Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum
The Adamantine Man did what she needed of him: he got her to the Raksheh. He led them, slowly and methodically, following the Yamuna River but never too close to the waters themselves even though they never saw any sign of the dreaded river worms. Down here, away from the forest, perhaps the dragons really had eaten them after all.
There had been people on the Yamuna plains once. It wasn’t a place for cities, but there had been an abundance of thriving small towns and villages clinging to the riverbank. She could see what had once been huts and halls, all built on stilts for when the river flooded. Most of them had been smashed and burned now; sometimes the only sign left was a field of stumps, blackened and splintered but still stuck stubbornly in the earth.
Boats littered the fields. They were everywhere, scattered among the flotsam and jetsam of the dragons’ passing. Most were little fishing skiffs, no more than a few poles lashed together, picked up by the last floodwaters and dropped wherever they were dropped. There was nowhere to hide, no shelter. No hills, no trees, not any more, no caves, no cellars, no rocks, just flat fields full of wild grass going on and on, a slight rise here, a slight dip there. As each night began to brighten, the Adamantine Man found them a cluster of rocks, a pit in the ground or maybe simply a mound of rubble. They spent one day dozing under a pile of old boats that he’d carefully arranged around the stump of a tree. Anything to hide them from the sky while the sun was up, while Kataros and her dragon-blood potions masked their thoughts and hid the fact of their presence.
She saw dragons every day, often more than once. They usually flew on their own, but sometimes they came in twos and threes; and towards the end, as they drew closer to the forest, there were more. She counted a dozen in one day, every one of them flying away from the Raksheh. She wondered why, but had no answer. They were flying away from where she was going and that would have to be enough.
The Adamantine Man set a hard pace. Most of the time he still carried the outsider. Even then she was pressed to keep up with him. Siff would have had no chance at all. He was getting some of his strength back now, but he still mostly dozed except at dawn and dusk.
‘The less time we spend here, the more likely we are to live,’ Skjorl told her, not that she ever asked him to slow down. Maybe he saw the strain in her face, but she wouldn’t complain, not to him. He’d stop if she told him too, she knew that; he’d walk slower if she asked, stand on his head or go and drown himself in the river if she demanded it, but for now he was doing what needed to be done, driving them on.
She saw the forest as they settled down to hide on the fourth day, distant hills above the plains, lit up by the rising sun. The river was already starting to change, from a wide sluggish brown to clear and flowing with purpose. The fields were away from the river now, more uneven, the earth harder. By the end of that night the villages they passed were still shattered and burned but the houses weren’t built on stilts any more. They were past the flood plains. Towards the next sunrise they came to the ruins of another village, a few stones houses on the edge of the hills. They were scorched, their roofs gone; they were black and empty shells half tumbled down, but carved over one doorway Kataros saw the outline of a dragon, worn and faded. She saw it and knew exactly where they were.
‘Looks as good a place to stop as any,’ muttered Skjorl. ‘One more day in the open. Another night of walking and then we should be in the trees. You can rest a bit then.’ He put Siff down and wandered around the buildings, looking to see what was there. Kataros stayed where she was. There weren’t any bodies, not that she could see, and by now all they ever saw were bones, but still… The dragon was the sign of the Order of the Scales. Of the alchemists. She doubted she would have known any of her kin who had died here, but that’s what they were. Kin. The order had a house here because it was close to the Raksheh. She knew it, had even come here once. You could ride a boat, if you were willing to brave the worms, all the way down the Yamuna from here; or you could ride a different boat up to the forest, but somewhere nearby were rapids that no boat could pass, and so the order had built this place, a way station for their own, with rooms to dry herbs and roots, to salt them or roast them or mix them with oil or water or vinegar or with blood.
Skjorl came out of one house and went into another.
