Stephen Deas - The King of the Crags

'You're shaking, Your Holiness. You're very pale.' King Sirion touched her shoulder lightly, awkwardly. She flinched away, ignored him, frantically waving her arms at her own riders already swooping out of the sky. Within seconds, a hunter thundered awkwardly in to land nearby. Zafir ran, screamed at the rider to move aside and hauled herself up onto the dragon's back. Sirion was forgotten. Never mind that he might have saved her life only a moment ago – for all she knew or cared, the hunter might have crushed him or swept him over the cliff and into the river below. Before she'd even strapped herself into the rider's harness, she commanded the dragon to fly. What mattered was her palace.

The dragon felt her need and threw itself over the edge of the Diamond Cascade, soaring out into the immensity of the void below, into the skies above the City of Dragons.

Streaks of flame flashed across the ground far below. What mattered was her palace, and her palace was burning.

Rider Semian shot out of the mouth of the Diamond Cascade and into the void beyond. Vengeance, the dragon he'd stolen from the Usurper, tucked in his wings and fell out of the sky like a stone towards the city below. The wind roared and screamed in Semian's ears and tore at his clothes. The wound in his leg hurt; there was a fever in his blood and when he closed his eyes all he saw was fire and endless burning plains. He whispered a prayer to the Great Flame. Drotan's Top and three other eyries ringed the speaker's domain and a fifth stood close to her palace gates. Today they would all burn. Let the kings and queens of the realms answer the speaker's call and find only ash and embers. The Red Riders, his riders, had dispersed. They'd flown north and south and east to strike at all the speaker's eyries at once. And while they do, I will find the heart and cut it out. Hyrkallan, when you hear of our deed, I wish you could know how I pitied you as I sent you away.

He opened his eyes. The City of Dragons had grown enormous. Vengeance stretched his wings and opened his mouth wide. Scorching winds blasted Semian's face even through his visor; the glorious smell of scorched air filled his nose and the city burned. He could feel the raw strength and power of Vengeance ripple through him and he knew the dragon felt the same. They were as one, burning bright with righteous fury. See how your ruler protects you. See how powerless she is? Three or four dragons were in pursuit of him now, guardians loitering up on the edge of the Purple Spur, but they were behind him. Too far away to reach him before he himself reached the palace. Fate and destiny had flown here with him and slipped him between the Usurper's patrols. They were his shield and his armour and they would protect him from the scorpions of the Adamantine Men too, he was sure. As the walls of the palace came up meet them, Shanzir and Nthandra peeled away to either side, striking at the eyrie and the barracks around it. He alone would have the glory. Vengeance smashed at the walls with his tail as they crossed, lashed a scar of cracked stone into the greens and blues of the Tower of Water and then let loose, spraying fire in all directions, cleansing the walls, the earth, the towers, everything within his reach. Men and women and horses all screamed and burned; servants and beasts, kings and lords, all were the same when they were made into ash.

Something hit Vengeance and the dragon shuddered and gave an angry snort. From the walls, soldiers were firing at him, shooting their handful of scorpions. In front of him, a company of Adamantine Men had formed up with their shields, turning the fire away. Vengeance lashed them with his tail as he flew overhead, but as Semian raced towards the Tower of Air and the Speaker's Tower beyond, more and more Guardsmen emerged. A second scorpion bolt hit Vengeance, and then a third. The dragon shrieked and veered, straining to turn and strike back. Only Semian's iron desire held him in check.

There! There in front of him were the open doors to the great Chamber of Audience. If the speaker was anywhere, she should be there. Guards were closing them though, and now hundreds of soldiers were spilling onto the walls and into the yards, raising their shields, dragging their scorpions.

It wasn't to be. Another scorpion struck Vengeance in the back of the shoulders, barely a yard away from where Semian sat, and this time the dragon would not be denied. Flames washed across the soldiers closing the door and then Vengeance pivoted his head and sprayed the walls, veering towards them. A few scorpion bolts would never take a dragon out of the air but they still hurt, and by the time Semian had Vengeance under control again, the moment was gone. The doors flashed past, still half open, inviting him in, mocking him. With a howl of rage he urged Vengeance onward, upward. He pulled away from the palace, jaw clenched with frustration, and finally glanced over his shoulder to see how many of the speaker's dragons were chasing him.

And saw something wonderful. A miracle of the Great Flame. No dragons were after him; they were all converging on another. For a moment he thought it might be Shanzir, but no. Nthandra.

Nthandra of the Vale had set fire to the speaker's eyrie as he'd told her, but now, instead of flying away, she'd turned back into the palace. Semian felt a strange pang of jealousy and joy. He saw her dragon almost crash into the doors he'd so narrowly missed, landing among the soldiers, crushing and scattering them. He saw its head lunge through the doors, smashing them to splinters, and then he saw fire fill the tower, exploding out of every door and window.

And he saw her die, shattered in her harness by three scorpion bolts at once and burned by her own fire, erupting back out of the tower. He closed his eyes and prayed for her, offering her soul to the oblivion of the Great Flame. The first martyr in two hundred years. Saint Nthandra of the Vale.

He flew south and then west along the Fury Gorge. No one came after him. Kithyr had promised him that he would be invisible, and so it seemed he was.

His head sang for the rest of that day, even as the other Red Riders returned with failure after failure. Samir's Crossing north of the Purple Spur was filled with the speaker's dragons and they'd turned away. Drotan's Top – they'd found to their cost – had been much the same, and four riders and their dragons were lost. But none of that mattered, and when he told them what Nthandra of the Vale had done, the other riders all seemed to understand. So they should. The riders not fit to follow the Flame had returned to the north, or else, like poor Jostan, gone some other way, willing or not. The ones that were left were the ones that would serve the Flame to their deaths.

The speaker is dead! The Usurper is slain, and by my command! Was that too much to think, too much to hope? When he turned to his tent as the sun sank below the hills, he lay in his bed and stared into the emptiness and prayed. Let her be gone. Let the victory be mine. Let the standard of the Great Flame burn across the realms! He closed his eyes and tried to think of the world as he would make it. Where the dragon-priests wielded the power that had once been theirs, with Semian at their head, the Knight of Fire of myth and legend. Justice and Vengeance. The visions filled his head as he drifted away.

You cannot rest, whispered the blame as he slept. You cannot rest.

All of it must burn. He tossed and turned in restless dreams and the sun was already high in the sky when he awoke. He'd missed dawn by hours. In his tent beside him sat the blood-mage, Kithyr.

'You did well, prophet,' said the mage solemnly. He laid cool fingers on Semian's brow.

Semian gripped Kithyr's hand. 'It's just the start. Just the beginning. We have to…' He tried to rise but Kithyr forced him to be still.