Stephen Deas - The King of the Crags

Lord Meteroa,

My previous instructions regarding Princess Lystra are withdrawn.

Jehal

He looked in horror at the words he'd written. So simple, so pure, so innocent in their way, yet they would tell Meteroa everything he needed to know. Anything more would be superfluous. The eyrie-master would understand exactly what was required of him.

He shook his head. I can't send this. The words may hide their meaning from others, but I'll always know what I've done. I'm commanding Lystra's murder.

The words sat on the page as words were wont to do. Still, un-moving, accusing. He bit his lip. And that's exactly what I have to do. She's in the way and she has to go. That was always how it was going to be, and if you weren't prepared for it, you should never have married her in the first place. You could have turned her down when the white dragon you were promised was never given. Face it, you were just being greedy. Just being you, who can never say no when it's served up on a plate for you. Well you've had her every which way you know and so now you can move on. Let her go. Marry Zafir. Follow her as speaker. It's not as if you'll have to wield the knife yourself, not if you don't want to. Say the word and Meteroa will do it for you. You can be a thousand miles away, hands as clean as Zafir's silken sheets.

I think I might love her though. There. That was an admission, wasn't it?

Pah! Kings have no room for feelings, remember? Who said that, Jehal? Was it you? Yes, I rather think it was. Zafir s much better in bed. Take that and be grateful.

Lystra is carrying my heir. My first-born. A son, perhaps. A son who could one day wear my father's crown. There. Wriggle out of that one.

But was that anything so special? First-born? He must have sired at least a dozen bastards by now. Zafir freely admitted that she might have conceived at least twice because of him and that both times she'd drunk a dose of Dawn Torpor and bled it out. Was this so different? If Lystra knew what was at stake, she'd probably even accept her fate. My life to save my mother? Yes, my love.

Without even thinking about it, he'd dropped a blot of molten wax onto the page. It sat there, waiting for him, waiting for the press of his ring to turn his words into a royal command and seal Lystra's fate. The trouble was, his hand wouldn't move.

This is stupid. In a minute the wax is going to go hard and I'm going to have to scrape it off and start again.

He closed his eyes. He didn't have much time for any of the many possible gods that the realms had to offer. Most people saved their prayers for their ancestors, but when it came to that, all Jehal could think about was his father, drooling and useless. And even if dying had restored Tyan's senses, Jehal wasn't at all sure he ought to be praying to someone he'd murdered, especially when it came to murdering someone else. Conscience troubling you, son? You never prayed to anyone about finishing me off, did you? Got a little trouble with some guilt there? And you thought for some reason that I might want to help you with it?

Still, he couldn't think of anyone more useful to ask for forgiveness.

Somewhere over the palace, in the first light of the breaking dawn, a dragon shrieked. Two short calls and then a long one; and with the last one it must have swooped straight over the palace, and low too. The whole tower shook with the thunder of its passing.

Jehal froze and then rushed to the window. No one in their right mind would do that, not now, not with the Night Watchman's scorpions lining the walls. There were shouts down below, but they weren't shouts of alarm, and when Jehal swivelled his gaze, he saw that the dragon hadn't flow across the palace, but had actually landed within the Gateyard walls. Men with torches were running towards it. A rider was dismounting and he wasn't waiting for a Scales or anything like that. He was racing straight for the Tower of Air. To Zafir.

Jehal left the letter where it was. He pulled on his boots and ran out of his rooms, out of the Speaker's Tower, and went to find Zafir as well. As he reached the Tower of Air, soldiers raced past him, heading away. He was halfway up the stairs when a bell began to toll. An alarm. More dragons. He ran faster and soon found Zafir, hurriedly dressed, coming the other way.

'Oh, trust you to be the first,' she snapped. She swept past him, not quite running but not quite walking either. Jehal reversed and fell in behind her.

'The first to what?'

'We're going to war – what does it look like?' 'What? Are we under attack?'

'You're still not a king, Jehal. You have no voice in this, but if you must know, there are dragons pouring out of the Worldspine. Hundreds of them. Almiri's and Jaslyn's.'

Jehal snorted. 'That can't be right.' No, no, no, they weren't supposed to do that.

'Why not? Slipped in and out of the Worldspine, where no one would see them. They mean to attack the palace.'

'That can't be right.' Could it? Could they really be so bold? If it was true…

'Jehal, listen to me carefully while I say it again slowly. Hundreds of dragons are flying out of the Worldspine. They are coming here. They have gone to war.'

Jehal grinned. 'If they have then I take off my hat to them. Can we stop them?' They're insane. They can't possibly have enough dragons. Not with so many of Zafir's already here… 'Of course I can stop them.'

They were nearly at the bottom of the tower. Jehal's mind raced on. If the Night Watchman was right then Hyrkallan was probably leading the attack. But that couldn't be, could it? Hyrkallan was too canny. He'd never let Jaslyn do something like this. It was suicide. 'I know Hyrkallan. He's one to wait and wait and wait and strike when the time is exactly right. Which isn't now. He's devoted to Shezira and an attack now would make her death certain. He'd wait.'

'While Jaslyn is impatient and has little love for her mother. Your point?'

'My point?' Jehal laughed, but before he could say any more, a second messenger threw himself to the ground in front of them.

'Your Holiness!' he gasped. 'It's not the north. It's the King of the Crags! The King of the Crags is coming!'

For all practical purposes, Jaslyn was a prisoner. She'd heard the new speaker's summons and she'd flown south without an inch of doubt inside her. She wasn't sure whether she wanted her mother freed or hanged, but in many ways that was a question that missed the point. Her mother would prevail. She would win because she always won, and Jaslyn would be tossed in her wake like a leaf in a storm.

She'd flown to Southwatch and then to Evenspire and then, quite to her surprise, all her dragons had been taken away. By her own sister. As jailers went, Almiri was as kind as they came, but a prison was a prison, and Jaslyn chafed at the invisible chains that held her to the ground. They might as well have cut off her legs.

'You're mad,' Almiri said when Jaslyn had told her where she was going. 'Speaker Zafir will throw you in a tower and have your head too.'

'And you're afraid,' was Jaslyn's reply. It hadn't been a good conversation after that. Maybe Almiri was right and Zafir was a monster. Did it matter? Not to go was to concede defeat, wasn't it? Jehal, who most certainly was a monster, who surely had his hand up Zafir as far as it would go, would waggle his fingers and make the speaker issue whatever decrees pleased him. Not to go meant no one would be there to challenge him, yet here she was, trapped by her own big sister as if they were both ten years younger and Almiri had been left in charge for the afternoon so their mother could go hunting. After days of frantic preparation, she suddenly found herself with nothing to do except to sit with Isentine and watch Almiri's Scales at their work while her riders kicked their heels in the vastness of the Palace of Paths.