taiytakei left by the end, and they were all as terrified as small children. Tuuran reckoned he’d counted nearly a hundred dead too stupid or full of their own luck to throw themselves on the mercy of the Elemental Men. He wondered how many had got away and decided it was probably none. The survivors were rounded up and kept out in the desert sun for half the morning, sweating fit to drop, until a glasship picked them up and carried them away. It was the same glasship he and Crazy had found in the night, left under the storm-dark, with greasy black ash all over the walls. Tuuran kept away from that. He’d looked about for the fat old eyrie master but hadn’t seen him, so Tsen had got out some other way. That or he’d been caught in the fight, but Tuuran reckoned Tsen to be a smart one, too smart not to know when to give up.
Another thing that struck him was the man in the fancy armour who was missing a foot and probably wasn’t going to last all that long. The other Taiytakei were making a big fuss of him and seemed very keen to make sure that however long he lasted, they could at least get him up to the eyrie. It wasn’t odd that he only had one foot – more luck than anything that, under the circumstances – and it wasn’t odd that the Elemental Men treated him so well, not with all that flashy armour and those silks and the length of his braids. No, what was odd was that his skin was all hard and flaking. Take off that armour and he’d be a Scales. One with not long to go at that. He was bleeding a lot too. Tuuran kept well away. No one seemed to be bothered where all that tainted blood was ending up.
Crazy nudged him. ‘Told you we’d do it the easy way,’ he said and grinned. Time was, Tuuran had liked that grin because it meant trouble and mischief round the corner, and he’d had a soft spot for Crazy Mad’s brand of trouble and mischief once, back when Crazy Mad’s brand of trouble and mischief had meant
bashing heads. Time was, but not any more. Now it meant turning people into ash.
‘And then what? What’s waiting for you when we get there?’ But Crazy only shrugged. Didn’t help that the bugger kept touching that golden knife of his. He held it out in the open but somehow the Elemental Men just didn’t seem to see it.
The shaft went so far down into the desert that Tsen didn’t much like the idea of climbing back up again. It was wide enough for a dragon, if one had wanted to squeeze down it, although that would have been a quick and thorough end to the steps and their uncertain scaffolding. Halfway down, when he could see the bottom more clearly, he called out, but no one answered. A thousand steps, maybe? Deeper than the shaft the skin-shifter had found out in the desert near the ruins of Uban, but he wasn’t surprised when he got to the bottom and there were two more bronze doors like the ones he and Kalaiya had already closed behind them. They were open. Tsen stepped through into a tunnel – wide, reaching off in both directions, straight as an arrow and going on for as far as he could see, lined with white stone walls alight with their own soft starlight glow. Exactly like the one he’d seen with Sivan. Tsen discovered that he wasn’t much surprised. If he’d had any doubts that Sivan had meant to come this way himself, the tunnel silenced them.
The sled with the dragon egg was in front of him. When he climbed onto it, he saw a black rod. He wasn’t really expecting it to work but he tried it anyway. The sled shivered and lifted a few inches off the ground. He held out his hand to Kalaiya and tried to estimate how many times the steps had circled the shaft and which way the tunnel ran. East to west, he thought, and if he’d got it right then one way went off towards Uban and the other way headed east toward Dhar Thosis and the Queverra. Madness, it was all madness, everything he’d seen and been through these last few days. What did he want with a dragon egg? Nothing. What if it hatched? Well then it would eat them, wouldn’t it? And there wouldn’t be a thing he could do. Then why in Xibaiya take it?
But the egg was too heavy for him to move. And whichever way the tunnel went, they were hundreds of miles from the edge of the desert and they had no food and no water. They weren’t going to
just leave the sled and walk, not if they wanted to get anywhere alive. Tsen chuckled to himself and shook his head, took Kalaiya’s hand and sat on the front, feet dangling over the edge. ‘I have no idea where we are or what this is or where it leads, my love. For all I know this tunnel leads to nowhere and this egg will hatch and we will die.’
Kalaiya’s eyes were bright with determination and wonder. ‘I thought I was going to die so many times, Tsen. So many times in these last weeks. I’ve grown accustomed to it and it doesn’t frighten me any more. I was a slave. A nothing to be played with for sport. No more, Baros Tsen. You are no longer t’varr to the sea lord of Xican and I am no longer a slave.’
