The Black Mausoleum (Memory of Flames 4) (5 page)

Sounds of something smashing, of stones shattered and falling. Where the covered canal had fed into the wall, where Jex and Relk and the others had been only a moment ago, Skjorl saw a patch of
darkness that wasn’t quite black. Stars. He was seeing stars. He was seeing the sky.

Then something blotted them out. Filled the hole. And as he looked away, the fire started.

Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum

‘He can’t walk.’ The Adamantine Man was looking down at Rat, his face saying loudly that he couldn’t care less.

‘Then you have to carry him.’

‘What’s the point? He’ll be dead in a few days.’ He did what he was told, though: he picked the outsider up and slung him over his shoulder. Rat groaned.

‘No. You’re going to keep him alive just like you’re going to keep me alive. We need him.’

‘To do what?’

Kataros ignored him. He was obedient – that was all that mattered – and she’d never said anything about not asking questions. ‘How do we get out of here without being
caught?’ The Adamantine Man shrugged. ‘You don’t
know
?’

‘No.’

She thought about that for a few seconds. While she thought, the Adamantine Man stood in the middle of the cell with Rat over his back. He didn’t do anything; he just stood there, waiting.
‘We’ll have to find someone who does, then,’ she snapped at him.
Think. Think!
The Pinnacles were surrounded by dragons. Back in the days of the speakers, when Queen Zafir
had lived here, people had landed them on the tops of the peaks, but there were other ways in. There were passages and tunnels down to the ruin of the Silver City – Kataros knew that because
that was how they’d brought her here in the first place.

She’d have to find someone else, someone who knew the ways. She’d have to make another blood-bond. Some of the alchemists under the Purple Spur had quietly been getting a lot of
practice at that. There, like here, you survived as best you could. Every day you ate, someone else didn’t. But not her. If she bound someone else, she might have to let this one go.
There’d be consequences to that.

The Adamantine Man sniffed. ‘Actually, I do know a way,’ he said. ‘As long as it’s dark. Up and out the side.’

‘Up?’

‘Yes.’

‘You want me to climb down the side of the mountain? They’re sheer cliffs out there! And how are you going to carry
him
?’

He was shaking his head. ‘No climbing. It’s easier than that.’ He frowned. ‘It’s like flying, I suppose. But not on the back of a dragon.’

She reached through the blood-bond, looking for the trick, for the deception, for the twisting of her demand, but there was nothing. He believed what he was saying.

‘It’s supposed to be a way down to the Silver City.’

‘
Supposed
to be? You mean you don’t know?’

He shrugged. ‘I know what I’ve heard, and what I’ve heard is there’s a way. You fly like a bird. I’ve not done it, but I’ve heard how.’

She looked a second time. He still meant every word.

‘Once you leave, you can’t come back. So they don’t guard it,’ he said.

‘Show me.’ Like a bird? Was that possible? How did a man grow wings?

‘Do you know what it’s like in the Silver City?’

‘No.’ She shook her head and she didn’t care. They’d go where they had to, and that was that.

‘You’re an alchemist. Do you know how to make a potion so a dragon doesn’t know where you are?’

‘Yes. What of it?’

‘Got any on you?’

She looked down at herself. A robe, torn and dirty, and that was it. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Well, since there’s dragons down there, we’ll most likely die then.’

Eight months before the Black Mausoleum

After the darkness, the brilliance of the flames pouring from the mouth of the canal was blinding. Skjorl couldn’t look. Couldn’t think. Was just thankful he could
see again, could see where his feet were landing. Could run. That was all that mattered. Getting away. Everything else came later, if it came at all, with the dazed knowing that you were still
alive.

The mouth of the canal was about the size of a dragon’s head. The rest wouldn’t fit. It would have to smash its way in. He had time. Time to get away.

Jex had been up there. Relk, Marran, Kasern. All dead. A snap of fate’s fingers and gone, just like that.

A storm of warm air tore at his clothes. The dragon was too far away to hurt him. Yet. He tried to think about where each foot was going, in between the chaos of broken stones and dragon eggs.
Just that. Nothing else.

Then he saw the second one. Down in the cisterns. A huge wriggling shape, a shadow in the distant haze, weaving between the columns. Saw a flicker of it, hundreds of yards away, coming towards
him before the fire from the first dragon stopped, plunging them all back into darkness. Jasaan and Vish? He had no idea where they were, whether they were alive.

