The Order of the Scales Deas - The Order of the Scales

If you cease to be useful, you become food.

‘Bollocks to you.’ He picked up a stone and threw it at her as hard as he could. It bounced off her nose. ‘Without me, dragon, you and yours would be throwing yourselves against one of the vast eyries of the plains. You’d be riddled with poison and scorpion bolts and wondering what went wrong. Just maybe, as you were burning from the inside, you’d be thinking that you should have listened to me, but probably not, because you’re all so blindly arrogant when it comes to that sort of thing. Without me, dragon, you wouldn’t even know these mountain eyries existed, much less have found any of them. I thought that’s why you tolerated me. Because without me your ignorance and your impatience make you so stupid that you might as well keep taking the alchemists’ potions.’

Snow lowered her face until she was inches from Kemir’s nose. When she hissed, she smelled of warm blood. Her head seemed huge, even if she was small for a dragon. As large as a cart with a mouth big enough to swallow a horse and lined with a hundred dagger-like teeth as long as his forearm. Her eyes were as big as his head.

The little one you brought to me had knowledge in the ways of this world, Kemir, more than yours. He knew many things that you do not. Events have happened since I awoke. I require to know more. I require an alchemist.

Kemir took a step forward. He was nose to nose with the dragon now. ‘Maybe I just won’t, dragon. Has that thought occurred to you?’

They have knowledge of the dragon-knight who killed your nest-brother. Shall I pluck it from their thoughts before I devour you, or do you prefer to die in ignorance? It matters little to me.

A silence hung between them. The silence of a wound ripped open. Time stopped. The mountain and the eyrie and the sky all vanished. There was only him and the dragon. ‘What?’

I require an alchemist, Kemir.

‘The Scales. Where is he?’ It had to be the Scales. He must have known something after all.

For an answer, Snow licked her lips.

‘You ate him.’

An alchemist, Kemir. You will bring me an alchemist.

The Alchemy

‘What is the secret? they always ask. What is the secret?

It is the Silver King, I sometimes say. The Isul Aieha, bound and tied in the deepest caverns of the Worldspine, held for ever in torment with a hollow spike driven into his still-living brain, from which drips an ichor of purest silver. That is the secret. They stare at me with wide eyes, lapping up every word, and then I laugh. Other times I say it is merely a plant, a common leaf, a happy chance of nature that renders our dragons dull. What is the secret? It is a thing I will hold in my heart like a lover and never let go. The secret is blood.’

Isentine watched the four dragons circle his little oasis. The fact that three of them were hunters only made the fourth, the war-dragon B’thannan, seem even more immense than usual. They’d come from the south, over the hundred miles of empty burning dunes from Sand to the last outpost of the north. To his eyrie, built around the ancient tower of Outwatch and the fertile strip of land around it. The oasis he understood. A river ran underground, all the way from the Worldspine, right under his feet. It touched the surface here. Somehow, because of that water, Outwatch had grown to be the largest eyrie in the realms.

The tower was another matter. Someone had built it long ago. They’d never quite finished, and they hadn’t been quite human, that much was clear to anyone who lived here.

The ground shuddered as the weight of the dragons hit the earth; he could feel the impacts through his feet, all the way up to the aches in his knees. He cast a nervous glance behind him at the tower. In his dreams things kept falling apart.

A tiny distant figure slid down from B’thannan’s back and strode across the hard blasted earth of the eyrie. Lord Hyrkallan, hero of Evenspire, prince of the north and King of Sand in all but name. A big man, but out here he looked small and insignificant. Against the immensity of the sky and the vast empty sands and the dragons sprawled basking in the desert sun, most things did. Kings, queens, riders, alchemists, they were all little more than oversized ants. At the head of his soldiers, standing stiffly erect, Isentine clenched his teeth. The pains in his knees and his back troubled him more every day. Age.

Hyrkallan ignored the soldiers. He walked straight to the eyrie-master and on, snapping his fingers at Isentine to follow him. Which was not something his rank entitled him to do, not until he was crowned. Isentine held his ground.

‘Your victories are sweet, but you’re not married to her yet, Your Highness,’ he said loudly.

Hyrkallan stopped dead. For a second he didn’t move. He didn’t turn. ‘Where is she?’

‘Where she always is.’ Isentine hung his head. ‘Underground. With the abomination.’

‘It must stop, Isentine.’

‘Yes, but she is our queen. I can’t force her. I need you to get her away from here.’ Now, finally, Isentine turned and walked side by side with Hyrkallan. ‘Or are you inclined to wonder, as I have heard others wonder, does it do such harm? The dragon is only a hatchling, after all.’ But no. An abomination was an abomination. Hyrkallan had the right of it.

Hyrkallan growled. ‘No, Eyrie-Master, I am not inclined to wonder. It must stop. She is a queen. She must behave as one.’

‘Shezira used to joke that you must have come out of your mother with that glare of disapproval on your face.’ Isentine tried to smile, but what came out was more of a wince. His hip this time.

‘I disapprove of many things, Eyrie-Master. The last thing of which I disapproved was Speaker Zafir. Now that she’s dead, I most strongly disapprove of her villainous lover Jehal sitting on her throne. I promised the Night Watchman that my dragons would not cross the Purple Spur and so they will not, but I will not watch from afar while the Viper triumphs. I have gone to war in the name of my queen and now I mean to marry her, just as she promised. I do not demand pomp and ceremony, old man, but I do demand that all do their duty. I have brought witnesses, from this realm and from King Sirion. You have priests here. We must strike while the ancestors favour us. Two weeks have passed since the rout at Evenspire and we have done nothing. Jaslyn must go to the Adamantine Palace. She must go in strength but in peace and she must do it soon. Unless I have judged matters awry, the Lesser Council will be glad to rid themselves of Jehal. The Speaker’s Throne is hers for the taking. Jehal may even keep his life if his queen demands it, although the Veid Palace of Furymouth shall become his prison.’ He growled. ‘The most gilded of prisons. But time is not on our side. Our strength is fragile, Isentine. Jaslyn must understand this. She must act or I must act for her, and I cannot rule alone as a prince. Then there is the matter of heirs.’

Isentine wiped his mouth. ‘I hope you brought a plentiful supply of Maiden’s Regret.’

‘I have enough.’

‘Jaslyn is…’ Isentine made a face. ‘I do not think she has ever had a lover, Your Highness.’

A tinge of red touched Hyrkallan’s face. ‘That is hard to believe, Eyrie-Master. Given her sisters…’ Hyrkallan obviously hadn’t looked where he was going before starting that sentence. Now he stopped, realising far too late what he was about to say.

‘Nevertheless,’ muttered Isentine when Hyrkallan had had enough time to feel suitably embarrassed. ‘I ask that you be gentle.’

‘She has to stop this foolishness, whatever it is that she’s doing. I don’t understand the nonsense that has possessed her.’