Silver Kings: The Splintered Gods Part 28

Tsen took her hand and squeezed it tight. 'So be it. A desert man and his desert wife. Thats probably the best we can hope for.

'Isnt that enough?

Tsen thought about that and then tapped the sled into motion. 'Im not so sure about the desert. Ill miss my apple wine and Ill miss my baths. But it will do to start. You must tell me: what happened to my eyrie after the s.h.i.+fter took me?

With a dragon egg behind them they drifted away. It would be a long journey with nothing much to see, but that was all right. They both had plenty to say.

Diamond Eye rose above the desert. The orange dawn light had long given way to the gold of early morning, the burnished copper of the sands turning electrum. A dozen men on linxia trotted across the dunes below, heading for the north. They had days of hard riding before they reached anything but desert. Zafir knew that because she and Diamond Eye had flown that way. Theyd flown everywhere.

The riders scattered as she came, abandoning their sled with its egg. Zafir let them go. Diamond Eye swooped down and took the egg in his talons. He could be gentle if he wanted to be.

The Elemental Men hadnt come after her again. Were they losing their edge? Too much to do and too few of them? Stretched too thin? She knew perfectly what that looked like. She should keep going then. Fly on to the sea. Fly so they never found her and then set Diamond Eye free, but there wasnt really a way out for her and there never had been. Run away? Hide? Diamond Eye would wake up and shed die. Abandon him and vanish among the Taiytakei, just another slave? The Statue Plague would get her and shed die. And all if the gold-gla.s.s circlet she could never take off didnt crush her skull.

She rode the wind back to the eyrie, placed the egg back in the dragon yard for the Scales and went out for the next. As she did, she pa.s.sed a gla.s.s.h.i.+p. She dived and circled its gondola, making sure that anyone inside had a good long look. A dragon and a dragon-queen. Rare things indeed and soon to be rarer still. The blinds on all the windows but one were closed. From inside Zafir saw a dark face looking back at her. The face was too far and too fleeting to recognise but the gondola was unfamiliar. Not the doll-woman. Today wasnt the day shed be hanged.

She found the second egg out in the open desert to the east on another sled with another dozen riders. When the riders scattered, this time she let Diamond Eye chase them. He swooped and took a rider and his mount in his claws, bit them in two and ate them on the wing then arced to chase another, flipped him into the air and took his linxia between his teeth. A mist of blood flew back and spattered Zafirs visor. The linxias rider fell to the sand, lost and forgotten, bones shattered, left for the vultures and the flies. The dragon took another and another that way, leaving the riders each time and eating their beasts. It played with them, lighting the sands with fire, leaving cherry-glowing gla.s.s, forcing riders to turn away and then turn again, boxing one in and making the box smaller and smaller until there was nowhere left to go and the rider simply stopped and waited for the end.

For no better reason than she felt like it, Zafir made Diamond Eye let that one go. The dragon snarled at her but sometimes a dragon had to remember who was in charge. She had him take the egg and fly home, turned and hunted down the third to the south, brought it quickly back and then returned and caught the scattered riders as they regrouped and burned them. She chased the stragglers. Diamond Eye tossed them into the air, caught the riders in his claws and their mounts between his teeth and crushed them.

The gondola had reached the eyrie by now and landed, and Zafir looked at all the dreams shed had of tearing the Arbiter out of the sky, of setting the desert ablaze from end to end and found theyd lost their l.u.s.tre. They seemed flat now, devoid of point and purpose. It didnt matter what she did. Lots of people would die or they wouldnt but in the end nothing would change.

I want to live. Not that she was afraid to die but she did want to live. That was why she kept looking over the edge and then backing away. Why she was still here.

I want to go home. Except if there was one thing the Taiytakei had shown her, it was that shed never really had one.

Diamond Eye offered nothing. He didnt understand. How could he?

She went back to where Diamond Eye had sniffed out the trace of the Crowntaker, to where little camps lay scattered outside the shadow of the storm, the places where the tribes of the desert came to trade in goods and slaves, to hold their truces and their weddings and now and then betray. A horde of white-painted men was swarming across the sands, laying waste to everything. Diamond Eye raked across their minds, searching, but the Adamantine Man wasnt there. He was somewhere above them. The Crowntaker too. Theyd come to her.

Zafir looked at the white-painted men, killing the Taiytakei. 'I could burn them all, every last one of them, she offered, but no one answered, and so she went back to the eyrie and to her shelter and stripped away her armour and basked in the sun, waiting for her death or her salvation, whichever would find her first.

