Stephen Deas - The Black Mausoleum

In an alcove beside her she felt the familiar shapes, the cold glass tubes of alchemical lamps. She hadn’t expected that, not here in the Pinnacles, where to be an alchemist, it had turned out, was to be an avatar of evil. ‘There are-’

‘Your lot made them. Yes.’

‘Don’t you-’

‘Believe that everything touched by an alchemist is cursed?’ The Adamantine Man snorted. ‘I was in Outwatch when the terror started. Then Sand. Evenspire, or what was left of it. Scarsdale. Got to the Purple Spur eventually. Spent more time there than I have here. I know what your kind are. You failed, that’s all. You’re no better and no worse than any of the rest of us. Not that that’s saying very much.’

Kataros picked up a lamp. She turned it upside down, shook it and waited until the glow started. Then she handed it to the Adamantine Man and got another. ‘Won’t someone see the lights?’

‘No one comes here these days.’ He settled Siff over his shoulders and started on down the tunnel. The walls were different now. The light showed that they were rough, hacked out with picks and shovels and never finished. Utterly unlike the exquisite carved archways, the murals and the mosaics she’d seen elsewhere.

‘Why?’

He stopped. ‘This leads to the lowest girdle of the scorpion caverns. Used to be hundreds of them here. They’re all ruined now. The poison ran out and then the bolts. Not much point sticking yourself somewhere you can be burned by a dragon when you haven’t got anything you can shoot back.’

The tunnel went on, rough and uneven until it stopped at a fissure that ran up and down. Kataros couldn’t see how far it went either way, for the alchemical lamps produced little light. She crouched, searching for a pebble to drop, but the ground was smooth and there weren’t any. The Adamantine Man shifted Rat into a more comfortable position across his shoulders and started to climb. There were rungs bolted into the rock.

‘Why are we going up, not down?’

‘There’s tunnels down below. Guarded and watched well. There’s barricades and bolted doors and the speaker’s riders down there, watching out against the ferals. No way out without a fight — not for one like you. This way’s better. Gets us to the surface. No one goes out this way and you can’t get back up again, so there’s no one watching.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘You run into anyone up the top here, wave your arms at them and make ghost noises, that’ll probably work. Hyrkallan’s lot, they’re like little girls. The ones who’ve been here even longer are no better. All spooked. Most likely they really do believe that you lot made all this happen like he says. Demons. So make like one. Easier than having a fight. If they come back with any soldiers, we’ll be gone by then.’

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she climbed after him in silence, up the slit in the rock, its sides worn smooth by water from another time. In places it was so narrow that Siff scraped against the far wall; from side to side, it spread out further than her lamp could reach.

‘What is this place?’ She couldn’t help but wonder that. She’d been wondering that from the moment she’d come inside the Pinnacles and seen what it was really like. Even in chains she’d stared, lost in awe.

‘There’s shafts up and down like this all over,’ he said. ‘It’s like one of them cheeses we used to get from up on the moors.’

He reached an opening and levered himself out. Kataros felt his tension as he crouched, ready to drop Siff in an instant, but there was only darkness and silence to greet them.

‘Right. Quick now.’ He started to run, lumbering off. She followed, keeping close behind. Her heart beat faster, excitement and expectation bubbling together as if she was brewing some potion. Almost out. Almost out.

He turned a corner and light — a patch of slightly lighter darkness anyway — loomed ahead. The scorpion caves. Vishmir and the first Valmeyan had fought here in the War of Thorns. Afterwards, Prince Lai had built the scorpions. They were supposed to defend the Silver City, but it seemed to Kataros that they did the opposite. History said that when the scorpions fired, the Silver City burned. If you looked hard now, she supposed you might see it burning still.

She saw stars.

Almost out!

The Adamantine Man slowed as they reached the lip of the cave. He stopped a good ten feet short, lowered Siff to the floor and peered around him, looking for something. Kataros stared out of the sheer side of the Fortress of Watchfulness, down over the Silver City, which wasn’t still burning after all. They were high. She had no chance of climbing down, not from all the way up here.

‘How far up are we?’

‘Don’t know. A few hundred feet over the plains.’

‘And we fly like a bird?’ She’d supposed there might be a rope, or some sort of lift or crane, but there was nothing. ‘You bastard,’ she hissed, and reached through the blood-bond, ready to claw his mind apart. ‘What do we do? Flap our arms and pretend they’re wings?’

The Adamantine Man stopped. His hands fell limp. He looked almost surprised. ‘Yes,’ he said.

She almost killed him there and then, almost let the blood inside his brain boil and rupture every vessel. She could have stood there and watched him bleed from his eyes and his nose and his mouth, from his fingers and his toes and every place in between, and she wouldn’t have been sorry. But however hard she peered through the blood-bond, she saw no deceit. They were going to fly. He truly believed that.

‘How?’

He went back to peering around the cave. After a minute or two he stopped. ‘With these.’

It took a moment for Kataros to understand what she was seeing, simply because the lamps didn’t make enough light.

She was seeing wings. Dragon wings. Lashed together and with a harness between them.

Eight months before the Black Mausoleum

He found Vish easy enough. No doubt about how dead he was. His neck was broken, the back of his head was smashed in and he was lying in a pool of blood that was bigger than he was. The axe and shield on his back had been shattered. Skjorl stood for a moment. There wasn’t anything special to say. Adamantine Men weren’t long on rituals or on sentiment. When you fought dragons, you did what needed to be done, nothing more, nothing less. You did it fast and you did it without hesitation. Most of the time you died anyway.

He took Vish’s potions, his poisons, his firebox, the alchemist herbs that stopped the dragons from finding them and left the rest. The shield and the armour were useless and he already had an axe.

The other dragon had left, judging by the quiet, but it wouldn’t be gone for long. Looking for another way in, most likely. Back soon enough, one way or the other. He wondered if any of the others up top had survived. Didn’t seem likely. Which left him and Jasaan. Jasaan the cripple. Jasaan and his principles. Easier to leave him behind.

He was starting to notice that his hand hurt. He took a last look at Vish. Quiet Vish.

Wouldn’t have left you behind, would I?

No. He didn’t suppose he would, and what was good for one was good for another. That was the way it was. And then there were all these eggs, which could hatch any time, and the small matter of not being able to use his own axe properly with only one good hand. Couldn’t see how bad it was, but there was no getting around that it was bad. Bad enough it wouldn’t be all fine again in a few days.

He’d have to give his axe a name, he thought. Call her Vish maybe, but Vish was a man’s name and his axe was more his lady, his lover. Dragon-bane? He cringed at that. She deserved better.