Silver Kings: The Splintered Gods Part 21

'With the dragons and the rider-slave and Shonda and his enchanters to deal with? How many of you are there, killer? His fingers were hot and everything between her shoulders was swollen and hurt.

'Enough, enchantress, always enough. I would go and tell them myself but I fear to leave our ladys side. Where she goes I must be her voice. Whatever hed done he seemed satisfied. He began to wind the bandage back around her.

'The Konsidar?

'Indeed. The Elemental Man tied the end of the bandage. He shuffled back and gave her a baleful look. 'Our lady does not say why. I will not ask if she has told you, but the Konsidar is another realm where our rules and our laws no longer apply. Be wary there, enchantress. He stood up. 'The wound is closing well. If I didnt know better then Id say it was many days old. Whatever your alchemist slave puts in his potions, you might consider selling its secrets. You would have good custom.

'I was content where I was, you know.

The Elemental Man walked to the steps. Halfway down he turned and smiled at her. 'You see, we can do it if we remember to try. I will tell our lady you are risen from the dead.

When he was gone, Liang eased herself back into her clothes. It took for ever, an endless series of slow tiny movements and then a gasping jab of pain and a pause for breath and begin again. Whatever your alchemist slave puts into his potions. His blood, thats what, and where his blood went so did a little part of him. She didnt know what Belli had meant by that but his face had said it wasnt a good thing, as if hed put some sort of curse on her even though it had saved her life from poison twice now a curse that struck her as peculiarly benign, as curses went. With careful gentle steps, she eased her way down the stairs. The killer stood in a far corner now, still and out of the way. Most of the gondola was taken up by the smashed-up remains of one of the golems, lying on its back. The two arms on its right side had been shattered by the iron ball of a black-powder cannon. Its head and back were peppered with chips and cracks and three of its golden eyes were missing. Lin Feyn was bent over it, moulding gla.s.s between her bare hands. She didnt look up as Liang came down. 'Can you work?

Liang didnt reply at first. The Arbiter was a navigator from the Dralamut, and every navigator had been an enchanter first and they had to excel to be called. But around Lin Feyn, Liang forgot these things and only saw the Arbiter, dressed in all her finery. Now and then shed seen the woman underneath, who seemed to find her own privileged life vaguely disagreeable. But as an enchantress, moulding gla.s.s . . . ?

'Well?

'Yes! Liang moved as quickly as she could and stood awkwardly, trying to find a position that was comfortable.

'Youre injured. You may sit in the presence of your Arbiter. Or kneel. Lin Feyn suddenly laughed. She was dressed in a tan smock streaked with stains and scorched in places; her braided hair was tied back in a messy bundle to keep it out of the way and she looked like any other enchantress hard at work. She glanced at the Elemental Man. 'Or sit or lie down or do handstands or roll around the floor. I think we can all forget, for a while, that I am what I am. Even you, killer. I am Red Lin Feyn today. I am a very fine enchantress but this golem is beyond me. She sat back and looked at Liang. 'When was the last time you went back to Hingwal Taktse? Do you know how these things are supposed to work? I made my own little golems when I was an apprentice and I imagine you did too, but they were stupid things, nothing like this.

A smile spread across Liangs face and she cracked her knuckles. 'I was never the best enchantress in Hingwal Taktse, not by a long way, and its been a decade since I was there. But I have spent years indentured to the lord of Xican, and there are more golems in Xican than in the rest of the Fourteen Cities put together. I know my golems. She crouched beside the gla.s.s-and-gold body and pressed her hands to it, looking for the shape and form of its inner structure.

'The spark is still there, said Lin Feyn. 'Were not wasting our time.

'I feel it. But something has cut it off from its body. She let her thoughts roam the structure of the gla.s.s. 'Im not sure I can remould this.

'I should hope not! Its a sentinel golem of the Dralamut. As with the palace towers of the sea lords, its meant to be impervious to your intrusions. Or mine for that matter. Not much use if one of us can simply reshape it into an exquisitely expensive gla.s.s statue just by putting a finger to it.

Liang withdrew her hands and winced at the pain across her back. She was already sweating at the effort of forcing her mind inside the golems gla.s.s. 'Well have to break it open. I have raw gold-gla.s.s ready for moulding. Some, anyway. I can probably repair whats broken, although it wont be as well made as this. Perhaps you should work it, lady? Its your golem.