50.

A Distant Sound of Thunder The gla.s.s.h.i.+p rose from the abyss. Liang watched the scarred cliffs drift past her gaze until they gave way to the more jagged slopes of mountainsides and then to snowy peaks, and suddenly the sun-bright glory of the Konsidar stretched out before her. When they were high above the mountain tops, the gla.s.s.h.i.+p turned to the east. Lin Feyn looked out of the window beside her, silent and pensive. They floated steadily towards the desert until the mountains fell away and in the far distance Liang saw the bright flat expanse of the arid badlands that led to the cliffs of the Tzwayg. They crossed that too, then the endless hours of the Empty Sands, until they reached the eyrie and the storm-dark. Killers came to them now and then with news. Shonda, Tsen, the eyrie falling, Zafir, the eggs, all of it. As they reached the eyrie at last, Red Lin Feyn dressed herself in her finery and guided the gla.s.s.h.i.+p down. She brought it to rest and then sat at her table, fingers steepled in front of her.

'I will no longer be the Arbiter after this, Chay-Liang, she said. 'Do not trust the killers when I am gone. Do not trust any of them. They went outside and moved between the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps holding the eyrie aloft. Liang set each one loose and guided it back to its proper position. Lin Feyn touched the gold-gla.s.s blocks and secured the chains back where they belonged, sealing them with enchantments that not even Liang would ever break. One by one until all were back as theyd been before Tsen had set them free.

'You should think about where you wish to be, apprentice, Lin Feyn said when they were finished. 'After this is done.

The trial of Sea Lord Shonda of Vespinarr and MaiChoiro Kwen, of Sea Lord QuaiShu of Xican and Shrin Chrias and in his absence his tvarr was a quiet thing. Liang sat beside Red Lin Feyn. Six Elemental Men sat three to each side. A few dozen other Taiytakei quietly listened. Some men of Vespinarr, a few of Xican, some of other cities. Most wrote a great many notes and two sword-slave scribes meticulously recorded every word spoken. Red Lin Feyn summoned them all and made them sit and then she summoned all those whose words were relevant, and nothing Liang heard came as any great surprise. When Belli came, Liang wished she could reach out to him or go to him but Lin Feyn wouldnt let her. He described the truth-smoke he made, something Liang had never known, and the Taiytakei hissed through their teeth at him and muttered to one another. There was no mention of the dead speaking the Arbiter spared them all that at least, and so perhaps the Elemental Men would never know. Zafir stood before them all and told, as best Liang knew it, the truth, unvarnished and without shame. She was a slave. Shed done as she was commanded, nothing more, nothing less, and if what shed done was wrong then perhaps the sea lords of the Taiytakei should look among themselves before they cast their stones. She showed no sorrow, no regret, no fear. Such things, she said, had no place in a dragon-riders heart.

Bellepheros brought his truth-smoke and all the Taiytakei spoke again. Quietly and in private, the judgement of the Arbiter was given. The dragons to be poisoned and the eggs destroyed. One in ten of Shrin Chrias Kwens men to be hanged and the dragon-rider too. Baros Tsen TVarr, Shrin Chrias Kwen, MaiChoiro Kwen, Sea Lords Shonda and QuaiShu to be sent in chains to Khalishtor to have her verdict read out in the Crown of the Sea Lords before all the a.s.sembled lords of the thirteen cities. The fleet of Vespinarr to be stripped of a hundred s.h.i.+ps to be given to the new sea lord of Dhar Thosis. All debts of Xican and Dhar Thosis to Vespinarr to be annulled. Stewards.h.i.+p of Xican and owners.h.i.+p of all properties of Sea Lord QuaiShu to be a.s.signed to Senxians heirs. The House of QuaiShu to be dissolved and struck from the Council of the Sea.

And so it went on in ever deeper detail, petty clauses and conditions that Liang barely understood. She listened to every word, heart in mouth, waiting until it was done, but nothing was said of s.h.i.+fters or the Queverra or the Konsidar or of any sorcery, nor of the alchemist Bellepheros until at the very end of it all when Red Lin Feyn spared her a pitying glance. 'Owners.h.i.+p of the alchemist slave Bellepheros and of the slaves known as the Scales to be transferred to the Dralamut.

Red Lin Feyn lifted the headdress off her hair and rose. She left the headdress on her chair and walked slowly away, the Arbiter no more. The Elemental Men filed solemnly after her, walking for once instead of s.h.i.+fting into air. When they were gone, the other Taiytakei left. Liang hurried in Lin Feyns wake.

