evade his father’s guards as much as any of his own people. After that they flew away. Out into the Raksheh, where no one would find them. One more night of freedom. Out to the little eyrie by the Moonlight Garden and the Yamuna Falls and the Aardish Caves, where Vishmir’s ashes had been hidden. Somewhere here, if you believed the stories, was the Silver King’s Black Mausoleum. If you believed the stories.
‘It’s finished,’ he told Lystra as night began to fall and they held on to each other, watching the stars gleam into existence overhead. ‘Zafir’s gone. Valmeyan is dead. Tichane is dead. They’re all gone. The war’s over.’ And I’m still alive. Rather to his surprise, what mattered more was that his queen and his son were still alive, that his city was still alive. Pity it had left him a cripple. From the look of things, he’d be in pain and chewing Dreamleaf for the rest of his life.
He shrugged to himself. Could have been worse.
Lystra glanced at little Calzarin, wrapped tight between them, snoring and snuffling softly. ‘Do you really want to name him after your brother,’ she said after a moment or two of silence.
‘No.’ Jehal wasn’t sure when he’d realised that, but he knew it to be true. ‘I don’t. I want to call him Vishmir.’
His wife held his hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s not really finished, is it?’
‘Oh, let Hyrkallan have the Adamantine Throne. Now that I know what it’s like, he’s welcome to it.’ I could let it go if I had to. Couldn’t I? It certainly hadn’t been what he’d hoped it would be, back when he’d set out to take it. Ancestors, but that seemed such a long time ago. He stretched and winced. There simply wasn’t a way to make his leg comfortable. ‘Let him deal with the rogue dragons. Him and the alchemists. I’m sure they’ll find a way. We can live here by the sea. Just the two of us.’
‘The two of us and about a thousand servants.’
‘Yes. In a palace that we haven’t built yet.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s not going to be easy, you know. Zafir and Valmeyan probably looted the treasury. We have a palace to build and an eyrie too, no money, and I can’t see the Taiytakei coming back in a hurry after what my uncle did to them.’ Not now they’ve got what they want. His voice trailed away. I’m going to miss you, old schemer. Who do I hatch my plans with now? He looked at Lystra and smiled. Certainly not you.
He almost didn’t leave in the morning. It would have been easy to go back to his city and start building, right there and then. Let Hyrkallan and Sirion and Jeiros and perhaps even the Night Watchman live in peace. Let them worry about dragons on the rampage in the north.
‘We’ve got no alchemists though,’ he whispered to Wraithwing as he climbed up onto the dragon’s back. ‘Don’t want you getting frisky on me. Don’t think that would be much fun.’ He wrenched his crippled leg into the saddle, gritting his teeth at the pain. The legbreaker had lived up to its name. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And for better or for worse, I’m still the speaker.’
44
Sand
Sand. This one is called Sand.
Another city of the north filled with little ones. An oasis surrounded by nothing. The same vast rivers flowed out of the World-spine and slowly died in the sun until they expired in the desert of salt, but the river here still ran strong. Not a city that could be starved and strangled. A city that met them with stones and scorpions. Brave but futile.
They flew in circles around the city walls, pouring fire inside it, building a whirling storm of flames, an inferno with a life of its own. Nothing was allowed to leave. It took a day, and then they stopped while the flames burned on and on, licking at the skeletons of stone that remained, searching for food. Some of the humans had sought shelter underground. Snow could feel their thoughts. She listened curiously as the few survivors slowly cooked to death in their cellars. The dragons didn’t feed here. They were already fat.
When the city was dead, they turned to the eyrie beside it. The little ones had long since disappeared deep under the ground. What would burn was burned. What could be crushed or smashed was ground to dust. When there was nothing left to do, they let Silence and the other hatchlings loose in the tunnels that remained. In Bloodsalt they had freed younglings and found eggs. Silence had carried them out, one by one, and the dragons had taken them and cradled them and stolen them away into whatever dark hidden places they could find. Here Snow already knew it would be different. There were no dragon thoughts. This was like Outwatch. Hatchlings all poisoned. Eggs smashed. Nothing left.
The dragons splashed around in the Last River, cooling themselves.
They don’t try to fight. They know we are here. Everything is poisoned.
No matter.
When one dies, another is born.
Eggs are easily made.
They hide in their holes.
They spawn like insects.
We will never be rid of them.
Where next?
Where next?
They were looking to her, Snow realised. Another city, not far away. A day of flying. And then… And then the thrill of what was coming threatened to overwhelm her.
Evenspire, brothers and sisters. The blemish you feel is called Even-spire and we will burn it. And then to the mountains and over the other side. To the city they name after us. The palace where their kings claim to rule. The heart of their land.
They would free as many as they could. And then…
The Spear of the Earth. We will take it. We will face our makers.
And then? The makers?
They left this world. It is ours.
A roar of thoughts lifted her up. Fire. Fire and burning and flames. Nothing more and nothing less.
Where next to conquer?
45
The Pinnacles
At the end of his second day hanging upside down thousands of feet over a plain full of dead dragons, Jeiros felt strangely alive. His ankles and his wrists hurt like a nail in the head, but the rest wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought it would be. Still horrible, but not as excruciating as he’d imagined. The weather had been kind to him, perhaps that was it. Another day of blistering sun and he’d probably have been dead; instead, the clouds had come in along with a pleasantly cool breeze and then the skies had opened. The first downpour had turned into a steady rain that had lasted for most of the afternoon. Water dripped and ran down his face and into his mouth. No, he certainly couldn’t complain about being thirsty or of wilting in the sun. Being soaked through would probably kill him once night fell, but so far it could have been worse.
He looked down at the ground far below. You couldn’t see much of it any more. The rain had hissed and fizzed off the dragons until the valley was filled with a warm mist. The rain had been a blessing for everyone really. The fires in the city had gone out. The dead dragons hadn’t ignited the plains grass. The rabble had been too busy with their own misery to get organised enough to storm the Fortress of Watchfulness. And the grand master alchemists of the realms was still alive. For the moment.
Yes, could have been a lot worse, and for now he was happy to take whatever he could get. He’d done what
