The Order of the Scales (33 page)

The dragon shifted closer until its nose was inches from Kithyr. Then its tail arced over its head. It snatched up three of Kithyr’s screaming men at once, tossed them into the air, caught them one by one in its mouth and ate them.

The rest broke and fled. The blood-mage might have bound them to him, but there were limits, even to that sort of power. The Picker didn’t wait. He flickered. He vanished from where he stood and for an instant became the wind and the air. A moment later he appeared behind Kithyr. The sword flashed and the blood-mage suddenly didn’t have an elbow any more.

‘Who was it told you all them stories, eh?’ he whispered. ‘Who was it told you about us, what we does and doesn’t do, eh? Was me and I lied.’ He snatched up the spear, meaning to hurl it towards the water and flicker away again. All too quick for the dragon to do anything about, leaving it with the blood-mage and whatever else took its fancy. Except even as he thought it, the simmering fury of the spear crashed into him like a great wave and he felt himself drown under its force. And then something wrapped around his waist and lifted him up into the air. The dragon had him.

I can still go
, he thought.
I can drop the spear and flicker away.
The fury in the spear was like someone screaming in his ear, constant and relentless. The second dragon, the golden one, paused from its destruction of the town and thundered towards them, burning timbers tossed up into the air by its wake as though they were paper. The black dragon lifted him higher, holding him close, staring at him with amber eyes the size of a man’s head.

Why are you here, Elemental Man? Why have the silver ones come back?

The Picker squeezed his eyes shut.

We have felt them. Why have they come back?

Silver ones?
The half-man, half-god wizards that the Taiytakei sea captains had brought with them, was that it? The Moon Sorcerers from the Diamond Isles. He shook himself. It didn’t matter. He was an Elemental Man. Even a dragon couldn’t kill him if he didn’t want to die. He tensed. This would have to be quick.

Do you know what you hold there, child of earth?

Enough. The Picker raised the spear and aimed straight at the dragon’s head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly, ‘what this spear will do to you.’ He threw the spear straight into the black dragon’s face and flickered away. The spear struck true, straight in the dragon’s eye. The dragon roared and screamed. The spear erupted in a flash of light so bright that the Picker had to turn away to shield his eyes. When he looked back, the dragon was still there, but now it wasn’t moving any more. The spear had turned it to stone.

He flickered again. Snatched the spear out of the dragon’s eye. It came away easily. His hands tingled. He dropped it, flickered, caught it before it hit the ground, turned towards the gold one and threw again with all his strength. ‘Die, monster!’ Flickered behind it . . .

Except the golden dragon jumped at him. It batted the spear aside, tumbling it away towards the river. The dragon’s tail lashed like a whip. As the Picker reappeared, it caught him square in the side, shattering one arm, caving in his chest and throwing him through the air like a rag doll.

‘How . . . ?’ He tried to say.
How did you know where I was? How can you be so quick?
He tried to flicker again, but it was a weak and futile effort. It didn’t work. Slowly he stood up. The golden dragon turned and gazed at him.

The Spear of the Earth
, it mused.
You are dying, earth-child. If you knew what you were, if you knew what you held, you would not have done this. Do you really not remember?
The monster seemed truly puzzled.
Do they poison you too, so that you forget what you are?

‘I don’t . . .’
Don’t know what you’re talking about
. Breathing hurt far too much to talk. He coughed and his mouth filled with bloody foam. He tried to stand. His legs at least were still working.

Nothing can stand against the power of the spear. That was always its strength and its curse. Why do you seek it, earth-child? What is it to you?

The Picker couldn’t answer, but he could feel the dragon rifling his head, searching for the answers.

The silver ones. They want it back. Is that why they have returned? Why do they want it? Why now, after all this time?

He tried to flicker one last time. Instead of turning into air, though, he merely lurched forward and then slowly rose. He looked down. The last three feet of the dragon’s tail were sticking out of his belly. He felt himself gag and his limbs go slack. The dragon lifted him up, high into the air. He could feel himself sliding off the dragon’s tail towards its open maw below. The pain still hadn’t hit him when he fell.

How can you be so quick?

A voice spoke in his head.
Because I can hear your thoughts, strange one, and so I know where you will go before you even move.
And then there was a crunch and everything went black.

