The Black Mausoleum (Memory of Flames 4) (24 page)

For the first time in a good few days Siff smiled. He kicked about in the pile some more. Eventually he found a dragon-rider’s leg. You could tell it came from a rider because of the boot.
It was a nice boot, but nowhere near as precious as the knife kept tucked inside it. Riders always kept a knife in each boot. No one had ever told him why, but that’s the way it was. Getting
the knife out took a while. Jamming it in between a couple of rocks took longer, fraying the ropes that bound him longer still, but he did it, and then he was free.

Free and cold and hungry. But free!

He shouted it out to the stones around him, not caring if there were any other dragon-riders here now, stretched and rubbed his hands. He was cold and he was hungry, but he was an outsider born
to the mountain forests and cold and hunger had been his friends for as long as he could remember. He had a knife and among the rocks and boulders around the waterfall he could see what looked like
caves. Up above was some sort of ruin. If he could ignore, for a moment, the great gouges that dragon claws had taken out of the earth and even out of the stones, he might think he could survive
here.

First things first. He went through the pile of bodies and found himself a decent pair of boots, threw off his wet clothes and took what he could to wrap around himself. Gold Cloak’s cloak
finished it off. After that he started looking for anything else he could find. There was a rider halfway up a tree by the top of the falls. His head was crushed to a smear and one of his arms was
missing, but the armour he wore was mostly intact. Siff didn’t like to think about how he’d ended up in a tree. An idle fling from a dragon’s tail, perhaps?

No.
Don’t
think about it.

He didn’t find any blankets, nor any weapons except for another knife from the same rider as gave up his armour. By then the sun was getting low. He was still cold. The hunger in his belly
was a tight knot, clenched in on itself, but he could come back to that. Dead people made good eating in a pinch. What he needed first was some shelter. Maybe, if he could start one, a fire.

That was when he found the eyrie.

Nineteen days before the Black Mausoleum

The tremor woke him up. Hadn’t been asleep for long, so no point smashing down the door yet. He’d had a good look at that as he’d been shoved inside. The door
was strong enough, but the frame had been wedged poorly and in haste into whatever stone this place was made of. A good charge or two would bring it down.

The alchemist was crouched over Siff. The shit-eater was still breathing. Wasn’t moving much more than that. Skjorl rolled over and let himself fall back to sleep.

When he woke up again, the room looked exactly the same. Same light. Shit-eater lying sprawled across the floor. Alchemist sitting beside him. He couldn’t tell how long they’d been
there. Hours. Could have been the middle of the night; could have been the next morning for all he knew.

‘Alchemist!’

Her head jerked up. She’d been sleeping. ‘What?’

‘What’s your plan?’

‘I don’t know.’

He unfolded himself and walked to the door. Peered through the cracks. Two men on guard outside. They looked bored and sleepy. ‘We could leave. If you want.’

‘No.’

Hardly a surprise. He sat down again.

‘Someone has mastered dragons. Whoever that is, I need to talk to them. It doesn’t matter who they serve. Whether it’s Speaker Lystra or Speaker Hyrkallan or some other speaker
I’ve never heard of, they’ve mastered dragons again.’ She turned to face him. Her eyes were wide. ‘Do you know what that means?’

‘It means hope, alchemist. I know that.’

‘Yes.’

‘I saw Taiytakei as they brought us here. I saw soldiers who are of these realms and others who are not. Among the Adamantine Men it’s said that the Taiytakei brought the disaster
upon us.’ He looked at her. She nodded. ‘Yet would you help them?’

‘I saw
one
Taiytakei. One.’ She growled at him, which made him smile. He stretched out and lay back down again. The last few days had been long ones. Adamantine Men learned to
catch their rest when they could.

Some time later the door opened. Someone threw in a loaf of bread and a skin of water and slammed it shut again. The bread was hard as stone and tasted of mould but it was bread. Skjorl
couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted bread. No one had made it since the Adamantine Palace burned. He savoured every mouthful, mould or no mould.

