Dragon Queen (19 page)

She twisted at the ring on her finger impatiently, conscious of its unfamiliar presence.

‘Holiness, to every speaker of the nine realms, we come. There is knowledge that we of the order wish to share with you. Knowledge for your ears and yours alone. It is usually done immediately after the naming.’

Zafir rose and paced restlessly to the gaudy throne that Hyram had brought here for her and sat down again. ‘Sit, Vioros. What knowledge?’

The alchemist carefully sat and crossed his legs on the floor in front of her, ignoring the chairs either side. ‘Holiness, when you touched the spear you became the guardian of us all. There are truths known among our order that are for the speaker and no other.’

Zafir made a show of looking about. ‘We do appear to be alone, Vioros.’

Vioros didn't follow her eyes so perhaps he didn't doubt her, but he shook his head. ‘I cannot, Holiness, for they cannot be spoken. It is a thing that you must see. Please, Holiness, will you come?’

Zafir let out an exasperated sign and slapped her thighs. All that delicious tension was turning slowly to frustration and that in its turn was making her irritable. ‘
Now
, Vioros? Does it have to be now?’

‘If it pleases you, Holiness.’

‘No, it doesn't.’ She let out another sharp breath and snapped to her feet. Certainly this wasn't what she wanted – what she wanted was Jehal or her dragon but neither were here and her mood was rapidly shifting. Jehal would never know what he'd missed. Even
he
had his limits and today, if he'd been here, they might just have found them, and Jeiros and Vioros could have waited, fuming, for as long as it took. But he wasn't, so boring alchemists it was.

Vioros wouldn't say any more. She quickly left him behind, bounding down the tower steps while he toiled after. Outside, when she'd waited for him to catch up, he led her across the Speaker's Yard and straight back into the tumorous lump of stone that was the Glass Cathedral. Jeiros was there and a few dozen riders still milling in clumps and clusters from the ceremony, talking and muttering to each other. Zafir wondered why they chose to stay in the dark of the cathedral instead of the bright sun of the yard. Conspiring probably, but they all bowed and fell silent
as she passed. Jeiros bowed too.
This
one had begun to annoy her. He was floundering his way into Bellepheros's shoes, still thinking that the old man might come back. Probably better for all of them if he did but the world was rarely that kind.
Although if I didn't have Bellepheros killed and neither did Jehal then who did? And why? What did that old man know? What did he find?
The timing of his vanishing was the most troubling of all, right after he'd scoured Jehal's eyrie for her mother's killer.

No matter
. She shook the thought away. A curiosity for another day, and here and now she couldn't be bothered with it. She had no time for the faraway vanishing of alchemists, not now, nor much for the ones in front of her. ‘My time is precious, Grand Master Jeiros.’ And yes, she meant it, filled as it was with dead kings and murdered queens and the Gateyard still littered with bodies and reeling in the ones that got away and what to do with the blood-mage under her feet, but most of all with the desperate urge to fly a while, alone with Onyx and a wind like a hurricane.

‘I'm sure it is.’ Jeiros spoke with a touch of acid as though he'd glimpsed her thoughts. Zafir let it go and followed the pair of them to the altar of the Great Flame and the stairs that burrowed into the ground beneath. A pair of Adamantine Men loomed from the shadows there to walk beside her. Why? In case her alchemists turned suddenly into assassins? Absurd! Absurd as thinking she couldn't take a fight to two old men even if they did, and besides she wasn't sure whom she should fear more just now – Jeiros and his alchemists or the Night Watchman and his guardsmen. She sent them away. It kept the frisson alive, the tension.

‘The tunnels here go deep, Holiness,’ whispered Vioros. ‘Deep into the Purple Spur. The caves are a realm in themselves. The ways to reach them are hidden to all but the senior alchemists of our order and to the speaker. That is the first thing we must show you.’

They descended the steps. Tunnels riddled the earth beneath the Glass Cathedral – everyone knew
that
– but how far they ran was a mystery. They were old, far older than the rest of the palace. Before the coming of Narammed, the Glass Cathedral had been the most important landmark in the realms save the beating heart of her own home, the Pinnacles and the Silver City. No one knew
who'd built the cathedral. It had been long abandoned, its stone burned glassy smooth long before the Silver King had tamed the dragons. Yet when the blood-mages had eventually torn him down they'd brought his spear – the Speaker's Spear – straight to the cathedral within days of his fall. As if it belonged here.

