Dragon Queen Read Free Page A

and picked up a sack, gestured at the knife. ‘Think that will work? I knows a blood-mage. Worse than you, maybe. And say you's quick enough to cut before I stops you. I just find another. More men die. Got a good name for me to go looking for?’
    Bellepheros hesitated. His hands were shaking. Trying to think it through. Trying not to be afraid because why, what was there to fear? And yet fear had him tight now.
    The Picker took another step. ‘Why's it so hard here, what I do?’ He wrinkled his nose at the dead men. ‘Right you was, about where I's from. Mostly. But where I learned, it was easy. Easy like talking. Could do it all day long. Here it's like tar. Took years to get used to it. Still knocks the wind out of me doing so much at once.’ He held out the sack. ‘You need to be putting that knife down now and putting this over your head.’
    ‘Dragons.’ Bellepheros shook his head. ‘You think taking me will somehow bring you dragons?’
    ‘That's what it is, Mister Grand Master Alchemist of the Order of the Scales. Dragons. Always was, always will be.’
    Bellepheros shook his head. ‘No.’
    ‘Going to make this difficult, are you?’ The Picker lookeddown at the sack. ‘Suit yourself.’ He turned his back and started to walk away and then vanished in a swirl of fallen leaves, and at the same time Bellepheros felt a hand on his arm, yanking the knife away from his neck and then a blinding pain under his ear where his jaw met his skull. The knife fell from his fingers. He gasped and whimpered and staggered forward. It hurt so much that he couldn't see, couldn't even think any more.
    The Picker scooped up the sack and threw it over the alchemist's head. Bellepheros fell to his knees. The Picker hauled him back to his feet. ‘And there's another thing. That spear. Easy one for a fellow like me, you'd think. But no. Can't shift that at all, not one little bit. Why?’
    Bellepheros still had blood on his hand, blood that could burn or bend wills. He flailed at the Picker through the haze of pain. The Picker caught his arm and bent it behind his back, forcing him to the ground again, knees digging into him, pressing his face to the earth. He could barely breathe. On his back, the Picker was making soothing hushing sounds as a rope slipped around Bellepheros's neck and drew tight.
    ‘Peaceful here, isn't it? Don't you worry, I's not going to kill you. Just needs you quiet a bit.’
    The rope drew tight. Bellepheros writhed but the Picker had him fast. He choked. Gasped. His lungs heaved but the rope was tight around his throat. A dark sea roared over his thoughts and drowned them. He felt the warmth of the sun on his hand and the dry autumn leaves crack between his clenched fingers. He heard the distant singing of the birds. And then nothing.

3
    Tuuran
    When Bellepheros came round, he was hog-tied across a saddle with a bag over his head and cloth stuffed into his mouth. Stabbing pains shot through his head to the steady thump thump of a dull thudding ache.
    He bit the inside of his mouth and let a little blood seep into the cloth. Then tried to merge his mind with the blood to make the cloth dissolve away. He could do the same with the sack. Then, maybe, with the Elemental Man . . .
    Nothing happened. The power simply wasn't there. The blood-magic was gone. He tried again. Still nothing, and then the real panic came because, without that, what was he? A weak old man, no use to anyone. He started to struggle, pulling ineffectually against the ropes around his arms and wrists, crying out through the gag.
    The horse stopped. The bag came off his head and the world flooded with light. He screwed up his eyes and blinked furiously. A hand grabbed his hair, tipping back his head. The Picker's face peered into his.
    ‘Worked then, did it?’
    Behind the gag, Bellepheros screamed. He couldn't breathe!
    The Picker sighed, undid the gag and lifted him off the horse to lie flat on his back. They were in some woods,