Tsen took her hand and squeezed it tight. ‘So be it. A desert man and his desert wife. That’s probably the best we can hope for.’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
Tsen thought about that and then tapped the sled into motion. ‘I’m not so sure about the desert. I’ll miss my apple wine and I’ll miss my baths. But it will do to start. You must tell me: what happened to my eyrie after the shifter took me?’
With a dragon egg behind them they drifted away. It would be a long journey with nothing much to see, but that was all right. They both had plenty to say.
Diamond Eye rose above the desert. The orange dawn light had long given way to the gold of early morning, the burnished copper of the sands turning electrum. A dozen men on linxia trotted across the dunes below, heading for the north. They had days of hard riding before they reached anything but desert. Zafir knew that because she and Diamond Eye had flown that way. They’d flown everywhere.
The riders scattered as she came, abandoning their sled with its egg. Zafir let them go. Diamond Eye swooped down and took the egg in his talons. He could be gentle if he wanted to be.
The Elemental Men hadn’t come after her again. Were they losing their edge? Too much to do and too few of them? Stretched too thin? She knew perfectly what that looked like. She should keep going then. Fly on to the sea. Fly so they never found her and then set Diamond Eye free, but there wasn’t really a way out for
her and there never had been. Run away? Hide? Diamond Eye would wake up and she’d die. Abandon him and vanish among the Taiytakei, just another slave? The Statue Plague would get her and she’d die. And all if the gold-glass circlet she could never take off didn’t crush her skull.
She rode the wind back to the eyrie, placed the egg back in the dragon yard for the Scales and went out for the next. As she did, she passed a glasship. She dived and circled its gondola, making sure that anyone inside had a good long look. A dragon and a dragon-queen. Rare things indeed and soon to be rarer still. The blinds on all the windows but one were closed. From inside Zafir saw a dark face looking back at her. The face was too far and too fleeting to recognise but the gondola was unfamiliar. Not the doll-woman. Today wasn’t the day she’d be hanged.
She found the second egg out in the open desert to the east on another sled with another dozen riders. When the riders scattered, this time she let Diamond Eye chase them. He swooped and took a rider and his mount in his claws, bit them in two and ate them on the wing then arced to chase another, flipped him into the air and took his linxia between his teeth. A mist of blood flew back and spattered Zafir’s visor. The linxia’s rider fell to the sand, lost and forgotten, bones shattered, left for the vultures and the flies. The dragon took another and another that way, leaving the riders each time and eating their beasts. It played with them, lighting the sands with fire, leaving cherry-glowing glass, forcing riders to turn away and then turn again, boxing one in and making the box smaller and smaller until there was nowhere left to go and the rider simply stopped and waited for the end.
For no better reason than she felt like it, Zafir made Diamond Eye let that one go. The dragon snarled at her but sometimes a dragon had to remember who was in charge. She had him take the egg and fly home, turned and hunted down the third to the south, brought it quickly back and then returned and caught the scattered riders as they regrouped and burned them. She chased the stragglers. Diamond Eye tossed them into the air, caught the riders in his claws and their mounts between his teeth and crushed them.
The gondola had reached the eyrie by now and landed, and Zafir looked at all the dreams she’d had of tearing the Arbiter out
of the sky, of setting the desert ablaze from end to end and found they’d lost their lustre. They seemed flat now, devoid of point and purpose. It didn’t matter what she did. Lots of people would die or they wouldn’t but in the end nothing would change.
I want to live.
Not that she was afraid to die but she
did
want to live. That was why she kept looking over the edge and then backing away. Why she was still here.
I want to go home.
Except if there was one thing the Taiytakei had shown her, it was that she’d never really had one.
Diamond Eye offered nothing. He didn’t understand. How could he?
She went back to where Diamond Eye had sniffed out the trace of the Crowntaker, to where little camps lay scattered outside the shadow of the storm, the places where the tribes of the desert came to trade in goods and slaves, to hold their truces and their weddings and now and then betray. A horde of white-painted men was swarming across the sands, laying waste to everything. Diamond Eye raked across their minds, searching, but the Adamantine Man wasn’t there. He was somewhere above them. The Crowntaker too. They’d come to her.
Zafir looked at the white-painted men, killing the Taiytakei. ‘I could burn them all, every last one of them,’ she offered, but no one answered, and so she went back to the eyrie and to her shelter and stripped away her armour and basked in the sun, waiting for her death or her salvation, whichever would find her first.
