by Stephen Deas
‘Shhh,’ he whispered in Jasaan’s ear. ‘These lovely potions don’t make a dragon deaf, so keep your voice down. You got something to say to me, you say it. But quiet like.’
Jasaan glared. He shook his head.
‘No, I thought not.’
The soldiers fell quiet then, sitting still and alert as the sun sank and the sky darkened. They’d become night people in the last year and a half. The dragons flew in daylight and slept – or whatever it was they did – at night, and so the Adamantine Men had learned to be otherwise. At night they moved. Never too far though, never so far that they couldn’t be sure of shelter come the dawn. Sometimes that meant they travelled for hours, found nothing and went back to where they’d been the night before. On the worst part of their trip up the Sapphire valley they’d spent six nights in the same cave. And that had been trouble too. The longer you stayed in a place, the more signs you left. Dragons were good at spotting signs.
Back then they’d numbered more than twenty-five. Now they were seven. Seven was a lot easier to hide. The way back would be quicker than the way here. A month, Skjorl thought. Not three. He crossed his fingers and hugged his axe and thought a little prayer to the Great Flame.
‘Fucking dragons,’ spat Marran.
Skjorl closed his eyes. ‘Easy, lads,’ he murmured. ‘They’ll go hunting sometime. We just wait here until they do.’ He stretched. ‘Then we slip in, slow and easy and do what Adamantine Men were born to do. We kill dragons.’ He grinned and let out a little growl. ‘A month from now we’ll be back near the Spur and Jex can stop making love-eyes at the sandflies.’
‘Yeah.’ Vish laughed. ‘He can make them at the snappers instead.’
‘Snapper wants a piece of me, it’ll be a sharp one.’ Relk gripped his spear.
‘Yeah, but Jex’s got a spear that’s every bit as hard, just not quite as sharp.’ A low rumble of laughter rippled among the men. Skjorl looked about. Jasaan was gone, moved off a little while back after Skjorl had told him to shut up. It was dark now, desert dark with clear air and a bright moon and a thousand stars. Still, he wasn’t about to get up and look for him. Man wanted to be on his own, that was his privilege, especially at night when there weren’t dragons overhead. He grinned to himself. Jasaan was probably thinking about sandflies too. Or of the woman from Scarsdale. Not the old one, but the young one. The one with the soft skin and the hair like fur. How grateful she’d been for an Adamantine Man.
Sometimes men did terrible things, Skjorl had come to realise. When they knew there was no one to hold them to account, yes, sometimes men did terrible things. And sometimes they enjoyed them more than was right. And that was just the way of the world.
He sniffed, looked up, heard the slightest noise and was on his feet in a moment, sword half drawn. But it was only Jasaan. He cocked his head. ‘Feeling better? No harm meant. I know how it is.’
Jasaan shrugged. There was hate in those eyes. Skjorl didn’t even need to see it any more, he’d seen it so much. But Jasaan was a weak one. Too bothered with staying alive. He looked away and spat. Jasaan tipped his head back towards the quiet rustling waters of the Sapphire. ‘Went for a little walk. Know what I found? I found a tunnel half filled with water. Want to know where it goes?’ He pointed straight towards the distant remains of Bloodsalt and to the dragons that stood between them. ‘That’s where. Right into the city.’
3
Kataros
Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum
Men did terrible things. The Adamantine Men were finding that out for themselves, but alchemists remembered that it had been like this before. An almost forgotten time, lost under dust and layers of brittle parchment, a time before Narammed, before the speakers, before the Empire of the Blood-Mages, before the Silver King. Before all that, when there had still been dragons and there had still been men, and in that time, men had done terrible things. They’d done them to survive.
The Adamantine Man got up from his stool. Kataros watched him. His movements were slow and weary as though everything was inevitable.
‘Hungry?’ He shrugged and showed Kataros his keys. He had one for each of them, for her and the half-dead Rat. He opened Rat’s cell and poked him. Rat groaned. The Adamantine Man shrugged again. ‘Well he’s not dead yet, but you can eat him if you want. I won’t stop you.’
