Jasaan turned. He had a dozen shit-eaters fanned out around him now, watching the whirl of his axe, all too scared to get close. The first one to charge died, that was what Jasaan was telling them. Eventually they might realise that they didn’t have to, but Skjorl slammed into them before they’d even got over that first fear. Took a man’s head off with one swing, chopped another one in half and then sheared straight through a third man’s face before they knew he was there.
‘Hello, Jasaan!’ The look on his face was something he’d cherish. Bewilderment. Amazement. Joy. Fear. Hate. All thrown in together. He was quite sure he’d never get to see a look like that again. The shit-eaters backed away. He bared his teeth. Two Adamantine Men with axes, side by side, their backs to a wall. No one in their right mind would come close.
‘Skjorl?’ Jasaan made it sound like a question.
‘Been following you for days. Or more rightly I been following this lot.’
Across the beach the rider who could barely walk and the two shit-eaters trying to kill him were still circling each other. It was like watching cripples dance. Pathetic.
‘Go!’ he bellowed. ‘Go and get my alchemist! But you take care of her, Jasaan, or I’ll break your balls.’
He jumped away from the rocks, screaming his lungs out at the shit-eaters, scaring the life out of them. If the looks on their faces were anything to go by, he wouldn’t even have to touch them with his axe.
Yes. Leave the killing to me.
62
She opened her eyes. The roaring that had been the sound of her drowning was still there. The waterfall. She was bobbing up and down, but not in the water any more. She was hanging over some man’s shoulder. Looking down from among the rocks beneath the Moonlight Garden. ‘You two! Hold here. Stop him. Or at least slow him down.’ Siff. ‘You! Bring her! Follow me! Run, damn you!’
Siff and the man carrying her climbed higher, over the top of the waterfall, then started picking their way along a ledge overlooking the river. She lurched up and down. Her hands and her feet were still tied. She had no strength, no energy, and struggling seemed futile when all she could do was cough now and then and bring up another mouthful of river water, yet a strange excitement had her. They were here. She couldn’t see it, even when she turned her head and tried to look up, but the Moonlight Garden was somewhere above her. No one had ever understood what the Moonlight Garden was. Not the first idea.
Stupid thing to think, really, but it gave her a focus. Stopped her being too sick and helpless and terrified.
At the end of the ledge they were among rocks again, picking their way down a steep slope. She felt the man who was carrying her slip. He was cursing with almost every other step until they reached the bottom and were beside the river again, out in the open on a flat overgrown field. The cave mouths drew her eye.
‘They’re getting closer!’ The man was breathing hard. She was slowing him. And then everything fell into shadow and he screamed. She hit the ground like a sack of turnips, winded and too weak and bruised to move, and that might have been what saved her. A huge shape blotted out the sun and snatched the man who’d been carrying her into the sky; and then the sun was back, and with it a wind like a hurricane that picked her up and threw her across the ground as though she was a leaf.
Dragon. She couldn’t bring herself to move. Stay still. Don’t struggle and above all don’t run. Dragons can’t resist it if you run, and no one who runs ever gets away. Ever.
Could it feel her thoughts? She wasn’t sure. She’d taken her last dose of potion back before the outsider settlement. Two weeks, give or take a couple of days. Yes, it could probably feel her then, and dragons hated alchemists with a fury. She sighed and closed her eyes and waited to die.
‘Get up!’ Hands were shaking her. Siff. ‘Get! Up!’ He was cutting the ropes around her feet, wrapping another one around her hands. ‘Get up, alchemist! We’re nearly there.’ He hauled her up, pulling her by her wrists. The dragon was in the air past the waterfall. Turning.
For a moment she caught a glimpse of movement in the rocks up the slope behind her. There was a man, his head and shoulders popping up. He had a bow. Was aiming at…
Her?
Skjorl?
No. Couldn’t be.
‘Come on!’ Siff pulled her hard enough to tear the skin of her wrists. She cried out. The man with the bow was out in the open now, running down the slope towards them, little streams of stones clattering in rivers around him as he came. And yes, it was Skjorl. He had his axe. She’d know him anywhere. Great Flame, did she laugh or did she cry? And he had someone else with him too. Another Adamantine Man.
‘Run, you stupid witch!’ Siff screamed and pulled at her. ‘Not from them! From the dragon!’
The dragon was coming back. You learned, when you worked with them for as long as she had, to read their flight. It was going for the Adamantine Men. She dropped back to the ground, squealing at the pain in her wrists, but she wasn’t going to run. ‘No! Stay still!’ It would burn them if they ran.
The Adamantine Men knew it too. They were fifty yards away, right at the bottom of the slope at the start of the open empty space that had once been a landing field. They were seconds away from her but now they veered away, diving for cover as the dragon swooped down on them, strafing them with fire. The earth shook, the very air quivered in shock, and then a wall of heat and wind and the stink of scorched earth picked her up and roared and rolled her across the grass.
The dragon turned again and landed where the Adamantine Men had been, hard enough that Kataros was almost thrown up into the air. The rocks on the slope to the path and the Moonlight Garden shuddered and shifted. A boulder the size of a horse tumbled down, bouncing past the dragon and into the river amid a hail of smaller stones.
Halfway up the slope a massive chunk of rock shifted very slightly. It was as big as a barn. Kataros held her breath, waiting for it to slide and bring the whole slope down on all of them, but it only shifted the once and then held still.
The dragon’s tail slashed the air, the tip hissing like a whip past her head, so close she could almost touch it. It had to feel her, didn’t it? Don’t think! Don’t think! But it had its mind elsewhere. The dragon took two quick steps away and lunged towards wherever the Adamantine Men had gone. A hot wind rushed over the ground as it tried to burn them out.
‘Can we run now?’ Siff’s eyes were wild. This time she let him pull her away. The dragon was tearing at the hillside, digging after the Adamantine Men at the foot of the high stone bluffs below the Moonlight Garden. It roared. Frustration. Kataros ran faster. Blood. A drop of blood was all she needed. Whatever Siff had inside him, it stopped her from mastering his will, but she could still burn him and there were other things too. If she could find anything that was alive, she could make it hers. Snakes, spiders, scorpions. Snappers even. Let the forest give her a weapon, any weapon…
Siff pulled her in among more tumbled boulders, behind an enormous rock towards an opening in the ground, too regular to be a cave. Her steps faltered. Even in the sunlight she could see how it glowed. It was a tunnel, like the passages, of all places, within the flying castle!
‘Move!’ Siff hauled at the ropes around her wrists. Kataros winced. Yet the alchemist in her wanted to see now, had to, no matter what happened afterwards.
‘It’s like the castle,’ she said. ‘It’s the same. Look at it. You didn’t know, did you?’ There. That made him stop. In the castle he hadn’t been himself.
‘Is it? I don’t remember.’
‘What’s inside, Siff?’
‘Come and see.’
The earth trembled. Siff dragged her deeper. The light here was soft and soothing and came from everywhere, just like in the castle over Farakkan. ‘What’s inside you, Siff? What did you find?’
