The Black Mausoleum (Memory of Flames 4) (7 page)

‘It just needs a hatchling small enough to squeeze through one of those tunnels and we’re finished,’ said Jasaan. Skjorl shrugged. Obvious really. Wasn’t sure why it
needed to be said.

‘We’re finished anyway,’ he muttered. ‘Look at us.’ No place among the Adamantine Men for cripples.

‘We’ll heal.’

Skjorl took a deep breath and sighed. He passed Jasaan some of Vish’s herbs to mix with his water and took some himself. Something to numb the pain. ‘Sun’s up. We’ve
smashed a good few eggs but not all of them. There’s others somewhere. As soon as one hatches, it’ll be small enough to come after us. We could barely face an angry old crone, never
mind a dragon.’

Jasaan offered some of his bread. Brothers together. Sharing everything. Live together, die together. Old traditions like that stuck with you, even in places like this. ‘We did what we
were asked to do.’

Skjorl shook his head and took his own bread instead. ‘Some of it. There’s no one left at Bloodsalt, but we won’t be getting back to tell anyone that. And there’s still
dragons. We didn’t kill the dragons.’

‘We killed one of them.’

‘Vish and I killed it.’ Skjorl stood up. He was tired enough to drop and he had nothing he wanted to say. ‘I’m going to look around for a bit. Get some rest. When
it’s dark we’ll see if we can find another way out.’ Which didn’t make any sense – no point spending the day hiding somewhere when the dragons already knew where you
were – but Jasaan didn’t argue, and Skjorl left him sitting there, busy trying to make some sort of splint for his ankle. He walked on through the cisterns. Not really looking for a way
out because he wasn’t expecting to find one, but just to be on his own.

After a bit he walked back to where the roof had come in, to where there was some light, and looked at his hand. Tried to take his gauntlet off, but that hurt too much, so he was left with
poking and prodding. Half pulverised. Two fingers shattered, a third one broken. At least the burns on his palm weren’t too bad.

He stopped there, in a ray of sunlight, and listened. If the second dragon was anywhere nearby, there was no sign of it. No sounds, no tremors in the earth. It was almost a disappointment. Being
eaten would have been easy, the quick way out, but when that didn’t happen he looked at the rubble instead. A man with two good hands and two good feet could climb that. Scramble straight up.
Simple. Might not be any holes big enough for a dragon to get through, but a man, now he wouldn’t have any trouble at all.

Dragons had good eyes in the daylight. Could spot a man moving through the desert from a mile away. Couldn’t pretend the temptation wasn’t there, though – just start climbing.
Never mind that he’d be leaving Jasaan behind. Never mind the noise it might make. Never mind being seen, just get up and go, and keep on going until claws and teeth closed around him.

Something scraped on the ground behind him. He spun around, fumbling for his axe, ready for a hatchling, but it was Jasaan.

‘I thought that too. Could be the only way out.’

‘Could be.’

‘When it gets dark, then?’

‘If the dragon doesn’t come back.’ Which it would. It knew they were there and it knew what they’d done.

‘Perhaps we should look for another.’

‘You go do that then.’ The adult was away. Hunting. Had to be. The young ones, they could be anywhere, but the big one would come back in the evening. It would tear its way in and
then they’d die.

No. No, by the great Flame, that
wasn’t
going to happen. If he was going to die, it was going to be
his
way. ‘Come on.’

‘What?’

‘Come on!’ He started to climb up the rubble.

‘What are you doing?’

‘We stay here, we die. So we don’t stay here. We get out before the big one comes back again. We get as far as we can. We hide up in the afternoon. As soon as it’s dark, we
press on. It’ll look for us here but we’ll be somewhere else. Not up the Sapphire valley. We head up towards the moors. Until we can kill dragons again. Then we come back and we finish
what we came here for.’

Jasaan was shaking his head. ‘There’s hatchlings. They’ll see you.’

‘Us, Jasaan. If they see anything, they’ll see
us
. And maybe they will and maybe they won’t, but I’m not waiting down here to die, and you’re coming with
me.’ Jasaan would slow him down, but in truth, neither of them was much use in a fight any more.

‘No! Skjorl, stay here. Wait until night! There might be another way. There might be other tunnels somewhere.’

