The young ones said the web was gone now. Broken or destroyed. The dragon had yet to see. The dragon’s mate, Bright Lands Under Starlight, that one would see now. Careless and reckless, but what was a dragon if not those things? What did a dragon fear? And they had not expected that any little ones would come. Now the dragon’s hatchlings had scattered into the hills in search of cooler climes. Only the dragon remained.
It hunted.
The little ones had not gone far. It felt them, tiny senses of them at the fringes of thought, a flicker and then gone. It felt them when it searched, but never for more than a moment. Never for long enough to know where they were.
I know you are here! it raged at them, but they never answered. It flew up and down the river, burning the stone, searching.
In the night it crept down to where its mate lay under the stone. It tore the boulders away one by one until there was space for it to squeeze into where the little ones had been. It had not expected to find them still there, but the little ones were always surprising and the dragon was amused to see that one had, after all, remained. It walked aimlessly back and forth, so oblivious to the dragon’s presence that the dragon paused from simply burning it.
Little one. Why are you still here? There is nothing but death for you here.
There was something wrong with it, this little one. It wasn’t made right. The dragon touched its thoughts, but there were none. It lived, and yet it didn’t. And there again was that touch of wrongness that it remembered, now untainted by the tastes of the moon and the earth.
The dragon picked the little one up. Its head was floppy. It seemed broken. It didn’t speak. It didn’t even seem to noticed that a dragon held it.
The dragon carried it out into the moonlight. Where are the others? it asked. There were more, it knew that much. How many of you came?
The little one didn’t answer. It took the dragon a while to realise why: the little one was dead. It had been dead for some time. Its head was crushed and broken from flying stone, but some part simply wouldn’t let go.
The dragon hadn’t seen a walking dead thing for a long time. Not since its first lifetime. It wondered for a while what that meant. It thought about eating this little one. Dead or not, they tasted the same, but it had learned about eating little ones. They poisoned themselves. So it set this one down on the ground and watched to see what would happen. Eventually the sun rose. The little one stumbled away looking for shelter. Each time it did that, the dragon picked it up and put it back in the sun again.
It didn’t last long. The walking dead had never lasted long out in the sun.
The dragon called Blackscar looked at the broken body for a while and then tossed it far out into the salt lake where it would be less of a temptation. Then it went back to searching for the ones who had killed its mate.
It would find them. And when it did, they would burn.
13
Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum
Kataros crawled out from under the broken wings, stopping now and then to untangle herself from pieces of the harness. Sharp pains laced her side and her shoulder hurt when she moved it, enough to make her cry out.
When she was free, she stood up. In front of her was the Golden Temple, what was left of it, its broken dome a silhouette against the night stars. She’d never seen it in all its glory before it had burned in the death throes of the realms. Now, lit up by the moon and the ten thousand constellations of the night, all she could see were shapes and greys. On this side were a series of flying buttresses, looping out of the stonework down to the wide space where she stood — what had once been a gathering place running the entire length of the temple. Behind her, the dark waters of one of the city’s canals whispered quietly in the night.
The pain in her ribs was something she could live with if she walked carefully. The shoulder was getting worse though. Under the Purple Spur with her potions and half a hundred herbs, roots and powders, the injury wouldn’t have mattered. They weren’t the sort of things that could mend a fracture, if that’s what it was, but she could have done something about the swelling and the pain. Here she had nothing, not even a knife, or a pestle and a mortar. All she had was her blood.
She hadn’t given much thought to what came next. The Adamantine Man and his tunnels under the city. She had to find him. They needed to reach shelter before dawn, and now that she was hurt, she was still going to need his help. More than the pain, that was what irritated her.
She reached through the blood-bond, searching for him. It was harder than before, the distance between them making it more difficult to reach him. She hadn’t expected that.
There!
He was raging, fury surging through him. One of them was on his back, scrabbling at his neck. Another one was hissing and dancing around in front of him. Two more were dragging off the body of the outsider. He hurled himself backwards, slamming into a wall to shake loose the one grabbing at his shoulders…
Kataros reeled. The emotion of the fight surged through her, almost making her trip over her own feet. Her fists clenched. She had a vague sense of where he was, somewhere back towards the black tower that was the mountain from which she’d come, the Fortress of Watchfulness.
He had the one off his back by the arm now. Wrenched it over his shoulder and crashed it down onto the ground. Didn’t have a sword but he was used to that. No hesitation. Stamped down twice. First stamp the feral man’s head hit the stone ground. Stunned. Second stamp crushed his throat. Dead.
He’d done what she needed of him. Maybe, on her own, she could survive out here without him. Adamantine Men had their ways and tricks but so did alchemists… but she wasn’t on her own. There was the outsider, Siff. Without the outsider and what he knew, she might as well have stayed in her cell and let them starve her to death, and there was no way she could drag him or carry him, not with a damaged shoulder.
Damn it! She still needed him. There was no getting away from it.
The one doing the dancing and hissing was backing away. Scared. Three of them and one of him and they were the fearful ones. That was how it was to be an Adamantine Man. Three against one. No fear!
Don’t let him take Siff! But the Adamantine Man was already roaring and bounding on, head filled with blood and murder.
The fight was making her head spin. She let the blood-bond go and started to walk towards him. Running would have been better, but that hurt too much, and either way the fight would be over before she got there. Calm and steady, that was the alchemists’ way, and so she let her mind wander to the emptiness of the Silver City around her, what was left of it. A hundred years ago it had been the hub of the world, home to tens of thousands. It had been a fading glory even then, its power already being leached away by Furymouth and the City of Dragons, but it had been a glory nonetheless. Out here on the esplanade beside the temple, with the gardens on one side and the canal on the other, there should have been people. She could almost see them, moving in little knots and clusters in the moonlight, even in the middle of the night. Now the gardens were overgrown, the canal choked with rubble and weeds, the temple dome tumbled and its marvels in ruins.
It was easy, she thought, with the skies filled with fire and angry monsters, to imagine the death of the Silver City was the work of the dragons, but that was wrong. The ruin wrought here had come when men still rode on their backs.
14
Seven months before the Black Mausoleum
