The Black Mausoleum

by Stephen Deas

Genres: Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Stephen Deas returns to the world of his epic dragon trilogy the Memory of Flames—fast-paced, high fantasy for those who like their dragons dark Two years have passed since the events of The Order of the Scales. Across the realms, dragons are still hatching—and hatching free. Skorl is an Ember, a soldier trained from birth to fight dragons. He is a living weapon, one-shot only, saturated with enough dragon-poison to bring down a monster all on his own. A violent, drunken misanthrope, for him to fulfill his purpose and slay a dragon means to be eaten. Now Skorl has a choice: he can hang for his crimes, or he can go with the last of the Adamantine Men, fighting against an enemy he was born to face. Rat is an Outsider. He's on the run and he's stumbled onto something that's going to make him rich beyond all his dreams. It's just a shame that the end of the world has started without him. Kataros is an alchemist, one of the order responsible for keeping the dragons in check—one of the order that has just failed, and disastrously so. Two men, one woman. One chance to save the world from a storm of dragons.

Release date: March 14, 2013

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 352

Sample

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum

He wasn’t stupid. Kataros had seen the way he looked at her, right from the start. Her jailer. She was a woman in a prison cell, frail and fragile, and he was the man
charged with keeping her, a brute, massive and scarred with one crippled hand. In stories that went one of two ways. Either he’d fall in love with her, or he’d try to rape her and
she’d get the better of him. Either way, in stories, fate always found a way to save the frail and fragile woman.

Actually no. In the childish stories she remembered the frail and fragile woman never saved herself. In those stories she stayed exactly where she was until some gallant rider on the back of a
dragon tore open the door to her cell with his bare hands and whisked her away to a happy-ever-after. But in this story that wasn’t going to happen, which left her back where she started. He
was interested. He didn’t take much trouble to hide it either. He wasn’t ugly, at least not on the outside, despite the scars. He was an Adamantine Man, though, and so her story
wasn’t going to end in love.

There weren’t many cells down here. As far as Kataros could tell, there hadn’t been any at all until recently. Whatever this place was it had served some other purpose, something
more benign, probably until the Adamantine Palace had burned. There were patterns on the floor, tiles, half buried now under a layer of filth. Ornate murals and faux arches decorated the walls.
They were all over the place those arches, in almost every room she’d seen as they dragged her here. At the far end, towards the door that was the only way out, hangings lined the walls,
intricate pictures of Vishmir and the first Valmeyan duelling in the skies; of the body of the Silver King, carried towards his tomb by men in masks and veils; of Narammed holding the Adamantine
Spear, bowing down so he looked almost as though he was worshipping it – she could understand that, knowing now what it did.

Yes, it had been a genteel room once, quiet and out of the way and meant for reflection until someone had slammed in a few crude rows of iron bars and called it a prison.

There was no privacy. The prisoner in the cell next to hers had stared the first time she’d had to squat in a corner. The Adamantine Man, at least, had looked away.

She steeled herself to wait until the gentle sunshine glow of the walls and of the ceiling faded to starlit night. Not that waiting was difficult. She hadn’t been fed since she’d
arrived and so hadn’t eaten for most of a week, and a few more hours would make no difference. The man in the cell next to her had been here longer. He’d been little more than a
skeleton when she’d arrived. These days he hardly ever moved. He was dying, slowly but surely.

There weren’t any others, just the two of them and three more empty cells. Their floors were like hers, covered in filth crusted dry with time, yet the air in the prison smelled fresh and
cool. That was the magic of the Pinnacles at work, the magic of the Silver King who’d come from nowhere and tamed the dragons, who’d built the world that every last one of them had come
to know and then been torn down by jealous men.

Kataros spared a glance for the other man. His name was Siff, but she thought of him as something else. The Adamantine Man called him Rat, and she could see that too. He’d talked a lot
when they’d first thrown her in the cell beside him; mostly he’d talked about all the things he’d like her to do for him, or the things he’d like to do to her if only he had
the chance. That had been before starvation had turned its final bend and the lechery and the leering had given way to ranting and raving. Once, as the madness took him, he’d let slip his
name.

He’d told her a lot of other things too, as he slipped away, more than enough to make her wish she’d heard them when he was lucid. He’d come out of the Raksheh. He’d
crossed the whole Realm of the Harvest Queen and yet the dragons hadn’t eaten him. You had to admire anyone who could do that yet here he was at death’s door, starving. A week or a day
or somewhere in between, was all he had left.

