by Stephen Deas
Carelessly he rubbed his head. Almost screamed, the pain was that blinding. Touched more softly now. There was blood crusted through his hair. A lump the size of an egg.
That explained the pain then. Vishmir’s cock!
Fishing. He remembered fishing. Remembered coming back. Cooking. He’d been reeling by the time he was done. Then …
Something about an alchemist. Alchemists. That’s why they were going home.
Ancestors! His head felt like someone had taken an axe to it. He must have fallen. Must have. Couldn’t remember …
He was fading again. Sleep creeping over him like blanket. He was still drunk. Probably a good thing that. Probably eased the pain. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, forced himself to look into the little pouch he still carried with him, the one he’d had ever since he left the Adamantine Palace. All the things the alchemists made for the Adamantine Men before they went to die. Most of them had got used up on the way to Bloodsalt, but not this.
Bloodsalt? Why was he in Bloodsalt? That wasn’t the way home? Was that where here was?
There was a dragon in Bloodsalt. It had killed Vish.
His eyes wouldn’t focus. Couldn’t see what he was doing in the half-dark anyway. He let his nose do the working, sifting through the little waxed paper packets of this and that until he found what he was looking for. Dreamleaf, mixed with just a touch of Petrios venom. Whatever that was. Something to take the edge off the pain. Something to keep a man going. A pinch, that was supposed to be enough.
He took two. Dropped them in a water skin. Forced himself to drink the lot. Just about managed that before his eyes closed and he slumped back to the floor. When it was sunset and they were getting ready to move again, someone would tell him how he’d hurt his head.
Except the next time he woke, the sun had set and it was dark outside and he was alone, and when he tried the cellar door, it wouldn’t move.
49
Jasaan
Sixteen days before the Black Mausoleum
He walked ahead, alone. It suited him. He didn’t have to talk, didn’t have to learn the riders’ names, didn’t have to hear where they were from. Most of the riders in the Pinnacles came from the deserts, from Sand and from Bloodsalt, and Jasaan had seen both after the dragons had done with them. They must have known their families were gone, but no one could imagine what Bloodsalt had been like. No one had come away, not one single survivor, to say how the dragons had destroyed that city, but Jasaan still saw the skeletons when he closed his eyes, their dry bones just lying in the streets and inside the houses and littered along the Sapphire valley.
He found a hollow for them to shelter in through the second day. He shared the potions that he’d brought with him from the Purple Spur, the ones that stopped the dragons from feeling their thoughts. He covered the riders with brushwood and then listened to them trying to stay silent and still as the long hours of daylight passed overhead. Now and then dragons flew out from the Raksheh. They didn’t pause, didn’t look down.
‘There must have been a dozen or more, all told,’ he said to Nezak as he changed the dressing on the rider’s wound. Nezak was carrying his injury well for now. Jasaan wondered what Hellas would do if the wound went bad.
‘Heading for the Pinnacles.’
‘Further south, I’d say. Can’t be sure.’
Roads became tracks, so overgrown now that even Jasaan had trouble finding them. The land became wilder. Burned-out villages gave way to burned-out farms. The hills grew bigger and steeper and the copses on their crowns spread out into woods. Good land for hiding. Better than the plains. They’d start seeing feral folk again soon, he thought.
The rain began one night, thick clouds hiding the moon and the stars and making the world so dark that they only covered another few miles before dawn. It rained on for most of the day, slowly soaking them, and when Jasaan roused Hellas and his riders in the evening they were sluggish and bad-tempered. Three days, that’s all they’d been out. He tried to remember what it had been like on the way back from Bloodsalt, hunted by a dragon but never allowed to stray too far from the lifeline of the Sapphire. Harder than this, that was for sure. His ankle was already hurting again, aching like it always did since Bloodsalt, whenever he walked on it for days at a time.
‘We get a roof over our heads after tonight,’ Hellas told him. ‘If you can find it. There’s a place the dragons didn’t burn. It’s hidden inside the Raksheh.’
