Dragon Queen (45 page)

There were no doors to the Paths of Words, only gold-glass that opened like a flower to the touch of Tsen's black rod. He tensed.
Never liked this bit
. Whenever he reached the top he always remembered the wind first, the howling gusts that blew across the Paths. There were no guard rails, nothing at all to stop a man from falling. It was a test, Quai'Shu had said many years ago when he'd first brought his promising young t'varr here.
Yes, and wasn't it just. Worst bloody weather in ten years. Howling great thunderstorm. Winds to snap anchor chains and pissing with rain. First thing that happened when you opened up the wall was lightning hit the Star of the Navigators and I almost fell off. Only those of courage may enter the Sea Council, you said. Only the ridiculously bloody stupid today, I thought, but I did it, even if you almost had to carry me. People still remember. We had the Great Sea Council to ourselves. Everyone else had far too much sense to be out in that weather
. Today was calm, but this was a different Quai'Shu now, old and broken.
Would it be such a bad thing if you fell? You wouldn't be the first. But if you do, then let it be because you've had enough, old man, not because of me, not even if LaLa wasn't here and the two of us were alone
. A witless sea lord was burden enough for any house, never mind one so crippled with debt, but Quai'Shu was Tsen's lord and master, had been his mentor once though there might not have been much love over the years, and even without Meido's wager he wouldn't simply stand by and do nothing. They walked side by side, arms wrapped around each other through the wind over glass as clear as water and then hundreds of feet of emptiness, and it seemed nothing more than two men who were well past their prime, both uncertain and a little fearful, holding on to one another to share what courage they had.
As you did for me in that storm. Although the glass is wider than it seems and there really isn't much danger of falling, not if your feet are sure, but it does things to a man's mind to look down, doesn't it? Straight through the air to the gardens and the trees and the contours of the water terraces so far below and you start to wonder, don't you, old man? What it would be like to fly, truly to fly
.

The glass platform sank back towards the ground. Others would follow bringing the alchemist and the dragon-rider and the little dragon. He laughed.
Yes. Little
dragon – the hatchling was as large as a horse and its tail made it more than twice as long. It would be interesting to see how
that
could be coaxed along the Paths of Words and he almost wished he could stay to watch. But Quai'Shu was his concern now; for the next six months, nothing else mattered. There were other people whose purpose was to see to such things as slaves and monsters.

From tower to Crown, the glass bridge was five hundred bold paces long, give or take a handful. Quai'Shu took far more than that and they were slow ones too, but Tsen tolerated it. When they reached the globe of gleaming silver that was the heart of the Crown,
he tapped his rod against its bright skin and the silver shimmered and flowed like liquid, opening before him. The globe of the Great Sea Council was another relic, a thing from a different time like the floating castle that had become his eyrie. The enchanters had found it and resurrected it long ago. Did they understand it? He didn't know. Could they have made it themselves, this thing of liquid silver? He thought not, but he'd never know because neither the enchanters nor the navigators would ever speak of such things, not to one who wasn't their own.

He stepped through into an open comforting space that glowed with its own light – another thing that made him think of his flying eyrie. It was a simple structure inside, one quicksilver globe inside the other. The Great Sea Council sat in the inner globe and from there they ruled the six known worlds. A series of spacious halls had been built between the two layers where the entourages of the sea lords might mingle and wait for their summons to the council itself. And, on the council's more exciting days, occasionally stab one another.

The inner skin flowed and opened before the touch of Quai'Shu’s rod. There were no guards here, no soldiers, no weapons. You either had a wand that would make the walls part for you or you didn't, and if you didn't then there simply wasn't a way in. Quai'Shu had one. So did Tsen, and Jima Hsian and Chrias Kwen. Probably not any of the others, not yet, but that would soon change.
Chrias Kwen will see to one for Lady Elesxian, so I should probably do something for Meido myself
.

