Master of Dragons Read online

  It was then, slowly, that Imladrik began to recover his equilibrium. He felt the swell and dip of the mighty muscles beneath him and smelled the smoky copper stench of his mount. He saw the stars spin above him and the gore-sodden earth stretch away below. For the first time since the kill-lust had taken him, he truly took in the scale of the destruction.

  He allowed Draukhain to carry him across the face of the plain. They flew in silence, the roars and battle-cries stilled.

  He could not count the dead. Thousands lay in the mire, spines broken and armour cracked. They stretched from the walls right up to the eaves of the trees, half-buried in muck and slowly cooling gore.

  Draukhain still flew strongly. His spirit burned hot. A palpable sense of satisfaction emanated from his blood-streaked body.

  Imladrik said nothing. His heart was still beating far faster than usual. His breathing was shallow and rapid. His palms were scorched even through his gauntlets and his sword still glowed red.

  The dragon did not slow until they reached the walls again. He flew low over the asur on the plain, who whooped and saluted as they soared overhead, before rising up towards the Tower of Winds.

  No, sang Imladrik, his first words since giving the order to unleash the drakes. The walls.

  Draukhain understood, and banked steeply, heading back towards the breach where he had first sensed Thoriol. In a few moments he had found the spot again and hovered over it. Menials were already at work clearing the bodies from the stonework, labouring under the light of torches brought up from the lower city.

  Imladrik guided Draukhain to the breach. The parapets were almost clear; only a few sentries from the archer companies remained, and they cowered in the dragon’s shadow, awe-struck.

  ‘Where are the archers who were stationed here?’ demanded Imladrik, finding it strange to hear his mortal voice out loud again. His throat was raw and painful.

  One of the sentries, shading his eyes against the fiery presence above him, stammered a response.

  ‘Th-they withdrew to the healing house. With the others.’

  ‘Their wounded?’

  ‘They took them. The captain died. Two others died.’

  ‘Who lived?’

  ‘Loeth did, lord, and the Silent, and–’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Thoriol, the Silent, lord.’

  A desperate hope kindled. ‘Go to the healing house now. Find the captain of the guard and tell him to place a watch on it. Tell him that Imladrik orders it, and will be with him soon.’

  The sentry bowed, and fled.

  Then Draukhain rose up once more, spiralling higher, his tail curling around the charred and semi-ruined spires.

  Where now? the dragon asked.

  Imladrik drew in a long, weary breath. He felt sick. He saw Yethanial’s face before his mind, calm and grey. Then he saw Liandra’s, the polar opposite. He wanted to be furious with her still, but sheer exhaustion got the better of him.

  The Tower of Winds, he sang gloomily.

  He knew why such torpor affected him: it was always the same after the brief releases of power. Every action had its price, and losing control exacted a heavy burden.

  Draukhain thrust upwards, his flight as effortless as ever. The dragon could have flown for days and never grown weary. He was a force of nature, a shard of the world’s energy captured and given form; for such as him a night’s carnage was of little consequence.

  You have done what they asked of you, Draukhain sang, in a rare concession to Imladrik’s disquiet. This is the end. We shall hunt them all the way back to their caves now.

  Imladrik laughed hollowly. Ah, great one. No, this is not the end. This is just the start.

  Draukhain’s long neck swung to and fro in a gesture uncannily like a mortal shaking his head. You will never be satisfied.

  No, probably not.

  They reached the open platform just below the tower’s topmost pinnacle. Salendor was there, as were Aelis, Gelthar and many other mages. The spellcasters looked on the edge of collapsing. A raw aroma of aethyric discharge hung on the air like snuffed candles.

  Salendor was the first to salute Imladrik. He looked genuinely impressed, his hard expression softening into something close to relieved remorse.

  ‘Hail, lord! You did as you promised.’