‘How far is it?’
‘We’ll be there before dawn.’ Hellas made it sound as though he knew this country well, as though he’d been here many times. Jasaan knew better. What Hellas had was a poor copy of some alchemist’s map and a handful of rumours. All passed on to Jasaan and expected to be enough.
The rain didn’t stop. Clouds veiled the moon and the stars. In the last few hours of the night, as they entered the Raksheh proper, Jasaan gave up scouting ahead. It was so dark now that he could barely see his hand in front of his face and each step was an adventure. Hellas was wrong. They never found his shelter; instead, they sat out the last few hours of the night huddled on the fringe of the Raksheh, under monstrous trees as wide as houses that already towered far overhead, waiting for the light.
‘There’ll be dragons come dawn. Then what?’
Jasaan shrugged. ‘Then either they’ll see us or they won’t.’ Under the canopy of leaves they should be safe enough, shouldn’t they? He didn’t know. He’d never travelled a land like this, fresh and wet and full of life. Everywhere he’d seen of the realms until now had been desert. ‘Haven’t seen any sign they roost near here.’ Among these trees, at night, there was no point in trying to make any progress. They might as well have worn blindfolds.
He led them deeper into the forest, and the further they went, the darker it became. There wasn’t much undergrowth any more, which was a blessing, but now every direction looked the same. Sometimes Jasaan had to stop and just stare at the trees. He’d never seen trees anything like these before. Little things that grew around the City of Dragons, yes, and the stunted desert trees of Sand, the same ones that grew among the Blackwind Dales and on the banks of the Sapphire and the Silver River, but nothing like these. Looking up at them from below reminded him of looking up at the old Tower of Air, the last speaker’s favourite tower before the dragons had brought it down, but the trees were taller. A man could build a palace here, he thought, and it would still be lost amid the size of everything.
He must have had a sixth sense because he was already signalling the riders to stop before he heard the first snarl. A dozen yards away a snapper was staring at them. Jasaan froze. Cursed thing must have been just standing there, still as a statue in the gloaming, watching them come closer. Snappers. They didn’t have wings, they didn’t breathe fire, they were cunning but not clever, but they were still the size of a small horse with jaws that could rip a man’s arm off in a single bite. One on one, a snapper almost always won. An Adamantine Man, even Skjorl, even the old Night Watchman himself in his full dragonscale armour, was no match for a hungry adult. What you did with snappers was you ran. You climbed up something and then you hoped that it wasn’t all that hungry. Snappers weren’t like dragons. Snappers would wait for you for days. Weeks.
The trunks of the trees around them were as wide as barns and as smooth as glass. So much for climbing.
Shit!
The other thing you did was shoot them. The bows and the axes that every Adamantine Man carried were about the only things that would hurt them. If you were lucky, really lucky, you could take one down. The riders had bows. He had an axe. And it wasn’t one against one.
‘Arrows,’ he said quietly. ‘Not swords. You need arrows.’ He stayed as still as he could while he let his axe slip from his back and into his hands. ‘Get them ready.’
The snapper was looking at him. Its head was half turned away, watching him with one beady eye. Very, very slowly, it picked up one leg and moved it a foot sideways, watching all the time. Tur
ning a little towards him.
‘Stay still,’ Jasaan hissed. ‘It’ll come for me as long as you just stay still. When I run and it chases, you shoot it. You aim for the head and for the neck.’ Damn things were bulky enough that an arrow anywhere else didn’t do much more than annoy it. Like shooting a scorpion into a dragon.
He gritted his teeth. If he’d had Adamantine Men behind him this would have been easy. He’d trust them. He’d turn and he’d run. The snapper would chase him. He’d race right through the archers and they’d shoot it dead. He’d done it once, when the Night Watchman had managed to trap a few snappers for some sport. Instead, what he had were four riders, four dragon-knights who’d never faced anything more dangerous than an irate servant unless they were on the backs of their dragons.
