46
Long Live the King
Jehal leaned against a well near the edge of the Adamantine Eyrie. Jeiros sat with his back to it, his useless legs stretched out on the muddy ground. Finding chairs for two cripples was proving to be a problem.
‘The trouble with dragons,’ Jehal mused, ‘is never the monsters themselves.’ Keeping the weight off his damaged leg was making his back stiff. It was tempting to sit in the dirt with Jeiros, but that wasn’t what a speaker should do. Wasn’t what a grand master alchemist should do either, for that matter, but Jeiros didn’t have much of a choice. He’d be lucky to ever walk again. ‘The trouble always comes from the people who ride on the back of them.’ Jehal’s leg hurt whatever he did with it, a steady throbbing that never went away. The alchemists would have something for that, now they were here. Herbs, potions, anything, something that was stronger than Dreamleaf. He watched wearily as the last of his riders came in to land. The sky above the Mirror Lakes was a deep grey, like the slate roofs of the city. Evening rain clouds, carried up by the wind from the Raksheh and the sea beyond.
Eventually Eyrie-Master Copas conjured up a litter from somewhere. Jehal climbed in, slowly and laboriously. Jeiros sat beside him, lifted in by two of the bearers. The alchemist didn’t say anything and his eyes were closed. Most probably he was asleep.
‘We could have flown all through the night, straight from the Pinnacles, and been here in the morning, bright and early. The dragons wouldn’t have minded. I know they don’t much like flying in the dark but they’ll do it if you tell them. No, it’s the riders. Needing sleep and food and rest and to empty their bowels. We lost the whole day.’ He prodded Jeiros and waved a pouch of Dreamleaf at him. ‘Can dragons fly for ever? Do they actually need to rest at all? Does anyone know?’
Jeiros had a faraway look, either because his thoughts had been miles away or because he really had been asleep. ‘No. And yes and yes.’ He took a pinch of leaf and started to chew on it. ‘We did experiments on that sort of thing a long time ago. They don’t exactly wear out. But if they don’t rest and eat and drink, then eventually they overheat and then they burn up from the inside and die.’ His eyes came into focus on Jehal’s face. ‘The trouble with dragons, Jehal, is that they exist.’
Jehal. Not Your Holiness, just Jehal. After all they’d been through he couldn’t hold it against the alchemist. He watched the dragons. They were hungry and irritable and were tearing with zeal into the terrified animals that the Scales had herded out of their pens. Those like Wraithwing who’d sated themselves were already curled up to rest. ‘They do make a mess.’
‘A mess? Pray we don’t see what a mess they make.’ Jeiros stretched and then winced. Every movement was pain. Jehal knew how he felt. Look at us. A pair of cripples. ‘We should have wiped them out when we had the chance. It took a sorcerer, a true half-god sorcerer. Thousands and thousands of people died. Probably tens of thousands. We gave ourselves up with the poison in our veins. We killed them and we tamed them and we hunted out their nests and smashed their eggs. Perhaps we could have destroyed them. But no. We tamed them. We thought we were so clever.’ He spat bitterly. ‘Why did you keep me alive, Jehal? All I want to do now is kill every dragon here.’
‘Yes, well you won’t be doing that just yet. I kept you alive because you kept me alive. Besides, the realms need their alchemists whether I like it or not.’ And let’s not forget that you’re probably the one person who’ll stop the Night Watchman sticking my head on a spike the moment I hobble through the palace gates. But we won’t mention that, eh?
‘They won’t thank you for it.’
‘Yes, yes. The apocalypse is coming. Tell me, Jeiros, because it’s been bothering me for months, this potion of yours – why don’t you just make more?’
‘If only it was so easy. Truth is we’ve never been able to make quite enough. We get by. Now and then, when there is a strong speaker, we have a quiet cull, spread over two or three years. We don’t tell the kings and queens, just let them think it’s some sort of disease. It goes by unnoticed. We did it with Vishmir, Ayzalmir, a few others. So then most of the dragons are hatchlings, and we can stockpile potion. As they grow into adults, we very slowly start to run out. In time we have to do it again. The rogues who attacked the Redoubt didn’t affect what we could make, but they destroyed what we had stored. Ruined the lot. And then there was the war. The Red Riders. Evenspire.’ He wrinkled his nose.
