by Stephen Deas
The tunnel went on, rough and uneven until it stopped at a fissure that ran up and down. Kataros couldn’t see how far it went either way, for the alchemical lamps produced little light. She crouched, searching for a pebble to drop, but the ground was smooth and there weren’t any. The Adamantine Man shifted Rat into a more comfortable position across his shoulders and started to climb. There were rungs bolted into the rock.
‘Why are we going up, not down?’
‘There’s tunnels down below. Guarded and watched well. There’s barricades and bolted doors and the speaker’s riders down there, watching out against the ferals. No way out without a fight – not for one like you. This way’s better. Gets us to the surface. No one goes out this way and you can’t get back up again, so there’s no one watching.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘You run into anyone up the top here, wave your arms at them and make ghost noises, that’ll probably work. Hyrkallan’s lot, they’re like little girls. The ones who’ve been here even longer are no better. All spooked. Most likely they really do believe that you lot made all this happen like he says. Demons. So make like one. Easier than having a fight. If they come back with any soldiers, we’ll be gone by then.’
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she climbed after him in silence, up the slit in the rock, its sides worn smooth by water from another time. In places it was so narrow that Siff scraped against the far wall; from side to side, it spread out further than her lamp could reach.
‘What is this place?’ She couldn’t help but wonder that. She’d been wondering that from the moment she’d come inside the Pinnacles and seen what it was really like. Even in chains she’d stared, lost in awe.
‘There’s shafts up and down like this all over,’ he said. ‘It’s like one of them cheeses we used to get from up on the moors.’
He reached an opening and levered himself out. Kataros felt his tension as he crouched, ready to drop Siff in an instant, but there was only darkness and silence to greet them.
‘Right. Quick now.’ He started to run, lumbering off. She followed, keeping close behind. Her heart beat faster, excitement and expectation bubbling together as if she was brewing some potion. Almost out. Almost out.
He turned a corner and light – a patch of slightly lighter darkness anyway – loomed ahead. The scorpion caves. Vishmir and the first Valmeyan had fought here in the War of Thorns. Afterwards, Prince Lai had built the scorpions. They were supposed to defend the Silver City, but it seemed to Kataros that they did the opposite. History said that when the scorpions fired, the Silver City burned. If you looked hard now, she supposed you might see it burning still.
She saw stars.
Almost out!
The Adamantine Man slowed as they reached the lip of the cave. He stopped a good ten feet short, lowered Siff to the floor and peered around him, looking for something. Kataros stared out of the sheer side of the Fortress of Watchfulness, down over the Silver City, which wasn’t still burning after all. They were high. She had no chance of climbing down, not from all the way up here.
‘How far up are we?’
‘Don’t know. A few hundred feet over the plains.’
‘And we fly like a bird?’ She’d supposed there might be a rope, or some sort of lift or crane, but there was nothing. ‘You bastard,’ she hissed, and reached through the blood-bond, ready to claw his mind apart. ‘What do we do? Flap our arms and pretend they’re wings?’
The Adamantine Man stopped. His hands fell limp. He looked almost surprised. ‘Yes,’ he said.
She almost killed him there and then, almost let the blood inside his brain boil and rupture every vessel. She could have stood there and watched him bleed from his eyes and his nose and his mouth, from his fingers and his toes and every place in between, and she wouldn’t have been sorry. But however hard she peered through the blood-bond, she saw no deceit. They were going to fly. He truly believed that.
‘How?’
He went back to peering around the cave. After a minute or two he stopped. ‘With these.’
It took a moment for Kataros to understand what she was seeing, simply because the lamps didn’t make enough light.
She was seeing wings. Dragon wings. Lashed together and with a harness between them.
8
Skjorl
Eight months before the Black Mausoleum
He found Vish easy enough. No doubt about how dead he was. His neck was broken, the back of his head was smashed in and he was lying in a pool of blood that was bigger than he was. The axe and shield on his back had been shattered. Skjorl stood for a moment. There wasn’t anything special to say. Adamantine Men weren’t long on rituals or on sentiment. When you fought dragons, you did what needed to be done, nothing more, nothing less. You did it fast and you did it without hesitation. Most of the time you died anyway.
