the Pinnacles. The rolling fields of the Harvest Queen shone in vivid greens and yellows. Blotches of darker woodland sat scattered among them. Even from a dozen miles away, the valley of the Fury was clear, the wide waters gleaming in the sun. To the north the land rose towards the Gliding Dragon Gorge and the Hungry Mountain Plains beyond, all too far away and lost in the haze.
For those who travelled by land, the Fury was a vast obstacle. Jeiros stared at the river as they flew over it. On the ground it seemed enormous. From the back of a dragon it didn’t seem that big at all. Further north, where it came out of the Worldspine and carved its massive scar across the realms, it looked impressive. Here? Half a mile wide? Nothing. To the south the air seemed clearer. He fancied that with a Taiytakei farscope that actually worked, he would have been able to see the hill of Purkan more than a hundred miles away, maybe even Valin’s Fields beyond. Peaceful and quiet, all of it. For a while he chose to forget that most likely they would all soon burn.
Hammerford shattered all that. The town was worse than he’d imagined. The fires were out and the smoke was gone, but the air, even hundreds of feet above the ruins, still smelled of burned wood and ash. He could see the stone dragons, just about, after Vioros had done lots of pointing and shouting. They looked tiny, but as his dragon circled lower, Jeiros could see they were everything Vioros had said. One of a dragon rearing up on its back legs, tail coiled back over its head and around its neck, the last tip wrapped around in a circle as though it was holding something and had brought it closer to have a good look. The other dragon lay in the water at the edge of the river, wings outstretched. Its tail pointed up slightly while its head and neck disappeared into the water as though it had toppled forward. Shattered boats bobbed against it. All that was left of the waterfront was wreckage. Not burned, Jeiros noted. Pity you can’t say the same for the rest of the town.
Vioros brought his dragon in to land as close as he could to the edge of what was left of the town. Jeiros thought he saw a few people moving in the streets, but they quickly scurried for cover. The smell almost made him retch. Dead people. Burned. Bits of them, hundreds of them. Scattered everywhere.
Other dragons landed around him, the riders and soldiers that Vioros had brought as escort. Not to protect the townsfolk from anything, but to protect the alchemists from any angry mob that might form and demand to know who had destroyed their lives. Jeiros made himself take a good long look. This is what we swore to stop. These are the people we swore to protect, from exactly this. There were other towns like this, mercifully out of sight – Arys Crossing. Felporsford. Beeve’s Brook, Valleyford of course. All burned out. All towns as big as this or bigger.
Should I count the Silver City? Ten, twenty, thirty thousand people? That was dragon-kings fighting each other. We never swore to protect the people from that. Does that make it any better? It didn’t really, but it made it Jehal’s problem and not his, and that was a distinct improvement. Dragon-kings could be reasoned with. Just about. Awoken dragons, well, you might as well reason with a mountain or the waters of the Fury.
He shivered. Hammerford had been burned by a rogue dragon. Two rogue dragons, if the sell-sword’s story was right. Who was to say there weren’t others close by?
Vioros slid down off the dragon’s back. ‘There’s-’
Jeiros wagged a finger at him. Beckoned him close and whispered in his ear. ‘Whatever it is you’re not telling me, I’d like to hear it right now.’
He let Vioros lead him through the rubble and ruin to the edge of the river while the rest of his tale came out. The sell-sword who the townsfolk thought was a dragon-rider. His fantastical stories. Rogues, blood-magi, men who appeared and disappeared like bubbles in a stream. All on top of the Adamantine Spear that had turned two riderless dragons to stone. Preposterous. Absurd. Beyond belief, except that the dragons were there, right in front of him, close enough to touch. Immense, far more impressive when you stood on your own two feet right in front of them than they had been from above. Fifty feet high, a hundred feet long. Life-size. He shook his head. The detail was exquisite and perfect. He’d never seen anything like it, even the dragon of Dragondale. The one reared up on its back legs even had a slightly surprised look. No craftsman had made these. You couldn’t have made something like that with the best sculptors from the City of Dragons, not even the best artist of the Taiytakei could even have come close. Easier to believe they were made by magic than by human hands.
