Salendor snorted. ‘We wait. Your counsel never changes, Gelthar. What would it take to prompt action from you?’
Gelthar remained implacable. ‘Why give up our advantage? Let them wear themselves out in endless sieges.’
‘Each siege has cost us,’ said Liandra.
‘It has,’ said Caerwal bitterly. ‘Gods, it has.’
‘And when did this become the asur way of war?’ demanded Salendor, exasperated. ‘This is craven counsel.’
Gelthar pursed his lips. ‘Enlighten us, then. What is yours?’
Salendor sat forward in his throne. ‘Muster the legions at Athel Maraya. Strike now. Meet them under Loren Lacoi before they get to us here.’ He shot a furtive glance at Liandra, as if already looking for her agreement. ‘They move slower than a crippled carthorse. We can choose where to engage them, how we engage them.’ He smiled rakishly. ‘If we choose, we can crush them.’
Gelthar sniffed. ‘Your counsel, too, never changes.’
Aelis looked at Liandra. ‘Your people have suffered as ours have. What is your view?’
Here it is. My chance to play the part assigned to me.
‘My view?’ she asked. She could feel Salendor’s impatience, and ignored him. ‘It is this: whenever our race has been threatened, we have ridden out. We have never waited for our lands to be burned first. We are the masters of the world; if we do not defend what is ours, then we do not deserve the title.’ She allowed herself to look at Salendor and caught the look of approval in his face. ‘We must strike first. Caledor has bought us this brief lull. Let us use it.’
Salendor could barely contain himself. ‘Hear her, my lady,’ he urged Aelis. ‘It is only caution that keeps us back. They sowed the seeds of this war; now let them reap the harvest.’
‘And throw away our greatest asset,’ said Gelthar wearily. ‘The walls they have never yet breached.’
‘We wither inside them!’ cried Salendor.
‘They preserve us,’ said Gelthar.
‘They did not preserve Athel Numiel,’ said Caerwal coldly. ‘It had high walls, but they did not stop the slaughter there. They murdered my–’
‘Enough.’ Aelis held up her hand again, stilling the argument. She inclined her head to one side, as if listening for something.
‘Do not stifle–’ started Salendor, but Aelis silenced him with a glare.
‘Be still,’ she said. ‘Do you not hear it?’
For a moment, Liandra sensed nothing. The first thing she noticed was a tremor in her mind-harmony with Vranesh. She felt the dragon’s sudden emotion flowing into her body, as if the resonance of a musical instrument had made the hairs on her neck rise. The sentiment was a powerful one; at first, she assumed it spoke of alarm, and she half-rose in her seat.
Then she discerned its true character – joy, of a pure kind, like a child recognising its mother and rushing to greet her.
By then the noises that Aelis had heard had become more obvious. From far below the Council Chamber, dim but growing in volume, crowds were crying out in fear and wonder.
Liandra pushed herself from the throne and rushed to the western wall of the chamber, followed by the others. She pulled open a pair of doors leading to the tower’s balcony and stepped out into fresh air.
The five of them lined up on the balcony’s narrow platform, suspended high above Tor Alessi’s narrow, teeming streets. Below them, a tangle of whitewashed buildings crowded and clustered its way towards the harbour, a half-ring of stone enclosing a basin of deep blue water. Dozens of warships swayed on the waves, their masts seesawing as they were buffeted. Across the entire city, from the high ringed walls to the summits of its many spires, tight-packed throngs peered up into the skies.
High over the harbour, buoyed by the downbeats of splayed wings, six dragons hovered in mid-air. Vranesh shot up to greet them, snaking around the newcomers and sending columns of flame shooting out in elation.
Liandra knew the dragons’ names: Rafuel, Khalamor, Gaudringnar, Telagis, Mornavere. Their mind-voices sang to her like a choir, overlapping and pushing against one another. They were magnificent, as huge as watchtowers and blazing with colours: gold, emerald, ivory, amethyst, wine-red. The air around them shimmered with heat and magic, as if they had carved their way into the realm of the senses from beyond the veils of madness. For all that, they were no daemon-kind – they were flesh, bone and blood, as superb and pristine as fallen stars.
All the drakes carried riders, each one wearing heavy plate armour and carrying a rune-tipped blade. They were nearly as splendid as their steeds, and she knew their names too: Heruen of Yvresse; Cademel of Eataine; Selegar, Teranion and Lania of Caledor. She could sense their gathered power, filling the air around her and making it tremble.
One drake hovered apart from the others, and they all paid deference to him. The mighty Draukhain arched his long neck high, holding perfect position with ease. Sunlight flashed from his sapphire hide, making it dazzle and shine like a coat of ithilmar. Even from such a distance Liandra could smell the burnt backwash of his movements. The furnace of his lungs sent out curls of fire and smoke like garlands; the aroma was almost as familiar to her as Vranesh’s.
Atop Draukhain’s churning shoulder-blades sat the Master of them all, the scion of the Dragontamer, the one whose name she still hesitated to recall lest it brought pain back with it. She tried to look away, but it was futile; her eyes were drawn ever upwards, scanning up to the silver armour with its black runic warding, the crimson cloak that draped across dragonhide, the naked longsword. She thought for an instant that she caught an intense flash of green eyes under a heavy silver helm, and had to grip the railing of the balcony to keep her poise.
She had forgotten the aura of power that he carried with him. None but a fellow dragon rider could truly know the command Imladrik possessed; only one