Kataros shuddered. They’d come to that under the Purple Spur too, eating the dead to survive. Sooner or later they’d come to that here as well, although it was something that no alchemist would ever do. Blood was power. Blood was magic and not to be tainted.
The Adamantine Man closed Rat’s cell and locked it again. He moved slowly as though he had all the time in the world. No one would come down here for hours, not until the walls and ceilings of the Pinnacles started to shine to declare to them all that outside, in the realms now ruled by the dragons, the sun had risen once more. Kataros looked at his crippled left hand. Half of it was little more than lashed up flesh and bone. It was an old injury, long healed. Two of his fingers were useless stumps.
‘Take your time, woman.’
Time? The Adamantine Man might have had as much of it as he wanted, but not her, nor Rat either. ‘So what did you do?’ she asked.
‘Do?’ He laughed and fumbled for the keys again and slid one into her lock. ‘What did I do?’
‘Shouldn’t you be out there. Getting eaten and killing dragons.’
‘Oh I’ve killed dragons.’ He chuckled to himself as he turned the key and eased open her door. He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering between her legs. Kataros took a step away. The corners of his mouth curled into a grin. ‘You’re going to rot and starve here like him.’ He glanced at Rat. ‘I could snap your neck if you like. Make it quick. Or . . . we could do something else.’
She took another step back and shook her head. The Adamantine Man took a step as well, backing her against the far wall of the cell.
‘No?’ He rubbed his crotch. ‘So how hungry are you?’
She shook her head again and cringed away, biting her tongue to keep the taste of iron in her mouth. Blood, that was the key. Blood would set her free.
When the Adamantine Man moved, he moved fast. He closed the distance between them in two quick steps and then he had his good hand around her throat, almost lifting her off her feet, crushing her against the wall. The other hand, the crippled one, groped at her. He was strong. She flinched, struggling, but he had her fast, pinning her with the weight of his body. She could see the faint scars on his face clearly now, lines of pale skin. Knife cuts, not the kind of wound you got from fighting dragons.
‘I’ll kiss you,’ she stammered. There. Plant the idea.
He threw back his head. ‘Yes, witch. You will.’
There was no need to feign her fear or her revulsion. She tried to shake her head. His free hand was working on his belt. His breathing was heavy, his heart beating faster.
‘Your sort brought this on us all,’ he grunted, forcing her down. ‘You deserve everything you get. You did this. You killed us all. Now since you’re so hungry, you can eat. If you’re not a good little witch, I will snap your neck after I have you.’
A little thought came. Let him. Do it his way. Do what he wants. It’ll be easier. It’ll be more certain. The thought came and then it went and she was damned if any man, Adamantine or otherwise, was ever going to force her to anything, not now, not ever again. As his fingers gripped tight in her hair, she spat into her palms, tasted the iron, and then raked her nails down the outside of his thigh hard enough to draw blood, his blood, as hard as she could. She slapped the palm of her hand against the wound and held it tight, two droplets of blood mixing together. Please please please be quick . . .
He snarled, pulled her up and threw her away.
‘You don’t like it rough?’ Her voice sounded frail and thin to her, desperately fragile.
‘I’ll show you rough, witch.’ He came at her, trousers round his ankles. She closed
her eyes and reached out for the blood she’d smeared over him. Her blood and his. Such a tiny, tiny link. Nothing. Almost nothing.
‘Kiss me,’ she quivered.
Fingers locked around her chin. For one fleeting moment the Adamantine Man looked confused. She put a hand around his neck and pulled him closer, pressed her mouth to his and wormed her tongue between his lips. His hands ran over her as she licked her blood into his mouth.
‘Now you’re going to bleed, witch!’ He tore himself away and towered over her, a rampant animal thing.
‘I already did,’ she murmured. ‘And because of that, you will never touch me again.’ She felt it now, her blood inside him. As he reached for her with his huge hands, so she reached for him inside her head, following the path of blood.
‘Stop!’