'Lady! She ran out into the dragon yard, following her. 'Lady!

'I will leave by dusk, Liang. I have given judgement and I am no longer the Arbiter of the Dralamut. That burden may now pa.s.s to another. I mean to travel to the Queverra. Do you wish to join me, apprentice? You may if you so desire it. She walked into her gondola and, when Liang followed, raised the ramp and shut the blinds and started to undress. 'Its done, Liang. My work is finished. I have listened and sought the truth and my judgement is pa.s.sed. I have served my purpose. Did I do well?

'Promise me! Liang fell to her knees. 'Promise me youll let him live until we return.

'Who? Then Lin Feyn shook her head and a half-smile flickered across her lips. 'Your alchemist? Hes the property of the Dralamut now. And so are you and so hes yours. The killers wont touch him. Youll come back with me, both of you. After that . . . She took Liangs hands in her own and lifted her to her feet. 'Im not sure, Chay-Liang, that I can make promises now. The killers are no longer on my leash.

'Then take him home, lady. Take him home! Theres no reason to keep him here. Youre a navigator.

'As you will be, Liang. She let go of Liangs hands and took the storm-dark globe and pushed it into them. 'Practise, Liang. Youre close. Tell me, if I did send him home, would you stay in the dragon-lands with him?

'I . . . Liang looked up and down and to either side as if she might find an answer somewhere inside the gondola. She closed her eyes. 'I dont know, lady. He wishes to live among his own people and I wish to live among mine.

'No gold-gla.s.s in the dragon-lands, Liang. What would you do?

'Think what we could learn! Truth-smoke!

Red Lin Feyn arched her brow. 'Bringing the dead back to speak, Liang? She shook her head. 'Will you come with me? There is a great deal for you to learn and its pus.h.i.+ng three days to the Queverra.

'How long will you be, lady? She already knew the answer. Too long.

'As long as needed to find the skin-s.h.i.+fter who did this, Liang. Lin Feyn looked long and hard into Liangs eyes. 'But no. She smiled. 'You love him, do you?

'I . . . It was a question she tried not to think about. 'I hold him in very high regard, lady, and I have a great affection for him. Love? What is that? Would I die for him, do you mean? She shrugged. 'Perhaps. For the beliefs he holds? Yes, because many are already my own. He is kind and generous and asks for little. He has great burdens and carries them lightly and will sacrifice himself for them if he has to, of that I have no doubt.

Lin Feyn leaned forward and kissed Liang on the cheek. 'Then he sounds very much like an enchantress I have grown to like.

'I know. Lady, I cannot . . . The next days will be hard for him. He will lose everything. He will say we are right to do what we will do, but . . . It will be hard, I think. He will need a friend. He will need someone to be his resolve.

Lin Feyn nodded solemnly. 'Hes not the only one, Chay-Liang. Then she smiled. 'Go in peace, apprentice. I look forward to getting to know this alchemist when I return. Both of you. She patted the globe in Liangs hands. 'And practise, apprentice. Practise!

They embraced. Liang walked slowly away. As the ramp closed and the gla.s.s.h.i.+p lifted Red Lin Feyn away from the dragon yard, Liang smiled and waved and wished her well.

Better, she thought, to be here.

Zafir sat leaning against Diamond Eyes leg. No one told her how it had ended but when she watched the Arbiter fly away in her gla.s.s.h.i.+p, she knew it was over. Shed stood before them all, proud as a dragon-queen should be. Shed told them how shed burned and smashed their city to the ground. She was a slave and had been told she must, and so shed done as her master had instructed her without shame or regret, and all of that was true, but there was a bigger truth that lurked among her words, hard and ungilded. The willingness. The pride to have caused so much hurt to those whod taken her from her home. It was the truth, and as shed spoken it, shed watched the faces around her and saw it bite. Too much? They only had themselves to blame. It was done now. She didnt know exactly who would hang and who wouldnt, only that a good few of their own deserved it a great deal and shed cheer for every single one of them, even as she dangled from a gibbet of her own.

But for there to be any dangling, they had to take her, and Diamond Eye would know if anyone came close to hurt her, and so Diamond Eye would be the first. After that, the hatchlings and then the eggs, and somewhere in the middle of all that, her. And it would be the alchemist who was sworn to serve her, whod taken an oath, he would do it. Hed kill her dragon and hed do it because he wanted to, and so the next time he came out into the dragon yard, out into the open, he would die. No more potions, no more poison. The doll-woman would use the circlet and crush her, and Diamond Eye would awake. It made her laugh.

