Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum
Prince Lai’s wings. She’d heard of them but she’d never met someone who’d seen a pair. The legendary prince had made them during the War of Thorns when the first Valmeyan had him trapped in the Pinnacles. The story went that he’d launched himself off the top of the Fortress of Watchfulness in the middle of the night and flown all the way to Furymouth, hundreds of miles to the south, to warn his brother Vishmir. After the war he made more, and across the realms there were said to be maybe a dozen pairs. If that was true then most of them were right here.
The Adamantine Man dragged a pair to the edge of the cave, first one wing and then another. Each was enormous, three or four times the size of a man, a fraction of a true dragon’s wing but huge nonetheless. He bolted them together. ‘Sit in the harness,’ he told her. ‘Left arm down to turn left. Right arm down to turn right. Both arms down when you’re about to land. Come on.’
She stared at him. ‘Come on?’
‘Yes.’ He pointed to the wings and then moved towards her, as if to help her buckle herself in. She hissed and recoiled.
‘You don’t touch me!’ She reached into him through the blood-bond but he was still held tight. He meant her no harm, not now.
He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. You go first. I’ll come after. I’ll be heavier, so I’ll pass you. Try and go where I go.’
She stared at him a while longer, then at the wings. Yes, she’d heard of Prince Lai’s wings, like every alchemist who studied the history of the War of Thorns back at the Palace of Alchemy. She’d seen pictures. It had never occurred to her that they were actually real, that they were anything more than a nice story.
‘Can we really fly all the way to Furymouth?’ The Raksheh was closer.
The Adamantine Man laughed. ‘That old story? These aren’t going to get you much further than the Silver City down there, and even if they could take us further, there’s no shelter on the plains. Sun comes up, dragons start to move. Then you die. You want to get to the Raksheh, we go the long way. Up the Yamuna. Not so many dragons up there.’
Kataros took another long look at the wings, taut dragon skin stretched over old dragon bones. When dragons died, they burned from the inside. They didn’t leave much behind, just their scales and wings. The scales became armour for dragon-riders and for the Adamantine Men. Wing bones were used for all sorts of things — bows, mostly, but potions too. The skin from the wings was the most prized thing of all, softer and more flexible than the scales and still impervious to flames. Princes and lords lined their armour with it. Prince Lai had made his wings after the war, sitting in the Adamantine Palace with Vishmir the Magnificent, the first and only Emperor of the Nine Realms. After the War of Thorns there had been more dead dragons around than usual, so maybe that was why he’d done it.
The Adamantine Man cleared his throat behind her. ‘Longer it takes before we’re down, the less time we have before sunrise. When that happens we need to be somewhere safe. There’s nests in the Silver City.’
She looked at the moon. The night was young. ‘There are still people down there in the city. Will they help us?’
‘The ferals?’ The Adamantine Man laughed. ‘Don’t think they come up to the surface much, even at night. But still, got to get their food from somewhere. Help us though?’ He shook his head and patted the axe slung over his back. ‘Ferals find us, it’ll be time for my lady to get to work. We get to the city, you stay close. We go down. Underground. Find a place to hide from the dragons, that’s the first thing. Then we look for the tunnels. There’s ways as far as the Fury. After that?’ He shrugged.
Kataros stared at the wings. If she got ripped to pieces by feral men or eaten by dragons, that wasn’t any worse than being raped and strangled in a dingy cell. And at least she’d be trying to do something. She took a deep breath and started to strap herself into the harness. It was simple enough, similar to a dragon harness, the sort of thing a rider would have designed. All buckled in, she tried to drag the wings towards the mouth of the cave, but they were so heavy she could barely move them.
‘Let me help.’ He lifted them up, resting them across his shoulders. Kataros walked towards the edge and then stopped. The sky was clear and she could see the shapes of the Silver City hundreds of feet below her. And she was going to jump? Madness! She shrank away and stepped back straight into the solid bulk of the Adamantine Man behind her. ‘Get away from me!’
‘Sorry about this.’
The next thing she felt was his hand in her back, hurling her forward. She screamed as her feet struggled to push against him, reached through the blood-bond, found him there, grasped the first part of him that came to hand and twisted and tore. The pushing stopped and he let go. Her feet teetered on the brink of the cave.
The wings collapsed on top of her, forcing her down and pitching her forward. She grabbed at them, but they were much too big and much too heavy and she was already too close to the edge. They toppled forward and tipped out into the void, and Kataros went with them.