thought, for the magician to be far away – but before he could bring himself to move, Kithyr was back and now he had Semian with him. They walked right past him.
'… with this,' said the magician.
'If I must.'
'You must. Unless you are a charlatan like Hyrkallan.' 'It seems wrong.'
'Needs must, Rider Semian. Hyrkallan wears the legend. You must live it. Once you have her, others will follow. I can see to that…'
They parted at the entrance to the tent. The magician walked away for a second time and Semian went inside. The noises that began soon after were easy enough to understand. Jostan waited for them to finish, and then waited a little more before he got up and slipped inside. The air was hot and stale and smelled of Nthandra. She was lying tight against Semian's back. From the snores, they were both already asleep. Jostan curled up beside her, close to her because close felt better. When he woke later on in the small hours of the morning to find her pawing at him, he didn't even think of turning her away.
5
'We need a harness for the war-dragon.' Hyrkallan's face was a mask of stone. Semian watched him carefully. The other riders had been up late, celebrating or mourning or both. He couldn't blame them for that; they'd all lost friends; brothers, fathers or lovers. Some of them were barely awake. Some had wept when they'd burned Hyrkallan's brother, but as for Hyrkallan himself, his eyes had stayed dry then and they stayed dry now. That deserved respect, Semian thought, to lose a brother and still stay true to your purpose. In a way, Semian was glad that someone had died. Not that he had anything against Deremis; he barely knew the man's name. But yesterday had mixed triumph and tragedy and spared him from more attention. He didn't want that. Not yet.
'We need ammunition for our scorpions and food for us. And potions,' Hyrkallan continued.
Semian glanced at the piles of barrels and crates that he'd brought from Almiri's eyrie. Good for a week or two, perhaps, but they needed to fend for themselves.
We need to fend for ourselves, he reminded himself. He was one of them now. For better or for worse, he wasn't sure. But he had to start somewhere. He was already slowly turning Nthandra. Others would follow.
'Since none of these things are going to make themselves, we're going to steal them. The Usurper owns a tiny eyrie on the edge of the Spur. Drotan's Top. Understand this, though. There's to be no burning, no slaughter unless there has to be.'
Semian pursed his lips and clenched his toes at that. No burning?
'We take what we want and we leave everyone alive when we go. We take their dragons, their weapons, their food, their potions, everything we can possibly use, but we do not take lives. Let the Usurper's servants live to tell of us. Let them spread fear.'
That, at least, Semian could agree with. The Great Flame was coming. Let them tell of us indeed.
Hyrkallan had already turned his back, heading towards the monster B'thannan. Semian knew of Hyrkallan's beast – every rider in the north had probably heard of it – but he'd never seen it until they'd reached King Valgar's eyrie; then Deremis had come for his secret meeting with the queen, pledging Hyrkallan's support to her if she would pledge hers to him, and B'thannan's landing had shaken Evenspire to its roots. B'thannan was enormous, by far and away the biggest war-dragon Semian had ever seen, almost as long as a hunter but three times as massive. He felt small enough as it was, surrounded by a score of dragons that could crush him with a careless step.
A pity it's not white. The war-dragon he'd stolen from Speaker Zafir's riders wasn't white either. There weren't any white dragons. Queen Shezira had managed to breed one as a present for the viper Jehal but somehow it had broken free. Eventually the Embers had killed it by poisoning themselves and then being eaten. Or at least that was what people believed. The white dragon flies free. The flames of destruction have come, and out of the flame, the red rider shall be born. It will come to me, somehow. Vengeance. And I will ride it.
Any dragon was better than no dragon for now. He and Jostan had left Valgar's eyrie without mounts of their own and fate or destiny or perhaps sheer blind luck had provided for them. Fate would provide again, when it was ready. He mounted his stolen dragon and launched into the air with the rest of the Red Riders. This one would be called Vengeance too.
Hyrkallan led them straight to Drotan's Top. They shot between the white-capped mountains of the Worldspine, among sharp narrow valleys filled with trees until they reached the Silver River, a dozen dazzling threads of water knotted and twisted together and gleaming in the sun. Hyrkallan led them low, the wind wet with spray thrown up by the sheer force of B'thannan's wings, screaming past Semian's face. As the valley grew wider and the mountains either side shrank to hills, they began to climb again. In the distance to his right, Semian saw the faint outline of the Great Cliff, the sheer walls of stone that marked the start of the Purple Spur.
Hyrkallan changed course now, leaving the river behind to rush on to its doom in the caves of the Silver King's Tomb. They turned south, straight at the Great Cliff, climbing ever higher until they were a full mile above the ground and the hills of the Blackwind Dales stretched out below like the wrinkled old skin of some ancient desert mystic. Then the Great Cliff rushed to meet them. It ripped away the space below and suddenly they were shooting between jagged peaks of white-capped stone again. Through the neck of the Spur for an hour or more, skimming over thick carpets of trees and racing rushing water until the mountains fell away and so did the rivers, and they emerged the other side into the Maze. Here they flew lower still, sinking among the narrow pillars and canyons carved from dry barren stone. No trees grew here in the warrens of the Maze, and as they followed the helter- skelter waters from the Spur downwards, the air grew dusty and warm. Walls and columns of stone flashed by in streaks of yellows and oranges and reds, punctured now and then by black pits of shadow. Piece by piece, the stone walls fell away, first one layer, then another, then faster and faster in a blur until the whole landscape collapsed away and spat them and the waters below into the abyss that was the Gliding Dragon Gorge, the great rent in the land torn by the might Fury River below. They crossed the gorge, using it as cover, climbing steadily, creeping up to the cliffs on the other side so low that the tails and talons of their dragons scraped the stone. When they emerged on the other side, there it was. Drotan's Top, perched on a long flat hilltop overlooking the fringes of the gorge. Half a day of flight and then to war with no warning. That was the dragon-rider's way and it filled Semian with joy.
True to his word, Hyrkallan didn't burn it. Instead he brought the riders in to land. A small company of Adamantine Guardsmen saw what was coming and fled the landing fields for the sanctuary of Hyram's Tor, and that was that. No blood shed. Not even a sword drawn. Semian was disappointed and vaguely disgusted. The Adamantine Guard was supposed to fight to the last man to defend the speaker and the realms. The last ones he'd met, the Embers in the alchemists' redoubt, had understood that. They'd understood that even throwing yourself naked into a dragon's maw could be a victory.
He was still standing at the edge of the landing fields, scowling to himself, when a hand slapped him on the shoulder.
'Drotan's Top is ours. Not bad for your first day, eh?' Semian turned around. The hand belonged to an older rider. One with a very slightly familiar face, but no name to go with it.
'I know you,' said Semian slowly.
'GarHannas.' The rider bowed. 'I served Speaker Hyram before he died. I know you too. Semian. You were at Princess Jaslyn's side at the alchemists' redoubt. You missed the Night of the Knives, but they say you nearly died anyway.'
'But not quite. I was reborn.'
'Lucky for you!' GarHannas grinned. He obviously had no idea what Semian was talking about. 'There are a couple of riders and a score of the Adamantine Guard who've locked themselves in Hyram's Tor. They're trapped and they know it. The alchemist is in there as well. Everyone else is busy taking everything we can carry from the landing fields, but Hyrkallan's gone to get the guard out of the Tor. We need the alchemist, or at least his help, and Hyrkallan doesn't want to burn them.' He grinned again. 'They don't know that, of course. We'll threaten them with fire and offer them their lives if they surrender. Want to hear the old man? He's good for this sort of thing.'
Semian shook his head, absently staring up at the tower. Slowly he dropped to one knee. 'Praise to the Great