Jehal waited. ‘You didn’t actually answer my question,’ he said.
Jeiros actually laughed. ‘I won’t tell you what goes into it, Speaker. Even Vioros doesn’t know that. Outside those who actually live in those caves, there are three of us who know, and only because we’ve done it ourselves. I’ve made that potion, Jehal. It’s simple enough. There’s just one thing that goes into it that matters, but that one thing…’ He shook his head. ‘We bleed for it, Jehal, we alchemists, and if our blood was all that mattered we would bleed ourselves dry. Only then there would be no more alchemists. Some harvests only yield what they yield and there is simply nothing more to be done.’ He laughed again. ‘Perhaps we should have bled ourselves to death for the rest of you. Perhaps we have. Not that it would make any difference.’
Jehal shrugged. ‘Look on the bright side – when it happens, whatever it is, maybe no one will live long enough to form an opinion on how much of it is actually your fault.’ Or mine.
‘Your indifference is touching.’ Jeiros looked at his feet. Bent and useless. Someone had put splints on him, but ankles smashed like that would never set right.
‘And your relentless gloom is relentlessly tedious.’ The litter lurched into motion, heading towards the eyrie gates. Jehal cast his gaze around, looking for his wife and the carriage she’d promised to find for him to take him up the hill to the palace. Riding dragons was one thing. Riding horses was a pleasure he had to leave to others now. No great loss. They were dull, stupid, uninspiring creatures. A bit like most of the lords I have to look forward to now that I’m home. Yes, that was a much more cheery thought. Hyrkallan and Sirion trapped in the Pinnacles without a dragon between them. Shezira’s other daughters with them. Valmeyan and Tichane dead. Zafir most likely dead too. Let’s face it, who’s left? Silvallan is probably shitting bricks wondering whether he’s next. At this rate I’ll have to invite the Syuss back to the council. They’ll have more dragons than any of the rest of us soon. Another little nugget to chew on. The Syuss had always hated Hyram. They’d hated Antros and Shezira and Valgar. The names were different now, but the hate would still be there. With a bit of prodding and stirring all manner of troubles might arise there. Played right the north could be a lot of fun in the years to come. But that can wait. When you tidy your house, you start with the bits you actually live in. First things first. Vale Tassan here I come. Say one thing for dragons: once you’re on the back of one, it doesn’t matter how much of a cripple you are. Boy, woman, man, half-man, put us on a dragon and none of that matters. What matters is that the monster obeys. When that happens, we become gods.
The litter stopped. Jehal tumbled out, catching himself with his staff, and hobbled towards Lystra and his waiting carriage. He and Jeiros would each deal with their own rogues. A fair and equitable arrangement.
As he limped closer, soldiers on horseback converged on the carriage. Adamantine Men. For a moment his heart missed a beat, but when they drew their swords, it was to salute him. So Vale knows I’m coming. I suppose it’s probably easier to kill me in the palace than down here. Too many witnesses…
The carriage door flew open. Lystra threw her arms around his neck, almost strangling him. His bad leg buckled. For an instant it seemed he would fall, dragging her out of the carriage to roll around in the mud. A fine sight that would have been – the speaker and his queen grappling in the dirt – but she had enough strength to pull him in instead. He half sat, half fell on the seat beside her.
She smiled at him, eyes wide with excitement. ‘Do you know I’ve never been here. Not since I was a little girl. You have to show me everything. There must be so many marvellous-’
He shut her up by kissing her, which still usually worked. So many marvellous things. Yes. Pity that most of them want to kill me. In a pause for breath he glanced out the window. The still waters of the Mirror Lakes lay dull and flat under the evening sky. Behind them the City of Dragons sat in a shimmer of mist. Her towers sparkled, painted in silver and gold. Money, opulence, decadence, too much of all of them. My kind of place.
Behind the haze of the city, the half-seen cliffs of the Purple Spur rose into the twilight. Somewhere above and beyond them, in the gaps between the clouds, the first stars of the evening twinkled. The sky. Closeted up in a carriage was no way to travel.