The glasship rose from the abyss. Liang watched the scarred cliffs drift past her gaze until they gave way to the more jagged slopes of mountainsides and then to snowy peaks, and suddenly the sun-bright glory of the Konsidar stretched out before her. When they were high above the mountain tops, the glasship turned to the east. Lin Feyn looked out of the window beside her, silent and pensive. They floated steadily towards the desert until the mountains fell away and in the far distance Liang saw the bright flat expanse of the arid badlands that led to the cliffs of the Tzwayg. They crossed that too, then the endless hours of the Empty Sands, until they reached the eyrie and the storm-dark. Killers came to them now and then with news. Shonda, Tsen, the eyrie falling, Zafir, the eggs, all of it. As they reached the eyrie at last, Red Lin Feyn dressed herself in her finery and guided the glasship down. She brought it to rest and then sat at her table, fingers steepled in front of her.
‘I will no longer be the Arbiter after this, Chay-Liang,’ she said. ‘Do not trust the killers when I am gone. Do not trust any of them.’ They went outside and moved between the glasships holding the eyrie aloft. Liang set each one loose and guided it back to its proper position. Lin Feyn touched the gold-glass blocks and secured the chains back where they belonged, sealing them with enchantments that not even Liang would ever break. One by one until all were back as they’d been before Tsen had set them free.
‘You should think about where you wish to be, apprentice,’ Lin Feyn said when they were finished. ‘After this is done.’
The trial of Sea Lord Shonda of Vespinarr and Mai’Choiro Kwen, of Sea Lord Quai’Shu of Xican and Shrin Chrias and – in his absence – his t’varr was a quiet thing. Liang sat beside Red Lin Feyn. Six Elemental Men sat three to each side. A few dozen other Taiytakei quietly listened. Some men of Vespinarr, a few of
Xican, some of other cities. Most wrote a great many notes and two sword-slave scribes meticulously recorded every word spoken. Red Lin Feyn summoned them all and made them sit and then she summoned all those whose words were relevant, and nothing Liang heard came as any great surprise. When Belli came, Liang wished she could reach out to him or go to him but Lin Feyn wouldn’t let her. He described the truth-smoke he made, something Liang had never known, and the Taiytakei hissed through their teeth at him and muttered to one another. There was no mention of the dead speaking – the Arbiter spared them all that at least, and so perhaps the Elemental Men would never know. Zafir stood before them all and told, as best Liang knew it, the truth, unvarnished and without shame. She was a slave. She’d done as she was commanded, nothing more, nothing less, and if what she’d done was wrong then perhaps the sea lords of the Taiytakei should look among themselves before they cast their stones. She showed no sorrow, no regret, no fear. Such things, she said, had no place in a dragon-rider’s heart.
Bellepheros brought his truth-smoke and all the Taiytakei spoke again. Quietly and in private, the judgement of the Arbiter was given. The dragons to be poisoned and the eggs destroyed. One in ten of Shrin Chrias Kwen’s men to be hanged and the dragon-rider too. Baros Tsen T’Varr, Shrin Chrias Kwen, Mai’Choiro Kwen, Sea Lords Shonda and Quai’Shu to be sent in chains to Khalishtor to have her verdict read out in the Crown of the Sea Lords before all the assembled lords of the thirteen cities. The fleet of Vespinarr to be stripped of a hundred ships to be given to the new sea lord of Dhar Thosis. All debts of Xican and Dhar Thosis to Vespinarr to be annulled. Stewardship of Xican and ownership of all properties of Sea Lord Quai’Shu to be assigned to Senxian’s heirs. The House of Quai’Shu to be dissolved and struck from the Council of the Sea.
And so it went on in ever deeper detail, petty clauses and conditions that Liang barely understood. She listened to every word, heart in mouth, waiting until it was done, but nothing was said of shifters or the Queverra or the Konsidar or of any sorcery, nor of the alchemist Bellepheros until at the very end of it all when Red Lin Feyn spared her a pitying glance. ‘Ownership of the alchemist slave Bellepheros and of the slaves known as the Scales to be transferred to the Dralamut.’
Red Lin Feyn lifted the headdress off her hair and rose. She left the headdress on her chair and walked slowly away, the Arbiter no more. The Elemental Men filed solemnly after her, walking for once instead of shifting into air. When they were gone, the other Taiytakei left. Liang hurried in Lin Feyn’s wake.
‘Lady!’ She ran out into the dragon yard, following her. ‘Lady!’
