by Stephen Deas
Adamantine Men did what needed to be done. That was all. They didn’t make themselves into heroes, and so it wasn’t a surprise when the alchemists under the Purple Spur found him something else to do. There was to be an attempt to reach the Pinnacles. Alchemists would be going. They would need guides. Soldiers to protect them, soldiers who understood the ways of dragons. Most particularly, they needed soldiers who had survived out in the open, who knew how to stay alive with no vast roof of stone to shield them from the skies. They needed an inspiration, someone the other soldiers, the alchemists even, would believe in. And Jasaan, since he was a hero, couldn’t deny them, no matter how much he never wanted to go out in the open again. Who else could they choose? And what else could he do but go?
He got them there too, all of them. Picked his men carefully, set off in three separate bands on three separate paths and amazed even himself. His alchemists reached the Pinnacles alive. Even in the Silver City, even as he tried to find a way into the fortress itself, he kept them safe from the feral men who lived in the tunnels and the cellars, hiding from the dragons above and only ever coming out at night. He kept them safe and he got them inside, all the way from the Purple Spur, with messages of greetings and hope from the speaker who lived there.
That had been a week ago. The next day, after his soldiers had politely surrendered their swords, trusting to the hospitality of King Hyrkallan and his men, Hyrkallan had killed the alchemists. Hadn’t listened to what they had to say, simply got rid of them.
No one actually said that, of course. Apparently what had really happened was that all the alchemists had gone to the very roof of the Pinnacles, to the Reflecting Garden, and been eaten by a dragon. About the most implausible story imaginable, but by the time he’d come to understand about the false speaker Hyrkallan and his hatred for alchemists, they were dead and the damage was done. All the men he’d lost on the way wasted. He might have made a fuss about it, but really what was the point? In the days since it had happened, he’d just felt more and more numb.
He stood in the same place now, the Reflecting Garden, looking at the moon. It wasn’t often that anyone who lived under the Spur got to see the real sky, the real moon, the real stars, never mind the real sun. To Jasaan open skies only meant keeping his eyes wide for dragons. He’d had enough of that. A good strong mountain over his head would do nicely.
A stream bubbled out from a pile of rubble that had once been a fountain. That was all the dragons had left of the Reflecting Garden, but the riders who’d been trapped in the Pinnacles since before the Adamantine Palace had burned spoke of pools of water that didn’t lie flat, of paths in arcs and the Silver Onion Dome. Even Jasaan had heard about that. He looked at the remains, the shattered stones and gravel. There was almost nothing left.
On special nights when there were no dragons roosting on the mountaintop, the false speaker Hyrkallan had his throne carried up from the tunnels below. Tonight was one of those nights, and he’d summoned Jasaan to join him. Jasaan watched carefully, vaguely wondering whether tonight was the night that the dragon who’d eaten his alchemists would mysteriously eat him and all his men too. Under the Purple Spur a lot of things were quietly said among the Adamantine Men about Hyrkallan and his queen. Hyrkallan should have been the speaker, they said. He could have saved the realms from disaster, they said, but his queen was another matter: his queen was bitter and ugly, hateful and mad and had awoken dragons for fun. Queen Jaslyn wasn’t there tonight and Jasaan hadn’t ever seen her, even when they’d first arrived. As for Hyrkallan, he was old, his beard was grey and there was white in his hair. To Jasaan he looked lost.
Riders were still coming up from the tunnels below, dragging poles and great long sails of dragon skin with them. Jasaan switched his eyes to watch. They looked like wings.
‘Jasaan? Guardsman Jasaan?’
Jasaan met the rider’s eyes. Neither of them bowed because neither of them knew whether either of them should. Adamantine Men served the speaker. As far as Jasaan was concerned that meant Queen Lystra, and if he’d been feeling suicidal, then Hyrkallan was a traitor and so was every rider who followed him. Jasaan had settled on quietly pretending not to notice. The other Adamantine Men who’d survived the journey from the Spur had followed his lead, and the same went for the story about the alchemists. Just pretend it’s true. Don’t ask questions. Made him sick, though, that one.
