The Black Mausoleum (Memory of Flames 4) (15 page)

Kataros cupped Siff’s face in her hands. She lifted back his eyelids. He was conscious, if only just. ‘Are you all right?’

‘He’s half-dead, alchemist. If he hasn’t told you everything you need, I’d get it out of him quick. Then we can dump him when we get to Farakkan. We’ll move
faster.’

The outsider rolled his head. ‘Fuck . . . you . . . rider . . .’

The Adamantine Man laughed. ‘See. It can talk. So make it!’

Kataros took a deep breath. ‘It’s not something he can tell me. Or you. We have to take him to the Raksheh with us. It’s something he has to show us.’

She’d expected an argument and that she’d have to force the Adamantine Man to her will again, but he only shrugged like he always did. ‘If you say so. If you’re not going
to use your magic to make him talk, perhaps you could use it to make him walk. Although since we’re all going to be eaten by dragons as soon as we try to get up the Yamuna, don’t strain
yourself.’

‘Give him some water.’

He laughed at her. ‘Give it to him yourself, alchemist. It’s right there. With a bit of luck the riders haven’t poisoned it today.’

Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum

Wouldn’t take all that much luck though – as far as Skjorl knew, for all their talk, the riders in the fortress had only actually done it once. Months ago, when
he’d still been somewhere on Yinazhin’s Way, talking to his axe and cursing at the moon. Dropped in poison by the barrel-load to try and kill the ferals. Hadn’t worked.

A hundred yards from where he’d left the alchemist, the tunnel ended in a vast cavern. Not that he could see much of it in the gloom now, but the light here waxed and waned like the light
in the rest of the fortress and he’d been here at other times, when the city had been in daylight. Water plunging from the centre of the roof, hundreds of feet up, crashing to the stone floor
and making everything damp with a cold mist. It came all the way from the very top of the fortress, from the endless fountains of the Reflecting Garden where water would lie still but not lie flat,
or at least that’s the way it had been before dragons had smashed it to rubble. Hadn’t killed the fountain though. Another mystery of the Silver King for the alchemist to ponder; as far
as Skjorl was concerned, it made clean water spill down through the levels of the fortress and kept them all alive, and that was as much as mattered.

All that water came down, and then it flowed out into the canals of the Silver City; and then it came back again and finally ended up here, draining away down the tunnel to Farakkan, the last
and lowest of the paths to the Fury. By the time it got this far, it wasn’t so clean. The place stank.

He climbed around the side of the cave. All the tunnels under the Silver City led here in the end. There were always riders too, because this was the way in and the way out of the fortress. The
Undergates. The
only
way in and way out as far as Skjorl knew, unless you happened to have a pair of Prince Lai’s wings or perhaps a handy dragon.

The rafts, if you could call them that, weren’t much more than a few lumps of wood poorly strung together sitting on the floor of the cave close to the water. Riders were far across the
other side by the gates. If they saw him at all, chances were they’d leave him be. Taking a raft would be easy, nothing like what he’d laid out for the alchemist to sweat over. Question
was though, did he stop at that? Riders here hated alchemists and so did their pretend speaker. Blamed them for everything that had gone wrong, for the end of the realms. Fair, perhaps, but killing
them all was throwing away a weapon, and that was something an Adamantine Man would never do.

But still . . .

He ignored the rafts and ran around the edge of the vault, skirting the spray of the falling water. When he was close enough to make out the gates through the gloom, he stopped with his hands
held up high, away from his sword and his axe.

‘Riders of Speaker Hyrkallan!’ Couldn’t see them but they were there. From the gates they’d see him too, at least the shape of him. They’d have a crossbow on him by
now. Might shoot him just because he was there. With luck he didn’t look too much like a feral; then again, riders weren’t always that bothered about such things. Better safe than
sorry.

‘I am Skjorl of the Adamantine Men. You had an alchemist imprisoned here. She has escaped. She aims for the Raksheh. For the Aardish Caves. She believes there is a weapon there. Something
against the dragons. Do you hear me?’

A muffled voice shouted back: ‘Come closer!’

