by Stephen Deas
‘I’d walk quicker with hands,’ was all he said.
For once, as the sun came up, Kataros was awake. The two of them sat, carefully apart, either side of a tiny fire. The trees were huge, their trunks as wide as a man with his arms outstretched. They reached up towards the sun and the clouds, sheer pillars of wood a hundred feet or more from the ground to the first branches, and this was only the fringe of the forest. High overhead the leaves were so thick that they all but blotted out the light. Daytime in the Raksheh was a perpetual twilight.
‘I haven’t seen fire for months.’ Kataros watched Siff’s eyes follow the smoke as it rose. The warmth was delicious.
‘Smoke calls dragons,’ he said.
‘In the deep caves it’s choking death.’
On the ground around them almost nothing grew. The earth was covered with a thick layer of dead leaves, moisture from the rain seeping through the canopy above. Here and there, in the few places where the sun broke through, bushes and saplings grew together, fighting for the light. In the darker damper places mushrooms grew instead, some of them as tall as a man. Some of them, she knew, were poisonous. Others were edible. The Raksheh was a place for alchemists. Alchemists and outsiders.
‘There’s going to be people here, most likely,’ said Siff after a bit. ‘Maybe they could help us.’
Company. She yearned for that, but what would a tribe of outsiders do if they found themselves an alchemist? Nothing good. ‘If there are people here, we will hide from them.’
‘Don’t think you can. Maybe if you move fast and far enough. Get further up the river. I don’t know how many months ago it was I came down from the caves, but there weren’t any people living by the river until I got close to the edge of the forest. It was all wild up there. Keep going for two or three days and hope for the best.’ He smiled happily. ‘If you ask me, I don’t think there’s much you can do about it. Just be thankful you left doggy behind. They’d kill him.’
‘They’ll kill me too, won’t they?’
His smile grew wider. Here it came. ‘Well now. Maybe they might. Or maybe, since they’re more my sort of people, I could talk them out of it. If I had hands.’ She tried to reach through the blood-bond and found nothing, just as it had been since the night in the old alchemists’ cellar. The thing Siff had inside him, even when it was asleep, kept her out.
Siff sniffed. ‘Not being all tied up like this might make me more amenable to help you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
‘We could tie your hands instead. Then they’d think you were mine.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘So after they hit you over the head with a rock, they’d feel free to help themselves to your property? No, Siff, you stay as you are.’ There was always another way. There was the alchemist’s way, the way of thought and foresight and knowledge. She got up and wandered away from the fire to where the nearest little forest of mushrooms grew. These ones barely came past her ankles. From their mustard-yellow tops they were goldcaps, which were fine enough to eat if you didn’t mind a few strange dreams. They’d make an oil to soothe the skin too. Her feet had blisters from all the walking; they could do with some soothing.
She cut some goldcaps, speared them on a few twigs and took them back to the fire. They were best fried in fish oil but these days you took what you could get. Goldcaps fried in anything at all would be a luxury back under the Purple Spur. After they’d started to crisp around the edges, she took them out from the flames and sprinkled a little white powder over them and handed one to Siff.
‘What did you put on them?’ Siff sniffed his mushroom suspiciously.
‘Salt.’
He took a bite. She almost had to smile at the way his face lit up. ‘This is good!’
‘It’ll give you dreams.’ She wondered, too late now, whether that was wise. Did the thing Siff had inside him dream?
She ate her goldcap and then went to cut some more. ‘We’ll move on a way. Until we find some shelter.’
‘My feet hurt.’
‘So do mine.’
‘Hand to get up?’
‘Do it yourself.’
Not much further upriver they found a massive branch fallen from one of the trees. There was a hollow under it filled up with dead leaves. Good enough.
‘That’ll do for some shelter.’ Siff yawned. ‘Good forest blanket there and wood to keep the rain off. Ancestors! I’m exhausted.’
Kataros nodded. This was the bit where she fell asleep and Siff tried his best to get out of his ropes, took her knife and slit her throat. Or maybe he didn’t slit her throat, maybe he simply ran away. She let him see her thinking. He yawned again.
