it pleases me, Wordmaster. Whoever he is.'
Herlian bowed again. 'Your Holiness, I wouldn't dream of trying to stop you. He's been asking for you. Or at least he's said your name. But he's not well, Holiness. His mind has wandered. He talks of you and of Antros and of Aliphera and of dragons, and makes little sense.'
'He'd better make sense when I ask why his soldiers are hammering on my doors.'
Herlian shrugged. 'I will take you to him, Your Holiness.'
Hyram was flying. He was on the back of a dragon high in the sky with the wind streaming past his face. He didn't know the name of his dragon. It belonged to someone else; he wasn't sure who. His brother, perhaps. Antros. The giant of his life, always casting him into shadow.
Maybe it was the wind that was making him weep, or maybe not, for hadn't Aliphera ripped out his heart and torn it to pieces in front of his very eyes, flaunting herself with that dashing prince from the south, Tyan. She'd wanted Antros, but Antros wasn't for having. She should have wanted him instead, but no, no, she didn't, and now she'd left him with nothing, just an empty shell, devoid of feeling.
No, that wasn't right either. There hadn't been any feeling for a long time, but now it was back, all of it, decades and decades of pain, all at once.
'Hyram.'
The dragon was talking to him. That must be it. There couldn't be anyone else with him, up here in the sky. Except suddenly there was another dragon, flying alongside him, with that frightened young slip of a girl from the north that Antros was off to marry. Not much to look at, but they had dragons, lots of dragons.
'Are you drunk?'
That made him laugh. If only he was drunk. Now there was a way to take all that pain, round it up and throw it back into the box from where it had escaped. Back where you belong. No business being out here after all this time.
'You are, aren't you? Drunk again.'
'No!' he screamed at the stupid girl on her dragon, wishing she'd leave him alone. 'Go away!'
'I'll go away when you explain to me why your Adamantine Guard have taken Valgar, have killed his riders, and why they were hammering on my door.'
'Guards?' He didn't know anything about that. 'Ask the speaker. He must know. They're his men.' He grinned. 'My brother's going to be the speaker one day.' Then he looked away. That was a stupid thing to say. The girl was about to marry Antros. Of course she knew about the pact.
The dragon underneath him suddenly banked and sank through the air. Hyram swayed and clutched at the harness. For some reason he hadn't strapped himself in. He had no idea why he'd forget a thing like that. That was the sort of thing Antros would do, except Antros didn't forget; he did stupid things on purpose and then mocked Hyram for being a coward. And he always got away with it too.
The girl grabbed hold of him. He couldn't even remember her name, but she must have jumped off her own dragon and landed on the back of his, and now she was pulling at him.
Hyram lurched violently and stumbled towards the parapet of the balcony. Shezira caught him, stopped him from falling to the ground, and then let go as he fought her away.
'If it's not you, then who's doing this?' But she could see in his eyes that he was somewhere else, somewhere far, far away.
'Get off my dragon,' he shouted at her. 'Get off it! Stay on your own!' She backed away from him. 'Yes, that's right. Back where you belong. Stay away!'
The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She'd seen Hyram drunk often enough. This was something else. 'Hyram? If you didn't send the Guard, then who did? Zafir?'
'Zafir?' he looked at her blankly, as though he'd never heard the name. 'Prince Tyan, that's who did this to me. And that little bitch Aliphera, with her flashing eyes and her stone-cold heart. She did this. And Antros, always blocking out the sun, wherever I stand. You're welcome to him. Take him away and leave me be, all of you.' He lurched again.
'Aliphera's dead, Hyram. Tyan's mad. Antros has been gone for fifteen years. What are you talking about?'
'Death.' For a moment his eyes focused on her. 'Death, Shezira. Life is like a wheel rolling through time, and sometimes little pieces stick to it. They stick to it all the way round and come back again when you least expect them. I'm sorry I betrayed you to them. Aliphera and Tyan.' He reached out to her, and then his eyes went wide and she could see him fall away back to whatever place held him. A door closed behind his face. He wasn't coming back.
Shezira shook her head and pursed her lips. 'You mean Jehal and Zafir, don't you? I'm sorry too, Hyram. Sorry for you, but I don't have time for this. Whatever they're-' Hyram's face had gone rigid with terror. He was looking past her.
'Get away! Get away!'
Something fluttered past her and flew at Hyram. In the darkness she couldn't see what it was. Some sort of bird perhaps, but it glittered like gold and made a strange sound as it flew, more a clattering of metal than the fluttering of feathers. It buzzed at Hyram's head.
'Get away!' He flailed at it, stumbling towards the parapet.
Shezira took a step towards him. Somewhere inside the keep a commotion had started. It was rapidly getting closer.
'Get away! Get off my dragon!'
He was going to fall.
'Hyram!' She lunged at him, trying to grab his arm. He shrieked and hurled himself away from her, straight into the parapet. His head and arms kept going, tipping over into the emptiness beyond. His legs flew up. It all seemed to happen very slowly, so slowly that Shezira couldn't understand why she couldn't do anything about it. And then he was gone. He didn't scream at all, but she heard the thud, a few seconds later, as he hit the ground.
There were people running into Hyram's bedchamber behind her.
'Murder!' shouted a woman's voice. It was Queen Zaflr. 'She's murdered my husband!'
For the first time in many years Shezira didn't know what to do. She stood staring over the edge. Behind her she could hear her riders trying to defend her. There were only two of them, though, and Zafir had come in force. It didn't last long.
Jehal unwrapped the silk from his eyes. Then he lay back on his bed while Kazah pulled his boots off again. He stared at the ceiling filled with immeasurable satisfaction.
I win.
68
The Glacier
She was getting hotter. Kemir felt it. They hadn't gone very far before Snow's back grew first uncomfortable, then painful and finally almost unbearable. He'd made a mistake, he thought. She was dying, and there wasn't much to be done about it.
At least we'll be far from the alchemists when they finally come out of their caves. We can just die slowly from cold and hunger instead.
He could live with that, he decided. Better to die out here, fighting to survive in these harsh lands, than rot in some dungeon. Nadira probably wouldn't see it that way, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. They'd tried, him and Snow. They'd tried and they'd failed, and that felt so much better than not having tried at all. He could die happy with that.
Snow flew higher and higher, arrowing deep into the World-spine. The mountains and valleys grew more wild and broken, the peaks higher, until they arced into a narrow valley filled with an azure lake. Snow dropped through the air until she was skimming the water. Her flying had become erratic. She was aiming for the end of the lake, where a glacier stretched down from the mountainside and immense chunks of grey ice drifted lazily in