The shit-eater was still unconscious. The alchemist was somewhere else, lost in thought. Skjorl stared at her for a while, thinking about what he’d do if she hadn’t done her
blood-magic to his head.

The door opened again. There were more soldiers this time. Eight, maybe nine. Skjorl didn’t get the chance to count them before they piled into him, ignoring the others, pinned him down
and tied his hands. Then they dragged him out. They didn’t take him far, just to another cell along the same passage, hardly a dozen yards from where they’d started and empty but for a
heavy chair. Took most of them to tie him to it, but they did. When they were done, one of them stood in front of him and cracked his knuckles.

‘You’re a spy.’

He had an accent, this one. Not a strong one, but an accent nonetheless. One Skjorl could place. Another outsider. Skjorl grinned at him. ‘You’re a shit-eater.’

The man punched him in the face and broke his nose. ‘Your speaker sent you. You’re a spy.’

Skjorl said nothing. Said nothing when the man punched him again. Said nothing when they held back his head and poured water over his face until he was sure he was going to drown. Said nothing
when they told him what else they were going to do, what bones they’d break, what pieces they’d cut off him and how they’d burn and scar him. The men of the speaker’s guard
took worse from the brothers of their own legion, after all, before they were finally given their dragon-scale and their axe and sword. A last test. No one ever said so, but the ones who failed
never saw another full year, dragon-scale or no.

Skjorl’s test had lasted three days. The shit-eater here grew bored after a couple of hours. When he stopped Skjorl laughed at him. He spat out a tooth.

‘I am an Adamantine Man, shit-eater,’ he said, as if that was enough.

They left him for a while. He didn’t bother struggling or trying to break free. Concentrated instead on recovering his strength. When they came back, they picked him up, chair and
everything, and turned him round so he couldn’t see the door.

‘I know about you,’ said a new voice. Heavy accent again, but the words were careful, shaped with thought and spoken slowly so they could be heard. ‘Adamantine Men. They raise
you from the cradle to fight dragons.’

Skjorl said nothing. He was what he was. An Adamantine Man never broke.

‘I’ve led soldiers in three worlds now. I would take your kind over any other. You have my profound respect. I’m sorry for the beating. Pointless, I realise, and if my captain
had been here, it wouldn’t have happened. He’d have known better, because he’s one of you. I’m also sorry that I have to take this from you in such a way, but time is
pressing.’

Skjorl waited for the blow. He didn’t flinch, didn’t tense his muscles, just waited for whatever would come.

What came was a tickle in his head, that was all. Like the alchemist’s fingers but infinitely lighter and defter. The faintest sense of something taken away, cut with an expert scalpel.
For a moment Skjorl thought he saw the flicker of a knife with a golden hilt reflected in the polished armour of the soldiers around him.

‘Now,’ said the voice again. ‘Tell me why you are here. Tell me everything.’

Skjorl told him everything. Afterwards, when they took him back to his cell, he sat down and wondered why he’d done that, because it wasn’t like they’d ripped it from him,
piece by piece, fighting for every word. More like he’d decided it was right to tell what he knew, and just didn’t know why, that was all. He watched, strangely detached, as the same
soldiers dragged the alchemist away and closed the door behind her. He listened to her shout, heard the scrape of wood on stone. That would be the chair. Voices. The man who had asked him
questions, then the alchemist, then another one, a woman, one he’d heard once before, a long time ago only now he couldn’t place her. She sounded sharp and angry. There was something
about a garden. Something about moonlight.

His brow furrowed. He was sure he ought to care about these things.

A tiny tremor ran through the walls. The shit-eater was still on the floor, unconscious or asleep or pretending, one or the other. Down the hall the voices stopped. When they started again they
were fast and urgent, words buried once more under strange accents. He caught one clear enough though. Over and over, shouted like an alarm.

‘Dragons!’

