Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum
Answers would come when answers were ready. The alchemist would tell him, because in the end people like her always did. She’d yield to him in other ways too, in time. For now there was killing to be done. There were always ferals in the tunnels. No surprise to open the door and find a few of them sheltering. He was in among them before the sleeping ones even had a chance to open their eyes. Three women. Pity to waste them, but the alchemist would never have let him toy with one. Two children. He killed those first, moved on to the women as quickly as he could. Not that they had any chance of getting away but because he had to be done with them before the alchemist could tell him to stop. There was a man, sitting on watch perhaps, eyes closed and dozing. Skjorl killed him last as he tried to flee, driving his sword into the man’s chest just when the alchemist screamed at him. Leisurely, he put his boot on the dead man and pulled his sword out again.
‘What are you doing?’
He walked back to one of the women, tore off the outer layer of her rags and wiped his blade clean.
‘Answer me!’ The words came with a hammer blow to the back of his head. He screwed up his eyes against the pain of it.
‘The ways from the tunnels to the Silver City are kept secret. They saw us come through. So they had to die.’ Good chance they already knew the secret shaft was there, might even have been why they’d settled where they had, but no need for the alchemist to know that. He looked up and down the tunnel. The light here was like the light in the fortress, a glow that came from the very stones of the walls and the roof. Here it was feeble, starlight on a cloudy night, no more than that. He closed his eyes and reached with his ears, searching for running feet, but now all he could hear was the alchemist bleating.
‘You will not kill without reason!’
‘I have reason. Hyrkallan’s riders have ordered that all ferals be killed.’
‘No!’
Stupid woman needed to know when to speak and when to shut up. If any ferals had got away, their footsteps were lost now. He growled. ‘Alchemist Kataros, listen when I tell you this. The feral folk who live under the Silver City may once have been ordinary men and women, but that was before their city burned and dragons ate all those they loved. They blame the speaker, their kings, their queens, their riders, their alchemists and even the Adamantine Men for what has fallen upon them. They will not listen to your pretty words — they’ll kill us for our food, for our clothes, for anything we carry, or if we carry nothing, they’ll kill us because we are not them. These would have come back with others. Your command was to protect you from any hurt. I have obeyed it.’
Which was more talking than he was used to. He blew out his cheeks and subsided into silence. The alchemist wouldn’t understand. She’d think she knew better. Alchemists always did until the world taught them otherwise.
‘No.’ She shook her head. She was a woman, inevitably weak. Which made the hold she had over him all the more galling.
‘Going to be hard to find shelter up the Yamuna. The alchemists under the Spur once gave us potions they said hid us from the dragons. Stopped them from knowing we were there even when they couldn’t see us. You said you know how to make that potion. Do you?’ The ferals were dead and good riddance to them. No point dwelling on what couldn’t be changed.
‘Yes, if I had what I needed. But I don’t.’ She was still staring at the bodies. Couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from them. He wondered why. They were dead, after all. It was done. Move on.
‘And what do you need?’
She looked up at him and laughed. ‘You’re not capable of getting it.’
Skjorl smiled to himself. Said with venom but hardly likely to be true. ‘What do you need, alchemist?’
‘Dragon blood, soldier. I need dragon blood.’
‘Something so easily done?’ He laughed back at her. ‘I’d hoped for a challenge.’ Whatever she said to that, she said it under her breath and he didn’t hear. He settled to stripping the corpses on the off chance they had anything useful. ‘I’ve not travelled the Yamuna valley, but I’ve heard nothing good. Open country, wide and flat, all the way from Farakkan to the Raksheh. No shelter. It’s one thing to hide from a dragon that flies past without the first idea you’re there. Different matter to hide from one that can feel you. Got to dig deep where it can’t reach and then wait for it to get bored. Can be days. Weeks even.’ How long had the dragon from Bloodsalt stalked him and Jasaan? Had it ever even stopped? ‘And then there’s the next one and the next. Too many down there and no place to go deep. There’s the river worms too, if such things are real. If the dragons haven’t eaten them. We should go somewhere else.’ Useless, these ferals. Never have anything worth shit. No keepsakes. No food, not even a half-decent knife. Nothing but stinking rags alive with lice and the string that holds them together.
‘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.