  Draukhain drew close to the platform’s edge. Imladrik pushed himself from his mount, stumbling awkwardly as he touched down on to the stone. His joints were raw and stiff, his limbs wooden. Servants rushed to aid him and he waved them away.

  ‘You doubted the drakes,’ Imladrik replied, allowing himself to take a little satisfaction in Salendor’s rare humility.

  To his credit, Salendor bowed. ‘I did. And their master.’

  Imladrik turned to Aelis. ‘Any word of Liandra?’

  Aelis shook her head. As she did so, Imladrik felt a warmth at his back, running up his spine. The air stirred, rustled by an ember-hot wind.

  He turned. All six of the dragons were suspended above the platform, five of them still bearing their riders. They held position in a semicircle, heads lowered, spines arched steeply. They hung in perfect formation, huge and terrible, making the robes of the mages bloom and flap from the beat of their wings.

  Before the battle each one had been a different colour, as glorious as new-mined precious gems. Now they were all red, covered in the blood of the slain, dripping as if dipped in vats of it, glistening in the light of the fires like raw sides of meat.

  ‘They salute you, lord,’ said Aelis, her eyes shining with wonder.

  Imladrik saw then how he must look to the others. He too was drenched from head to toe in blood. He too looked like a visitation from some other world, one of reckless savagery and unlocked murder.

  He didn’t know what to say. The dragons’ fealty, for the first time, embarrassed him. In the light of what he had done, his failure, his loss of control – it felt like a mockery.

  You become the dragon, the dragon becomes you.

  ‘Enough,’ he said, turning away from them and beginning to walk. His heart was heavy, his footprints dull crimson smudges on the marble. ‘My son is here. The boy has need of me.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Yethanial woke suddenly. She had only been asleep for a short time, retiring early after a long and gruelling session at her writing desk. Ever since Imladrik had gone her mind had struggled to retain its focus. She dreamed of him often, imagining him at the heart of battle, mounted on that damned creature that made his moods wild and dark.

  Her chamber was still lit by half-burned candles. The windows rattled from the wind, a strong easterly. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Sleep, she knew, would be elusive now.

  It could not go on. She had tried to pretend that all was well for too long. She reached out to the table by her bed and rang a small brass bell.

  A few moments later her maidservant entered, bowing as she drew close to the bed.

  ‘I asked you for word of my son,’ said Yethanial.

  ‘There has been none, lady. Not for many days. The master-at-arms believes…’ The girl trailed off, uncertain whether she should go on.

  ‘That he is no longer on Ulthuan,’ said Yethanial. She had come to the same conclusion herself, but unwillingness to countenance it had prevented her from acting. ‘We must accept that he is right. And if he is not on Ulthuan, then there is only one place in the world he would have fled to.’

  She reached for a scrap of parchment – there were always several lying close to her bed – and began to write with an old quill and half-clotted ink.

  ‘I have stayed here long enough, pining like some useless wife. I am not some useless wife. I am a daughter of Isha with the blood of princes in my veins.’

  She handed the parchment to her servant. ‘Take this to the harbourmaster at Cothmar. Ensure he
finds me a good ship – fast, and with room for a dozen guards. Take my house seal so he knows who asks him. I will travel tomorrow and will be at the quayside by noon.’

  The maidservant bowed again, taking the parchment. ‘How long will you be gone, lady?’

  Yethanial sat back against her bolsters, dreading the long night ahead.

  ‘I have no idea. Long enough.’

  The maidservant left, hurrying as she went. Yethanial heard her echoing steps as she skipped down the stairs. Soon after she heard the slam of doors and the creak of the great gates, followed by the drum of horses’ hooves in the night.

  She hated the thought of leaving. She hated not being in Ulthuan, and hated the thought of a long and dangerous sea crossing. Caledor, had he known, would almost certainly have forbidden it.

  Yethanial lay back, pulling the sheets around her. It could not be helped. Even if she had not had such dreams she would have made the crossing, for the sake of her son if for nothing else.

