She'd thought about that all through the day, as the mountains grew shorter and steeper and sharper and more pressed together.
'I want to help kill the dragon-knights,' she whispered. She wasn't sure if she'd meant it for Kemir or for Snow, or whether she was simply speaking to the wind. 'Every one of them,' she added. 'I want to kill them all.' This surprised her. It wasn't the purpose she'd expected. Maybe it wasn't her purpose at all. Maybe the dragons had made her want it, in the same way that when they grew angry she grew angry too. Or maybe she'd caught it from Kemir. In the end it didn't really matter, did it?.
Nadira hunched her shoulders and closed her eyes. She made herself small and snuggled next to Snow. The dragons were dreaming, and from their dreams she knew exactly what was coming.
Yes. There were far worse places to be.
Returning the Cinders
There is one last price a dragon-rider must pay. When a dragon
finally dies, it burns from the inside so that all that remains
beneath the scales is charcoal and ashes. The scales survive.
They are light and strong, and above all fire and heat will not
penetrate them. Thus they are much sought after as armour.
When a dragon dies and only the scales remain, the rider must
gather them and return them to the eyrie and the dragon-king
from whence they came. Thus the dragon returns to the place
of its birth. Only from the cinders, say the alchemists, can a new
dragon be born.
51
The Alchemists
Jaslyn had come to see the alchemists once before. She'd been thirteen years old. Lystra was eleven, Almiri sixteen and very soon to be wed to King Valgar. They'd come with their mother and Lady Nastria on the backs of two dragons, both dead now. Jaslyn's memories were of huge dark caves and wizened old men and damp stone, and of Almiri being unbearable. Their mother had taken them down through endless tunnels to a place that had never seen the sun, lit only by a few lamps. The rush of some underground river had echoed everywhere they went. They'd come out into a huge cavern, and her mother had pointed at the purple stains on the walls.
'This is where our power comes from,' she'd said. 'These tiny little plants. The alchemists make them into potions. The Scales feed the potions to our dragons. The dragons do as we command them. Without these little plants we are nothing. Remember that, always.'
Jaslyn had hated every minute of it, but what she had hated most was the thought that her dragons did as she asked of them because of some little plant. They were supposed to do it for her. For their love of her.
She was older and wiser now, but the feeling was still there, and it hit her in the pit of the stomach as soon as she landed. I hate this place. She looked at the cave mouths and trembled, and so it was a relief when Keitos led them through the jumble of stone houses instead. He bowed and nodded his head and mumbled platitudes, none of which she really heard, and took them into a squalid little hut where an old man sat at a bench squinting through a piece of coloured glass at a leaf. They stood in the doorway and waited, but the old man didn't seem to notice them. He just looked at his leaf. He was deathly pale, and all that was left of his hair were a few white wisps.
Eventually Keitos coughed.
'I know you're there, Master Keitos.' The old man didn't look up. 'I know you have visitors too. Three dragon- riders. I felt them land. Whoever you are, you'll just have to wait.'
'This is Princess Jaslyn, Master Feronos, daughter of Queen Shezira, our next speaker. Soon to be our mistress. With her, Rider Semian, also in Queen Shezira's service.' Jostan had stayed at the eyrie to see their dragons were well cared for.
The old man sighed. He stared at his leaf for another few seconds and then put it down and looked at them. 'Princess Jaslyn. Yes. You came once before with your mother. Five years ago, in the winter, when we were all covered in snow. Yes, yes. I remember.' He didn't get up or bow, or do any of the things Jaslyn was used to. 'Shouldn't you be at the palace?'
Jaslyn stared at him.
'Master Feronos is the wisest of us in the lore of stones and metals,' said Keitos nervously. He shuffled his feet and took a step into the room. 'Her Highness has brought something that she says is a mystery, Master. A liquid that is like metal.'
'A liquid that is like metal or a liquid that is metal?'
'Prince Jehal may be poisoning Speaker Hyram or King Tyan with it. Maybe both. And someone has used it to try and poison my mother,' snapped Jaslyn. She pushed Keitos out of the way and thrust the clay pot, still sealed with wax, in front of the ancient alchemist.
A gnarled, trembling hand reached out and took it from her. Feronos wasn't ready for how heavy it was. It tumbled from his fingers, and Jaslyn barely caught it before it smashed on the floor.
'Ahhh.' The old man nodded. 'I know this. It's been a long, long time since I've seen it. It doesn't surprise me that you don't know what this is. There aren't many that would. You have to be old like me to remember.'
'You haven't opened it, old man.' Jaslyn clenched her fists. 'How can you know what it is when you haven't even opened it.'
Silently, Feronos put the pot on his table and broke the seal. Very carefully he opened it. 'A metal that gleams like silver and runs like water. Very heavy. Nothing quite like it. Very hard to find.'
'I know that.' Jaslyn stamped her foot. 'Where does it come from? Who made it?'
'No one made it, girl. You cannot make this. As for where it comes from…' He shrugged. 'Not from within the realms we know, I can tell you that. We had some once. It came across the sea, I think.' His brow furrowed. 'Oh, now… who was keeping it? Not here. Somewhere in the west. Old Irios had some in Shazal Dahn, but he's gone now. Long gone.'
The old man seemed to drift away.
Keitos bit his lip. 'Our stronghold in the western deserts,' he said reluctantly. 'We like to keep it a secret.'
'But that's…' Jaslyn's gaze shifted to Semian. 'That's Speaker Hyram's realm!'
'It was a long time ago,' whispered the old man.
Jaslyn rounded on him.
'But it's poison, yes? It is poison?'
He shrugged. 'Drink enough of it and you'll sicken. Like a lot of things. Irios liked to work with it, but he went mad. They say the liquid metal did it to him. Sailors used to bring it to him. The alchemist's disease, they call it. Old age I say. Couldn't stop shaking. In the end he just walked out into the desert and never came back. Or that's what someone told me once, I think. Fumes in the air. But not a poison. Not unless you want to spend a decade waiting. No. Quicker to let age take its course, I would think.'
Jaslyn gripped the table. The world seemed to spin and rush around her. 'No. It is poison. Alchemist's disease. That's what Almiri called it too. And King Tyan, yes, he's been dying of it for nearly a decade, and Hyram, he's been ill for more than a year. Slowly getting worse. It is a poison. It is Jehal.' She clenched her fists. 'He's killing them so slowly that they don't know they're being murdered. Hyram has the right of it, and no one else believes him!'
Master Feronos carefully sealed up the pot and put it on the floor. He seemed slightly disappointed. Jaslyn strode back out of the hut and filled her lungs with fresh air.
'Highness!'
'Rider Jostan!' She looked at him in surprise. 'You're supposed to be at the eyrie, seeing to it that Silence is cared for exactly as I requested.'
'Highness, there are other dragons nearby. The white has been seen.'
Jaslyn blinked. 'What? Here? With the alchemists?'
