The Black Mausoleum (Memory of Flames 4) (30 page)

Indifference. The alchemists had given her much. They’d taken much too. Dragons had made her what she was, not men, except perhaps the one called Kemir.

‘There’s a cellar here.’ Skjorl came out of another ruin. He looked pleased with himself. Then she saw he was holding something, one in each hand. Bottles. ‘We stay here
for the day,’ he said. ‘Don’t know if any of what’s down there is stuff we can eat, but
I’m
happy.’ He took a swig from one of the bottles and bared his
teeth. ‘Still good. A sight better than the rotgut we used to drink back when there was anything more than water.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Have a look. You’d know better than
me.’

He sauntered over to where he’d left Siff and made as if to lift the outsider over his shoulder again.

‘Piss off, doggy.’ Siff’s eyes were open. Droopy but open. ‘I can walk.’

‘Suit yourself, shit-eater.’

She ignored them both and went inside. Skjorl had left the trapdoor open. Something between a ladder and a steep set of steps went down into the darkness. She climbed inside and made her way
carefully down to the little square of moonlight that shone through the ceiling. Beyond, around her, everything was almost pitch black. A little light gleamed from a rack of dusty bottles where
Skjorl had found whatever he was drinking.

She found she was angry with him for that. Not that she had any good reason to be, but he’d taken something from the dead here, something that he didn’t even need. There’d been
no reverence, no respect, no pause to wonder at the lives that had been lost here; he just took for himself without a thought. Odd, she thought, to resent him for that amid her own
indifference.

On the floor next to the rack of wine bottles she found a little box carefully stocked with alchemical lamps. It was tucked out of the way where no one would ever see it, but when you were an
alchemist you came to know where to look. Everywhere she’d ever worked had caves or tunnels or cellars; at least, everywhere that was near dragons, which was anywhere an alchemist was likely
to go. They all had their lamps, kept where they were needed, and you acquired an instinct about where to look for them. She took one out of its box. She’d made them herself once – a
little cylinder of thin brown glass, a small cup of Kyamberan’s potion filling the glass halfway, then a disc of waxed paper, carefully sealed on top. When it was dry, fill the top half of
the lamp with caveworm essence and seal it shut. Some lamps had a hole in the top with a small stick you could use to poke at the seal between the two halves. Others were closed and had to be
shaken to break the seal and make them to work. Every alchemist learned to make lamps. If she looked, she’d probably find all the pieces she needed right here.

Age had done no favours to the seal inside and the lamp started to glow almost as soon as she picked it up. A dim and cold white light slowly filled the room. The Adamantine Man had been right:
there was a workshop here, or part of one. There were benches, chairs, a rack on the wall filled with pots of powders of dried herbs and roots . . . and a skeleton in the corner.

She jumped back and almost dropped the lamp. The skeleton sat slumped with its legs sprawled out, its skull lying on the floor beside a pile of empty bottles. He – she maybe – was
still dressed in a few rags. The skeleton had a knife resting between its fingers. The other arm was across its lap. She could almost see his end – the last alchemist of the Raksheh, lost and
alone among the ashes, furious dragons overhead, too scared to leave his cellar, slowly starving, finally caving in to despair and cutting himself deep and simply letting the blood flow.

‘Any food down there?’ shouted Skjorl from the trapdoor. Kataros jumped again. ‘See you found some light.’

‘No. No food.’ She hadn’t looked, but no alchemist with his head on right would keep food in the same place as he kept his materials. There were far too many ways that could go
wrong.

‘Raw fish again then.’ On their second day along the river the Adamantine Man had found a tattered fishing net half buried in the mud. Ever since, he’d been obsessed with using
it. No more roots and berries, even though they were plentiful; Skjorl wanted meat. As it turned out, he was a decent fisherman, and he came back every dawn with three or four of them, expertly
gutted, and it never seemed to take him very long. Kataros’ stomach turned. Roots and berries she understood.

As soon as she heard Skjorl’s footsteps recede, she went back to looking at what the alchemists here had left her. Most powders kept well enough if they stayed dry, and most roots and
leaves too, although you could never be sure there wasn’t any contamination. Did she need anything?

