by Stephen Deas
She found she was angry with him for that. Not that she had any good reason to be, but he’d taken something from the dead here, something that he didn’t even need. There’d been no reverence, no respect, no pause to wonder at the lives that had been lost here; he just took for himself without a thought. Odd, she thought, to resent him for that amid her own indifference.
On the floor next to the rack of wine bottles she found a little box carefully stocked with alchemical lamps. It was tucked out of the way where no one would ever see it, but when you were an alchemist you came to know where to look. Everywhere she’d ever worked had caves or tunnels or cellars; at least, everywhere that was near dragons, which was anywhere an alchemist was likely to go. They all had their lamps, kept where they were needed, and you acquired an instinct about where to look for them. She took one out of its box. She’d made them herself once — a little cylinder of thin brown glass, a small cup of Kyamberan’s potion filling the glass halfway, then a disc of waxed paper, carefully sealed on top. When it was dry, fill the top half of the lamp with caveworm essence and seal it shut. Some lamps had a hole in the top with a small stick you could use to poke at the seal between the two halves. Others were closed and had to be shaken to break the seal and make them to work. Every alchemist learned to make lamps. If she looked, she’d probably find all the pieces she needed right here.
Age had done no favours to the seal inside and the lamp started to glow almost as soon as she picked it up. A dim and cold white light slowly filled the room. The Adamantine Man had been right: there was a workshop here, or part of one. There were benches, chairs, a rack on the wall filled with pots of powders of dried herbs and roots… and a skeleton in the corner.
She jumped back and almost dropped the lamp. The skeleton sat slumped with its legs sprawled out, its skull lying on the floor beside a pile of empty bottles. He — she maybe — was still dressed in a few rags. The skeleton had a knife resting between its fingers. The other arm was across its lap. She could almost see his end — the last alchemist of the Raksheh, lost and alone among the ashes, furious dragons overhead, too scared to leave his cellar, slowly starving, finally caving in to despair and cutting himself deep and simply letting the blood flow.
‘Any food down there?’ shouted Skjorl from the trapdoor. Kataros jumped again. ‘See you found some light.’
‘No. No food.’ She hadn’t looked, but no alchemist with his head on right would keep food in the same place as he kept his materials. There were far too many ways that could go wrong.
‘Raw fish again then.’ On their second day along the river the Adamantine Man had found a tattered fishing net half buried in the mud. Ever since, he’d been obsessed with using it. No more roots and berries, even though they were plentiful; Skjorl wanted meat. As it turned out, he was a decent fisherman, and he came back every dawn with three or four of them, expertly gutted, and it never seemed to take him very long. Kataros’ stomach turned. Roots and berries she understood.
As soon as she heard Skjorl’s footsteps recede, she went back to looking at what the alchemists here had left her. Most powders kept well enough if they stayed dry, and most roots and leaves too, although you could never be sure there wasn’t any contamination. Did she need anything?
‘So.’
For the third time she almost jumped out of her skin. Now it was Siff, crouching at the top of the steps. She’d forgotten about him; she’d grown so used to him being mute and slung across the Adamantine Man’s shoulders.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes.’ She watched him come down the ladder. He moved slowly, carefully and cautiously. ‘Finding your strength again?’
‘Yes, I’m on the mend,’ he said when he got to the bottom. He met her eye. ‘Don’t feel like I’m closer to the ghosts of my ancestors than I am to living any more. Thanks to you, I suppose. Doggy gone for a bit?’
‘Skjorl is fishing for us.’ Siff’s contempt for the Adamantine Man was fine enough when it was to Skjorl’s face. Alone with him, she found it uncomfortable. Maybe it was being in a room with one way out and him standing between her and it, or maybe it was that the Adamantine Man he so despised was the one who carried him and caught the food that was giving him back his strength. Maybe it was both.
‘The Raksheh’s not far away. What you going to do with him when we get there?’ He ran his fingers over the bottles in the rack beside the steps. ‘This what I think it is?’