‘I think not.’ Tone was wrong. He jumped sideways and ran away, back towards the rafts, jinking from side to side. Maybe they took a shot at him, maybe they didn’t.
Didn’t matter. He’d done what was right. They knew where he was going. If there was a prize to be had, a secret to be found, it wouldn’t die when the alchemist was eaten by a
dragon. The riders, now they could do whatever they thought was right to do too, and if that was nothing at all, well then he was glad to be rid of them.

He reached the rafts and pulled one to the edge of the water. He could see it now – the reason he hadn’t killed the alchemist when he’d had the chance. The fortress was the
strongest bastion against the dragons in the realms. They had food. Water. They weren’t all starving like the alchemists under the Purple Spur. And what were they doing? Nothing. Sitting
there. Fading.

He pushed the raft into the water and rolled into it. The current took him at once, fast away down the tunnel. Waiting, that’s what they were doing, but waiting for what? For the dragons
to get bored and go away? For the Silver King to return? But the Silver King was dead and there was nowhere else for the dragons to go and they couldn’t wait for ever.

And so he hadn’t killed her when he’d had the chance, and maybe it
was
better to be a slave with a glimmer of hope for freedom than to be dead and with your ancestors. Needed
some thought that, but by then the alchemist was in front of him, waving madly in case he somehow didn’t see her. He rolled back off the raft and dragged it to a halt.

‘Here.’ She refused his help to climb on, so he grabbed hold of Rat instead. The outsider was more awake now. Maybe the water had done him some good. Pity they had no food. Another
thing needing some thought, and maybe urgent too. Alchemist had her mind set on the Raksheh, but the getting there, that was going to be the hard part. No food, no bows to hunt with, no easy way to
hide from dragons. Hard wasn’t right. A bloody miracle, that’s what it would be.

But still better than doing nothing.

The water carried them briskly down the tunnel. Dead straight as they all were, except when they split apart, and even then it was easy. Follow the water all the way.

‘You ever go to Farakkan?’ he asked when neither the alchemist or the outsider had said a word for most of half an hour. The alchemist shook her head. ‘Mud hole,’ he
said. ‘Nothing there. Even before the dragons.’ He looked at her in the gloom. ‘What are you doing here, alchemist? What is this about? Why did you leave the Purple
Spur?’

‘Why did you?’

‘Orders, of course.’

‘Likewise.’

‘Fine. I was sent to Bloodsalt to see whether anyone survived there. I went with a company of men. Most of us died on the way. Dragons got half and the rest went to bad food, starvation,
disease, snappers, ferals, snakes and one scorpion. When we got to Bloodsalt, there was nothing left except dragons. Two of us escaped. On the way back we were separated. I got lost. When I came
down from the moors, I met riders and they brought me here. And that’s that. You?’ Wasn’t sure why he wanted to know. Made no difference, after all.

‘It remains none of your concern.’ She shook her head. Skjorl spat into the water. There was nothing to see this far from the Silver City. The ferals didn’t come so deep, and
whatever
did
come this far was quickly washed away. There was only the sloshing of the water, the faint glow of the walls and the smell of rot. He didn’t even know for sure that any of
the riders really had ever come down this far. They used the rafts as far as the edge of the Silver City, but further? He’d heard talk, but never with any names. Farakkan. Easy to reach, but
hard to get back with all that water flowing in your face.

Dragon blood.
How, by all those who’d gone before him, was he supposed to get dragon blood?

The alchemist was tending to the outsider. Soaking a piece of cloth in the water and then squeezing dribbles into his mouth. He was so weak he could barely move.

‘I wouldn’t drink anything she offers you, shit-eater.’ Skjorl laughed. ‘She’ll make you her slave.’ Too late for that, of course.

She looked at him, a glance of pure hate. ‘I only do that to people who try to rape me.’

He laughed. ‘You’d have come round, alchemist.’

‘I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last man alive.’ Fingers scraped the back of his head on the inside. A warning of what she could do to him.

An hour passed and then another. He watched the alchemist for when she would fall asleep, but her eyes stayed wide and alert. More blood-magic perhaps, or maybe some old-fashioned fear.
Eventually he gave up and let himself doze.

He woke up to find the alchemist shaking his arm. His hand was on his sword before his eyes had finished opening. She was pointing.
Ferals
, that was his first thought, but that
wasn’t it. She was pointing because one side of the tunnel had opened out. Already, she was guiding them to the edge of the water.