She let him go and turned her eyes back to the Adamantine Man. He was watching her. There was no pretence about it – today he was simply staring. Something had changed, had it? Most likely
the man who called himself King of the Pinnacles had decided there would be no reprieve. Hyrkallan, that was his name. She’d heard of him before she’d come here, but she hadn’t
understood his hate for her kind until it was too late. There would be no change to his law, no clemency for any who called themselves alchemist, no matter what they might bring. And what
did she bring? A hope that was no hope at all. An impossible idea. Another mouth for a starving court to feed.

She looked at the Adamantine Man as he stared at her. She bit her tongue until she tasted blood. ‘Hey.’

He didn’t move.

‘Hey!’ Half the Adamantine Men she’d ever met thought that the War of the Two Speakers had made them into gods. The other half were mad, as if there was much difference. Some
managed to keep some seed of civilisation inside them, but most of the ones she’d seen were violent drunkards, brutes, rapists who thought they had a right to anything and everything. We
are swords. We sate ourselves in flesh as the need comes upon us and then we move on, that was their creed and they were proud of it. Sometimes they killed dragons like they were supposed to,
but usually when they tried that they just died.

This one still didn’t answer. His eyes didn’t flicker. He was making it hard for her, harder than it already was. The blood in her mouth sharpened her mind. She could see the
knowledge in his eye. They both knew what was coming.

‘Hey.’ She made her voice softer this time. He moved a little now, tilted his chin slightly and looked at her some more, silent as the still air. She forced herself to get up and
walk towards him until she was almost against the bars. If he’d wanted to, he could have reached through and touched her.

For a long time they looked at each other.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said. Each day he brought them water. Water, water, always water, the one thing the Pinnacles never lacked. He never brought food. He never ate in front of
them either, but she could smell it on his breath. Food. The answer was in his eyes. Everyone is hungry.

‘Are you going to ask me to be gentle?’ he asked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eight months before the Black Mausoleum

Bloodsalt. There used to be a city here. Skjorl had never seen it in its glory and never would because it had been gone for more than a year. Burned. Flattened. Crushed. The
alchemists said it had been the first city to fall when the dragons had broken loose, the first place they’d gone after shattering the tower at Outwatch. The first and now the furthest from
the few companies of Adamantine Men who still survived. Skjorl watched the sun set behind it. There was nothing left, nothing but ash and sand and salt and ruin. The dragons had dammed the river.
Changed its course. Whatever they hadn’t burned, whoever had stayed hidden, had been left to parch in the relentless sun. The more foolish probably tried to drink from the lake; they would
have been the ones to die first, for the waters of Bloodsalt had earned their name. As for the rest, the last survivors? Skjorl had walked past their bones, scattered along the Sapphire valley.

Now he lay on the top of a low hill, squeezed between two rocks and hidden beneath a thorn bush, itself old and dead and dried. The river had found its way through the dragon dam in time, but
not until everyone here was long dead. Nonetheless he kept absolutely still. There were still things alive at Bloodsalt. There were dragons.

His fingers tightened around the haft of his axe, closer to him and cared for with more tenderness than any lover. He squinted. Two adults. The same two adults he’d seen every day for more
than a week now as he and what was left of his company of men eased their way along the Sapphire valley towards the lake and the ruins of the old city. Two adults and perhaps a score of hatchlings.
More dragons than any of them had seen in the year since the Adamantine Palace burned.

The Adamantine Men had done their duty when the dragons first awoke. To eyrie after eyrie the word had come before the dragons did. Quietly and without fuss, the alchemists had slipped poison
into the potions they fed to adults and hatchlings alike. Quietly and without fuss, the dragons had burned from the inside and died; and while they were burning, the Adamantine Men had taken their
hammers and their axes. They’d marched into the hatcheries and the egg rooms and they’d done what needed to be done. In some places there had been fighting between the Adamantine Men
and soldiers loyal to an eyrie master or the dragon-king or -queen who owned him. Always fights that the Adamantine Men won. Across the realms eggs had been smashed, dragons poisoned.

Except here. Here and Outwatch. Had Bloodsalt had any warning? They’d had seconds at Outwatch. Seconds, and that had still very nearly been enough.

‘Any kills, boss?’ whispered a voice in the thorns beside him. ‘I don’t see any kills.’

