Dragon Queen (9 page)

‘He has come to buy you,’ murmured the columns.

No one bought an Elemental Man. They paid for a service. Sometimes a service that would take years or even decades but it was always, eventually, discharged. To buy an Elemental Man, to own one, flesh and blood forever until death, that was unthinkable. The price would be beyond imagination.

‘Yes,’ sighed the air. ‘Both of you.’

A whispering breeze brought him the sound of distant leaves fluttering against one another and a fresh waft of scent from peach groves not far away. He smelled Quai'Shu too. He remembered that clearly, long afterwards. Oils and scents and sweat, smells of riches and hard work. He waited, still as stone, until the old man reached the circle and looked him up and down. Then he bowed and the Picker bowed too. The first of many to their new master. ‘I am yours to command,’ they said as one.

‘Yes.’ Quai'Shu leaned against the twisted rusted iron that was the elemental column of metal and took a moment to catch his breath. ‘You are. And you'd better not fail me like the last one.’

Those first words were enough to make the Watcher blink. Elemental Men didn't fail. Lesser mages, a Windbinder perhaps, or a Stoneshaper. But a true Elemental Man? Fail? No.

‘Yes. Failed. So you are both mine and I ask that you do better.’

Another movement in the air brought up the smell of the blossoms from further down the slope where they had bloomed a few days earlier. The trees at the very top of the mountain were always the last. The Watcher took a deep breath, tasting the air. He could ride that breeze if he wanted to. Turn himself into the wind and fly wherever it would carry him. Or he could sink into the stone,
or become light and colours, or nothing but empty shadow in the dark. Anything but metal. And so no, an Elemental Man did not fail, not ever.

‘The Diamond Isles.’ The Picker spoke softly, so quietly that only the Watcher would hear. His voice had a keenness. The sorcerers of the Diamond Isles were a myth. No one had seen them for a thousand years. They'd died out long ago, but that was one way an Elemental man might fail, if the task was impossible because the victim simply didn't exist; although only a fool would try and wave such trickery at the Septtych.

And yet it was true, and to the Diamond Isles they went. A year passed from that day on the silver circle at the peak of Mount Solence and the Watcher stood on a gleaming beach, with the ship that had carried him there rocking at anchor out to sea. A boat sliced through the calm waters in long powerful strokes. Bright sun in a clear blue sky glinted off the rippling waves and sweat glistened on the tanned skins of the slaves at the oars. Another boat lay already beached on a small curve of gleaming white sand squeezed between two jagged fingers of black rock. Away from the sea the sand was quickly overwhelmed by a jungle of vivid green ferns and trees laced with bright red bloodflowers high up in their branches, thick and impenetrable, fighting and tumbling on top of each other for the precious sunlight. Distant shrieks and hoots echoed within. Now and then the Watcher saw flashes of brilliant yellow and blue and silver. Birds flitting among the branches.

He looked past the jungle up to the sapling mountains whose sheer sides rose from the verdant heart of the island. Three mountains, not great or grand or even particularly tall, but steep and sheer and sharp and each one topped by a tower. The towers seemed small from this distance but their glitter was dazzling. They were carved of solid diamond, or so it was said. The Picker, at least in part, had been right.

In the year that his life had belonged to Quai'Shu, the Watcher had come to learn his master's ways. Quai'Shu was a Taiytakei sea lord in every sense, measured yet bold. He'd sailed many worlds and there were few he hadn't seen with his own eyes. He'd taken slaves from the Small Kingdoms and from the coast of faraway Aria. Three times he'd taken a flotilla of ships to the Dominion of
the Sun King and back. He'd plundered the ruins of Qeled. He'd seen men die and ships sink, beheld shapeshifters, monsters and ghosts. He'd watched other sea lords rise from nothing and fall into calamity, their fleets and families with them, and yet others rise in their place. Much that the Watcher had learned from the Septtych, Quai'Shu had seen for himself. Such experience deserved respect.

‘Three men clad in silver with eyes of blood and the faces of dead gods. Do you know why we are here?’ asked Quai'Shu suddenly.

‘I am to kill them?’

