Stephen Deas - The adamantine palace

The gorse was dense and the soldiers were in heavy armour. The man he'd set his sights on stumbled; Kemir bellowed and threw himself on top of him, wrestling him, hacking at him with his knife. The soldier was wearing dragonscale plates, which would turn his knives no matter how hard he stabbed, but armour always had gaps. In the crotch, behind the knees and elbows, around the throat. The soldier half rose to his feet, raised an arm to ward Kemir off and reached for his sword with the other. Kemir's first knife found the soldier's armpit, driving up into his shoulder. The soldier opened his mouth in shock, and Kemir drove his other knife down the man's throat. He pulled both blades out as the soldier fell, howled in exultation and looked for someone else to kill. Snow was a few hundred yards down the track now. She'd stopped and was sweeping the bushes with flames.

He remembered the soldier who'd dived into the gorse to escape Snow's tail.

Alive. We need one alive. Although it was hard to remember that through the haze of murder in his head.

Nadira was off Snow's back as well. He saw her in the gorse, lifting up a heavy stone and smashing it down again. He couldn't see what she was crushing. Someone's head, most lively.

He couldn't see any soldiers now. They were all gone, lost among the thorn bushes, most of them shattered or burned by Snow's wrath. If any of them were still alive, they were hiding. You couldn't outrun a dragon.

'She can hear your thoughts,' he shouted. 'You can't hide from her.'

The dragon had finished burning soldiers. She came pounding back along the track, shaking the earth, past where Kemir was standing, back to the ruins of the burning wagons.

Alchemists. Where are they? She didn't make a sound, but the thought was so loud in Kemir's head that it made him wince. He started back towards the wagons as well. Snow was rummaging in the bushes, clawing out the half-burned bodies of the wagon drivers, the ordinary men who'd happened to be in the way. She gave each one a cursory glance and then tossed it into the air.

Dead.

When the bodies came down again, she caught them in her mouth and swallowed them whole.

Dead.

Nadira staggered out of the gorse onto the track. Her hands were bloody, her face a strange expression of exultant shock. She came towards Kemir. Her eyes were very wide.

Dead.

'I killed one!' She sounded amazed. 'I never killed anyone before, but I did it. I smashed his head with a rock.'

Dead.

The bloodlust was still there, still strong, but no longer overwhelming. Kemir took her hands in his. 'Do you know who these soldiers were?' She shook her head. 'These were Adamantine Guardsmen. The speaker's men. The best soldiers in the realms, or so they say. They train to fight dragons.'

Dead.

He looked around at the carnage and laughed. So much for the Guard, but then what were they thinking? What was anyone thinking? How could a man fight a dragon? How could even an army of men fight a dragon?

Dead.

He left Nadira to search the corpses for anything worth stealing and went to look at the weapon they'd used to shoot at him. It was smashed, crushed under Snow's claws as she'd run past, but the remains told him enough. He'd been right – it was a crossbow, the biggest one he'd ever seen. It probably took two men to even carry it. The mechanism for cocking it was splintered beyond recognition, but Kemir guessed it was some sort of crank. It probably took three or four soldiers to use the weapon. Grudgingly he found himself impressed that the soldiers had been quick enough to use it at all.

Alive! Kemir, there is one alive. Ask it! Make it tell you where the alchemists are to be found!

A shriek echoed between the mountains. A dark shape swooped out of the sky towards them. Kemir's heart sank.

Shit. Ash.

Ash

When he'd set out with Snow to find the alchemists, Kemir had soon realised that he didn't know where they lived after all. What he knew was that the blood-mages who had first conquered the dragons had lived somewhere in the north of the Worldspine, and that the alchemists had raised their stronghold in the same place. It had never occurred to him how vast the Worldspine was. They'd searched for days, and the mountains had stretched on forever in every direction they looked. The days had become weeks. All they ever found were bleak snow-covered peaks, lush forested valleys and, when they strayed close to the realms, occasional Outsider camps.

You lied to me. You do not know where the alchemists live.

All he could do was let Snow peer into his thoughts, let her see for herself that he'd never meant to fool her, that he'd always thought that his knowledge was enough. Sometimes, when she was angry with him, she was terrifying. It was hard to live with a creature that could extinguish him so easily, over which he had no power.

Because of your alchemists, it is my kind who have no power, she'd replied.

He'd gone into a couple of Outsider settlements with some of the weapons and money they'd stolen from Queen Shezira's dragon-knights. The first village had given him a cautious welcome and taken his gifts, but they hadn't known any more about the alchemists. The second had taken him captive. They probably would have killed him if Snow hadn't crashed in first. She'd destroyed the village and anyone who wasn't quick enough to run away into the trees. She was pitiless. Man, woman or child, if it moved, if it thought, it burned. Some of them got away, and Kemir almost had to beg her not to hunt them down. Snow had given him a curious look, an expression he'd come to recognise as a mixture of incomprehension and indifference. She'd let the survivors go in the end, but the memories made him shiver. They'd been Outsiders, which sort of made them his people. Snow didn't care. She'd squashed them with all the compassion of a child crushing ants.

They'd flown south again, deep into the Worldspine, still searching. There, Snow had spotted a lone dragon in the far distance. Kemir couldn't even see it at first but then made out a tiny black speck in the sky, miles away.

There is another dragon, Kemir. Alone.

'Where there's a dragon, there's a rider. Maybe he knows where the alchemists hide away.'

Snow climbed higher and surged through the air. The dragon-knight saw them coming but didn't seem particularly bothered until Snow swooped down and almost landed on his dragon's back. She ripped the knight out of his saddle. The other dragon shrieked and did what they always did – it dived for the ground. Snow banked into a steep spiral, following it down. This new one was shorter than Snow, but heavier, squat and compact. A war-dragon, Kemir decided. A poor one too, since its scales were a dull dark grey, almost black in places, and barely gleamed at all.

Alchemists! Where are the alchemists?

It took Kemir a moment to realise that Snow wasn't thinking to him, but to the rider she'd seized. The two dragons whirled towards the ground. Kemir's fingers gripped into Snow's scales. Riding behind him, Nadira's arms around his waist were like a vice, crushing the air out of him. The wind took his breath away. Nadira might have been screaming, but he didn't hear it so much as feel it reverberating through him.

Where?

His heart almost stopped as the ground hurtled towards him – he could almost believe that Snow was so set on having an answer to her question that she hadn't noticed – but, as always, at the last moment she spread her wings and he nearly fell off her back, and then they were suddenly down on the ground.

The near-black dragon was eyeing them mournfully. Snow hurled the rider at it. The beast sniffed the body and then curled up around it, head held erect and alert. It never blinked, Kemir noticed.