Stephen Deas: Dragon Queen

Then she was gone and Tsen had no idea what had just happened. None at all.

Liang stood in the yard watching the dragon. It was acutely restless, fidgeting and turning and flapping its wings and curling and uncurling its tail and its neck. Now and then it plucked a piece of debris out of its scales. Its discomfort rolled through her, turbulent and disquieting, and she almost didn't see Belli hurrying across the yard towards the tunnels where the Scales lived. When she did, she waved at him, and when he pretended not to see her, she ran, robes flapping around her feet, until she caught him. He was flushed and out of breath and his face was stricken with anguish. He kept shaking his head, even before she started to speak.

‘What's wrong with the. .’ What's wrong with the dragon? she was about to ask, but her eyes were drawn to his clenched fist and the bottle he was trying to hide within it. She looked at it long and hard and then looked him in the eye. His head fell. He started to shake. It took her a moment to realise it but he was sobbing. She touched his arm and held out her hand. ‘That is not who you are, Belli,’ she whispered. ‘You are a builder, a maker, a healer, an architect. Give it to me. You are not a poisoner. You are not a murderer. Leave that to others.’

Wordlessly he gave her the bottle. Her fingers closed over it. It was heavy.

‘Stay here.’ She clasped his hand in her own. ‘Stay, Belli. Just stay.’

He nodded and she walked briskly away, across to the walls and climbed them and then threw the vial of silver poison hard and far, away over the edge of the eyrie to be lost in the desert sands far below. When she came back, he was where she'd left him. She took his hands and then, when that didn't seem to be enough, embraced him and held him tightly. ‘I'm sorry,’ she said because after all she'd been the one to put the idea into his head. ‘I'm so sorry.’

She held him until his weeping stopped, and then they stood apart and looked over at the dragon. ‘What's wrong with it?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Zafir must be more wounded than she seemed.’ Then he shrugged. ‘He feels his rider's anguish.’

Zafir walked as quickly as she could away from Baros Tsen and his bath, as fast as her pride would let her, back to her own little room. She was shaking. Everything the dragon had given her was gone. She curled up in a corner against the walls, holding Myst and Onyx tight to her, covering herself in their comfort and their warmth.

‘No pity for pretty little Zafir,’ she murmured and touched a hand to her breast. ‘My heart is here. What's left of it. When they come, make them strike true.’

The eggs were waiting for it, a cluster of them alone and far away from the others. The dragon Silence felt their call. Urgent skin that begged for the spark of life.

Afraid?

Dragons were not afraid.

The dragon chose one and slipped inside the waiting flesh as a man might slip on an old shoe. The sensation was a familiar comfort, yet always new. Every skin was different. What colours will I be? Will my tail be long? My neck? How many fangs shall I have? All these things a new discovery with each hatching. Another joy the little ones had taken away.

It eased into its new flesh like a ghost and opened its brand-new eyes still inside the egg. The urge to smash its way to freedom was strong but it let its senses roam instead, searching for sorcery, searching for thoughts. Things to which the little ones were blind.

It found much of both, and so it stayed quiet and looked at all the things in the strange and wonderful place where it would be born that was filled with alien thoughts and a very few that felt oddly familiar, and with many sorceries that were strange and fresh and one that was colossal and overwhelming and as ancient as the dragon itself. Something made before its first ever dawn.

It looked at all these things and chose its time with care. There were men with ropes and chains always watching. It slid inside their thoughts and sang songs of faraway dreams that lulled them, but they were clever and careful and the alchemist who watched over them was wise to such trickery. So it waited, hidden in its egg, day after day after day, until a change came — more men with more sorceries — and chaos and killing erupted around and above it and the watchers finally looked away. Then it bunched its muscles and clenched its claws; it built the fire inside it as high as its new body would allow, and when it was as ready as it could be, it burst its shell apart and leaped and spread its wings, and the last few men with their chains were too slow and frightened to reach it and it was free. It burst into a night full of thunder and lightning and little ones’ screams as they died.

I am Silence , the dragon whispered amid the chaos around it, and I am hungry .