‘There’s a trail from here to the forest,’ she told him, but he didn’t seem to hear. In the light of the half-moon the ruins cast shadows that merged together, one after the other. If she let herself drift, they all merged into one. She supposed she ought to feel something in a place like this. Sadness. Loss. Something, at least; she’d felt a sadness when they passed through the burned-out towns and villages by the river after all, so she ought to feel it here as well, oughn’t she? But she didn’t. All she felt was indifference, nothing more, nothing less. If the Adamantine Palace hadn’t burned, her brothers and sisters would have made her a Scales. They would have dulled the spark within her and fed her their potions and made her fall in love with a monster, and never mind that she was as good an alchemist as any of them. She’d liked her men, liked her wine, liked other things. She’d said things that she shouldn’t and they’d flogged her for it, and she’d gone straight out and done it again.
She looked up at the moon and the fitful clouds and picked absently at the hard skin on her knuckles, the first stages of Hatchling Disease. Siff and Skjorl had both drunk her blood. They’d have it too now, although it would take a good while to show. The alchemist’s curse: I can give you a potion to help with that. Just one little thing: if you drink it, it’ll slowly turn your skin to stone. She hadn’t exactly been pretty to start with, but then an alchemist wasn’t supposed to care about such things. An alchemist’s thoughts were always lofty.
Indifference. The alchemists had given her much. They’d taken much too. Dragons had made her what she was, not men, except perhaps the one called Kemir.
‘There’s a cellar here.’ Skjorl came out of another ruin. He looked pleased with himself. Then she saw he was holding something, one in each hand. Bottles. ‘We stay here for the day,’ he said. ‘Don’t know if any of what’s down there is stuff we can eat, but I’m happy.’ He took a swig from one of the bottles and bared his teeth. ‘Still good. A sight better than the rotgut we used to drink back when there was anything more than water.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Have a look. You’d know better than me.’
He sauntered over to where he’d left Siff and made as if to lift the outsider over his shoulder again.
‘Piss off, doggy.’ Siff’s eyes were open. Droopy but open. ‘I can walk.’
‘Suit yourself, shit-eater.’
She ignored them both and went inside. Skjorl had left the trapdoor open. Something between a ladder and a steep set of steps went down into the darkness. She climbed inside and made her way carefully down to the little square of moonlight that shone through the ceiling. Beyond, around her, everything was almost pitch black. A little light gleamed from a rack of dusty bottles where Skjorl had found whatever he was drinking.
She found she was angry with him for that. Not that she had any good reason to be, but he’d taken something from the dead here, something that he didn’t even need. There’d been no reverence, no respect, no pause to wonder at the lives that had been lost here; he just took for himself without a thought. Odd, she thought, to resent him for that amid her own indifference.
On the floor next to the rack of wine bottles she found a little box carefully stocked with alchemical lamps. It was tucked out of the way where no one would ever see it, but when you were an alchemist you came to know where to look. Everywhere she’d ever worked had caves or tunnels or cellars; at least, everywhere that was near dragons, which was anywhere an alchemist was likely to go. They all had their lamps, kept where they were needed, and you acquired an instinct about where to look for them. She took one out of its box. She’d made them herself once — a little cylinder of thin brown glass, a small cup of Kyamberan’s potion filling the glass halfway, then a disc of waxed paper, carefully sealed on top. When it was dry, fill the top half of the lamp with caveworm essence and seal it shut. Some lamps had a hole in the top with a small stick you could use to poke at the seal between the two halves. Others were closed and had to be shaken to break the seal and make them to work. Every alchemist learned to make lamps. If she looked, she’d probably find all the pieces she needed right here.
Age had done no favours to the seal inside and the lamp started to glow almost as soon as she picked it up. A dim and cold white light slowly filled the room. The Adamantine Man had been right: there was a workshop here, or part of one. There were benches, chairs, a rack on the wall filled with pots of powders of dried herbs and roots… and a skeleton in the corner.