They settled for staring at each other. The riders of the Pinnacles didn’t know what to do with him. The Adamantine Men made them uncomfortable. They were scared, and so they should be.
‘I’m Jasaan,’ he said.
‘Come.’
The rider led him across the rubble towards Hyrkallan’s throne, close enough that Jasaan could know he was being watched. Other riders, clustered together, stopped their conversation and stared as Jasaan approached. One broke away to face him.
‘Guardsman Jasaan.’ Jasaan didn’t know this one, but he could see the other riders deferred to him.
‘That’s me.’
They stared at each other, yet another battle of wills. Jasaan had had enough of those since he’d come here. Truth be told and despite the obvious danger, he’d happily have taken his chances leading his men back to the Purple Spur.
‘One of your alchemists is alive,’ said the rider without looking away. ‘You will help us find her.’
Her. So it was Kataros, the half-alchemist who’d been thrown out of the order in disgrace before the Adamantine Palace had burned. He didn’t know what her indiscretion had been – pillow talk, secrets spilled to a rider lover she should never have had, something like that – and it simply wasn’t his business. She was the alchemist who’d found the Adamantine Spear, the Dragonslayer. The Adamantine Men called her the spear-carrier, and of the three he’d brought here, she’d been the one who seemed to understand what a dragon really was. It didn’t surprise him that she, of all of them, would survive, although last he’d heard she’d been eaten by a dragon along with the rest of them right where he stood. Apparently that had been a lie. He said nothing.
‘Your alchemist may have killed the others,’ said the rider. ‘We think she led them up here, knowing a dragon was waiting. We think she did it so she could disappear.’
Jasaan said nothing. They all knew perfectly well that his alchemists had been killed by men, not by dragons.
‘We know why and we know where she’s going. You will help us find her.’
Jasaan allowed himself to blink. Eventually they’d tell him what they really wanted him to know.
‘She’s gone to the Raksheh,’ said the rider eventually. ‘To somewhere near the Aardish Caves.’
‘Why would she do that?’ Jasaan asked when the rider didn’t say anything more.
The rider spat. ‘Alchemists make their own laws. They think they are beholden to none, not even to the speaker.’ He glanced at Hyrkallan on his throne and then turned to watch Jasaan carefully. ‘You will help me,’ he said again.
‘How?’
‘You’ve been out there.’ The rider glanced over towards the edge of the mountain. He was scared. It had taken Jasaan this long to realise it, but the rider was scared. He was scared to leave his stone shelter.
‘Yes.’ No expression in his voice. No judgement. Scared? So he should be.
‘The speaker commands that this alchemist is to be found. She is to be returned. As are those with her and anything she may have found if we do not catch her in time.’
‘Found?’ Jasaan cocked his head.
‘We had an outsider. He claimed to have entered the Aardish Caves and found the Black Mausoleum. The alchemist has taken him.’
Jasaan nodded. There was no such place. Every Adamantine Man knew that story, and that’s all it was – a story, a myth, another waste of time. ‘Vishmir himself spent his life searching for it in those caves,’ he said.
‘Indeed. Yet this alchemist you brought among us has taken him. We will start our search there.’
He had to wonder why they were even bothering about such a mad tale, but that was another question and not one for an Adamantine Man. All in all he’d be glad to be out of the Pinnacles, filled with its veiled hostility, and he’d be glad enough to find the alchemist too. Her life had been placed in his hands and all he’d managed to do was deliver her to men who wanted to kill her. He owed her for that. When he found her, he wouldn’t be bringing her back here, that was for sure. ‘I’ll get my men ready,’ he said. Eaten by a dragon on the top of a mountain? No alchemist was that stupid.
‘No,’ said the rider. They stared one another down.