‘There’s nowhere for you to go,’ she said, and pointed. ‘You have that bit. I’ll be somewhere else. You’ll pardon me if I watch you while you go to sleep.’
‘If you must.’ Siff chuckled to himself. She could almost read his thoughts. You think I can’t fool you, alchemist? They both knew he could hide things from her, blood-bound or not.
She watched him anyway. When he started to snore, she crept closer. ‘Salt,’ she whispered. ‘And a little more. Enjoy the dreams.’ She sighed and stretched and snuggled down under her end of the fallen log. It was damp, the leaves prickled her skin, but she was so tired she barely noticed. Sleep, for once, without the Adamantine Man to look over her, to watch her. She shivered, thinking about that. Yes, she was glad he was gone. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about all the things that might go wrong, all the things that lived in the Raksheh that were poisonous, the spiders, the centipedes, the scorpions, the little six-legged biting lizards and their larger scavenger cousins who’d have a go at anything that wasn’t quick enough to run away. The packs of man-eating snappers that were supposed to roam the place. Yes, tried not to think about any of that, and then, to her surprise, it was suddenly late in the day and she woke up with a start.
Something was prodding her. Something sharp.
She blinked.
Three outsiders were standing over her log. They had spears.
51
Jasaan
Sixteen days before the Black Mausoleum
Jasaan saw the second snapper but none of them saw the third. It took Hellas from the side and bit clean through his arm. Hellas screamed and spun around. Blood sprayed across the lizard, and then the snapper lashed with a claw and ripped most of Hellas’ face off. An instant later its jaws came down again. It picked Hellas up by his head and shook him, threw him against one of the trees and hissed. Hellas landed in a heap of limp limbs. He didn’t move.
Jasaan caught glimpses, but mostly he was running. The second snapper burst forward and pounced, flying twenty feet through the air to land on a rider’s back and bear him to the ground. Before anyone could do anything, the snapper was ripping at him with his hind claws.
Jasaan stopped. He ran back to the dead snapper and started levering his axe out of its head. The fallen rider was screaming for help. He had armour, dragonscale over metal, too tough even for snapper claws, but that wouldn’t stop the beast from crushing the man inside. It would find a way in, sooner or later.
He looked about for Nezak and the other rider but they were gone. Had the sense to flee like he ought to. Thing was, you never knew with snappers how many were out there. In the Blackwind Dales and up on the moors packs as large as twenty had savaged entire villages.
He had the axe out now. The rider on the ground was looking straight at him, eyes pleading. There was blood. The snapper had found a way in. The other one was busy shaking and shredding Hellas, trying to get him out of his armoured skin.
Jasaan’s hands were shaking. The snapper was looking at him too. They were both were. One man pleading with him to come, one monster daring him to try.
He couldn’t do it.
The rider managed to stab the monster in its leg with his sword and then the snapper finally flipped him on his back and ripped his throat out.
/>
Scared. The one thing no Adamantine Man could ever be. He was frozen, shaking, part in fear, more in shame. He hated himself. Skjorl would never even have thought of running.
The two snappers settled in to eat, keeping half a watchful eye on him. Jasaan began to back away. When they didn’t follow, he turned and ran. Didn’t know where he was going. Just somewhere. Away. Nezak and the other rider were long gone; they probably hadn’t seen what had happened, but he couldn’t count on that. If they had, then what? They’d hate him, that’s what. They’d think he was nothing. Less than nothing and they’d be right.
It would be like it was before. The way it had been after Scarsdale.
Eventually, when nothing gave chase, he stopped running. He caught his breath and his head started to clear. He hadn’t the first idea where he was and he didn’t dare go back and look for Nezak. If there were any more snappers, the last two riders were probably both dead like the rest.
He’d lost his shield. He didn’t remember when.