His bow floated past. Kemir let go of the jetty support long enough to snatch it and drag it through the water towards him. The gold dragon had already flown past. The darker one, though, the black one, crashed into the shore at the end of the jetty. More fire. More screams, short, snuffed out in a blink.

‘You cannot touch me, dragon!’ Someone was shouting loud enough to be heard over the explosions of fire from around the town. ‘You know what this is!’

The blood-mage?

There were times when curiosity and valour were both fine things, but, as Sollos used to say, more often than not they both got you killed. Heroism or bravery were for fools; what usually got Kemir in trouble was the curiosity bit. That and getting up and doing things without thinking beforehand. One moment he was bobbing up and down in the Fury, trying not to swallow any more water than absolutely necessary, watching burned bits of people bob about in the water beside him; the next he’d just finished shimming up a slippery pole and was hauling himself up by his fingertips onto the splintered stub of what had once been a wooden jetty. He dropped into a crouch, as low as he could manage without actually lying down. The crowd on the waterfront was a mass of blackened bodies at his feet – those that weren’t down in the water. The market stalls were splinters and ash.

Fifty feet away from him was a dragon, a black one he’d never seen before. The dragon was nose to nose with the blood-mage Kithyr.

‘You know what this is!’ roared the mage. At least the words came from the Kithyr’s mouth, but they didn’t sound anything like him. He held the spear high, poised to throw it. ‘Do you remember us, brother? Do you remember what we are?’ There were other men around the mage, slack and stupid-looking. For some reason they weren’t running away. Kemir couldn’t for the life of him imagine what that reason could be. Climbing to his feet, he slowly took an arrow and nocked it. The arrow flights were wet. The string was wet.
Not good.

The black dragon lifted its tail, reached over its head, picked up three of Kithyr’s men and ate them. The rest, at last, ran away, and the blood-mage faced the dragon alone.

No, not quite alone. Suddenly there was another man standing next to him. Kithyr screamed and his hand, the one holding the spear, just seemed to fall off his arm. He crumpled to his knees and toppled over.

So much for that then. An arrow saved.

No, wait. That’s . . . That’s the Picker.

Bastard.

Kemir lifted his bow and aimed as best he could with a buggered arm, but by now the dragon had its tail wrapped around the Picker.
And what were you going to to do, anyway? Shoot him before he gets eaten? Get back into the water and hope they don’t notice you, you idiot.

Fat chance of that. The gold dragon circled, over the town, already half wreathed in flames. It smashed down into the ground beside its black companion, shaking the earth with such force that Kemir nearly fell, and slashed back and forth with its tail. Walls cracked and tumbled as it cleared some space for itself. At first Kemir thought it hadn’t seen him, hadn’t felt him, but then it looked his way. Only a glance, but one that left no room for doubt. It knew he was here. And this one Kemir
had
seen before. One of the dragons Snow had freed from the Mountain King’s riders at the cliffs where the Worldspine met the sea.

He looked down into the water. Kat was still there, craning her neck to look back at him.

‘Stay where you are,’ he called. ‘No matter what you hear. No matter what happens to me, you stay where you are until they’re gone.’

The gold dragon was looking at him.
I feel you, little one called Kemir. I know the taste of your thoughts.

Kemir lifted his bow again. ‘And I remember you too. Come and get me, dragon!’

The Picker threw his spear at the black dragon. There was a blur and a dragon’s scream and a flash of light so bright that Kemir reeled and fell. He screwed up his eyes and blinked, hard. When he could see again, the Picker was on the ground with the spear in his hand again. Kemir saw him throw it at the second dragon, saw him vanish into thin air, saw the dragon bat the spear away and lash at something with its tail.

The spear tumbled lazily through the air. It came down, jammed itself point first in the wood at Kemir’s feet and quivered.

Take us!

The voice in his head this time was no dragon. This was something else. Some
things
else. He took a step forward. Up close he recognised it. The Speaker’s Spear.

The black dragon was strangely still.

We kill dragons
, said the spear.

On the shore, the gold dragon had the Picker impaled on the end of his tail. He dropped him into his mouth, bit him in half and turned to look at Kemir.

Leave, little one.

