Stephen Deas: Dragon Queen

The ship rolled slowly. Back and forth, back and forth. He started to feel sick. A dull spark of anger began to flicker inside him. Anger at the world. At this Adamantine Man, this servant of the speaker, for not conjuring a miracle. Anger at the door for staying closed and barred. Futile, but still no helping it. The Taiytakei had always wanted dragons. And if they had dragons then they would need an alchemist. Although it would have been kinder, Bellepheros thought, to steal one who was younger.

And if they really did have dragons, then what? What would he do?

‘What do they want with you?’

Bellepheros laughed, full of bitterness. ‘The Tyans of Furymouth moved their eyrie further down the coast many years ago. To keep the dragons and the Taiytakei apart. Dragons and ships are a poor mix. There's been more than one fleet burned to the water outside Furymouth, but that's not why they moved their eyrie. They moved their eyrie to keep the Taiytakei away from their dragons, not the other way around.’

‘Ayzalmir,’ murmured Tuuran.

Bellepheros looked at him in mild surprise. ‘An Adamantine Man who's heard of Ayzalmir?’ He chuckled for a moment before his thoughts turned bleak again. ‘No, Speaker Ayzalmir never burned the Taiytakei fleet. It was his edict that scourged them from the realms north of Gliding Dragon Gorge but the lords of Furymouth never took it to heart as others did. I was thinking of older times.’ He rubbed his fingers to his temples and winced at the knot growing in his stomach. ‘Tuuran, I am an alchemist. They have dulled my powers for now but I'm no use to them like this. They will let us go home. I will see to it.’

‘Vishmir and Narammed.’ Tuuran shrugged. ‘The sun and stars of the Adamantine Legion.’ He shifted heavily on the bed beside Bellepheros, his feet resting on a trunk, knees hugged to his chest. Bellepheros frowned and Tuuran half-smiled. ‘Small cabin, I know. You'll have it to yourself once there's nowhere else to go. After I was taken, I found I wasn't the only one from this realm. I've not met any other Adamantine Men but the King of the Crags does a healthy trade in Outsider slaves. They're full of stories, those ones.’ He shook his head. ‘You won't make them let us go, alchemist. You won't. You haven't seen who they are, not really. When you do, you might not even want to.’

The last of Bellepheros's anger drained out of him. ‘They can't keep me this way. They have to let me use my alchemy. When they do. .’ He wasn't sure. But he'd find a way. Blood-magic wasn't the way of the alchemist and was mostly shunned, but they learned at least a little. It wasn't really any different from making potions, after all. Just more. . direct.

Tuuran was still shaking his head. ‘I'd heard of you before they took me. You weren't grand master then but you were going to be. Everyone in the palace knew it. You went on your big journey around the nine realms and wrote it all down.’

Bellepheros gaped. It had never occurred to him that the Taiytakei might read his words. Now he had to wonder: what had they learned? Was that how they knew his name? Was that why they'd chosen him? ‘Who was speaker when you were taken, Master Tuuran?’

‘His Holiness Hyram of Bloodsalt had just taken the spear and the ring. Does he still speak for the nine kings and queens?’

‘His time is almost done, but yes, he does.’

‘I hope his reign was a good one. I remember when Antros died. You all thought he'd be another Vishmir.’ He shook his head. ‘There could never be another Vishmir though. Not without another Anzuine, and the Adamantine Guard would never allow that.’

‘He's been good enough.’ Bellepheros clucked his tongue. ‘The vultures are circling as they always do when a new speaker is due.’ Aliphera's death — was it an accident, or was it the start of some great plan? He'd never know now. ‘Tuuran, how did an Adamantine Man end up a slave to the Taiytakei?’

‘Stupidity.’

‘Be patient. I will take us home.’ He put a hand on Tuuran's shoulder. ‘I will make them take us home.’

The cabin door burst open as the sun finally set. Three black-skinned Taiytakei stood there, dark as night but with eyes like candle flames, with shirts and coats made of feather rainbows, brilliant and dazzling and ever-shifting. Two of them carried glass wands tinged gold, with wire in fine patterns wrapped around them, glowing with a fierce inner light. They waved them at Tuuran. ‘Out, slave!’

Tuuran moved slowly away and past them, head bowed. When he was gone, another Taiytakei appeared, an old man with wrinkled skin and grey hair that was turning white. The first Taiytakei looked suddenly drab. This old one had colours in his clothes that Bellepheros had never even seen, braids in his hair that reached almost to the floor and a cloak of feathers that looked like a shimmering between dragon fire and liquid gold. He had a presence too, the sort that Bellepheros knew well from his time among the kings and queens of the dragon realms. He was a man who ruled, who was obeyed. Bellepheros bowed his head.

‘Alchemist.’ The old man pursed his lips and stared hard.

‘I am Bellepheros.’ Bellepheros didn't look up. Dragon-kings and — queens would have had him on his knees, face pressed into the dirt. ‘I am the grand master of the Order of the Scales, master alchemist of the nine realms. I am keeper of the dragons.’

‘No longer. When the dragon eggs I will bring you hatch, can you master them?’

‘I can, if I so choose.’

‘Keeper of the dragons? You may keep that name. You will build me an eyrie, Keeper of the Dragons. If you do not, you will die.’

He understood, in this old man's voice, that he would never return home, no matter what he did, that no threat would be enough, nor anything he could promise. They had taken him from his land and his life and his family — for that was how he thought of his Order of the Scales — and he would never come back. The old man believed it with a certainty that was absolute, and when the alchemist looked up and met the old man's eyes, what he saw there showed no remorse, no doubt, no miracles, no meticulously planned escape. He had the eyes of a true dragon-king, but still Bellepheros held his gaze. ‘If you have dragons then I will build an eyrie. Not because you ask it of me but because that is my calling. And when I am finished, you will wish that I had not, and you will bring me back to my home, and you will beg me to take my dragons with me.’

The Taiytakei gave him books to read to amuse himself. They were in their own language but it wasn't so different from the language of the dragon-kings and he mastered it easily enough. For two hours each day Tuuran came to sit with him. Bellepheros wasn't sure why, but he was thankful for the company and a familiar face. Someone he could talk to about the things he knew, the lands he'd travelled and the faces he'd never see again. He tried asking Tuuran about the Taiytakei but the Adamantine Man wasn't much use for that, not past how they treated their slaves and how to sail their ships. He claimed to have seen their city from a distance once, with towers of glass and gold that touched the sky and gleaming discs that flew through the air, slow and clumsy and fragile things beside a dragon, he thought, and if it sounded fanciful, well maybe dragons sounded fanciful too if you hadn't grown up spending your days with them flying overhead. Sometimes they spent their time together looking out of the window, at the endless grey sea. Other times Bellepheros read aloud. The Taiytakei even had a copy of the journal he'd written almost a decade ago which described the land that had raised them both. He spoke his own words while Tuuran lay on the bed and listened, rapt like a child being told stories by his father. Sometimes his eyes glistened, though he tried to hide it.