He took Vish’s potions, his poisons, his firebox, the alchemist herbs that stopped the dragons from finding them and left the rest. The shield and the armour were useless and he already had an axe.
The other dragon had left, judging by the quiet, but it wouldn’t be gone for long. Looking for another way in, most likely. Back soon enough, one way or the other. He wondered if any of the others up top had survived. Didn’t seem likely. Which left him and Jasaan. Jasaan the cripple. Jasaan and his principles. Easier to leave him behind.
He was starting to notice that his hand hurt. He took a last look at Vish. Quiet Vish.
Wouldn’t have left you behind, would I?
No. He didn’t suppose he would, and what was good for one was good for another. That was the way it was. And then there were all these eggs, which could hatch any time, and the small matter of not being able to use his own axe properly with only one good hand. Couldn’t see how bad it was, but there was no getting around that it was bad. Bad enough it wouldn’t be all fine again in a few days.
He’d have to give his axe a name, he thought. Call her Vish maybe, but Vish was a man’s name and his axe was more his lady, his lover. Dragon-bane? He cringed at that. She deserved better.
‘You walk?’ he asked when got back to Jasaan. Jasaan shook his head.
‘Ankle’s done. I can hop.’
‘Not down here with no light. You can crawl, right?’
‘I can crawl.’
They shuffled along in the darkness, quiet as they could, Jasaan on his hands and knees, Skjorl inching his way beside him until they reached one of the cistern walls. Here and there they passed more eggs. With a bit of care, Skjorl could still swing his axe with one hand to smash them. It took Jasaan to cut off the unborn hatchlings’ heads. Skjorl tried but he couldn’t find a way to make his buggered hand work and he just made a mess. Quicker to prop Jasaan up to finish the job.
He didn’t know how long they’d been going when they finished the eggs. Long enough he wanted to sit down. Back where the roof had collapsed there was sunlight filtering down through the hole, giving a dim light so he could finally see. The dust had mostly settled except where the two of them kicked it up again. He put his back to a stone and rummaged in his pack for something to eat.
‘It just needs a hatchling small enough to squeeze through one of those tunnels and we’re finished,’ said Jasaan. Skjorl shrugged. Obvious really. Wasn’t sure why it needed to be said.
‘We’re finished anyway,’ he muttered. ‘Look at us.’ No place among the Adamantine Men for cripples.
‘We’ll heal.’
Skjorl took a deep breath and sighed. He passed Jasaan some of Vish’s herbs to mix with his water and took some himself. Something to numb the pain. ‘Sun’s up. We’ve smashed a good few eggs but not all of them. There’s others somewhere. As soon as one hatches, it’ll be small enough to come after us. We could barely face an angry old crone, never mind a dragon.’
Jasaan offered some of his bread. Brothers together. Sharing everything. Live together, die together. Old traditions like that stuck with you, even in places like this. ‘We did what we were asked to do.’
Skjorl shook his head and took his own bread instead. ‘Some of it. There’s no one left at Bloodsalt, but we won’t be getting back to tell anyone that. And there’s still dragons. We didn’t kill the dragons.’
‘We killed one of them.’
‘Vish and I killed it.’ Skjorl stood up. He was tired enough to drop and he had nothing he wanted to say. ‘I’m going to look around for a bit. Get some rest. When it’s dark we’ll see if we can find another way out.’ Which didn’t make any sense – no point spending the day hiding somewhere when the dragons already knew where you were – but Jasaan didn’t argue, and Skjorl left him sitting there, busy trying to make some sort of splint for his ankle. He walked on through the cisterns. Not really looking for a way out because he wasn’t expecting to find one, but just to be on his own.
After a bit he walked back to where the roof had come in, to where there was some light, and looked at his hand. Tried to take his gauntlet off, but that hurt too much, so he was left with poking and prodding. Half pulverised. Two fingers shattered, a third one broken. At least the burns on his palm weren’t too bad.
