Let it go! You can't!
What were they? Books hidden in the secret places of the Pinnacles where she'd grown up had had pictures of things like this, and of something the same but much, much greater, something that made even a dragon look tiny. Books the alchemists always coveted but were never allowed to see. But if these creations had a name, she'd never known it.
Leave them! Up! Fly up!
The stone monster toppled backwards into the sea taking Diamond Eye with it. The waves slammed into her side and then she was under the water, beneath the dragon with the giant on top of both of them.
No! Diamond Eye writhed beneath her. Dragons didn't breathe. Dragons could live under water for days if they wanted to. Dragons didn't care. . But I can't. There was no struggling this time, no cutting herself free. She didn't even try. Her lungs began to spasm, demanding that she take a breath. The rippling daylight far above flashed orange and bright. Fireballs hot and fierce in the air but the water was black and cold and dark. She closed her eyes. She wasn't afraid, not any more. Focused her mind. Just. Let. Go!
And then Diamond Eye was free and he surged upwards. She burst out of the water and gasped and gulped at the air. The dragon spread his wings and towered out of the sea, half of him still under, but his head and claws and wings were out of the waves, and so was she. Steam rose all around them. Diamond Eye's wings pulled at the air, harder and harder, but they weren't moving as the stone monster anchored them to the seabed. Then at last Diamond Eye burst up out of the water in a cloud of mist and spray.
He had the stone monster of the sea in his claws. How many tons of stone? And he knew what to do, and this time there was no stopping him, no desire to even try. She understood, without quite knowing how, that he'd done this before in another time and in another life. Long ago, before the Silver King had come, he'd fought this battle once before and won. She felt it in him.
He rose slowly and painfully, sinking down again before each upward beat of his wings, but he still climbed and the giant made of stone still hung from his claws. High above the top of Dul Matha he let it go, soared up, turned and arrowed down again, following the stone titan as it fell until it struck the jagged rocks at the bottom of Dul Matha and exploded into pieces and a gleeful satisfaction poured though dragon and rider both. He crashed into the waves and dragged her beneath the water again, but now she simply closed her eyes and waited. He was too hot. The cold of the water would stop him from burning on the inside, and she knew, as certainly as she could, that he wouldn't hurt her, that he would remember her enough to see she didn't drown. And so it was; and they rose together and swam for a while until the heat inside him eased and he pulled himself back into the sky.
He plucked the second giant out of the water like a sea eagle taking a fish. And because he could, when he soared once again high up above the pinnacle of the Kraitu's Bones, this time he dived and hurled it into one of the glasships and smashed them both.
78
Berren, Crazy Mad, the Bloody Judge, Skyrie. More names than he needed, a different man born each day, but this was war, and war was what had birthed the Bloody Judge, and so in the here and now that was who he was. He raced across the three arches of the bridge and on, through smudges of thick smoke, leaping over dead sword-slaves and Taiytakei soldiers alike. Tiny elegant huts lined both sides of the bridge, miniature shops and workshops blocking the view to the sea. All of them were wrecked and ruined by lightning now, and in the gaps between them he saw the rising sun of the morning on one side and the stone monsters on the other. Spawn of the Kraitu and the Red Banatch. He didn't know how, but he knew that's what they were.
The first of them was getting close, yet what spurred him on more was the look he'd seen in Tuuran's eye. It frightened him, that look. He'd seen it before on the faces of men across the world. Belief. Fanatical belief. And that wasn't Tuuran. Tuuran believed in Tuuran and that was that. That look in his eyes didn't belong.
He reached the other end of the bridge and slowed as he emerged into the open. Tall and handsome buildings had once lined a wide paved road. They were broken shells now, filled with smoke and rubble that spilled out of them like the guts of a man with his belly sliced open. The bodies scattered about here were sword-slaves again, charred and burned.
Tuuran caught up with him. ‘More rockets, eh?’ The stubby glass and gold tower at the end of the bridge had been shattered from within. Only the side facing back across the water remained. The first stone giant reached the bridge, and Berren watched as it stopped and raised its fists and brought them down. The ground trembled as the centre of the bridge dissolved into dust and glittering fragments. Tuuran looked forlornly back. ‘There were enough dead night-skins back there to find ourselves at least some armour that fitted.’ He gave Berren a nervous up-and-down glance. ‘Something without a hole in it, you know? That gold and glass stuff they have that stops the lightning.’
The streets were ghostly empty past the destruction at the end of the bridge, abandoned, the only sounds the cries of fighting wafting down from higher up the island. Tall stone walls lined the road ahead. They were peppered with grand entrances festooned with bright banners in reds and yellows and vivid greens. Colourful signs hung overhead. Merchants for rich folk. Traders bringing in exotica that no one else had a use for or could afford. There was surely money here, yet there were no signs of looting. Nothing was on fire, nothing broken, no murdered men or screaming women. The quiet was almost eerie. The sword-slaves hadn't been this way or else somehow they'd been kept in check. Here and there Berren saw furtive faces at windows.
Tuuran dragged him into a doorway and pushed him into the shadows. A shape flashed through the sky. ‘Dragon.’ He made a sign, the warding against evil that Berren had seen so many times on the slave galleys. When it passed they ran on. ‘You sure you going to find what you're looking for up here?’
Sure? How could he be sure? But where else was there to look? ‘This is where the Taiytakei soldiers came, right? The rest. .’ He frowned. The rest had been a ruse, a distraction. The destruction of a whole city in a whirl of fire and hell — but this, this was what the fleet had come for. For the palace they'd seen from across the sea.
He heard shouts up ahead that grew louder as they ran on, interrupted now and then by cracks of lightning. The street spilled them into a square. Berren slowed. There were Taiytakei ahead, soldiers, the sort that carried lightning wands. On the far side of the square the road ran between two stone bell towers and started to rise, climbing the island towards the golden towers at the top. A little way beyond the towers a barricade barred the way. Now and then lightning flashed out from it, but the Taiytakei in the square had golden shields and it splashed off them and crackled harmlessly into the stone underfoot. A few sword-slaves cowered in helpless clusters under whatever cover they could find, but nearly all the soldiers were armoured in glass and gold. They were running back and forth and yelling at each other, looking for a way to outflank the barricade. They kept looking up too. Pointing. Another glasship was drifting down from the peak with a bright burning orb hung beneath it. More fire.
Something whizzed past Berren's head and smacked into the stone behind him. An oversized crossbow bolt. Almost a small javelin.