Silver Kings: The Splintered Gods Part 33

Onyx dropped to her knees and kissed Zafirs feet. 'We are yours, Holiness. Holiness? That was new. They must have picked it up from Tuuran.

'We have a little time. Zafir stripped off her armour and stepped back and held out her arms. 'Tend to my wounds and then dress me again for war. Please.

They unlaced her tunic and lifted off her s.h.i.+ft and Zafir looked at herself naked. The cuts from the Elemental Man were the worst, long and razor-sharp. They werent deep, but every time she flexed her shoulder or twisted, she tore them open again. Onyx cleaned them with the last of their water. Myst went out and came back with curved needles and thin silk thread. She gestured to Zafir to be still and set to work sewing the wounds closed. Zafir looked over the rest of her skin while Myst worked. The bruises from riding Diamond Eye over Dhar Thosis were gone, but she had new bruises instead from other things, from the wild ride to seize Lord Shondas gondola and from the hunt for the missing eggs when the wind had killed the Elemental Man behind her. She had two little scars on her ribs from when Diamond Eye had saved her from MaiChoiros noose and, older still, a trace of white skin on her side from when shed almost hanged herself on the Taiytakei s.h.i.+p all those months ago. Her ankle twinged now and then, never quite right from her duel with Queen Lystra, Jehals wife. She laughed.

'Holiness?

She shook her head. Lystra. How shed hated Jehals little starling bride. Now? Easier to imagine them sipping sweet tea together, sharing smirks over Jehals shortcomings, than going at each other with sword and axe.

'I was thinking of home, she murmured, though she knew shed never had a home as Myst or Onyx or even Tuuran would understand it. Never a safe place of comfort and kindness wasnt that what a home was meant to be? But such things made for weakness and a dragon-rider could never be weak. The nature of dragons made it so. Strength born of cruelty.

Onyx tore strips off Zafirs filthy silk s.h.i.+ft to make bandages and handed her a new one. It was stained with a streak of dried blood. In the Adamantine Palace shed have hanged a servant who offered her something so dirty to wear but not any more. It was her own blood after all, and the best cloth they had. After the s.h.i.+ft came the wraps of dragon-scale shed worn over Dhar Thosis, scratched and marked. They stank of her sweat and didnt fit very well the alchemists enchantress was no tailor. She had Myst rip the rest of the torn s.h.i.+ft into strips and pad her hips and under her arms where the chafing was worst. After the dragon-scale, she did the rest of the armour herself because it was a point of pride for a dragon-rider to dress alone when they went to war. Perhaps once there might have been a reason for it perhaps a traitorous servant who had sabotaged a rider and made her armour fail. If so then the story had long been lost. A dragon-rider stood on her own two feet, that was all. They needed no one, not ever, not for anything.

She was almost done when Tuuran knocked. She let him in. When he saw her not quite fully dressed, the look on his face made her laugh. He dropped to his knees at once and pressed his face to the floor. 'Holiness, they come.

Zafir put a hand on Tuurans head. 'Get up, Night Watchman. If theres anyone left, find them. When the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps come you must hurt them if you can. The black-powder cannon are for that.

Tuuran rose and bowed. 'There are few of us left, Holiness, but I will try. He jogged away into the depths of the eyrie. Zafir wrapped the last gold-gla.s.s plates around her arms and slipped her hands into her golden gauntlets. She put on her old helm from Dhar Thosis. The dragon carvings had smeared a little in the heat of Diamond Eyes fire and no one had repaired them but the visor at least was new. She drew it down over her face and marvelled as she always did at how it almost wasnt there. The joy of being able to ride a dragon through wind and fire and to see, for the first time to really see, made everything else almost worth it. A mirror would have been nice. She took a bladeless knife from the pa.s.sageway where an Elemental Man had been turned to a smear of ash, buckling its sheath around her waist. A rider rarely carried anything more than a pair of simple knives for cutting themselves free of a damaged harness, but she thought she might make an exception. It was, if nothing else, a trophy of all that shed done.

Somewhere outside she felt Diamond Eye surge with glee and leap into the air, and then the first cracks of lightning began.

'Hide, she said. 'Not here. Somewhere with an iron door. Hide and bar the door, and come out for no one until I come back.

They were almost in tears. Myst fell at Zafirs feet and clutched her ankle. Onyx only stared. 'Live, mistress, she said. 'Live.

Zafir pulled gently away and bowed to them. 'And you. Both of you. I could not have asked for better slaves but you are slaves no more. You are free. A lopsided smile curled her lip. 'Though it may not last for long. But remember, nonetheless. She turned her back and walked away to where the battle had already begun.

Liang slipped out of Bellepheross study and crept back to her workshop. She woke a sled and loaded the bombs shed made. There was an easier way than simply throwing them, there had to be. She pulled the sled through the chill of the bathhouse morgue, through the empty pa.s.sages where the Scales had lived and up to the dragon yard. She lurked in the shadows, waiting for the monstrous dragon in the middle of it all to be gone.