'Im not sure Id do any better but I do have more gla.s.s. Whats wrong with it?

'I can show you, but first we have to get inside.

Easier to say than do. At the heart of the golem the spark that gave it life and motion resided within an intricate structure of gla.s.s and gold. Moulded around that was the carapace armour of its body, inches thick. Neither Red Lin Fey nor Liang, even together, could begin to reshape the armour, which left breaking inside, and that would be no mean feat given the golem had been struck by a cannon and had survived. They looked at it for a while until Lin Feyn hit it with a hammer out of sheer frustration and then laughed at her own foolishness as it bounced and flew out of her hand. 'We should open the ramp, throw it out and smash it to pieces on the mountains and rework it from the start, she said, although they both knew that would shatter both the golems armour and its inner heart.

In the end they landed the gondola and tipped out the golem and had the Elemental Man drop rocks on it from ever-greater heights until the armour cracked and they were able to smash and lever a c.h.i.n.k out and reach inside with their own moulded gla.s.s. Liang rebuilt the link from the spark to the body and then withdrew and left Red Lin Feyn to repair the arm and broken armour. It looked like what it was when they finished a hodgepodge but it walked and talked and remembered who it was. Which was as well, since even all three of them together had no hope of dragging its weight back inside the gondola.

Lin Feyn smiled. 'Well, Chay-Liang of Hingwal Taktse, that was certainly far more enjoyable than sitting in MaiChoiro Kwens gondola in your wind-blasted eyrie listening to Sea Lord Shonda threaten and whine about not being allowed to leave. There was a new tear in her smock and her hair was a mess.

'Im afraid I never learned to master lightning beyond a simple wand. Liang poked at the golems shattered arms.

Lin Feyn shrugged. 'Nor did I. Its still better than nothing. She chuckled. 'I could have another one sent from the Dralamut, of course. Wed wait a few days and it would come, perfect and new, but I prefer this way. Well have little use for a golem in the Konsidar anyway. They wont let it beneath the surface.

'How did you get it into the gondola in the first place? Liang asked.

'A lot of slaves and a sled. Her smile faded. 'It gave my killer something to do while I had a look at your wound. Dont thank me, though. It was your alchemists potions that saved you.

Liang eased her back and realised it was hardly troubling her any more. She stared at the mountains around her. They were far from Vespinarr. Not in the Konsidar proper but at the edge of it, among the valleys where the Vespinese mined their silver. The landscape was deserted. A wide river only a few inches deep ran through a bed of sharp rocks and gravel, some tributary of the Jokun or the Yalun Zarang. The sides of the valley either side were steep and streaked with bare rock between thick verdant trees. The air was damp and cold. 'A pleasant change after the desert, lady, she said, 'I hate that desert. Lin Feyns voice was distant. 'I hate that eyrie. I hate the G.o.dspike and I hate the storm-dark. She shuddered. 'Floating over it and its always there, huge and uncaring and malevolent, just waiting to swallow me whole. You were there far longer than I didnt you ever get the urge to jump? She turned and smiled at Liang. 'The Arbiter is long gone, isnt she? If you were her, what would you do?

That was easy. 'Id poison every dragon. Id throw the eggs into the storm-dark and Id throw the dragon-rider into it too.

'You dont like her? Lin Feyn laughed again, deep and throaty. 'Why Chay-Liang, Im taken wholly by surprise! And you hid it so well.

Liang let the mockery pa.s.s her by. 'Shes poison, lady. You asked me what I would do if I were the Arbiter. Id put her and her dragon down in a heartbeat. I would have done it long ago. I would certainly have done it before we left the eyrie. Theyre both too dangerous. You told me yourself see how she chooses who lives and who dies.

'But the rider knows the truth and has no reason to lie.

'I know the truth, lady. Baros Tsen TVarr knows the truth. MaiChoiro has already confessed that he gave the orders. Shonda told him to do it. Hes the one who burned Dhar Thosis.

