The Adamantine Palace (5 page)

Half a snapper was little more than a snack for a monster like Mistral, but it seemed to settle his mood. With a pang of regret, Shezira left the hunters to their fun. She turned him on the ground, cumbersome and slow as he was, and then he started to run. That made the other dragons sit up and take notice, for the footfalls of a running war-dragon could shake the earth enough to shatter houses, and it took a lot for a beast like Mistral to take to the air. When he did finally spread his wings and soar into the sky, though, all his ungainliness was gone. Shezira had him circle once above them and tipped a wing to wish them luck. Then she put the mountains and forests to her back and headed out over the plains. She allowed Mistral to set his own pace, and let herself enjoy the feeling of the wind in her hair and the utter sense of being alone. It wasn't often that she had the skies to herself, and yet she had long ago come to realise that that was what she enjoyed most. That was when she was truly free, free to pretend she had no titles, no burdens, no family, no daughters to marry off, no plotting nephews to watch, no subjects to rule, no obligations, no responsibilities ...

Catching herself thinking these thoughts made her laugh. And here I am, set to become the next Speaker of the Realms. Would I really turn my back on that if someone told me I could? Would I really take Mistral and fly away across the Stone Desert to the secret valleys beyond, where no one would know me and no one would find me?

The answer, she knew, was that she wouldn't contemplate it even for a second. Which probably made her a fool, and that in turn made her laugh even more, and by the time she reached Valgar's eyrie, she felt ten years younger.

She'd hoped the feeling would last after she landed, but it didn't. It died at the exact moment that she saw her knight-marshal, Lady Nastria, walking briskly across the scorched earth towards her. Nastria was already half in her armour, as if in a rush to leave, and was waving something in her hand. She was shouting.

'Your Holiness! Queen Aliphera is dead!'

6

Huros

Huros knew exactly what was going on, because nothing could happen without him. He'd sat with Eyrie-Master Isentine and explained to Queen Shezira everything about the route they would take to escort Princess Lystra to her wedding. Exactly how many dragons would be flying, exactly where they would be stopping and exactly for how long.

They left King Valgar's eyrie at the crack of dawn. Huros was expecting that, because that had been in his plan. Today was the longest stage of their journey, all the way to the Adamantine Palace. They would stay there for one day, no more and no less, to let the dragons rest. He was quietly looking forward to it. He would spend the time with the highest alchemists in the realms, perhaps even with Master Bellepheros himself. It was an opportunity to advance himself, and this had filled his thoughts until late into the night. Thus he wasn't entirely awake when someone knocked on his door. He stumbled outside while the sun was still creeping over the horizon and checked his potions were all carefully packed. Then he wrapped himself in his thick and deliciously warm flying coat, secured himself to the back of a dragon and started to count the others getting ready around him. By the time he reached twenty, his eyes had grown so heavy that he thought he might rest them for a bit. The counting was rather pointless, after all. He knew exactly which dragons were with them and exactly where they were going.

Others climbed up beside him. He felt the dragon start to run and then launch itself into the air. He had a sleepy look around, and then his eyes closed.

When he woke up two hours later, as his belly reminded him that he hadn't had any breakfast, he was in the wrong place. The mountains of the Worldspine were too close. More to the point, there should have been some thirty dragons in the skies around him. Instead, he could see the white, two other war-dragons, and that was it.

'Er ... Excuse me?'

There were two men on the war-dragon with him. One was a rider, sitting up above its shoulders. The other one looked like a Scales. Huros furrowed his brow, trying to remember the man's name. Kailin. The one who looked after the white.

'Hey! Scales!'

The Scales turned around and gave Huros a blank look. The rider was too far away to hear them over the wind.

'Scales! Can you hear me?'

The Scales nodded.

'Where are we?'

The Scales shrugged.

'Um, don't you know? Where are the others then?'

The Scales shook his head and shrugged again.

'Well. Oh. Then who does know?'

The Scales tipped his head towards the dragon-knight. Huros rolled his eyes and gave up. Strictly speaking, Scales were subordinate to Huros and the other alchemists, and all belonged to the order. In reality, most Scales lived in a tiny world of their own that seemed to consist of themselves, their dragons and very little else.