Waves of gleeful joy pulsed in Zafirs head. Chaos. Sleds sped through the air, racing over the edge of the eyrie. Hatchlings wheeled and snapped at them, peppered with lightning. It hurt them and they were all almost lost to their rage. Diamond Eye seized a soldier and crushed him, lashed his tail and smashed two sleds at once into pieces and their riders too. His head whipped round and fire washed over the white stone.

Zafir stepped out of the tunnels. A bolt of lightning struck her at once, dazing her for a moment as sparks crackled over gold-gla.s.s. Armoured Taiytakei soldiers were landing in the dragon yard, running for the tunnels. Three charged straight at her, waving their ashgars to smash her to pieces, clumsy weapons but deadly even to a gla.s.s-armoured knight. Zafir dodged aside and rammed the bladeless knife into the ribs of one and drew it out. He took another two paces before he even noticed. The other two rounded on her. She ducked another blow and sliced at a leg, cutting it clean in two. The third soldier caught her a glancing blow that knocked her flying. A sled zipped overhead. The soldier on the back leaned and swung at her, almost taking her head off, and then he suddenly wasnt there any more as a hatchling shot out of nowhere and seized him, bit off his arm and threw him aside. The sled spiralled and smashed into the eyrie in a shower of gla.s.s. The first soldier shed cut faltered, looked down at himself and then dropped to his knees, crimson flooding in sheets from his side and down his armour. The last of the three jumped in to finish her. She scrabbled aside as his ashgar slammed into the white stone and lashed at him with the bladeless knife. She barely felt any resistance as the knifes blade severed gla.s.s and gold and flesh and bone. He screamed. Another Taiytakei roared and came at her as she rolled to her feet. She didnt try to defend herself this time. Didnt need to. As he lifted his ashgar to smash her, Diamond Eyes tail swatted him, hurling him through the air, a rag-bag of broken bone.

Across the dragon yard, the Taiytakei around the Crowntaker were fighting among themselves. Zafir didnt understand how so many men could have arrived so quickly, but she saw the Crowntaker walk calmly through the chaos, eyes burning silver. Here and there he reached out and touched a Taiytakei and they burst into a cloud of black dust, hanging for a moment in the shape of a man before the wind whipped them away. Lightning struck him and flared like an aura around him; fierce silver light travelled back along frozen thunderbolts and soldiers burned in hostile moonlight fire. Others he simply touched with his gold-handled knife, pausing a moment as he made them his slaves.

Another lightning bolt hit her. It blurred her sight. She didnt run but walked, as the Crowntaker did, to the side of her dragon, expecting death at any second lightning or the bolt from a cross-bow or a hidden knife. She found it didnt trouble her. She felt . . . serene. Men in gla.s.s and gold swung their ashgars at one another and let off lightning at anyone and everyone. A gang of slaves with Tuuran at its head burst out of the tunnels, mad with fear and fury. They ran this way and that, some of them bolting again for shelter, others throwing themselves at the first Taiytakei they saw, dragging them down, pulling off their helms and battering their faces against the stone.

And then the Vespinese still in the air turned and sped away. The Crowntaker raised his hand and silver flashed from his fingers. The last fleeing sleds dissolved into ash, tipping their riders screaming into the abyss below, while those ahead tore off and vanished into the distance. There seemed no method to the Crowntakers fighting. He killed or enslaved or showed mercy or did nothing, all on a whim. The last few stranded Taiytakei left in the dragon yard fell to his knife. Zafir climbed onto Diamond Eyes back. The glas-s.h.i.+ps were closing. Fifty, maybe sixty of them. Too many. Soldiers turned by the Crowntakers horrible knife bowed at his feet as he sent them to Tuuran. Tight cl.u.s.ters of slaves huddled together in the mouths of the tunnels, transfixed by this killer they couldnt understand, this half-G.o.d come among a people for whom the idea of any G.o.d at all was anathema.

'The cannon, Tuuran, she cried. 'We do what we can.

Diamond Eye crossed the dragon yard and climbed the wall. He spread his wings and leaped and, when clear of the rim, allowed himself to fall, diving towards the storm-dark and then soaring up again in lazy circles, higher and higher as the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps came closer. The hatchlings were taking to the air, circling the eyrie. The cannon were turning, slowly coming to bear.

The earth-touched are not all gone. A few remain.

How do you know?

I feel their thoughts, bewildered and full of dread. They are few now but they will return. Diamond Eye banked sharply, tucked in his wings and fell out of the air as the first bolt of lightning flew at him. Over the roar of the wind Zafir barely heard the thunderclap but she felt it p.r.i.c.kle her skin. Diamond Eye pirouetted and shot up, jinked as another bolt of lightning flayed the sky so close that the flash of it dazzled her. She clung to his back, and then he was in among the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps at the edge of their formation.