He stopped there, in a ray of sunlight, and listened. If the second dragon was anywhere nearby, there was no sign of it. No sounds, no tremors in the earth. It was almost a disappointment. Being eaten would have been easy, the quick way out, but when that didn’t happen he looked at the rubble instead. A man with two good hands and two good feet could climb that. Scramble straight up. Simple. Might not be any holes big enough for a dragon to get through, but a man, now he wouldn’t have any trouble at all.
Dragons had good eyes in the daylight. Could spot a man moving through the desert from a mile away. Couldn’t pretend the temptation wasn’t there, though – just start climbing. Never mind that he’d be leaving Jasaan behind. Never mind the noise it might make. Never mind being seen, just get up and go, and keep on going until claws and teeth closed around him.
Something scraped on the ground behind him. He spun around, fumbling for his axe, ready for a hatchling, but it was Jasaan.
‘I thought that too. Could be the only way out.’
‘Could be.’
‘When it gets dark, then?’
‘If the dragon doesn’t come back.’ Which it would. It knew they were there and it knew what they’d done.
‘Perhaps we should look for another.’
‘You go do that then.’ The adult was away. Hunting. Had to be. The young ones, they could be anywhere, but the big one would come back in the evening. It would tear its way in and then they’d die.
No. No, by the great Flame, that wasn’t going to happen. If he was going to die, it was going to be his way. ‘Come on.’
‘What?’
‘Come on!’ He started to climb up the rubble.
‘What are you doing?’
‘We stay here, we die. So we don’t stay here. We get out before the big one comes back again. We get as far as we can. We hide up in the afternoon. As soon as it’s dark, we press on. It’ll look for us here but we’ll be somewhere else. Not up the Sapphire valley. We head up towards the moors. Until we can kill dragons again. Then we come back and we finish what we came here for.’
Jasaan was shaking his head. ‘There’s hatchlings. They’ll see you.’
‘Us, Jasaan. If they see anything, they’ll see us. And maybe they will and maybe they won’t, but I’m not waiting down here to die, and you’re coming with me.’ Jasaan would slow him down, but in truth, neither of them was much use in a fight any more.
‘No! Skjorl, stay here. Wait until night! There might be another way. There might be other tunnels somewhere.’
He was halfway up the pile of broken stone already. Didn’t bother to look back or even to shake his head. True, there might be another way out of the cisterns, but he didn’t care. There weren’t any tunnels for people to hide in, not in a place like this. No catacombs like in Sand, no endless caves like there were under the Purple Spur. Just desert. Hot, harsh and much too bright. No, and Jasaan wouldn’t stay down here on his own either. Skjorl reached the top and waited, squinting against the fierce daylight. The cisterns had been built underneath some sort of palace, not that there was much left of it now. Dragons had taken their time over destroying it. Burned it from the outside and then smashed it down with tail and claw and trampled it and burned it again. Same as they’d done to Outwatch all those months ago. Pieces of carved masonry lay heaped about, broken statues, fragments of walls and floors covered in patterns of tiny coloured tiles. That sort of thing. All the pointless finery that had once surrounded the great lords of the realms. Looking at it now made him want to laugh. The sun was high in the sky, blistering hot. He took a swig of water from his skin. That was all he needed. The sun on his back, a splash of water and something to fight. None of this pointless pride.
A stone head stared at him sideways from the rubble, its body lost amid the tumbled stones. There was something familiar about it. When Skjorl turned and stared back, he recognised it. Speaker Hyram. The last one to serve out his years. The speaker under whom this had started. One dragon gone missing, that was all, the white he’d seen at Outwatch. One dragon and the realms were all but destroyed. Speaker Zafir had followed him. Easy on the eye, that one. Then Speaker Jehal, the one they called the Viper. Now Skjorl served Jehal’s queen, Lystra. Or at least he had when he’d left the Purple Spur. For all he knew she might be dead by now too, another speaker raised in her place. Speakers came and speakers went. He shook his head at Hyram’s still face. ‘What does it matter now? What do any of you matter?’
Jasaan climbed up beside him. Skjorl turned. ‘See. No one’s eaten me yet.’
‘Are they still here? Maybe they all flew off?’