‘No.’ Skjorl shook his head. There was nothing to eat near Bloodsalt for anything larger than a sand lizard, much less a dragon. The adults probably flew up into the Oordish Moors to
feed, hundreds of miles away, but they always came back. The hatchlings? He didn’t know if they’d go so far. He was hoping not, otherwise they were all wasting their time.

‘Bollocks.’ The thorns rustled angrily. Skjorl stayed silent. No kills meant nothing to poison. Until there was something to poison, they’d stay where they were, hiding in the
dust and the salt, drinking brackish water, eating their own boots and being bitten to death by sandflies. He could live with that if it meant taking down a dragon. Skjorl had his own cask of
dragon poison, more than enough for a full-grown adult. He had his axe too, in case they got as far as the eggs. Yes, he could wait right enough.

They’d had a hatchling in a cave at Outwatch. A rogue the mad queen had made. The old greybeard who ran the eyrie had let slip what it was and that had been good enough for Skjorl, good
enough to kit up in dragon-scale armour, dismantle a scorpion and carry it down to the caves. The dragon had strained at its chains and spat fire at them, but those chains had held. They’d
carried the scorpion in pieces to the far end of its cave, to the hole in the cliff face where the sunlight and the air poured in. They’d carefully built it back together while the hatchling
had watched them like a hawk. Somehow the first shot had missed. Then Skjorl had looked outside and he’d seen the white horror gliding through the sky towards them. Riderless. Coming home.
The greybeard eyrie master had seized the scorpion for himself then. Skjorl hadn’t waited. He’d run, shoving his men out in front of him, last one out slamming the door as he went.
Didn’t pause to see what became of the eyrie master. Death walked beside every Adamantine Man. When it came it came quick and you went one of two ways, crispy or crunchy. They’d run and
run, all through the tunnels under Outwatch as the citadel came smashing down. They’d taken their hammers and their axes. Eggs smashed. Hatchlings murdered, the little ones butchered, the
bigger ones fed poison. He’d taken servants, slaves and Scales, and battered them and strapped skins of poison to them, then thrown them to the howling monsters to be devoured. They’d
have been dead anyway if he hadn’t. And amid the screaming and the blood and the fire that came after, an unexpected smile had stretched across his face. The dragons had awoken. The end of
the world had begun. It was what he’d been made for.

The same smile was still there. Crispy. The greybeard eyrie master had gone the crispy way. For ordinary men there was a third way too, the starving-to-death-under-the-ground way; that was
something that would never happen to him, but he didn’t mind a bit of waiting, not if there was a reason for it. In Outwatch he’d waited them out and they’d left. Left him and his
company, what remained of them, stranded in the middle of the desert, a hundred miles from anywhere, surrounded by ash and ruin. It had been a lot like this.

The sun slipped below the horizon and darkness wrapped the salt plains. Skjorl eased himself out from under his thorn bush and crept back down the hill and into the tumble of rocks where the
other Adamantine Men were waiting, still and quiet. There were seven of them left, a poor shadow of the fifty-odd who had left the Purple Spur three months ago. There was Jex, who’d been with
him in Outwatch and ever since. Vish too. Jasaan he’d picked up on his way south, in what was left of Sand after the dragons had finished with it. Kasern, Relk and Marran, they’d come
later when he’d trekked his way from Sand all through the dead Blackwind Dales as far as the Silver River and finally found what passed for the remains of civilisation, hiding out in the
caves and chasms that reached from one side of the Spur to the other. Jex and Vish, they were his squad. They’d spent the best part of a year together, struggling every day not to be dead.
The rest were all Adamantine Men, and three months creeping beside the waters of the Sapphire had told him everything he needed to know. They were alive while everyone else wasn’t. They were
survivors then. The best.

‘Stay alive?’ Vish tossed over a skin half full of water from the river. It tasted warm and foul. Everything out here was too hot. Skjorl drank, though. The taste was something
he’d come to know. The bitterness and nausea and blood-iron tang of the powders the alchemists had given them. Mix with water and drink at least once a day so the dragons don’t find
you. Skjorl had no idea what that meant or how it worked, but it was true that dragons usually had a way of knowing where you were, no matter how well you hid. They’d found that out the hard
way crossing the Blackwind Dales.

He tossed the skin to Jex. It was also true that on their trip up the Sapphire valley the dragons had seemed not to notice them. Maybe they’d been lucky, although seven left from more than
half a hundred was an odd kind of luck. But he took his potion, however bad it tasted, and he’d keep taking it. Given how many of them were left, there wasn’t much chance they’d
be running out any time soon.

