'King Jehal,' purred Meteroa. 'King Tyan died five weeks ago.'
Five weeks? Why didn't I know this? Jaslyn turned to Lystra. 'Then if Jehal dies, you're queen!' She could slap herself. She must sound like an idiot. Meteroa had been calling Lystra his queen ever since they'd arrived. What's the matter with me?
Lystra was staring at faslyn. Her eyes were very big and glistening with tears All of a sudden she stepped closer and embraced Jaslyn again. 'I know you think the worst of him,' she whispered, 'but he has the heart of a good man, not a wicked one. All the things they say about him, they aren't true. I know. I see him in a way no one else does. Don't wish him dead, Jaslyn, please.'
Jaslyn froze. A shiver ran through her. She held Lystra tight. 'You've changed,' she whispered. She couldn't think of anything else. There. That was every question I had, answered in a stroke. Now I might as well go home.
Lystra straightened and stepped away. 'Jehal tried to save Mother from Zafir's headsman. That's why he was imprisoned.'
'Did he? Did he really?' Jaslyn couldn't bring herself to believe in Jehal. If he did, he had a selfish reason for it.
'He was trying to save the realms from a war, I think,' murmured Meteroa. 'Always a foolish pursuit.' He turned and grinned at Jaslyn. 'Since you're here, I suppose he must have failed.'
'I came to see my sister.' Go away!
Meteroa didn't go away. All through the dregs of the day he was constantly at Lystra's side. To protect her, he said, from all the little dangers that others don't see, although he wouldn't say what those dangers were, and Lystra had practically been born and bred in an eyrie. The next day was no better, although Meteroa at least took Jaslyn around Clifftop to present his dragons. Quite a collection, Jaslyn realised. Jehal didn't have as many as Isentine held at Outwatch, but such a variety! So many colours and shapes and sizes. Hunters and war-dragons of course, like every other eyrie, but some were… something else. Smaller, too small even to be hunters. Then he led her into the caves etched into the cliffs, into tunnels and darkness where everything smelled of smoke and Jaslyn could barely hear what he was saying, where all his words were blotted out by memories of choking air and rushing water and the deadly tightness of the alchemists' redoubt. She could barely breathe. Cold sweat clung to her skin, gripping her, wrapping her in suffocating arms. Twice she stumbled and leaned on Lystra to keep herself from falling, and then finally a blast of fresh air and light thundered into her. They emerged into a gallery overlooking a yawning void. A hundred feet below, the sea crashed and roared over a tumble of black boulders that littered the cave mouth. Sunlight reached inside to light up the stone walls beyond, worn smooth by the waves. Further in lay a deep pool of still dark water. The air was fresh and salty.
'No use for dragons, this one,' said Meteroa, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the spray. 'No easy way in and out. We use this cave for something else. The kings of Furymouth have always kept their collection here.'
Jaslyn took deep breaths, sucking the cool fresh air into her lungs, cleansing them of the memory of smoke. 'Collection?'
'Collection.' Meteroa pointed out into the emptiness of the cave. Slowly, as Jaslyn's eyes adjusted to the brightness of the sun pouring in off the sea, she saw that there were things suspended in the air. Bones. Blackened bones. Dragon bones. Whole dragon skeletons.
'Are they real?' She stood agape. Dragons burned when they died. Burned from the inside out so that nothing was left except their scales and their wings. Maybe a few charred bones from the end of their tail, but everything else went to ash. She'd never seen the skeleton of a dragon. No one had. Or at least that's what she'd thought until now. Now there were four of them in front of her. They were enormous.
Meteroa nodded, sounding solemn. 'Very real, Your Holiness.'
'How?'