She jumped back and almost dropped the lamp. The skeleton sat slumped with its legs sprawled out, its skull lying on the floor beside a pile of empty bottles. He — she maybe — was still dressed in a few rags. The skeleton had a knife resting between its fingers. The other arm was across its lap. She could almost see his end — the last alchemist of the Raksheh, lost and alone among the ashes, furious dragons overhead, too scared to leave his cellar, slowly starving, finally caving in to despair and cutting himself deep and simply letting the blood flow.
‘Any food down there?’ shouted Skjorl from the trapdoor. Kataros jumped again. ‘See you found some light.’
‘No. No food.’ She hadn’t looked, but no alchemist with his head on right would keep food in the same place as he kept his materials. There were far too many ways that could go wrong.
‘Raw fish again then.’ On their second day along the river the Adamantine Man had found a tattered fishing net half buried in the mud. Ever since, he’d been obsessed with using it. No more roots and berries, even though they were plentiful; Skjorl wanted meat. As it turned out, he was a decent fisherman, and he came back every dawn with three or four of them, expertly gutted, and it never seemed to take him very long. Kataros’ stomach turned. Roots and berries she understood.
As soon as she heard Skjorl’s footsteps recede, she went back to looking at what the alchemists here had left her. Most powders kept well enough if they stayed dry, and most roots and leaves too, although you could never be sure there wasn’t any contamination. Did she need anything?
‘So.’
For the third time she almost jumped out of her skin. Now it was Siff, crouching at the top of the steps. She’d forgotten about him; she’d grown so used to him being mute and slung across the Adamantine Man’s shoulders.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes.’ She watched him come down the ladder. He moved slowly, carefully and cautiously. ‘Finding your strength again?’
‘Yes, I’m on the mend,’ he said when he got to the bottom. He met her eye. ‘Don’t feel like I’m closer to the ghosts of my ancestors than I am to living any more. Thanks to you, I suppose. Doggy gone for a bit?’
‘Skjorl is fishing for us.’ Siff’s contempt for the Adamantine Man was fine enough when it was to Skjorl’s face. Alone with him, she found it uncomfortable. Maybe it was being in a room with one way out and him standing between her and it, or maybe it was that the Adamantine Man he so despised was the one who carried him and caught the food that was giving him back his strength. Maybe it was both.
‘The Raksheh’s not far away. What you going to do with him when we get there?’ He ran his fingers over the bottles in the rack beside the steps. ‘This what I think it is?’
‘Drink it and find out.’
‘Think I might. We won’t need doggy in the forest. There’s no dragons there. What you going to do with him?’ He took out a bottle of wine and pulled the cork with his teeth. Took a swig. ‘Nice.’
‘I don’t know.’ Something about the way the outsider moved told her to be cautious. She went to the alchemists’ bench and took down a couple of pots of powders without looking at what they were, then took her knife out of her belt and put it on the table beside her. ‘You could make yourself useful. Go and tell him to bring back some water from the river.’
Siff didn’t move. Instead he took another mouthful of wine. ‘You should try this.’
Kataros took down a mortar. She pricked her finger with her knife and dripped blood into it. Blood went into everything, every potion an alchemist ever made. Blood was what gave them power and always had been. Look under our robes and we’re no different from blood-mages, that’s what her teacher had said. But for the love of your ancestors, don’t tell anyone.
‘You need to get rid of him,’ said Siff after a bit. ‘Give me your knife. I’ll do it.’
‘No.’
‘He wants to kill me.’ Siff smirked at her. ‘We both know what he wants to do to you.’
‘I will not permit him to do either.’
The outsider wrinkled his nose. Took another gulp. ‘I don’t think that’s good enough.’
‘It will have to be.’
Siff shook his head. ‘No. It won’t.’
Kataros stopped what she was doing and turned to look him in the eye. ‘Do you know how I bound him to me? I put my blood in him. Think, outsider, about who has fed you water, medicine, food. Do you think for a moment I haven’t done the same to you.’ She reached into herself, looking for Siff, looking for where he was bound and shackled.
