Part 8 (1/2)

'I didn't see anything except a roof fall on my head. By the time I got out they were on up the mountain. Just as well. I've got no strength for a fight.' Kemir closed his eyes. Mostly he wanted to lie down. He needed rest, and lots of it. Then maybe he'd get to find out whether Snow had broken anything that wouldn't get better. Broken bones he'd had before. He sighed and stood up. 'Can you help me?'

She looked at him like a frightened rabbit.

'My arm's broken. I need to set it straight. It would be a lot easier if you helped.' He wrinkled his nose. 'Don't you alchemists learn about that sort of thing?'

'I'm not an alchemist.' There. Words. Not screaming spitting hatred. Words.

'You know how to set a splint?'

Eventually he got a reluctant nod. He started plucking the arrows out of the dead men on the floor. Good strong shafts. Good for splinting a break. Shame to have to snap them in half, but needs must as the Silver King drives . . . He frowned, hearing himself think that old saying. Silver King, silver ones. What did they have to do with all this? Could they be the same? Had to be, didn't they? Did that mean the Silver King was coming back? Not that he had much of an idea of who the Silver King even was. A demon? Outsiders knew nothing when it came to things like that.

He put the thought aside. For now he had other worries.

She watched him. Didn't help, just watched, even as he got to taking off the s.h.i.+rts from the dead men, cutting them into ribbons then tying them back together. One-handed it was hard, and he had to hold his knife between his teeth, but she still didn't help. Finally he was done.

'Come here.' He held out the arrow shafts and the strips of cloth. The woman shook her head. Didn't move. He clenched his fist, but she just backed further away. Staring, watching. For a moment Kemir wondered whether she was as much a liar as him, whether she knew exactly who he was and was just waiting for the chance to kill him.

Well fine. If that's what it is, let's get on with it. I've gambled worse in my time. He started to bind his right hand to the top of a table leg, wincing and groaning. Every movement made his arm worse. When he was done, he looked at her. One last chance.

'Please?'

Another shake of the head. Another step away.

Right then. He put a wad of cloth in his mouth. Then he braced his feet and his good arm against the table and pushed, separating the two broken halves of his arm. And screamed. Lots of screaming. Vaguely, through the walls of pain, it looked like his one good arm was doing something vaguely right. Splinting the break. Wrapping strip after strip of cloth around as tightly as he could. Strip after strip . . .

Screaming felt good. At some point he either finished or gave up. He didn't remember untying his hand. The screams faltered to weeping and whimpering. He forgot about the woman then. She was a vague thing across the room, as significant as the food on the table and the dead bodies on the floor. He stumbled and crawled to one of the cots and fell into it, sobbing. The pain overwhelmed him. Turned out he had a lot more than a broken arm to scream about.

Eventually he fell asleep.

The Scales.

Kemir.

He had no idea how far he'd gone or for how long. Long and far, though, and still the dragon had found him.

Kemir.

'You tried to kill me.'

If I had tried, you would be dead.

'Why didn't you finish me, dragon?'

Can it not be generosity? she asked him. Which made him laugh. She was laughing too.

Generosity? I don't think so. Laughter was good. Laughter helped him clean up the mess that a tidal wave of fear and sorrow and regret had left behind.

Then I had some other purpose. It matters not. Goodbye, Kemir.

'You're an ungrateful s.h.i.+t,' he shouted at her in his dream.

You are still alive, Kemir. Remember, while I tear these kingdoms down, that this is what you wanted.

He felt the dragon lever her way back into the air and glide away from the ruined eyrie, her thoughts fading as she flew. He didn't have much of an answer to that. Didn't have much of an answer to anything any more. No family, no friends, no Sollos, no Nadira, no reason for doing anything much any more except looking for Rider Rod so I can kill him, and then what? No hate, no revenge, no nothing.