‘Waiting, is it?’

Skjorl nodded. Waiting. Three months it had taken them to get this far. Soon enough they’d be done and then maybe they’d spend three months getting back home again, and if
that’s how it was, that’s how it was.

Jex tipped the skin and poured water into his mouth. He tossed it back towards Vish but Kasern snatched it out of the air. He picked up another one and held them out in one hand, dangling them
next to each other. ‘What’s that then?’

Relk shook his head and turned away. Jex and Vish were laughing.

‘Tits,’ Marran spat. ‘That’s what that is. I could murder for a good pair of tits.’

‘That’s not just any tits.’ Jex rubbed his crotch and nudged Skjorl. ‘That woman from Scarsdale, she had tits like that, eh? Old and saggy and wrinkled and yet oddly
firm.’ He chuckled to himself.

‘More like two giant balls in a giant ball sack, they were.’ Vish wrinkled his nose.

‘Didn’t see you minding at the time.’

‘Didn’t see anyone minding at the time,’ grunted Skjorl. Four months it had been when they’d reached Scarsdale. Four months from Outwatch. Past Sand, black and smashed to
bits. Past Evenspire, which just wasn’t there any more except the Palace of Paths, so big and so massive that even dragons couldn’t knock it flat. Four months and mostly all
they’d seen were blackened corpses. Everything in the Blackwind Dales was dead even before the dragons. And then they’d got to Scarsdale. Twelve people they’d found there, hiding
in the copper mines, creeping out at night for water from the Dragon River, eating fish and freshwater crabs and whatever roots and leaves they could find.

‘Shit-eaters, all of you,’ grumbled Jasaan. ‘And what about the other one? You remember her?’

This again. Skjorl tensed.

‘Sweet Vishmir but she was ripe. If she was here now . . .’ Vish leered.

‘If she was here now you’d tie her up and show her your adamantine cock.’ Jex licked his lips.

‘Damn right.’

‘Not before I showed her mine. Except I wouldn’t be needing any rope. She’d be begging for it.’

Skjorl punched Jex in the arm. ‘Old soldiers first, boy.’ He scowled. ‘Marran, put them away. We’ve none of us had a woman for months. My balls are full to
bursting.’

‘Any more of this and I’m going to start wanting to fuck the sandflies!’

‘Lai’s dick!’ Jasaan waved his arms. His voice rose over the others. ‘You . . .’ He had words to say. Anyone could see that, but they were old words and had been
said before, and no one else gave a shit about Scarsdale and all the things that had happened there, no one except Jasaan. ‘You’re—’ But by then Skjorl had slipped like an
eel round behind him and clamped a hand firmly over his mouth.

‘Shhh,’ he whispered in Jasaan’s ear. ‘These lovely potions don’t make a dragon deaf, so keep your voice down. You got something to say to me, you say it.
But quiet like.’

Jasaan glared. He shook his head.

‘No, I thought not.’

The soldiers fell quiet then, sitting still and alert as the sun sank and the sky darkened. They’d become night people in the last year and a half. The dragons flew in daylight and slept
– or whatever it was they did – at night, and so the Adamantine Men had learned to be otherwise. At night they moved. Never too far though, never so far that they couldn’t be sure
of shelter come the dawn. Sometimes that meant they travelled for hours, found nothing and went back to where they’d been the night before. On the worst part of their trip up the Sapphire
valley they’d spent six nights in the same cave. And that had been trouble too. The longer you stayed in a place, the more signs you left. Dragons were good at spotting signs.

Back then they’d numbered more than twenty-five. Now they were seven. Seven was a lot easier to hide. The way back would be quicker than the way here. A month, Skjorl thought. Not three.
He crossed his fingers and hugged his axe and thought a little prayer to the Great Flame.

‘Fucking dragons,’ spat Marran.

Skjorl closed his eyes. ‘Easy, lads,’ he murmured. ‘They’ll go hunting sometime. We just wait here until they do.’ He stretched. ‘Then we slip in, slow and
easy and do what Adamantine Men were born to do. We kill dragons.’ He grinned and let out a little growl. ‘A month from now we’ll be back near the Spur and Jex can stop making
love-eyes at the sandflies.’

‘Yeah.’ Vish laughed. ‘He can make them at the snappers instead.’