His stomach began to rumble. He decided to have one more try. 'Scales! Um. Have you anything to eat?'

The Scales nodded and passed back a hunk of bread. Huros gnawed on it and quietly fumed. Under no circumstances was a squadron of dragons to split without consulting the senior alchemist present. Since Huros was the only alchemist Queen Shezira had deemed fit to bring, that was him. He would have words, he thought grimly. Words, yes. Strong and forthright ones.

They flew for hours, and with each hour, Huros clenched his lists ever tighter. Eventually it occurred to him that Queen Shezira might have changed her plans because of the news of Queen Aliphcra's tragedy. Huros wasn't sure why that should be, but then he hadn't really been paying much attention. He'd had his own plans to worry about. Besides, that didn't change anything. He should have been consulted. Ancestors! He didn't even know where he was any more, except that the peaks of the Worldspine were to the right and there were more mountains to the front. Which meant they were still flying south, away from Outwatch. He furrowed his brow. Or was that the other way round, and the mountains should be on the left?

The pressure on his bladder grew. He pressed his legs together and bit his lip, but eventually he had to give in. Dragon-knights did this all the time, he told himself, and he started to undo the straps that held him onto the dragon. Even the Scales had calmly stood up, relieved himself into a bottle and strapped himself back in again. Except when Huros stood up, the wind buffeted him and almost knocked him over, and he was so terrified that he couldn't go. The pressure turned gradually into pain, and by the time they landed, it was so excruciating that Huros was in no fit slate to have words with anyone. He didn't waste any time to see where he was, but stumbled and staggered away towards the nearest tree.

Before he was done, his dragon and its rider were already taking off again, the beast lumbering away and flapping its wings, accelerating up to a speed where it could lift itself off the ground. For one terrifying heartbeat Huros thought he'd been abandoned; then he saw the Scales and a pair of strange-looking soldiers, and when he looked up, the other dragons were there, still in the air overhead. The Scales was sitting by the edge of a wide open stretch of jumbled rocks, next to a pile of boxes and sacks that must have come from the dragon-riders. Here and there sparkling ribbons of bubbling water criss-crossed and threaded their way between the stones and among streaks and strands of silvery sand. Strips of ragged grass, perhaps a stone's throw across, lined the river's course before the forest trees took hold.

The two soldiers walked slowly towards him. They were carrying some strange contraption between them. From the way they were walking, it was awfully heavy. Huros had a moment to wonder where the queen's precious white dragon had gone, when it shot through the air straight over his head, so close that the tree beside him shook and the alchemist was almost lifted off his feet into the dragon's wake. He clung on to a branch. By the time he'd recovered, the dragon was rolling on its back in the river bed next to the Scales, flapping and splashing its wings. Its rider was standing nearby, soaking wet, waving his arms and shouting furiously at the Scales.

The two soldiers shouted something as well and shook their fists, then carried on with what they were doing. Huros waited until they were close, and then stepped out of the trees. 'You're not dragon-knights.' Both soldiers had longbows slung over their backs. The bows were white and made of dragonbone. Precious things. The alchemist wondered where they'd got them.

The soldiers looked at him. They exchanged a glance and seemed to smirk. 'Clever of you to notice,' said the taller of the two. 'Was it the fact that we're not wearing several tons of dragonscale that gave it away, or that we're not sitting around and picking our noses?'

'We're sell-swords,' said the other one.

The tall one nodded. 'That's right. Currently we've sold them to your knight-marshal.'

'They don't come cheap, either.' The shorter one gave Huros a nasty grin. 'Our swords are long and sharp and very hard.' He definitely smirked.

'Lady Nastria?' Huros frowned. The thought of her sent a jolt through him. She'd given him a bottle of something strange, and he hadn't even looked at it. He was supposed to tell her what it was.

'If that's what her name is.'

The tall one belched loudly. 'That's the one. I'm Sollos. This is my cousin, Kemir. Since you're not the Scales, you must be the alchemist.'

'Huros,' said Huros.

'Well then, Huros the alchemist, make yourself useful. There's half a ton of luggage down there by the river. We'd quite like to move it up into the trees before the heavy brigade come back.' The sell-sword made a rude gesture towards the rider who was still standing over the Scales, waving his arms and shouting. 'I don't imagine he'll be much help.'

