‘There are other paths in and out of the fortresses from the city. Plenty of them, so I’m told. We close this behind us so the ferals can’t follow.’
‘Men!’ she shouted back at him. ‘They are not ferals!’ And then he was on top of her, hand clamped across her mouth, blood-bound slave or not, hissing in her ear.
‘Quiet!’ She heard a chuckle in his throat. ‘Quiet, alchemist. Lest you get hurt when the ferals hear you and fall upon us in their hordes.’ He let her go and bared his teeth, then dragged Siff to the edge of the hidden shaft under the altar and began to climb down rungs set into the stone with the outsider over his shoulders. When all three of them were inside, he swung on the rope until the altar stone was back in place and the darkness became absolute. She heard him below her, one foot after the other, climbing down the shaft faster than she could bring herself to, even though he had Siff on his back and she had nothing.
‘Wait!’ she hissed, but either he didn’t hear her or he didn’t care. At the bottom, his hand touched her arm in the dark. She squealed and flinched away.
‘Just me, alchemist. What did you fear?’ He was laughing at her.
She didn’t know how far down they were. The alchemist-trained part of her understood they’d gone neither as far nor spent as long there as it seemed in the blackness. Older instincts wondered what monsters lurked so deep beneath the earth. ‘Under the Purple Spur sometimes the dead, those who aren’t taken up into the sunlight, rise,’ she said. ‘Does that happen here?’
He laughed at her. ‘I came from under the Spur before I came here and I heard the same. People living in fear will say many things. Believe me, alchemist, the dead do not rise.’
‘Those under the Spur say otherwise.’
‘Seen it yourself?’
She looked away. ‘No.’
There was a shrug of indifference in his voice. ‘I am what I am, alchemist. I believe what my senses show me, not the tales of fearful men.’ His arm touched hers again and brushed along her side. ‘You should take my hand, alchemist, lest you trip and fall and hurt yourself in the dark.’
‘No.’ She pushed him away. ‘You don’t touch me.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He moved off. She felt the space between them, felt his absence from close to her like a load taken away that been clamped around her chest.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’
He didn’t answer that. Through the blood-bond she felt him ease his way slowly in the darkness. He still had Siff slung across his shoulders. He was strong, fearfully strong, but that was the way the Adamantine Men were made. It was simply done. They took unwanted children from across the realms, just as the alchemists did, only for a far lesser price, and then they forged them, without mercy, into fighting men who would stand against dragons. Most died before they reached manhood. Most of the rest didn’t last as long as this one had, judging by his age.
Skjorl. Did she even want to know his name? He was better as a faceless monster, cold and loathsome as the dragons he’d been raised to face.
‘If you were in the Spur after the realms fell, how did you get here?’ she asked. Following him was easy. She could sense him, where he was, always, feeling his way along the walls.
‘I walked, alchemist. And you? You were under the Spur too. Kataros the spear-carrier. You were at the palace when it fell, after all.’ She heard him chuckle. ‘Why would you come to the Pinnacles, alchemist, where only torture and death could possibly await you?’
‘I was sent.’ She felt him freeze and fall silent and so she did the same, ears stretching out into the black, grasping for sound and finding nothing. After a few seconds he began to move again. ‘There were others. Do you… Do you know what happened to them?’
‘No.’
He was lying. The blood-bond told her that at once, which must have meant the others were dead. She took a ragged breath. It wasn’t a surprise, not at all, but still there was a difference between fearing the worst and knowing it. She was alone here then, as she’d thought, and there would be no seeing her old master again, nor any of those that passed as friends who’d come here.
‘Who sent you? The speaker?’
‘That’s none of your concern, soldier, nor is the why.’ Even if the why, she suspected, had more to do with the dwindling of supplies under the Spur, the growing starvation, the simple presence of more mouths than could be fed, even among the Adamantine Men, even among the alchemists.
‘There are tunnels as far as Plag’s Bay. You could return. It would be a safer journey than going into the Raksheh. I’d take you if you asked.’
She answered that with silence. There were reasons, of course there were reasons, but sharing them would make her weaker, not stronger.
‘What did this shit-eater I’m carrying tell you?’
She let her silence answer that one too. Through the blood-bond she felt him grinning to himself.
‘Here. A door. Ready? There’s about to be blood.’ He stopped and lowered Siff to the ground. She heard the grind of metal against metal and then a line of dim light opened the darkness like the drawing of a curtain. Cold white light, alchemists’ light, flooded in as Skjorl pulled the door wide. He drew out his sword and then jumped through. There was a shout, and then the screaming started.
19
Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum
Answers would come when answers were ready. The alchemist would tell him, because in the end people like her always did. She’d yield to him in other ways too, in time. For now there was killing to be done. There were always ferals in the tunnels. No surprise to open the door and find a few of them sheltering. He was in among them before the sleeping ones even had a chance to open their eyes. Three women. Pity to waste them, but the alchemist would never have let him toy with one. Two children. He killed those first, moved on to the women as quickly as he could. Not that they had any chance of getting away but because he had to be done with them before the alchemist could tell him to stop. There was a man, sitting on watch perhaps, eyes closed and dozing. Skjorl killed him last as he tried to flee, driving his sword into the man’s chest just when the alchemist screamed at him. Leisurely, he put his boot on the dead man and pulled his sword out again.
‘What are you doing?’
He walked back to one of the women, tore off the outer layer of her rags and wiped his blade clean.
‘Answer me!’ The words came with a hammer blow to the back of his head. He screwed up his eyes against the pain of it.
‘The ways from the tunnels to the Silver City are kept secret. They saw us come through. So they had to die.’ Good chance they already knew the secret shaft was there, might even have been why they’d settled where they had, but no need for the alchemist to know that. He looked up and down the tunnel. The light here was like the light in the fortress, a glow that came from the very stones of the walls and the roof. Here it was feeble, starlight on a cloudy night, no more than that. He closed his eyes and reached with his ears, searching for running feet, but now all he could hear was the alchemist bleating.
‘You will not kill without reason!’
‘I have reason. Hyrkallan’s riders have ordered that all ferals be killed.’
‘No!’
Stupid woman needed to know when to speak and when to shut up. If any ferals had got away, their footsteps were lost now. He growled. ‘Alchemist Kataros, listen when I tell you this. The feral folk who live under the Silver City may once have been ordinary men and women, but that was before their city burned and dragons ate all those they loved. They blame the speaker, their kings, their queens, their riders, their alchemists and even the Adamantine Men for what has fallen upon them. They will not listen to your pretty words — they’ll kill us for our