The answer seemed obvious, and then it was immediately every bit as obvious that it wasn't right. Quai'Shu’s smile seemed to chide him for his presumption. ‘No, servant, you are not their end. You are an offering.’

The Watcher bowed. ‘You mean to give me to the sorcerers who live here?’ For a moment he wondered if he might murder his master rather than be given up as a gift.

‘Perhaps.’ Quai'Shu gave an impatient frown. ‘But you are a treasure. Priceless. Why would I give you away? What could be worth so much?’

Elemental Men spoke with actions and deeds. Men like Quai'Shu, the Watcher had learned, spoke mostly for their own ears. He held his silence. The sea lord was playing with him.

‘What are we, we Taiytakei? We sail between worlds. We cross the storm-dark and what do we do? We find what they want and we give it to them.’ He smiled. ‘Do you know how many lands I've seen?’

The Watcher nodded. ‘All of them, master.’

‘No one has seen them all. Some have yet to be revealed. But I've seen many. Perhaps all of them that matter. Do you know what I've found?’

The Watcher shook his head.

‘I've led my family and my fleet for two decades and I've led them well. The City of Stone prospers. In the all-devouring duel between Cashax and the Vespinese, I've taken my side and ridden it with care. A good ally to one, never a dangerous enemy to the other. Small as we are, I've kept Xican's place in the Great Sea Council among the thirteen cities who quietly rule the six known
worlds. Yet I am not satisfied. Another few years and I'll be too weak for these voyages. The mantle will pass to someone younger. One of my sons. I'll be remembered as a good captain but not a great one. Not yet.’ He turned and looked the Watcher in the eye for the first time since they'd reached the island. ‘What have I found? I've found whatever I wanted to find. That is what we do. It's what makes us what we are. Every desire but one I've sated. In the court of the immortal Sun King, who is revered as a god and who wears armour made of the very matter of the sun itself, I found something unexpected. I knelt in his presence. It was uncommonly bright but otherwise like that of any other man, king or otherwise. Yet what I found there was a desire I have not been able to sate.’

‘Do you wish him dead, master?’ asked the Picker. He frowned at once, at his own impertinence perhaps, but the Watcher understood perfectly. Killing for mere amusement? Elemental Men had done so before but such murders were shameful. And then
he
felt ashamed too, for Quai'Shu surely wouldn't stoop to such a thing.

‘Do I seem so little to you?’ Quai'Shu hacked up a gob of phlegm and spat it onto the white sand. ‘I want something that will not be given, not for anything in the world. Dragons. That was the desire the Sun King showed me in his palace. For a dragon, he said he would give me anything. I could not satisfy him. I promised myself I would not rest until I could, but later my thoughts wandered far. I am set on a new course. I will bring dragons to all our captains of the sea. They will change our world.’

‘Dragons, master?’

‘Dragons.’

The Watcher had seen dragons in pictures. Quai'Shu had seen dragons too. From a distance, but for real and with his own eyes. The princes of the dragon lands guarded them jealously. The Watcher knew this because Quai'Shu had said so.

‘As captain of my house I've been cautious and prudent and it has made me rich. For most of my life that's all that mattered, to keep the keepers of my coin content; now, in the twilight of my years, it's not enough. Does that seem strange to you men of the elements? Foolish? No matter. Here we are. Dragons cannot be bought and so I mean to steal one. A scheme worthy of an Elemental Man. I
would see if these Diamond Men will help. I will buy them if I can, with the most precious thing I can offer.’

Looking for sorcerers who might not even exist. But if they did . . .

‘The Key.’

The Watcher kept the key on a string around his neck, hidden under his shirt, kept against his skin so he would always know it was there. It didn't
look
much like a key, but Quai'Shu had promised it would work. It was a flawless diamond, cold, too cold to touch for long, and so he kept it wrapped in layers of soft cloth. Safe and close. It had cost Quai'Shu a year of profit, more than a dozen brand-new ships, and he would never tell a soul how he'd finally found it, though the Watcher knew it had come from mysterious Qeled. From the Scythians, perhaps? It said much that Quai'Shu had given it to him to be its guardian.