Red Lin Feyn went to the edge of the river, crouched in the water and drank from it. The Elemental Man, Liang saw, had already done the same while they were repairing the golem. His robes were wet. When Lin Feyn came back, she said, 'I believe you, Chay-Liang, but you would not make a good Arbiter. Shonda is guilty, you say? My heart says yes but I must stand before the Crown of the Sea Lords and say so to all of them, and some will crow with glee and others will howl with outrage, and what is said will depend on who has been paid and how much and by whom. It will be easy to blame Baros Tsen TVarr and blame him I do and no one will blink an eye. The dragon burned Dhar Thosis. The dragon is his. He is responsible and also bankrupt. But to hold the lord of Vespinarr to account, with all his riches? He wasnt even there. His kwen was a prisoner. Hed already lost his tvarr his own brother. Baros Tsen was surely his enemy, not his ally. MaiChoiro claims coercion.

'But . . .

Lin Feyn squeezed Liangs shoulder. 'I must, if I can, have all those who were responsible alive to speak. That is why we are here on the trail of Baros Tsen TVarr. He and Shrin Chrias Kwen, who as yet eludes my killers, they are the ones who matter the most. Without them, perhaps I am acting on a whim. Perhaps I am a poor Arbiter. Perhaps I have been bought and paid for by the lords of Cashax, who will crow when Shonda falls. Or, worse, what if Shonda is guilty but did not conspire alone? I have my suspicions there. The killers will trust my word and carry out my verdict, but I must do better than that. To bring down a sea lord, there must be no questioning of my judgement. Our authority is absolute. Our dispa.s.sion and rigour must be the same. Thus I need your dragon-slave to speak the truth, and I will bargain with her if I have to and promise her whatever she wants to convince her to give me what I need, for what I need is more important. She is an unbranded slave who obeyed her master, and that cannot be a crime. The deed is the crime of the master. When a sword stabs you, do you blame the steel or the hand that held it? She pursed her lips.

'Youre going to let her live? Dear Xibaiya, are you mad? Liang put a hand to her mouth as soon as the words came out. 'Lady, forgive- But Lin Feyn had doubled up with laughter. 'This is why I have you with me, Chay-Liang! She took a moment to compose herself. 'No. A city has burned, a sea lord hanged from his own palace, and she knew her master meant her to stop . . . She glanced at the Elemental Man still standing by the river and leaned in to Liang, her voice now a fierce whisper. 'But in the midst of this a skin-s.h.i.+fter of the Konsidar steals away the man most clearly responsible? My killers try to hide things from me? These things strike to the heart of what we are.

She sighed and walked on back to the gondola. The golem was waiting inside, silent and infinitely patient. As Lin Feyn pa.s.sed it, she ran a hand over its gla.s.s. 'This one was Ferring Syfa once. I knew him. He was an old man even when I first came to the Dralamut but he taught me a great deal before he died. She patted the golem. 'Lungs, wasnt it, old man? Gave out on you in the end. Slowly filled with fluid. The coughing got worse and worse. Ah, we tried to keep him a while, to make him comfortable, but theres no cure for age. I suppose you must have drowned in your sleep one night, was that it?

The golem didnt move, didnt speak.

'Do you remember, golem, who you were?

'No.

'None of them do. I suppose its a mercy but I missed him. I was young and the world had just become so very big. She glanced at Liang with a moment of longing in her eyes. 'Could your alchemist have saved him, I wonder. Hes saved you twice now. She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, crumpled up and covered in Bellis writing. 'This is yours. It told me what to do.

The gondola lifted them slowly out of the valley. Liang watched the mountains sprout up from behind one another. She moved so she could look to the north and to the heart of the Konsidar. Shed seen it so many times but only from afar, only the edges of it. Towers of stone capped with snow. Deep dark valleys filled with trees, the ground buried beneath their leaves. Streaks of dark rock amid waterfalls of green vines. They flew over a valley where a deep red streak of acer trees ripped through the green, a rune carved into the forest like a livid scar on wrinkled green skin. Another valley and another sigil in the same dark red leaves. The mountains grew taller and the valleys deeper and the forest thicker and wilder. They drifted above more sigils etched among the trees, mostly the reds of acers but now and then the black leaves of some tree Liang didnt know, and once there were lines of scars and pale bare rock. They were too regular to have grown that way on their own. They had been made.

'Theyre like the writing on the pillar.

'Yes. She hadnt even noticed the Elemental Man come to stand beside her. 'It is the language of the half-G.o.ds whose war brought the Splintering and broke the world apart. It is the language of the moon. These ones are signs. Some are warnings. Some are directions. Some . . . He shrugged. 'Some of them only the skin-s.h.i.+fters know.