It was a whispered word inside her cell, barely rippling the air, but inside the Adamantine Man’s head it was a command to shake mountains. She knew this was so because she’d felt it herself once, when her own master had done the same to her, when he’d bound her to him and elevated her from a Scales, a failure, to be an alchemist again. The binding was a price that she’d learned only after it was too late.
His eyes rolled back. Most men would have fainted; this one reeled but stayed on his feet. Very slowly his eyes found her face again. He lunged towards her and then paused.
‘No,’ she whispered. Now she had him, she wanted to laugh, laugh at how stupid he looked with his trousers round his ankles. She wanted to laugh to take away the scream that was clenched inside her.
‘What have you done to me, witch?’ he snarled.
‘Dress yourself.’ Reaching through the blood was an effort, but for now she barely noticed. Later she would have to conserve her strength and her touch would be more gentle.
He did as he was told, trembling now, fearful. She smiled. Even an Adamantine Man would crack in the end.
‘What have you done?’ he asked again.
Her eyes glittered. She bared her teeth. ‘Now you know how it feels to be weak and helpless.’ It was hard not to make him take a knife to himself, right there and then, hard not to remember another time, another place, a desert canyon, a rushing river, the river men all over her, the roar of the dust they’d given her in her head and then another roar, of fire and dragons, everywhere dragons . . .
No. She shook herself. Maybe later, when they were in the Raksheh and she’d found what she was looking for, maybe then, but for now she needed him. ‘You’re going to help me,’ she said shortly. ‘You’re going to take me out of here. You’re going to take me to the Yamuna River, to the Raksheh and then to the Aardish Caves. You’re going to help me find the Black Mausoleum. You want to. For you this shall become the most important thing in the world. For all of us. If anyone gets in our way or tries to stop us, no matter who or what they are, you are not going to let them.’
She watched him closely, watched his slack face as her words reached through from her blood, mingling her desires with his. The Adamantine Man went out of her cell. He stood, uncertain, as she followed and closed the door behind her. She was free.
He looked puzzled. ‘How?’ he asked.
‘With whatever means you have; but you will fight to the death before you let anyone take me back here.’
‘They’ll kill us both.’
‘Then find a way so they don’t!’ She nodded towards Rat in the other cell. ‘And he has to come too.’
4
Skjorl
Eight months before the Black Mausoleum
Bloodsalt. Stuffed away in the corner of the realms with nothing much around it except salt flats and desert. Blisteringly hot days, cold nights, no food, no nothing. A man came out here, he might wonder why anyone had ever built a city in such a desolate place. Might wonder, that was, until he tripped over his first nugget of gold just sitting there at the edge of the Sapphire. It had meant something once, gold. Fat lot of use to anybody now.
Adamantine Men had had no use for gold, even back then. The old Bloodsalt, the alive one filled with people, had had no use for the Guard, but it turned out that Vish had been there once, back in Hyram’s time, when the new speaker had flown in with his grand master alchemist and taken a few of his Adamantine Men with him to show off. Vish had seen the city and that was why he was here, and because Vish was in Skjorl’s company, that was why Skjorl was here too.
‘Fucking hole at the end of the earth, if you ask me,’ grunted Vish. ‘Don’t know why old shaky even brought us out here.’
Hyram and his alchemist were both dead now, so no one was ever going to find out. Not that any of the Adamantine Men cared. The waking of the dragons had changed everything, and now nothing mattered except food and water and watching the sky.
They moved along the slabs of rock and the loose shingle beside the Sapphire. The whispering of the water drowned their footfalls. They had an easy stealth to them, one that came with years of practice. Quiet was easy. Quiet came with careful, and a man who wasn’t careful, well, out here he was dead.
‘Here.’ Jasaan held up his hand for them to stop. He pointed. The river drifted on towards Bloodsalt Lake, an inland sea almost as wide as a whole realm and yet never so deep that a man standing upright on its bed wouldn’t still be breathing air. Where Jasaan was pointing, in the shadows of the far bank, a low stone building butted up against the river. Skjorl climbed a little higher and then he could see a line of something in the levelled sands, running from the water and straight into the heart of the city. Or where its heart had been, before the dragons had eaten it.
