The Adamantine Palace (17 page)

Kemir was the first to notice the smell. The rain had stopped in the middle of the day, and for the last few hours they'd walked on in glorious sunshine. Apart from his feet, Sollos was feeling almost dry when Kemir abruptly stopped and sniffed the air.

Sollos stopped as well. He wrinkled his nose. There was ... something, something slightly familiar.

'Soul Dust,' muttered Kemir, keeping his voice low so the dragon-knights, a few dozen yards behind them, wouldn't hear.

Sollos shook his head. 'No. There's something right enough, but it's not Dust. Dust doesn't smell like that.'

'It does when you burn it.'

Sollos shrugged. 'It can't be. No one here burns Dust.' He swept his hand across the empty landscape. 'Do you see anyone burning Dust?'

Kemir glared at him. 'No, obviously I don't, because if I did, I'd be pointing at them. Just because you can't see the shit on the bottom of your boot doesn't mean it doesn't stink, and I'm telling you, that's the smell of burning Dust.'

Five minutes later Sollos sniffed again. This time he smelled smoke.

They looked at each other. Then Kemir started to run as best he could over the scattered rocks. The riders shouted. Sollos paused for long enough to yell at them to smell the air, and then set off after Kemir. Around the next bend of the river they skidded to a stop.

Kemir pointed to the scorched scar at the edge of the forest. 'Do you think that's the settlement we were supposed to be finding?' A few charred pieces of wood were still smouldering. The rest of whatever had been here was ash, but that wasn't what caught Sollos's eye.

'Bugger the settlement.' He pointed up the river.

At first glance it might have been a huge white boulder, but there was something too regular about it, too smooth. The boulder, when Sollos looked closely, had eyes that looked back. As he watched, the boulder slowly unfurled its legs, wings and tail and turned into a dragon.

Kemir gave a little whoop of joy. 'Finder's fee!'

Sollos touched Kemir on the arm, a gesture of caution. 'Something isn't right about this. There's no rider.'

'Of course there isn't. We were there, remember. When the other dragons attacked? Fire, shouting, running for our lives? Am I ringing any bells?'

Sollos edged sideways, out of the middle of the river bed, heading for the cover of the forest. The dragon was watching, and there was something altogether too intelligent in the way it was looking at him. 'We never found the Scales.'

'That's because he's dead.'

'Then why this?' Sollos began to step faster. 'Dragons never flamestrike unless someone tells them to.'

'Maybe it was hungry.'

'Maybe it still is.'

The dragon moved. Sollos grabbed Kemir and ran.

Tipping the Scales

For ten years, as the dragon is matured, the gifts must continue, and those whose gifts are found wanting will find their dragon,
when they take it, perhaps a little dull in its scales, not as
vigorous in its flight or as tight in its turns as they had hoped.

When his dragon has finally matured, the rider will visit the
eyrie for one last time. A final round of gifts is made, and then
rider and dragon are introduced. The dragon is his.
Before the rider leaves, it is customary for one last payment to be
made: a small gift to the Scales, the man or woman who has fed
and watered and nurtured the dragon since it was an egg. The
dragon-princes call this gift Tipping the Scales

23

Snow

A torrent of flames poured from the sky, swallowing her and the Little One beside her in its fury. The river waters steamed. Stones cracked in the heat.

She felt the presence of the other dragons in the sky long before she saw them. Different minds, different thoughts made up of different sounds and colours, but that didn't bother her at first. Other dragons came and went all the time, and the Little Ones never seemed afraid. And then she'd felt their thoughts change, the colours darken and sharpen and fill with fire. She knew what was coming.

An instant before the flames struck, she spread out her wings, tenting them over her head and over the Little One beside her. Instinctively. Protecting her eyes and the Little One. The other Little One, the one who'd been angry and shouting, the one who rode on her back and told her what to do, he was too far away for her to save. She felt his thoughts snuff out, and that made her a little sad. Little Ones burned so easily.

