Read Online The Order of the Scales by Stephen Deas - Free Book Online

claims.’ The door was heavy, bound in iron. Small too. Small enough that a large man like Hyrkallan would have some trouble getting through it in all his armour. Small enough to keep all but a newborn hatchling out. Or in, which was more to the point. ‘Here,’ he said, with a twinge of sadness in his voice. ‘Her Holiness is here. You will find her inside.’
    He let Hyrkallan go in first, since the prince was wearing armour and sometimes the hatchling was in a foul mood. When there were no shrieks or bursts of fire, he peered around the door himself. Jaslyn was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. The dragon was curled up beside her, sleeping. She was stroking its scales.
    ‘He likes this,’ she said distantly.
    Isentine shook his head. ‘I’ll leave you to it then. I’d rather be away from that thing. Watch it if it wakes, My Lord. The two of them seem to have an accommodation, but I wouldn’t trust it not to bite your arm off. She says it reads your thoughts, so I advise you to guard them.’
    He slowly climbed back up to the surface and waited. Half an hour passed, and then Hyrkallan emerged. His face was dark with fury. Isentine knew exactly how things had gone. Whatever Hyrkallan had said, he’d already tried it all himself.
    ‘I know, I know,’ he said, as Hyrkallan stormed towards him.
    ‘She refused me! Will nothing sway her?’
    ‘Nothing even reaches her, My Lord. I see little choice left but to drag her, kicking and screaming, out of there. A thing I cannot do.’
    ‘She is our queen, Isentine.’ Hyrkallan’s expression didn’t change. Lost in thought mixed with a heavy tinge of anger. ‘This is not how a queen should behave. Not at any time and especially not now.’ He sat down beside Isentine and scratched his nose. For the first time Isentine could remember, Hyrkallan looked lost. ‘Curse her. I need her. I need her with me at the Adamantine Palace.’
    Isentine pursed his lips. ‘Then force her. That would be your right as her husband. Get her away from that abomination and her mind will clear. Or give the word and I will do it. Let her blame me. It’s time I took the dragon’s fall.’ It cost him a lot to say such things. Jaslyn was the closest of Shezira’s daughters to her mother and the one he loved the most. But they had to be said. He sighed. ‘I never thought to see days like these.’
    Hyrkallan took a deep breath and levered himself back to his feet. ‘If neither reason nor duty will persuade her, perhaps she will listen to her sister.’
    ‘To Queen Almiri?’ Isentine chuckled. ‘After Evenspire, I don’t think Almiri’s cooperation is something you can rely on.’ No. Not Almiri. Lystra?’
    Hyrkallan nodded. ‘ Queen Lystra.’ Then he laughed. ‘You spend too much time with your dragons, old man.’

A Siege of Dragons
     
    They had half a day before Prince Tichane came back at them. When he did, he came with everything. Dragons, hundreds of them, wheeling and circling Meteroa’s spire of stone, bathing it in flames until it must have seemed a column of fire, a bright shining thing seen across half the realms. Tichane came with riders, hundreds of them too, decked in dragon-scale. With scorpions that rained like hail on the unyielding stone. With barrels of lamp oil that turned the Reflecting Garden into an inferno and flowed in burning rivers down the sheer cliffs of the mountain. With endless hordes of slave-soldiers, carried in cages to mill in useless impotence on the wrong side of Meteroa’s walls. Tichane could bury the Pinnacles in burned bodies and shattered scorpion bolts for all Meteroa cared. Impotent, all of them. All of them except the dragons. It was almost enough to make him laugh, even if he’d lost a dozen riders in that first hour and most of the scorpions in the upper caves had been ruined.
    A learning experience. All because we didn’t know how to work them. At least, not properly. But now . . . now we know better.
    Three