He fell on one of the silver gondolas and sank his talons into it. Metal groaned and bent. The gla.s.s.h.i.+p swayed and sank under the dragons weight, and then one by one the silver chains snapped. They whipped past her, one of them striking Diamond Eyes neck hard enough to tear his scales. Drops of dragon-blood spattered her visor. Diamond Eye fell like a stone as a cascade of lightning showered the air around him. He curled up into a ball in the air and his wings wrapped tightly around his back, covering her. She felt his pain as lightning struck him. Then he unfurled and hurled the mangled gondola fizzing through the sky. It smashed into the disc of a gla.s.s.h.i.+p. Fractured fragments of lightning arced madly as the gla.s.s cracked and then fell apart in a glitter of shards. Diamond Eye snapped out his wings, crus.h.i.+ng her as he stopped his fall. He threw himself up into the midst of the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps again, fast and close, twisting and turning like a shark in a shoal of jellyfish. His tail lashed and gla.s.s exploded. He crashed into the top of one s.h.i.+p and tore out its heart with his teeth, held it as a s.h.i.+eld against a dozen flashes of lightning as the gla.s.s.h.i.+p fell, then tossed it arcing away to smash into the side of another and send both tumbling away into the abyss.

The first cannon fired from the eyrie, a distant boom and flash scattering a spray of iron. Nothing happened. More flashes and puffs of smoke and still nothing. Diamond Eye wheeled and Zafir clung to him. Lightning hit him and he screamed and fell, and she howled at him until he found his wings and surged up high and dived among them again, the rage surging through them both so nothing mattered except to bring every last s.h.i.+p to the ground and smash it into sand. And there had been a time when she would have guided and fought that fury, as every rider learned to do, but not today, not any more.

A rain of iron b.a.l.l.s fell past her, dozens of them, each the size of her fist. Three clipped the rim of a gla.s.s.h.i.+p, cracking it so great chips fell away. Zafir saw it tip and slowly spin, falling in a leisurely spiral to its death in the maelstrom beneath the eyrie. Diamond Eye began to sing, the same murmuring joy of being unleashed for war that hed sung over Dhar Thosis. He didnt seem to know that he was doing it, but the song curled around Zafir. It was the song of a fight to the bitter end. It writhed inside her, hot and welcome.

Tuuran didnt understand where the soldiers Crazy Mad sent to him had come from. One minute he was standing in the dragon yard swinging his axe to split a man in two, ready to bolt for shelter before someone fried him with lightning, the next moment the Taiytakei were all running away and he was chasing them, and then the one after that, the dragon yard was almost empty and the lightning and the fire had stopped, and there was Crazy, wandering about to the last few men who hadnt got away. He didnt make any pretence about what he was doing. He stabbed them in the chest with his golden knife and whispered in their ear and pointed at Tuuran. And when the soldiers came to him, their eyes were glazed and dull and each one said the same: 'I am your slave, and then stood slack and patient like a golem.

'The cannon, Tuuran! The great red-gold dragon climbed from the yard onto the eyrie wall and launched itself over the side, swooping out of sight and then climbing in long slow circles as the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps came closer. Crazy was out in the middle of the yard now. He sat down as Tuuran watched him, tipped back his head and put his hands on the white stone almost as though he was praying. His eyes blazed. Tuuran looked away. His own world hadnt had much use for praying, but if you were already half a G.o.d then maybe that made all the difference. Maybe Crazy could make all these gla.s.s.h.i.+ps simply vanish. Hed do what hed do, whatever that might be, and after what Tuuran had seen these last few weeks, he reckoned that could be almost anything or nothing at all.

Cannon then. He shook his head and started yelling, dividing his men into four squads, one for each of the cannon that still worked three groups of Crazys Taiytakei with their dull eyes and a fourth he took himself with the last free fighting men on the eyrie. He sent them with orders simple enough even for an Adamantine Man. Hold your position. Destroy as many gla.s.s.h.i.+ps as you can. Keep firing until either you or they are dead. Nothing else matters. He might have added something about running away at some point, only to where?

The hatchlings took to the air to circle. The dragon and the dragon-queen dived. The rims of the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps glowed a brilliant white like the sun, and Tuuran heard their thunder rumble over the roar of the wind as the first bolts arced. The dragon twisted as though it knew what was coming, jinked, wheeled and dodged and shot suddenly up through the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps. Tuuran squinted. Dazzling shards exploded in its wake. A first gla.s.s.h.i.+p began to fall, and the soldiers around Tuuran jumped and punched the air and howled and cheered. Then the dragon fell and a cascade of lightning flew after it. Another gla.s.s.h.i.+p shattered and broke apart and the soldiers let out another cheer. The dragon flared its wings and began to rise again, powering up with a strength Tuuran didnt remember from any dragon in the realms of his home.