‘So there’s a tunnel that goes from here into the city.’ Skjorl scratched his head as he eased back down to his men. ‘What’s that for?’
‘Takes water from the river into the city cisterns,’ said Vish.
Jasaan shrugged. ‘I had a look. It’s about knee deep. We could walk through it.’
‘You mean it’s like a canal?’
‘Suppose.’
‘With a roof on it? Why put a roof on a canal?’ Not that it mattered. What use it was right now, that was what mattered.
Vish sniffed. ‘Goes straight to the city cisterns. I saw them when I came with the Speaker. They’re huge. And they’re cool and damp.’
He nodded and Skjorl nodded back. Dragons liked to leave their eggs somewhere like that. Out here in the desert there simply wasn’t anywhere. Or at least so Skjorl had thought.
‘Worth a look then.’ He shrugged. The hard part with dragons wasn’t finding them. Man wanted to kill a dragon, he needed to be bloody sure the dragon had no idea he was there. Slip in, poison their kill, slip away and never be seen. Smashing eggs came after, when the dragons that had laid them were dead. If you ever got that far.
On the other hand, tunnels and water could mean people. Not that anyone was still alive out here, but he supposed he ought to at least look like he’d been told.
No. Not people. Alchemists. If it was just people, well there were people everywhere. Like cockroaches. Hiding under every stone and in every cave until a dragon sniffed them out. Just hungry mouths to feed; the last thing the Purple Spur needed was more of them. No, it was alchemists he’d been sent out here to find. Bloody waste of time.
‘If there’s eggs there, we don’t touch them unless I say,’ he growled. ‘And that means we keep away from them.’ In case one hatched while they were there but he didn’t need to come out and say it, not to men like these. ‘We look in case there’s people. Then we take the adults. Eggs last.’
‘People?’ Jex laughed and shook his head. ‘There’s no people here.’ And Skjorl reckoned he was right.
First thing was crossing the water though, easier said than done. The Sapphire might have been sluggish down this close to the lake, but it was wide and too deep for a man to wade. Jex went first since he could swim. He took a rope. The rest of them stripped, floating the things that had to stay dry on their shields and hauling themselves on Jex’s rope. It took a while. Skjorl checked the moo
n. A third of the night gone, but that wasn’t too bad. The covered canal would be a perfect place to spend the day if they could get into it.
The entrance was in the riverbank. A channel nearly a dozen strides wide had been cut into it. Shallow, just like Jasaan had said, but the channel narrowed inside and grew deeper until they were waist-deep in warm stagnant water. The moonlight quickly faded to nothing. The darkness inside was almost absolute.
‘It’s not flowing,’ muttered Jex. ‘Must be blocked somewhere. Can’t spend the day here, not in this shit.’
Skjorl frowned. Had to agree with that. Man couldn’t be standing upright when he was supposed to be resting.
‘We could make little beds out of our shields and float on them maybe?’
‘Daft bugger.’ Skjorl scratched his head. ‘Push on for now.’ They had a place to shelter not far away if they crossed back to the other side. Less than half the night gone. Still safe to press forward.
‘Ouch.’
At the front Jasaan stopped. Skjorl couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, it was that dark. Some fifty yards behind them, the tunnel entrance was just a patch of black not quite as black as the rest.
‘What is it?’
‘Gate. Bars. Hold on.’
Skjorl stood his ground, stock still. He’d been in tunnels this dark before, plenty of times. Darkness didn’t bother him, but other things did. Things lived in tunnels and dead ends made his skin crawl.
‘Some sort of grille. Kasern, you still behind me? Give me a hand.’
Down in the mines of Scarsdale, for example. Plenty of tunnels there, and plenty of dead ends too. For once he’d been the hunter, sword in hand, already stained with blood. In Sand they’d explored the passages under the monastery. Plenty of tunnels there too. They’d found scholars and Adamantine Men and a friendly place for a day or two before they’d moved on, underneath the hell that the dragons had made above.