But.
But for the love of the Great Flame, how?
‘I told them I’d pay them a lot of money if they found the Speaker’s Spear. If they have, we should rebuild their town for them. It can’t have gone far.’
Jeiros shook his head. ‘You really think the spear did this? Don’t you think we’d know?’ Or was that some secret so dire that Bellepheros somehow neglected to pass it on to any of us. But what else could have? ‘Vioros, the dragon of Dragondale is a lie. You and I both know that. There is no other story I have ever heard of magics that turn living flesh into stone. Even the old stories of the Silver King say nothing about this.’
‘Touch them. They’re right in front of you.’
Yes, they were. He touched them anyway, just to be sure they were real. Then he sighed. ‘You’d better take me to the sell-sword now.’ There, that feeling, right there. What was it? A glimmer of belief? A bit of hope? Don’t fool yourself.
Vioros led him back again, almost running. They hurried along streets strewn with rubble and then into a part of the town that was almost intact. A fine layer of white ash lay on the ground, kicked into the air by their feet and turning their riding clothes slowly grey. The air stank of smoke. They came to a small square. Abruptly, Vioros stopped.
In the middle of the square a makeshift gallows had been built. A man was hanging from it, a rider by the looks of him. Vioros, when he moved, walked very slowly towards the body. He walked around to the other side and took a good long look at the man. Jeiros watched his face.
‘That your sell-sword?’ he asked when Vioros didn’t say anything. The other alchemist nodded.
‘They were going to hang him. They thought he was the rider from one of the dragons.’ Very slowly Vioros shook his head. ‘I didn’t think they’d be so quick.’
Jeiros gestured to the riders around him. ‘Cut him down.’ He looked at Vioros. ‘You’re sure this is your man? The one who said he killed a dragon by turning it into stone.’
Vioros nodded, mute.
‘Narammed said that the Speaker’s Spear cuts both ways. Whatever you do with it will come back to you. Use it to kill and death will stalk you. Use it to rule and you will be ruled. Protect it and it, in turn, will protect you. That’s why it became the speaker’s weapon. Kill the speaker and the spear’s curse falls on you, or so they say. Unless you get someone else to do it for you. Worked for Zafir.’ Jeiros shrugged. ‘I always assumed he meant that as a metaphor, not literally. Ancestors! I don’t think I know any more which stories about the speaker and the spear we made up to suit ourselves, which we heard from somewhere else and decided to keep, and which have their root in some truth.’ The riders had the dead man down from the gallows now. Around them a spectral crowd of townsfolk was starting to form, eyes peering from the shadows, around corners. ‘Do you suppose they mind us cutting him down?’
‘Not as much as they’re going to mind when you make him start talking again.’
‘Then we’d better take him somewhere else.’ Jeiros winced. ‘Not back to the Pinnacles though. Too far.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Actually, this could work out to our advantage. Here.’ He took a gold chain from around his neck and gave it to Vioros. ‘While our escort are busy, get some people to find some barrels and fill them with water from the river. When we come back, we’re going to make a discovery.’
‘We are?’ Vioros looked blank.
‘Yes. We’re going to find dozens of barrels of potion. The secret cache we’ve kept here since the wars started, in case it was ever needed. The one you came here looking for. One of several in fact. Fortunate for us that this one survived the attack.’
‘What?’
Jeiros lowered his voice, mindful of the riders cutting down the body. ‘Barrels of water, Vioros. We’re going to lie about some barrels of water, and I want these riders to hear. The barrels must not be sealed, mind. I will need to inspect them myself. Do you understand?’
Vioros shook his head. ‘Not really. Why would we lie about potions?’
‘To buy ourselves some time. Let the riders and their kings and queens think all is well. It will give us the day or two to do what we need to do.’ There was quite a bit more that Jeiros might have said, but he kept it to himself. A burden shared was sometimes a burden halved, but when it meant trusting someone with a secret, sometimes a burden was just a burden to be lived with. Vioros really didn’t want to hear the rest. Just another few days, old
