Jaslyn stared at him.

'Master Feronos is the wisest of us in the lore of stones and metals,' said Keitos nervously. He shuffled his feet and took a step into the room. 'Her Highness has brought something that she says is a mystery, Master. A liquid that is like metal.'

'A liquid that is like metal or a liquid that is metal?'

'Prince Jehal may be poisoning Speaker Hyram or King Tyan with it. Maybe both. And someone has used it to try and poison my mother,' snapped Jaslyn. She pushed Keitos out of the way and thrust the clay pot, still sealed with wax, in front of the ancient alchemist.

A gnarled, trembling hand reached out and took it from her. Feronos wasn't ready for how heavy it was. It tumbled from his fingers, and Jaslyn barely caught it before it smashed on the floor.

'Ahhh.' The old man nodded. 'I know this. It's been a long, long time since I've seen it. It doesn't surprise me that you don't know what this is. There aren't many that would. You have to be old like me to remember.'

'You haven't opened it, old man.' Jaslyn clenched her fists. 'How can you know what it is when you haven't even opened it.'

Silently, Feronos put the pot on his table and broke the seal. Very carefully he opened it. 'A metal that gleams like silver and runs like water. Very heavy. Nothing quite like it. Very hard to find.'

'I know that.' Jaslyn stamped her foot. 'Where does it come from? Who made it?'

'No one made it, girl. You cannot make this. As for where it comes from…' He shrugged. 'Not from within the realms we know, I can tell you that. We had some once. It came across the sea, I think.' His brow furrowed. 'Oh, now… who was keeping it? Not here. Somewhere in the west. Old Irios had some in Shazal Dahn, but he's gone now. Long gone.'

The old man seemed to drift away.

Keitos bit his lip. 'Our stronghold in the western deserts,' he said reluctantly. 'We like to keep it a secret.'

'But that's…' Jaslyn's gaze shifted to Semian. 'That's Speaker Hyram's realm!'

'It was a long time ago,' whispered the old man.

Jaslyn rounded on him.

'But it's poison, yes? It is poison?'

He shrugged. 'Drink enough of it and you'll sicken. Like a lot of things. Irios liked to work with it, but he went mad. They say the liquid metal did it to him. Sailors used to bring it to him. The alchemist's disease, they call it. Old age I say. Couldn't stop shaking. In the end he just walked out into the desert and never came back. Or that's what someone told me once, I think. Fumes in the air. But not a poison. Not unless you want to spend a decade waiting. No. Quicker to let age take its course, I would think.'

Jaslyn gripped the table. The world seemed to spin and rush around her. 'No. It is poison. Alchemist's disease. That's what Almiri called it too. And King Tyan, yes, he's been dying of it for nearly a decade, and Hyram, he's been ill for more than a year. Slowly getting worse. It is a poison. It is Jehal.' She clenched her fists. 'He's killing them so slowly that they don't know they're being murdered. Hyram has the right of it, and no one else believes him!'

Master Feronos carefully sealed up the pot and put it on the floor. He seemed slightly disappointed. Jaslyn strode back out of the hut and filled her lungs with fresh air.

'Highness!'

'Rider Jostan!' She looked at him in surprise. 'You're supposed to be at the eyrie, seeing to it that Silence is cared for exactly as I requested.'

'Highness, there are other dragons nearby. The white has been seen.'

Jaslyn blinked. 'What? Here? With the alchemists?'

'No. But two dragons were seen near the village a few hours before we came. A black war-dragon and a white hunter. It can only be ours. There are no other whites.'

She snorted. 'And who told you this, Rider Jostan? A peasant already in his cups? A farmer? Or was it the village idiot?'

'Your Highness, a captain of the Adamantine Guard. A legion of them protects the alchemists' redoubt.'

'I've never heard of such a thing. Nor did I see any Guard as we flew in.'

'They camp within the forest, under the cover of the trees.'

Jaslyn shook her head. 'No matter. We must return to the palace at once. Go back to the eyrie and have our dragons readied. Queen Shezira is on the point of making a pact with Prince Jehal. We must be back before the speaker is named. So we must leave now.'

Jostan looked unhappy. 'Your Highness, by the time the dragons are fed and readied the sun will be almost set. I beg you, please do not camp in the wilds of the mountains in the middle of the night while there are other dragons nearby. We do not know if they are friends or enemies or what their purpose is, but if one is the white… Remain here, Your Highness, in safety. We can leave at first light and still be back in time.'

'Rider Jostan is right,' said Semian from behind her. 'We will fly with you if we must and die to defend your life, but it is unwise to leave in such haste.'

Jaslyn growled and clenched her fists, but they were right and she knew it. She stamped back into the hut and snatched up the pot of poison. The Viper's venom.

'Very well. First light. Not a moment later.' She swept up her cloak and marched away, striding impatiently across the ground without knowing where she was going. Nastria should have come. Too many mysteries. Wait, wait, wait; we should leave now; I should be with mother. And what does Jehal get from poisoning her ten years from now? Why would he do that?

And why is the white here?

First Light

A low droning hum filled the Glass Cathedral. Hyram and Queen Zafir stood on either side of the altar. They wore jewelled dragon masks and and long robes of gold and silver leaf that flowed and spilled across the floor. They were supposed to stand absolutely still, like statues, while the sun rose, until the first light of the day spilled in through the windows.

Shezira watched them carefully. She'd been through the same ordeal when she'd married Antros. She'd had to be still for nearly hall an hour, and apart from giving birth to their daughters it remained the hardest thing she'd ever done. Antros, of course, had fidgeted constantly. Now Zafir was so still that she might have been made of stone. Hyram, she thought, was trembling very slightly.

The droning of the priests grew very slightly louder. The sun was nearly at the window. Shezira glanced over her shoulder, fehal was sitting somewhere at the back with King Tyan. Tyan had gone into one of his moaning phases, and she could hear him even over the hum of the priests. If he was trying to say something, he'd long ago passed the point where anyone could understand him.

She'd made a point of going to see King Tyan and spending some time with him. He seemed to recognise her. He couldn't talk and hardly moved, and when he did, he trembled so violently that everything around him went flying. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling, when she looked into his eyes, that he was still in there somewhere, hopelessly alone and mad with despair. Afterwards she'd found it hard to be angry with Hyram any more. She'd even suggested to Jehal that he should give Hyram some of his secret potions himself, that they should make peace, but Jehal had only shaken his head.

'Never,' he'd whispered. He was doing everything he could to discover how Queen Zafir had stolen them. It was all her doing. She had an iron wickedness inside her. A true dragon-queen.

Shezira looked at her, across the altar, trying to see it, but she could never get past how young Zafir was. Too young to be a speaker.

Finally, the first light spilled in and struck the altar. The priests stopped their moaning and closed in around Hyram and Zafir, waving their arms up and down, reaching for the sky and then the earth and then back to the sky. Whatever the symbolism of all these rituals, Shezira doubted that anyone but the priests understood it. No one cared about the dragon-priests any more.