Liang had questions. So many questions of G.o.ds and half-G.o.ds and times long ago and why any of that mattered here and now and what it had to do with dragons and the death of Dhar Thosis. But the killer was what he was, sworn to keep such secrets dark and undisturbed, and so even if he knew them they would stay his and his alone. She looked at him for a moment. 'You understand why we put the golem back together, dont you? Instead of simply asking for a new one? Then the gla.s.s.h.i.+p rose over a ridge and Liang saw what lay on the other side and all her questions melted into one.

'Fire and earth! What is that?

Surrounded by cliffs and the sheer sides of the mountains, the ground fell away into a monstrous chasm, a hole a mile wide and ten miles long and deeper by far. As the gla.s.s.h.i.+p drifted past the ridge and out over the abyss, Liang couldnt see to the bottom.

'This? This is the secret of the Konsidar?

The killer shook his head. 'This? No, enchantress, this is merely the way in.

The gla.s.s.h.i.+p sank into the chasm. Waterfalls spilled down its sides, dissolving into mist. On every ledge and in every cranny, trees and vines clung to the stone. Ferns gripped even the slightest crack, and where the rock was so smooth and sheer that no root would take hold, long streamers of moss clung to it instead.

'Have you ever seen anything like it? The killer was mocking her, she thought, but when she shook her head he tapped her shoulder and pointed down. As the walls of the abyss drew slowly closer, she saw an arch of stone reach from one side to the other, and further down were others, dozens of them until they vanished into the darkness.

Lin Feyn was dressing as the Arbiter again. 'Gird yourself, killer. The guardians of Xibaiya await and I may have to be rude.

'Its like the Queverra, Liang whispered.

'Yes. The killer drew away. 'But the Queverra is dead. Its gates to Xibaiya are marked and warded and those who enter do not come out. Here, Chay-Liang, it is otherwise.

39.

Best Not to Ask The stone bridge went on for what felt like for ever and Tuuran didnt like it one little bit. It reminded him of a giant tree root made of rock rounded and arching through empty s.p.a.ce and uneven and slippery, smooth as gla.s.s in places and there was no kindness to it, no forgiveness. Twice it caught him out and he slipped and barely regained his balance before a short sharp slide over the edge into oblivion. Further down, all he could see was lots of blackness and a handful of pinp.r.i.c.k lights that just might have been fires, or maybe stars looking back at him from the other side of the world, or possibly they were his mind playing tricks on him.

Hed given up thinking about the way back, and so far hed only found one way down. Crazy must have gone this way. If Tuuran went far enough, hed find him. When he did, hed think about what happened next. Though there was a good chance it would start with him giving Crazy a good solid punch in the face.

The bridge took him to a series of terraces linked by steep steps. In places the terraces were as wide as a field, in others so narrow that he had to ease his way along sideways, trying not to peer down at his toes and the endless chasm underneath. 'Crazy Mad! he bellowed when hed been making his way along them for an hour. It felt good to break the silence. He was fiercely hungry and close to exhaustion and the terraces just went on and on. 'You hear me, Crazy? When I catch up with you, youre going to get a right thumping, I can tell you. There wasnt any answer. After a bit he took to singing to himself just to make the emptiness go away.

The terraces dumped him onto another arch back across the chasm. He looked up and rather wished he hadnt, crossed over anyway and found yet more steps carved into the cliff, winding on down. There were sparks on the side of the chasm here, distant little windows of firelight. Proper fires, not torches, and they got him wondering what sort of people lived in this darkness, what they could possibly find to burn and whether they had any food he could have.

A spike of fear hit him then that hed made a mistake, that his strength wouldnt be enough to climb to the top again, that hed never get out and hed die here alone, so far from everything he knew that his legion ancestors wouldnt ever find him. He crushed it quickly. Adamantine Men didnt know fear. Adamantine Men faced dragons and spat in their eyes. And as for his legion ancestors? They were Adamantine Men too, the spirits of the hundred thousand gone before, and they knew their duty. Leave no one behind. Theyd find him wherever he died. Theyd upend the underworld if they had to.

They would too. He felt a bit better, thinking that.

He went on because he was stubborn, because turning back meant hed been wrong, and Adamantine Men were never wrong or if they were they didnt live to be shamed by it. He counted the steps this time so his legs would have something to think about on their way back. Somewhere over six hundred he gave up. By the time they brought him to the next ledge, he reckoned it must have been pus.h.i.+ng a thousand.