Her
spear now. And there it was, beneath the altar at the bottom of the spiralling staircase, standing on a plinth of its own. Alone, where it had lived before Narammed had taken it; and now it was here again and it seemed to Zafir that it was waiting for her. It stood erect, its pointed haft buried six inches into the stone floor. The walls around it were lit by alchemical lamps and their cold white light glittered on the spear's silver skin. She reached out to touch it again as they passed, almost couldn't help herself, then drew back as the alchemists stiffened.

‘Yes, touch it, Holiness.’ The voice from the shadows made them all jump, but it was only Aruch, sitting still and quiet in his dark cowled robe. ‘Touch it. Claim it. Bleed for it and make it yours. Some speakers did and some speakers chose not to, but the ones who do are always the ones who are remembered.’

All of a sudden Jeiros was as tight as a scorpion ready to fire. She could see the muscles standing out on his neck. He was shaking his head. ‘Holiness, it's not necessary . . .’

Good enough reason to do it right then. She stepped smartly to the spear and ran the tip of a finger along the closest of the spear's four blades. The edge was wickedly sharp. A few drops of her blood dribbled over the bright silver and then, to her astonishment and alarm, shrank away and vanished as if drawn into the metal itself.

‘The spear has tasted you now,’ Aruch said.
‘
It knows you. You belong to it.’

‘That was foolish, Aruch,’ snapped Jeiros and Zafir had never heard an alchemist sound so savage. ‘Come, Holiness, please. We have far to go.’ He turned away down another passageway of hewn stone worn smooth with age, lit by alchemical lamps. Zafir stared a moment longer at the bright silver of the spear. There was no sign of her blood. It hadn't been an illusion or a mistake. It had been there, and then it had gone. She backed away, uncertain of herself and not sure what to do with the feeling and so she settled
for following Jeiros and pretending it hadn't happened for now. The tension she'd brought was still inside her but now it had an unpleasant edge, cold and clammy and nothing like the delight of before.

‘Why did the blood-mages bring it here?’ She cocked her head at Jeiros, who of all of them ought to know. ‘Why not keep it in the Silver City? It always seemed strange, what they did.’ Carried the spear as far away as could be. The end of the known world. ‘Not embraced in their victory, yet not destroyed nor buried nor hidden either. Why?’

‘They were afraid of it, Holiness,’ said Jeiros softly. ‘The blood-mages believe it carries its master's power within it. Or something even greater. They were afraid of it because of what they'd done.’

Zafir sucked at her finger. ‘Does it, Jeiros? Does it carry the power of the Silver King?’

‘No.’ The grand master alchemist of the realms shook his head. ‘I'm sorry, Holiness. Aruch shouldn't have misled you. He clings to old ways and not all of them are wise. I'm afraid I have little to say of the Speaker's Spear except that it's breathtakingly sharp and keeps its edge. I hope the cut isn't deep.’

Months later Jeiros would remember those words, his own, in bitter disbelief.

18

The Naked Dragon

Little to say of the Speaker's Spear except that it's breathtakingly sharp and keeps its edge
. But she'd seen her blood vanish into the silver – hadn't Jeiros seen that too? It scared her and she'd have to face that; and there was a blood-mage down here somewhere, and blood-magic was stronger than alchemy. Yes, and there she'd been thinking of having Queen Shezira's little pet exposed and executed for what he was. Foolishness when he could become
her
tool instead . . .

Jeiros opened an iron-bound door and closed it behind them. ‘None may enter this way save the masters of the order, the great priests and the speaker,’ he said, as if she cared about such dry old rituals. ‘Had you brought your Adamantine Men they would have had a long wait for you here.’

Zafir nodded, bored and getting impatient again. The spear had unsettled her and she'd been unsettled to start with, only now it was unsettled in a bad way. She wanted the wind in her hair and huge spaces all around her, not to be wrapped up in stone like this. Dark places brought back memories she preferred to forget. ‘It is far, Master Alchemist?’

‘I'm sorry, Holiness, but it is, and it must be done.’