Nineteen days before the Black Mausoleum

Finding others took time. Not long, but time nonetheless. A sun passed and then another. The open ground around the great river had little to offer. Everything that once roamed
here had been eaten. Burned. Chased away, even after the dragons who had come were bloated. No food for the little ones. Let their animals roam far away. Let them starve in their holes if they
cannot be burned.

There were always dragons to be found near the old towers, though. The place the little ones called the Pinnacles but the dragons knew by a far older name, a place where the silver-skinned
makers had once lived and worked and wrought their sorceries. Sorceries like the one that had come to visit the plains of the great river.

It found three dragons, all young and small, all hatched since the Awakening. It shared what it had seen. Four would not be enough, not when three were small.

What brings it back?

Little ones, teeming with them.

Not afraid?

What is this Black Moon?

We have seen the hole in the realm of the dead. You have not, Black Scar of Sorrow Upon the Earth.

They flew towards the setting sun, to the dark forests where even a dragon could not pass, and then to the hills and the mountains of the great Worldspine beyond. High among the glaciers and the
snow, it found more of its kind, young and old.

A scent powerful and old.

Something of the silver ones and something even greater.

What can be greater?

The Earthspear.

The Earthspear is buried under mountains.

No. A thing that speaks of the stars. And something other.

The little ones will burn.

Their sorceries will be devoured.

Chains?

Pulled through the sky?

Made into a toy?

Joy. Fear, as much as a dragon could feel such a thing. Amazement. Wonder. Alarm. All those things it felt in the thoughts of its kin. Then, one by one, they found their true natures and all
turned to fury.

Come!
it cried, and the other dragons were eager.

Dragons do not serve men.

Nineteen days before the Black Mausoleum

They opened the door, threw Skjorl inside and took her instead. The Adamantine Man looked wrong. His face was distant and she couldn’t tell whether he’d seen
something truly wonderful or whether he’d simply been broken.

‘What did you do to him?’

The soldiers pulled her down the passage a short way and shoved her into another room. A chair sat in the middle, waiting for her. Dressed in finery with her back to the doorway was a woman, a
man standing next to her looking every bit as fine, as though they were a king and queen. Their clothes were like those of the Taiytakei, but their skin was too pale. What caught her eye, though,
was the knife that the man held. It was a strange thing: the blade shone like polished silver and patterns seemed to swirl inside it. The shape was odd too, more like a cleaver than a knife, while
the golden hilt was carved into a pattern of stars that, it seemed to her, made an eye. An eye that watched her as she was tied down to the chair.

‘Where is it?’ asked the man. He spoke slowly and carefully, but it was hard to make out what he was saying because of the way he twisted his words in his mouth. The accent was a
strange one. Unfamiliar.

‘Where is what?’ Blood. If she dug her fingernails into her palms, maybe she could make herself bleed and then she’d have a weapon. ‘Who are you?’

‘The Silver King’s Tomb,’ said the woman. From
her
accent, she might have been raised in the Adamantine Palace itself. ‘That’s what you’re looking for.
Where is it?’

Kataros thought about the answer to that for one long second. She could lie. She could pretend she didn’t know, but why? Whoever these people were, they had a power that harnessed dragons,
and that was all that mattered. She was an alchemist, and alchemists served the realms, not this lord or that. Alchemists kept the monsters in check, that was their all and their everything.

The truth then. The essence of what Siff had told her, even though it had one great flaw running down its centre that meant it could not be quite as it seemed. ‘I believe it to be in the
Aardish Caves, underneath the Moonlight Garden, where Vishmir always thought it was,’ she said. ‘Forgive me, Highness, Holiness, Lord, Lady, but, with the most humble respect please,
who are you?’

The woman rounded on her. ‘Who am I? Who am
I
? I am your speaker! Do you not know me?’

Kataros had never seen either of the speakers they had now, not the one under the Purple Spur who had sent her away, nor the false one under the Pinnacles. This one was tall, but that
didn’t help. With a start, she realised the woman had Hatchling Disease, the early marks of it, just like her own . . .