No, that wasn't right. He had pain, plenty of pain. In his arm. He sat up and wished he hadn't. He could walk. That was something. He was breathing hard, not getting enough air. His chest hurt. Everything hurt. Down here smelled bad too. He got up. He needed to be out. He wasn't sure whether Snow's voice in his head had been real or a dream, but she was gone, he was sure. Gone into the deep mountains with her kin.

Why is it so dark? The alchemical lamps seemed dimmer than he remembered. He couldn't see across the room any more. They were fading. Going out. Leaving him trapped down here in blank nothing.

The woman was awake, backing away from him. He ignored her, heading for the surface as fast as he dared, gasping for breath. Back to fresh air and the sky over his head. When she saw where he was going, her face changed. Scared. Afraid he was going to abandon her. Afraid of being alone.

I was going to kill you. The thought horrified him.

'The dragons are gone.' He stumbled down the pa.s.sage as fast as he dared, over the mound of rubble, up the stairs and into the glorious freezing air, and never mind how much it all hurt to get there. Outside, the early morning sun had crept high enough to light up the eyrie. Most of the valley below was still in shadow. He stood amid the ruins, taking deep breaths, staring up at the sky. Better. Better to be outside. The cold took away the worst of the pain. Took the edge off it at least. He was right. The dragons had gone. He squatted among the broken stones, rocking back on his heels, wondering what to do. He'd lost his sword, lost his bow. When he looked, he didn't even have a knife with him any more. Must have left it down with the woman. Didn't matter. There'd be more lying about, if he looked hard enough.

I will take my sleeping brothers and sisters far away, where we will not be found until they awake. That is how long you have to run before I will come. And how long was that? Weeks? Maybe a month? Never mind swords and bows. He had a purse full of coin and a pouch full of Souldust. Should be able to have a lot of fun with that in a month. He could at least die with a smile on his face. Had a lot more appeal than spending his last days trying to dodge swords and arrows. Especially with a broken arm.

And then what? Roll over and burn just like everyone else?

A boat down the river to Furymouth then. Away on a Taiytakei s.h.i.+p by whatever bargain it took, to whatever lands lay beyond the Sea of Storms. The Taiytakei had to come from somewhere, right? They couldn't just live on their s.h.i.+ps. And Snow had found those islands. And if even if they did live on their s.h.i.+ps, that had to be better than being burned and eaten, right? What did the Taiytakei want? He had money and Souldust, but somehow that didn't seem enough. They traded in slaves, but that was too much like being a dragon-knight. Dragons. The Taiytakei wanted dragons. Everyone knew that. Or failing that, they wanted the secrets of the alchemists . . .

Alchemists. He couldn't help but laugh. With one hand, the fates p.i.s.sed on him, with the next they showered him with gold. The woman. He could make her up as an alchemist, even if she wasn't. She had to know something to have been in those tunnels with the rest, right? He could trade her for pa.s.sage. Or maybe there were other bits and pieces hidden under the ground. Potions. Recipes. Anything.

Dragon-riders, alchemists, same difference. There was that mantra again. Wasn't really working.

Most likely he'd wind up a slave. But slavery was better than dead, wasn't it? Slaves could always dream of breaking free.

He glanced up at the sky. The dragon was gone but she was up there somewhere, off into the lifeless glaciers at the heart of the Worldspine or the arid peaks of the Purple Spur. If I was a dragon, that's where I'd go. Nothing there.

The start of the long road up to the ruins of the castle wasn't much more than a track, a path wide enough enough for a man on a horse maybe but no bigger, certainly not wide enough for a wagon. It wound up the slope down which Snow had thrown him the day before, cutting though the black trees, gloomy and overhung. The snow was clean, unmarked. No one had come down here for days. There was probably a stair, somewhere underground. Or a shaft and a cage on pulleys for lifting loads up from the eyrie. No need for a road at all really. At least not until some pa.s.sing dragon smashed your stairs and ate your slaves.

He sighed. On the one hand, he didn't have the energy for climbing mountains. On the other, his arm wouldn't stay that way for ever. Sooner or later he was going to need a sword and a bow again. Chances were he'd be good for that around about the same time that Snow came back to set fire to the world. Perfect. Still, he could always take his mind off how much his arm hurt by thinking about how much his ribs and spine hurt instead. Or his legs, or his knees, or the windburn on his neck or the creeping numbness in his toes. Plenty to choose from there.