‘I will leave by dusk, Liang. I have given judgement and I am no longer the Arbiter of the Dralamut. That burden may now pass to another. I mean to travel to the Queverra. Do you wish to join me, apprentice? You may if you so desire it.’ She walked into her gondola and, when Liang followed, raised the ramp and shut the blinds and started to undress. ‘It’s done, Liang. My work is finished. I have listened and sought the truth and my judgement is passed. I have served my purpose. Did I do well?’
‘Promise me!’ Liang fell to her knees. ‘Promise me you’ll let him live until we return.’
‘Who?’ Then Lin Feyn shook her head and a half-smile flickered across her lips. ‘Your alchemist? He’s the property of the Dralamut now. And so are you and so he’s yours. The killers won’t touch him. You’ll come back with me, both of you. After that . . .’ She took Liang’s hands in her own and lifted her to her feet. ‘I’m not sure, Chay-Liang, that I can make promises now. The killers are no longer on my leash.’
‘Then take him home, lady. Take him home! There’s no reason to keep him here. You’re a navigator.’
‘As you will be, Liang.’ She let go of Liang’s hands and took the storm-dark globe and pushed it into them. ‘Practise, Liang. You’re close. Tell me, if I
did
send him home, would you stay in the dragon-lands with him?’
‘I . . .’ Liang looked up and down and to either side as if she might find an answer somewhere inside the gondola. She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know, lady. He wishes to live among his own people and I wish to live among mine.’
‘No gold-glass in the dragon-lands, Liang. What would you do?’
‘Think what we could learn! Truth-smoke!’
Red Lin Feyn arched her brow. ‘Bringing the dead back to speak, Liang?’ She shook her head. ‘Will you come with me?
There is a great deal for you to learn and it’s pushing three days to the Queverra.’
‘How long will you be, lady?’ She already knew the answer. Too long.
‘As long as needed to find the skin-shifter who did this, Liang.’ Lin Feyn looked long and hard into Liang’s eyes. ‘But no.’ She smiled. ‘You love him, do you?’
‘I . . .’ It was a question she tried not to think about. ‘I hold him in very high regard, lady, and I have a great affection for him. Love? What is that? Would I die for him, do you mean?’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. For the beliefs he holds? Yes, because many are already my own. He is kind and generous and asks for little. He has great burdens and carries them lightly and will sacrifice himself for them if he has to, of that I have no doubt.’
Lin Feyn leaned forward and kissed Liang on the cheek. ‘Then he sounds very much like an enchantress I have grown to like.’
‘I know. Lady, I cannot . . . The next days will be hard for him. He will lose everything. He will say we are right to do what we will do, but . . . It will be hard, I think. He will need a friend. He will need someone to be his resolve.’
Lin Feyn nodded solemnly. ‘He’s not the only one, Chay-Liang.’ Then she smiled. ‘Go in peace, apprentice. I look forward to getting to know this alchemist when I return. Both of you.’ She patted the globe in Liang’s hands. ‘And practise, apprentice. Practise!’
They embraced. Liang walked slowly away. As the ramp closed and the glasship lifted Red Lin Feyn away from the dragon yard, Liang smiled and waved and wished her well.
Better, she thought, to be here.
Zafir sat leaning against Diamond Eye’s leg. No one told her how it had ended but when she watched the Arbiter fly away in her glasship, she knew it was over. She’d stood before them all, proud as a dragon-queen should be. She’d told them how she’d burned and smashed their city to the ground. She was a slave and had been told she must, and so she’d done as her master had instructed her without shame or regret, and all of that was true, but there was a bigger truth that lurked among her words, hard and ungilded. The willingness. The pride to have caused so much hurt to those who’d
taken her from her home. It
was
the truth, and as she’d spoken it, she’d watched the faces around her and saw it bite. Too much? They only had themselves to blame. It was done now. She didn’t know exactly who would hang and who wouldn’t, only that a good few of their own deserved it a great deal and she’d cheer for every single one of them, even as she dangled from a gibbet of her own.
But for there to be any dangling, they had to take her, and Diamond Eye would know if anyone came close to hurt her, and so Diamond Eye would be the first. After that, the hatchlings and then the eggs, and somewhere in the middle of all that, her. And it would be the alchemist who was sworn to serve her, who’d taken an oath,
he
would do it. He’d kill her dragon and he’d do it because he wanted to, and so the next time he came out into the dragon yard, out into the open, he would die. No more potions, no more poison. The doll-woman would use the circlet and crush her, and Diamond Eye would awake. It made her laugh.
