The Silver Kings (59 page)

‘Tuuran!’

‘What?’ He came to her slow and reluctant, like a dog to his master’s side after a beating, full of prowling discontent.

‘It’s beautiful here today,’ Zafir said. There were no clouds, no rain. A hot sun beat down, mingling with the cold air, a steady wind blowing from the north, dry from the deserts. She pointed her spear at the moon on the horizon. ‘Why does this matter to him? Moonrise? Who does anything at moonrise?’

Tuuran didn’t answer.

‘He cut you, didn’t he?’

Tuuran didn’t answer that either, but he didn’t need to; his face said it all. Fury and crushing despair all at once. When she put a hand on his shoulder he flinched.

‘He’s gone, Tuuran.’

‘No.’ He wouldn’t look at her. ‘He’s still in there. Somewhere.’

‘The Crowntaker wouldn’t have let him cut you. He never did before.’

‘He
is
in there, Holiness. He. Is. Still. There.’ Tuuran was trembling. ‘Yes. He cut me, and he told me to end myself after I brought you here. As I see fit, he said. So you’ll open the door to the Silver Sea, Holiness, and I’ll push him inside, and it will kill me, but the Black Moon will be gone for ever, and Crazy will come back, and
that
is how I see fit.’

She didn’t press for more, for how he might manage such a feat. She thought he might strangle her if she did.

The Black Moon turned to look at her then. The wind abruptly dropped. Tuuran froze and so did Myst beside her. Everything fell silent. Everything stopped except for the Black Moon, walking slowly up the stone path towards her. Zafir stayed exactly as she was, watching him come, too shocked by the sudden stillness of the world to move. Tuuran had seen this once, so he said, out in the deserts of Takei’Tarr when the Black Moon had first woken. And in Diamond Eye’s memories Zafir had seen the Isul Aieha do the same when Diamond Eye had snatched his spear. The stillness she’d felt in the dragon’s memory of that moment. There was nothing quite like it. The Black Moon had stopped time.

The half-god stood in front of her. The world snapped into ­motion. The wind blew again. She felt Tuuran’s quivering.

‘Give me the spear,’ the Black Moon said.

The spear was all she had. She hesitated a moment, and then handed it to him. The Black Moon gripped it tight. His face
screwed up in agony. Silver fire burst from his eyes, and ice-white cracks spread along his arm as he lifted the spear and aimed it at the rising moon. ‘Do you see me?’ he cried, a roll of thunder enough to make mountains shiver. ‘
Do you see me?
’ He handed the spear back to her. ‘Call them,’ he said. ‘Call the dragons, spear-carrier.’

‘How?’

He whirled at her and slammed a hand into her face and drove his fingers into her skull, and for a moment she felt him inside her, rushing through her, a whirlwind maelstrom of unbearable power.

‘Like this,’ he said.

The knowledge was there before her, the keys to the Silver King’s spear unlocked. She summoned the dragons as he asked, all of them, while the Black Moon raised his hands to the sky and locked his eyes on the distant moon.

Bellepheros led them through the Enchanted Palace. The Silver King’s maze eluded him. The Hall of Mirages remained a mystery, as did the routes to the arches and the carvings and all the palace’s other innermost secrets. But from the cave where Kataros had flown she took a shaft to the old reflection cells that had been her prison while Hyrkallan decided how to be rid of her, where Zafir had held Hyrkallan himself, and from there Bellepheros guided them to the Gold Hall beyond the Undergates where a pair of dragon-riders sat in mute boredom, keeping watch against errant dragons. They looked at Bellepheros, curious, and then at the men who came after him. At Jasaan holding a lightning thrower, not quite pointing it at them but not quite not. At the other alchemists, and then Adamantine Men they’d never seen before, and Jeiros in his wheeled chair, and Jasaan and Kataros circling behind, perhaps simply to walk on through and make way for those who were following, or perhaps not.

‘Alchemist?’ The watchmen rose slowly, wary now. Riders who had once flown with Hyrkallan, who had been taught that al­chemists were devils.

‘As you were,’ Bellepheros said gruffly. ‘I’ve brought more ­alchemists with me from the Spur. Where is her Holiness?’

‘Alchemist? How did you get inside?’ Their hands drifted to
their swords. In an instant Jasaan had his lightning thrower pointed to their faces. Bellepheros shook his head.