'When he comes, I want you to eat him. She pictured Bellepheros walking to the wall to feed Diamond Eye his daily potion and the dragon s.n.a.t.c.hing the alchemist in his jaws. But no, the alchemist was too clever for that. Hed be ready. 'No. Dont eat him. Throw him off the wall. Drop him into the storm-dark and then fly away as far and fast as you can. Fly to the sea. Fly to the water. Sink beneath it and wait until you awake. She stroked the dragons scales. Diamond Eye didnt understand.

The eyrie was full of bustle today. The doll-woman was gone. Other gondolas sat in the dragon yard, slaves hurrying to and fro, milling Taiytakei from a dozen different cities, all whipped up by a wind filled with shouted gossip of the Arbiters judgement. On the far side of the yard, as far away from the hatchery as could be, a gang of slaves was building a wooden platform. Zafir watched them work and knew exactly what it was. A scaffold and gallows, just as MaiChoiro had once ordered. Maybe, when they were nearly done, shed climb onto Diamond Eyes back and smash it down. There didnt seem much point in waiting any longer.

The dragon was watching something too, out in the hustle and bustle. A sense stirred inside both of them at once, of something old and yet familiar. 'Is he here, old friend? The other one who fascinates you so? She touched the dragon again and knew that he was. The man from Dhar Thosis. The Crowntaker, but the dragon knew him by a different name that made no sense. It couldnt quite remember but knew there was one there to be had, ancient and as powerful as the mountains and the sea . . .

Days and days and the Adamantine Man hadnt come to her. She hadnt even seen him. But he too was here. Diamond Eye knew him.

She spotted Bellepheros coming into the dragon yard. He walked among the hatchlings, supervising the feeding, tipping potion from the bucket he carried over the slaughtered carca.s.ses of the animals they ate. She could see the little dragons chafe at the food placed before them as though they were cattle. Where was the hunt? Where was the lunge of tooth and claw, the burn of fire? They were too dulled by the alchemist to understand what was wrong but they felt it nevertheless. They snapped at one another and shrieked and tugged their chains. They were angry today. Restless.

Gla.s.s.h.i.+ps lifted off and gondolas drifted away. Zafir watched the alchemist work. She was dressed in her armour of gla.s.s and gold and dragon-scale, all of it repaired or replaced. The parts the enchantress Chay-Liang hadnt finished had been done by others Shondas enchanters, perhaps. No matter. She had Chay-Liangs helm and gauntlets waiting for when the time came. She wore the overlapping diamond-shaped scales of gold-gla.s.s, the same design shed worn over Dhar Thosis. The greaves and the vambraces were cruder, artless pieces, but theyd keep the lightning at bay and that was all that mattered.

The slaves finished their scaffold and set to work on the gallows. They were only erecting one gibbet. One noose just for her. Zafir slipped back off the wall to her little shelter and drew out the bladeless knife shed taken from the Elemental Man shed dropped into the storm-dark. It felt heavy in her hand. If you looked hard and close, the blade s.h.i.+mmered sometimes when it caught the light, sparkled when the sun touched it just so. It wasnt bladeless at all, merely made of something so thin that it was all but invisible, yet so sharp and so hard that it would cut through gla.s.s and steel as though they were air.

Shed do it herself. In front of everyone, shed kill her own alchemist.

The wind whipped across the wall, battering at her. It wouldnt make any difference. The Elemental Men would snuff her out quickly enough, but a dragon-queen shouldnt ever go meekly. She settled beside Diamond Eye again, using his bulk for shelter. The Taiytakei roundly cursed the ever-whipping gale by the G.o.dspike, but to Zafir the wind was a friend. She liked it up here. The desert sun was hot and fierce, the air cold and fast, the contrast a delicious pleasure. Strong and pure and full of the energy of life.

The slaves finished their gallows and started on some wooden cages. Five of them. Bellepheros was still with the hatchlings, talking to the Scales, taking his time, dragging his heels perhaps, watching the last of the visiting gondolas fly away. The cages were quickly made, and as soon as they were, armoured soldiers dragged four chained men out into the sunlight. The cages were thrown open, the men hurled inside. Two of them almost had to be carried. Zafir tried to see who they were but they were too far away. She thought she knew, and Diamond Eye certainly did. Sea Lord Shonda. Sea Lord QuaiShu. MaiChoiro Kwen. He knew their thoughts and tasted their fear. He didnt know the fourth. And the last cage is for me.

