Stephen Deas - The Black Mausoleum

Jasaan climbed up beside him. Skjorl turned. ‘See. No one’s eaten me yet.’

‘Are they still here? Maybe they all flew off?’

‘Haven’t looked.’ He pointed to the head of Speaker Hyram. ‘Been talking to our old friend here.’

Jasaan looked sideways too. ‘I remember him.’

‘Don’t we all. The shaking speaker.’

‘Who buggered his pot boys and then murdered them and threw their bodies in the Mirror Lakes.’

Skjorl frowned. ‘Don’t think anyone ever knew more than they kept going missing.’ Maybe Hyram hadn’t amounted to very much as a speaker, but he’d been a mighty sight better than what had followed. Besides, it never did any good to speak ill of the dead.

‘Relk always said he knew who it was who’d done away with the bodies. One of us. Different company but still one of us. Wrapped them in sheets and weighted them with stones and then tossed them into the middle of the lake.’

Skjorl had to smile at that. ‘Relk reckoned he knew a soldier who’d shared Queen Shezira’s bed, that the Night Watchman himself shared Speaker Zafir’s and that there was a blood-mage living under the Glass Cathedral masquerading as a surgeon. Never actually saw any of it himself, mind. Always someone else.’ He glanced up at the sky, screwed up his eyes and looked away. After the blackness of the cistern everything out here was too bright.

‘There was a body went out to the lakes the night Hyram died. No one saw who it was. Wasn’t a boy, though. Was a woman from the weight of it. Some assassin with a knife for Speaker Zafir, hiding in her rooms in the Tower of Air. Was King Jehal’s riders — prince he was then — who took it away. Already wrapped up. Asked about a bit the next day and tracked where they’d gone with it. Out to the lakes in a boat. Don’t know who it was. They said there’d been a fight, but I reckon they were full of crap. No blood. Not on them, not on their swords, not on anything, not even the smell of it in the air.’ He sniffed. ‘Me, I reckon we’re better off without the lot of them. Speakers, riders, kings, queens, princes, any of them.’

Skjorl stiffened. Treason talk that was, even out here.‘We serve the speaker, Jasaan, whoever that might be,’ he growled. ‘Orders. The Guard obeys orders. From birth to death. Nothing more, nothing less.’

‘And who do the speakers serve, Skjorl? Themselves?’

‘They serve the realms, Jasaan. Any more talk like that and you’ll hang.’

Jasaan looked as him as though he was mad and then burst out laughing. ‘We’re in the middle of a lifeless burned-out city in the middle of a desert. There’s probably not a single other person alive for a hundred miles in any direction. I can’t walk, you can’t hold your axe and there are dragons everywhere; they know we’re here and are probably hunting us, and you think I should be worried about getting hanged if we ever make it back? Vishmir’s cock!’

‘I’ll hang you here and now if I have to, soldier.’ Didn’t expect to mean it, but he did. From birth to death. The most solemn oath in the realms. An Adamantine Man who didn’t believe in that, who didn’t believe in all the things that made them what they were, well, they didn’t deserve to live.

‘No, you won’t, Skjorl. Don’t be a dick.’

‘This is still my company, Jasaan. You going to hop on your own all the way back to the Spur?’

‘You’re as crippled as I am.’

‘I can walk, Jasaan. Big difference.’

Jasaan raised a hand in submission. ‘Your way, boss. From birth to death. I always served as I was asked. I’m here, aren’t I? Out in the middle of this shit?’

Skjorl let his anger fade. ‘That you are.’ Maybe Jasaan didn’t deserve it. And three hands would be better than one on the way back, however far they got before a dragon ate them. And he was right, wasn’t he? They were both as crippled as each other now. Two would be better than one. Just as long as they carefully kept on not talking about Scarsdale.

They stayed in the narrowest streets on their way out of the city. Once his eyes finally got used to the desert sunlight, Skjorl climbed up to the top of the smashed remains of something that might have been an old temple to the Great Flame. He searched the skies and the distant sands and salt flats and the waters of Bloodsalt Lake for anything that looked like a dragon, big or small. Past the city’s bones was a yellow-white flatness, boiling and shimmering in the late-morning heat, and then the deep deep blue of the sky. If there were dragons out there, he couldn’t see them. In the haze he wasn’t sure he ever would.

They hobbled on, pitifully slow and sweating fit to drown. Skjorl saw a lizard the size of his hand once, basking on a stone. Nothing else moved. When they stopped to rest and drink, he emptied his water skin without even noticing.

‘Keep on like this and we’ll die from the heat, never mind any dragons,’ muttered Jasaan.

Skjorl nodded. ‘We’ll stay here then.’ Probably they were far enough from where they’d killed the dragon. He looked about and picked a house still in one piece, made out of baked mud or some such and washed in white. One room, low roof. A few old blankets rolled up in a corner. Not much else. Whoever had lived here, they were long gone. Dead somewhere. Burned by dragons or maybe eaten. Or killed by the desert heat somewhere between the city and the place a hundred miles away where the dragons had blocked up the Sapphire. They’d found plenty enough old bones along the river’s course. Skeletons. Skulls. Whole families sometimes. People died. Skjorl knew that better than most, but when you took a step and heard a crack and looked down to find you’d just snapped the sun-bleached bones of a child… Well, made you stop and think for a moment it did.

‘Jasaan…’

But he was already asleep.

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.’