by Stephen Deas
‘Are you done?’
Skjorl got up. He looked up and down the tunnel again. Nothing moved. No sounds. After the caves of the Spur the old paths under the Silver City felt strange. Too straight, too smooth. Like they’d been made by some giant burrowing worm. Nothing but glassy soft-glowing rock, perfectly round except for a small flattening at the bottom. He’d once seen a dragon-rider try to carve a pictogram into the stone and come away with little to show for it past a blunt knife. In the Pinnacles they said that blood-mages had made the tunnels after they’d killed the Silver King, but they were wrong. You could see that straight away. The hand at work here was the same as inside the fortress. The hand of the Silver King himself, the half-god sorcerer.
History. You learned a little of that as an Adamantine Man, mostly about the villainy of the blood-mages. Then there was the rise of the Order of the Dragon, the first speaker, Narammed, and the beginnings of the Adamantine Men. Their traditions, their stories. A man needed to know his roots, but the Silver King had come and gone before all that.
‘Do you know any rites for the dead?’ he asked.
‘No.’ The alchemist spat her derision at him. Alchemists and priests. Oil and water. He wrinkled his nose at the bodies. Didn’t like to just leave. There ought to be words. Even ferals deserved that, something to guide them to their ancestors.
He shrugged. Didn’t like to, but didn’t get to chose. ‘This way then.’ He went back to get the outsider. They’d have to do something about him soon or else he’d be dead before they reached Farakkan, never mind the Raksheh. Or maybe the alchemist hadn’t seen what state he was in.
She looked at the bodies. ‘You’re just going to leave them?’
‘Yes.’ Not much choice.
‘Beneath the earth? Cut off from the sun and the moon and the stars and the sky?’
‘Yes.’ Didn’t like it, but yes. He pushed past her. Crouched down beside the outsider. He was still breathing at least. Conscious even, although he was pretending he wasn’t. ‘We need to find some food and water for—’
‘No!’ There it was, the hammer into the back of his head again. He dropped the outsider’s hand and grunted at the pain of it.
‘What then?’
‘You’ll take them back up. You’ll take them back up, one by one, into the Golden Temple and leave them out where their ancestors will be able to find them.’
Madness! But he couldn’t even argue. This time the pain almost knocked him to the ground. ‘Stop, alchemist! We don’t have time for this!’ Would be right, though. Would be doing right by the ones he’d killed. Couldn’t argue with that.
‘Just do it.’
Skjorl closed his eyes. ‘It will take hours. More ferals might c—’
‘Men! They are men!’
‘And what will you do if more men come while I’m up in the shaft? Speak harshly to them? Or will you make them slaves with your blood-magic, as if that’s somehow better than giving them a clean death? Or will you burn them like you burned the ones up above. It’ll be pushing dawn before we’re done. The dragons will be awake.’
‘Then be quick and do not argue.’
She wouldn’t move. He understood, in a way. This was to be a battle between them, one of her will against his. She thought she couldn’t lose, but she would. In the end she would. Wasn’t a bad thing to ask anyway. Killing a man was one thing. Leaving him where his ancestors couldn’t find him, that was cold. He nodded. ‘As you wish then.’ Maybe if he seemed docile and beaten, she might believe it. And then he’d simply bide his time for the chance that would inevitably come, just as the dragons had done ever since the Silver King had mastered them. Every Adamantine Man knew that story. So he dragged the bodies into the hidden passage and closed the door behind them all, trying to keep the alchemist out of harm’s way. Any ferals came along, he’d have the obligation of trying to rescue her. Might as well try to save himself that trouble.
When he was done with that, one by one, he carried the dead up the shaft and dumped them beside the altar of the Golden Temple. Another offering. Took long enough too.
Halfway through he came down the shaft to find the secret door wide open, the moonlight glow of the Silver King’s tunnels casting ghastly shadows over the faces of the dead.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t like the dark,’ snapped the alchemist.
‘Ferals come while I’m up there, I can’t help you.’
She showed him her knife. ‘I can look after myself.’
He closed the door. When he came down the next time, it was open again. This time he let it be. Stupid, but that was alchemists for you. Always thinking far away, never up close about what was around them, right there in their hands.
Eventually he was done. Most of the night wasted. He went to pick up the outsider. Another burden to carry, but he was used to that.
The outsider was gone.
20
Kataros
Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum
Skjorl just rolled his eyes, shook his head and vanished into the tunnels, closing the door behind him. Kataros sat and nursed her aching shoulder, but he wasn’t long, and when he came back he had Siff slung over his shoulders again. The outsider was moaning softly to himself.
They set off. As the Adamantine Man led her through the tunnels, Kataros tried to catch Siff’s eye, but he was far away, lost in his own misery. Ahead of them, here and there, she thought she saw movement, shapes running away, footsteps echoing across the smooth stone.
‘Ferals.’
‘Men,’ she muttered, but the Adamantine Man didn’t answer. Whoever they were, they were gone before she saw much more than shadows.
‘They’ll be up in the ruins, most of them,’ grunted Skjorl. ‘Dusk and dawn. That’s the time to go feral hunting.’