‘Snapper wants a piece of me, it’ll be a sharp one.’ Relk gripped his spear.

‘Yeah, but Jex’s got a spear that’s every bit as hard, just not quite as sharp.’ A low rumble of laughter rippled among the men. Skjorl looked about. Jasaan was gone,
moved off a little while back after Skjorl had told him to shut up. It was dark now, desert dark with clear air and a bright moon and a thousand stars. Still, he wasn’t about to get up and
look for him. Man wanted to be on his own, that was his privilege, especially at night when there weren’t dragons overhead. He grinned to himself. Jasaan was probably thinking about sandflies
too. Or of the woman from Scarsdale. Not the old one, but the young one. The one with the soft skin and the hair like fur. How grateful she’d been for an Adamantine Man.

Sometimes men did terrible things, Skjorl had come to realise. When they knew there was no one to hold them to account, yes, sometimes men did terrible things. And sometimes they enjoyed them
more than was right. And that was just the way of the world.

He sniffed, looked up, heard the slightest noise and was on his feet in a moment, sword half drawn. But it was only Jasaan. He cocked his head. ‘Feeling better? No harm meant. I know how
it is.’

Jasaan shrugged. There was hate in those eyes. Skjorl didn’t even need to see it any more, he’d seen it so much. But Jasaan was a weak one. Too bothered with staying alive. He looked
away and spat. Jasaan tipped his head back towards the quiet rustling waters of the Sapphire. ‘Went for a little walk. Know what I found? I found a tunnel half filled with water. Want to know
where it goes?’ He pointed straight towards the distant remains of Bloodsalt and to the dragons that stood between them. ‘That’s where. Right into the city.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum

Men did terrible things. The Adamantine Men were finding that out for themselves, but alchemists remembered that it had been like this before. An almost forgotten time, lost
under dust and layers of brittle parchment, a time before Narammed, before the speakers, before the Empire of the Blood-Mages, before the Silver King. Before all that, when there had still been
dragons and there had still been men, and in that time, men had done terrible things. They’d done them to survive.

The Adamantine Man got up from his stool. Kataros watched him. His movements were slow and weary as though everything was inevitable.

‘Hungry?’ He shrugged and showed Kataros his keys. He had one for each of them, for her and the half-dead Rat. He opened Rat’s cell and poked him. Rat groaned. The Adamantine
Man shrugged again. ‘Well he’s not dead yet, but you can eat him if you want. I won’t stop you.’

Kataros shuddered. They’d come to that under the Purple Spur too, eating the dead to survive. Sooner or later they’d come to that here as well, although it was something that no
alchemist would ever do. Blood was power. Blood was magic and not to be tainted.

The Adamantine Man closed Rat’s cell and locked it again. He moved slowly as though he had all the time in the world. No one would come down here for hours, not until the walls and
ceilings of the Pinnacles started to shine to declare to them all that outside, in the realms now ruled by the dragons, the sun had risen once more. Kataros looked at his crippled left hand. Half
of it was little more than lashed up flesh and bone. It was an old injury, long healed. Two of his fingers were useless stumps.

‘Take your time, woman.’

Time? The Adamantine Man might have had as much of it as he wanted, but not her, nor Rat either. ‘So what did you do?’ she asked.

‘Do?’ He laughed and fumbled for the keys again and slid one into her lock. ‘What did I do?’

‘Shouldn’t you be out there. Getting eaten and killing dragons.’

‘Oh I’ve killed dragons.’ He chuckled to himself as he turned the key and eased open her door. He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering between her legs. Kataros took a
step away. The corners of his mouth curled into a grin. ‘You’re going to rot and starve here like him.’ He glanced at Rat. ‘I could snap your neck if you like. Make it
quick. Or . . . we could do something else.’

She took another step back and shook her head. The Adamantine Man took a step as well, backing her against the far wall of the cell.

‘No?’ He rubbed his crotch. ‘So how hungry are you?’

She shook her head again and cringed away, biting her tongue to keep the taste of iron in her mouth. Blood, that was the key. Blood would set her free.

When the Adamantine Man moved, he moved fast. He closed the distance between them in two quick steps and then he had his good hand around her throat, almost lifting her off her feet, crushing
her against the wall. The other hand, the crippled one, groped at her. He was strong. She flinched, struggling, but he had her fast, pinning her with the weight of his body. She could see the faint
scars on his face clearly now, lines of pale skin. Knife cuts, not the kind of wound you got from fighting dragons.