And found nothing.
‘No, alchemist.’ For a moment, in the gloom, it seemed that his eyes shone too brightly. ‘No, that won’t work on me. I’m not like your doggy.’
He came towards her, his eyes still too bright and now filled with a menace she hadn’t seen there before. Kataros stepped back. She held out the knife towards him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going back to the Raksheh. I’m going back to that cave and I’m taking what’s there. I wonder if you think you’re going to stop me?’
She took another step away. ‘That depends, Siff, on what’s there to take.’
‘Exactly what you think. The power of the Silver King.’
‘And if that’s true, what would you do with it?’
He laughed. ‘I’d probably do some of the things you’d want me to and a good few things you wouldn’t.’ His eyes were alive now, burning with silver light.
‘What did you find there, outsider? Don’t tell me it was truly the Silver King’s tomb because I know that cannot be. That is not where he was taken!’
‘You think the Isul Aieha was bound by mere flesh and bone?’
‘The Silver King is gone, Siff! What little of his essence remains is what is used to bind the dragons!’ Such secrets as these had cost her dearly once, overheard as she slipped through places she didn’t belong to see her lover. Even she wasn’t supposed to know these things. ‘Whatever is there, it must be used for the realms. The dragons…’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not bound by mere flesh and bone? And what would you know of these things, an outsider from the mountains?’
‘Oh a pox on the dragons!’ He laughed at her. ‘We all know they weren’t anything more than the Silver King’s pets. They’ll be put in their place. It’ll all be like it was, back in the old days.’
She stared at him, half in awe, half in horror. ‘You want to bring him back!’
‘And you don’t?’
A shape appeared at the top of the trapdoor. It hovered there for an instant and then flew down. Skjorl landed on Siff’s back, thumping him to the floor. The light in Siff’s eyes flared; he snarled and started to rise, but then the Adamantine Man had a handful of his hair and slammed Siff’s head into the ground. Once, twice, and the silver light went out of Siff’s eyes and he fell still.
‘Shit-eater.’ Skjorl sat on his back. He’d found a piece of rope from somewhere — here or else he’d had it all along and Kataros hadn’t noticed. He hog-tied Siff, kicked him once and then looked at Kataros and laughed. ‘You always know where you stand with his sort. First chance he got he was going to run. Obvious.’
‘It was more than that.’ Maybe she should have kept that to herself.
‘Was it?’ The Adamantine Man laughed again. ‘Was it now? I can imagine. Wanted something from you before he ran did he?’
‘Not what you think.’
‘Oh don’t be so sure about that.’ The Adamantine Man took Siff’s bottle of wine, which lay on the floor, spilling itself into a puddle. He took a gulp of what was left. ‘You think he must be like you because you were both thrown into prison to die. Doesn’t make him like you at all. He’s a shit-eater. They’re all the same. He’ll turn on you first chance he gets.’
‘He wanted me to kill you.’
‘Well he certainly can’t do it himself.’ Skjorl seemed unmoved. ‘You want me to go get that fish now? He won’t be going anywhere.’
‘Take him with you.’
‘Take him with me?’ He shook his head, then waved the bottle at her. ‘I’ll take this with me though.’
‘Take him with you and watch him. I need to work. In peace.’
The Adamantine Man looked around the cellar. He sniffed and then shrugged. ‘You get lonely, you let me know. I’ll be back before sunrise.’ With that he lifted the outsider over his shoulder and carefully climbed out, and she was alone, alone with the ghosts of the alchemists who’d died down here.
She climbed up the ladder too, just to make sure Skjorl was really gone. When she saw him plodding away towards the river, she returned to the cellar. Ghosts. Ghosts were for children; there weren’t any of those here, not really. What was here was a gift. Powders, dried roots, herbs, mushrooms, everything an alchemist could want except that most precious thing of all, blood, and for that she had her own. She set to work.