‘You hunt them?’
He shrugged. ‘Not me. Sometimes the riders do.’
She wondered if the same was true in the Purple Spur. The Adamantine Men there crept out at night to forage for food. She’d never thought to ask what food it was they found.
The tunnel ran straight as an archer’s arrow and smooth as one too. They hadn’t been made so much as created, simply brought into existence exactly the way the Silver King had wanted them. A half-god who could tame dragons and raze mountains on a whim, what did he want with tunnels? She couldn’t begin to guess their purpose, but then who was she to fathom the mind of a semi-divine?
The tunnel split into three, each spiralling off in languid arcs so that it was possible to walk almost straight and yet pick any one of them as they curved up and down and away. The Adamantine Man chose one without hesitation. She didn’t know whether that was because he knew where he was going or simply because that was the way he was.
‘Stay close. If I start to run, you run with me.’
She heard a distant hiss of water. When the tunnel split again, the Adamantine Man took the path that sloped downwards, curved back on itself and then merged with another, one with water running through it. When he waded in, it came up to his knees. It was flowing fast. He stood for a time, not moving, then came out again.
‘To get to Farakkan, we follow this water,’ he said. ‘Riders go there sometimes. They have rafts. On a raft it takes two or three days.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Getting back takes longer. Got to walk up the Fury to Purkan. There’s another tunnel there. Can’t get back this way against all that water. We leave, we probably can’t come back.’
‘We don’t need to get back,’ she snapped. ‘Just there.’
‘That so?’ He shrugged. ‘And after the Raksheh? If you find whatever it is that’s there? What then?’
‘That’s no concern of yours.’ Which was another way of saying she hadn’t thought about it. In truth, she had almost no idea what she was going to find. Siff had been raving, but even if everything he’d said had been true, the chances of getting there seemed so small that she’d never looked to what happened after.
‘Then find another way.’
He shook his head. ‘Can’t, because there isn’t one. We raft or we walk. I don’t know how long that will take. Too long for him unless we find food.’ He looked down at Siff, picked him up and went back into the water. ‘It’s not far. You can stay with him while I deal with it. You’ll be safe enough. Ferals avoid the place and if there’s any riders, they have to get past me first.’
She followed him in up to her knees. The current tugged at her, fast enough to take her down and wash her away if she slipped. The Adamantine Man didn’t seem troubled. With each laboured step, the hiss of rushing water grew louder, until it became an echoing roar. Under the Purple Spur she’d seen where the Silver River emptied itself into some bottomless chasm. She’d seen it from the inside, from the other side of the chasm in a cave like a cathedral, and the sound had been the same. Was there a river in the Silver City? She didn’t remember one. There were canals, the city had been famous for them, but a river?
Skjorl stopped and moved carefully to the edge of the water, up the curve of the tunnel. He propped Siff against the side and beckoned to her.
‘Getting light up there soon,’ he said. ‘Ferals forage at dawn and sleep in the day. Riders are still in their beds. Good time for us to be thieving.’ He pointed. ‘Look closely. Do you see?’
‘See what?’ Up ahead there was a subtle change to the light.
‘Where the tunnel opens out. We’re right underneath where we started. Stay here with him. Make sure the water doesn’t take him.’ He shrugged. ‘If he tries to escape, he’ll not get far on his own, but you’ll be lucky to get him back before he drowns.’
Kataros cupped Siff’s face in her hands. She lifted back his eyelids. He was conscious, if only just. ‘Are you all right?’
‘He’s half-dead, alchemist. If he hasn’t told you everything you need, I’d get it out of him quick. Then we can dump him when we get to Farakkan. We’ll move faster.’
The outsider rolled his head. ‘Fuck … you … rider …’
The Adamantine Man laughed. ‘See. It can talk. So make it!’
Kataros took a deep breath. ‘It’s not something he can tell me. Or you. We have to take him to the Raksheh with us. It’s something he has to show us.’
She’d expected an argument and that she’d have to force the Adamantine Man to her will again, but he only shrugged like he always did. ‘If you say so. If you’re not going to use your magic to make him talk, perhaps you could use it to make him walk. Although since we’re all going to be eaten by dragons as soon as we try to get up the Yamuna, don’t strain yourself.’
‘Give him some water.’
He laughed at her. ‘Give it to him yourself, alchemist. It’s right there. With a bit of luck the riders haven’t poisoned it today.’
21
Skjorl
Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum
Wouldn’t take all that much luck though – as far as Skjorl knew, for all their talk, the riders in the fortress had only actually done it once. Months ago, when he’d still been somewhere on Yinazhin’s Way, talking to his axe and cursing at the moon. Dropped in poison by the barrel-load to try and kill the ferals. Hadn’t worked.
