The Silver Kings (8 page)

They walked on, cautious and tight together, lightning throwers held ready until the Silver King’s Ways converged under the Pinnacles in the vast cavern of the Undergates, whose white stone glowed with the same inner light. Water plunged from the cavern roof here, crashing to the stone floor, brushing the air with cold mist, tumbling in rivulets and channels and torrents all the way from the top of the mountain and the fountains of the Reflecting Garden. Zafir watched it fall, the clean fresh water from the fountains that spilled throughout the Silver King’s palace. It kept men alive, drained into the canals of the Silver City, mixing with rainwater from the little streams and brooks that wound among the surrounding meadows and fields; but it all came back and ended here, draining away down the old white stone tunnel to the Ghostwater near Farakkan. The Undergates were the only way in and out of the mountain unless you came on a dragon, and they were barred by dragon-rider guards and traps and deadfalls and barricades, and old sorceries worse than any imagination.

Unless, of course, you knew their secrets.

Zafir crept around the edge of the cave, keeping away from the gates themselves. Rafts – not much more than a few lumps of wood strung together – were drawn up at the water’s edge where the underground river flowed off towards Farakkan. She crept into the shallows and crouched there. Of all the hidden entrances to her palace, this was her most secret. Hands pushed beneath icy water, brushing aside sand and gravel and slime until she touched the white stone beneath. Her fingers felt the contours of it, the outline of a sigil etched under the dirt.

‘They’ve seen us!’ Snacksize raised her lightning thrower. Armoured dragon-riders ran from the gates, fanning across the cave.

Zafir traced the outline of the sigil under the water with a naked finger.

‘Come close!’ A silver light shimmered beneath her feet. She pulled her Adamantine Men – if you could call this motley band that, but Tuuran did and she wasn’t about to argue – into a huddle and raised her arm, lightning ready. Light built around them. Her heart fluttered as the first rider from the gates closed, slowed and lifted his helm. Zafir saw his face. She knew him, if not his name. He stared in puzzlement, then disbelief as she raised her own visor, as the silver light grew ever brighter beneath her. She took off her helm and met his gaze, eye to eye, strength to strength, defiance to defiance.

‘I am Zafir,’ she said and lifted her bare hand so he might see the Speaker’s Ring still on her finger. She saw in his face that at last he knew her. Shock and loathing twisted him. He lunged.

‘You will not—’

The light flared silver-bright. They were gone, lifted away by the magic of the Silver King, deep into the Pinnacles’ sorcerous heart.

The Undergates, the only way in and out of the fortress unless you knew better.

Light dimmed to dark. Tuuran smothered his torch, feeling his way through the tunnels in the pitch black, fondling the stone like it was the skin of a woman. Hadn’t ever liked this place even when it had been filled with light and noise, with chatter and laughter and the belly-rumbling smells of hot grease and mead. A fortress carved out of stone long before the Silver King. Catacombs all the way down. Secret doors scattered among the cellars of the Silver City. If you believed the stories, there were
things
buried here, old monsters, sorceries that would rip a man’s soul from his flesh. He felt its hostility at his intrusion. A resentment as old as the moon …

He shook himself. At least it put him in the right mood for hitting something.

Felt like bloody miles before he found the entrance to the Enchanted Palace. Couldn’t have been, nor anything like, but
felt
it. Easing his way in the blackness, ears straining, waiting for the counter-charge, the trap, the lurking knife. Then the glow of light ahead at last, and him as tight as cordage in a storm. Don’t think
.
Just run, axe in one hand, shield in the other. Let it all out – the rage, the frustration, the years of being a slave that lay behind him.

Soldiers waited with iron and steel and bleeding smiles. A wall of spears and shields, and he wouldn’t have given a pebble of shit, would have scattered them as easily as old gnawed bones, but these men were Adamantine, and he knew it at once from the way they held themselves. Was enough to pause him, and so he stopped an inch from their spear tips. His kin, these men, and he was theirs, and they saw it too. He lifted his visor.

‘I am Tuuran,’ he said, ‘and I am Adamantine.’