‘Ready!’ he roared, as much a challenge to the snapper as anything else. The lizard turned to face him properly now. It took another step towards him, not as slow this time, and opened its mouth to show off its teeth. Jasaan bellowed out another challenge right back. Then he turned and ran. He felt the snapper launch itself after him, felt the ground shake as though it was a hatchling dragon. He counted his steps. One, two, three, four, five and the snapper would be at full speed. Six, seven; he ran past the first rider, Hellas, saw him draw back his bow and let fly. Eight; past the next two. Nine; saw Nezak off to one side. Ten; the monster was behind him now, right there. He started swinging his axe. Eleven; let the swing go on, jumped into the air, twisting round, bending every ounce of strength.
Twelve.
It was right there, jaws open wide, a couple of yards away and closing fast. Three arrows were sticking out of its neck and shoulders. Blood trickled from each. As far as Jasaan could see, it had hardly noticed. He turned the flight of his axe a fraction. There wasn’t much else he could do.
The blade met the side of the snapper’s head and kept on going. The snapper’s eyes rolled back. Jasaan pulled at the axe, using its weight and the snapper’s momentum to lever himself out of the way. That was half the trick, not getting crushed.
The axe stuck. Jasaan let it go, spun out of the way, lost his footing, rolled and was up again in time to see the monster’s legs falter. It ran for another three steps before it fell, sliding through the leaf mould and what little undergrowth there was. Jasaan swayed. He was trembling. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t help but stare. He’d killed it. Hadn’t expected that, not really.
Behind him Hellas shouted a warning. When Jasaan turned to look, he saw why.
That was the thing about snappers. They hunted in packs.
50
Kataros
Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum
She sat beside the Adamantine Man. He was snoring. Drooling. She had a knife in one hand, the fingers of the other on the pulse of his neck. It would be so easy. A little cut in the right place, he’d bleed out and never wake up. She sat there and thought it through. Thought about how he deserved it and how she’d feel after it was done. Would it change anything?
‘You don’t need him any more,’ whispered a little voice that might have been Siff, except when she turned to look the outsider was sound asleep so it must have been her own little voice.
He wasn’t ever going to change. Not that it mattered now. He’d served her need for him. The question was whether she left him alive or left him dead. She reached into her blood and looked for the ties that bound him to her. They were still there, still strong. It must have been the wine then. He’d been scratching at his head while she’d been trying to make him stop. Was that it? Had he been too drunk to notice the screaming in his head commanding him to leave her alone? No one had ever told her that that was how it worked, but then alchemists never got drunk. Most of them. Except for her.
After a while she got up, took the last bottles of wine and smashed them. She shook Siff.
‘Get up.’
He rolled over, so tightly tied he could barely move. His eyes were alert. He hadn’t been asleep after all.
‘Get up,’ she said again.
‘You’ll have to untie me. I can’t move. Good with knots, your doggy.’
She looked at what Skjorl had done, but she couldn’t see where to start. In the end she simply cut the outsider free, everything except his hands, which stayed tied behind his back.
‘I can’t exactly walk like this,’ he complained.
She poured a little water into an old glass flask. Then cut herself and dripped a drop of blood into it. She made sure Siff could see everything. ‘Drink?’
‘And make me like your doggy? No thanks.’
‘You were no better than him last night.’
He looked away. ‘Wasn’t I? Thing is, I don’t remember.’
‘You were … You weren’t you.’ She turned away too. Thing was, she wouldn’t have untied him anyway, and he already had her blood inside him.
‘It happens sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know why. I don’t want to hurt you. You got me out of there.’
He was lying. She was a means to an end, that was all. She could see that in the way his eyes gleamed, in the little smile that played at the corner of his lips when he glanced at the Adamantine Man, still snoring on the floor. A means to an end. That cut both ways though.