Nezak. Stupid thing to do, learn a man’s name and a little bit about him. Stupid out here, the world being what it was. He sighed and sat on his heels. Where would you go if you were a rider? Get out of this blasted forest. Yes, a man with any sense would turn right round, and sure, they’d have to cross the plains to reach the Pinnacles, and yes, there were dragons out there but there were places to hide too. A man with any sense would turn right round and go home.
They’d been five. Now they might be three if he was lucky, one if he wasn’t. But it only took one man to make a difference, if he was a man in the right place.
Bugger.
Took a while, staring up at the canopy of leaves overhead, to get a rough idea of where the sun was. Good enough to tell his north from south and his east from west. The Pinnacles were somewhere to the east. As far as he knew, the Aardish Caves were somewhere to the west and the Yamuna would be to the south.
Home. He didn’t have a home. The Guard had been his home and the dragons had taken that from him. The dragons and then Skjorl.
He turned south, towards the river. The river would take him to the caves.
52
Skjorl
Twelve days before the Black Mausoleum
He pushed at the door with all his strength but it didn’t move. He could see from the way the daylight came through the gaps in the planks around the edges what they’d done to him. They’d trapped him. Buried him alive.
Didn’t make any sense. Why do that? You wanted to kill man, you stuck a knife in him and watched until the light went out of his eyes. That was that, the only way.
So she didn’t want him dead. Maybe they were coming back? He should sit and wait?
No. He’d done that once before. In Scarsdale. And why would they bury him? Made no sense.
Mighty Vishmir but his head hurt! Once he’d pushed at the door enough to know it was weighed down with more than he could move, he went and sat in the middle of the cellar floor to think. Or try, at least to try. His head was screaming.
He’d been drunk. Dead drunk. He remembered that. The shit-eater had been tied well enough. Couldn’t have escaped on his own. The alchemist then. Had there been an accident? He’d banged his head?
Moving meant screwing up his face against the surge of pain. Dreamleaf, more of it, that’s what he needed. Except when he looked for it, his eyes couldn’t quite seem to focus. He moved to where one of the shafts of sunlight sneaked in through a crack in the trapdoor, but the brightness was like being stabbed in the eye with a hot needle. He lay down, rolled on his side, closed his eyes and lay still, gasping. The cellar was spinning.
The shit-eater had been in the cellar when he’d been drunk. He’d been talking to the alchemist. He remembered, in pieces. She’d looked good. That was the wine.
Scarsdale.
Had he had her? In front of the shit-eater? Had she given in at last? No, he’d remember that, wouldn’t he?
He’d taken her. In front of her man. What was his name?
No, that was Scarsdale. This was somewhere else.
Memories crashed into each other, merged, went their own way again, all muddled up.
Ancestors! The alchemist. She’d done something to him. He couldn’t remember her name. Couldn’t remember either of them. Couldn’t remember much except the pain. Someone had hit him on the head. The evidence was the lump on his skull. Start with that.
Start with the beginning.
No. Scarsdale. Start with that.
Isul Aieha! Damn place wouldn’t leave him alone. He screwed up his eyes. Looked for a memory he could hang on to, one that wouldn’t slip away. Found it and clung to it as though it was his life. Sand. He remembered Sand. Everything burning. Held on to that memory and forced out the next one. Stuck them back together piece by piece, like undoing a rope full of old knots, each one as impenetrable and held fast as the next. One by one he picked and prised them apart.
Sand. They’d walked for weeks after the tunnels under the monastery. The men he’d had with him at Outwatch had been stoical about the destruction. The others, the hundreds of refugees, the survivors, the ordinary folk who happened still to be alive, they’d wept and screamed and torn their hair. Couldn’t blame them. Even the Adamantine Men had come out with tight lips and taut faces and faraway eyes. The first time most of them had seen what dragons could really do. They were seeing the death of the realms, of everything they knew, stark and irrevocable. Some faced it and took it for what it was. Others screamed and tried to imagine something else. For the most part those were the ones who died on the way.
