Read Online The Splintered Gods by Stephen Deas - Free Book Online Page B

maelstrom. He was afraid of what might be waiting, from knowing their journey and their time were almost done. His heart seemed to beat too quickly for his chest to hold it inside him. The cloud of the storm-dark, the majestic uncaring size of it, became a peculiar comfort. Beside it everything diminished.
    He took out a farscope and peered through the gondola windows. Near the heart of the darkness where the Godspike punchedthrough and streaked towards the stars, he spotted a dark speck in the sky. The eyrie. Chay-Liang was flying it high. The air was so thin now that he was gasping. His head was throbbing and getting worse as they rose. Kalaiya lay back on the silks and cushions, clutching at her hair, frenziedly chewing Xizic resin. Xizic helped with the headaches but Tsen couldn’t look away, couldn’t take his eyes anywhere else or even close them, until at last the glasship drifted over the top of the eyrie and the familiar craggy rocks and then the white stone circle of sloping walls and the flat bright open space of the dragon yard, a mile above the storm. As it slipped beneath him, he clung to the familiarity of the shapes. The dragon, red and gold and huge, perched on the eyrie wall, staring towards the Godspike. The lightning cannon and the black-powder guns, the hatchery, all as it had always been. He saw the moving specks of men and women, slaves about their business as they always were, and still it didn’t tell him whether the Elemental Men had come or whether Shonda and the Vespinese were waiting for him. His blood was pounding, pulsing fit to burst every vein. The gondola came slowly to a stop over the middle of the dragon yard and he saw Chay-Liang running towards him, waving, but whether in welcome or warning he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t breathe. The air was too thin. He couldn’t think any more.
    He was going to be sick. His head felt ready to explode and his skull was too tight. There just wasn’t enough air. He barely waited for Kalaiya when the gondola touched the white stone of the dragon yard before he cracked the ramp open. A wind worse than the one in Dhar Thosis howled about him. It buffeted him when he stepped out and he stumbled and almost fell, too dizzy to bother with righting himself, then staggered again and dropped to his hands and knees and vomited over the perfect smoothness of the dragon yard’s white stone. A slave came running to help him up. Tsen clutched at him.
    ‘Are they here?’ His eyes were wild. The slave only looked bewildered. Tsen shook him. ‘Are they here? The Elemental Men? The Vespinese? Are they here?’
    The slave pulled away in alarm and shook his head. ‘No, Master T’Varr. No.’ He kept backing away but Tsen couldn’t give a shit any more. All the strength had drained out of him. He could barelystand. He swayed in the wind. They’re not here yet. His head was killing him. Suddenly all he wanted and all he was good for was a bath. A long soak, a lot of Xizic tea and maybe a glass or two of apple wine. Anything to be out of this flaying wind, anything to make this headache go away. Some sleep. A lot of sleep. Hadn’t had much of that these last few days.
    They’re not here . He felt like a puppet with his strings all cut. Chay-Liang was waving again but his skull was splitting open and he ignored her. Even ignored the dragon, the towering looming angry monster that glared at him as it glared at everything with its ravenous resentment. Right now he would probably have ignored an Elemental Man with a drawn blade held to his throat.
    A silver cage swinging back and forth in the gale caught his eye. Mai’Choiro Kwen had brought it with him for Lord Shonda’s jade ravens. Through the haze of pain, the cage reminded him there was one thing he had to do right now, no matter how many needles he felt stabbing through his eyes. He stumbled to the top of the wall, stopping to catch himself now and then against the howl of the wind before the gusts picked him