He felt the air tingle. Lightning arced from the nearest gla.s.s.h.i.+p but it fizzed into nothing before it reached the eyrie rim. They were coming low, level with the eyrie where the cannon couldnt bear on them. Black-powder cannon were designed to fire from the ground at gla.s.s.h.i.+ps attacking from the sky. No one had thought that on an eyrie already flying a mile over the ground that wasnt so clever. The alchemist had explained this to Tuuran long ago and theyd had a bit of a laugh at the Taiytakei for not being as smart as they liked to think; but the alchemist had also whispered a little secret in Tuurans ear that hed never have thought of himself but was so patently obvious. What goes up must come down. And gla.s.s.h.i.+ps, unlike dragons, were big and slow.

They had the cannon turned toward the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps, the barrels cranked for the furthest range they could manage. Hed seen it done with scorpions before and archers did it all the time, arcing up-and-over shots instead of shooting straight. No one had ever hit a dragon with a scorpion doing something so daft, but dragons were fast and agile and gla.s.s.h.i.+ps werent. And there were a lot of them and they were cl.u.s.tered together, concentrating their lightning to drive the dragon away.

He winced as the first cannon fired, as loud as any thunder, then squinted to see whether it made a difference. He hadnt the first idea, but the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps were coming straight towards the eyrie, and all he had to do was keep making it rain iron b.a.l.l.s somewhere between them and eventually hed hit something. And he had a lot of iron b.a.l.l.s and a crew of a dozen men for each cl.u.s.ter of cannon and a whole pile of conveniently abandoned sleds to carry all the powder and shot.

Sleds.

He didnt know where the warning came from but it made him suddenly look back behind him, away from the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps.

Liang ran out into the hatchery, hugging the eyrie wall, eyes darting everywhere for the next thing that would try to kill her. Sleds shot overhead and lightning rained from the sky. The hatchling dragons screamed and burned and lashed their tails and tore apart any who came near the cannon. A killer appeared and slashed, severing a hatchlings wing as he burned in the dragons fire. Out over the rim and beyond the wall, soldiers on sleds swarmed around the black-powder cannon. The air fizzed and flashed with thunder as the Taiytakei swung their ashgars and slaughtered each other. Dozens of men fell, and then a spark must have set off some powder and one of the cannon exploded. Liang reeled. Over the roar of the wind and the lightning, the detonation rang in her ears. Debris irons b.a.l.l.s, bits of cannon, shards of mangled gold-gla.s.s, limbs and broken bodies fizzed across the eyrie and showered over the far side of the dragon yard and the rim beyond. The Taiytakei around the cannon were pulverised and the blast picked up and shook every sled within a hundred yards, flinging them through the air, shrugging off riders to crash to the yard or the walls or fall screaming to the all-devouring storm-dark a mile below. More soldiers on sleds swarmed around the other cannon. Hatchlings shrieked and tore them down.

Liang kept as far away as she could. She scurried to the closest set of steps, well away from any of the cannon cl.u.s.ters on the rim. The crippled hatchling turned its head to look at her, more curious than anything, as if trying to understand what she was doing. Liang climbed to the top of the wall. She slipped and slid down the outside and then she was on the rim. The cannon here were already ruined, destroyed in the Vespinese attack weeks ago when Tsen had vanished. It was almost quiet here except for the wind. There was one other thing out on this side though.

Liang looked up at the gla.s.s.h.i.+p floating overhead, one of the five now keeping the eyrie aloft.

A sled shot past Tuurans head as he dived around the bulk of the cannon. Lightning cracked and sparked along the barrel. Another sled whizzed past. The soldier on it levelled his wand and then vanished, torn off and thrown away by a furious hatchling. It was all wrong, fighting with a dragon and not against it. Then again it was all wrong fighting men on flying gla.s.s sleds who threw lightning, especially when he didnt have any of their nice fancy armour. A solid brigandine had done him fine in Dhar Thosis, but now he was b.u.g.g.e.red.

He cringed behind his gold-gla.s.s s.h.i.+eld. Lightning slammed into it, dazzling him. He picked up a stone, ready to throw it, but the sled had shot off over the dragon yard and now another raced overhead. The soldier on the back swung his ashgar and sent one of Tuurans sword-slaves flying. The Taiytakei had wands, armour and their sleds. Tuurans soldiers had sleds too, but the Vespinese Taiytakei were practised with them, and knew how to fly, and that made all the difference.

The lightning from the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps was getting closer. They were coming in range. Another minute or so and theyd start hitting the eyrie rim. Another minute after that and theyd reach the cannon and then . . . well, never mind then. Had to last that long first.

