Stephen Deas: The King of the Crags

When he was done he mounted up and took to the air again. His riders knew what to do. Most stayed to hold the eyrie, but a few joined him back in the air. As they circled down, fire bloomed around the edge of the city below. There go the whores and all the riders who were lying with them. Never much cared for their kind. To get himself in the mood, he flew over the flames and through the smoke. The smell of it set his blood pumping, even more than burning the Taiytakei had done. There was something primal about dragon-fire, something that tore off the thin mask of order that governed the realms and exposed the raw chaos lurking beneath. And once in a while we let the madness out to wreak its havoc, and then we carefully put it away again, locked up until the next time.

A dozen of his dragons had already landed in the city eyrie. Zafir had taken almost all her dragon-knights north to fight Almiri. Seizing her city was turning out to be even easier than Meteroa had thought it would be. He circled the second of the Pinnacles, the Palace of Pleasure, urging his dragons up around the sheer face of the rock. Here and there he caught sight of windows, of little platforms, of tiny passageways carved into the cliffs, given away by the firelight that shone from within. Every one he saw, he burned. He didn't have the men to even try and hold another of the three Pinnacles, so a different approach would have to sulfur.

When they finally reached the lop,.I thousand feet above the plains below, a handful of soldiers and half a dozen scorpions were waiting for him. Or maybe it was more; in the darkness, Meteroa couldn't see them, but nor could they see him. He heard them shouting and he heard the sounds of the scorpions firing. He had no idea whether they'd hit anything or whether they'd even come close. Then his dragons enveloped the entire palace in flames. Meteroa had to put his visor down simply to'block out the glare. When it faded, there were no more shouts and no more scorpions, only screams. When even those stopped, Meteroa landed.

'Right!' he shouted for the benefit of anyone who was listening. 'Message for Princess Kiam. Your uncle's dead. You've got one hour to surrender yourself before I set fire to your sister's city.'

With that, he settled back to wait.

Zafir couldn't have even seen Almiri's dragons coming. The six of them fell out of the air straight at Onyx. Two of them smashed into him and glanced off, somersaulting through the air and almost crashing into the ruined palace below. Onyx lurched towards the ground. A third hunter ploughed into him, ripping the scorpioneer off his back. The fourth crushed his other riders and finally forced him to land. The fifth and then the sixth landed on top of him before he could move. Zafir's dragons were onto them in seconds, but they were far too late. By then everyone on the black dragon's back had been ripped to pieces.

Jehal threw back his head and screamed, 'I had to do that. Me! She was miner He tore down again, chasing after the hunters that had killed Zafir. They were trying to scatter but Zafir's war-dragons were already there. By the time Wraithwing arrived there wouldn't be anything left but scraps. Too late. The damage is done. Almiri wins… But now there are seven riderless dragons sitting on the ground, waiting to be taken.

For the second time he pulled Wraithwing up short and started to climb again. For all his rage, Almiri's riders had done him a favour. After all, isn't that exactly what I wanted? And now I don't have to do it myself. I don't have to find out what it would have felt like to watch Wraithwing rip her to pieces right in front of me.

Or, if you looked at what had happened in a different way, Almiri had made him look hopelessly incompetent. He had some two hundred dragons circling below the clouds to stop exactly this from happening and they'd failed. And how do I retort? Do I say that I didn't give a shit what Almiri did to Zafir, since that just spared me the trouble of doing it myself? Ancestors! I couldn't even protect myself. But how did Almiri kttow where to strike, and when?

He looked up at his dragons, still circling aimlessly, still waiting for orders. How many does Almiri have left? Sixty? Seventy? And then the dragons she took from Prince Sakabian. Less than a hundred. She'd be mad to launch herself at us now. She's done as much damage as she could hope for. Zafir is dead. The speaker. The war is over, even if the battle still rages. She should know that. There's nothing more she can do.

If he pretended for a moment that Almiri didn't exist then there really wasn't much point waiting around any longer. Zafir's riders must have taken the citadel by now. They'd be landing, mopping up any survivors too stupid to hide in the deep tunnels. They'd be wondering what on earth to do next. He took a deep breath.

Almiri has done my workfor me. I could leave quietly. Return to the Adamantine Palace. Return to Furymouth. There would be a council of kings and queens to choose Zafir's successor. It's hard to see who it would be. Sirion, perhaps? Narghon? Silvallan? Not me though. They won't choose me. Not like this. No speaker's throne for dithering King Jehal.

And that, in the end, was the whole reason he was here. He reached his dragons and signalled. It was what they'd been waiting for. Almost as one, they turned and dived towards the ground to smash the remnants of Zafir's reign to pieces.

High above the cloud where the dry desert air was thin and the sky was so blue that it hurt his eyes, Prince Hyrkallan flew. Prince Hyrkallan now and soon to be king. He understood why Queen Jaslyn had offered herself to him – she needed him simply to survive. He understood, but it didn't matter. He'd given himself a single day to consider her proposition, what it would mean to accept and what it would mean to reject her. In the end the decision was easy. If he turned his back on her, the realm would fall apart. Jaslyn would fall, a hundred pretenders to the throne of Sand and Stone would crawl out from their holes. There would be blood and chaos, and all the while Speaker Zafir would be laughing at them.

No, he had only one choice and so he committed himself to it with all his heart and vowed to make Jaslyn into a queen to make her mother proud. So while Jaslyn remained closeted away in her eyrie, he'd flown, in person and in secret, to King Sirion. He'd gone with almost nothing to offer, yet Sirion had listened, and when Hyrkallan had finished, King Sirion had nodded. They would go to war together.

'Why?' Hyrkallan had asked, and Sirion had shaken his head.

'Because of the Red Riders. Because you knew what was right.' And then he'd done the strangest thing. He'd bowed and taken Hyrkallan's hand. 'Shezira should have followed Hyram but she's dead. Now it will be you.'

All that was before they'd slipped into the City of Dragons and the Night Watchman had almost begged them to overthrow Zafir. Another man might have felt the hand of destiny resting lightly on his shoulder. To Hyrkallan, it was all simply justice. Justice and Vengeance, exactly as he'd promised.

He looked around behind him. Nearly four hundred dragons. Not as many as Zafir would have and so he'd planned his attack with care. Almiri didn't know he was coming. There would be no pitched battle to save Evenspire from the flames. The city would be sacrificed. Then, as Zafir revelled in her victory, he would fall out of the skies on her and crush her.

Far above the cloud, where the air was thin and the sky was so blue that it hurt his eyes, Prince Hyrkallan felt a deep sense of calm as he signalled his dragons down. They'd flown as high as they had in the hope of evading any eyes that Zafir had left to keep watch; now they fell at such speed that the wind ripped the air out of their lungs. All Hyrkallan could see was cloud, but the dragons knew. They had an instinct for where things were, as though they could sense their own kind, and knew they were coming for a fight. Hyrkallan could feel it from them – the tension, the anticipation, the hunger, the joy.