They were slow. Some days they only covered a few miles, following the Last River towards the mountains. Simply wasn’t any other way to go, not with so many people. He split them up into little groups, graded by their speed, divided his men between them. He took the slowest. The weak, the sick, the old, the frail, the mad. They hated him. One by one they failed or fled, but he had no choice. He drove them hard. The longer they took, the more they starved, the more they starved, the slower they went. When they fell, he killed them. Same for the ones who fled – tracked them, hunted them and put them down with neither malice nor mercy, then buried them in the sand. Left them in the open, maybe a dragon would find them. Maybe it would start to wonder, or worse, it would find them still alive and tear out their memories. He’d seen that under Outwatch. Seen it with his own eyes, that murderous hatchling snatching men and staring at them, and them screaming and begging for mercy and spilling out the places where others might hide. It never saved them. The hatchling had killed everyone. It had been admirably, remorselessly thorough.
So the ones that ran, he killed them. They were doing to die anyway and it made the others safer. When they got to Southwatch, he was proud of the ones he’d saved but they still hated him.
Southwatch had food and shelter for months, but he’d let his Adamantine Men stay for three days, no more. When they left, they left with as much as they could carry, as many weapons as they could use, whatever tools took their fancy. Too much, screamed the men and women of Sand that he left behind. There were hundreds of them against a score of his Guard, but they didn’t dare to try and stop him. A few begged to come with him. Fine, he told them, if you can keep up. There were maybe half a dozen who left with them for Evenspire. After the second day he never saw any of them again. He’d done his duty. He’d led the survivors of Sand to a safe place and now he was going home. To do his duty again, whatever it was.
Evenspire, when they got there, was deserted. The city had burned. The Palace of Paths still stood, its walls so massive that even dragons couldn’t knock them down. They stayed for two days, trying to find a way into the tunnels that were surely beneath it, to reach the survivors who must be there. Hadn’t worked out, and so it had been a choice: follow the Evenspire Road out into the desert again, or else the Dragon River south through the Blackwind Dales to Scarsdale. Evenspire Road was hundreds of miles across the Plains of Ancestors, with no water un
til the Sapphire and Samir’s Crossing. Death to men on foot, Adamantine ones or any other. Wasn’t much of a choice.
They took the river then, and so it was they got to Scarsdale, starving. A dot on a map, that was all, the last place they might scavenge some food before they crossed the line of hills to the valley of the Silver River and the Great Cliff. What they found were ramshackle ruins, burned and smashed, littered all along the river and up the hills with no sense of order or purpose. Place had been stripped clean. Too clean for it to be dragons. Someone had got there first.
Finding the mines, though, that had been an accident. He’d thought it was a cave. Good piece of shelter for the day, but they took a look about first – man had to be sure he wasn’t sharing with snappers or something like that after all – and that’s where they’d found the shafts. By the end of that day they’d found the rest, a few dozen people living down in the mines with enough food to last them a year.
The Adamantine Men had feasted. Two solid days of it. Got drunk on wine, on the barrels of it hidden there. The people had been none too pleased, but when you’d been out in the open, hiding from dragons in the day and marching across a parched landscape by night, you took what you could get. He’d been doing that for months. Yes, a man took what he could get.
Liouma. That had been her name. The one he’d taken. Nice tits. Big. Big arse too. Ripe. He knew he was going to have her from the moment he saw her. And then the next day, afterwards, he’d woken up and it had been like this. Hungover, thundering head, locked up behind a wooden door without knowing why.
Like this, but not the same.
He ran through the rest anyway. The Purple Spur. Bloodsalt. Vish. Killing a dragon. Jasaan. The moors. The Pinnacles. The alchemist. All of it. All nicely in a row like it was supposed to be, one thing after the next.
His head still thundered but his eyes would focus now. He looked in his pouch. Dreamleaf and plenty of it, in the last water he had, and then he waited for the numbness it would bring. In Scarsdale they’d taken his axe. That was before she’d had a name. The alchemist hadn’t done that. Kataros. Must have been her, because the shit-eater would have cut his throat and been done with it. Yes, the alchemist.