He pointed down to the water below. 'The Salt Pool. The sea barely reaches into the cave, but the pool beneath us is deep. Sometimes when a dragon is dying we bring it here to the Salt Pool. We feed it the same poisons as the Embers took when they fought for you and the alchemists. When a dragon dies in the Salt Pool, the water is enough to save the bones. The salt ruins the scales though. We don't bring them here very often.' He pointed. 'The nearest is Awestriker. He was King Tyan's last mount. Prince Jehal had the dragon slain when it became clear that his father would never ride her any more. The furthest is Bludgeon. That was the first dragon to be brought to the Salt Pool. They say the first king of Furymouth, the blood-mage Tyan from whom King Jehal's father took his name, came here. There had been a battle. This was long before Narammed and Vishmir and the rise of the speakers. The Order of the Dragon had risen up in the Silver City and ousted the blood-mages from the Pinnacles. The battle was lost, the magus' dragon was damaged and he did not want it to fall into the hands of the Order. He brought the dragon here to hide it. The dragon died. Later, when the Order came and Tyan fled, they sent soldiers to the cave to bring back the scales. The scales were ruined, but they found the bones instead. For days no one understood where the bones had come from. Sea monsters, they said. Eventually they realised the bones came from Tyan's dragon.' Meteroa smiled. 'Of course, that was long before there was an eyrie at Clifftop. Come. There's more.'
He walked along a narrow ledge carved into the sheer side of the cave. Jaslyn followed nervously. Lystra stayed where she was. The ledge was rough, a foot wide or sometimes less, and the Salt Pool was far below. Small niches had been cut into the wall, tenuous handholds to offer an illusion of safety. Meteroa moved carefully and methodically. 'The menagerie may interest you, Your Holiness, if you have an interest in dragons.'
The ledge ran for some fifty feet before it opened out into a wide natural gallery. There were more skeletons here, much smaller than the monsters hanging over the bulk of the cave. These were hatchlings, so small they must have been fresh out of the egg.
'We've been breeding them like this since the realms begun, Your Holiness.' Meteroa smiled again. 'Not many of our visitors are privileged to come down here but I know this isn't wasted on you. And you are our king's sister now. The interesting ones are back here.'
One of the hatchlings had two heads.
Jaslyn stared at them in disbelief. Half of them were deformed. Two heads, two tails, four wings…
'Blood-magic,' said Meteroa with a curl of disgust, although whether he meant it or it was feigned Jaslyn couldn't tell. 'A few of our kings have had a taste for it. They were set on breeding a new kind of dragon. This is what they got. They never had any success. Fortunately the local penchant for blood-mages has died away. We work with the alchemists now, using potions to try and evolve the breeds.'
'You want to breed a dragon with two heads?' Jaslyn couldn't contain her disbelief. Meteroa laughed.
'No. It's all about the colour of the scales, the timbre of their sheen, that sort of thing. That's why Jehal so wanted your white dragon.
A new strain, a new bloodline, perhaps we could have done something different. You breed your dragons for speed and strength; we're known through the realms for the most colourful dragons.' He chuckled again. 'In different times, an alliance between our realms would have been a happy time for me. I would have spent a great deal of time in your eyrie and you in mine. We could have traded secrets, eyrie-master to eyrie-master. We could have traded bloodlines. I had high hopes for what our eyries might produce if they worked together. Who knows – maybe those dreams are not quite lost?' He talked on and on and Jaslyn soaked up every word. Meteroa knew what he was doing and he knew his dragons. She got lost in them and almost forgot why she was there. Other things slipped in. Jehal's imprisonment, his injury, his recovery. The poisons Meteroa had found in the kitchens. The sabotage to the saddles of Lystra's horses. A dozen other ambiguous little clues, all of them pointing to Zafir. Evil, wicked Zafir.
'King Jehal was so sure he would keep her in check. I'm afraid he rather seems to have failed.' Meteroa sighed. 'Queen Lystra lives at Clifftop now because it's safer. I trust the alchemists and the Scales here more than my own riders and certainly more than the servants in the palace. I had thought we knew all of Zafir's secrets, but I'm afraid we rather failed there too. It's all quite depressing. Come, Your Holiness. We've left your sister for long enough. If we delay any further she may have one of her foolish moments and try to follow us.'
The eyrie-master retraced his steps. Jaslyn followed, easing her way uncertainly along the ledge. When they returned, Lystra was sitting on the edge with her feet dangling over the Salt Pool, tossing stones down into the water. She glared at them both.
'Meteroa, you've taken my sister away for far too long and I'm immensely bored. I am cross with you.'
Meteroa bowed. 'I am deeply sorry, Your Holiness. To make amends, I shall arrange a great entertainment for