‘Don’t honey-tongue me, Siff.’ She climbed the steps and pushed open the trapdoor. The last greys of dusk filled the cellar.
Siff spat on Skjorl with careful precision. ‘You just going to leave him?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know he won’t let you. He’ll come after us when he wakes up. You know that. He’ll cover the ground faster too. He knows where we’re going. He will find us. You can’t just leave him.’
‘Yes, I can. You can come with me now or we can wait until he wakes up. You choose.’
‘I saw what he was like.’
‘I saw what you were like.’
Siff ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘You’re an alchemist. Suppose that means you haven’t ever killed someone. I could do it for you, if you want. Doesn’t bother me.’
‘Yes. I’m an alchemist and I deal in blood every day. I know exactly where to cut a man, Siff. If I wanted to kill him, I’d do it myself.’ She dealt in her own blood, never the blood of another. That was a line an alchemist never crossed, the line between alchemy and blood-magic. She’d given herself the chance to bleed out the Adamantine Man already and found she hadn’t the will to do it. Letting Siff do it for her now seemed weak.
‘If you say so.’ Siff shrugged and Kataros shook her head. The outsider was trouble enough on his own. Neither of them understood what he had inside him and neither of them could control it, but even without that she had to believe he’d turn on her the first chance he got to escape. Skjorl had been her shield.
She gave the Adamantine Man a last glance as she stood at the top of the steps. ‘Are you coming then?’
Siff struggled his way up the ladder. ‘This would be a lot easier with hands.’
‘The Yamuna will lead us to the Raksheh.’ They’d be under the trees by dawn and the canopy of the Raksheh would hide them from the dragons. They could walk by day and sleep at night again. They’d follow the river to the Aardish Caves, however far that was, and then Siff would show her what he’d found. Maybe they’d fight each other for it or maybe they wouldn’t, but they had to get there, that was the first thing.
She looked about. Once Siff was out of the cellar, she closed the trapdoor and piled stones from the ruins on top of it. There were plenty of them.
‘I’d help if I had hands,’ said Siff. Kataros ignored him. She piled as many stones as she thought would hold the Adamantine Man inside the cellar, and then piled on as many again until the door was nearly buried.
‘Would have been kinder to kill him with that knife,’ said Siff when she was done.
‘I don’t mean to kill him. Only to slow him. I don’t think you’re right about him following us, but just in case.’ She pushed past him. ‘We’ll go as fa
st as we can, if you don’t mind.’
Siff followed her. ‘I’d walk quicker with hands,’ he said.
‘There are a lot if things you could do better with hands. Most of them won’t help us.’
‘When I need a piss, are you going to hold it for me?’
He was close behind her, so when she suddenly stopped and turned, he almost walked right into her. She had her knife pressed to his throat while he was still blinking in surprise. For a moment she almost did it. Alchemists are considered in all things. An alchemist acts with thought, always, never on impulse. Which had been her downfall, had been a flaw in her large enough that they’d never have made her what she was if the Adamantine Palace hadn’t burned, if Hyrkallan hadn’t killed half the order at the Pinnacles, if she hadn’t been the one to dive down into the waters of the Fury and pick the Adamantine Spear out of a dead dragon’s mouth, if any of those things hadn’t been so.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, she was having to bite back tears for the one other outsider she’d known, for Kemir.
‘Don’t,’ she hissed. ‘Just don’t.’ She put the knife away slowly, then turned and started to walk again. ‘When you need a piss, you can work it out for yourself or you can piss in your breeches.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘No.’
There wasn’t much to be said after that. They walked in silence under the clouds. A drizzle started, a cold cloying dampness that stuck to Kataros and wrapped her up as though trying to steal all her warmth. No matter. She had potions now, powders and herbs and blood and water, everything she needed. She fed a drop or two to Siff. He was slow, slower than Skjorl had been, even when he’d had the outsider on his back.
‘You want him to catch us?’ she asked as the trees either side of the Yamuna grew thicker and taller.