‘So.’

For the third time she almost jumped out of her skin. Now it was Siff, crouching at the top of the steps. She’d forgotten about him; she’d grown so used to him being mute and slung
across the Adamantine Man’s shoulders.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Yes.’ She watched him come down the ladder. He moved slowly, carefully and cautiously. ‘Finding your strength again?’

‘Yes, I’m on the mend,’ he said when he got to the bottom. He met her eye. ‘Don’t feel like I’m closer to the ghosts of my ancestors than I am to living any
more. Thanks to you, I suppose. Doggy gone for a bit?’

‘Skjorl is fishing for us.’ Siff’s contempt for the Adamantine Man was fine enough when it was to Skjorl’s face. Alone with him, she found it uncomfortable. Maybe it was
being in a room with one way out and him standing between her and it, or maybe it was that the Adamantine Man he so despised was the one who carried him and caught the food that was giving him back
his strength. Maybe it was both.

‘The Raksheh’s not far away. What you going to do with him when we get there?’ He ran his fingers over the bottles in the rack beside the steps. ‘This what I think it
is?’

‘Drink it and find out.’

‘Think I might. We won’t need doggy in the forest. There’s no dragons there. What you going to do with him?’ He took out a bottle of wine and pulled the cork with his
teeth. Took a swig. ‘Nice.’

‘I don’t know.’ Something about the way the outsider moved told her to be cautious. She went to the alchemists’ bench and took down a couple of pots of powders without
looking at what they were, then took her knife out of her belt and put it on the table beside her. ‘You could make yourself useful. Go and tell him to bring back some water from the
river.’

Siff didn’t move. Instead he took another mouthful of wine. ‘You should try this.’

Kataros took down a mortar. She pricked her finger with her knife and dripped blood into it. Blood went into everything, every potion an alchemist ever made. Blood was what gave them power and
always had been.
Look under our robes and we’re no different from blood-mages
, that’s what her teacher had said.
But for the love of your ancestors, don’t tell
anyone
.

‘You need to get rid of him,’ said Siff after a bit. ‘Give me your knife. I’ll do it.’

‘No.’

‘He wants to kill me.’ Siff smirked at her. ‘We both know what he wants to do to you.’

‘I will not permit him to do either.’

The outsider wrinkled his nose. Took another gulp. ‘I don’t think that’s good enough.’

‘It will have to be.’

Siff shook his head. ‘No. It won’t.’

Kataros stopped what she was doing and turned to look him in the eye. ‘Do you know how I bound him to me? I put my blood in him. Think, outsider, about who has fed you water, medicine,
food. Do you think for a moment I haven’t done the same to you.’ She reached into herself, looking for Siff, looking for where he was bound and shackled.

And found nothing.

‘No, alchemist.’ For a moment, in the gloom, it seemed that his eyes shone too brightly. ‘No, that won’t work on me. I’m not like your doggy.’

He came towards her, his eyes still too bright and now filled with a menace she hadn’t seen there before. Kataros stepped back. She held out the knife towards him. ‘What are you
doing?’

‘I’m going back to the Raksheh. I’m going back to that cave and I’m taking what’s there. I wonder if you think you’re going to stop me?’

She took another step away. ‘That depends, Siff, on what’s there to take.’

‘Exactly what you think. The power of the Silver King.’

‘And if that’s true, what would you do with it?’

He laughed. ‘I’d probably do some of the things you’d want me to and a good few things you wouldn’t.’ His eyes were alive now, burning with silver light.

‘What did you find there, outsider? Don’t tell me it was truly the Silver King’s tomb because I know that cannot be. That is not where he was taken!’

‘You think the Isul Aieha was bound by mere flesh and bone?’

‘The Silver King is gone, Siff! What little of his essence remains is what is used to bind the dragons!’ Such secrets as these had cost her dearly once, overheard as she slipped
through places she didn’t belong to see her lover. Even
she
wasn’t supposed to know these things. ‘Whatever is there, it must be used for the realms. The dragons . .
.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not bound by mere flesh and bone? And what would
you
know of these things, an outsider from the mountains?’