Inside the inner sphere the black-cloaks gently manoeuvred Quai'Shu to his place among the thirteen thrones of the sea lords, arrayed in the shape of a horseshoe. Plain wooden benches were lined up behind each throne, simple and unadorned and desperately uncomfortable after not very long at all, but only sea lords sat in thrones. Four of them were already here, Quai'Shu the fifth, a sign of the importance of their twilight debate today. LaLa stood beside him – oh yes, and no pair of eyes missed
that
little statement, did they? – while the black-cloaks withdrew to the edge of the circle. Soft light shone from the walls, from the floor and from the roof, tinged with orange to reflect the setting sun outside. Tsen stretched his ears and listened to the whispering among the kwens
and the t'varrs who served the other sea lords. Wagers, mostly, on who would attend and who would not. Across the horseshoe the throne for Lord Shonda of Vespinarr sat empty. Tsen touched a finger to his brow to salute the man who sat behind it, Vey Rin T'Varr. Rin smiled and returned a faint nod. More than half a lifetime ago he and Tsen had been friends together in the desert, chasing slaves. As far as it was possible for either of them, Tsen liked to think that old friendships still counted for something.

The walls parted and closed again as other t'varrs and kwens and hsians took their places, or now and then left and came back again minutes later, running petty errands for their restless masters. A hush rippled over them as three navigators entered, their braided hair almost touching the floor and as long as his own. Their cloaks of feathers were iridescent things, a deep blue but shimmering in every colour of the rainbow as they caught the light. Their robes were the same. The navigators had no thrones and stood in the centre, back to back and facing outward, meeting the eyes of the assembled lords, something that only a navigator was privileged to do. One of them held an hourglass. Tsen squinted at its sands. The speaking would begin when the sun fully sank into the sea.

More arrived, two more sea lords – seven of them in one place together, something almost unknown – and dozens of their kwens and their hsians. The murmuring grew. The sands trickled away, and as the last grain fell the navigator who held the hourglass spoke. Tsen smiled. Today wasn't about Quai'Shu’s dragons, but one day it would be.
And how many of you will come then?

‘The Ice Witch of Aria.’ There was a pause and then the navigator continued. Tsen sighed and tried to pay attention. Chrias Kwen would receive his own information. Jima Hsian probably knew everything he would hear today and far more besides. But Tsen listened anyway as the navigator went on. Aria was a realm that Tsen had never seen and in which he had no interest. He was a t'varr after all, charged with putting things in their correct places, and once they were there he had little interest in what they actually did. Given the choice he preferred his vineyards and his bathhouse. But the navigators’ voices betrayed their alarm – they were anxious, all of them, even afraid. Sorcerers were growing in Aria like weeds, the strongest already a threat even to an Elemental Man, it seemed.
Their world was changing quickly –
too
quickly. They'd learned to forge near-perfect glass, might soon unravel the secrets of the enchanters, had taken Scythian steelsmiths and . . .

A furore broke out at that. Not at steelsmiths being somewhere they weren't supposed to be –
that
was a mere annoyance and quickly solved by the swift cut of a bladeless knife – but for them to be there at all meant that someone had taken them across the storm-dark along with secrets the Taiytakei had chosen not to share. Now the sea lords smirked and twitched and looked among themselves to see if any face would reveal who'd made such a dangerous trade and what prize they might have won in return. The t'varrs and hsians and kwens behind them whispered to one another, exchanging wagers. Tsen heard Quai'Shu’s name more than once. He closed his eyes for a moment. It would be easy to let go, to let others do whatever needed to be done. It would be like sinking back with a large happy sigh into warm scented waters, but that wasn't why he was here. Not why Quai'Shu and Jima Hsian – and even Tsen himself these last two days – had cashed in every favour they owned to have this debate here and now with a dragon in the wings outside.

The navigators waited, quietly letting the rest have their moment to build their little conspiracies, biding their time, and then the first navigator glared at the lords around him, fixing his eyes on them one after another. ‘They were
taken
, my lords. Do not look within. A sorcerer from another realm has walked between the worlds.’

The silence unleashed was deep and long as the meaning sank in.
Someone other than a navigator has crossed the storm-dark
.
We have an equal
.

A competitor
.

A threat
.

