The Splintered Gods (40 page)

Sivan gripped his arm. ‘Do it! Put an end to dragons!’

Chay-Liang could make a sled out of glass. There were other sleds too . . . Maybe people would get away . . . An end to dragons . . .

‘Do it or never see your slave woman again!’

Tsen touched his rod to the chains and watched them let go. They hung loose. The glasship stayed where it was and so did the eyrie. He did it not because it was right or wrong or because it would end the dragons or even because of Kalaiya; he did it because he knew that if he didn’t then Sivan would kill him right there and then.

Stupid, weak, pathetic, cowardly t’varr.

Sivan dropped the sled beneath the eyrie and followed the underside of the rim to the next glasship. And the next and the next and the next; and as the last chains unravelled and the eyrie began to fall, Sivan turned the sled and hurtled off into the night as though the wind itself was chasing him.

Such a coward, Tsen. Such a pathetic coward.

Chay-Liang

44

Not the Quietest Night

Bellepheros almost missed Baros Tsen T’Varr. Underneath the bland smile, the amiable facade of blissful ignorance and the cheerful slightly stupid t’varr manner, he’d had the sense and the certainty in his own people to leave Bellepheros and his Scales and Li alone. He’d given them whatever they needed, trusted they had a good reason for everything they did and largely believed in Li to do what was right. Mai’Choiro Kwen, on the other hand, hadn’t even trusted his own t’varr, Perth Oran.

The Elemental Men had cleared out his study. They were watching him as though they knew he’d done something terrible; and Liang had as good as told him to keep his mouth shut and his head down. He trusted her, so he was following her advice. He missed her. He missed having someone to talk to.

Lord Shonda had made his exit with all the subtlety of a monkey kicking over a hornet’s nest. The killers were buzzing after him, her Holiness was off on some night flight, and between the two of them that left him with a little peace and quiet for once, a rarity these days.

On his desk was what would be a book if he was ever allowed to finish it. In earlier years he’d travelled the length and breadth of the nine kingdoms of the dragon-realms and written about what he’d seen so other alchemists could learn about their lands without the indignity and discomfort that came from having to go and look with their own eyes. It was better that way for most. Dragon-riders called him mad, but he really did prefer to read about faraway places in the comfort of a warm fireside than see them for himself in the freezing rain through a haze of hypothermia. Writing a book about the Taiytakei was a little different but he’d been reading whatever he could and boiling it down into one account. For that he appreciated quiet nights like these.

‘The Konsidar’. He kept coming back to the same page, the one he read every night before he started work again. It was where Li had gone.

The Konsidar mountain range runs north–south along the western side of Takei’Tarr and divides the continent into the narrow but wet and fertile Western Coast and the arid interior. Largely unexplored. A few passes exist in the far north, which provide once-vital but now little-used land routes between the cities of Cashax and Zinzarra. Other routes existed before the Splintering, an event which considerably changed the landscape of the Konsidar. The city of Vespinarr lies on a plateau at the southern tip of the range, along with the silver mines that give it its famous wealth . . .

And the thoughtless self-serving bastards who lord themselves over it.

The thought made him blink. He wasn’t used to thinking things like that. It was only a short step away from saying the same about dragon-kings and dragon-queens, and he’d long ago decided he knew better than to have any thoughts at all when it came to them. He served. That was his purpose. He served whoever needed to be served in order to keep the dragons from flying free.

A glass globe, a present from Chay-Liang, shifted on his desk. It started to roll sideways. He caught it and put it back but for some reason it just started to roll again. He frowned at it hard. For the last several days it had been perfectly happy sitting still and now it wasn’t?

There was a tapping at the door. He ignored it. The Elemental Men and Perth Oran would both just barge right in; Li wasn’t here and so this had to be a slave. He didn’t want a slave. He tried to settle the globe but the sphere wasn’t having it.

The tapping on his door came again.

‘Go away!’ he shouted. He tossed the globe onto his bed and went back to his notes.

The central massif of the mountains is inhospitable and largely unknown even among the Taiytakei. A prohibition on entering is ruthlessly enforced by the Elemental Men. Within
live the so-called Righteous Ones, a mysterious group whose existence is not widely known. Some texts allude to deep complexes of caves and tunnels running through the Konsidar in much the same way as they are said to exist under the Desert of Thieves. If true, it is conjectured that these tunnels and caves interconnect under the expanse of the Empty Sands.

Every night he read it and finished with the same thought: that what he’d written was a dry and long-winded and slightly dull way of saying, ‘Range of mountains. Do not enter. No one knows why.’