‘Oh a pox on the dragons!’ He laughed at her. ‘We all know they weren’t anything more than the Silver King’s pets. They’ll be put in their place. It’ll
all be like it was, back in the old days.’

She stared at him, half in awe, half in horror. ‘You want to bring him back!’

‘And you don’t?’

A shape appeared at the top of the trapdoor. It hovered there for an instant and then flew down. Skjorl landed on Siff’s back, thumping him to the floor. The light in Siff’s eyes
flared; he snarled and started to rise, but then the Adamantine Man had a handful of his hair and slammed Siff’s head into the ground. Once, twice, and the silver light went out of
Siff’s eyes and he fell still.

‘Shit-eater.’ Skjorl sat on his back. He’d found a piece of rope from somewhere – here or else he’d had it all along and Kataros hadn’t noticed. He hog-tied
Siff, kicked him once and then looked at Kataros and laughed. ‘You always know where you stand with his sort. First chance he got he was going to run. Obvious.’

‘It was more than that.’ Maybe she should have kept that to herself.

‘Was it?’ The Adamantine Man laughed again. ‘Was it now? I

can imagine. Wanted something from you before he ran did he?’

‘Not what you think.’

‘Oh don’t be so sure about that.’ The Adamantine Man took Siff’s bottle of wine, which lay on the floor, spilling itself into a puddle. He took a gulp of what was left.
‘You think he must be like you because you were both thrown into prison to die. Doesn’t make him like you at all. He’s a shit-eater. They’re all the same. He’ll turn
on you first chance he gets.’

‘He wanted me to kill you.’

‘Well he certainly can’t do it himself.’ Skjorl seemed unmoved. ‘You want me to go get that fish now? He won’t be going anywhere.’

‘Take him with you.’

‘Take him with me?’ He shook his head, then waved the bottle at her. ‘I’ll take this with me though.’

‘Take him with you and watch him. I need to work. In peace.’

The Adamantine Man looked around the cellar. He sniffed and then shrugged. ‘You get lonely, you let me know. I’ll be back before sunrise.’ With that he lifted the outsider over
his shoulder and carefully climbed out, and she was alone, alone with the ghosts of the alchemists who’d died down here.

She climbed up the ladder too, just to make sure Skjorl was really gone. When she saw him plodding away towards the river, she returned to the cellar. Ghosts. Ghosts were for children; there
weren’t any of those here, not really. What
was
here was a gift. Powders, dried roots, herbs, mushrooms, everything an alchemist could want except that most precious thing of all,
blood, and for that she had her own. She set to work.

Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum

He had gaps. He knew that, had known it for a long time. Gaps that had started that night in the Raksheh when he’d gone to sleep one night and woken up to find that
autumn had turned into spring and a mound of dead men had become nothing more than a few scattered bones, overgrown and almost lost beneath the grass. That had been the first, but it hadn’t
been the last.

He’d walked along the banks of the Yamuna. Roots and fruits grew beside it; a clever man with the right skills could hunt too, catch a fish maybe or one of the animals that lived in holes
by the water. He didn’t have a bow, but he had a knife for killing and skinning and he was quick enough with his hands. His injuries were all gone. He’d felt more alive, more vital than
he could remember.

The next gap had come in the middle of one night, rolling in agony, his stomach clenched in a knot. He’d never felt such a pain. He’d poisoned himself, eaten something he
shouldn’t, and now he was going to die. One minute he was screaming, vomiting, tearing at his own skin, the next he was walking along the banks of the river in bright sunshine, just as
he’d been doing the day before and the day before that as though nothing had happened. No trace of the pain. No trace of anything. He told himself it had been a dream.

The first signs of people had come not long after. He’d found a hollowed-out tree trunk, pulled up against the shore with a few tracks leading away into the trees. He’d counted three
men, wondered for a bit about taking whatever they had and stealing their boat, and then thought better of it. When they came back, he gave them what he’d taken from the dead dragon-riders
and their slaves, what little he’d been able to find and didn’t need for himself. They were outsiders like him, after all. Outsiders stuck together, them against the rest of the world.
They told him that the dragons were flying free and that the power of the dragon-kings and their riders was shattered into shards. He’d rejoiced at that. They all had.