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

‘I don’t want to be a Scales,’ she said, but he didn’t really hear.

Early the next morning, the boat stopped at another riverside shanty town. Kemir and Kataros got off while the boatman busied himself getting ready for the long haul through Gliding Dragon Gorge to Plag’s Bay, where the only road for hundreds of miles wound its way up and out of the gorge and eventually to the City of Dragons. Kataros would get off there. Kemir didn’t think he’d be stopping her.

Oh well. Just have to sell myself into slavery then.

He looked back up the river. The valley was already deep and steep here, but you could still see the peaks of the Worldspine in the distance. Back there they were mountains. Here they were more craggy hills. Ahead lay the Maze. A dozen or more rivers, each carving their own way down from the heights of the Purple Spur. The mountains stole all the clouds, and so the Maze was a barren hard mess of hard rock, sand and dusty earth where it never, ever rained. Of towering mesas and stone pinnacles, of canyons, rivers, rapids, waterfalls and flash floods. No one lived here. No one except bandits.

Absently he looked at his fingers. No rings. That was good. The Order of the Finger hid away in the Maze. They had a liking for rings, or so he’d heard.

The dragon was out there too. Snow. Didn’t know how he knew, but he did. Even thinking about her, he could feel his connection to her stir. Maybe she’d fly out of wherever she was hiding, burn them all and be gone again. And no one would ever know.

Well bring it on, dragon. You know I’ll be waiting.

As the boat pulled out from the bank once more and the current took hold and dragged it away, he found it hard not to look back. With a force of will, he pulled himself away and marched to the bows, staring ahead at the wide expanse of water ahead. Kataros came to stand beside him.

‘It’s all there behind me,’ he said quietly. The woman surely couldn’t care less, but some things needed to be said, if only to the wind. ‘Everything I was is gone. All that matters is whether I can run fast enough to get away. Nothing else.’ Nothing else at all.

To his surprise, she took his hand in hers. He wondered what that meant. ‘I know,’ she said, and squeezed.

‘Do you think there’s much to see between here and the sea? I’ve never been south.’

‘I think there’ll be a war,’ she said.

Jehal peered over the dragon’s shoulder as Wraithwing circled what was left of the landing fields. Jeiros had described the place well. Most of it was blackened soil, the grass just beginning to regrow. There had been buildings once, but they’d been smashed and weeds were growing up among them. A mile to the west and a mile high, the cliffs of the Purple Spur threw long afternoon shadows out across the northern edge of the Hungry Mountain Plain. A thousand trickles of meltwater ran down from the sheer stone walls and merged into a maze of creeks and streams, everything converging into the steep-sided scar that ran across the land. The valley of the Sapphire River. The last water before the deserts of the north.

The bridge itself was still in one piece. You could see why Vishmir had built another one further to the east where the Sapphire valley flattened out. Narammed’s was nothing more than a lot of planks suspended high above the rushing waters by some ropes, all swaying gently in the wind. Jehal felt somehow let down. He’d expected something grand. This was where Narammed had forged the Speaker’s Peace?

Let down by the bridge, perhaps, but not by the dragons waiting beside it. Hyrkallan’s outriders had seen him coming from miles away. Counted his dragons and then flown back to their master to say that the speaker and the Lesser Council had come to honour their truce. Waiting on the ground on the north side of the bridge were two of the biggest dragons in the realms. Hyrkallan’s B’thannan and Sirion’s Valediction. Almost as big as the monster that Prince Tichane brought to Zafir’s council when she condemned Shezira. Almost. Beside them were a motley collection of hunters and war-dragons, all of them made small by the two monsters. He spared a lingering glance for the hunters, but none of them had any colours that he hadn’t seen before. Nothing here to add to his eyries.

Meteroa’s eyries. His uncle had been the one with the passion for breeds.

He landed Wraithwing on the south side, walked him up close to the bridge. The dragon stared out across the chasm. His muscles were tense. He tossed his head and snarled. That was dragons for you. Always looking for a fight.

You had to wonder who’d gone to the trouble of building a bridge out here and why they’d bothered. Most likely some nameless company of Adamantine Men had done it simply because they could. All he knew was what Jeiros had told him, that Narammed had come here in his later years, when his power was almost secure, to broker a final peace with the northern kings after he’d betrayed their trust and made a peace with the south. Rather like this. Except when Narammed met them in the middle of the bridge, he’d had the strength to force them to their knees. Can’t see Hyrkallan bending much of anything this time. My neck, maybe, if he can get his hands on it.

The sight of Meteroa’s severed finger haunted him.

‘No one else knows,’ Jeiros had said up in the Spur where no one could possibly overhear. ‘Valmeyan has come out of the mountains. Zafir lives. They have taken the Pinnacles and doubtless Furymouth as well. They send you this gift.’ Valmeyan had sent his message with one of Meteroa’s riders on one of Meteroa’s dragons, and yet somehow the alchemist had intercepted both before they could reach Jehal. Just as the Night Watchman had intercepted the message from the north. They might as well have told him to his face that he was superfluous.

Jehal dismounted. His bad leg was playing up again, making it difficult to keep his footing on the soft blackened earth. Armoured figures were already standing on the far side of the bridge, waiting for him. Or waiting for someone. He limped towards them.

Zafir. Never mind his uncle – he’d be the first to say there were far worse things than losing a finger. Valmeyan was a dragon-king. He’d treat his prisoners well enough. Jehal might have to part with a small fortune to get his eyrie-master back, but he’d come back fat and well fed. No, that wasn’t the fear that gnawed at him. What mattered was that Valmeyan had Lystra and Zafir. Were they both his prisoners now? Jeiros seemed to think not. Zafir alive. Was that a feeling of hope or dread? He’d gone to Evenspire to murder her and then wept when someone else had beaten him to it.

Lystra, Zafir. Zafir, Lystra. He reached the middle of the bridge. Cursed thing swayed so much he felt like he was trying to balance on the back of a horse. Hyrkallan and two other riders were coming out to meet him. When he looked down, the empty space and the churning water below made his head spin, but if he didn’t look down, he was quite sure he’d fall. Damn stupid place to make a peace. One good gust of wind and we’ll all be tossed in the river and half the realms will be looking for new kings. Maybe Hyrkallan had had the same thought. Maybe he and Sirion would simply push him into the river and get on with the serious business of talking to men whose opinions actually mattered. Ironic, really, after what had happened to Hyram.

The clever thing would be to step aside right now. Let Hyrkallan and Valmeyan destroy each other and then swoop back to pick up the pieces when they were done.

And then King Sirion was in front of him, with Hyrkallan at his side almost spitting in Jehal’s face. Ancestors, but the man was big!