‘The most likely thing,’ said Jasaan after neither of them had flinched, ‘is that they’re both dead. They’ll fall prey to dragons or feral men before they even leave the Silver City.’ He shrugged. ‘But if you want her found, then you’ll want to take with you the men who have the most knowledge of what lies out there.’ He nodded towards the darkness. ‘We braved dragons, yes, but there’s more.’ Perhaps he could play on this rider’s fears. ‘There are snappers, wolves, feral men. Disease is rife and every day is a battle merely to find food. Once we reach the Raksheh . . .’
The rider shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Then send us out together because we are the men you can best afford to lose!’ hissed Jasaan. Keep us together!
‘No.’ The decision, Jasaan realised, had already been made. He glanced up at the throne, at Hyrkallan the pretend speaker, staring back down at him.
The rider pointed to the wing-like things that had been brought up from below. ‘There can be eight of us, no more, because that’s how many of Prince Lai’s wings we have left. They’ll take us far enough away from the Silver City. Two of my riders will return them. You and I and four others will enter the Raksheh. I have no doubt at all that you’re right, that the alchemist is already dead and the outsider too. Nonetheless, we will look for them. We will go to the Aardish Caves and we will search for them, and if we do not find them then we will search for the Black Mausoleum ourselves. We will not return empty-handed.’
So we won’t be returning at all. That explained the rider’s fear. Jasaan looked for his own and found nothing. He’d either survive or he wouldn’t, whether there were dragons to face or not.
‘Vishmir searched for twenty years,’ he said again. ‘With a hundred dragons and a thousand men. There is no Black Mausoleum.’
The rider wasn’t listening, but the plan made Jasaan feel better about leaving his soldiers behind. They weren’t welcome here, that much had been obvious from the day they’d arrived, but they deserved better than to be thrown at the Raksheh chasing after a dream. He, on the other hand, he deserved every bit of it.
He looked at the things the rider had called Prince Lai’s wings. Yes, they looked like wings. Other than that he had no idea what they were for.
‘You will come.’
It wasn’t a question. Jasaan nodded.
‘Good.’ The rider paused and frowned. ‘The alchemist took one other with her. We do not know whether he went willingly or not. He was another Guardsman. An Adamantine Man who found his way here some months ago.’
The rider paused, waiting for a reaction, but Jasaan didn’t have one for him. Good for her, he thought to himself. Maybe she was still alive after all.
‘His name was Skjorl. Did you know him?’
Skjorl? Here? Jasaan frowned for a moment. ‘No,’ he said mildly. ‘No, I don’t know a Skjorl.’
45
Kataros
Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum
The Adamantine Man did what she needed of him: he got her to the Raksheh. He led them, slowly and methodically, following the Yamuna River but never too close to the waters themselves even though they never saw any sign of the dreaded river worms. Down here, away from the forest, perhaps the dragons really had eaten them after all.
There had been people on the Yamuna plains once. It wasn’t a place for cities, but there had been an abundance of thriving small towns and villages clinging to the riverbank. She could see what had once been huts and halls, all built on stilts for when the river flooded. Most of them had been smashed and burned now; sometimes the only sign left was a field of stumps, blackened and splintered but still stuck stubbornly in the earth.
Boats littered the fields. They were everywhere, scattered among the flotsam and jetsam of the dragons’ passing. Most were little fishing skiffs, no more than a few poles lashed together, picked up by the last floodwaters and dropped wherever they were dropped. There was nowhere to hide, no shelter. No hills, no trees, not any more, no caves, no cellars, no rocks, just flat fields full of wild grass going on and on, a slight rise here, a slight dip there. As each night began to brighten, the Adamantine Man found them a cluster of rocks, a pit in the ground or maybe simply a mound of rubble. They spent one day dozing under a pile of old boats that he’d carefully arranged around the stump of a tree. Anything to hide them from the sky while the sun was up, while Kataros and her dragon-blood potions masked their thoughts and hid the fact of their presence.