‘When he comes, I want you to eat him.’ She pictured Bellepheros walking to the wall to feed Diamond Eye his daily potion and the dragon snatching the alchemist in his jaws. But no, the alchemist was too clever for that. He’d be ready. ‘No. Don’t eat him. Throw him off the wall. Drop him into the storm-dark and then fly away as far and fast as you can. Fly to the sea. Fly to the water. Sink beneath it and wait until you awake.’ She stroked the dragon’s scales. Diamond Eye didn’t understand.
The eyrie was full of bustle today. The doll-woman was gone. Other gondolas sat in the dragon yard, slaves hurrying to and fro, milling Taiytakei from a dozen different cities, all whipped up by a wind filled with shouted gossip of the Arbiter’s judgement. On the far side of the yard, as far away from the hatchery as could be, a gang of slaves was building a wooden platform. Zafir watched them work and knew exactly what it was. A scaffold and gallows, just as Mai’Choiro had once ordered. Maybe, when they were nearly done, she’d climb onto Diamond Eye’s back and smash it down. There didn’t seem much point in waiting any longer.
The dragon was watching something too, out in the hustle and bustle. A sense stirred inside both of them at once, of something old and yet familiar. ‘Is he here, old friend? The other one who fascinates you so?’ She touched the dragon again and knew that he
was. The man from Dhar Thosis. The Crowntaker, but the dragon knew him by a different name that made no sense. It couldn’t quite remember but knew there was one there to be had, ancient and as powerful as the mountains and the sea . . .
Days and days and the Adamantine Man hadn’t come to her. She hadn’t even seen him. But he too was here. Diamond Eye knew him.
She spotted Bellepheros coming into the dragon yard. He walked among the hatchlings, supervising the feeding, tipping potion from the bucket he carried over the slaughtered carcasses of the animals they ate. She could see the little dragons chafe at the food placed before them as though they were cattle. Where was the hunt? Where was the lunge of tooth and claw, the burn of fire? They were too dulled by the alchemist to understand what was wrong but they felt it nevertheless. They snapped at one another and shrieked and tugged their chains. They were angry today. Restless.
Glasships lifted off and gondolas drifted away. Zafir watched the alchemist work. She was dressed in her armour of glass and gold and dragon-scale, all of it repaired or replaced. The parts the enchantress Chay-Liang hadn’t finished had been done by others – Shonda’s enchanters, perhaps. No matter. She had Chay-Liang’s helm and gauntlets waiting for when the time came. She wore the overlapping diamond-shaped scales of gold-glass, the same design she’d worn over Dhar Thosis. The greaves and the vambraces were cruder, artless pieces, but they’d keep the lightning at bay and that was all that mattered.
The slaves finished their scaffold and set to work on the gallows. They were only erecting one gibbet. One noose just for her. Zafir slipped back off the wall to her little shelter and drew out the bladeless knife she’d taken from the Elemental Man she’d dropped into the storm-dark. It felt heavy in her hand. If you looked hard and close, the blade shimmered sometimes when it caught the light, sparkled when the sun touched it just so. It wasn’t bladeless at all, merely made of something so thin that it was all but invisible, yet so sharp and so hard that it would cut through glass and steel as though they were air.
She’d do it herself. In front of everyone, she’d kill her own alchemist.
The wind whipped across the wall, battering at her. It wouldn’t make any difference. The Elemental Men would snuff her out quickly enough, but a dragon-queen shouldn’t ever go meekly. She settled beside Diamond Eye again, using his bulk for shelter. The Taiytakei roundly cursed the ever-whipping gale by the Godspike, but to Zafir the wind was a friend. She liked it up here. The desert sun was hot and fierce, the air cold and fast, the contrast a delicious pleasure. Strong and pure and full of the energy of life.
The slaves finished their gallows and started on some wooden cages. Five of them. Bellepheros was still with the hatchlings, talking to the Scales, taking his time, dragging his heels perhaps, watching the last of the visiting gondolas fly away. The cages were quickly made, and as soon as they were, armoured soldiers dragged four chained men out into the sunlight. The cages were thrown open, the men hurled inside. Two of them almost had to be carried. Zafir tried to see who they were but they were too far away. She thought she knew, and Diamond Eye certainly did. Sea Lord Shonda. Sea Lord Quai’Shu. Mai’Choiro Kwen. He knew their thoughts and tasted their fear. He didn’t know the fourth.
And the last cage is for me.