Eight of them blocking his way. Dozens of his own men coming up behind with Taiytakei lightning, half in gold-glass armour over dragonscale, but these eight wouldn’t flinch or budge. They’d hold their ground until they were dead. He’d expect nothing less. He tried again.

‘Her Holiness Zafir, queen of the Pinnacles and speaker of the nine realms, demands entrance.’ Not that he imagined for a moment they’d believe him. Was quite something that they even listened.

A soldier levelled his spear at Tuuran’s face. ‘Speaker Zafir died over Evenspire. Speaker Jehal at the Adamantine Palace. There
are
no speakers any more. Surrender yourself. King Hyrkallan will hear your voice, brother.’

Tuuran lowered his shield. Eight years a slave at sea, where the galley masters tossed lightning about the decks on a whim with a casual wave of their hand. When anger took them, then their bolts threw men into the air and left them black twitching corpses, but mostly it was pain they were after, and obedience. Tuuran nodded sharply and pressed his hands to his ears. Thunder flashed and flew about him. Men screamed and crashed to the stone. Not dead, because Tuuran knew his lightning, knew how much it took to kill a man and how to wrap one in fleeting agony. The soldiers behind him swarmed forward, beating the Adamantine Men down before they could rise again, taking their spears and their shields. It almost made him weep seeing that, seeing how easy it was.

‘Watch them.’ He gave Halfteeth a long hard look. ‘My brothers these, so Flame help any man who kills one, for I will flay him. And yes, Halfteeth, I
am
looking at you.
You
can stay with me.’

He pushed through. Adamantine Men were his brothers right enough, but somewhere here, hiding at the back, would be some prancy-arsed dragon-riders. Dragon-riders were different, and Halfteeth could do as he damn well liked. Dragon-riders could bleed and burn and die for all Tuuran cared, and he’d be happy to piss on them as they did.

The flare of silver light faded. In the deep heart of the Isul Aeiha’s labyrinth Zafir stood inside a vast hollow sphere of white stone, wide enough to swallow a palace. Its distant walls glowed with soft moonlight. White archways ringed her, while a single span of white stone reached from the centre of the void to its edge. Standing here was like standing in the centre of a bubble.

‘What is this?’ asked Vish. Hard as iron, most of these men, but here they clustered like frightened children about their mother.

‘A relic of the Silver King.’ Zafir ran a hand over the stone. ‘And nothing we should fear.’ As smooth as glass and cold. There were arches like these in the eyrie too.

‘But what
is
it?’ Vish peered anxiously over the edge at whatever lurked below, screwed up his face and shuddered. At the bottom of the curve beneath them was a pitch-dark hole.

‘No one knows.’ Zafir put the arches behind her. She crossed the white stone span. That hole wasn’t just any hole. If the stories were true then it was a hole in the world, but Vish probably didn’t want to hear that. ‘I used to come here when I was a child,’ she said. ‘I used to drop things over the edge into that hole. Stones and sticks and little things. I never did find where they came out.’ She clapped a hand on Vish’s shoulder. ‘So don’t fall, eh?’

He looked at her as though she was mad.

Blood ran down Tuuran’s axe. A rider threw himself forward, fury and a swinging blade. Tuuran caught the sword on his shield, feinted at the rider’s head, let him dodge, then kicked the bastard hard in the ankle, bashed in his face and floored him with a backswing. Twisted it at the last so the axe hit on the flat. Stupid buggers, these dragon-riders. Not one with a jot of sense of how to fight when they didn’t have their fat arses spread over the back of a dragon. Pompous bluster, toothless and pathetic. No stomach, no spine, spiritless rags now they’d lost their mounts. He picked the dazed rider up off the floor.

‘Who rules here?’

The rider spat blood in Tuuran’s face. Tuuran smashed him into the wall.

‘Let’s try that again. I’ll ask nicely, and if you really want to see how it feels while I rip your balls off with my bare hands, you won’t tell me. So. Who rules here?’

‘Hyrkallan!’

The second time he’d heard the name. Hadn’t meant anything when the Adamantine Men had crumbled before his lightning, but he’d had time to think about it now, between murdering stupid stuck-up fools with too little sense to run. Hyrkallan. From Sand in the north. He’d won the Speaker’s Tournament when Hyram took the Adamantine Throne. Strong and hard. Good. About time he found someone worth waking up for. He threw the rider away.

