Dragon Queen (86 page)

‘They're here!’ The hunger in Crazy's voice was a frightful thing, like the insatiable hunger of a dragon. He pulled at the stones, tearing them away from the body underneath. When they got the corpse out, Crazy Mad turned him over. The bodies lying in the open were black and charred for the most part, brittle as charcoal where their armour hadn't shielded them, but the stones must have covered the warlock from the worst of the fire. His belly and face were pale. The tattoos on his arms ran up to his neck. The fragments of robe hanging in tatters around him were grey. No question as to what he was.

‘Is that him?’ Tuuran made himself look. ‘The one you're after?’

‘No.’ Crazy Mad sat there staring. He looked strangely content. ‘But now I know they're here.’

Zafir made Diamond Eye fly between the outer towers and leave them be. Forced him straight for the inner ones, the tallest, and there she let him loose on the first one they passed, tooth and claw and tail, splintering great chunks of gold and glass from its side. Pieces fell into the open yard below among the milling Taiytakei and their slaves and exploded in a hail of deadly spears and knives.
Screams echoed beneath her and joy surged inside – from Diamond Eye but also her own.

Clusters of black-powder cannon. She saw them now, around the outer ring, close to each of the three black needles of the enchanters’ monoliths. More lightning too perhaps, although she spotted none of the rings of brilliant light she'd seen around the cannon on the fortress by the sea. She turned Diamond Eye towards them. They were moving, trying to bear on her, but they were uselessly slow, like the cannon that Tsen had shown her on the eyrie. Weapons to fire on glasships, clumsy and worthless against a dragon. Diamond Eye flew to the first and tore the cannon to pieces with his claws, hurling the metal tubes at the black monolith beside them, cracking it. Zafir laughed madly.

‘Burn them!’ she screamed into the wind and urged Diamond Eye on to the next. ‘Burn them!’ There was no lightning here. Lightning didn't work against glasships, and what else could fly so high? ‘Burn them!’ They reached the next cluster of cannon. Fire raged out of the dragon all along the walls, up and over the metal and the stone, and then the wall blew apart beneath them and a mighty hand lifted them up, dragon and all. It tossed them into the air and she felt Diamond Eye convulse with pain, peppered by stones and shards of glass like scorpion bolts. Pain and then more rage and he banked and rolled and dived at the offending ground. Another explosion, smaller than the first. The dragon skimmed the wreckage, smashing the skeleton of iron beneath the glass and pouring flames into the gaping wound. Fire bloomed inside another piece of wall and burst through it like a fist through paper. More glass flew. The Taiytakei were little figures, running and screaming, frantic like ants. Anything to get away. The flying glass tore them to pieces before her eyes. It ripped them open and tore their limbs and sliced off their heads.

A piece hit her in the face, right between the eyes like a stone from a sling.

Tuuran and Crazy Mad passed the first gatehouse, which reeked with the stink of hot stone and burned flesh. There were bodies, dozens of them. Taiytakei soldiers dead at their posts, their armour melted on them by the dragon's fire. Tuuran glanced at them and
smiled. Dead slavers! A thing to make hearts sing. People were running the other way now, eyes mad with terror, fleeing from the palace of their unassailable sea lord. Slaves. A few were pale-skinned folk from the dragon lands or perhaps the little kingdoms and the northern edge of the Dominion. Mostly they were darker, Crazy Mad colour from the heart of the Dominion or the southern coast of Aria. There were Taiytakei too, slaves holding their hands high as they fled so that anyone who cared could see the brands they carried. Tuuran ignored them. Slaves were slaves and he had no grief with them, whatever skin they wore.

The second gatehouse was empty. The road beyond was gouged, stone slabs ripped out of the ground in great long slashes. The dragon. Bloody limbs, spiked clubs, shields, batons: all lay strewn about amid streaks of sticky blood. More and more slaves ran past. A few here and there stooped to pick up discarded weapons. At the third a gang of sail-slaves had armed themselves from the fallen Taiytakei. They held up their hands to show their brands and Tuuran held up his own and they nodded to one another. They had a Taiytakei and they were killing him, slowly and with a great deal of relish. If it wasn't for Crazy Mad Tuuran might have stopped to join them.

