The King of the Crags (44 page)

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Authors: Stephen Deas

Tags: #Memory of Flames

BOOK: The King of the Crags
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‘I see you left some for me.’ He wrinkled his nose. The air stank.
 
We will stay here now, Kemir. There is enough to eat.
 
‘You’ve only got half a whale left. You’ll be hungry again in the morning.’
 
This will satisfy us for days if we do not fly. If we grow hungry, we shall simply hunt more. In all my many lives, I have never seen the sea with my own eyes. It is not so bad after all.
 
Kemir nodded. The stench was getting worse, strong enough to make him gag. ‘You enjoy yourselves then. I’ll go hunt something more my size.’
 
I feel your hunger, Kemir. You may take from our kill.
 
‘I’m honoured.’ He wasn’t sure that he particularly wanted to, but an offer to share food was a meaningful thing among outsiders and to refuse was often an insult. Maybe dragons were different. Or maybe not. ‘Right then. Honoured then. Like I said.’ Disgusted as well, but not disgusted enough to offend something that could squash him flat without really noticing. With a sigh, he drew out one of his knives and tried to work out how best to approach the whale. Most of its head was missing, so it was a choice between its tail and its belly, where it had been ripped open and its innards scattered across the sand.
 
‘Tail,’ he decided. ‘When it comes to whales, we humans like the tail bits best.’ Especially when it’s the part that’s furthest away from all that . . .
mess
. He held his breath. He’d hunted and killed and eaten animals all his life, but never one whose corpse he could actually walk inside.
 
Snow was laughing at him.
You have never even seen these creatures before. You have barely heard of them.
 
Kemir glared at her. ‘Tail is still the best.’ He started to cut off strips of meat, trying to hold his nose at the same time.
 
Take as much as you wish. After this, you will have to hunt for yourself. You cannot stay with us. For a time, at least, we must be apart.
 
‘What?’ He stopped, frozen still. ‘Why? Where are you going?’ The thought of being left alone out here scared him. Which was insane. He pinched himself.
Nadira. Remember Nadira.
 
You must leave us here. We must be alone. Already my new brothers are beginning to dream, Kemir. I have shown you those dreams. You have seen what they are and you have tasted how they feel to us. You should not be here when the awakening begins. Remember Ash.
 
‘Ash was deranged.’
 
Ash was angry. All of us are angry. When I awoke,
I
was angry. And you do not want to be near when we are angry. I cannot promise they will not eat you. I cannot promise that I could stop them.
 
Kemir snorted. ‘Just tell them how useful I am.’
 
When the awakening has finished, I will reason with them. As I reasoned with Ash. Ash did not eat you, Kemir. Despite his anger.
 
‘Well then, fine. I’ll just piss off into the middle of nowhere. On my own. Leave you to it. Have fun and just see how far you get without me. Am I supposed to take your pet dragon-rider with me and look after her for you?’ He looked at Snow long and hard. She was still changing. Still remembering. Still learning who she was. There hadn’t been much time to notice since . . . since Nadira. Not until they’d reached the sea. But she was. She wasn’t the same Snow who’d burned the alchemists’ redoubt, not the same dragon who’d eaten Nadira or destroyed a city whose name she didn’t even know. Maybe she really didn’t need him any more. He wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. ‘There’s one thing I want to know before I go. What’s your name, dragon?’
 
Snow, Kemir. It is Snow. Why do you ask when you know this?
 
‘Not that name. Your real name. The name you were given when you were born for the very first time.’
 
For a moment he could almost believe Snow was smiling.
My hatching name. The name my silver rider gave me. The first name I ever had. Is that what you want?
 
‘Yes. Your first name or your real name or whatever it is. Not Snow. Not the one the Outwatch alchemists gave you. Unless it’s some secret and you’re going to have to eat me if you tell me.’
 
It is no secret. I was called Alimar Ishtan vei Atheriel - Beloved Memory of a Lover Distant and Lost.’
 
Kemir stared at her and tried not to laugh. ‘Beloved. That’s . . . That’s not a name I would have ever guessed. Alimar is better. Alim, maybe. Ali.’
 
You may know my true name, but you have not earned the right to speak it. Take whatever meat you wish. And then you must go.
 
Kemir threw a glance down the beach at the dragon-rider, still lying in the sand. ‘Fine with me. So what about her?’
 
Snow moved over to the prone figure on the sand. She nudged the rider with her nose. Kemir felt her disgust.
This one is broken.
Gingerly she picked the rider up by one leg and shook, then dropped her again.
This one will be gone before my kin awake. She will stay. I will take what I can while she lingers.
 
For a moment, Kemir hesitated. Maybe he should have killed the dragon-rider after all. Maybe it would have been a mercy. Then he turned. ‘All yours then. Farewell, dragon.’ He didn’t look back.
 
When it is safe, I will find you.
 
‘Only if I want you to, dragon. Only if I want you to.’ With that he stalked away into the foreign trees of a forest whose name he’d never hear. Alone. Snow had company now. Her own kind. They didn’t need him any more.
 
‘Forget them,’ he snapped to himself, as if that would be enough. ‘They don’t need you and you don’t need them.’ Although, all things considered, it would have been nice to have been abandoned somewhere that he knew. Or even somewhere that had people
.
 