'Keep firing the cannon! he screamed, not that anyone could hear him over the roar of the wind and the cacophony of screams and dragon shrieks and thunderclaps. Four bolts. .h.i.t a hatchling all at once. It crashed out of the air and smashed into the rim, rolled and jumped up and shook itself and was back in the air at once, mad with fury, but for a moment the Taiytakei had him and his men at their mercy . . .

A thunderous explosion shook the eyrie. He felt it through his feet a moment before he heard it and then a thumping wall of air hammered into him, staggering him, almost knocking him down. Pieces of stone and flying metal fizzed overhead. Something hit his s.h.i.+eld hard enough to crack it, almost knocking it out of his hand. He saw a plume of bright fire, smoke trails arcing away before they were torn apart by the buffeting wind. Men and sleds tumbled and fell all around him. A Taiytakei landed heavily in front of him and groaned, dazed. Tuuran brought his axe down before the man could get up. Two cannons were still firing but his own sword-slaves were too busy fighting for their lives to tip bags of powder and iron b.a.l.l.s into the barrels. He saw one on a sled turn and flee and then another, and he couldnt say he blamed them for it, and then one of the hatchlings shot out from the eyrie and tore them both to pieces. 'Our side! Tuuran screamed, not that the dragon could hear, but he was sure it knew exactly what it was doing. They had no mercy, no fear, no remorse, and certainly no kindness.

He cowered behind his s.h.i.+eld as another barrage of lightning flew at him. He was right next to the powder store. Deliberate choice, but now the Taiytakei knew what they had to do and they were firing at him again and again, and all he could do was hide behind the s.h.i.+eld and wait for a spark and . . .

Shadow engulfed him. The red-gold dragon swooped and shot over the top of his cannon as it sped back towards the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps. The wind of its wings tumbled sleds, tossed riders into the air and scattered them to the stone below, Taiytakei and his own sword-slaves alike. One sled smashed into the cannon. Tuuran looked about. Half his men were dead. The rest were running. He was on his own. He picked up the broken sled, thought for a bit about propping it over the powder store and then reckoned that was pointless given there wasnt anyone left to load the cannon anyway. He jumped on it and tried to make it fly but it just sat under his feet and did nothing except make him feel stupid. The hard way then.

On foot he bolted around the rim for the cannon that were still firing.

Liang moulded her bomb until it was wrapped around all of the silver chains that connected the eyrie to the gla.s.s.h.i.+p above. Everyone was missing the point. They were fighting over the eyrie but why did it matter? The dragons, Zafir, the sorcerer sitting quietly in the middle of it all while anarchy and chaos and the end of the world exploded around him . . . no one would ever truly own any of them. They had to go. No eyrie, no more dragons.

She fired her lightning wand at the bomb, reeled from the light and then staggered and fell as a wall of hot air slammed into her. As she lay dazed, she wished she hadnt fought Tsen so hard for so many gla.s.s.h.i.+ps to keep them from falling into the storm-dark and cursed Lin Feyn for setting enchantments she couldnt break.

She picked herself up. The silver chains were severed. Four more to go. Shed stand a little further away for the next lot.

A second cannon exploded. The blast knocked Tuuran off his feet and more of the Taiytakei off their sleds but they still kept coming. There were several on the ground again now and Tuuran kept waiting for Crazy to do something instead of sitting there with his head back, staring with his silver eyes up at the sky, but he didnt. He just sat, and anyone who went near him simply vanished into black vapour and blew away in the wind.

The rim was still littered with junk and all manner of detritus. Liang spotted a slave hiding, curled up under the ruin of a crane that had once lifted supplies from the desert. The eyrie had never struck her as particularly large, but running around the rim with a bomb in her hands to the second mooring, it felt vast. She couldnt remember the last time shed run so fast, or if shed ever been as terrified as she was now.

She glanced at the approaching gla.s.s.h.i.+ps. Their lightning was almost at the walls. She couldnt see the dragon rampaging in their midst but she didnt dare hope it was dead. Nothing ever seemed enough. Dragon and rider alike, somehow they survived everything.

She reached the second mooring, set off her bomb around the silver chains, stayed long enough to see that all of them were severed and then ran back the way shed come, flooded with relief to be free of the cursed thing, only to have the great red-gold dragon shoot up from under the rim straight over the top of her, flattening her and almost making her heart stop. There were holes in its wings, charred and ragged. The dragon circled the eyrie once, caused havoc among the Taiytakei on their sleds, knocked half of them out of the sky with the wind of its pa.s.sing, and then shrieked and arrowed away. On the far side of the rim another detonation shook the ground as a second cannon exploded. Liang picked herself up, shaking. Three more moorings and then it would all be over, and it was just a matter of finding a sled that still worked and getting Belli to stand on the back of it with her never mind his terror of heights and then not being eaten by a dragon or shot down by lightning as they fled, and maybe, just maybe, escaping all the way from the G.o.dspike to the Dralamut.