She saw dragons every day, often more than once. They usually flew on their own, but sometimes they came in twos and threes; and towards the end, as they drew closer to the forest, there were more. She counted a dozen in one day, every one of them flying away from the Raksheh. She wondered why, but had no answer. They were flying away from where she was going and that would have to be enough.
The Adamantine Man set a hard pace. Most of the time he still carried the outsider. Even then she was pressed to keep up with him. Siff would have had no chance at all. He was getting some of his strength back now, but he still mostly dozed except at dawn and dusk.
‘The less time we spend here, the more likely we are to live,’ Skjorl told her, not that she ever asked him to slow down. Maybe he saw the strain in her face, but she wouldn’t complain, not to him. He’d stop if she told him too, she knew that; he’d walk slower if she asked, stand on his head or go and drown himself in the river if she demanded it, but for now he was doing what needed to be done, driving them on.
She saw the forest as they settled down to hide on the fourth day, distant hills above the plains, lit up by the rising sun. The river was already starting to change, from a wide sluggish brown to clear and flowing with purpose. The fields were away from the river now, more uneven, the earth harder. By the end of that night the villages they passed were still shattered and burned but the houses weren’t built on stilts any more. They were past the flood plains. Towards the next sunrise they came to the ruins of another village, a few stones houses on the edge of the hills. They were scorched, their roofs gone; they were black and empty shells half tumbled down, but carved over one doorway Kataros saw the outline of a dragon, worn and faded. She saw it and knew exactly where they were.
‘Looks as good a place to stop as any,’ muttered Skjorl. ‘One more day in the open. Another night of walking and then we should be in the trees. You can rest a bit then.’ He put Siff down and wandered around the buildings, looking to see what was there. Kataros stayed where she was. There weren’t any bodies, not that she could see, and by now all they ever saw were bones, but still . . . The dragon was the sign of the Order of the Scales. Of the alchemists. She doubted she would have known any of her kin who had died here, but that’s what they were. Kin. The order had a house here because it was close to the Raksheh. She knew it, had even come here once. You could ride a boat, if you were willing to brave the worms, all the way down the Yamuna from here; or you could ride a different boat up to the forest, but somewhere nearby were rapids that no boat could pass, and so the order had built this place, a way station for their own, with rooms to dry herbs and roots, to salt them or roast them or mix them with oil or water or vinegar or with blood.
Skjorl came out of one house and went into another.
‘There’s a trail from here to the forest,’ she told him, but he didn’t seem to hear. In the light of the half-moon the ruins cast shadows tha
t merged together, one after the other. If she let herself drift, they all merged into one. She supposed she ought to feel something in a place like this. Sadness. Loss. Something, at least; she’d felt a sadness when they passed through the burned-out towns and villages by the river after all, so she ought to feel it here as well, oughn’t she? But she didn’t. All she felt was indifference, nothing more, nothing less. If the Adamantine Palace hadn’t burned, her brothers and sisters would have made her a Scales. They would have dulled the spark within her and fed her their potions and made her fall in love with a monster, and never mind that she was as good an alchemist as any of them. She’d liked her men, liked her wine, liked other things. She’d said things that she shouldn’t and they’d flogged her for it, and she’d gone straight out and done it again.
She looked up at the moon and the fitful clouds and picked absently at the hard skin on her knuckles, the first stages of Hatchling Disease. Siff and Skjorl had both drunk her blood. They’d have it too now, although it would take a good while to show. The alchemist’s curse: I can give you a potion to help with that. Just one little thing: if you drink it, it’ll slowly turn your skin to stone. She hadn’t exactly been pretty to start with, but then an alchemist wasn’t supposed to care about such things. An alchemist’s thoughts were always lofty.
Indifference. The alchemists had given her much. They’d taken much too. Dragons had made her what she was, not men, except perhaps the one called Kemir.