  It had always been Thoriol who had drawn them together – he, in the end, remained the strongest bond between them.

  One by one, the candles in her chamber blew out, gradually clothing the room in darkness. Yethanial lay there, her mind alert and unsleeping, her hands loosely clasped over the counterpane. Even when the last one guttered out, little more than a pool of wax in the silver holder, she was still awake, her grey eyes shining with resolve.

  Liandra shaded her eyes against the horizon-glare. For a moment she didn’t believe it – just another mirage on the baking world’s edge, a false hope born from desperation.

  Then it didn’t go away. She looked closer, squinting into the distance. It stayed put, tantalisingly so.

  A city. The city. One she had never visited but had known must be close: Oeragor, Imladrik’s own, thrust out into the utter margins of asur territory in Elthin Arvan and raised from the choking desert in defiance of all reason.

  Drutheira didn’t say anything. It would have been hard for her to do so with a gag ripped from her own robes wrapped tightly around her jaw. The druchii’s eyes were red-rimmed, her stance slumped in the heat.

  Every so often on the long trek east she had fallen, no doubt from genuine fatigue. On those occasions Liandra had waited patiently for her to get up, neither helping nor hindering. The druchii witch didn’t like to show weakness and would struggle to her feet again when she could. With her arms bound tightly, her tongue clamped and her staff shattered she was no longer a threat, just an encumbrance.

  Killing her would have given a modicum of satisfaction. Over the past two days Liandra had come close. Once, in the middle of the night as the campfire burned low, she had reached over to the witch’s slumbering form, knife in hand, just a hair’s breadth away from plunging the point into her throat.

  It had not been mercy that had held her back. In a strange, shadowy way Liandra felt like the dark elf had been part of her life for a long time, an integral part of the struggling tale of the colonies. Drutheira was a dark mirror to her, a spectral counterpart of Liandra’s own fiery presence.

  When she had first come round from her deep unconsciousness, the witch had smiled thinly.

  ‘So you won,’ she had said, as if that was all there was to it.

  It had been unutterably eerie to look into the violet eyes of her quarry. The hatred Liandra felt for her was too intense to generate even a token response. She stayed her dagger-hand, though.

  Perhaps she had learned something from Imladrik after all, and saw the larger canvas spread out before her. The witch knew things: she knew why the druchii had been active, why they had been sent, how many were still in Elthin Arvan. Her very existence was the proof Imladrik needed. If Liandra could bring her back to Tor Alessi alive then the dream of a settlement was not yet dead.

  All of which, though, meant nothing if she failed to keep her alive.

  Liandra hauled Drutheira along behind her on a length of cord taken from her belt. The witch was in a far worse state than her, ravaged by what must have been months out in the wild. Liandra never untied her and never let her speak again, but soon stopped fearing her powers.

  The first day was the worst. Plagued by terrible headaches from the sun, progress amounted to little more than putting one foot in front of the other. All Liandra had to guide her was old memories and a vague sense of rightness – like all the asur mageborn she could sense the echoes and resonances of her kind even from immense distances, shimmering amid the aethyr like the whispers of overheard conversations. Many times on that trek she stood still, eyes closed, letting her mind rove ahead of her, seeking out the source of the faint aura of familiarity.

  Such work was easier in the absence of Vranesh’s huge influence. With the dragon gone, Liandra’s mind seemed to work more surely. Once the worst of the grief had subsided she found her moods calming down, settling into the analytical patterns required for survival. She still missed the drake’s voice – unbearably so, at times – but it was impossible not to also notice how much freer she felt once out of its shadow.

  It wasn’t until the third day that she began to give up hope. The hard land yawned away from her in every direction, a semi-desert of scree, dust and thorny bushes that gave neither shelter nor moisture. Both of them suffered. Drutheira’s eyes were permanently half-closed and puffy, her breathing little more than a soft rattle. They spent most of the morning struggling down a winding defile and having to clamber over boulders twice their size. Only at the end of it, after miles of solid torture, did the landscape finally open up again.