‘No, Jasaan. No need.’

Jasaan gave him a look as though he was daft. ‘Then shall I tie them up? Set a man to watch them? How many should I leave, do you think? One? Two? What if they shout out? Do my men kill them for that? How many soldiers live here? Will more come this way? When will other men come to relieve this post? Hours? Minutes?’

‘Leave the soldiering to the soldiers,’ muttered Jeiros, sidling beside Bellepheros and craning his neck to whisper in his ear.

Bellepheros looked at them all. ‘What are we? What have you all become?’

Almost every potion he made held a taint of his blood mingled with that of a dragon and diluted with water. They were nearly all the same. Oh yes, there were spices and ground-up roots, but those were more for taste to cover the iron underneath. He reached into the two riders and snapped them to sleep like snuffing a candle. There wasn’t a man alive in these realms who hadn’t once tasted him. He glanced to Kataros and then met Jasaan’s eye.

‘We are all abominations, Jasaan,’ he said. ‘Every one of us. The difference is what we choose to do with ourselves. Tell me, was this more evil or less than slitting their throats?’

He didn’t wait for an answer. He led the way after that, brazenly walking wherever he chose, through a gateway that carried them in a single step through half a mile and more of stone to the upper reaches of the Enchanted Palace and the Princes’ Hall. Everyone knew who he was, Queen Zafir’s grand master alchemist, and no one short of Tuuran himself would stop him.

They reached the foot of the Grand Stair. Two dragon-riders stood with their backs to the steps, keeping people out. They looked pale and nervous.

‘Her Holiness is up there, is she?’ Bellepheros asked. ‘And your Night Watchman?’

‘And a very great many dragons, Grand Master.’

Bellepheros smiled at them. Their knees buckled and down they fell.

‘Then that’s where we need to be,’ he said.

Dragons swarmed the Pinnacles. Hundreds. They swirled and circled, a vortex of wings spiralling over the Black Moon on his throne.

‘He’s talking to them,’ whispered Myst. Zafir held her close. Her and Tuuran, afraid of what Tuuran might do if she let him go. ‘The dragons tell him he is a ghost, a shadow, a mist-made echo of their half-god creator. They say he is not whole, that he is only a splinter. He answers that he is the Black Moon, come to end what began ten thousand years ago.’

The Black Moon rose from his throne. His voice thundered volcanic, shuddering the air with syllables Zafir had never heard, words and sounds that bent the world and changed its fabric. Colours spoke and stone mourned.

‘He declares himself against gods in every realm. He demands our obedience. Obeisance. Many refuse. They will not demean themselves to an echo. Others acquiesce. They know, as I know, that there is no resistance to be offered …’ Myst’s voice petered out to a whisper. ‘Little one. It comes, and I must fight for him. The cut he gave me commands it. Some others will fly for him, but most will not. Hide away, little one. It comes once more. Dragon against dragon in the names of gods and half-gods.’

‘We both knew this was waiting for us, Diamond Eye.’ Zafir bowed her head. ‘Come to me then. Let me ride you this last time to battle.’

‘No.’

‘Then I’m sorry, but for this last service I command you. Whether you will it or not.’

‘I cannot hear your thoughts, little one.’ Myst looked as fierce as a tiger. Was that her, or was that some manifestation of the dragon speaking inside her?

‘No matter. I will ride you anyway. This is our end.’

Myst gasped and shrank away as Diamond Eye crashed into the mountain beside her. A fury bellowed from him. Zafir took up her spear and bounded to the mounting ropes.

‘Myst! Look after Tuuran. Keep him close. Night Watchman, care for my Myst and my Onyx!’ She wasn’t sure Tuuran heard, but Myst bowed and touched a finger to her brow. Zafir jumped into the harness and tightened the buckles that held her fast. The Black Moon’s voice thundered in the dead words of a tongue long lost, but Zafir didn’t need to see into Diamond Eye’s thoughts to know what he said. She knew this speech, a hundred times from a hundred different men. Always, in its heart, the same.
I am your master. I have power and I will use it. I will have your obedience, because that is what you owe me, because of who I am.

The same tired tirade. A flash of rage streaked across her eyes, and she might have struck him down there and then if she’d had a way. The entitlement. The arrogance. The naked demand of ownership. God or half-god, speaker or king, no matter the consequence, no matter what he stood for and what might come either way, she would spit in the eye of any who ever made such a claim of her.