He kept moving. The alchemists said that dragons talked in your head sometimes, but he’d never had that. Kill, eat, burn, that’s all a dragon was.

The ground shook again, now with the crash of tumbling stone. That was the dragon worming its way towards him, given up on not smashing down the columns that held the cisterns together. A mad
grin swept across his face. Maybe they’d all end up buried alive. Entombed together. A fitting end for an Adamantine Man.

His foot caught on something. Hurled forward, he curled up before he even hit the ground, rolled and let his armour take the impact. First thing he did when he was back on his feet was check the
pouches of dragon poison wrapped around him. Instinct, that was. There wasn’t much else you could do about a dragon except be eaten, and there wasn’t much point in that unless you were
going to take the monster with you. All burn together, him from the outside, the dragon from within. What else was the point?

Thing was to get to an edge, a wall, somewhere that would give shelter when the roof came down. Then hunker down and pray.

Shudders rippled through the ground. More tumbling stones and the cisterns lit up with fire again. He didn’t look back, took what he could get and sprinted. There was no running from
dragons, but that didn’t stop a man wanting to try, not when there was one right behind you.

A deeper rumble shook the earth. The dragon behind him roared. The stones answered. A huge hand of air plucked Skjorl off his feet and threw him across the floor, bouncing between dragon eggs.
He thumped into a step and cracked his head hard enough to make the world waver, even through his helmet. He blinked hard. Everything went dark again. The fire had stopped. The air was ripe with
dust, rich with the smell of falling masonry and the rumble of tumbling stone.

He sniffed. Fresh air from outside too. Sand. The smell of sand and salt.

He smiled, but that wasn’t enough so he laughed, and even then he needed more. ‘You stupid dragon,’ he roared. ‘You actually did it. Vishmir’s cock!’ He stood
up, filled with being alive. Filled with what felt like victory. Took a few steps back towards where the dragon had been before he stopped himself. Still couldn’t see a thing.

There was the other one. Somewhere.

Ought to slip off. Tiptoe between the eggs and hope another one didn’t hatch. Ought to. Really, really ought to. That’s what a man with an ounce of sense would do.

‘Vish? Skjorl?’

Jasaan?
He tried to make out where the call had come from. He counted to ten and when there wasn’t a raging dragon coming after him he reached for his firebox. Mad.
What am I
doing?
But by the time he’d asked himself that, the firebox was lit. Didn’t help much. All he could see was a thick mist of dust.

‘Skjorl?’ Jasaan’s voice was laced with pain.

‘Jasaan?’ Took a couple of steps. Stopped.
Somewhere
out there was still a dragon. Maybe more than one. Maybe the hatchlings too.

‘Jasaan?’ A second voice.

‘Vish?’

‘Yep. Still alive. Skjorl?’

‘Still got all my bits.’ Friendly voices in the dark gave him strength. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘I can see you.’

‘The roof caved in.’ Jasaan’s voice was strained but he wasn’t gasping.

‘And the dragon?’

‘It’s not moving.’

‘You can
see
it?’ He couldn’t make out any other light.

There was a pause. ‘It’s close. And I’m hurt.’

Skjorl frowned at that. Adamantine Men were never hurt. They kept going or they fell over and crawled off to die, and if that was what they were going to do, they did it on their own without
bothering anyone about it. The creed of the Guard had no room for the sick or the injured, no time or space for helping the wounded. You stopped to help someone when there was a dragon about, you
both wound up dead. That simple. ‘Where are you?’

‘Over here.’

‘What about the dragon. It moving?’

‘I think it’s stuck.’

What Skjorl should be doing, he decided, was leaving. What Jasaan ought to be doing, unless he had two broken legs and two broken arms, was crawling over to wherever that dragon was and tipping
poison down its throat.

No.
His
company. So that was what
he
ought to be doing.

Crap.

‘Vish! You keep going. See if you can find another way out of here.’

‘Bollocks!
You
do that. I got me a dragon to slay.’

‘Where’s the other one?’

‘Can’t see.’

‘You keep away from that tunnel.’

‘You think I’m an idiot, boss?’