  Liandra looked east, and her heart sank: the land was as featureless and barren as the rest. But then she saw them, hard on the edge of her vision: spires, hazy in the distance, glinting like ivory in the sun.

  ‘Oeragor,’ she breathed. It was the first word she had spoken aloud for three days.

  Drutheira stood beside her, swaying, looking like she had barely any awareness of where she was. Liandra glanced coldly at her. ‘They will welcome you there, witch. Always a chamber to be found for the druchii.’

  They started to walk again. After the initial euphoria wore off the precariousness of their position reasserted itself. Liandra went steadily, trying not to breathe too heavily, feeling the solid heat hammer at her back and shoulders. She had wound fabric from her cloak over her head, but though it protected her skin from the worst of the sun, it made her feel claustrophobic and stuffy. Every time she looked up the spires seemed to be just where they had been the last time – too far away.

  After several hours of trudging she realised she wouldn’t make it. Her heart was labouring like an old carthorse’s. Her throat was so bone-dry she could no longer swallow and her lips were split and bleeding. The towers remained just where they had been all along: within eyesight, still too far.

  Drutheira was in even worse shape. When Liandra stopped the witch fell to the ground and stayed there. Liandra couldn’t be sure she was breathing and couldn’t be sure that she cared. She sank to her knees, wondering just how long it would take for the sun to fry her into wizened ashes. There was no shelter, no moisture, just open miles of horrific, bleary, seamy heat.

  She closed her eyes. After a while, oddly, she began to feel better. The heat on her shoulders felt a little less intense, the air a little less stultifying. Perhaps, she thought, this was what dying felt like.

  She opened her eyes again and looked up, half expecting to see the skies unravelling into waves of pure sunlight. Instead she stared straight up into the jaws of a huge creature, hovering above her on massive wings like a golden eagle’s. A cruel curved beak snapped at her less than an arm’s length from her face. She smelled the tart scent of animal breath on the wind.

  For a moment she thought she was hallucinating. Then she saw the rider mounted on the back of the beast – asur armour lined with black and bronze – and realised what it was: a griffon, magnificent in leon
ine splendour.

  ‘I would have slain you for a dwarf,’ called the rider, shading her with his beast’s wings. He landed and dismounted, bringing a gourd of water with him. Liandra saw the sigil of Oeragor – a black griffon rampant on an argent field – embroidered on the fabric, and would have smiled if her mouth still worked.

  She drank, just a little, letting the griffon-rider hold the gourd for her. The water was cool, almost painfully so.

  ‘We do not see many travellers out in the Blight,’ he said. ‘If I had not been aloft–’

  ‘Don’t,’ croaked Liandra. ‘I do not wish to think on that.’

  ‘And your companion?’

  ‘Druchii.’

  The griffon rider started, hand leaping to the hilt of his sword, but Liandra shook her head weakly.

  ‘Captive,’ she rasped, forcing the words out. She began to feel dizzy again, and struggled to keep her poise. ‘Bringing… to the city. Take us there. Lord… Imladrik…’

  That was all she got out. Black spots appeared before her eyes and she felt her head go thick.

  The griffon-rider gazed at Drutheira doubtfully, then back to Liandra.

  ‘I can take you to the city,’ he said, tipping the gourd up for her again. ‘Though Imladrik is not here, nor has been for many years.’ The rider had a young, lean face, one that was both serious and mournful. ‘Would that he were. I fear you have not found much sanctuary here.’

  Liandra drank greedily. She barely heard the words; all she knew was that she had cheated death – again. That made her happy, almost deliriously so.

  ‘There is little time,’ she said painfully. ‘Use it well. Take us both.’

  A fire burned in the heart of the forest, as tall and broad as the great oaks that crowded around the edges of the clearing. It roared and crackled, sending sparks trailing high up into the night sky and skirling above the treetops.