And how many times have I claimed others thus?

Diamond Eye shot into the air. The dragons were coming now. She spotted Snow among them, not too crippled to fly but lurching with a distinctive beat to her wings.

Enslaved to a half-god, or have dragons devour us all. An annihilation or an end to the curse of alchemy.

A score of dragons dived at the Black Moon on his throne, fire scouring the stone. Pointless. Other dragons gave chase, snapping at their tails.

The spear is yours.
Diamond Eye’s voice. Not heard, but remembered.
Call it to your hand and it will come.

A wild melee spread across the sky, tail and claw and fire. Choosing sides, some for, many against. Dragons swooping to burn the Black Moon. Others gave chase, still more chasing the chasers. In circling swirls, dragon turned on dragon. They tore into one another, claw and fang, hurling each other from the sky while the half-god on his throne railed madness against the moon, turning on his creator while demanding fealty from his progeny. Dragons rebelling against a creator of their own.
But we little ones are still little ones, and we will all die in fire in the end.

Diamond Eye smashed into the back of a red-scaled dragon. He ripped at its wings, crippling it. Wheeled away as Zafir watched the dragon fall. He rolled and lurched, throwing her like a doll, slamming her into his scales. The wind roared. Dragons were everywhere. A monster in silver and grey lurched and snapped at Diamond Eye’s neck. He veered. Another came from above, green this one. Zafir turned. An awkward motion. The green dragon opened its mouth. Fire bloomed. It reached its claws to rip her to pieces …

She threw the Silver King’s spear. It struck the dragon in its throat. Green scales rippled to grey, wings froze and it fell, made into stone. Diamond Eye bucked and twisted and threw her forward, tearing at another as it passed beneath. The dragon she’d killed plunged and smashed into what had once been the Reflecting Garden. It shattered into a thousand pieces.

The spear is yours. Call it to your hand and it will come.
She held out her hand as she had under the Spur, willing the spear to return, never thinking it would. It hadn’t before.

The spear was in her hand once more. The Black Moon had shown her how.

Putting guardsmen to sleep was one thing, climbing the Grand Stair was quite another. Bellepheros struggled up, cursing under his breath at the pain in his knees which came with every step, quite sure he’d never make it to the top. At least old Jeiros was having trouble too, his chair carried by gasping soldiers. The rest bounded on ahead, Adamantine Men, who never wore down, Kataros and the younger alchemists, who still had youth in their legs. Chay-Liang simply floated up on her gold-glass sled.

‘Get on,’ she grumbled. ‘Both of you.’

‘I hate that thing.’ Distant rumbles shook the mountain, the shiver and shudder, the dull muted screams of dragons.

‘Just get on it, you silly old man, or whatever is happening will be finished!’

They stopped. The Adamantine Men carrying Jeiros gratefully hoisted him onto the sled. Bellepheros climbed after him. He thought of the disc Li had made on the very first day he’d met her, carrying them all up through the sky to the floating Palace of Leaves, and then wobbled, dizzy, and wished he hadn’t. He’d hated that too.

Diamond Eye twisted and rolled. The whip-crack of a tail swept over Zafir. The wind of it jerked her head. She lunged, stabbed, drove the Silver King’s spear through scales. Another dragon turned to stone, crashed across Diamond Eye’s back and almost knocked him out of the sky, then fell to smash below. Diamond Eye drove for a cluster of smaller dragons, scattering them as a shark might scatter a shoal of fish. They wheeled and came at him from all sides. He tore one out of the air, almost ripped it in half. Zafir hurled the spear. Another dragon fell. A monster as big as Diamond Eye himself shot from beneath. The two dragons tangled, biting at one anothers’ throats, claws tearing at bellies, sunk into shoulders, slashing at wings.

The spear returned to her hand. She drove it into a claw and turned the monster to stone. They fell, all three of them together, a shock of speed until Diamond Eye burst free.

See, little one.
See!
She didn’t need to read Diamond Eye’s thoughts to know his mind. Nor the Black Moon as he watched her, revelling in the chaos. Dragon fell on dragon. Flames wreathed the Black Moon, but a silver light wrapped him and pushed them away. She threw the spear again. Missed. Did it matter what dragon she hit any more? No. Like the dragons themselves, the fury took her and carried her past any care.