He was halfway up the pile of broken stone already. Didn’t bother to look back or even to shake his head. True, there might be another way out of the cisterns, but he didn’t care.
There weren’t any tunnels for people to hide in, not in a place like this. No catacombs like in Sand, no endless caves like there were under the Purple Spur. Just desert. Hot, harsh and much
too bright. No, and Jasaan wouldn’t stay down here on his own either. Skjorl reached the top and waited, squinting against the fierce daylight. The cisterns had been built underneath some
sort of palace, not that there was much left of it now. Dragons had taken their time over destroying it. Burned it from the outside and then smashed it down with tail and claw and trampled it and
burned it again. Same as they’d done to Outwatch all those months ago. Pieces of carved masonry lay heaped about, broken statues, fragments of walls and floors covered in patterns of tiny
coloured tiles. That sort of thing. All the pointless finery that had once surrounded the great lords of the realms. Looking at it now made him want to laugh. The sun was high in the sky,
blistering hot. He took a swig of water from his skin. That was all he needed. The sun on his back, a splash of water and something to fight. None of this pointless pride.

A stone head stared at him sideways from the rubble, its body lost amid the tumbled stones. There was something familiar about it. When Skjorl turned and stared back, he recognised it. Speaker
Hyram. The last one to serve out his years. The speaker under whom this had started. One dragon gone missing, that was all, the white he’d seen at Outwatch. One dragon and the realms were all
but destroyed. Speaker Zafir had followed him. Easy on the eye, that one. Then Speaker Jehal, the one they called the Viper. Now Skjorl served Jehal’s queen, Lystra. Or at least he had when
he’d left the Purple Spur. For all he knew she might be dead by now too, another speaker raised in her place. Speakers came and speakers went. He shook his head at Hyram’s still face.
‘What does it matter now? What do any of you matter?’

Jasaan climbed up beside him. Skjorl turned. ‘See. No one’s eaten me yet.’

‘Are they still here? Maybe they all flew off?’

‘Haven’t looked.’ He pointed to the head of Speaker Hyram. ‘Been talking to our old friend here.’

Jasaan looked sideways too. ‘I remember him.’

‘Don’t we all. The shaking speaker.’

‘Who buggered his pot boys and then murdered them and threw their bodies in the Mirror Lakes.’

Skjorl frowned. ‘Don’t think anyone ever knew more than they kept going missing.’ Maybe Hyram hadn’t amounted to very much as a speaker, but he’d been a mighty
sight better than what had followed. Besides, it never did any good to speak ill of the dead.

‘Relk always said he knew who it was who’d done away with the bodies. One of us. Different company but still one of us. Wrapped them in sheets and weighted them with stones and then
tossed them into the middle of the lake.’

Skjorl had to smile at that. ‘Relk reckoned he knew a soldier who’d shared Queen Shezira’s bed, that the Night Watchman himself shared Speaker Zafir’s and that there was
a blood-mage living under the Glass Cathedral masquerading as a surgeon. Never actually saw any of it himself, mind. Always someone else.’ He glanced up at the sky, screwed up his eyes and
looked away. After the blackness of the cistern everything out here was too bright.

‘There was a body went out to the lakes the night Hyram died. No one saw who it was. Wasn’t a boy, though. Was a woman from the weight of it. Some assassin with a knife for Speaker
Zafir, hiding in her rooms in the Tower of Air. Was King Jehal’s riders – prince he was then – who took it away. Already wrapped up. Asked about a bit the next day and tracked
where they’d gone with it. Out to the lakes in a boat. Don’t know who it was. They said there’d been a fight, but I reckon they were full of crap. No blood. Not on them, not on
their swords, not on anything, not even the smell of it in the air.’ He sniffed. ‘Me, I reckon we’re better off without the lot of them. Speakers, riders, kings, queens, princes,
any of them.’

Skjorl stiffened. Treason talk that was, even out here.‘We serve the speaker, Jasaan, whoever that might be,’ he growled. ‘Orders. The Guard obeys orders. From birth to death.
Nothing more, nothing less.’

‘And who do the speakers serve, Skjorl? Themselves?’

‘They serve the realms, Jasaan. Any more talk like that and you’ll hang.’

Jasaan looked as him as though he was mad and then burst out laughing. ‘We’re in the middle of a lifeless burned-out city in the middle of a desert. There’s probably not a
single other person alive for a hundred miles in any direction. I can’t walk, you can’t hold your axe and there are dragons everywhere; they know we’re here and are probably
hunting us, and you think I should be worried about getting hanged if we ever make it back? Vishmir’s cock!’

