The King of the Crags by Stephen Deas Page A

stay. Why?
     
    He couldn’t listen to another of Semian’s speeches so he stumbled back towards their tent to find Nthandra, only to be met by a scream. As he drew near, she staggered out, wearing only a shirt, her hands pressed between her legs. There was blood running down her thighs. Jostan froze; his stomach turned to lead. His face and his hands went numb. He felt distant tears roll down his cheeks. In a flash, he knew exactly what this was. This was the sacrifice Kithyr had demanded.
     
    ‘Oh . . .’ He couldn’t speak. His lips were made of wood and his tongue tasted of ash. He reached for her and she recoiled, shrieking and wailing like an animal. Then she looked at him as though he was mad. He wasn’t sure, through her grief, that she even knew who he was.
     
    ‘The blood-mage. He did this.’ He shook his head. Any moment now he was going to be sick. She’s just a girl. ‘I am so sorry. I knew . . .’ He was shaking, horror and rage flooding together. She’s too young to be a rider. ‘I should have . . .’ He was after her right from the start, from the moment we came . . . ‘I’m sorry, Nthandra of the Vale. It’s too late, I know, but I’ll stop him, Nthandra. Whatever it is, I’ll stop him.’ He sighed and held his head in his hands, then screwed up his face and screamed at the sky.
     
    ‘No, you won’t,’ said a voice behind him. An edge burned across his throat. His mouth filled with something hot and salty and he started to choke. He staggered and coughed and blood gushed out of his mouth. He turned and then fell over. He could hear singing. The Picker was standing over him, holding a knife so thin that you could see right through it. Or you could have, if it hadn’t had Jostan’s blood all over it.
     
    ‘Suppose you should have gone with the others.’ The Picker shrugged and walked away, and all Jostan could see was the sky, fierce and bright. The singing was getting louder. He heard Semian somewhere far away, bellowing promises of blood and fire and victory, and then the singing swallowed everything.
     
    And then it stopped and there was nothing.
     

Two
     
    Of Princes and Queens
     

8
     
    The Lovers
     
    ‘Can I kill your bride yet?’ Speaker Zafir curled her arm around Prince Jehal and stretched her long neck, tilting back her head, inviting Jehal to sink his teeth into her throat. He duly obliged, nibbling gently at her skin. A few feet to one side of him was a bed. Their bed, high up in the topmost room of the Tower of Air, scattered with silk sheets from the silkworm farms on Tyan’s Peninsula. His farms.
     
    ‘That would hardly be wise, my love.’ A few feet the other way was a gaping open arch. More silk fluttered in the breeze. Beyond that, a tiny balcony; then nothing but air and the hard ground of the Speaker’s Yard a hundred feet below. He liked it up here. For the view across the palace and the City of Dragons beyond and then the sheer dark cliffs of the Purple Spur and the glittering rain from the Diamond Cascade.
     
    And yes, for the bed too. Although sometimes, when push came to shove as it always did when they were alone, he wondered what would happen if he pushed for the window instead. Two speakers falling to their death in such quick succession would show such a lack of imagination though . . .
     
    ‘I was wondering whether to have her poisoned, or whether I should simply slit her throat.’
     
    Tedious, tedious . Jehal put on his best smile. How many times had they talked about this? He gave a petulant little sigh and stepped away from her, a little closer to the arch and the empty air. ‘Must we go over this again? Lystra is Queen Shezira’s daughter. Her other two daughters are already riled enough. They have well over three hundred dragons between them and they want your head. The speaker is supposed to weld the realms into a unity of peace and harmony, not start a war. You should let Shezira and King Valgar go.’
     
    Zafir snorted and