She looked around the eyrie and put her mind to the battle to come, made herself note the lightning throwers that hadnt been destroyed, tried to make herself look up to the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps that still flew overhead, to show Diamond Eye where each danger lay. Tried, but she knew the answers already. Instead she found herself looking at the knife again. Maybe it was better not to fight at all. The Taiytakei deserved what Diamond Eye would bring them but what point was there if she wasnt there to see it? In the end what difference did it make? In the end theyd always win. Flames and death all around, but her heart wasnt really in it. Even if she couldnt quite admit it, she knew that must be true because she was still standing on this wall and thinking and not sitting on Diamond Eyes back, screaming rage and fire.

Waiting for the Adamantine Man. That was it. Because he was here, and he would find her before she died.

She ran her finger along the flat of the blade, finding the tip. Tried hard to see it. Flexed her hand, felt its weight, looking for the flash of light where it caught the sun. It would be easy to drive it through her own heart. She had a strong heart, she thought. Made so by the dragons around her. It had needed to be strong to survive. Shed been stabbed through it enough times, but none of them had ever quite finished her. She could do it better. Do a proper job of it. For some reason that made her laugh even if her eyes brimmed and a tear trickled down her cheek. Betrayal everywhere, but she survived.

No mercy for pretty Zafir.

She turned the knife carefully back, tipping its lethal point away. The alchemist was leaving the hatchery, heading for the tunnels behind. Hed come soon now. Hed put out his potions for Diamond Eye to drink and shed tell the dragon to wait. Hed come to the wall and shed take him to the rim and theyd talk, and then shed tell him she was sorry and kill him quietly and put on the last of her armour, her golden helm and her gold-gla.s.s gauntlets, and climb onto Diamond Eyes back and . . . and theyd fly away? Just that?

Her eyes ranged over the dragon yard, looking for Tuuran, waiting for him to come to her, hoping he would before the alchemist made it all too late, and yet when he came up the steps and crossed the wall towards her, big and with the sun across his face and his hair all lank and straggly and his chin covered in a month of beard, she didnt recognise him. Filled by an odd sense of familiarity she watched this stranger come, until he stopped twelve paces away, exactly as close as an Adamantine Man was allowed to approach the speaker of the nine realms, and dropped to his knees and pressed his head to the stone of the wall top. And then she knew.

'Holiness. You told me to find my way back to you, Holiness. Here I am. I have pa.s.sed your test.

And her heart was full of fire again.

Bellepheros had stayed in his laboratory after the trial, making poison for the dragons. It wouldnt take long, surely. And then Li had walked in. Shed sat with him, and she wouldnt say what the Arbiters judgement had been but nor did she need to. Theyd come and tell him to kill the dragon. Her Holiness would die. He and Li would live. He could read it all in the set of her face and there wasnt anything to be done about it, and so he asked Li to leave him be and quietly made a second poison to give to Zafir if she asked for it again. He couldnt save her and wasnt sure that he should, but he could give her that much. A quiet death of her own. Private and without spectacle.

The Elemental Man came early the next morning. He knocked on the iron door through which he couldnt pa.s.s, and when Bellepheros opened it, he walked politely inside instead of vanis.h.i.+ng and appearing somewhere else. 'The judgement of the Arbiter has been given, alchemist. Theyd quietly stopped calling him slave since the truth-smoke.

Bellepheros gestured to the tables against the far wall, what hed been able to repair of his laboratory. 'I told Sea Lord QuaiShu, when he first brought me to his palace, that he would regret what he asked me to do. It ends then, does it?

The killer bowed. 'They are all to be destroyed. You can do this?

'Ive been making this poison ever since I came here. Im glad theres one among you whose wisdom exceeds his greed at last. Theres still a missing egg. I trust you havent forgotten.

'It will be found.

'And if it hatches?

'It will be found.

Well, that was surely true enough. Theyd suffer for it but an egg was only an egg. No matter how big the dragon got before they stopped it, a single dragon couldnt mate with itself and hatch more, and so, one way or the other, the plague would end.

When he was ready, he made his rounds, delayed by all the busy fuss in the dragon yard as the Taiytakei whod come to witness the trial bustled away, their gondolas and gla.s.s.h.i.+ps cluttering the sky. He dawdled, talking to the Scales about things that didnt matter, but there was no ignoring it for ever. He had the poisons ready.