An explosion shook the ground. Up around the edge of the palace a fireball bloomed and rose into the air. He saw the dragon, saw it lurch and then turn and vanish behind the higher walls. He could smell smoke again, drifting in on the breeze. The stream of slaves fleeing the palace became thicker. There were fights, short and sharp and vicious. Slaves of all colours beating down Taiytakei soldiers, swallowing them with their weight of numbers, tearing off their armour and pulling away their helms and battering them bloody. Lightning spat left and right. It was madness. Chaos. Whether the Taiytakei were attackers or those defending the palace, Tuuran had no idea. The slaves didn't much care.

And there, running straight at him with panic on his face, was one of the men he'd seen on the ship. The tall grey dead man, Crazy Mad's Vallas Kuy, and Crazy had seen him too. The warlock was slow, old and feeble among the young muscle of the escaping slaves. His skin was as pale as the moon and his grey robes fluttered around his feet. Crazy Mad moved into his path; he took off his
helm with slow and deliberate care, but the grey dead man was too busy running to look at faces. Vallas the warlock skittered sideways, eyes fixed on the road and his only escape from the dragon, and then at the very last his gaze flicked to Crazy Mad's face and flicked away again. And then flicked back.

Crazy Mad caught hold of him, eyes gleaming. Tuuran stopped to watch.

81

Who Am I?

‘Vallas Kuy!’

‘You!’ The grey dead man gaped. For a moment he looked truly afraid.

‘Me. Do you remember me, Vallas? Do you remember me from Tethis? Do you remember Gelisya and Syannis? Do you remember what your brother did to me?’ Crazy Mad threw Vallas to the ground, both oblivious to the slaves streaming past, the running battles, the shouting and the screaming and the cracks of lightning. Tuuran craned his neck to scan the sky, looking out for the dragon, but his ears were firmly with Crazy Mad. ‘Do you? Do you remember? Get up!’

Vallas rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet, still gaping at Crazy Mad as though he'd seen a ghost. ‘You,’ he whispered. ‘Why are you here?
How
are you here?’ The earth shivered and Tuuran cringed as another explosion rocked the Kraitu's Bones. The fleeing slaves had an urgent terror to them. For a moment Vallas stared at Tuuran instead. ‘And you! I knew we weren't wrong.’

‘Get on your knees, soap maker!’ Vallas shook his head. The fear was leaving his eyes and a venom taking its place. From behind the palace the dragon soared high into the sky. The air crackled with energy as it shrieked its victory. Tuuran looked around for shelter. Crazy Mad pointed his sword at Vallas. ‘What did you do to me? Who am I? What did you
do
?’

The dragon was going berserk: screaming, burning, smashing, throwing itself against the three great towers of glass and gold, lashing them with its tail, tearing at them with its claws. There was no telling when it might come their way, but when it did –
if
it did – it was clearly long past paying attention to things like who it was supposed to burn and who it wasn't. It would kill them all. ‘Oi! Crazy! We don't have time for this. Not in the open.’

Neither of them heard. The grey dead man drew a knife from inside his robes, one with a blade like a cleaver and a hilt of solid gold with a pattern of stars that looked like an eye. It distracted Tuuran for a moment. It was the knife he'd seen before, that time he'd thrown Crazy Mad into the sea.
The
knife. Crazy Mad had talked about it enough after all.

A deep groaning splintering trembled the air. The first of the palace towers crazed with cracks, bent and began to topple. The dragon turned towards them. Tuuran took a step closer. ‘Crazy Mad! Whoever you are! We need to—’

Vallas clutched the knife. ‘Go, Crowntaker! Be about your work. You have no hold on me, not while I have this. It will crush even
your
soul.’ He backed away behind the knife, black shadows beginning to swirl around him.

‘Best you drop it then.’ Tuuran's axe flashed and the grey dead man didn't have a hand any more. The knife clattered to the stones. Tuuran pointed to the palace and glared at Crazy Mad. ‘Not here! Big fucking dragon make big fucking fire!’

But Crazy Mad was staring at the severed stump; and then Tuuran stared too. No blood came from the wound, only wisps of black shadow. The warlock drew back his lips, bared his teeth and howled then pointed. The shadows flew from around him like daggers towards Tuuran's throat.

The stone snapped her head back. Pain shot through her neck, up into her skull and down her spine. She reeled and blinked and then pitched forward as Diamond Eye powered for the sky again. She couldn't see. Her head spun. No, she
could
see, but everything was a blur, just formless light. The dragon wheeled and turned. A shape flashed past.

