‘Let go, you daft bastard!’ shouted Crazy over the noise of the ship and the storm outside, and then the abrupt stillness of the storm's heart hit them. It knocked the words out of Tuuran's mouth. There was silence for a moment and then Crazy arched his spine and tipped back his head and his eyes turned luminous silver like the moon. They lit up the hold and he screamed, and Tuuran could hear the other slaves in the hold screaming too, and then something terrible and vast swept into his head and hurled him away. Dragons! Filling the sky. Hundreds! Thousands! The air black with them and thick with their cries flying to war. .
‘MINE!’
Men arrayed under the sun, light gleaming from silver so bright it blinded. Massed among spires so high they scratched the clouds, flawless white stone. .
‘MINE!’
And in the darkness of the night the silver light of the moon shone down, hard and violent, and it burned and he clenched his fist and he would not bow, not ever, not even to the god that had made him, not now because he knew, he KNEW what lay beneath and behind and beyond.
‘Go away!’ For a moment he was Tuuran again but the words sounded like they weren't his. Like they came from Crazy Mad. ‘Leave me alone!’
The vision went as suddenly as it came. Tuuran caught his breath. The ship was lurching as though the storm had never broken and Crazy Mad was staring at the ceiling, eyes bright and gleaming silver-white. Tuuran slapped him — hard — and the light slowly faded. Crazy rolled his head, looked about as though he didn't quite know where he was and then shook himself. Tuuran grabbed him. ‘What in the fire of the Flame was that?’
Crazy Mad shrugged as though this sort of thing happened all the time and was hardly worth mentioning. ‘I see things sometimes. From the other man's life. The one who used to have this face. Skyrie.’
‘The one who lived on the edge of a swamp somewhere? Some swamp!’ Impossible to see in the darkness now, but Tuuran could sense the other sail-slaves shrinking away from them. Some were still wailing and moaning. He could hear others muttering under their breath, little mantras and prayers as the storm hurled the ship to and fro. Cautiously he lifted his lamp and peered at Crazy Mad's face. Crazy squinted and peered back.
‘Strange things happen when you cross the storm-dark, right? People see things. What I see is a man standing over me in robes the colour of moonlight, with a face one half ruined, scarred ragged by disease or fire and with one blind eye, milky white. Happened the last times too, ever since. . I am the Bringer of Endings. That's what he says. Every time.’ For a moment Crazy Mad didn't sound either crazy or mad. Just scared. And Tuuran must have sounded it too. ‘What is it, big man?’
‘Your eyes,’ said Tuuran. ‘They went silver. Pure solid silver and they glowed. That didn't happen the last time we crossed the storm-dark.’ He took a deep breath and let it out between his teeth. Now he'd seen it again there was no pretending about the other time any more. ‘It's not the first time. When the grey dead came. After they were gone and I hauled you out the water. Same thing.’
Crazy Mad grabbed him. ‘I need to find who did this to me. I need to find Vallas Kuy!’ And Tuuran thought, Yes, Crazy Mad, you probably do.
They reached land within a week, quick for a crossing of the storm-dark. They were sailing with other ships now, until the whole flotilla anchored together off a cluster of mountain islands draped in a thick carpet of green, deeper and darker than Tuuran had ever seen. The ships lowered boats for fresh food and water, and Tuuran and Crazy Mad went with them to a gleaming beach, a small curve of white sand squeezed between two jagged fingers of black rock. A few dozen yards from the sea the sand gave way to a wall of trees and plants tumbling on top of each other for precious sunlight. Distant shrieks and hoots echoed across the water, but none held Tuuran's ear for long.
Three mountains, not great or grand or even particularly tall but sheer and sharp, rose from the green heart of the island. Each had a tower on top. They seemed small from this distance but two of them caught the sun in a shower of colour, and Tuuran knew, because he'd heard the stories, that they were carved of solid diamond.
63
A dozen glasships dragged the floating eyrie deeper and deeper into the desert. The dunes beneath them were lifeless and after a while, to Chay-Liang, they all looked the same. For a long time no other glasships came. Chrias Kwen was back again but no others, no return of any of the Vespinese. Chrias, she knew from overhearing things that she wasn't supposed to, was preparing to go away to Xican to gather his fleet and then to. . She wasn't sure. It wasn't her business. To the dragon realms to speed the hunt for another rider-slave so that this one could meet the fate she so deserved? But surely that hunt was already well under way. No, this was something else. The Great Sea Council, after two hundred years, was finally going to burn out the runaways of Bom Tark, and Baros Tsen's dragon was going to be their tool. And after that, Aria and its witch. It shouldn't trouble her, she told herself. The slaves in Bom Tark were probably murderers and rapists and thieves else why run away? And this other realm? Far away. The Great Sea Council was only doing what was needed to preserve their way of life. Her way of life. But it did trouble her. No one deserved to be set upon by that monster and the murderously deranged slave who sat on its back. And Belli was no help at all. I'm a slave. Would you burn me too if I ran away? And what do you think you are to anyone from another realm if not a witch?
Right now, however, those were Tsen's troubles because she had quite enough of her own. The dragon disease again, which was why she was standing out in the yard along with every other Taiytakei, every slave, every single person who lived in Baros Tsen's eyrie. They were crowded together in a great big arc, all of them together, pressing themselves back as far away from the ever-looming presence of the dragon as they could. They were staring at the dozen slaves caged at the dragon's feet. Those found to be infected would be fed to the dragon. Liang supposed it was as good a way as any to dispose of the problem, and Tsen was doing it openly, a grand display for all the slaves and for his own men too. If you get the disease, this is what will happen to you. If you get this disease you will not be able to hide it. There is no cure. There are no exceptions. Do not get it. No one will leave until the eyrie has been cleared. He said his piece and then the dragon leaned down with the rider-slave Zafir on its back and picked up the cage between its claws. The slaves inside screamed, tumbling over one another, tangling together as the dragon lifted the cage and eyed it, turning it. She's enjoying this, Liang thought, and for a moment she wondered how easy it would be to make a little device on the dragon bitch's helm to make her head explode when no one was looking. Very easy, that was the answer. Very easy indeed.
She watched the alchemist's eyes. He didn't like this either. He was watching the cage now, but as Tsen had said his piece his eyes hadn't been on the t'varr at all. He'd been watching Chrias Kwen. She wondered why. I am missing something? And maybe she was. There were clues to be had in the slaves screaming in their cage. All bar one of them were women. It didn't seem likely that the one male slave in there with them had spread it to all the rest. So someone else, and almost certainly a man. She didn't know the ins and outs of the slave hierarchy terribly well, but Tsen would. He'd have worked it out already, who the carrier was. One of the kwen's soldiers? And that made sense, since soldiers were generally stupid and didn't understand anything they couldn't hit, and the ones with the kwen came and went and didn't understand how the eyrie worked at all.