‘Drink it and find out.’
‘Think I might. We won’t need doggy in the forest. There’s no dragons there. What you going to do with him?’ He took out a bottle of wine and pulled the cork with his teeth. Took a swig. ‘Nice.’
‘I don’t know.’ Something about the way the outsider moved told her to be cautious. She went to the alchemists’ bench and took down a couple of pots of powders without looking at what they were, then took her knife out of her belt and put it on the table beside her. ‘You could make yourself useful. Go and tell him to bring back some water from the river.’
Siff didn’t move. Instead he took another mouthful of wine. ‘You should try this.’
Kataros took down a mortar. She pricked her finger with her knife and dripped blood into it. Blood went into everything, every potion an alchemist ever made. Blood was what gave them power and always had been. Look under our robes and we’re no different from blood-mages, that’s what her teacher had said. But for the love of your ancestors, don’t tell anyone.
‘You need to get rid of him,’ said Siff after a bit. ‘Give me your knife. I’ll do it.’
‘No.’
‘He wants to kill me.’ Siff smirked at her. ‘We both know what he wants to do to you.’
‘I will not permit him to do either.’
The outsider wrinkled his nose. Took another gulp. ‘I don’t think that’s good enough.’
‘It will have to be.’
Siff shook his head. ‘No. It won’t.’
Kataros stopped what she was doing and turned to look him in the eye. ‘Do you know how I bound him to me? I put my blood in him. Think, outsider, about who has fed you water, medicine, food. Do you think for a moment I haven’t done the same to you.’ She reached into herself, looking for Siff, looking for where he was bound and shackled.
And found nothing.
‘No, alchemist.’ For a moment, in the gloom, it seemed that his eyes shone too brightly. ‘No, that won’t work on me. I’m not like your doggy.’
He came towards her, his eyes still too bright and now filled with a menace she hadn’t seen there before. Kataros stepped back. She held out the knife towards him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going back to the Raksheh. I’m going back to that cave and I’m taking what’s there. I wonder if you think you’re going to stop me?’
She took another step away. ‘That depends, Siff, on what’s there to take.’
‘Exactly what you think. The power of the Silver King.’
‘And if that’s true, what would you do with it?’
He laughed. ‘I’d probably do some of the things you’d want me to and a good few things you wouldn’t.’ His eyes were alive now, burning with silver light.
‘What did you find there, outsider? Don’t tell me it was truly the Silver King’s tomb because I know that cannot be. That is not where he was taken!’
‘You think the Isul Aieha was bound by mere flesh and bone?’
‘The Silver King is gone, Siff! What little of his essence remains is what is used to bind the dragons!’ Such secrets as these had cost her dearly once, overheard as she slipped through places she didn’t belong to see her lover. Even she wasn’t supposed to know these things. ‘Whatever is there, it must be used for the realms. The dragons…’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not bound by mere flesh and bone? And what would you know of these things, an outsider from the mountains?’
‘Oh a pox on the dragons!’ He laughed at her. ‘We all know they weren’t anything more than the Silver King’s pets
. They’ll be put in their place. It’ll all be like it was, back in the old days.’
She stared at him, half in awe, half in horror. ‘You want to bring him back!’
‘And you don’t?’
A shape appeared at the top of the trapdoor. It hovered there for an instant and then flew down. Skjorl landed on Siff’s back, thumping him to the floor. The light in Siff’s eyes flared; he snarled and started to rise, but then the Adamantine Man had a handful of his hair and slammed Siff’s head into the ground. Once, twice, and the silver light went out of Siff’s eyes and he fell still.
‘Shit-eater.’ Skjorl sat on his back. He’d found a piece of rope from somewhere — here or else he’d had it all along and Kataros hadn’t noticed. He hog-tied Siff, kicked him once and then looked at Kataros and laughed. ‘You always know where you stand with his sort. First chance he got he was going to run. Obvious.’
‘It was more than that.’ Maybe she should have kept that to herself.