The tapping on his door came again. ‘Master Alchemist sir!’ He recognised the voice now. A Scales. Which was odd because the Scales never came here to bother him. Never.

He got up, lurched sideways and almost fell over as if he was drunk. He steadied himself on the desk. Frowned. There was something odd. The room was . . . tilted? Except that surely couldn’t be right, could it? He rubbed his eyes.

‘Master Alchemist, sir!’

‘What?’ He walked to the door slowly, an old man a little unsure of his footing. When he opened it, the Scales looked terrified.

‘Master Alchemist, the eyrie’s falling!’

‘What?’

‘The eyrie’s falling!’

Scales weren’t the cleverest slaves. The potions he gave them did that. He hurried up to the dragon yard, and on the way found that he kept drifting towards the passageway walls as he did. By the time he got outside, there was no doubt. He could see the Godspike and feel the change in the wind. The eyrie was dropping steadily through the air. Falling more like a feather than a stone, but falling nevertheless. It was also tipping slowly sideways. He looked up. The glasships that once held the eyrie aloft were high above, five tiny specks of light.

A momentary chill ran through him.

‘There used to be six . . .’ He shook himself.
Falling.
And what in the name of the Great Flame was he supposed to do about that?

Someone had let loose the glasships. He’d warned her Holiness, but whoever it was had done it without telling anyone.
How long do we have?
They weren’t falling all that fast . . . Long enough to
get everyone up and away . . . A surge of panic shot through him. He forced himself to be calm and looked around for Diamond Eye but the great dragon hadn’t come back. ‘Well go and wake everyone up!’ He shook himself again.
No.
No need. There were already men up on the walls and other men coming running out of the tunnels and passages dressed in their nightclothes. ‘We need an enchanter.’ Did they even have one any more? Now that Chay-Liang had gone and all the Vespinese? ‘Sleds! We need sleds! Get them! Load the eggs!’

Really? Load the eggs?
When he could simply let them go?

A kwen came running. ‘You have a sled! Where?’

They kept one in the hatchery. Bellepheros looked about wildly. ‘Yes.’ He poked the Scales. ‘Show him. Take him to it!’ Let the eggs fall into the storm-dark, but he’d need his potions, and a single sled wouldn’t be enough for all his Scales anyway .

Other sleds were rising from the rim, heading fast towards the floating glasships. Bellepheros watched them go, helpless, then ran to his secret larder of corpses and started to pack a bag.

Zafir flew with Shonda’s gondola in Diamond Eye’s claws. She had Shonda trapped inside and the corpse of the Elemental Man to keep him company. At the edge of the storm-dark she dropped the gondola towards the maelstrom. She watched it fall and then thought better of it, swooping to snatch it out of the sky. She turned Diamond Eye towards the Godspike but the eyrie wasn’t where she expected to find it. There was a moment of disorientation then, but only a moment before she spotted it. Not so much falling, she thought. More adrift. Slipping slowly downward, half a mile lower than when she’d left it and half a mile and steadily less from the violet churning clouds below.

Specks of light rose from the stricken eyrie. Sleds were heading for the glasships floating high above. She watched, carefully distant, considering. If the eyrie fell into the storm-dark, that was the end of the alchemist. No more potions. No more dragon poison. No more eggs or hatchlings. Just her and Diamond Eye, and in time Diamond Eye would wake up. The Elemental Men would survive, of course. They’d hunt her.

Or she could do something?

They’d kill her either way. Just maybe later.

Bellepheros came outside, huffing and out of breath and with a satchel over his shoulder. He seized the first Scales he found by the arm. ‘Get everyone together. All the Scales.’ More and more sleds were taking to the air now. Bellepheros couldn’t tell whether the Taiytakei were abandoning the eyrie to its fate or trying to do something to save it. A bit of both, perhaps?

The Scales he’d sent to get the sled for the kwen was tugging at his sleeve. ‘The sled isn’t there, Master Alchemist. It went with the glasship like you told us.’

‘What? What glasship? What are you talking about?’ He had a second sled hidden in his room of corpses. Not that he could fly it. Not that he’d want to, but better that than falling into the storm-dark. ‘Speak! What glasship?’

The shriek of Diamond Eye thundered over the rushing wind. The dragon crashed onto the wall and the whole eyrie shivered. It was holding something that looked like a battered gondola in its foreclaws, clutching it as though it was precious. It grabbed the wall with its massive hind talons, dug in and started to flap its wings. Bellepheros watched, paralysed with amazement. He staggered as the wind of each wingbeat shuddered across the dragon yard, but even for a dragon, lifting the whole eyrie was too much. It let go and disappeared up into the sky. Bellepheros grasped the Scales by his shoulders.