Still, alive was alive. Alive was something other than dead. And Snow hadn’t eaten him after all. He walked as far away from the dragons as he could be bothered to and built himself a shelter. He could never walk far enough, of course, not when they had wings. Over the next days he saw them sometimes, flying in the distance. He tried to ignore them, but as the days stretched to weeks he couldn’t. Food was plentiful, the hunting easy. He started to grow fat with waiting. He gave up his first shelter and took to roaming the island, exploring as much as anything for something to do. Sometimes even that wasn’t enough. Sometimes he stared at the skies for hours and hours, just hoping to catch a glimpse of wings and fire.
 
He’d been there for three weeks when he saw the ships. He was on the far side, as far away from the dragons as he could get, and all of sudden he woke up in the morning and found the sea full of ships. They were far away, too far for him to signal, so he watched and wondered who they were. The dragons must have seen the ships too. He saw them later that morning, flying out across the sea. The sight made him glad that he was on land. Dragons and ships didn’t mix. Even he knew that. He didn’t see what happened and didn’t much care.
 
The next morning, though, they were waiting for him when he woke up. All four of them. He should have known better than to think he could hide. He found himself looking for the dragon-rider, but she wasn’t there.
 
This one?
The other three dragons looked different now. Full-grown war-dragons, they dwarfed even Snow, and they were awake too. He could see it in them.
 
This one is useful to us.
Snow turned her attention to Kemir.
We are four now. We are strong. We will return to free our kind, and you will help us.
 
‘And how can I possibly help a dragon?’
 
Snow dropped something at his feet. A pack. The dragon-rider’s pack. Ripped pages and maps spilled out. The realms. No one had ever bothered teaching him to read or write, but he knew a map when he saw one. With the desert up in the north, the moors to the east, the Worldspine to the west . . .
 
They are . . . they are too small. And too fragile. You will hold them and you will look at them and we will see through your eyes.
He was suddenly aware of Snow, fiercely attentive to his thoughts. At the same time he saw the little crosses marked on the Worldspine in a separate hand, and realised what they were. A map of the Mountain King’s eyries.
 
It shows where dragons can be found, does it not?
 
Kemir didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His thoughts had already given him away. He could feel Snow in his head, glittering with greed. A map of the Mountain King’s eyries. Yes. He could almost see them burn, one by one.
 
He didn’t bother asking what had happened to the rider they’d carried across the sea with them. ‘I could stay here and you could struggle away on your own.’ But even as he said it, Kemir knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t live on his own, not in this wilderness. Not for ever. He’d go mad.
And besides . . . Valmeyan . . .
 
You will help us, Kemir.
 
‘And if I don’t?’
Why am I even asking? I can finally do what Sollos and I once swore to do. I can make the King of the Crags pay. I can make him burn.
The feeling was delicious and hot.
 
The dragon didn’t answer, just licked her lips.
We shall leave now. We are ready.
Her thoughts were excited, but there was something else. Something out of place. Uneasy. She was almost . . .
 
‘Are you
scared
, dragon?’
 
We have seen ships on the sea. There was a presence among them. A presence we have not felt for a long time. Not since the world was broken into pieces.
 
‘Any chance of having that again, except this time so it makes some sort of sense?’
 
One of our creators has returned. We do not know what this means. We thought they were gone.
 
Kemir shrugged. ‘But then you’ve been asleep for the last few hundred years.’
 
One of the dragons lunged. Kemir flinched, closed his eyes, but the blow never came. When he opened his eyes again, there were teeth inches from his face. Teeth as long as his arm. The dragon’s breath was hot on his skin, and rank. He felt the anger from all of them, even from Snow.
 
Have a care, Kemir.
 
He didn’t say anything else. Just quietly gathered up what little he had and loaded it onto Snow’s back. He made sure he had plenty of food and water this time - might as well head to his death in comfort. For now at least, the dragons didn’t seem to be hungry. Presumably they’d been hunting whales again.
 
‘Where are we going?’
 
We will cross the water to the place where the Worldspine crashes into the sea. We will return to the mountains where I awoke, and there it will begin. It is marked on these maps the places we will go. You will be our eyes. When we are done with those and our numbers are too great to be stopped, we will find your alchemists again. We will find your eyries and your castles and your palaces, and this time we will burn them all. Starting with the place where I was hatched.
 
They looked at each other.
 
Outwatch!
 
37
 
Moths and Flames
 
‘So are you a man or half a man now?’ Zafir sat across from Jehal in the solar atop the Tower of Dusk. Jehal had chosen the room deliberately. He wasn’t sure what he’d been trying to prove.
That I can climb stairs on my own now? Was that it? Is that what I’m reduced to? And what has it got me?
The whole left side of his body was throbbing, and his wound felt as though it was on fire. He could barely sit still. The sad truth was that his leg was never going to get better. Without a staff to lean on he could barely walk, and that would never change.
 
Still, it could be worse. I can still ride dragons. And other things.
 
Zafir didn’t wait for an answer. She twirled her hair and made big eyes at him. ‘Vale Tassan says that Shezira meant to unman you, but Jeiros tells me that she may have merely crippled you. He goes very coy when I ask and claims that he doesn’t actually know. So. Did she miss, then? Do you still have what it takes?’ Zafir had brought the Night Watchman with her. He stood in the background, removed from them.
But not so far away that I could reach Zafir and wring her pretty little neck before he could cut mine, eh?

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