by Stephen Deas
The archways drew him in. The light seemed brighter there, the air felt warmer. He lay down between them. If there were no animals then nothing would come and eat him while he slept. That was good. He hadn’t found any other ways out. You had to wonder, he thought, as he drifted to sleep, why a place like this was hidden away. Protecting something? Wasn’t there something in the Raksheh? Something about caves and an old ruin and a tomb. Vishmir? He hadn’t found Vishmir’s tomb, had he?
That was worth some thinking. Vishmir’s tomb? Never mind all that dust he’d lost, Vishmir had ruled the world. There’d be treasure, wouldn’t there? His eyes closed.
In the middle of the night he thought he woke up to find a tiny silver snake curled up on his chest. Its head was lifted, staring at him. He tried to move, but nothing worked. The snake stared and stared, and then instead of biting him, it slid up his chest and up his neck and pushed its head between his lips and forced its way into his mouth. He tried to scream but nothing happened. Afterwards he knew it was a dream, because the next thing he remembered was standing on a sea of liquid silver, looking up at a moon far larger than the moon he knew. He saw himself with his back to a range of mountains, while ahead of him the sky was dark with thousands of onrushing dragons. Beside him a man clad in silver raised a spear. He struck the earth with it and the ground split open into a chasm a mile wide and impossibly deep, and from it rose a sheet of fire, a wall so high it tore the clouds to pieces and turned even dragons away.
The dreams grew stranger still, but when Siff woke up, the memory of them faded, and only the snake and the silver sea and the fire remained, those and the feelings that came with them, deep and alien.
He got up from the floor and would have gone outside, except now the archways around him were like mirrors and there was no way out of their circle, and when he looked down, he realised he must still be dreaming, because tiny snakes of moonlight were curling from his ruined fingertips. They reached and strained and pulled him forward, until they touched the nearest mirror and the mirror became a gateway to another place, also filled with silver, and he was sucked inside, back to where he’d been before, standing on a silver sea with the giant moon above. He staggered back and tripped and something happened inside his head as he fell.
He woke up with a start, gasping and shaking, but there were no silver snakes curling from his fingers and the archways were merely the same stone they’d been the night before. He got to his feet and walked away and quietly swore, Vishmir’s tomb or not, that he would never return, not to this part. At least he didn’t feel hungry any more.
Outside he soaked up the bright warm sun and sucked in air sweet with the scent of pollen and flowers, so different from the biting autumn wind of the day before. He felt strangely good. His fingernails didn’t hurt now, nor the place where they’d branded him. He was thirsty, that was all. And he knew now exactly what he was going to do. Never mind dragons and tombs, what he was going to do before anything else was sort through the pile of bodies and do a proper job of it this time. Take whatever food, clothes, swords, knives, armour and anything else that he could salvage and then get away from here as fast as he could before the smell of blood drew in the snappers. Down the river, that would do. He thought for a bit about making a raft but he didn’t have an axe to chop wood, and anyway wasn’t some sort of monster supposed to live in the Yamuna, if that’s what this river was?
Riverbanks were good for food though. Animals came for water. Things grew there, fruits and berries and such like. Maybe he could try fishing. And then he’d get out of the forest and find his way to the Silver City and to the court of the Harvest Queen. Aliphera? Or was she the one who’d fallen off her dragon? Not that it mattered – whoever it was, he’d tell them that he’d found Vishmir’s Tomb, take whatever gold they’d give him for showing them the way and leave them to it. Or maybe he’d find some band of outlaws. Yes, that would be better still, a gang of sell-swords. He could bring them here, show them the way in and see what they brought out. Take his share and be done. Just as long as he didn’t have to go back in there on his own again.
The sun was high in the sky. It felt warm, even though the year was turning to winter. The heat cheered him. Best to make the most of it. If there was one thing the Raksheh didn’t see very much, it was the sun. Most of the time, if it wasn’t raining, it was shrouded in mist and cloud. The sun gave him a sense that he might not die out here after all.
Ancestors but he felt good.
