He stared at the arches, at the liquid mirrors within them, at the silver sea beyond the gate made of moonlight.
Home.
Not his home. Home for whatever was inside him. A seed planted when he’d come this way by chance. A seed growing all the time. He wondered, for a moment, why he’d ever left, why he hadn’t stayed here and gone through the gate, and then he remembered. He was looking for something, something that had been missing and now had been found.
He reached for the arch. Its surface felt like he was dipping his fingers into a bowl of warm water. The scene inside rippled.
‘There,’ he said again, voice soft with wonder. ‘That’s where your Silver King went. He didn’t die. He went home.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, alchemist.’
‘No, Siff. That’s not what happened. Siff, listen to me. I’m an alchemist, and there are things known to us. Histories. Perhaps the Silver King built a mausoleum for himself here before he died just as Vishmir did. Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps he built many. But he did not come here to die.’
‘Look!’ Siff waved his hands at the silver mirrors all around them. The snakes from his fingers slithered through the air, touching one after another and, as they did, each mirror changed. In one he was looking at a lake of fire. Another gave him the clouds, broken, looking down on them from above, high over a huge forest. The third opened on to a small dark chamber, round with no exits, but with a mosaic on the floor, half lost to age and three skeletons lying upon it, each clad in bronze mesh armour. Deep underground by the feel of it, although he wasn’t sure how he knew. The next showed him a room full of more archways exactly like these, high up at the top of some tower; then a man with a strange gold-handled knife on his hip riding a horse; then another man, riding on the back of a dragon, high above the clouds; then another, a man with one eye and a face half-ruined by the pox. The next opened on to a place of shimmering rainbows and a woman, achingly beautiful with a circlet of gold around her brow.
The one-eyed man and the woman both seemed to notice Siff. He felt them turning their gaze towards him as though sensing his presence, as though they were looking for him, perhaps. The man with one eye smiled.
The snakes snapped away from the mirror and it abruptly became silver and blank once more. The last one he tried was dead. When he touched it, nothing happened, but he felt a warning of some all-destroying void. He let that one go, let even the silver mirror fall and fade. Left the arch the same dead stone as he’d found it
‘How do I know these things?’ he whispered to himself.
‘How do you do these things?’ whispered the alchemist.
‘Look though!’ He turned on her. ‘The Silver King! Who else could have made them?’
She bowed her head. ‘No one, Siff. You have found one of his palaces, of that I have no doubt, but he is not here, only relics of him.’
‘No! He is here!’
‘The Silver King was killed by the blood-mages, Siff. He gave them only a tiny piece of his power, but they became many. They overthrew him and they slew him.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, Siff. With the magic of the blood that he had taught them, and it cost them almost everything. But they did, and they took his body into the mountains and they used his essence for one great ritual of blood that forever bound the dragons to the potions we had learned to make. The Silver King is gone, Siff. Only his relics remain.’
Blood. Blood! That was what he had gone searching for! He looked at her and smiled. ‘No, alchemist. No, you are so very wrong.’
‘Look around you, Siff. He’s not here. Our only hope is to scour this place for whatever he may have left behind that we might use against the dragons.’
‘No.’ Blood. That was the answer. That was why he hadn’t stayed. He needed blood, and not just any blood. He needed the blood of someone special. Of the Silver King, except that wasn’t possible. But of someone who had touched the Isul Aieha. ‘Tell me, alchemist, how the first blood-mages were made.’
‘They tasted the moonlight essence of the Silver King. They tasted
…’ Her voice petered into nothing.
‘His blood.’ He smiled. The moonlight snakes withdrew into his fingers. His eyes began to gleam. He crouched down beside her, lifted her chin and made her look into his eyes.
‘You,’ he whispered. ‘He’s in you.’
She shook her head.
‘Yes. Yes, he is. I’ve tasted your blood. You gave it to me. You tried to use it against me but instead you roused something. He’s in you. A tiny, tiny part of him. Think, alchemist! What is it that makes you what you are?’
‘Knowledge,’ she said, her voice hoarse, but she couldn’t look at him.
She knew! The witch knew! All along! ‘You lie.’
‘No.’
‘Yes!’ He threw back his head and laughed, and then clamped a hand around her throat and forced her back until she was lying flat on the stone in the middle of the arches. ‘That’s what you are, isn’t it? All of you alchemists? Pale and ghostly reflections of the Silver King himself. Blood-mages in disguise. He is in you! All of you. Every one.’ Her hands were tied but not her legs, and she started to struggle hard. He pushed one arm across her throat until she couldn’t breathe and held her down with his weight. ‘I came here and I found something. No. It found me, something that had been waiting for centuries. A seed, I think, and now I need your blood to grow. My blood, for I am the Isul Aieha and I want it back.’
He pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the neck, cutting deep until her blood spurted in great arcs. Drops of it spattered the arches. Where it touched them, they began to glow.
‘Please!’ she gasped, although there was no hope for her now. She’d bleed dry in seconds.
‘Look, alchemist! Look! Look what you’ve done!’
One by one the arches shimmered to silver. He felt the power coursing through the vault. His power. The Isul Aieha. They would open now, if he asked them.
He waited until the alchemist became still beneath him. Then he got to his feet. He looked at her, almost sad. The flat stone was covered in her blood. It was everywhere. ‘Such a shame you couldn’t see this,’ he said. ‘Such a shame.’
He went to the gate that opened to the sea of liquid silver and let his moonlight serpents touch its surface. The sea and its giant moon appeared before him. When he reached to touch it with his hand, there was no resistance, no shimmer. This time the door was open.
Home.
‘Such a shame,’ he said again.