‘In the larder where the corpses hang is another sled. Get it and get the rest of you together.’ It wouldn’t be big enough for all of them but he didn’t know what else to do.

And when it isn’t? Who stays and who goes?

There wasn’t a comfortable answer to that. How could he leave another man to die, even a Scales?

Li . . .

In his study, underneath the page on the Konsidar, was another he knew by heart.
The Righteous Ones are a mystery among the Taiytakei . . .
Truth was, he had nothing, nothing that made any sense. Another race of men, or a race of something different, not creatures of flesh and bone at all but beings of the spirit or
of something else, or else arcane constructs like the golems of the Crimson Sunburst.

Li . . .
That was where she was, in the Konsidar. He’d told her he’d be safe. He’d told her not to worry. And now he needed her more than anything.

The dragon powered up towards the glasships and he lost track of it in the darkness. The first sleds were already coming back. Taiytakei ran back and forth, yelling at each other. They were on the edge of panic. The glasships weren’t getting any closer. If anything, they were further away. Bellepheros stared up into the night sky.
The writings of the Rava are whispered to describe men who change both flesh and bone . . .
Not that
that
meant much since even having seen a copy of the Rava was punishable by death. He’d come across whispers that said the Rava was pretty much anything you could imagine, from a manual to summon demons to an excessively lewd collection of erotic poetry. But men who changed both flesh and bone? They were skin-shifters surely?

Specks of light darted back and forth high above like rising embers dancing in the smoke of a camp fire. Frantic sleds in the moonlight, rushing to the receding glasships. Bellepheros had no idea whether the glasships could descend fast enough to catch the eyrie anyway. He thought probably not.

Li . . .
Of all of them, of everyone here, she’d have been the one who would have known what to do, and he really couldn’t fly away on a sled and leave a man behind, not even a Scales. After everything he had done to them,
especially
not a Scales.

The eyrie was too much. Diamond Eye’s talons dug into the stone but after a few heavy beats of his wings, they both knew it wasn’t going to work.

Why are you trying to help them?
The thought was her own, not the dragon’s, and she didn’t know the answer, but she was beginning to think it had to do with the Adamantine Man from Dhar Thosis. Seeing him again after so many years had changed something. She wasn’t sure what, but it had started then. Started when she’d knocked the poison from Baros Tsen T’Varr’s own lips. She wasn’t as . . .
certain
of things as she’d once been.

Up!
She tore Diamond Eye loose from the wall and shot straight
for the glasships. Taiytakei on sleds were milling about them. Several of the gondolas had open ramps, men inside now, trying to get the glasships to move. Diamond Eye picked at the sense of their thoughts.
Not working. Not moving. Can’t make them obey.
Fear and frustration and despair; they didn’t understand. And then the whisper of an Elemental Man among them who did.
Doomed. Regret. Anger
. The glasships had been locked with an enchanted key. They flew at the command of the black rod of Baros Tsen T’Varr or the enchantress Chay-Liang. No one else. One of them had done this. Baros Tsen was dead. The enchantress then.

The witch abandon her alchemist? Zafir laughed at that.
Not likely.
But none of them knew what to do . . .

None of them but her. She showed Diamond Eye, picturing it in her mind, and the dragon wheeled in the air and snatched at the chains of the nearest glasship, seizing them in his teeth. He dived, powering towards the falling eyrie, dragging the glasship after him. The glasship fought him stubbornly through every beat of his wings, adjusting the harmonics of its rotations to fight for its place in the air. A chaos of sleds whirled around her. An Elemental Man appeared in the air ahead of them, gestured and shouted words that were lost in the wind as Diamond Eye hauled the glasship down. The eyrie fell steadily lower, sinking towards the storm-dark. Halfway there and someone lit a torch out on the rim, and then another and then a whole ring of them, and Zafir understood they were guiding her in. As Diamond Eye came closer, she saw the lanterns formed a circle around the wreckage of a black-powder cannon blown to bits by the Vespinese not so many days before. She urged him on towards the violet clouds.

Bellepheros was on the wall as Zafir and the dragon came in. Half the Taiytakei of the eyrie were there now too, all of them holding their breath. The other half were out around the ruined cannon, waving lamps, or else up in the air on their sleds. Lots and lots of sleds. A couple of t’varrs had been trying to organise the evacuation, but even they had stopped to watch.