He walked back up to the smashed eyrie. It all looked much more overgrown than he remembered. When he’d first seen it, he could have sworn that the destruction had been fresh, yet now he could see he’d been wrong and it had happened some time ago. Months, at least. But then it had been late when he’d climbed past the waterfall. The sun had been low in the sky, the shadows long and deceiving and he’d still been dazed and amazed that he was even alive. Beaten and battered and not quite himself. Maybe that was it. Would explain why there was no one here.
He picked his way up the bluffs, careful not to disturb any stones, and followed the path above the river to the falls and then down the other side. The water was flowing faster today, and a lot higher too. Rains in the mountains in the night, maybe?
Eventually he reached the bottom. Where there ought to have been a pile of bodies, there was just grass. Grass and, when he looked carefully around, a few old bones, almost buried. A boot. Pieces of leather, worn and cracked, here and there. A skull. All almost lost in the thick grass.
He looked at his fingers again, looked at them properly this time. His nails were still missing but otherwise they were healed. Completely. The seeping scabs were gone.
His hair kept falling in his eyes. It was long. Hadn’t been long before.
He tore off his shirt. Not his shirt, but the shirt he’d stolen from a dead man the day before. The brand was an old scar, long healed.
He stopped then and looked more closely at the forest around him. Everything was different. Yesterday, autumn had been coming. The leaves had been starting to turn and there were berries on the bushes. Today there were no berries; instead there were flowers. The leaves on the trees were all green, and the scent in the air was of the last trace of spring blossom.
While he’d slept whole seasons had passed. And he hadn’t the first idea what had happened to him.
40
Blackscar
Nineteen days before the Black Mausoleum
The fortress was where the dragon remembered it. There was no hesitation this time, no pause to wonder. It raked its mind through the hive-thoughts of the little ones within.
The chains first, it thought to those who flew beside it. The chains and freedom to those who were bound, freedom through tooth and claw. Then the little ones would burn, all of them, and the dragons would take that which did not belong here and send it back to the sleep whence it had come.
The dragon sifted from thought to thought and, as it did, found something it had forgotten. A mind. The one from the place in the burning desert and the lake of red salt. The one it had hunted. Here. Yet even as the dragon found that, it felt something else, something that passed like a ghost through the thoughts of another little one, like a ghost and yet like a titan passing among ants, so vast that it went almost unseen. They are here! it said, but the presence had already vanished again, and after that it hardly seemed to matter any more as the exultant fury of the fight took its place.
An age had passed since dragon had last fought dragon.
41
Skjorl
Nineteen days before the Black Mausoleum
He could understand a battle. Tunnels that glowed with their own light, bronze statues that didn’t go green with age and came to life when you touched them, castles that floated above the ground, shit-eaters with silvery snakes in their fingers, none of that made any sense. Alchemist business, not his. But a battle, that was something else. A dragon fight, that was everything he’d been made for, and he’d been
here before, in Outwatch, in Sand, in Bloodsalt and Samir’s Crossing. All of them filled with screams, the earth quaking as the dragons destroyed everything in reach, stones falling from tunnel roofs, dust choking the air. Here the shouting was more distant and so far the ground wasn’t shaking. A matter of time, that was all.
He stooped through the door that the dead soldiers had left open. The shit-eater was unconscious again, eyes rolling behind half-closed lids, muttering and moaning to himself. Skjorl might have asked the alchemist what she’d done to him, but he was easier to get along with like this. That and he simply didn’t care. Outside the door there was his sword and there was his axe. Dragon-blooded. Simply propped against the wall. Holding it made him whole again.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Out,’ he said. Down the passage back the way they’d come. Back towards the outside.
‘Shouldn’t we go the other way? Aren’t we safer underground?’
‘No.’ Everyone thought that. ‘At Outwatch the dragons sent their little ones down the holes.’ Hatchlings. A few days old was enough. They’d rip a bear to pieces, probably a snapper too, never mind a man. All skittering claws and curling limbs and wings and teeth and tails like whips. ‘Scrawny, with the hunger of a wolverine. Then there was the fire. In a tunnel there’s no place to run, no place to hide. You just die.’