‘Was it?’ The Adamantine Man laughed again. ‘Was it now? I can imagine. Wanted something from you before he ran did he?’
‘Not what you think.’
‘Oh don’t be so sure about that.’ The Adamantine Man took Siff’s bottle of wine, which lay on the floor, spilling itself into a puddle. He took a gulp of what was left. ‘You think he must be like you because you were both thrown into prison to die. Doesn’t make him like you at all. He’s a shit-eater. They’re all the same. He’ll turn on you first chance he gets.’
‘He wanted me to kill you.’
‘Well he certainly can’t do it himself.’ Skjorl seemed unmoved. ‘You want me to go get that fish now? He won’t be going anywhere.’
‘Take him with you.’
‘Take him with me?’ He shook his head, then waved the bottle at her. ‘I’ll take this with me though.’
‘Take him with you and watch him. I need to work. In peace.’
The Adamantine Man looked around the cellar. He sniffed and then shrugged. ‘You get lonely, you let me know. I’ll be back before sunrise.’ With that he lifted the outsider over his shoulder and carefully climbed out, and she was alone, alone with the ghosts of the alchemists who’d died down here.
She climbed up the ladder too, just to make sure Skjorl was really gone. When she saw him plodding away towards the river, she returned to the cellar. Ghosts. Ghosts were for children; there weren’t any of those here, not really. What was here was a gift. Powders, dried roots, herbs, mushrooms, everything an alchemist could want except that most precious thing of all, blood, and for that she had her own. She set to work.
46
Siff
Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum
He had gaps. He knew that, had known it for a long time. Gaps that had started that night in the Raksheh when he’d gone to sleep one night and woken up to find that autumn had turned into spring and a mound of dead men had become nothing more than a few scattered bones, overgrown and almost lost beneath the grass. That had been the first, but it hadn’t been the last.
He’d walked along the banks of the Yamuna. Roots and fruits grew beside it; a clever man with the right skills could hunt too, catch a fish maybe or one of the animals that lived in holes by the water. He didn’t have a bow, but he had a knife for killing and skinning and he was quick enough with his hands. His injuries were all gone. He’d felt more alive, more vital than he could remember.
The next gap had come in the middle of one night, rolling in agony, his stomach clenched in a knot. He’d never felt such a pain. He’d poisoned himself, eaten something he shouldn’t, and now he was going to die. One minute he was screaming, vomiting, tearing at his own skin, the next he was walking along the banks of the river in bright sunshine, just as he’d been doing the day before and the day before that as though nothing had happened. No trace of the pain. No trace of anything. He told himself it had been a dream.
The first signs of people had come not long after. He’d found a hollowed-out tree trunk, pulled up against the shore with a few tracks leading away into the trees. He’d counted three men, wondered for a bit about taking whatever they had and stealing their boat, and then thought better of it. When they came back, he gave them what he’d taken from the dead dragon-riders and their slaves, what little he’d been able to find and didn’t need for himself. They were outsiders like him, after all. Outsiders stuck together, them against the rest of the world. They told him that the dragons were flying free and that the power of the dragon-kings and their riders was shattered into shards. He’d rejoiced at that. They all had.
The next gap was a long one, or maybe there had been several with not much in between. He’d stayed with them a while, these men and their tribe. He didn’t remember much, only… memories that he couldn’t quite piece together, or maybe they were dreams. It was a hard life in the woods. They’d had nothing to look forward to. Work, eat, breed, die, that was all that most outsiders had ever had, dragons-kings or no dragon-kings. For a while, he remembered, it had been pleasant. Then later they’d been afraid of him, and then later still in awe. He could have made them do anything, and yet he had no.. use for them any more, and so he’d left one day without really knowing why, without remembering why. He’d had dreams, though. He remembered those more than he remembered the men of the forest. They’d come more and more while he lived among them, dreams of men in silver, of dragons, of power beyond imagining, beyond what he could even begin to comprehend.