Another b.l.o.o.d.y stone arch. He could hardly see his hand in front of his face now. He pa.s.sed the remains of a few old fires. Charred fragments of wood. Men had come here, not in the last few days but not all that long ago.

Wood? Where did they get the wood?

He pa.s.sed a pair of pillars sunk into the face of the cliff. White stone like the ones hed encountered before. Thing was, hed seen writing like this back in the Pinnacles in the places where the Silver King had worked his magics, and the white stone there was the same as in the eyrie and now here, and a pillar was just a pillar but two pillars started to look like an archway or a gateway, and the Pinnacles had had archways lining the walls everywhere. Riddled with the things, and all blank and just for decoration and not leading anywhere except in the stories people whispered when sometimes one of them suddenly changed and there was another world on the other side and you could walk right through into a different land, except no one ever came back because as soon as you crossed through the arch snapped closed behind you.

Stupid stories. These pillars didnt lead anywhere either.

'Crazy? He meant to shout but he couldnt bring himself to, and then he told himself how stupid that was, and it made him angry because it meant he was afraid, and that wasnt supposed to happen, not ever. 'Crazy? Crazy Mad? Berren! Skyrie! Whoever you are! You in here? This time he roared it as loud as he could, then stood and clutched his axe too tightly as he listened to the echoes. He tried to slow his racing heart with some long deep breaths but apparently it wasnt feeling in a slowing mood.

'Flame on this. He turned his back on the pillars and walked away, fighting the urge to jump, to get it over with, to get to the bottom and be done with it. He had to pinch himself to remember that he couldnt just do that and then get up again.

Keep it together. Cursed place is getting to you.

And then suddenly there wasnt an abyss beside him and he was at the bottom. He took a few deep breaths, let his head spin a bit until it sorted itself out and then wandered about to be sure there wasnt some hidden crack leading even deeper. All he found was a flat sandy floor with a shallow river running through it and no sign of any great rift on to the very heart of the world. He knelt by the river and tasted the water, found it pure and clean and filled his belly with it. Better. Then he looked for footprints in the sand because if Crazy Mad had come this way then he must have left some, and it wasnt as if there was any wind or rain to hide them again, and Flame but Crazy was going to get a thumping for dragging him all this way . . .

When he traced his own steps back to the side of the abyss, he found what he was looking for. Prints. One pair of boots. They might have been Crazys or they might not, but Tuuran couldnt think of a better idea. In the near dark at the bottom of the Queverra he followed the tracks on his hands and knees, crawling from one footprint to the next. It was grindingly slow and probably made him look utterly stupid but it took him to a cave. A bigger cave than the others and this one didnt have just two pillars outside it but six, four like the ones hed seen before and two much larger. He swore and wondered what to do, because Crazy Mad had gone in there but Crazy was, well, crazy and mad, and his own not-so-crazy guts were twisting in knots at the thought of following even if they couldnt tell him why. He called out again: 'Crazy? No answer. He wasnt surprised. Hadnt had one yet.

But there really wasnt anything else. Not after hed come all this way.

'Crazy Mad, Im going to carve some new holes in you for this. He got up, muttering to himself, and took two steps towards the cave.

'I wouldnt, if I were you, called a voice in the dark behind him. Crazy.

'You son of a t.u.r.d! Tuuran turned and squinted and peered and then spotted the shape of a shadow in the gloom and strode towards it, still not sure whether he was going to hug Crazy or hit him or possibly both. And it was him, even if there was something different about him. Something different in his face. When he reached the little man, he settled on pus.h.i.+ng him. Hard. 'You! You left me! In the middle of a gang of slavers! You turned one man to ash and scared off a dragon and then you just left! You git! And then this! You drag me all the way down here? He pointed up to the narrow slit of light miles above them. Relief had the better of him, wagging his tongue. 'Do you have any idea what a royal pain in the a.r.s.e its going to be to get back up? He shoved Crazy again and then grabbed him, crushed him. 'I tell you, I intend to make you pay for this for the rest of your whole b.l.o.o.d.y life! b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

He stepped back and took and deep breath and let out a sigh, and that was when he realised that he and Crazy werent alone. He jumped back and grabbed his axe but Crazy held out a soothing hand. 'Calm, big man. Theyre not here to hurt us. These are my friends. He laughed but there was strain in it. Something off. 'You didnt have to follow me down here, you know.