The visor. The glass in her beautiful visor had crazed. She put a hand to her head to hinge it up and crunching brittle crumbs fell down her face and over her fingers. There was blood on her gauntlet. Hers. Her head throbbed and her neck squealed whenever she moved it, but at least she could see. They were between the great towers at the centre of the palace, Diamond Eye lashing at them with his tail as they passed through, sending more giant shards of shattered glass plunging to the ground, and then they
were through and he arrowed for the last cluster of black-powder cannon.

‘No fire! No fire!’ But Diamond Eye was too lost in his fury to hear. Zafir pulled the visor down again and pressed herself forward, turning her head away, ignoring the howl of pain from her neck.
Broken? No, it can't be
. Diamond Eye shuddered, breathing fire over whatever took his fancy as Zafir cringed on his back. The air shook. Heat washed over her. He turned and tore back into the sky and wheeled for the towers again. She barely had time to think before he crashed into one, gripping at it with all his claws. Glass shrieked and cracked as he tried to cling on, whipping his tail back and forth, striking the tower beneath him again and again. They slid down, pieces of gold-glass flaking away around them, a rain of deadly spears; and then they were falling backwards with half the tower coming down on top of them. Pieces clattered off Diamond Eye's scales, off Zafir's already cracked armour, and then the dragon rolled and spread his wings and they were away as the tower fell. A massive piece of debris struck another of the towers near the bottom. Glass exploded up and down the length of it, overwhelmed by the strain, and that too began to fall. Through the pain and the fury and the fatigue and the terror, Diamond Eye's joy surged into her.

‘Down,’ she whispered, exhausted, finished but exultant. ‘Down. Enough.’

The dragon turned. He cocked his head as if listening for something he could barely hear. And then, for once, he did as she commanded.

Berren snatched the knife off the road. As the shadows ripped at Tuuran he buried its blade into the warlock's chest, right where his black heart should have been. He felt no resistance at all, as though Vallas was made of nothing more than smoke, but he wasn't surprised. He'd done this before. Dismay stretched across the warlock's face and a pulse of fire swept down Berren's arm. His vision filled with ghostly faces. He could see Vallas before him, doubled, one figure made of skin and bone and the other a shimmering ghost of something else. He saw two Tuurans, two of everyone, of each slave who ran past them, staring at these mad
men who'd chosen here and now of all places to fight while the palace above them burned and was torn to pieces by a monster. The ghost shapes filled his vision and howled in his ears, and inside the second Vallas he could see the web of the warlock's soul, an endless tangle of threads like a spider's web wrapped within itself, exactly as he'd seen his own once before.

Tell the knife! Make it your promise. And then cut, Berren, cut!
Half a lifetime ago Vallas's brother Saffran had held this knife – this one or its twin, Berren had never known which was which. He'd put it into Berren's hand and made Berren drive it into himself and see his own soul, displayed just like this. He'd made Berren make three little cuts, snip, snip, snip.
Three little slices. You! Obey! Me!
Saffran Kuy had made Berren into his slave on that day; and though Tasahre had saved him, the hold had remained, and even after Saffran was gone there was still the hole of what he'd cut away, and Berren knew without knowing how that that hole had something to do with what Vallas and the last of his warlocks had done to him in Tethis.

And now he'd find the answers. Saffran was dead, killed by the same knife. Berren remembered every moment of that day in Deephaven with perfect clarity and now he made three little cuts of his own, and with each cut the knife sliced a little piece of Vallas away.
Three little slices. You! Obey! Me!
He pulled the Starknife away from the warlock and held him fast. ‘Let him go!’

The shadow serpents faded. Tuuran dropped to his knees, gasping and clutching his neck. Berren gripped Vallas by the throat. ‘You tell me now, warlock, you tell me what you did in Tethis. What spell you put on me and then you tell me how it can be undone!’

The warlock let out a hacking laugh in Berren's face. ‘The spell should have pulled the Bloody Judge out of his body and put him in yours, and Skyrie the other way with the thing he carries inside him. That was the spell we put on you but it didn't work.’

Berren's fingers tightened around the warlock's throat. ‘Didn't work? You
liar
! How is it undone?’