Stephen Deas: Dragon Queen

The horse stopped. The bag came off his head and the world flooded with light. He screwed up his eyes and blinked furiously. A hand grabbed his hair, tipping back his head. The Picker's face peered into his.

‘Worked then, did it?’

Behind the gag, Bellepheros screamed. He couldn't breathe!

The Picker sighed, undid the gag and lifted him off the horse to lie flat on his back. They were in some woods, among waist-deep bracken. The air smelled of old earth and mushrooms.

For a moment fear got the better of him. They were going to kill him. ‘What do you want from me? What have you done to me? Are you going to kill me?’ He gulped at the air like a man drowning.

The Picker snorted. ‘Kill you? You gone daft? What I want is for you to be good and quiet till I get you where you need to be. And what I done is give you a taste of something. Tolds you I knows a blood-mage. So you'll not be doing them sorts of tricks like you tried before, not any more. Keep your blood nice and quiet. Likes my life easy, I do.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

The Picker sighed. He turned his back and waited a while until Bellepheros stopped struggling, then heaved him over the back of the horse again like a dirty old carpet and tied the sack over his head once more. He left the gag off this time.

‘No one here, old man. Shout all you like. You's clever enough, though. You'll see where this is going if you stops to think.’

They rode on. After maybe an hour it started to rain. Bellepheros heard the soft hiss of it on the leaves overhead, the pitter-patter of drips coming down off the trees, felt wet splats now and then on his hands and his legs. Afterwards the air smelled of trees, the rich tang of wet leaves. So they were on the fringes of the Raksheh, maybe, since that wasn't far from where the Picker had kidnapped him. Stupid thoughts buzzed in his head: he liked the Raksheh. He had fond memories of times years ago, wandering the edge of the forest, picking mushrooms and searching for roots and flowers. The Raksheh was a paradise for alchemists, full of interesting plants and strange crawling, slithering creatures. A delight as long as you kept a sharp eye on the lookout for the snapper packs.

In the middle of the afternoon they stopped and the Picker let him go and have a piss behind a tree and gave him some water. ‘Nothing in it, not this time,’ he said. Bellepheros wasn't sure whether to believe him, but he was thirsty enough to drink it when he saw the Picker drink it too. When the Picker threw him back on the horse, he forced himself to be an alchemist again, to think the way he'd been taught, the way he now taught others: sum the actions of the Taiytakei over the years. Arrange them with method and logic. They wanted dragons and they always had. To control a dragon, you needed an alchemist.

He tried asking questions. ‘Have you already got them? Are they hatchlings or are they still eggs?’ Others, anything he could think of, looking for a response, but the Picker never answered. Maybe he was thinking about it all wrong. Maybe they'd take an alchemist first, before the dragons. It made more sense.

He wondered, vaguely, about whether he might escape. Didn't see how, though. He needed to work his blood. Without that he was useless. And there were ways to take away a blood-mage's powers — he knew several and he knew how to get round most of them too — but without knowing how the Elemental Man had done it, and being tied to the back of a horse as he was, all that knowledge was useless.

They stopped before dark at some old hut deep in the forest. The Picker took off the sack and untied his hands and locked him inside. When he rattled the door, it was shut fast. He tried shouting a few times for help but no one came, and for all he knew the Picker was right outside. He huddled in a corner and spent most of the night shivering, too cold to sleep.

In the morning he tried to work his blood again. Still nothing. He tried running when the Picker opened the door but that just made him look an idiot. The Picker watched, laughing probably, then vanished and appeared right in front of him and tripped him and tied him up and left him flat on his back while he went to fetch the horse. Bellepheros listened to the calls of the birds and the hiss of the wind among the trees. It wasn't the Raksheh, he decided. For what that was worth. The birdsong was wrong. They'd gone back towards Furymouth. They probably weren't far from the river.

In the middle of the day they came to a road. The Picker hauled Bellepheros off his horse and stuffed him into a carriage. The sack stayed over his head. For all he knew, it was the same carriage he'd been in yesterday. There were two others with him now, men who never spoke but who smelled of Taiytakei. They stopped every few hours and let him out to empty his bladder or his bowels. In the middle of the day the Picker took off his sack and watched him eat. The carriage windows were boarded shut. None of them spoke a word. After he'd eaten, the sack went back on.

The carriage kept going, rattling up and down, shaking his bones. He felt the ground change from grassy earth to hard-packed mud. As the day wore on, the sounds outside the carriage changed too. There were people now. Animals. Birds. Seagulls. The road became teeth-jarring cobbles and he knew where they were — right back in Furymouth, where he'd started. Before long he could smell the city. He cried out for help, shouted himself almost hoarse, but no one answered and the roll and bounce of the carriage never faltered. By the time they stopped and bundled him out, he'd long since given up. Rough hands gripped his elbows and almost carried him and then dumped him down and took off his sack. He was in a big open hall. The first thing he saw was a mosaic — the great Vishmir with the sun and the moon and the stars sitting at his feet — in all its brilliant colours. The floor was a mosaic too, made of tiny tiles not much bigger than a fingernail. White, mostly, but with lines of vibrant green and vivid blue trailing across it like discarded strands of silk.

He knew exactly where he was. The Paratheus. He looked at the dome overhead to be sure but he hardly needed to. Others thought of the Paratheus as a Taiytakei temple, but that wasn't really true. Paratheus was just another way of saying a place of learning. It was their place, though. Their place within the sea king's city. The air inside was cool despite the heat of the early autumn sun and smelled of incense, not of fish like the rest of the city. Even Jehal's palace had smelled of fish.

‘Noisy you were in there. Didn't help though, did it?’ The Picker smiled. ‘Pretty place this.’ His smile grew wider as if he was letting Bellepheros in on some great secret. He took a step closer. ‘They had gods and so forth once. Was us who took those away from them. Like burning out the badness. Hurts when the brand comes but best in the long run. It's all mathematics, geometry and astronomy now. And a few other bobs and bits I shan't be speaking of just here. Supposed you might like to see this. Being as you are what you are.’

Bellepheros met his eye. ‘I'd prefer it if you let me go.’

The Picker shrugged. ‘Daft, you is.’ And before Bellepheros could protest, the sack was back on again. ‘Been a fine little ride we've had. Got me some different trouble to be stirring now, so I leave you in the tender care of others.’

Those others, when they came, were Taiytakei through and through, black-skinned men in rough tunics, sailors, led by two men in dull feathered cloaks that had seen better days, their hair in short braids down to their shoulders. They carried spiked clubs and they dragged him and a dozen other slump-shouldered captives from the Furymouth slave market through streets lively with shouting traders and carts rattling over cobbles. Dragged him with a leash around his neck and a bag over his head and no one said a word.