‘I’ll hang you here and now if I have to, soldier.’ Didn’t expect to mean it, but he did.
From birth to death.
The most solemn oath in the realms. An Adamantine
Man who didn’t believe in that, who didn’t believe in all the things that made them what they were, well, they didn’t deserve to live.

‘No, you won’t, Skjorl. Don’t be a dick.’

‘This is still my company, Jasaan. You going to hop on your own all the way back to the Spur?’

‘You’re as crippled as I am.’

‘I can walk, Jasaan. Big difference.’

Jasaan raised a hand in submission. ‘Your way, boss. From birth to death. I always served as I was asked. I’m here, aren’t I? Out in the middle of this shit?’

Skjorl let his anger fade. ‘That you are.’ Maybe Jasaan didn’t deserve it. And three hands would be better than one on the way back, however far they got before a dragon ate
them. And he was right, wasn’t he? They were both as crippled as each other now. Two would be better than one. Just as long as they carefully kept on not talking about Scarsdale.

They stayed in the narrowest streets on their way out of the city. Once his eyes finally got used to the desert sunlight, Skjorl climbed up to the top of the smashed remains of something that
might have been an old temple to the Great Flame. He searched the skies and the distant sands and salt flats and the waters of Bloodsalt Lake for anything that looked like a dragon, big or small.
Past the city’s bones was a yellow-white flatness, boiling and shimmering in the late-morning heat, and then the deep deep blue of the sky. If there were dragons out there, he couldn’t
see them. In the haze he wasn’t sure he ever would.

They hobbled on, pitifully slow and sweating fit to drown. Skjorl saw a lizard the size of his hand once, basking on a stone. Nothing else moved. When they stopped to rest and drink, he emptied
his water skin without even noticing.

‘Keep on like this and we’ll die from the heat, never mind any dragons,’ muttered Jasaan.

Skjorl nodded. ‘We’ll stay here then.’ Probably they were far enough from where they’d killed the dragon. He looked about and picked a house still in one piece, made out
of baked mud or some such and washed in white. One room, low roof. A few old blankets rolled up in a corner. Not much else. Whoever had lived here, they were long gone. Dead somewhere. Burned by
dragons or maybe eaten. Or killed by the desert heat somewhere between the city and the place a hundred miles away where the dragons had blocked up the Sapphire. They’d found plenty enough
old bones along the river’s course. Skeletons. Skulls. Whole families sometimes. People died. Skjorl knew that better than most, but when you took a step and heard a crack and looked down to
find you’d just snapped the sun-bleached bones of a child . . . Well, made you stop and think for a moment it did.

‘Jasaan . . .’

But he was already asleep.

Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum

Prince Lai’s wings. She’d heard of them but she’d never met someone who’d seen a pair. The legendary prince had made them during the War of Thorns when
the first Valmeyan had him trapped in the Pinnacles. The story went that he’d launched himself off the top of the Fortress of Watchfulness in the middle of the night and flown all the way to
Furymouth, hundreds of miles to the south, to warn his brother Vishmir. After the war he made more, and across the realms there were said to be maybe a dozen pairs. If that was true then most of
them were right here.

The Adamantine Man dragged a pair to the edge of the cave, first one wing and then another. Each was enormous, three or four times the size of a man, a fraction of a true dragon’s wing but
huge nonetheless. He bolted them together. ‘Sit in the harness,’ he told her. ‘Left arm down to turn left. Right arm down to turn right. Both arms down when you’re about to
land. Come on.’

She stared at him. ‘Come on?’

‘Yes.’ He pointed to the wings and then moved towards her, as if to help her buckle herself in. She hissed and recoiled.

‘You don’t touch me!’ She reached into him through the blood-bond but he was still held tight. He meant her no harm, not now.

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. You go first. I’ll come after. I’ll be heavier, so I’ll pass you. Try and go where I go.’

She stared at him a while longer, then at the wings. Yes, she’d heard of Prince Lai’s wings, like every alchemist who studied the history of the War of Thorns back at the Palace of
Alchemy. She’d seen pictures. It had never occurred to her that they were actually real, that they were anything more than a nice story.