Kemir took the spear in both hands this time. Ignored the cold shiver that ran down his spine, the electric tingle that touched his skin. He wrenched it free of the planks and raised it high. Behind the dragon, Hammerford lay wreathed in smoke. A pall of it hung in the air, drifting slowly towards the river. He could hear the distant flames, the sounds of beams cracking and groaning, of buildings tumbling. There were probably lots of people noises too, shouting and screaming and cursing, but he couldn’t hear those over the roar of the town’s death.

The spear.

Amid the rubble and the bodies something moved. The figure of a man. In a flash, the dragon snatched him up. It took Kemir a second to realise that the dragon was holding Kithyr.

You know this one.

‘Yes. It’s all the same to me if you eat him, but don’t blame me if he doesn’t taste very nice.’ As he spoke, he could see the dragon’s claws turning slowly orange. Blood, perhaps. The dragon dropped the mage as though he’d been stung. He stamped on him twice, still holding his fore-limb out in front of him. Kemir felt the pain and the rage pulse out of the dragon in waves.
What have you done to me?

The dragon’s claws, he saw, were melting. Little curls of stream rose from the talons and drops of something dark dripped from them and splashed onto the waterfront.

‘I’d go and see to that if I were you.’ He readied the spear to throw. The dragon turned, furious, but still didn’t strike. It stared at him.

You may keep your life if you give me the spear.

‘You’re running out of claws to hold it.’ The dragon’s fore-limb was little more than a stump now. The steaming had stopped, though.

You know what I am, little one called Kemir. I have seen your thoughts before and I see them now. Throw your spear if you wish. It is the Spear of the Earth. If your aim is true, nothing will turn it and I will die. If you miss, I will kill your mate first, the one who hides in the water beside you. I will roast her slowly. I will crush your bones and then you will listen to her screams. I will leave you beside her. You will be alive but you will be broken, so broken that you can barely move. The river will quench your thirst. For food I will leave you the roasted flesh of your mate. I will leave you alive to choose whether you eat her or starve. The other one was closer than you are now and the spear did not save him. Now give it to me!

There were probably the best part of couple of hundred corpses littered about. Kemir took a step and then stopped. He lowered the spear and then raised it again. If the dragon wanted him dead, why was he still alive? It could burn him from the air. Could burn him from where he stood right now. Could pick out pieces of building and throw them at him. He might evade the first boulder, the first blast of fire, but sooner or later the dragon would get him.

How long will your mate remain down there in the river? She is tired, Kemir. And cold. Give me the spear, little one. That is all I desire of this place. Give it to me and I will be gone. I will tire of this soon enough and then I will kill you for it.

It dares not strike you.
Kemir jumped. The new voices in his head were the spear itself, harsh and violent and metal.
We will protect you. Strike at us and we strike back. That is what we are. The dragon knows this.

The dragon twitched and Kemir felt its anger.
Give it to me, little one. It is not what you think.

An interesting thing to say, since he hadn’t the first idea what it was that he
did
think. He waited, but the spear stayed silent. He could feel it, though, a gentle power coursing down his arm, filling him with certainty.
What are you then? What are you supposed to do?

Give it to me and I will go.
The dragon turned to face Kemir squarely. It rocked back on its hind legs and flapped its wings a couple of times. Its tail flicked restlessly from side to side. Readying itself to spring.

He was moving before he even knew it. Wasn’t even sure why, except that simply standing rooted to the spot while a dragon pounced on him was stupid. He was running, screaming, spear raised. The dragon drew its head back and Kemir’s arm did the same. Kemir’s arm and the dragon flew forward in the same moment. The spear lanced through the air and vanished into a blossoming cloud of fire. Kemir hurled himself sideways, rolled across the jetty and fell over the edge. He closed his eyes. Fire filled the air. Heat seared his skin and then the water reached up and sucked him down into its cold roar. He thrashed blindly. Near him something vast smashed into the river. The dragon, it couldn’t be anything else. For a moment the world filled with light, one great flash of it. He pawed at the water, flailing helplessly until his hands touched something solid; he pulled himself towards it and then hurled himself to the surface. His head burst back into the air. The last fragments of the jetty were gone, smashed to splinters. The golden dragon lay half in the water, half out, head raised, wings and claws outstretched and reaching right over Kemir’s head. It wasn’t gold any more, it was grey. Turned to stone.