And here it comes. My moment
. In the silence Baros Tsen T'Varr coughed and had their attention at once. Ah, but this was going to be difficult and he wasn't even sure he wanted to do it. But he had eyes fixed on him. The lords and t'varrs and kwens and hsians of the thirteen cities. What he wanted was his bathhouse. His apple wine. His peace and quiet the way it had been a week ago but it was too late for that. He'd made this happen. This moment.
Inspired or mad?
He wasn't sure but now he stood up. ‘I believe
the lord of Xican may be able to offer a solution.’ No going back now. ‘A plague to ruin worlds.’ That was what the alchemist had said when they'd taken him, wasn't it? Yes, and that, in the end, was why their lord had spent twenty-odd years of his life and broken his house's bank to steal these monsters. Because of Jima Hsian's warning:
Some day, in our lifetime, something will come. In the Dominion, in Aria, from out of the depths of Qeled, something will rise. Something that will threaten us all and we must be ready for it
.

Twenty-three years ago. Midsummer's night and every hsian in Takei'Tarr had said the same, but Quai'Shu was the only sea lord who'd listened.

‘What plague?’ The first navigator asked the question in all their eyes. Tsen let his smile grow wide. He had them where he wanted them. Every last one.

‘I will show you,’ he said. ‘But there will be a price, my lords. And it will not be a small one.’

40

Dragon-rider

Zafir's breath caught in her throat. The Crown of the Sea Lords did that to her every time her eyes strayed to it. She told herself not to look, told herself that the Pinnacles, her old home, were larger and grander; and they
were
, three whole mountains carved and tunnelled and . . . and
wrought
long ago by the will of the Silver King. But still she couldn't help the stolen glimpses and glances. So much glass, so much gold, so much light and so much sheer
size
! And the orb that floated far above it, all spines and spires of glitter. Each time it trapped her with its majesty she forced herself to see it shattered by dragons, its great golden shards falling like rain. Dragons.
They
were the true wonder.
She
was their mistress. She clung to that like a drowning man to driftwood.

The glasship drifted to a halt at the edge of the Crown beside one of the gold-glass towers. The black-cloaks pressed a stud in the wall and the bronze shell of the gondola split open. A ramp eased down. They led her out over a flat black circle of polished marble towards the looming tower. Brass gates as tall as a ship hung open. As she passed through them, she saw they were wrought from top to bottom with pictures beaten into the metal: a huge tower topped by a circle of cloud, ringed by lesser towers; a man standing on the prow of a ship facing a storm full of lightning; men bearing gifts, bowing in supplication. At the very top, etched right across the doors, were the twin lightning-bolts of Xican.

Beside her the alchemist was looking up at them too. ‘Feyn Charin,’ he whispered. ‘The story of the first navigator.’

The black-cloaks led them on into the vast hollow tower, between walls of pale marble and gleaming glowing glass, across a floor of more black stone speckled with flecks of gold like the night sky. They took her to a glass disc that floated over the floor and pushed her onto it and stood in a circle around her. The alchemist,
when he saw it, groaned and clutched his belly, and when he sat, got down by the edge, closed his eyes and gripped it tight with his hands. He looked old now, old and scared and she wondered why, until without any warning the glass rose and floated up through the inner space of the tower. Her heart jumped into her mouth at first but she quickly pushed it back where it belonged. The black-cloaks, if anything, looked bored. To them this was simply how things were, not to be given a second thought.

Dragons
. She recalled sitting on Mistral, diving over the edge of the Pinnacles, the wind a storm in her face. They'd played a game, before her mother had forbidden it, with three great poles that jutted out of the cliffs, one at the top, one in the middle, one by the bottom, each with strips of coloured cloth tied to the end. One by one each dragon-rider took their dragon to the edge of the cliff and dived, the aim to snatch a coloured strip from each pole as they arrowed past, a test of skill and courage for rider and dragon alike. She'd been the fastest but it wasn't for playing the game that her mother had forbidden it.
That
had come when Zafir had insisted she be the one to climb out on the middle pole to tie on the strips so they could play again. It jutted fifty feet from the cliff, the ground half a mile below, no ropes, nothing to catch her, nothing to save her. She'd crawled along the top of the pole where the other riders hung underneath and the ground had stared up at her every inch of the way, and she'd stared right back while the wind that whipped around the cliffs had tugged at her clothes, and she'd felt so
alive
! She'd slipped twice, tying on the strips, nearly fallen each time but she'd caught herself, and when she finally came back, her heart was racing so fast and she was shaking so much she could barely stand. Now, as she looked at the black floor of the tower a mere few dozen yards below, she smiled. The Taiytakei thought they were so grand and so elegant, so full of arrogant poise and perhaps they were, but where was their fire?