‘Chance we could do this the nice way, do you think? Settle matters with some pretty words?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. Dragon-riders didn’t bend. They couldn’t, because of what they were; and Adamantine Men, when it came to it, were more of the same. Dragons, that’s what it was. Left no space for anything but black and white.

More fighting ahead. Halfteeth clenched tight and impatient as a virgin in a brothel. Tuuran ran on and caught up in time to see him pick up a crippled rider and rip out his throat, then jump out into a hallway and thumb his nose at whoever was at the end of it. A flurry of crossbow quarrels chased him back into shelter. At least Tuuran had a few men still with him, and others catching up. They were getting strung out though. Dragon-riders coming from all sides. Could turn bad any time now. Tuuran hurried up close, took a quick peek around the corner and grinned. Coming at him from all sides, yes, but they weren’t actually stopping him, and now the arched entrance to the Octagon was right ahead. Queen Aliphera’s throne room. Where he wanted to be.

‘Gather everyone you can. Right here, right now.’ He crouched behind his shield, quarrels pinging off the walls around him. Sneaked a look, then dived across the open space. The Hall of Princes, was that what they called it? Crossbow bolts rattled around him. He rolled and jumped into a niche behind the statue of some old queen or other who’d just had a chunk chipped out of her face. Checked the lightning thrower on his arm. Bastard things were playing up. Not working right. Half-god enchantments all around. Made his skin crawl. Best not to think about it.

A volley of thunderclaps echoed ahead. Flashes of lightning through the archway to the Octagon itself. Tuuran braced himself. Glorious victory or a quick death, one way or the other. The riders in the Pinnacles hadn’t seen anything like his lightning, nor his Taiytakei gold-glass armour. So far he’d cut through them like a hot knife through soft old rotting cheese, but damn, there were more men here than he’d been ready for. Surrounded and out­numbered, flanked and nipping at his rear …

Right then. Time to end it.
He roared, hurling war cries and curses at his ancestors as he led the charge, loud enough to shake mountains and wake the dead. A quarrel slammed into his shield, cracking it. Another zinged over his head. A swarm of fight-crazed men pelting into the teeth of the storm, hiding behind their shields, screaming at the barricade across the entrance to the Octagon, laying into whoever was there until they shut up and stopped with the fucking crossbows. No idea how many he lost because he wasn’t looking back and wasn’t going to. Couldn’t see much inside as he ran either, except a swirling melee of men. Stupid idle thoughts came at him sideways.
Crazy Mad, he would have loved this
.

Almost at the barricade, and some bastard with a crossbow nearly took his head off; Tuuran returned the favour with a blast of lightning. That was that done, then. Someone screamed beside him. Another quarrel hit his shield and cracked it again –
that
cock-crawler could die too. It wasn’t as if they had an armoury stuffed full of shields and lightning throwers back on the eyrie, and they didn’t have an enchantress to fix things any more. He smashed through a gap between an upturned table and some sort of dresser and laid about with his axe, splitting the first evil bastard he saw almost in half, and bursting on into the throne room. One way or another it ended here.

The white stone bridge passed through an arch inscribed with sigils and out into a maze of halls and corridors. Etched archways lined the walls, plain and leading nowhere. The servants said the maze shifted, that it was never the same, that sometimes men became lost here for days, but Zafir had never found it so. There were darker stories that on full-moon nights the arches shimmered silver and sucked men inside them. The stories made sure no one ever came to the Silver King’s inner sanctum, that and the Hall of Mirages, where anyone who tried to cross found themselves back where they started until they unpicked the secret to its design.

Zafir led, twisting left and right, climbing stairs, always up wherever she could. One hall led past a gaping void, one wall open to an endless darkness. Another became a spiral of steps circling a torrent of water streaming over myriad carvings of monstrous creatures that had never existed. Archways faced her from every wall, and everything was carved with sigils. She remembered the feeling of the place now, how the Silver King’s palace felt alive, as though it was watching her, how it had crawled under her skin and laden her with dread and then, in later, darker years, had seemed oddly like a friend. A refuge.