A hundred yards from where he’d left the alchemist, the tunnel ended in a vast cavern. Not that he could see much of it in the gloom now, but the light here waxed and waned like the light in the rest of the fortress and he’d been here at other times, when the city had been in daylight. Water plunging from the centre of the roof, hundreds of feet up, crashing to the stone floor and making everything damp with a cold mist. It came all the way from the very top of the fortress, from the endless fountains of the Reflecting Garden where water would lie still but not lie flat, or at least that’s the way it had been before dragons had smashed it to rubble. Hadn’t killed the fountain though. Another mystery of the Silver King for the alchemist to ponder; as far as Skjorl was concerned, it made clean water spill down through the levels of the fortress and kept them all alive, and that was as much as mattered.
All that water came down, and then it flowed out into the canals of the Silver City; and then it came back again and finally ended up here, draining away down the tunnel to Farakkan, the last and lowest of the paths to the Fury. By the time it got this far, it wasn’t so clean. The place stank.
He climbed around the side of the cave. All the tunnels under the Silver City led here in the end. There were always riders too, because this was the way in and the way out of the fortress. The Undergates. The only way in and way out as far as Skjorl knew, unless you happened to have a pair of Prince Lai’s wings or perhaps a handy dragon.
The rafts, if you could call them that, weren’t much more than a few lumps of wood poorly strung together sitting on the floor of the cave close to the water. Riders were far across the other side by the gates. If they saw him at all, chances were they’d leave him be. Taking a raft would be easy, nothing like what he’d laid out for the alchemist to sweat over. Question was though, did he stop at that? Riders here hated alchemists and so did their pretend speaker. Blamed them for everything that had gone wrong, for the end of the realms. Fair, perhaps, but killing them all was throwing away a weapon, and that was something an Adamantine Man would never do.
But still …
He ignored the rafts and ran around the edge of the vault, skirting the spray of the falling water. When he was close enough to make out the gates through the gloom, he stopped with his hands held up high, away from his sword and his axe.
‘Riders of Speaker Hyrkallan!’ Couldn’t see them but they were there. From the gates they’d see him too, at least the shape of him. They’d have a crossbow on him by now. Might shoot him just because he was there. With luck he didn’t look too much like a feral; then again, riders weren’t always that bothered about such things. Better safe than sorry.
‘I am Skjorl of the Adamantine Men. You had an alchemist imprisoned here. She has escaped. She aims for the Raksheh. For the Aardish Caves. She believes there is a weapon there. Something against the dragons. Do you hear me?’
A muffled voice shouted back: ‘Come closer!’
‘I think not.’ Tone was wrong. He jumped sideways and ran away, back towards the rafts, jinking from side to side. Maybe they took a shot at him, maybe they didn’t. Didn’t matter. He’d done what was right. They knew where he was going. If there was a prize to be had, a secret to be found, it wouldn’t die when the alchemist was eaten by a dragon. The riders, now they could do whatever they thought was right to do too, and if that was nothing at all, well then he was glad to be rid of them.
He reached the rafts and pulled one to the edge of the water. He could see it now – the reason he hadn’t killed the alchemist when he’d had the chance. The fortress was the strongest bastion against the dragons in the realms. They had food. Water. They weren’t all starving like the alchemists under the Purple Spur. And what were they doing? Nothing. Sitting there. Fading.
He pushed the raft into the water and rolled into it. The current took him at once, fast away down the tunnel. Waiting, that’s what they were doing, but waiting for what? For the dragons to get bored and go away? For the Silver King to return? But the Silver King was dead and there was nowhere else for the dragons to go and they couldn’t wait for ever.
And so he hadn’t killed her when he’d had the chance, and maybe it was better to be a slave with a glimmer of hope for freedom than to be dead and with your ancestors. Needed some thought that, but by then the alchemist was in front of him, waving madly in case he somehow didn’t see her. He rolled back off the raft and dragged it to a halt.
‘Here.’ She refused his help to climb on, so he grabbed hold of Rat in
stead. The outsider was more awake now. Maybe the water had done him some good. Pity they had no food. Another thing needing some thought, and maybe urgent too. Alchemist had her mind set on the Raksheh, but the getting there, that was going to be the hard part. No food, no bows to hunt with, no easy way to hide from dragons. Hard wasn’t right. A bloody miracle, that’s what it would be.
But still better than doing nothing.
The water carried them briskly down the tunnel. Dead straight as they all were, except when they split apart, and even then it was easy. Follow the water all the way.
‘You ever go to Farakkan?’ he asked when neither the alchemist or the outsider had said a word for most of half an hour. The alchemist shook her head. ‘Mud hole,’ he said. ‘Nothing there. Even before the dragons.’ He looked at her in the gloom. ‘What are you doing here, alchemist? What is this about? Why did you leave the Purple Spur?’
‘Why did you?’
‘Orders, of course.’
‘Likewise.’
‘Fine. I was sent to Bloodsalt to see whether anyone survived there. I went with a company of men. Most of us died on the way. Dragons got half and the rest went to bad food, starvation, disease, snappers, ferals, snakes and one scorpion. When we got to Bloodsalt, there was nothing left except dragons. Two of us escaped. On the way back we were separated. I got lost. When I came down from the moors, I met riders and they brought me here. And that’s that. You?’ Wasn’t sure why he wanted to know. Made no difference, after all.