Read Online The King of the Crags by Stephen Deas - Free Book Online Page B

He knows you’re mad. He knows you don’t give a fig about what happens to Queen Shezira any more. This is something else for you now. You and all the others who’ve forgotten why we fly together. He could have said it too, and it wouldn’t have made a jot of difference.
     
    Nthandra ducked into the tent. At least Jostan could understand why she followed Semian. He’d given her a new family, something to fill the hole.
     
    ‘Where’s Semian?’
     
    ‘Gone looking for the blood-mage.’ Even the word left a sour taste in his mouth.
     
    ‘He was hurt.’
     
    ‘Nothing serious. The wound’s already closed.’ Shanzir and Riok followed her in, and then Leistar and Mallizan and Joen. Semian’s coven. No, they were the blood-mage’s coven. Semian just gave him a voice.
     
    ‘Is he here? Is he all right?’
     
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Jostan mumbled and watched them sit down. They were all here for Semian not for him. But why? What do you see in him? Why do you believe in him so? Shanzir still looked pale from the wound she’d taken when Deremis had died. She was lucky. If a scorpion hit you, you were dead, and that was that. Almost no one ever got injured by a scorpion. Jostan had seen the wound in her leg, and it was huge, even though Deremis had taken the worst of the impact for her.
     
    The Picker and Kithyr came in last. They were at the heart of this, but Jostan didn’t have time to think about that before Semian followed them in.
     
    Kithyr cocked his head. ‘So?’
     
    ‘I told him we should be burning the speaker’s palace instead of her filthy hirelings. He said we wouldn’t get close. You will lead them to their deaths, ignoble and barely remembered . That’s what he said.’ Semian spat. ‘He’s too old and too cautious. He doesn’t belong here any more.’
     
    ‘Is that what you would do, Semian, if you led us?’ asked Shanzir. ‘Would you lead us against the palace itself?’
     
    ‘Yes!’ Semian’s eyes flared for a moment. ‘Yes! Yes, we’d burn her on her own throne.’
     
    ‘The palace is defended by the Adamantine Guard,’ Jostan heard himself say. ‘With so few dragons we’d never get close enough. They would shoot us down.’
     
    The blood-mage closed his eyes. ‘Not if they didn’t see you.’
     
    ‘And how could they . . .’ How could they not see us? But no one was listening to Jostan. He wasn’t one of them and they all knew it. They were all looking at the mage.
     
    ‘How?’
     
    ‘Is it possible?’
     
    ‘Could it be done?’
     
    Ripples of wonder spread among them.
     
    Kithyr pursed his lips. Jostan felt a sickening smugness radiate out from the magician, but none of the others seemed to notice. ‘Do you know,’ he asked, ‘how the dragons were tamed?’
     
    ‘By potions brewed by the alchemists,’ snapped Semian. ‘Could it be done or not?’
     
    ‘You are wrong about that,’ said Kithyr softly. ‘The alchemists came later. When the dragons were tamed, there was only blood-magic. In the stories I was taught there were other magics once, but they went when the dragons came. After that there was blood or there was nothing. There were no cities of men, no great armies, not even towns. All that existed among what we called the realms were frightened bands of wild men who were little more than animals, hiding in the fringes of the world, in the caves and the hills and the mountains and the forests where the dragons didn’t find them. And there were lost places, places left behind by the sorcerers who had once taught us our craft before they abandoned the world. The greatest among them were the three fortresses of the Pinnacles. And that is where the dragons were tamed.’
     
    ‘The Pinnacles?’ Kithyr had their rapt attention now. The Pinnacles were Zafir’s palace now.
     
    ‘That was the greatest of our strongholds. Encased within the stone, the dragons could not reach us. We laboured always, day and night to find a way to tame them. For