'That was pretty good, though.' The short one grinned again. Kemir. 'The white one forgot she had a rider for a moment there. If he'd been any slower jumping clear when she rolled ...' He drew his finger across his throat. 'Pity, really. I would have pissed myself. Still, we don't want all our luggage crushed, do we.'

Huros shook himself. Words, he reminded himself. He was going to have words with someone. And these two were very rude. And he was Master Huros, thank you very much. They looked a bit big, though. And armed. He bit his tongue. 'Um. Of course. Although ... Excuse me, but where have the rest of the dragons gone, exactly?'

'Their riders have taken them hunting,' said the tall one. Sollos. He gave Huros a pitying look and shook his head.

'For food,' added Kemir. Yes. When the knights came back, Huros would have words about these two as well. What are they even doing here?

'Can't have them getting hungry. Never know, they might set their minds to snacking on alchemists.' The two sell-swords were leering and shaking their heads. Every day Huros spent at least some of his time with ravenous monsters who could swallow him in a blink, kept only in check by their training and by the subtle potions that he dripped into their drinking troughs. These two, though, made him far more nervous that any dragon ever had.

'Um. Clearly. I meant the other ones. The rest of them. Where's the queen?'

The sell-swords looked at each other and shrugged. 'Keep an eye on the Scales,' said Sollos. 'That's what we were told. We keep an eye on the riders too. In case any of them get any bad ideas about stealing the queen's dragons.' He grinned and stuck out his bottom lip. 'Where the rest of them went...' He shrugged. 'Don't know, don't care. A clever man might hazard a guess that they flew off to the Adamantine Palace, just like they were supposed to. But you're an alchemist, so I suppose that must mean you're a clever man, and you'd already thought of that.'

'Well... But why ... why didn't we?'

The tall one sniggered. 'I don't know. Maybe some unsettling news came of late. Maybe your queen doesn't trust your speaker further than she could throw him. I hear he's grown quite large of late. Or maybe we don't know shit.' The sell-swords looked at each other again.

'Did anyone say anything about keeping an eye on alchemists?' asked the short one. The tall one shook his head. Sollos, Huros reminded himself again. His name was Sollos. He seemed to be the one in charge.

'I don't think so.'

'No, I didn't think so either.'

Sollos smiled what was possibly the most menacing smile Huros had ever seen. 'We're just sell-swords. We do as we're told and go where we're sent. No one gives us reasons, and we don't ask for them. Why don't you bother that rider over there, once he's finished laying into your Scales. I'm sure he'll know more than us. As long as you don't expect him to help with the luggage. In the meantime do you think you might help us? I believe some of it could be yours.'

The short one nodded sagely. 'It's the stuff at the bottom, I think. It might have been a bit squashed. Crushed even.' He looked at the other sell-sword. 'Come to think of it, did you see something leaking out of one of those boxes?'

His potions!

Huros ran towards the river as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn't need to look back to know that the sell-swords were laughing at him.

A shadow crossed the sun. Huros stopped and looked up. There were dragons in the sky, diving towards the river. Four of them, which was at least one dragon more than there should have been. And they were hunting dragons, not war-dragons, which meant...

The lead dragon opened its mouth, and the river exploded in fire.

7

The Glass Cathedral

Being alone on Mistral's back was one of the nice things about being queen. All the dragon-knights had to share their mounts with the gaggle of courtiers from her palace, the mob of extra hedge-knights that Lady Nastria insisted on bringing and of course the alchemists and the Scales from the eyrie. Not to mention all the luggage.

Shezira sighed. Everything seemed so small from up in the sky. Over her shoulder, to the west of the realms, the volcanic Worldspine mountains ran from the sea to the desert and, as far as Shezira knew, on to the ends of the world. North of Shezira's eyrie, the dragon lands faded into the trackless Deserts of Sand, Stone and Salt. At the opposite end of the realms, King Tyan's capital was built on the shore of the endless Sea of Storms. When she stood among the mountains or in the emptiness of the desert, everything seemed so unimaginably vast. Yet from up here it was all nothing.