The alchemists led her this way and that along passages, smooth-worn and narrow, to a long hall lit with dozens of their lamps. It was a harsh light, casting shadows sharp enough to cut the eye. They made her uneasy. Jumpy. Nervous, and that was never good. She found herself wondering about Bellepheros and Furymouth and Jehal again, wondering what people knew and what they thought they knew and what they imagined. Whatever brilliance Jehal had contrived to have Shezira push Hyram off his own balcony, it
would
have been better if he was still alive. A few months and then he could have quietly gone away, fallen ill and
died without a whiff of suspicion. But she couldn't, couldn't live with the lie for that long, not with everything it brought with it, the things she had to do to sustain it . He was old and fat and that reminded her far too much of—

No. Not here
. She could already feel the panic rising.
Not in a place that's already dark
. A dragon-queen feared nothing but the shifting shadows were taking her there, back to the dark place of long ago. She pushed the panic away, closed her eyes and thought of racing among the clouds, warmth spreading up through her legs from the heat of the dragon beneath her, howling biting winds on her face. A dragon-queen was made of stone. A dragon-queen had no place for fear or doubt. She took deep breaths, snarling at herself. Closed her eyes and clung to the wind until the fear withdrew. Breathed slowly out as it did, a long sigh of relief.
Better
.

They took her down yet more steps, worn and sandy, so many that she lost count. ‘Where are you leading us, Master Alchemist?’

‘You will see, Holiness.’ The walls pressed around her. The shadows ahead and behind filled with unkind mystery. The closeness of the two alchemists made her skin prickle and tense.

Wind in her face, tugging at her hair
.
Wind in her face, tugging at her hair
. ‘I understood the tunnels under the cathedral reach as far as the deep cellars of the gatehouse and elsewhere around the palace. I've heard they might even stretch to the City of Dragons itself. Yet it seems to me we've travelled in the wrong direction for that, and too far to be within the bounds of my palace. Vioros spoke of caves beneath the Spur. I think one of you must tell me a little more now we have gone so far.’ She had to work to keep the tension out of her voice. They'd chosen a bad day to bring her to a place like this.

‘Are those the only stories you've heard, Holiness?’ asked Jeiros. ‘I've heard far more. Stories that these tunnels reach the Fury, that they cross the realms as far as the Pinnacles and Bloodsalt and Bazim Crag. They don't, but they go quite a way. This path will bring us to caves that lie beneath the Spur, as you have said. Behind the Diamond Cascade.’

‘That's a very long way to walk under the ground, alchemist, when a horse might have carried us instead. I am displeased, Jeiros.’
Stop being scared! Stupid woman! It was done and finished long ago. They're gone, all of them. Dead. You killed him, remember? The darkness has no hold on you now!
But the darkness only laughed at her. All the gleeful joy of before, they'd leeched that from her, bringing her down here. Alchemists liked their caves and their small dark places. But not her. She gritted her teeth. Hated it, but they wouldn't see it, none of them, not a flicker of it.

‘A horse could not have carried us where
we
are going, Holiness.’

Down into the bowels of the earth: hours of the same rough-walled tunnel that ran straight to the heart of the mountains. At least the alchemists carried plenty of lamps. Zafir closed her eyes and summoned the wind to her face. Space. Space around her, below her and above her. And light. And no one for miles, no presence lurking right beside her. Caves were for alchemists, not for dragon-riders. Not for her. The panic gnawed at her but she'd lived for years with this foolish fear of the dark and had learned the tricks to hold it at bay.
And he's gone! Get over it!

‘There was a river here once,’ Jeiros told her. The alchemists were breathing heavily by now, both of them out of breath from so much walking. ‘Its course was changed to create this passage.’

She had no idea how far they went but she was aching by the time the alchemists stopped, gasping, at yet another great door. As Jeiros struggled to open it, the wood two inches thick and bound in iron, pulling at it with all his strength, she saw a slash of blood across his palm.

‘You're bleeding, Master Alchemist.’ As much as anything she wondered how he'd cut himself down here. She was a dragon-queen and the speaker now and knives were always a danger, and she'd spurned her two guardsmen from the Glass Cathedral . . .

Jeiros flashed with anger. ‘The doors are bound closed, Holiness,’ he said. ‘Only an alchemist may open them.’