Skjorl growled. He started to move as quickly as he could through the haze of dust and the litter of rubble. Off towards Jasaan. By the time he got there, he could see the pile of fallen stone
where the dragon had to be.

The floor shuddered again. The other dragon, the one that had burned Jex and Kasern and the others. It was somewhere behind the cave-in now. Or could be a third. No way to tell.

Jasaan was standing up, leaning against the broken stub of one of the pillars. He had one foot held off the ground. Ankle. Skjorl could see that straight away. Couldn’t walk. Could hop
though.

‘You’re alive then.’

Jasaan nodded.

‘That way.’ Skjorl pointed back the way he’d come. ‘Look for a way out.’ Maybe there wasn’t one, but it was that or climb past the collapsed roof, over the
top of one dragon and straight into the path of another.

‘Don’t know why you’re standing around gossiping. Got nothing better to do?’ Vish trotted past them both.

‘I can’t, Skjorl.’ There was that pain in Jasaan’s voice again. ‘I can hardly move.’

‘You just wait here then.’ Skjorl took a moment and then followed Vish. Through the settling dust he could see the edges of the collapse. It was huge. Some building or other had sat
on top of the cisterns and the whole thing had come down. Great slabs of cracked brickwork, of tiled floor covered in mosaics. Stone pillars and old scorched beams that still smelled of ash.

Another rumble, a reminder that there was a second dragon around here somewhere.

‘Hey! Dragon! Are you already dead under there?’ Vish had his axe out, his own faithful mistress.

‘Still plenty of eggs to end if it is.’ Skjorl stared at the rubble. Looked up. He could feel a breeze. There was a way out here if they wanted it.

‘Ah. There you are. Tyan’s fury – if only I had a spear!’

The dragon was buried from the neck down. It’s eyes were very slightly open, but it didn’t move. Skjorl’s first thought was that it was dead, but then he saw it blink.

‘Spear through the eye,’ muttered Vish as Skjorl stood beside him. ‘That would do it. Right in deep.’

The head shifted slightly. Turned a fraction towards them. Despite himself, Skjorl froze for an instant. He had a dragon, right in front of him. A woken adult dragon. He took another moment to
savour not being dead.

‘Poison. We have to poison it.’ There was always leaving it alone. Letting it starve until it burned from the inside. But no, couldn’t do that. Couldn’t leave a monster
alive if he could leave it dead. Always the chance that some other dragon would dig it free.

The dragon’s lips curled back, letting them see its teeth. Vish weighed his axe. As he climbed close, it tried to snap at him, but it couldn’t turn its head far enough to reach, not
with the stones crushing its neck. It sent a weak blast of fire at Skjorl, forcing him to shelter behind a shattered column, but then Vish was round behind it, and when it tried to reach him,
Skjorl dashed up the rubble, and then they were both where it couldn’t touch them, halfway up and round the back of its head. It shuddered and closed its eyes and lay still.

From the far side of the collapse, stone smashed against stone. Skjorl set to work on one side, Vish on the other. Killing the dragon with their axes was hard, like chopping at stone, but the
monster never made a sound. Its eyes opened towards the end, looking at them as they finally hacked their way through its scales to the sinew and bone beneath, and then slowly closed again. Skjorl
stopped, panting from the effort. Vish kept chopping away until Skjorl raised a hand.

‘Enough. It’s dead. Let’s go.’

Vish grinned back at him like a madman. ‘We killed a dragon, Skjorl! We killed a dragon! With our axes! We killed a dragon and we’re walking away.’

‘And we’ve got eggs to finish. And there’s still the other one.’ The ground shook. ‘Can’t expect those stones to stop it for ever.’ The Night Watchman
had killed more then ten on the night the Adamantine Palace had burned, but he’d had the Speaker’s Spear and the dragons still got him in the end. He and Vish, they’d killed an
adult and they’d done it with steel and their bare hands. Not much chance they’d get back to the Purple Spur to brag about it, but Vish deserved his smile. They both did.

A stone the size of a child hit Vish square in the back with the force of a charging horse, arcing down from the top of the collapse. Vish sailed through the air like a thrown-away doll, arms
and legs limp and loose. He landed like a sack of turnips. Skjorl stared in disbelief. Then jumped away and looked behind him. Just a pale white haze of dust and sand in the air lit up by his
firebox. Beyond that: darkness. He could hear, though. Stones moving.