A second flamestrike engulfed her. The fire warmed her, but didn't frighten her. The Little One was afraid, though. Sharply, suddenly filled with fear. She felt it from all of them, but especially from the one beside her. And pain. The Little One was in pain. And panic. And terror. The emotions rolled into her from the Little One. She didn't know what to do with them. She'd never felt these things before. Bad things that made her want to run away.

The newcomer dragons were still close. She could still feel their thoughts, hot and fierce. They were circling around. They meant to come back.

She seized the Little One gently in her left foreclaws and hurled herself down the river, picking up speed with each stride. One of the other dragons swooped over her. She felt its thoughts and held the Little One close as the dragon above raked her with fire.

It passed over her head. As it did, she launched herself into the air and snapped at its tail. She still clasped the Little One tight to her breast. It was out of its mind, screaming and thrashing. Its thoughts were a jumble, disconcerting and incoherent. They made her feel strange. When another dragon swooped past her, she snapped at that one too and lashed it with her tail. She felt its surprise as it veered away.

Up, up, up. Faster and faster. Away. Sometimes she thought the Little One was trying to tell her to let it go, but its thoughts were chaos, broken and messy, and it kept contradicting itself. Three of the new dragons were following her. They were bigger than she was. They felt older. They had Little Ones to tell them what to do too. She could feel their determination, their hostility.

Another dragon dived from the sky above. A dragon she knew, one of the strong ones. One of the dragons that had come from her nest place. It shot down like an arrow and smashed into the closest dragon behind her, sending them both tumbling towards the ground. She heard the shrieks of other dragons echoing around the valleys, and with them came a surge of excitement. The dragons behind her were all gone, spiralling down together, snapping and lashing at her nest-mate.

She felt a shriek of terror from one of the Little Ones, abruptly cut to nothing. Then they were all gone, too far behind for her to hear their thoughts any more.

The excitement faded. The Little One held in her claws was calmer now, and her own thoughts were less confused. A part of her wanted to go back and play with these new dragons, but the Little One's thoughts were clear: it wanted to get away. Far, far away. It didn't know which way she should go and it didn't care, so she flew whichever way caught her eye, along valleys, between mountains, over lakes. She'd never seen this land before, or anything like it, with all its strange shapes and colours and so much sparkling rushing water. She dragged the tip of her tail through shimmering mirrors, soared and dived and snapped at waterfalls, and spiralled around mountains, riding the currents of rising air. Eventually the light faded, the sun set and the Little One's thoughts went quiet. She could feel herself slowly getting too warm, but the landscape was simply too fresh and exciting to ignore, and so she flew on, playing with it until the heat inside her was positively uncomfortable. Then she landed by a lake. She carefully put the Little One down on the ground, out in the open where she could see him, and bounded into the delicious ice-cold water. She splashed and played under the stars until she was cool again, and then curled up around the Little One and went to sleep.

She dreamed. Far, far away, things were happening. Immense things. Somehow she was a part of them, but they were so far away, she couldn't see them, couldn't hear them, couldn't remember them. She tried to fly towards them, but they kept moving away, eluding her, darting out of the way when she lunged for them.

Abruptly the sun was in the sky again, creeping over the surrounding peaks. She yawned and stretched out her tail and arched her back. The Little One was awake again. She could feel its thoughts. It was hungry.

Yes. Hungry. She was hungry too. She looked at the Little One and bared her teeth, as she always did when it was feeding time.

Tm sorry, Snow. You'll have to find your own breakfast.'

She looked around. She didn't understand most of the noises that the Little Ones made, but sometimes their thoughts were enough. He didn't have any food for her. He was in pain too. And he was afraid. She didn't like those thoughts. They made her feel anxious, and so she stopped listening to them. She thought about being hungry instead, waiting for the Little One to do something about it. When he didn't, she bared her teeth at him again.

'Hunt,' he said. 'You have to hunt.'

Hunt. She knew that noise. It meant flying and chasing and, yes! Catching and killing and eating.

She rose onto all fours and then lowered her neck, inviting the Little One to climb onto her back.