Not a natural cavern. The walls were straight and threw off the same dim light as the tunnel. They weren’t smooth though. He frowned. Peered at them. Archways. The walls were decorated
with arches. Like the walls inside the Fortress of Watchfulness. Odd.

‘This is . . .’ He frowned. ‘Where are we, alchemist?’ Trouble with dozing and floating in the dark in a place like this. Could be they’d a gone a mile or two,
could be they’d gone a hundred. Could be the Silver City was barely out of sight behind them, or maybe Farakkan was just a few minutes ahead.

The alchemist ignored him. ‘What is it?’ Which told him what he needed to know – she knew as much as he did: nothing. He shook his head as the boat ground against the stone
floor of the tunnel and bumped to a stop.

‘Whatever this is, it isn’t Farakkan. We should go on.’ Adamantine Men never felt fear. Never. So the feeling in the pit of his stomach had to be something else. Concern? An
understanding that something was out of place, perhaps? An awareness of possible danger. Call it all of those things. He shook himself. Old stone walls, nothing else. The Pinnacles had been carved
out before the Silver King had ever come to them, and if this had been made by the same hands then they were dead a thousand years and the only thing he might find alive here were ferals
who’d been swept away from the Silver City; and ferals were things he could kill. He got out of the boat. There. In the middle of the far wall, a pair of doors gleamed softly in the light.
Bronze, perhaps, though untouched by age. Should have been greened and dull.

The alchemist followed him out of the boat. Her fingers dug into his arm. ‘What is this place?’

He shrugged. ‘You keep asking, but I still haven’t the first idea. Never heard of it.’ He pointed at the doors. ‘You want to find out, go ahead.’

‘No. You go.’

‘I am . . . uneasy about this place.’ Now there was a thing. Couldn’t shake that feeling of something being wrong.

Fingers in his head again. ‘Go and open those doors and find out what lies beyond. Then I’ll tell you why I was sent from the Purple Spur.’

The hair on his arms prickled. ‘I’ll do as you ask, but I feel danger here. Take that as a warning.’ Danger from what? Ghosts? But there were no such things as ghosts. No such
things as spirits. There were dragons and there was blood-magic and there were knives in the back in the dark.
Those
were dangers. Dark shadows? Old stones? He walked to the doors. Slowly
and carefully though, legs and arms loose and ready to run, sword drawn. The doors were huge, bigger than they’d seemed from the water. Not familiar either, not like the wood and iron gates
inside the Pinnacles; these were made of bronze, and into each was carved the figure of a man, ten feet tall and with four arms instead of two, each hand with a long curved sword. Their faces were
hidden behind blank helms with no eyes. There were no handles that he could see, nothing to pull.

He stopped and looked the bronze up and down. Gave the door a good hard push. Nothing. Couldn’t say he felt too bad about that. Whatever was behind those doors had been there for a long
time. Belonged to whoever had made the Pinnacles, and no one at all knew who
that
was. Someone bigger and older even than the Silver King.

‘No way in.’ He took a step back.

The doors creaked. The groan of bending metal shook the cave, so loud that Skjorl staggered back another step. The doors opening? No. That wasn’t right. One of the bronze figures was
falling forward. Out of its door!

No, that wasn’t it either. The bronze was moving right enough, but it wasn’t
falling
. Grinding tearing shrieking sounds of metal shook the air, rang in his ears. For an
instant Skjorl stood and stared. He’d faced dragons without fear, without a moment of pause, and dragons were the most terrible things in the realms. Or that’s what he’d thought;
but then as far as he knew, no one had ever come face to face with a ten-foot-tall statue of bronze with four arms all holding swords. Not one that moved and was tearing itself out of a door.

An instant passed, that was all. Then he sheathed his sword and pulled Dragon-blooded off his back in one movement, leapt sideways and forward and brought the axe round with all his strength,
sweeping low as the bronze man finished pulling himself free. He ducked under the sweep of a scimitar and the axe struck home, smashing into a knee joint and snapping it clean in two. Skjorl
recoiled away as the bronze giant staggered onto its knees. Didn’t fall though, and now its scimitars were weaving arcs faster than any human swordsman. Skjorl backed away.