Stephen Deas - The King of the Crags

'Want does not come into this. As we serve you, Your Holiness, you must serve your realm. Your realm needs a future and it needs a leader. Take who or what you want into your bed when you've done your duty, but this realm needs an heir.'

Jaslyn closed her eyes. 'Enough, Isentine. I hear this every day. My duty? To spread my legs? Ach, what a fine thing it is to be a queen! I came here to escape all that.'

'But you can't, Your Holiness.' He looked sad as he let go of her. He pities me. I pity me too.

She took a deep breath. 'Very well, Eyrie-Master. Make your list and we shall see which of them I might bring myself to like. Now let me see the hatchlings.'

Isentine shook his head. 'My Queen, there is nothing to see that you haven't seen before.'

'Really? Because I've heard you have a hatchling that I have not seen.'

She watched him hesitate. 'True. It will not last, Your Holiness. It is another that refuses its food. It will be gone soon.' 'I've heard that it is ash-grey.'

Now he shook his head. 'That does not make him your Silence, Holiness.'

'So it's a male then.'

Isentine nodded.

'Silence was male.'

'That is not how it works, Holiness.'

'But you don't know how it works.' Anger swept through her like a storm out of the desert, sudden and furious. She'd had a temper for as long as she could remember, but lately it had been getting worse. She grabbed Isentine's shirt and almost knocked him over. She could do that sort of thing here. No was watching except Isentine's soldiers and they weren't going anywhere. There would be no whispers behind her back. 'Take me to him now!

He staggered away. 'Will you marry, My Queen?'

'Yes! If I must then I will. Does that satisfy you?'

'Yes.' Isentine dusted himself down. 'It does.'

The descent into the caverns under Outwatch was as suffocating as ever. The phantom stench of woodsmoke taunted Jaslyn. She felt sick. Being underground was like staring at death. She bore it though. Silence was worth that much. This time, whatever Isentine said, she felt him with her again.

The hatchling, when they reached it, was something of a disappointment. He was ash-grey, but lighter than Silence and most of his patterning was wrong. He was pretty though. I would have called you Ghostfire, she thought as soon as she saw him. After speaker Ayzalmir's mount. But no, Isentine was right: the hatchling didn't look much like Silence at all. Still, at least he was looking at her, watching her with a modicum of interest, not trying to bite her head off like the last one. She pasted on Isentine's ointment against Hatchling Disease and shooed him and his servants away, sending them to stand outside the door. Then she sat down where the chains that held him wouldn't let the hatchling reach her. At least she had her helmet this time, in case he tried to burn her.

'You're not Silence, are you?' Her voice brimmed with disappointment. 'You're not Silence. Was it a lie then? You said that you would come back. The alchemists said you would come back too. But you said you would remember. The alchemists said nothing about that. Even when I asked them they only shrugged their shoulders and said they didn't know. Maybe you are Silence. Maybe you've just forgotten. How would I know? How would any of us know?'

She took the helmet off and wiped the tears away. 'Go on then. Burn me if that's what you want. It won't change anything for you but at least I won't have to be my mother any more. I don't want any of this. I don't want to fight this war; I don't even like Almiri and I don't want to marry Llyrkallan. I love my sister Lystra and I loved my Silence and that's all there ever was. And now they're both gone. So burn me, whatever you are in there.' She laughed a bitter laugh. 'You don't even understand me, do you? Did I imagine it all? Did I imagine Silence speaking to me? Was that just grief playing tricks on me?'

Enough. She picked up her helm and stood up. To war.

I remember you.

She froze. There was a voice in her head.

Princess Jaslyn. Yes. I do remember you. I remember a fleeting glimpse of you. A flash of clarity. You were there.

'Silence?' Her heart was racing. It couldn't be, could it? However much she wanted it, she'd never believed…

That is not my name.

'But you remember me?'

Yes.

She took a step towards him. 'Well? What? Tell me! Tell me what you remember!'

Tell you what I remember? The voice in her head was filled with scorn. I remember everything. I remember my first hatching. I remember the world breaking. I remember many lives lived. And then emptiness. Nothingness. Like flying through a cloud. And then a moment of waking again, already burning from the inside. There was another dragon who remembered. I knew her once. Alimar Ishtan vei Atheriel. An unbecoming name. She told me what you have done to us. You were there. Inside you, I saw it was true. And then the heat of the little death took me.

'Even if there was something to take this poison away, I would not go back to what I was. That's what you said.'

Yes. You called me Silence. You said that was my name but it is not.

'You said I would follow you. One day. That the difference between us is that you would die that day and be reborn the next and I would not. And then you were gone. And now you're back.'

I have died the little death four times since the day I spoke to you. With every turn of the wheel I learn a little more. Your kind are always waiting for me when I am reborn. I look into their minds and I know that they understand what I am. They know what I will do, and what they, in turn, must do to stop me, I think only of when I will die again.

Slowly, each time, I starve. Sometimes, between lives, I meet the souls of other dragons. Most are dull and dim and pass quickly away. But there are others, ones who awoke long ago, and other things too. We linger together as long as we can, before we are pulled away. 'Alchemists…'

Yes. When I will not take the poisons your kind try to feed me, then come these alchemists. The others do not understand but these alchemists, they do. They fear me. I like their fear.

'Talk to them!'

They know what I am and it would make no difference. But you are not afraid of me. You are…a curiosity. Why?

'You're my Silence. Why would I be afraid?'

Because I would destroy you if I could. Because you are food. Because dragons kill humans to feast upon. Because that is why we were made.

'You were made?' Jaslyn's world was spinning. Silence! This is my Silence! Why is my Silence so cold and hostile?

Because you are my enemy, Princess Jaslyn. You would like to have me as I was. Stupefied. I can see it in you, a great desire. I am not the creature you once flew. I am not some beast of burden. I am a dragon, and dragons do not serve men. You cannot have what you desire. Find another creature to be your slave. Be gone.

The tears were back. 'You'll starve,' Jaslyn whispered. 'You'll die.'

Yes. Again and again and again, and each time I will return. What does it matter to us? Doom draws near. One day I will be reborn and you will be gone. Then, for a time, I will be free.

'You come back and each time you force yourself to die? Every time?'

Yes.

Jaslyn shivered. The tears were coming freely now. 'But why?'

I have told you why. Nor am I alone. There are others who have been reborn a thousand times only to wither and die of their own free will rather than take what you offer us as life. I look forward to seeing them again. We speaks as our spirits pass in the remnants of the Underworld.

'But how… How can you live like that? There must be another way.'

Why must there? Besides, this world will not last. The beings that made us tore their world to pieces,. They pieced it back together again and plastered over the cracks but their repairs were imperfect and doomed to fail. One of your kind has already ripped them open again. In lands so far away that none here have heard their names, in the places closest to the cracks, even your kind do not die properly any more. The end times are coming and your kind will soon be gone. If I do not see it in this cycle, I will see it in the next or the next or the one after that. 'Silence-'