Pinnacles, not Adamantine Men, and so he could live –
even though he’d be another mouth to feed – as long as he didn’t mind putting his axe to some use; and Skjorl didn’t mind that one little bit. For a month they stayed,
hiding in the day, fighting ferals at night, searching for food and anything that might be salvaged, meticulously recording the movements of any dragons that passed overhead. Might have stayed
longer if one dragon hadn’t got scent of them and set itself to digging them out of the ground. Skjorl hadn’t thought it possible, but it sat over their heads and each day they heard it
tearing with its claws at the earth. He saw it in the air one day. Saw its silhouette and the shape and beat of its wings and knew it was the dragon from Bloodsalt. Odd that.
Hunger and a dragon overhead were old friends to Skjorl, but the riders didn’t like this dragon one bit. Got to them quick it did. He wondered how they meant to cross the open land from
where they were to the Pinnacles, what with no alchemists and no potions to hide them, but they laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and told him he shouldn’t worry. A warren of tunnels
reached out from the Fortress of Watchfulness, they said, right out across the realms, all of them ending on the banks of the Fury, from Gliding Dragon Gorge in the north to Farakkan in the south,
to Purkan and Arys Crossing and Valleyford in between. Tunnels. That was how they were going home.
And so they did. Took five days. Strange and sorcerous things, those tunnels, wondrous at first, not hewn by the hands of man but by something else. Then, later, just dull. Boring and monotonous
and the same, hour after hour after hour, straight as a scorpion bolt and dark and empty as a murderer’s heart until they reached what the riders said were the catacombs of the Silver City
itself, back from the blood-mage days when burying the dead had been no sin. They took him up into the Fortress of Watchfulness and the slowly dying fellowship of men that lived there, this Speaker
Hyrkallan and his queen, and they set him to work doing nothing much at all. More wonders. The Silver City was old, he knew that, but the three stone warrens that overlooked it were older still.
The Pinnacles. Hollowed out by hands long forgotten, tunnelled and quarried by men as a shelter from the terror of the dragons when they came, shaped and transformed by the will of the Silver King.
Three mile-high monoliths that had been the centre of the realms from the day the dragons had been broken. They were old and they were heartless.
He found a few others of his kind, a handful of Adamantine Men who’d been sent out, as he’d been sent to Outwatch, with axes and hammers and dragon poison for the great cull that was
supposed to save the realms and had failed. He couldn’t believe what they told him at first, but over the weeks and the months he slowly saw it with his own eyes. The knights and riders of
the Pinnacles were doing nothing. They had their tunnels that reached halfway across the realms and food enough for most of a lifetime. They had water, an endless inexplicable stream of it flooding
through the fortress from the fountain on its peak conjured by the Silver King. But they had no hope. They were already lost.
After that he spent as little time there as possible. Lived as much as he could with the hunting parties, out in the Silver City tunnels.
Doing
something. Killing ferals mostly, but at
least doing
something
.
Eventually, after a few months, another party of Adamantine Men had arrived out of nowhere. He kept away. Didn’t want them to see what he’d become. And it was just a few days after
that, when he found himself guarding some traitor alchemist they’d brought with them, that everything went to shit again.
15
Blackscar
Five months before the Black Mausoleum
The dragon searched the river. Other dragons came and went, other thoughts, other
even though he’d be another mouth to feed – as long as he didn’t mind putting his axe to some use; and Skjorl didn’t mind that one little bit. For a month they stayed,
hiding in the day, fighting ferals at night, searching for food and anything that might be salvaged, meticulously recording the movements of any dragons that passed overhead. Might have stayed
longer if one dragon hadn’t got scent of them and set itself to digging them out of the ground. Skjorl hadn’t thought it possible, but it sat over their heads and each day they heard it
tearing with its claws at the earth. He saw it in the air one day. Saw its silhouette and the shape and beat of its wings and knew it was the dragon from Bloodsalt. Odd that.
Hunger and a dragon overhead were old friends to Skjorl, but the riders didn’t like this dragon one bit. Got to them quick it did. He wondered how they meant to cross the open land from
where they were to the Pinnacles, what with no alchemists and no potions to hide them, but they laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and told him he shouldn’t worry. A warren of tunnels
reached out from the Fortress of Watchfulness, they said, right out across the realms, all of them ending on the banks of the Fury, from Gliding Dragon Gorge in the north to Farakkan in the south,
to Purkan and Arys Crossing and Valleyford in between. Tunnels. That was how they were going home.
And so they did. Took five days. Strange and sorcerous things, those tunnels, wondrous at first, not hewn by the hands of man but by something else. Then, later, just dull. Boring and monotonous
and the same, hour after hour after hour, straight as a scorpion bolt and dark and empty as a murderer’s heart until they reached what the riders said were the catacombs of the Silver City
itself, back from the blood-mage days when burying the dead had been no sin. They took him up into the Fortress of Watchfulness and the slowly dying fellowship of men that lived there, this Speaker
Hyrkallan and his queen, and they set him to work doing nothing much at all. More wonders. The Silver City was old, he knew that, but the three stone warrens that overlooked it were older still.
The Pinnacles. Hollowed out by hands long forgotten, tunnelled and quarried by men as a shelter from the terror of the dragons when they came, shaped and transformed by the will of the Silver King.
Three mile-high monoliths that had been the centre of the realms from the day the dragons had been broken. They were old and they were heartless.
He found a few others of his kind, a handful of Adamantine Men who’d been sent out, as he’d been sent to Outwatch, with axes and hammers and dragon poison for the great cull that was
supposed to save the realms and had failed. He couldn’t believe what they told him at first, but over the weeks and the months he slowly saw it with his own eyes. The knights and riders of
the Pinnacles were doing nothing. They had their tunnels that reached halfway across the realms and food enough for most of a lifetime. They had water, an endless inexplicable stream of it flooding
through the fortress from the fountain on its peak conjured by the Silver King. But they had no hope. They were already lost.
After that he spent as little time there as possible. Lived as much as he could with the hunting parties, out in the Silver City tunnels.
Doing
something. Killing ferals mostly, but at
least doing
something
.
Eventually, after a few months, another party of Adamantine Men had arrived out of nowhere. He kept away. Didn’t want them to see what he’d become. And it was just a few days after
that, when he found himself guarding some traitor alchemist they’d brought with them, that everything went to shit again.
15
Blackscar
Five months before the Black Mausoleum
The dragon searched the river. Other dragons came and went, other thoughts, other
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