At some point there had been soldiers. Not many, a dozen, perhaps. He’d found a new place to hide and there they were, already there. He’d had no chance, and yet the next thing he knew four of them were dead. He had no idea how he’d killed them, but there was no doubting that he’d been the one who’d done it. With his bare hands, by the looks of it, because there hadn’t been any blood. The rest had taken him back with them to the Pinnacles. They’d been terrified of him every step of the way, and he could have drunk that terror like the finest wine if he hadn’t been strung up just like he was now. And then in the Pinnacles the dreams and the gaps had finally stopped and he was Siff again, the person he’d grown up knowing, and nothing strange at all had happened. Shame about being thrown into a cell to slowly starve to death.
Then the alchemist had come and now it was all starting again and it was all he could do not to scream.
‘Hey, doggy!’ He had no idea what had happened. One moment he’d been talking to the alchemist, wondering whether she was an ally or an enemy and wondering what she meant to do with her doggy once they reached the forest. The next thing he knew, here he was, hog-tied by the river. If he’d been able to reach, he’d have felt his head. His face burned. He’d taken a good crack from something. Pity he had no idea what.
‘Hey, doggy!’
The Adamantine Man ignored him. He was sitting by the river with a bottle of what must have been the wine from the alchemists’ cellar. When he stood up, he was obviously drunk.
‘Hey shit-eater,’ he said, ‘you thirsty?’ He pulled down his trousers and aimed carefully at Siff’s face. Siff turned away — there wasn’t much else he could do — and felt the warm wetness of the Adamantine Man’s piss spatter his skin, soaking his hair and the clothes on his back.
‘Going to kill you for that, doggy,’ he snarled.
The Adamantine Man spat at him. ‘Nothing changed there then, eh, shit-eater? I heard what you said to her.’
Siff grunted. Pity I didn’t.
‘Saw what you had in mind for her, too.’
‘Seen what you have in mind for her, doggy.’
‘Touch her and I’ll cut your hand off, shit-eater.’
‘Really. I thought you might like to sit and watch. Closest you’re going to get.’
The Adamantine Man walked away and left him there. Maybe this was it. Maybe they were going to leave him for the next dragon to pass by. Ancestors! What did I say to the witch?
Later, the air brought the smell of smoke and cooking fish. The Ada
mantine Man had finally found the courage to make a fire. The smell got stronger and stronger and then, after a bit, it went away again. The sky started to lighten. Dawn was coming.
‘Doggy! Oi! Doggy!’ Dragon’s blood — they weren’t really going to leave him out here, were they? They couldn’t! If a dragon came down, it might find them too. ‘Alchemist!’
He’d about shouted himself hoarse when the Adamantine Man finally came back. He didn’t say a word, just dragged him back up the hill and tipped him down into the alchemists’ cellar. The idiot was almost too drunk to stand.
‘Hungry, shit-eater?’ he asked. And then he carefully placed a little pile of fish guts right in front of Siff’s face. ‘Eat, then. Heh.’ He reeled away.
‘You’re drunk.’ The alchemist shook her head in disgust. ‘Is that how it is to be an Adamantine Man?’
‘Oh we used to drink all right.’ He laughed. ‘Now and then. Drink until we fell over in our own piss. All that’s long gone. We were the Adamantine Men. Greatest soldiers…’ He staggered towards the alchemist. ‘There’s nothing like us. We’re the biggest. Best. Hardest.’ He reached out a hand. The alchemist didn’t move.
‘You can’t touch me, Skjorl. Go to sleep.’
The Adamantine Man shook himself. He grabbed the alchemist by her shoulders. The look of shock on her face was precious.
‘Should have listened to me,’ sang Siff. Whatever I said.
The Adamantine Man’s brow furrowed as though he was thinking hard. He clawed at the back of his head, then pushed the alchemist up against a wall. His other hand went to her face. He grinned. ‘My spear is huge, its shaft is hard, its point is savage and battle-scarr’d. Best lovers in the realms, the Guard. You look good.’ He started to fumble at her. The alchemist pushed him away.