‘I’ll kiss you,’ she stammered. There. Plant the idea.

He threw back his head. ‘Yes, witch. You will.’

There was no need to feign her fear or her revulsion. She tried to shake her head. His free hand was working on his belt. His breathing was heavy, his heart beating faster.

‘Your sort brought this on us all,’ he grunted, forcing her down. ‘You deserve everything you get. You did this. You killed us all. Now since you’re so hungry, you can
eat. If you’re not a good little witch, I will snap your neck after I have you.’

A little thought came. Let him. Do it his way. Do what he wants. It’ll be easier. It’ll be more certain. The thought came and then it went and she was damned if any man,
Adamantine or otherwise, was ever going to force her to anything, not now, not ever again. As his fingers gripped tight in her hair, she spat into her palms, tasted the iron, and then raked her
nails down the outside of his thigh hard enough to draw blood, his blood, as hard as she could. She slapped the palm of her hand against the wound and held it tight, two droplets of blood
mixing together. Please please please be quick . . .

He snarled, pulled her up and threw her away.

‘You don’t like it rough?’ Her voice sounded frail and thin to her, desperately fragile.

‘I’ll show you rough, witch.’ He came at her, trousers round his ankles. She closed her eyes and reached out for the blood she’d smeared over him. Her blood and his. Such
a tiny, tiny link. Nothing. Almost nothing.

‘Kiss me,’ she quivered.

Fingers locked around her chin. For one fleeting moment the Adamantine Man looked confused. She put a hand around his neck and pulled him closer, pressed her mouth to his and wormed her tongue
between his lips. His hands ran over her as she licked her blood into his mouth.

‘Now you’re going to bleed, witch!’ He tore himself away and towered over her, a rampant animal thing.

‘I already did,’ she murmured. ‘And because of that, you will never touch me again.’ She felt it now, her blood inside him. As he reached for her with his huge hands, so
she reached for him inside her head, following the path of blood.

‘Stop!’

It was a whispered word inside her cell, barely rippling the air, but inside the Adamantine Man’s head it was a command to shake mountains. She knew this was so because she’d felt it
herself once, when her own master had done the same to her, when he’d bound her to him and elevated her from a Scales, a failure, to be an alchemist again. The binding was a price that
she’d learned only after it was too late.

His eyes rolled back. Most men would have fainted; this one reeled but stayed on his feet. Very slowly his eyes found her face again. He lunged towards her and then paused.

‘No,’ she whispered. Now she had him, she wanted to laugh, laugh at how stupid he looked with his trousers round his ankles. She wanted to laugh to take away the scream that was
clenched inside her.

‘What have you done to me, witch?’ he snarled.

‘Dress yourself.’ Reaching through the blood was an effort, but for now she barely noticed. Later she would have to conserve her strength and her touch would be more gentle.

He did as he was told, trembling now, fearful. She smiled. Even an Adamantine Man would crack in the end.

‘What have you done?’ he asked again.

Her eyes glittered. She bared her teeth. ‘Now you know how it feels to be weak and helpless.’ It was hard not to make him take a knife to himself, right there and then, hard
not to remember another time, another place, a desert canyon, a rushing river, the river men all over her, the roar of the dust they’d given her in her head and then another roar, of fire and
dragons, everywhere dragons . . .

No. She shook herself. Maybe later, when they were in the Raksheh and she’d found what she was looking for, maybe then, but for now she needed him. ‘You’re going to help
me,’ she said shortly. ‘You’re going to take me out of here. You’re going to take me to the Yamuna River, to the Raksheh and then to the Aardish Caves. You’re going to
help me find the Black Mausoleum. You want to. For you this shall become the most important thing in the world. For all of us. If anyone gets in our way or tries to stop us, no matter who or what
they are, you are not going to let them.’

She watched him closely, watched his slack face as her words reached through from her blood, mingling her desires with his. The Adamantine Man went out of her cell. He stood, uncertain, as she
followed and closed the door behind her. She was free.

He looked puzzled. ‘How?’ he asked.

‘With whatever means you have; but you will fight to the death before you let anyone take me back here.’

‘They’ll kill us both.’

‘Then find a way so they don’t!’ She nodded towards Rat in the other cell. ‘And he has to come too.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eight months before the Black Mausoleum

Bloodsalt. S