'I can't, Snow. I'm a Scales, not a rider. I'm not allowed.'

The noises made no sense. Hunt meant that a Little One sat on her back and told her where to go. She lowered her neck even more, rubbing it against the stones on the ground.

'They'd put me to death if they knew.' The Little One started to walk in circles. Its thoughts were confused, still laced with pain, Still frightened. 'Only riders ride dragons. That's the law. We should go back. What happened? Were we attacked?' It shook its head. 'Oh, I wish you could speak. What if they're still there? The queen won't be back yet, will she? Oh, what to do? I can't ride with you, Snow. There's no saddle; I'd fall. But we can't stay here, and you can't find your way home on your own. I don't even know where we are. Do you know where we are?'

She rubbed her neck against the ground again and bared her teeth once more. Hunt. Hungry.

'You want to eat. Yes, you must be hungry. Oh, but there aren't any alchemists here. You have to drink the water they make for you. You'll get sick otherwise. We'll have to go back.'

Hunt. Hungry. She made the gestures again. She was starting to get frustrated, and the Little One's thoughts were confusing her. She couldn't make any sense of them.

'I can't climb on your back, Snow. There's no harness. I can't reach.' The Little One walked to her left foreclaws and tried to open them. She didn't understand what he wanted to do, then she caught a picture from his mind, of flying through the air at night, and she was carrying him.

Yes. The way they'd come here. Carefully she raised herself onto her back legs and held out her foreclaws. The Little One nodded and made noises, and in his thoughts she saw that she'd understood him. He climbed into her claws, and she gently closed them around him.

'Hunt!' he said.

Hunt. That was something she understood.

24

A Memory of Flames

They hunted. She ate. The Little One ate too, and then they climbed into the sky together again. The Little One wanted to go somewhere, but it didn't know which way to go, so she flew again as the fancy took her, into a wilderness of crags and broken stone and boulders the size of castles. She tried to hunt there too, but the land was barren and empty. When night fell, she found a place to land and went to sleep. The dreams came again, as distant as ever.

The next day they flew back out among the valleys and rivers. It rained. She liked that, liked the feel of it. The Little One started telling her which way to go. She understood its thoughts: Left, straight, right, up, down. She knew the noises too, but when they were racing through the air, the noises were all lost in the wind, and she had to pluck the thoughts out of the Little One's head. She began to wonder whether this Little One was somehow broken. The other Little Ones that sat on her back had thoughts that were much clearer.

'We're lost,' said the Little One. She didn't understand, but she could see in his thoughts that he was anxious. He was always anxious. Mostly she blocked him out.

They looked for dragons but they didn't find any. The next day was the same. And the next. But at night, when she slept, something was beginning to change. The dreams were coming closer. She didn't notice it at first, but after a few days a strange understanding came to her. She wanted the dreams. More than anything else, she wanted them. They were important. More important than food or shelter or even than the Little One. She didn't know why; they simply were. With that one revelation came another. They would come to her as long as she stayed here, away from the others, alone.

The day after that she chose her own way to fly. Instinct drove her towards ever higher places. The Little One was even more upset than usual. It shouted at her. It was angry with her, and that made her feel very bad. She was supposed to do what the Little Ones wanted, and this Little One was the most special Little One of them all, the one who'd been with her since she'd first opened her eyes.

That night the dreams were even closer. She could almost smell them, almost touch them. They were filled with fire and ash and burning flesh. In the morning, when she woke up, she left the Little One behind and went to hunt alone. She felt its anguish and despair as it watched her fly away. It was still there when she came back. It felt joy to see her return and made lots of noises that she didn't understand. When she slept again, the dreams finally let her touch them.

She was a tiny part of something vast. She couldn't see or hear, but she could feel the thoughts of hundreds of dragons, bright and sharp and clear. She could feel other beings too, huge and powerful. Far beneath them she felt a hum of lesser thoughts. Little Ones, she realised with surprise, but that didn't make any sense, because the Little Ones seemed so dull and dim next to the other dragons, and the truth she knew was the other way around.