Stephen Deas: The Black Mausoleum

‘I’ll kiss you,’ she stammered. There. Plant the idea.

He threw back his head. ‘Yes, witch. You will.’

There was no need to feign her fear or her revulsion. She tried to shake her head. His free hand was working on his belt. His breathing was heavy, his heart beating faster.

‘Your sort brought this on us all,’ he grunted, forcing her down. ‘You deserve everything you get. You did this. You killed us all. Now since you’re so hungry, you can eat. If you’re not a good little witch, I will snap your neck after I have you.’

A little thought came. Let him. Do it his way. Do what he wants. It’ll be easier. It’ll be more certain. The thought came and then it went and she was damned if any man, Adamantine or otherwise, was ever going to force her to anything, not now, not ever again. As his fingers gripped tight in her hair, she spat into her palms, tasted the iron, and then raked her nails down the outside of his thigh hard enough to draw blood, his blood, as hard as she could. She slapped the palm of her hand against the wound and held it tight, two droplets of blood mixing together. Please please please be quick…

He snarled, pulled her up and threw her away.

‘You don’t like it rough?’ Her voice sounded frail and thin to her, desperately fragile.

‘I’ll show you rough, witch.’ He came at her, trousers round his ankles. She closed her eyes and reached out for the blood she’d smeared over him. Her blood and his. Such a tiny, tiny link. Nothing. Almost nothing.

‘Kiss me,’ she quivered.

Fingers locked around her chin. For one fleeting moment the Adamantine Man looked confused. She put a hand around his neck and pulled him closer, pressed her mouth to his and wormed her tongue between his lips. His hands ran over her as she licked her blood into his mouth.

‘Now you’re going to bleed, witch!’ He tore himself away and towered over her, a rampant animal thing.

‘I already did,’ she murmured. ‘And because of that, you will never touch me again.’ She felt it now, her blood inside him. As he reached for her with his huge hands, so she reached for him inside her head, following the path of blood.

‘Stop!’

It was a whispered word inside her cell, barely rippling the air, but inside the Adamantine Man’s head it was a command to shake mountains. She knew this was so because she’d felt it herself once, when her own master had done the same to her, when he’d bound her to him and elevated her from a Scales, a failure, to be an alchemist again. The binding was a price that she’d learned only after it was too late.

His eyes rolled back. Most men would have fainted; this one reeled but stayed on his feet. Very slowly his eyes found her face again. He lunged towards her and then paused.

‘No,’ she whispered. Now she had him, she wanted to laugh, laugh at how stupid he looked with his trousers round his ankles. She wanted to laugh to take away the scream that was clenched inside her.

‘What have you done to me, witch?’ he snarled.

‘Dress yourself.’ Reaching through the blood was an effort, but for now she barely noticed. Later she would have to conserve her strength and her touch would be more gentle.

He did as he was told, trembling now, fearful. She smiled. Even an Adamantine Man would crack in the end.

‘What have you done?’ he asked again.

Her eyes glittered. She bared her teeth. ‘Now you know how it feels to be weak and helpless. ’ It was hard not to make him take a knife to himself, right there and then, hard not to remember another time, another place, a desert canyon, a rushing river, the river men all over her, the roar of the dust they’d given her in her head and then another roar, of fire and dragons, everywhere dragons…

No. She shook herself. Maybe later, when they were in the Raksheh and she’d found what she was looking for, maybe then, but for now she needed him. ‘You’re going to help me,’ she said shortly. ‘You’re going to take me out of here. You’re going to take me to the Yamuna River, to the Raksheh and then to the Aardish Caves. You’re going to help me find the Black Mausoleum. You want to. For you this shall become the most important thing in the world. For all of us. If anyone gets in our way or tries to stop us, no matter who or what they are, you are not going to let them.’

She watched him closely, watched his slack face as her words reached through from her blood, mingling her desires with his. The Adamantine Man went out of her cell. He stood, uncertain, as she followed and closed the door behind her. She was free.

He looked puzzled. ‘How?’ he asked.

‘With whatever means you have; but you will fight to the death before you let anyone take me back here.’

‘They’ll kill us both.’

‘Then find a way so they don’t!’ She nodded towards Rat in the other cell. ‘And he has to come too.’

Eight months before the Black Mausoleum

Bloodsalt. Stuffed away in the corner of the realms with nothing much around it except salt flats and desert. Blisteringly hot days, cold nights, no food, no nothing. A man came out here, he might wonder why anyone had ever built a city in such a desolate place. Might wonder, that was, until he tripped over his first nugget of gold just sitting there at the edge of the Sapphire. It had meant something once, gold. Fat lot of use to anybody now.

Adamantine Men had had no use for gold, even back then. The old Bloodsalt, the alive one filled with people, had had no use for the Guard, but it turned out that Vish had been there once, back in Hyram’s time, when the new speaker had flown in with his grand master alchemist and taken a few of his Adamantine Men with him to show off. Vish had seen the city and that was why he was here, and because Vish was in Skjorl’s company, that was why Skjorl was here too.

‘Fucking hole at the end of the earth, if you ask me,’ grunted Vish. ‘Don’t know why old shaky even brought us out here.’

Hyram and his alchemist were both dead now, so no one was ever going to find out. Not that any of the Adamantine Men cared. The waking of the dragons had changed everything, and now nothing mattered except food and water and watching the sky.

They moved along the slabs of rock and the loose shingle beside the Sapphire. The whispering of the water drowned their footfalls. They had an easy stealth to them, one that came with years of practice. Quiet was easy. Quiet came with careful, and a man who wasn’t careful, well, out here he was dead.

‘Here.’ Jasaan held up his hand for them to stop. He pointed. The river drifted on towards Bloodsalt Lake, an inland sea almost as wide as a whole realm and yet never so deep that a man standing upright on its bed wouldn’t still be breathing air. Where Jasaan was pointing, in the shadows of the far bank, a low stone building butted up against the river. Skjorl climbed a little higher and then he could see a line of something in the levelled sands, running from the water and straight into the heart of the city. Or where its heart had been, before the dragons had eaten it.

‘So there’s a tunnel that goes from here into the city.’ Skjorl scratched his head as he eased back down to his men. ‘What’s that for?’

‘Takes water from the river into the city cisterns,’ said Vish.

Jasaan shrugged. ‘I had a look. It’s about knee deep. We could walk through it.’

‘You mean it’s like a canal?’

‘Suppose.’

‘With a roof on it? Why put a roof on a canal?’ Not that it mattered. What use it was right now, that was what mattered.

Vish sniffed. ‘Goes straight to the city cisterns. I saw them when I came with the Speaker. They’re huge. And they’re cool and damp.’