Stephen Deas - The adamantine palace

He led her to the edge of the eyrie, where a line of carriages waited to carry Zafir and her entourage to the palace. There he left her while a hundred servants buzzed about, carrying cases and sacks and boxes to the four corners of the palace. He'd given her the Tower of Air again, hoping she'd understand that he meant to honour her. When he'd summoned her, a part of him had meant to accuse her. He might even have treated her as he'd treated Jehal, with a bit of mild torture and the truth-smoke. Now the thought appalled him. What was he thinking? The Viper deserved it for a hundred and one other tilings, but Queen Zafir?

She was exactly as he remembered her mother. Her clothes, her hair, her jewellery, the way she spoke, the way she held herself. A part of him knew that she must have done it deliberately; another part didn't care.

In the evening they dined in the great hall of the palace, with the golden carved heads of the previous forty-four speakers looking down on them. Zafir walked in with a dozen gleaming dragon-knights behind her, all dressed in the deep reds and autumn browns that Aliphera had favoured. She wore Aliphera's own favourite dress, and the sight of her brought tears to Hyram's eyes. So much regret.

As they ate he quietly told her everything he'd done to Jehal, and everything Jehal had said in return. She listened quietly. Her eyes seemed to tell him that he'd done the right thing.

'It doesn't matter whether he pushed her or whether she fell,' she said softly, when he was done. 'He is responsible, and I hate him for it. I used to like him. There was a time when…' She looked down. 'There was a time when I hoped he would marry me and not Princess Lystra. But now…' She shuddered. 'She's welcome to him. I should have listened to you a long time ago, and so should my mother. There will not be a war, Speaker, I promise you that. But I will have vengeance. I can promise you that too.'

He got drunk. It lessened the symptoms of his illness, but that was only ever an excuse. Mostly, it lessened the bitterness and the regrets and the pain, the other illness that ate away at him from deep inside. Except tonight it didn't; it made him worse and filled him with maudlin sighs, until he found himself telling Zafir everything. It was all he could do not to break down into tears. In front of all his knights and hers that would surely have been the end of him. Through it all, she watched him. She didn't say anything, but her eyes seemed filled with sympathy. He'd expected her to tell him that he was stupid, that he was a fool, that what he'd done to Jehal threatened the peace of the realms, that he was an idiot for mourning a woman he'd barely known, and that death was death and he should be glad of the years he'd had.

Instead, when he was done she leaned towards him and spoke into his ear.

'I can't bring my mother back, Hyram,' she whispered. 'But your sickness, if it truly is the same as King Tyan's, now there I may be able to help you.'

'The V-Viper claims he has a p-potion,' Hyram slurred. 'The a-alchemists know nothing about it. You s-said you had some i-information. In your letter.'

She leaned further towards him. 'He gets his potions from the Taiytakei, but I can do better than that.' From somewhere she produced a small vial. 'He was bringing a sample with him when he came to the palace to answer your summons. I dare say he meant to taunt you with it.' She giggled. 'I stole it when he spent the night at my eyrie on his way here.' She opened the vial and poured a few drops into his wine and then a few into her own. 'I thought about asking my alchemists what it was, but you know what they're like. A year from now they might come back with an answer or they might not. I've had it tested.' She lifted up her goblet and swallowed. 'It's not poison, I know that much. It's a bit…' She giggled again. 'It's a bit like a mild dose of Maiden's Regret. Of course, I don't know if it will help you with your sickness, but I'm sure it can't do you any harm. If you can believe anything Jehal says, it doesn't make the sickness go away, only keeps it at bay for as long as you take the potion. If you stop taking it, the sickness comes back again.'

Hyram stared at his wine. He sniffed it.

'It tastes terrible. It doesn't go well with wine either. Brandy is better.'

'Y-You tried it before?'

Zafir shrugged. 'I wanted to know what it would do before I offered it to you. Obviously I didn't try it until I knew it wasn't poison.'

'B-But it came from the Viper.' Hyram shook his head. The room was blurring before his eyes. 'It c-could be anything.'

She sat back in her chair, moving away from him. 'You don't have to drink it, Speaker. If you do, and it works, I have more.'

'How m-much more?'

Now she laughed. 'Enough for a few months. Enough to see you to the end of your time here. I know where he gets it too. I can tell you, if you want me to.' She leaned into him again. 'Drink it, Hyram. Don't let Jehal win. Be young and strong again, the way my mother wanted to remember you.'

Her closeness, the warmth of her through his clothes, made him shiver.

'What have you got to lose?'

He stared at his wine. He was still staring at it as the feast came slowly to an end. When he meandered away to his bed, he took the goblet with him, still half full. In the morning, he decided. In the morning I'll as\ her for another dose. Jeiros can take it. He can tell me what's in it. He can tell me if it's safe. In the morning. He put the goblet on the table beside his bed and tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come, and the goblet seemed to stare at him.

If you were Antros, you'd drink me, it seemed to say. If you were you, you'd drin\ me. If you don't, then who are you? Queen Zafir is right. What have you got to lose?

'Everything,' he whispered, and hoped the goblet would hear him and leave him be, but instead it seemed to laugh.

'Everything? You've already lost everything. And here I am, offering it all back again, and you turn me away? Who are you? What are you? Are you already a ghost?

Trembling, he reached out and took the goblet in his hand. She'd put some into her own cup, hadn't she? And drunk it down. He'd seen her do it. She was right, wasn't she?

That's right, murmured the goblet, as he put it to his lips. Drink me down. Be a man again. Be a man.

Be a man.

An Accommodation

Kemir crept out from the trees. In the middle of the river the wounded dragon paused from its howls and turned to look at him; quickly Kemir retreated, but the dragon didn't seem very interested in him. He couldn't see Rider Semian anywhere.

Maybe he got crushed in the fight.

That would be too much to hope for. Kemir ran through the forest beside the river until he rounded a bend and the dragon couldn't see him. Then he crossed over and crept back again. Still no Semian. The dragon hadn't moved either. He watched it for a while, searching for the courage to go out into the water where Sollos lay.

When he finally found him, he wondered why he'd bothered. Sollos was dead, and he'd known that from the moment he'd seen Rider Semian drive down his sword. He helped himself to Sollos's bow, his arrows and his pack.

'Goodbye, cousin.' He turned Sollos over and very gently removed an amulet from his neck, then turned his back on the body and picked his way into the trees. He carefully buried the amulet. Next he set about looking for any tracks that might have been Rider Semian's; he didn't find any, but as the sun slipped behind the mountain peaks two more dragons swooped silently into the valley and landed in the river. Kemir watched them come in through the trees. He strung his bow and crept closer until he could see them properly. The dragons were splashing in the water, cooling themselves down, while their riders clustered by the shore. Four dragon-knights. No, five.