It made her laugh sometimes, her own boundless optimism that somehow everything would end not too badly after all. Helped with the shaking though. She ran back around the rim and over the wall to the mouth of the tunnel where she kept her bombs and her sled; and it was only as she reached the entrance to the spiralling pa.s.sages that she saw the crippled hatchling, waiting for her there.

Tuurans cannon were silent. The lightning from the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps had reached the wall now and they were climbing. He saw a hatchling struck again and again by Taiytakei wands until it crashed into the dragon yard, and then a dozen soldiers struck it with more lightning from the air, over and over, keeping it writhing and helpless while three men on the ground with ashgars clubbed at its head. Another hatchling shot through them, scattering the soldiers on the sleds and tearing two of the Taiytakei from the ground in its talons and hurling them away, but too late. The fallen hatchling didnt move.

Tuuran half ran and half fell down the steps to the dragon yard. What defence was left was cl.u.s.tered around the last cannon now, two hatchlings and a few dozen soldiers, but they were being swamped, the men cowering behind their s.h.i.+elds under a deluge of lightning. The gla.s.s.h.i.+ps were still falling, one by one, smashed by cannon fire or torn from the sky by the raging dragon, but nowhere near fast enough. Once the eyrie was in range of their cannon, everything would be over. He raced into the middle of the yard.

'Crazy! Somehow the wind was blowing more strongly in his face. 'Crazy! Do something! Look!

But Crazy Mad didnt look up, and as Tuuran tried to get closer, he found the air thicker and thicker until a few feet away from Crazy it was like trying to walk through a wall and he simply couldnt. 'Crazy! Youve got to . . .

The eyrie shook as the cannon behind him blew apart.

Liangs eyes bulged. The hatchling came at her, and the air was full of men on sleds and lightning, and any moment now one of them was going to see her, just another slave in the open, and shoot her down. She reached for a piece of gla.s.s to mould and throw at the dragon, but as she did, the hatchling suddenly turned and Liang saw the flicker of a man appear beside it and then vanish again. The hatchling jumped back and spat a gout of flame. The moment was enough. Liang threw the gla.s.s into the tunnel entrance, shaping it as it flew to seal the tunnel shut and the hatchling inside it. It wouldnt hold for long but maybe long enough. She turned and ran back for the wall, up the steps and over the other side, looking for a place to hide.

The air popped beside her. A killer. She whimpered and looked down at herself but there was no cut, no bladeless knife drawing away already dripping red with her blood. He looked at her. The knife was in his hand, ready. 'For whom do you fight, enchantress?

She was shaking so much that she could hardly speak and she couldnt stop looking at the knife. Any moment now and hed use it and then shed die, but worse Belli would die too. She had more gla.s.s and she could make a s.h.i.+eld, but it wouldnt matter because she didnt have time and he could appear anywhere he liked and the bladeless knife would cut through metal and gla.s.s as though it was air, and then shed never finish severing the moorings to sink them all into the storm-dark, and even if he didnt kill her here and now, shed sealed the hatchling into the tunnel and the bombs shed made were in there too and shed never get to . . .

She stopped. Froze for a moment, consumed by her own quivering and the pounding of her heart. The knife . . .

'I would sink this eyrie into the storm-dark, she quavered, still staring at the knife. 'I was trying to do that. I was cutting the chains. But you could do that. You could cut them all. In a blink. Any one of you could.

His face was a blank mask. She had no idea whether he understood. She went from terror to wanting to shake him.

'Cut the chains that tether the eyrie to the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps! Finish what Tsen tried to do! It will all sink into the storm-dark and be gone for ever.

He didnt move. She closed her eyes and waited for the cut to end her life, but it didnt come. When she opened them again, hed vanished.

Diamond Eye was gone, lost to hunger and rage. Zafir felt his sense of death, his own coming end, but greater still his hunger to be a storm as he fell upon the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps yet again, a frenzy of tooth and claw and las.h.i.+ng tail. Twice he tumbled towards the storm-dark below, helpless and dazed and dazzled with pain, mind ragged and jumbled and askew, and twice Zafir had screamed him back. Shed torn through the cacophony and the madness and rammed the order of her will into him. Fly! Fly! Spread your wings and fly! The second time theyd fallen theyd almost touched the maelstrom, but shed done it. Shed saved them both and the dragon knew it. See. We have a use.