The Watcher peeled away the black silk cloth and held the diamond up to the sun. Even here in the heat the cold burned his fingers. The chill crept along his arm, down his spine and all the way to his feet. He was used to doing things that couldn't be undone, to taking journeys into places that were little more than myth or rumour; after all, that's what Elemental Men did, why they were made, but still
. . .
He could feel the magic humming through the key. Something alien, something different, something greater even than the sorceries of his masters. He held the diamond up to the sun until his fingers screamed at him and he let it go, holding the silver chain that bound it instead.

‘Let it fall.’

The Watcher dropped the key in the sand. He didn't know what he should expect now. For the sand to grow into a vast bridge across the jungle canopy? To part and reveal dim winding steps twisting down a black hole into the ground?

But not nothing.

Quai'Shu waited for another minute and then plucked the diamond off the sand by its chain. The Watcher wrapped it in its black silk and put it back under his shirt. A part of him wasn't surprised. If any of the stories were true, the moon sorcerers were nothing short of gods, beyond the understanding of even an Elemental Man. If none of them were true then Quai'Shu had
come a very long way to leave with nothing; yet the sea lord's face looked calm.

The Watcher took a deep breath and turned around. The second boat coming from the ship was almost at the beach now, filled with men to carve a path through the jungle if they were needed. He'd do that for his master if he was asked. He'd become the wind and scale the mountains and the towers themselves and ride the earth to the sorcerers who lived there, if they truly lived there at all. But in his heart he knew that if the moon sorcerers were real and the key had failed then it was because, as offerings went, he wasn't enough.

Your desires
.

He jumped and spun around. The ship was gone. Everything was gone except the beach and the jungle and the mighty hands of black rock that clawed at the sea and his master beside him. The Picker was gone too. In his place stood three men.

Men? No.

Their hair was long and white. They wore armour that glittered and gleamed as though made of pure polished silver, shaped and faceted like the eyes of an insect. Their faces were those of young men, handsome and strong, fast but pale as the dead, and their eyes . . . their eyes were the colour of fresh blood and as old as the world.

Three of them. Three towers.

Yes
. Their lips didn't move but their words rang inside his head. They spoke together, three voices into one alien melody.

‘I brought . . .’ Quai'Shu’s voice was, for the first and only time the Watcher would hear, hesitant. ‘I brought an offering.’

The Watcher fell to his knees and bowed.

This?
Now the voices spoke in his head one at a time, alternating one after the other.

What knowledge of this . . .

. . . do you think we do not possess?

They were laughing at him. He could feel their amusement at this little creature who had the audacity to disturb them. To think he was important. Quai'Shu’s voice didn't falter, though. ‘I will take the master alchemist from the dragon lands. I can bring you the secrets of dragons . . .’

We know . . .

. . . everything there is to know . . .

. . . about dragons
.

The Watcher kept his head bowed. Quai'Shu, the great sea lord of Xican. A man whose voice rang across the whole might of Takei'Tarr when he spoke in the Crown of the Sea Lords in Khalishtor; a man who had negotiated trades in every world the Taiytakei could reach for forty years, twenty as the captain of his house and some with men who'd begun by trying to kill him. That was what sea captains did. It was his life. Yet here and now he was at last lost for words.

He was the offering and he wasn't good enough. He would find a way to repay his master for his failure.

Our answer . . .

. . . is yes
.

Your offering . . .

. . . is nothing
.

You will give us . . .

. . . something other
.

Even in front of three half-gods, some instincts ran too deep. The Watcher heard the familiar sly lilt to his master's voice. ‘Something other? What is it you desire?’

You will not understand
. They didn't smile but there was a mocking laughter in their words, and then they were gone.

Months passed and turned to years. Quai'Shu grew old and frail before his time until he could barely walk. Much of his fleet passed on to his sons and daughters as he let them pitch themselves against one another while he watched, waiting to see if one would show themself more able than the others, but his dreams of dragons were not forgotten. His steps were assured, careful and precise, the piece-by-piece building of a machine that had come fully formed into his head that day on the beach of the Diamond Isles. The Watcher learned that there had indeed been another Elemental Man, the one that failed. He learned why. It was a strange thing, but in this land of dragons certain things that an Elemental Man took for granted simply didn't work.