By the time he reached the first bend in the road, he felt as though he'd spent the whole day running. He leaned against a tree, caught his breath and listened. Nothing. Not a sound. Not even a bird. Not even the rustle of the wind in the trees. Just a stillness. Silence, m.u.f.fled up in a blanket of snow.

It really shouldn't have taken him more than an hour to get to the castle, but instead it took half a day, wading through the snow and the scattered lumps of stonework that littered the road and the forest, tossed aside in the destruction of the castle. When he got to the top, his bow was right there where he'd dropped it, still in once piece. He gave a murmur of thanks to his ancestors for that. It was a nice bow, carved from the wing bone of some long-dead dragon. It was the kind of bow that a dragon-knight would have, and in fact had had, right up until Kemir had slit his throat. They'd had one each, him and his cousin Sollos. The second one was carefully wrapped and padded and, for all Kemir knew, still tied to Snow's back. The bow that he'd taken from his dead cousin's still-warm body on the same day that he'd first met Snow. The bow he'd sworn he'd use to kill the dragon-knight who murdered him. Or was that the one he was holding in his hand, and was it his own bow left on the back of the dragon?

Yeah. That was something else he could do. He could spend his last few months hunting down one last dragon-rider while around them the world burned.

He shook his head. He needed to rest, to lie down, to go back to sleep, preferably for days, but up here there was nowhere. Bright brilliant mountain sun, gleaming off the slopes around the ruins. Smashed blackened stone. Churned-up earth, ripped and and torn by dragon claws. The charred skeletons of a few trees, caught in Snow's fire. All the snow for hundreds of yards had melted and then frozen again in the night. Everywhere hard and cold and bright and glistening and unforgiving. He sat down on a flat rock for a while and slumped into a doze, soaking up the feeble warmth of the sun until the shadows of the broken trees and stones started to grow long again. Then he forced himself up, forced himself to look through the ruins, even though all he wanted was to lie down and sleep. Didn't find anything more either, so that was all a waste and in the end he trudged away, back down the road between the trees with just the bow. A sword could wait. Arrows he could find on the way. Make, if he had to. A knife, though. Couldn't do without a good knife. Best get his old one back from the underground refuge. Best get as much food and whatever else they had down there too, since he wasn't going to be doing much hunting for a while. Couldn't stay up here for ever. Sooner or later, people would come. Wasn't sure which was worse, people or dragons.

The sun was behind the mountain by the time he got back, the whole eyrie cast in freezing shadow even while the mountains across the valley gleamed a pinky-white. The woman was waiting for him. Or she was waiting, at least. Sitting on the stones just as he'd done before her, staring at the devastation. She was s.h.i.+vering. He sat down beside her, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her on his skin through the biting air. She didn't seem to even notice him, but even so the feeling of being close to someone almost made him cry. Strange way to feel about someone you'd planned to murder, were planning even now to sell into slavery, but that was how it was. He would take them both to Furymouth. He would get them both away before the dragons came out of the mountains, and he'd do whatever it took. That was the way to look at it. Never mind what happened at the end.

A light dusting of snow covered the eyrie now. Not enough to hide anything. Must have come in the night. The sky had been clear all day. Clear and cold.

'We should go,' he said after they'd sat together for some time. The woman didn't move. Eventually, Kemir left her there and made his way slowly and painfully back down into the refuge. At least she'd found some more lamps. With a bit of light, the place wasn't quite as bad. Didn't make him constantly feel like the air was being crushed out of his lungs. At some point, when his arm was throbbing so much he could hardly think, he lay down for a rest and fell asleep. When he woke up, the woman was back. She'd made a bed for herself in one of the storerooms, as far away from him as she could be, all mounded up in blankets and furs. If it hadn't been for the snoring, he'd never have known she was there.