‘Haven’t looked.’ He pointed to the head of Speaker Hyram. ‘Been talking to our old friend here.’
Jasaan looked sideways too. ‘I remember him.’
‘Don’t we all. The shaking speaker.’
‘Who buggered his pot boys and then murdered them and threw their bodies in the Mirror Lakes.’
Skjorl frowned. ‘Don’t think anyone ever knew more than they kept going missing.’ Maybe Hyram hadn’t amounted to very much as a speaker, but he’d been a mighty sight better than what had followed. Besides, it never did any good to speak ill of the dead.
‘Relk always said he knew who it was who’d done away with the bodies. One of us. Different company but still one of us. Wrapped them in sheets and weighted them with stones and then tossed them into the middle of the lake.’
Skjorl had to smile at that. ‘Relk reckoned he knew a soldier who’d shared Queen Shezira’s bed, that the Night Watchman himself shared Speaker Zafir’s and that there was a blood-mage living under the Glass Cathedral masquerading as a surgeon. Never actually saw any of it himself, mind. Always someone else.’ He glanced up at the sky, screwed up his eyes and looked away. After the blackness of the cistern everything out here was too bright.
‘There was a body went out to the lakes the night Hyram died. No one saw who it was. Wasn’t a boy, though. Was a woman from the weight of it. Some assassin with a knife for Speaker Zafir, hiding in her rooms in the Tower of Air. Was King Jehal’s riders – prince he was then – who took it away. Already wrapped up. Asked about a bit the next day and tracked where they’d gone with it. Out to the lakes in a boat. Don’t know who it was. They said there’d been a fight, but I reckon they were full of crap. No blood. Not on them, not on their swords, not on anything, not even the smell of it in the air.’ He sniffed. ‘Me, I reckon we’re better off without the lot of them. Speakers, riders, kings, queens, princes, any of them.’
Skjorl stiffened. Treason talk that was, even out here.‘We serve the speaker, Jasaan, whoever that might be,’ he growled. ‘Orders. The Guard obeys orders. From birth to death. Nothing more, nothing less.’
‘And who do the speakers serve, Skjorl? Themselves?’
‘They serve the realms, Jasaan. Any more talk like that and you’ll h
ang.’
Jasaan looked as him as though he was mad and then burst out laughing. ‘We’re in the middle of a lifeless burned-out city in the middle of a desert. There’s probably not a single other person alive for a hundred miles in any direction. I can’t walk, you can’t hold your axe and there are dragons everywhere; they know we’re here and are probably hunting us, and you think I should be worried about getting hanged if we ever make it back? Vishmir’s cock!’
‘I’ll hang you here and now if I have to, soldier.’ Didn’t expect to mean it, but he did. From birth to death. The most solemn oath in the realms. An Adamantine Man who didn’t believe in that, who didn’t believe in all the things that made them what they were, well, they didn’t deserve to live.
‘No, you won’t, Skjorl. Don’t be a dick.’
‘This is still my company, Jasaan. You going to hop on your own all the way back to the Spur?’
‘You’re as crippled as I am.’
‘I can walk, Jasaan. Big difference.’
Jasaan raised a hand in submission. ‘Your way, boss. From birth to death. I always served as I was asked. I’m here, aren’t I? Out in the middle of this shit?’
Skjorl let his anger fade. ‘That you are.’ Maybe Jasaan didn’t deserve it. And three hands would be better than one on the way back, however far they got before a dragon ate them. And he was right, wasn’t he? They were both as crippled as each other now. Two would be better than one. Just as long as they carefully kept on not talking about Scarsdale.
They stayed in the narrowest streets on their way out of the city. Once his eyes finally got used to the desert sunlight, Skjorl climbed up to the top of the smashed remains of something that might have been an old temple to the Great Flame. He searched the skies and the distant sands and salt flats and the waters of Bloodsalt Lake for anything that looked like a dragon, big or small. Past the city’s bones was a yellow-white flatness, boiling and shimmering in the late-morning heat, and then the deep deep blue of the sky. If there were dragons out there, he couldn’t see them. In the haze he wasn’t sure he ever would.