'Oh, so you leave me with slavers and go gallivanting off to make some new friends on your own, eh? Were you planning on coming back out at some point to see about rescuing your other friend you know, the one whos been at your side for the last however many years its been? Whyd you come down here anyway?

Crazy Mads face screwed up. 'Dont know really. Looking for something. Looking for someone.

'Looks like you found several someones.

'Not me. Whatever it was the one-eyed warlock put into Skyrie before Vallas Kuy did what he did to both of us.

Tuuran snorted uneasily at that because it made no sense to him and never had. Crazy Mad had his name for a reason, and hed got it before his eyes had started turning silver now and then and the odd occasion when hed disintegrated people. Oh, and stopped time that once. That too. 'Well then, did you find who you were looking for?

'No.

'Not your one-eyed warlock himself, was it? You didnt think hed be down here, did you?

Crazy jerked as though stung. Then he frowned. 'I think it was looking for itself. He said this as though they were back in a tavern in Deephaven and Tuuran had asked him whether he wanted his ale pale or dark. As though the answer was so obvious it amazed him that Tuuran felt the need to ask.

'I find a mirror works pretty well for that. Tuuran took a deep breath, let it out slowly, took another one and found he still hadnt the first idea what to do with himself. Hed come all this way to find Crazy. Well, hed done that. And now? 'Im just a simple soldier, Crazy. You know what? I dont have the first clue what youre talking about.

Crazy clapped him on the shoulder. 'Long way down though, isnt it? You hungry? You must be. Want to eat before we start on the way up?

'What? Were going back up now? Great Flame, tell me there was something here to make it worth it! Although now that he mentioned it, yes, Tuuran was very hungry indeed and yes, he would very much like to eat something because eating was a simple thing he could understand.

'Food first, big man. And for a while, as they walked along the bottom of the abyss with white-painted men creeping in circles around them and gated caves to Xibaiya and the realm of the dead pa.s.sing on either side, Crazy Mad talked like he usually did, and Tuuran talked too, and life was almost normal again.

40.

No Escape, Not Even for You The sun rose over the storm-dark and the swirls of cloud lit up in a patchwork of dull orange light and deep black shadow. The sunward side of the G.o.dspike glowed a brilliant pink and bright rays of dawn fire streamed over the eyrie walls into the little shelter. They sprawled through its sailcloth walls and over the sleeping face inside. Zafir sat up and pushed away her silken wrappings. She rubbed her eyes and blinked and then took a little water from the silver bowl beside her and splashed it on her face. She hitched up her s.h.i.+ft and squatted over her chamber pot and then walked outside to greet the dawn. When she reached the wooden lean-to where Myst and Onyx slept, she ducked inside. They were gone, but she could still smell them so they hadnt been awake for long. They fretted at how their mistress lived and yes, palaces and castles and gold and silks were fine things, but in her heart Zafir was a dragon-rider before she was a queen, and no dragon-rider was a stranger to a crude camp in an open s.p.a.ce with a dragon beside her.

She walked out to the eyrie rim, through the litter of her first shelter, which Diamond Eye had crushed on the night the hatchling came to kill her. He was perched out on the edge this morning instead of at his usual post on the wall beside her. She sat down next to him, feet dangling over the void, peering between her knees at the storm-dark. Sometimes she thought about falling. Toppling forward and not stopping herself and tipping over and plummeting into the maelstrom below. But even if she wanted to, Diamond Eye wouldnt let her. Hed come after her before she was even close to the cloud, catch her and bring her back. Hed keep her safe whether or not safe was what she wanted. That was why she slept beside him. To know when they were coming for her.

'Theyre thinking it, she whispered to him. 'You first and then me. Even the ones who want to keep you want me to hang. Everyone wants us gone. One day my alchemist will quietly poison you, though Ive forbidden it. Then theyll come for me. Here they were, she and her alchemist, both slaves of the rapacious sea lords, both taken from their homes, both from the same land. The alchemist should have been hers, body and soul, and yet he wasnt. He tolerated her. That was about as much as you could say now. It cut deep, knowing he would betray her.

'I want to go home, she whispered. The dragon didnt move. His eyes stayed on the G.o.dspike. His thoughts were distant and vague. Watching. Waiting. And Zafir had come to think that neither of them had the first idea what for. Just something.