He was about to go when he saw the strangest thing. A man stood in the entrance to the tunnels behind the hatchery, short for a slave, his once-pale skin tanned brown by years in the open sun but not night-black like the Taiytakei. The man carried a naked knife, a strange-looking thing with a golden handle and a blade more like a cleaver in which patterns swirled like smoke in moonlight. He wasnt Taiytakei but he wasnt dressed as a slave either, and his eyes . . . There was light coming from them. For a moment they stared at each other. Then the man beckoned. Bellepheros wasnt sure why but it seemed important. He frowned and walked over.

'Who are you? he asked.

The man looked up and Bellepheros gasped. His eyes were bright burning silver. 'h.e.l.lo, brother, he said, and drove the knife into Bellepheross chest.

Three little cuts, Bellepheros heard a distant voice say. You. Obey. Me.

After Bellepheros went off to poison the dragon and put an end to it all at last, Chay-Liang surveyed her workshop. Shed asked to be with him and hed refused, and it rankled because she knew he was quietly punis.h.i.+ng her for being so pleased with herself. She picked up a few pieces of unshaped gla.s.s and moved them from one bench to another. She put away a few lengths of gold wire. She started to tidy up a pile of books and then spotted a gla.s.s beaker still half full of cold qaffeh, left forgotten on the floor beside one of her benches long enough to be growing mould. She looked around the workshop to make sure she was alone and then looked at the beaker, but no, she couldnt bring herself to drink it, not when it looked like that . . .

The rider-slave was finally going to hang. It pleased her immensely and she wasnt hiding it very well and so Belli was punis.h.i.+ng her.

Still, she wished hed let her be with him for this.

Far beneath the earth and deeper still, across the divides between the world above and Xibaiya below, the dragon Silence circled the stuttering spirit of the Watcher, the Elemental Man once killed by the dragon Diamond Eye.

Earth-child. Silence spoke softly. The killers spirit was fading, part consumed into the fabric of Xibaiya from which it had been made. Hiding in forlorn wait for the dead G.o.ddess.

Dragon. Its memories were broken and scarred and as thin as cloud in places, but they were there, jumbled in their jagged pieces. The dragon called Silence, as it reached for them, was gentle.

Tell me, the dragon whispered. Tell me what it was you left undone. It showed the spirit a face: the Adamantine Man it had found in the desert. What was he looking for? What did you want of him? Why?

Flashes. Through the spirits eye, the dragon saw three figures in silver and white. The moon sorcerers of the Diamond Isles, echoes of ghosts of half-G.o.ds whod stayed behind when they should have known better. Faded ashes of themselves, yet they had once hurled Silence to Xibaiya with a single sorrowful thought.

They gave me a task. Words spoken. Or thoughts. The grey dead come with the golden knife. They call the Black Moon to rise again.

The Black Moon, chasing the sun across the sky, a little closer with every dawn until the Splintering had come and ripped the world apart and the Black Moon had shattered and its pieces had fallen across the earth . . .

Silence wormed deeper. Other flashes. Memories. Little ones with white skin, with tattoos on their necks and faces and running down their sides. Strange words, old writing, sigils never seen except in places as old as time. The Azahl Pillar. The skin of a killer. The Adamantine Man had seen them in the living world where the men who mastered dragons lived, but not one of them knew those signs for what they were.

The grey dead have called the Black Moon to rise again. Do not let the splinters become whole, dragon. The spirit of the Watcher showed the future it saw. A terrible thing. Death and war and oblivion. The Black Moon reborn and rising from the southern sky to blot out the sun and smother the world in another age of ice and darkness. The dragon watched and wondered. It was a future that fed its hunger.

Why should I care? The glimpsed echo of the Black Moon that night in the desert, inside the little one whose eyes burned silver. Others existed in those thoughts. It had seen a different face that the little one claimed was his own and yet was not.

It will devour everything.

Silence turned from the stuttering spirit. The prison of the Nothing was broken. The splinters of the Black Moon were loose on the world.

You were once a half-G.o.d too.

The dragon Silence pondered the Watchers words and cast its senses around for a new skin it might wear in the land of the living. It found one egg alone, separate from the rest, and tossed its soul through the veil of Xibaiya, leaping eagerly into the call of waiting flesh.

Red Lin Feyn sat in her gondola where the killers couldnt reach her, meditating and sleeping, thinking about the Queverra and what she might find there. She gave the killers most of the next day to clear the eyrie and do what needed to be done, and then she closed her eyes for a moment and with a thought set loose the enchantment to crush the dragon-riders skull.