The door to the outside was open. Grey clouds muted the daylight. It was raining, and most of the castle was hidden in mist. Warm mist. Steam. Mostly mist was good. Mist was a place to hide. He glanced up at the sky. Where the mist broke he could see dragons. Looked like dozens of them.
Three men burst out of the fog, running like their tails were on fire, yelling their heads off. If they realised who Skjorl and Kataros were, they didn’t let it bother them. Skjorl pulled the alchemist out of the way, sideways along the wall. Fast.
‘We didn’t—’
Didn’t hear the rest of what the alchemist said. Didn’t need to. We didn’t come this way. No. But the shriek from the mist, so loud it staggered him, was all the explanation she was going to get. Over his shoulder he saw a shape, a head and a neck, long and vast, nothing more than a darkness in the haze. The mouth opened and the cloud lit up. Fire poured in torrents. The head turned towards them.
The air flashed and shook. A thunderclap shook the castle. ‘Run, woman!’ He looked for a shield, anything.
The sky darkened. Another shape plunged through the mist over Skjorl’s head. A second dragon. He cringed. Couldn’t help it, dropped the shit-eater and covered his head. Pointless, but the second dragon wasn’t interested in him. It smashed into the first one and the two of them rolled away across the sky.
‘Ancestors!’ He couldn’t help himself. Never seen anything like it. A dragon attacking another dragon?
‘Come on!’ The alchemist. Couldn’t see her through the mist but following the wall took him to her quickly enough.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked, but she had no better idea than he did.
Steps up the wall. He could see them. Not the steps they’d used coming in, but still steps.
‘Stay!’ He dropped the shit-eater at the alchemist’s feet and ran up. The smoke and fog were beneath him now and he could see the dragons in the sky again. A score of them at a quick count. The air smelled of smoke. Most of the castle yard was filled with it, smoke or steam or more likely a mix of both. A dragon swooped down towards him from the other side of the castle. It levelled out. Its mouth opened and a torrent of flames poured over the far side of the castle yard, scouring it, blasting smoke and steam aside. It turned away. Over on the far wall something glowed brightly, some strange towering device of glass and gold.
He ran down the other side of the wall, over to the abrupt edge of the eyrie. The stone beneath him shook. Another thunderclap split the air. The sky behind him flashed. No sign of any cage like the one that brought them here. There was a dragon though. Coming towards him. Right at him. He looked at the cliff in front of him and the slope of the wall behind. There was nowhere to go. There was something oddly familiar about the beast. About the beat of its wings.
The dragon from Bloodsalt.
Another thunderclap. Lightning dazzled the air. For a moment he couldn’t think. Took a quick step forward, out to the edge. Stared at the dragon and the winding silver coils of the Fury sprawled across the plains below. But no, there really was nowhere to go.
He closed his eyes. Hung his head and waited for the fire to come. Damn you, dragon! Damn you! Not that an Adamantine Man was supposed to care, but for the first time he could remember, he wasn’t ready. Not now.
Another dragon screamed. A wall of hot air slammed him back, knocking him down. But it didn’t burn, wasn’t fire. The monster from Bloodsalt passed over his head, blotting out the sky, except it wasn’t one dragon now but two, wrapped around each other, claws and tails twisted together, teeth snapping. The wind of their wings picked him up as they passed, threw him like a doll back up the slope of the wall. Their tails clipped the top of it, shattering the stone. Boulders as big as his head hurled through the air and rained down around him. A length of chain dangled between the dragons, links as big and thick as his arm. It slashed behind them, curling and writhing in the wind like a snake. Slicing and shattering whatever it touched.
Then they were past, tipping down towards the ground, smashing into the midst of the castle, gouging a trail of destruction and then bouncing up again, splitting apart. The one from Bloodsalt turned and climbed. The other one vanished down towards the plains, wings outstretched.
