Forest.
With the exception of the rather arid northern section close to Drotan’s Top, the forest has the distinction of being one of the wettest places in the realms, surpassed only by the southern reaches of the Worldspine itself.
Bellepheros’ Journal of the Realms, 2nd year of Speaker Hyram
44
Twenty-one days before the Black Mausoleum
Bloodsalt made him a hero. Bloodsalt earned him everything and then hoisted him by his own shirt and dropped him in a cesspit.
On the moors he and Skjorl had gone their separate ways, something that had been coming ever since Scarsdale. Jasaan then tried to get on with the business of walking and eating and walking and sleeping and walking and drinking and not being caught in the open by a dragon; and most of all not thinking about Skjorl and how small and subtle were the differences between them. As far as Jasaan knew, Skjorl had meant to stick stubbornly to Yinazhin’s Way, so Jasaan picked his path down to the Sapphire valley. There was water, food if you knew where to look for it, not much but enough and plenty of fish. He drank his potions and hid in the day and walked carefully at night and took each sunset as it came, quietly assuming he’d die somewhere beside the river and get nowhere near the Purple Spur; and then, somehow, he’d reached Samir’s Crossing. It wasn’t even that difficult.
No one had ever thought Skjorl or any of his company would come back. People didn’t even come back from the moors any more and Bloodsalt was three times the distance. At Samir’s Crossing the Adamantine Men who watched the skies and the plains to the north and south made him a hero. They welcomed him with open arms and poured praise over him like wine at a desert wedding.
He waited a few weeks — they gave him that luxury — but Skjorl never came back. Skjorl was dead. Eventually Jasaan believed it. And all the while the stories he told of Bloodsalt made delicate and tiny changes to themselves. Quiet Vish and Skjorl always killed the dragon, but his own part changed, maybe became a little more how it might have been than what actually happened. Yes, Skjorl and Vish had wielded their axes, but it was no accident that the roof had collapsed where it did. The dragon had been lured to its doom by the cleverness of men. By Jasaan.
Adamantine Men did what needed to be done. That was all. They didn’t make themselves into heroes, and so it wasn’t a surprise when the alchemists under the Purple Spur found him something else to do. There was to be an attempt to reach the Pinnacles. Alchemists would be going. They would need guides. Soldiers to protect them, soldiers who understood the ways of dragons. Most particularly, they needed soldiers who had survived out in the open, who knew how to stay alive with no vast roof of stone to shield them from the skies. They needed an inspiration, someone the other soldiers, the alchemists even, would believe in. And Jasaan, since he was a hero, couldn’t deny them, no matter how much he never wanted to go out in the open again. Who else could they choose? And what else could he do but go?
He got them there too, all of them. Picked his men carefully, set off in three separate bands on three separate paths and amazed even himself. His alchemists reached the Pinnacles alive. Even in the Silver City, even as he tried to find a way into the fortress itself, he kept them safe from the feral men who lived in the tunnels and the cellars, hiding from the dragons above and only ever coming out at night. He kept them safe and he got them inside, all the way from the Purple Spur, with messages of greetings and hope from the speaker who lived there.
That had been a week ago. The next day, after his soldiers had politely surrendered their swords, trusting to the hospitality of King Hyrkallan and his men, Hyrkallan had killed the alchemists. Hadn’t listened to what they had to say, simply got rid of them.
No one actually said that, of course. Apparently what had really happened was that all the alchemists had gone to the very roof of the Pinnacles, to the Reflecting Garden, and been eaten by a dragon. About the most implausible story imaginable, but by the time he’d come to understand about the false speaker Hyrkallan and his hatred for alchemists, they were dead and the damage was done. All the men he’d lost on the way wasted. He might have made a fuss about it, but really what was the point? In the days since it had happened, he’d just felt more and more numb.
He stood in the same place now, the Reflecting Garden, looking at the moon. It wasn’t often that anyone who lived under the Spur got to see the real sky, the real moon, the real stars, never mind the real sun. To Jasaan open skies only meant keeping his eyes wide for dragons. He’d had enough of that. A good strong mountain over his head would do nicely.
A stream bubbled out from a pile of rubble that had once been a fountain. That was all the dragons had left of the Reflecting Garden, but the riders who’d been trapped in the Pinnacles since before the Adamantine Palace had burned spoke of pools of water that didn’t lie flat, of paths in arcs and the Silver Onion Dome. Even Jasaan had heard about that. He looked at the remains, the shattered stones and gravel. There was almost nothing left.
On special nights when there were no dragons roosting on the mountaintop, the false speaker Hyrkallan had his throne carried up from the tunnels below. Tonight was one of those nights, and he’d summoned Jasaan to join him. Jasaan watched carefully, vaguely wondering whether tonight was the night that the dragon who’d eaten his alchemists would mysteriously eat him and all his men too. Under the Purple Spur a lot of things were quietly said among the Adamantine Men about Hyrkallan and his queen. Hyrkallan should have been the speaker, they said. He could have saved the realms from disaster, they said, but his queen was another matter: his queen was bitter and ugly, hateful and mad and had awoken dragons for fun. Queen Jaslyn wasn’t there tonight and Jasaan hadn’t ever seen her, even when they’d first arrived. As for Hyrkallan, he was old, his beard was grey and there was white in his hair. To Jasaan he looked lost.
Riders were still coming up from the tunnels below, dragging poles and great long sails of dragon skin with them. Jasaan switched his eyes to watch. They looked like wings.
‘Jasaan? Guardsman Jasaan?’
Jasaan met the rider’s eyes. Neither of them bowed because neither of them knew whether either of them should. Adamantine Men served the speaker. As far as Jasaan was concerned that meant Queen Lystra, and if he’d been feeling suicidal, then Hyrkallan was a traitor and so was every rider who followed him. Jasaan had settled on quietly pretending not to notice. The other Adamantine Men who’d survived the journey from the Spur had followed his lead, and the same went for the story about the alchemists. Just pretend it’s true. Don’t ask questions. Made him sick, though, that one.
They settled for staring at each other. The riders of the Pinnacles didn’t know what to do with him. The Adamantine Men made them uncomfortable. They were scared, and so they should be.
‘I’m Jasaan,’ he said.
‘Come.’
The rider led him across the rubble towards Hyrkallan’s throne, close enough that Jasaan could know he was being watched. Other riders, clustered together, stopped their conversation and stared as Jasaan approached. One broke away to face him.
‘Guardsman Jasaan.’ Jasaan didn’t know this one, but he could see the other riders deferred to him.
‘That’s me.’
They stared at each other, yet another battle of wills. Jasaan had had enough of those since he’d come here. Truth be told and despite the obvious danger, he’d happily have taken his chances leading his men back to the Purple Spur.
‘One of your alchemists is alive,’ said the rider without looking away. ‘You will help us find her.’
Her. So it was Kataros, the half-alchemist who’d been thrown out of the order in disgrace before the Adamantine Palace had burned. He didn’t know what her indiscretion had been — pillow talk, secrets spilled to a rider lover she should never have had, something like that — and it simply wasn’t his business. She was the alchemist who’d found the Adamantine Spear, the Dragonslayer. The Adamantine Men called her the spear-carrier,
