‘The Raksheh’s not far away. What you going to do with him when we get there?’ He ran his fingers over the bottles in the rack beside the steps. ‘This what I think it is?’
‘Drink it and find out.’
‘Think I might. We won’t need doggy in the forest. There’s no dragons there. What you going to do with him?’ He took out a bottle of wine and pulled the cork with his teeth. Took a swig. ‘Nice.’
‘I don’t know.’ Something about the way the outsider moved told her to be cautious. She went to the alchemists’ bench and took down a couple of pots of powders without looking at what they were, then took her knife out of her belt and put it on the table beside her. ‘You could make yourself useful. Go and tell him to bring back some water from the river.’
Siff didn’t move. Instead he took another mouthful of wine. ‘You should try this.’
Kataros took down a mortar. She pricked her finger with her knife and dripped blood into it. Blood went into everything, every potion an alchemist ever made. Blood was what gave them power and always had been. Look under our robes and we’re no different from blood-mages, that’s what her teacher had said. But for the love of your ancestors, don’t tell anyone.
‘You need to get rid of him,’ said Siff after a bit. ‘Give me your knife. I’ll do it.’
‘No.’
‘He wants to kill me.’ Siff smirked at her. ‘We both know what he wants to do to you.’
‘I will not permit him to do either.’
The outsider wrinkled his nose. Took another gulp. ‘I don’t think that’s good enough.’
‘It will have to be.’
Siff shook his head. ‘No. It won’t.’
Kataros stopped what she was doing and turned to look him in the eye. ‘Do you know how I bound him to me? I put my blood in him. Think, outsider, about who has fed you water, medicine, food. Do you think for a moment I haven’t done the same to you.’ She reached into herself, looking for Siff, looking for where he was bound and shackled.
And found nothing.
‘No, alchemist.’ For a moment, in the gloom, it seemed that his eyes shone too brightly. ‘No, that won’t work on me. I’m not like your doggy.’
He came towards her, his eyes still too bright and now filled with a menace she hadn’t seen there before. Kataros stepped back. She held out the knife towards him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going back to the Raksheh. I’m going back to that cave and I’m taking what’s there. I wonder if you think you’re going to stop me?’
She took another step away. ‘That depends, Siff, on what’s there to take.’
‘Exactly what you think. The power of the Silver King.’
‘And if that’s true, what would you do with it?’
He laughed. ‘I’d probably do some of the things you’d want me to and a good few things you wouldn’t.’ His eyes were alive now, burning with silver light.
‘What did you find there, outsider? Don’t tell me it was truly the Silver King’s tomb because I know that cannot be. That is not where he was taken!’
‘You think the Isul Aieha was bound by mere flesh and bone?’
‘The Silver King is gone, Siff! What little of his essence remains is what is used to bind the dragons!’ Such secrets as these had cost her dearly once, overheard as she slipped through places she didn’t belong to see her lover. Even she wasn’t supposed to know these things. ‘Whatever is there, it must be used for the realms. The dragons…’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not bound by mere flesh and bone? And what would you know of these things, an outsider from the mountains?’
‘Oh a pox on the dragons!’ He laughed at her. ‘We all know they weren’t anything more than the Silver King’s pets. They’ll be put in their place. It’ll all be like it was, back in the old days.’
She stared at him, half in awe, half in horror. ‘You want to bring him back!’
‘And you don’t?’
A shape appeared at the top of the trapdoor. It hovered there for an instant and then flew down. Skjorl landed on Siff’s back, thumping him to the floor. The light in Siff’s eyes flared; he snarled and started to rise, but then the Adamantine Man had a handful of his hair and slammed Siff’s head into the ground. Once, twice, and the silver light went out of Siff’s eyes and he fell still.
‘Shit-eater.’ Skjorl sat on his back. He’d found a piece of rope from somewhere — here or else he’d had it all along and Kataros hadn’t noticed. He hog-tied Siff, kicked him once and then looked at Kataros and laughed. ‘You always know where you stand with his sort. First chance he got he was going to run. Obvious.’
‘It was more than that.’ Maybe she should have kept that to herself.
‘Was it?’ The Adamantine Man laughed again. ‘Was it now? I can imagine. Wanted something from you before he ran did he?’
‘Not what you think.’
‘Oh don’t be so sure about that.’ The Adamantine Man took Siff’s bottle of wine, which lay on the floor, spilling itself into a puddle. He took a gulp of what was left. ‘You think he must be like you because you were both thrown into prison to die. Doesn’t make him like you at all. He’s a shit-eater. They’re all the same. He’ll turn on you first chance he gets.’
‘He wanted me to kill you.’
‘Well he certainly can’t do it himself.’ Skjorl seemed unmoved. ‘You want me to go get that fish now? He won’t be going anywhere.’
‘Take him with you.’
‘Take him with me?’ He shook his head, then waved the bottle at her. ‘I’ll take this with me though.’
‘Take him with you and watch him. I need to work. In peace.’
The Adamantine Man looked around the cellar. He sniffed and then shrugged. ‘You get lonely, you let me know. I’ll be back before sunrise.’ With that he lifted the outsider over his shoulder and carefully climbed out, and she was alone, alone with the ghosts of the alchemists who’d died down here.
She climbed up the ladder too, just to make sure Skjorl was really gone. When she saw him plodding away towards the river, she returned to the cellar. Ghosts. Ghosts were for children; there weren’t any of those here, not really. What was here was a gift. Powders, dried roots, herbs, mushrooms, everything an alchemist could want except that most precious thing of all, blood, and for that she had her own. She set to work.
46
Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum
He had gaps. He knew that, had known it for a long time. Gaps that had started that night in the Raksheh when he’d gone to sleep one night and woken up to find that autumn had turned into spring and a mound of dead men had become nothing more than a few scattered bones, overgrown and almost lost beneath the grass. That had been the first, but it hadn’t been the last.
He’d walked along the banks of the Yamuna. Roots and fruits grew beside it; a clever man with the right skills could hunt too, catch a fish maybe or one of the animals that lived in holes by the water. He didn’t have a bow, but he had a knife for killing and skinning and he was quick enough with his hands. His injuries were all gone. He’d felt more alive, more vital than he could remember.
The next gap had come in the middle of one night, rolling in agony, his stomach clenched in a knot. He’d never felt such a pain. He’d poisoned himself, eaten something he shouldn’t, and now he was going to die. One minute he was screaming, vomiting, tearing at his own skin, the next he was walking along the banks of the river in bright sunshine, just as he’d been doing the day before and the day before that as though nothing had happened. No trace of the pain. No trace of anything. He told himself it had been a dream.
The first signs of people had come not long after. He’d found a hollowed-out tree trunk, pulled up against the