Diamond Eye didnt answer. He powered up in renewed fury towards the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps as another one splintered and cracked under a hail of iron from the eyrie cannon. There was nothing their enemies could do but hang helplessly in the sky and hurl their lightning. Diamond Eye flew higher then turned and fell upon them, cras.h.i.+ng into the highest, slas.h.i.+ng and biting at the discs at the heart of it until the gla.s.s.h.i.+p tipped and began to slide to its end. He fell upon another and tore out its heart and gripped it with his claws, dragging it towards the next, s.h.i.+elding himself with it from the lightning that flashed and thundered around them. The gla.s.s.h.i.+ps crashed together and exploded into shards while the dragon stormed on, slas.h.i.+ng with his shattering tail, swooping and soaring as their gold rims glowed with white-hot light and Zafir felt the air p.r.i.c.kle and scratch in the hail of lightning. They were almost over the eyrie now, the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps raining death over everything, the battle already lost, the end coming close. Zafir closed her eyes. Her heart sang. They were primal beings now, both of them, locked together in this, dying as a dragon and a dragon-queen should die. Lightning shattered the air above her, beside her, all around her. Noise deafening, light blinding, yet Diamond Eye jinked and dived and rose and rolled between the thunderbolts. The air smelled of fire and sorcery, that burning tang that rose sometimes from the depths of her old palace where the Silver King had made his miracles.

Lightning from the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps was. .h.i.tting the walls. Crazy didnt flinch. Tuuran shook his head and turned his back and ran for the tunnels because now there was nothing he could do except find a sled and go. The eyrie shuddered again. He had the strangest feeling as though it was tipping, like a s.h.i.+p rolling in the swell of the sea.

A thunderbolt struck Diamond Eyes wing near the shoulder, punching another hole through the skin. Sparks arced along his wing and rippled over his scales. He tipped sideways. The glowing golden rims of the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps brightened to fire again. Another bolt hit him in the belly. He shrieked and tumbled into one of the gla.s.s discs, a savagery of tooth and claw and tail and fire, blindly smas.h.i.+ng it down. Straps in Zafirs harness groaned and snapped as he wheeled and tried to recover. She felt his rage at these s.h.i.+ps-that-flew, burning her on the inside as his flames scorched the air without. Another bolt hit him at the base of his tail. She felt the shudder. Sparks ran over his scales and then there was another thunderclap and she felt her skin p.r.i.c.kle . . .

A bolt hit his neck a yard in front of her. For a moment her mind went blank. The noise drowned everything. She almost flew from the saddle but the remains of the harness held. Her heart stopped and then began beating again. Every muscle turned rigid. Diamond Eye fell, blind, dazed with pain, one wing paralysed. He couldnt lift his head.

We tried, she told him. We tried and we died well. Then she urged him: Fly! Fly! Flare your wings and fly, d.a.m.n you! But Diamond Eye was too far gone to hear or care for her tiny voice. He almost managed to right himself at the last, flaring one wing to break the fall, but he couldnt flare the other and rolled. The dragon yard was suddenly above her, spinning wildly. He slammed into the stone on his side. The crash smashed her hard against his scales and yet her harness still held, and though bones and muscles screamed and tore, somehow she was alive. Luck, this time. Diamond Eye had forgotten she was even there.

He moved sluggishly, unsteadily. Trying to right himself. Lightning flared again, striking the last cl.u.s.ter of cannon. She heard them die, exploding in showers of fireworks and flying twisted metal. The dragon yard was littered with shattered gla.s.s and dismembered dead. She tried to make her arms move, to make her hands uncurl from the fists theyd become.

Lightning struck from above. Diamond Eye spasmed. Zafir gasped as the shock of it ran through her. Her fingers were too numb to undo the harness but there was still the bladeless knife. She forced her shaking hand to pull it free and cut, slas.h.i.+ng at the ropes, cutting the dragons scales and the flesh beneath in her frenzy to be free. Another bolt struck and then another. Diamond Eye writhed and curled and the sky went dark as one wing covered them both and she fell, sliding and tumbling over his burning scales to land on the stone, pressed up beside him, too broken to even move. Her eyes closed as thunder burst around her.

Liang made it to another tunnel. She felt the s.h.i.+ft of the eyrie through her feet as she reached it, the lurch as it started to fall. Tsen had shown them all how long it would take, that the eyrie would fall slowly like a stricken gla.s.s.h.i.+p, not plunge like a stone, so she knew she had time. She paused and looked up before she entered the tunnel, watching the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps overhead, dozens of them raining lightning in a storm around the dragon as it finally fell, and then picking out the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps that had once belonged to Baros Tsen TVarr, drifting up now, their dangling chains slack beneath. She stayed until shed counted them and knew for certain that the Elemental Man had finished what shed started.

The shock as the dragon hit the stone of the yard almost knocked her off her feet. She turned and ran as fast as she could and never mind how her legs burned and her feet hurt. She was in tunnels that had been the barracks once, an unfamiliar place, but that didnt matter. They all spiralled in the same downward fractal pattern to the chamber at the eyries core where Baros Tsen had built his bathhouse amid the ring of white stone arches. She met no one. Everyone was dead or had fled to the darkest corner they could find. She stumbled and fell as she ran, legs pumping too fast for the rest of her to keep up until she sprawled across the white stone floor. She got up again, dimly aware of the pain, raced on, deeper and deeper, dodging and hurdling the ripped bodies that still lay scattered about until she reached the open doorway to the bathhouse. Cold air billowed out, chilled by the enchantments shed made for the bath house to become a morgue.