The dragon from Bloodsalt. Skjorl watched it turn. There wasn’t any doubt. At least now he knew what colour it was. Gold. A real prize. He spat. Some consolation.
He picked himself up. Ran back up the wall before the dragon could return and raced down the steps. Grabbed the alchemist and kept running, taking what shelter he could. Not that it would help much if the dragon was still after him.
The dragon that had killed Vish. It filled his blood. Stay here with me, dragon, and I’ll find a way to crash this fortress on your head!
He was ready for the fire, but it never came. They ran through a choking wall of smoke, a cloud of scalding steam, more smoke, mist, but no fire. And then they were at the steps, the ones that would take them back to the cage and down to the ground.
And then?
He ran up, the shit-eater still over his back, light as a feather. The cage and its crane were there, what was left of them. Smashed to splinters. The rope was there too. Huge and heavy, its coils sprawled around its shattered pulleys. Scorched but not burned through.
And then?
The question wouldn’t let go. What happens when you get to the bottom? When the dragon from Bloodsalt is still looking for you and you have nowhere to hide? Because there was no doubt. It remembered. Its eyes had never left him.
Amid the ruin of the crane he found the end of the cage rope, still spliced into a loop around a cracked beam of wood. Dragged it to the edge of the rock and pushed it over and dodged out of the way as the rope’s weight dragged it down, heavy loops of it flipping and squirming like eels in a jar.
Another thunderbolt, another flash of lightning and a dragon fell out of the sky, its wings broken, screaming until it smashed into the castle yard. The wall trembled. The alchemist staggered. She reached out, steadied herself on his arm to stop herself falling, then jumped away as though she’d been stung.
‘I have to stay here,’ he told her.
She looked at him as though he was mad. ‘No.’
‘There’s a dragon here I’ve seen before.’ The one that had crashed into the castle? No, that had been a darker colour with flashes of metallic green. ‘It knows me.’
She laughed.
Skjorl shrugged. He pointed down the wall. ‘You can climb down.’ He didn’t know whether the rope reached the ground or not. Hadn’t thought to check.
‘And him?’ She pointed to Siff.
‘You wake him up
and make him climb too.’ She wasn’t going to carry him, that was for sure, and there wasn’t anything he could use to make a harness, no other rope to lower him down.
‘Look at him!’ The alchemist screamed in his face. And there they were, the fingers inside his skull again. ‘You get him down. I don’t care how, but you do that.’
‘A dragon here is hunting me,’ he said again, in case that would help her understand. ‘It’ll find me. Won’t take it long. It wants to kill me. If you’re with me, it’ll kill you too. I can throw your shit-eater over the edge if you like.’ The thought made him smile. ‘See if he bounces. Would amount to much the same.’ The castle shook. Another crash of thunder loud enough to make him cringe; another flash as light filled the air.
‘Get. Him. Down!’
His body jerked with the force of the command. He shrugged. Without a choice any more, he picked up the shit-eater and arranged him carefully over his shoulders. Arms and one leg wrapped in front of him so that both his hands were free. Then carefully down the slope of the wall back to the wreckage of the crane. He peered over the edge.
Stupid.
The fortress was moving, slowly, dragging the end of the rope through the fields below, vanishing under the castle’s bulk. He lay down and swung his legs over the edge. It was higher than it had been before, or maybe it just seemed that way. Two hundred feet or more to the ground now.
Stupid stupid stupid. Dangle from a rope in the middle of the air in the middle of a dragon fight? And one of them hunting me? Stupid beyond belief.
He took hold of the rope and slid over the edge. With luck the shit-eater would fall off. If that happened, well then good riddance to him. Once over the side, he clung on to the rope with both hands and walked down the purple-veined slab of stone under the castle until he was dangling over empty air and the shit-eater was still wrapped around his shoulders. He squeezed his legs around the rope and let himself slide the rest of the way to the ground as fast as he dared. As fast as he could without shredding himself. They landed hard, sprawling and tumbling apart, rolling in the mud. Easy. Easier than he’d thought.