She stopped. The arches. Shed seen them on the very first day shed come to the eyrie, when Tsen showed her around. What do you make of these, enchantress? And shed made nothing of them at all because they were simply a ring of white stone arches around a white stone slab. An altar to old forbidden G.o.ds perhaps, that was all she could say, and Tsen had laughed and declared it as fine a place as any to build his bath and drink his apple wine. After that, shed not spared them a second thought.

The archways s.h.i.+mmered silver now. s.h.i.+ning liquid moonlight. She went up to one and almost touched it to see if it would ripple, then shook herself and s.h.i.+vered in the unnatural cold and ran on. She was here for Belli, to get them away before the eyrie plunged into the storm-dark, because when it did, everything here would be gone as though it had never existed. She ran past Tsens old rooms, past her workshop to Bellis study, praying to the forbidden G.o.ds that he was still there, that he hadnt moved, that she would find him; and there, waiting for her, was the crippled hatchling.

Liang skittered to a stop. The hatchling almost didnt see her, but then it turned and shrieked and its talons scrabbled at the stone, clawing for purchase. Liang dived back into her workshop, looking for a globe of gla.s.s to throw, grabbing the first that came to hand. She stumbled, turned as she fell and threw the gla.s.s back at the doorway as hard as she could, willing it into a cage. The dragon pushed inside but it was slow and hampered by the narrow entrance. The gla.s.s missed its head and hit its flank and burst in a thunderclap of imploding air. The dragon lurched and seemed to shrink in on itself. It fell dead at once, a gaping hole in its side where a festering dark black ma.s.s now floated in the air, lit from within by tiny flickers of purple.

Horror gripped Liang as she realised what shed done. The gla.s.s shed thrown had been Red Lin Feyns captured piece of the storm-dark and now a tiny cloud of it hovered free in the doorway, the dead hatchling underneath blocking the rest of the way out.

She had to find a sled. She had to get to Belli. She had to . . . but there was no way she could move the hatchling on her own . . .

Lin Feyn had never said what would happen if the globe broke. Something bad, surely. Maybe not so bad if they were all doomed anyway, but now she couldnt get out and so Belli would die and so would she, and she wasnt ready for that, not after everything theyd been through. She reached her mind into the storm-dark as she would into her enchanted gla.s.s. There was a twist, Lin Feyn had told her. A reaching in and then doing something different. Not a bit different but completely alien.

Gla.s.s was all about control. Delicate, intricate, precise thoughts.

Maybe she could pile up some furniture and climb over. Maybe there was enough s.p.a.ce . . . But the eyrie was falling and it would all take too long.

She reached out and touched the storm-dark. She screamed all her pain and desperation and anguish, knowing that shed never make it move, that it had her trapped.

Before her eyes the storm-dark obediently curled into a ball and floated in her palm.

Kill me, whispered the dragon through the lightning and the screaming pain. Zafir opened her eyes and shuddered awake. Every thing ached, but worse than that was the dull numbness inside. When she tried to move, her arms flailed. Her legs twitched. She tried again and cried out at a stabbing pain that ripped through her insides. The doll-womans circlet felt tight around her skull. Squeezing her.

I cant. Im dying.

Kill me, little one. We are falling into the abyss.

Then the storm-dark will kill us both. Youll come back.

The storm-dark will unmake me. It will be the end.

She saw the dragons thoughts and understood. A final end and the dragon was, at last, afraid. With gasping effort she forced her eyes to open and looked for the bladeless knife. It was right beside her. Her fingers clawed at the circlet. Somewhere, the doll-woman was trying to kill her. Shed always supposed it would be sudden and quick. Not like this.

Her hand closed around the hilt of the knife.

Drive it deep, little one.

Diamond Eye shuddered as lightning hit him again. Shed have to leave the wing that lay over her, s.h.i.+elding her. Shed have to haul herself out. Have to drive the knife through his skull. She started to crawl. Standing up was too much. She pulled herself with her arms and pushed with the one leg that still worked, inching along his body. She wondered briefly why she was doing this, what difference it made, then threw the thought away. Diamond Eye was hers and she was his. She pushed her way out from under his wing, hauled herself up with her hands, tugging on his scales until she was standing on one leg. The other would barely take any weight. She whimpered at the pain around her head. The pressure was crus.h.i.+ng her skin.

Im cold, she told him. She was bleeding inside. Had to be. She could feel blood inside her armour too, drying, tacky, sticking her silk s.h.i.+ft to her skin.