The Tree of Story (15 page)

“The gate is shut and the wall seems intact,” Corr said. “No sentries that I can see.”

As the other ships emerged from the clouds and came level with the flagship, the Stormrider in the crow’s nest high up on the mast gave a cry. They followed his outstretched arm and saw a pair of large winged shapes circling above the city. Finn found it difficult to tell how big these creatures were, but something in the slow, stately wheel of their flight told him they were very large. Corr shouted to the lightning gunner at the prow of the ship to stand ready, but almost before the words had left his lips, the winged creatures broke from their circling with slow, unhurried flaps of their wings. They beat their way northward through the smoky air, away from the city and the approaching ships, and swiftly vanished into the clouds. A cheer went up from the Stormriders.

“Dragons?” Finn asked.

“It looked that way,” Corr said, “but no, they were scavenger birds.”

“They must have been huge,” Alazar said in wonder.

“Yes. They’ll eat nearly anything, but most often they show up after a battle to feast on the dead. Anything else that might have been looking for a meal gets out of their way fast.”

“They’ve arrived for dinner a little early, then,” the doctor said grimly.

Corr laughed. “I would call their presence a good omen, Doctor. For us. Nightbane eat those creatures when they can bring them down. The birds won’t usually fly anywhere near Adamant or our fortress for that reason. It’s a sign the city has probably been deserted. That’s why the men cheered.”

The ships dropped ever lower, and as sails were furled, the forward movement of the ships began to slow, as well. Just as the flagship passed over the ring-wall, Stormriders threw grappling hooks on long ropes that caught on the iron spikes. The ropes went taut, and with a lurch and a shudder through its frame the flagship came to rest. One after the other all the skyships followed suit and were soon anchored above the wall, venting steam and groaning deep in their timbers.

Finn gazed over the side, awestruck in spite of himself. Just within the enclosing wall a broad walkway ran around the entire rim of the city. Within its circle a great crater yawned wide and deep, descending in ring after concentric ring of ledges, balconies, staircases and battlements far into the earth, until its lower circles were lost in smoke and darkness. There was no movement or sign of life in the depths that Finn could see, though he could make out small dark shapes that might have been bodies lying on some of the walkways. Directly beneath the flagship, an anvil-shaped projection of black stone jutted out into the central well, tapering to a pier. On the far side, a second pier reached out across the city’s crater, but the two did not meet. A broad gap lay between them, though their jagged tips suggested that they were two halves of what had once been a slender bridge spanning the deep. The black stone, Finn guessed, must be the fabled adamant, the rare ore from which the city took its name.

“That’s where we’ll set down,” Corr said, pointing to the nearer of the two anvil-shaped piers. “It’s closest to the main gates. If anything unforeseen happens, we’ll have the best chance of withdrawing from there with men and ships intact.”

Below the upper parapet the depths of the city were lost in shadow and smoke. Flakes of ash whirled in the air, and the same acrid stench of sulphur and burning tar filled Finn’s
nostrils and stung his eyes, though a fainter but even more unwholesome reek accompanied it now: the smell of dead and rotting things.

“Where I come from we have a legend about a city like this,” Alazar said to Finn. “It’s where the spirits of the wicked go after death, to be tormented for all eternity.”

Corr overheard him and turned with a cold gleam of amusement in his eye. “The spirits of the dead are down there indeed, Doctor,” he said. “Don’t you see them?”

Finn looked again and realized that some of what he had taken for drifting shreds of smoke and ash were in fact fetches: pale, wavering shapes of men, slowly moving about the parapets and platforms of the city.

“Will they attack us?” the doctor asked.

Corr didn’t answer. He shouted another order to the helm and the ship began slowly to descend. When it dropped below the rim of the ring-wall, the sun’s pale light was suddenly cut off.

In a few moments all five ships hovered little more than a man’s height from the upper parapet and then came to rest on their flat keels. The sails sagged and the flagship’s timbers knocked and groaned as they settled upon themselves.

Gangplanks were quickly lowered down the sides and the Stormriders hurried onto the pier. Corr ordered Finn and the doctor to wait on the ship’s deck until he gave the word, and then he went over the side, followed by the golem and then the Stormriders. The other ships disgorged their crews, as well, and soon there were hundreds of Stormriders milling about the dull black surface of the pier. Finally Corr signalled to Finn and he climbed down with the doctor, who brought his heavy satchel with him.

“Welcome to Adamant,” Corr said.

The flat, broad pier jutted out like a road, from the massive
front gates of the city. The gates themselves were set deeply in the outer wall between two towering bastions that had carved stone heads of dragons set atop them. Finn thought it odd that these monstrous heads, their mouths gaping, should have been placed inside the city, facing inward, rather than glaring out at the valley to dismay enemies. But he was too busy surveying the rest of the city to think about it for long.

On either side of the pier the parapet curved away, and now Finn could see there were other structures built upon it: round sentry towers overlooking the central well, and vaults, like hoods carved of stone, over entryways to descending ramps and staircases that Finn guessed would lead to the city’s lower levels.

The fetches Finn had glimpsed earlier from above had all vanished, as if they had been frightened away. He remembered Master Pendrake explaining that these spectres had no will of their own and drifted aimlessly unless bound by spellcraft. But they were drawn by the
gaal
, Nonn had said. That was how his people had trapped and sealed so many of them in armour alloyed with the fever iron.

Some of the Stormriders ran back along the pier to the gates and up staircases to the battlements, where they stood at watch while the rest of Corr’s forces left the ships, carrying gear and supplies. Other Stormriders began to fan out and explore the platform and the adjacent tunnels and walkways. Corr’s beastmaster, an enormous brute with a whip, came down from one of the other ships with seven of the wolves following him. They were agitated and wary, no doubt smelling the scent of blood and death in the air. And there were a few Nightbane corpses to be seen, lying on the stone or the stairs to the upper battlements. Some had had their limbs or heads hacked off.

Once the ships were securely at rest, Finn and the doctor walked with Corr to the tapering end of the pier, followed by the golem and two Stormriders. As Finn had seen from the ship, the walkway ended at a broken and jagged edge, as did the end of the pier on the far side. It seemed as if a central span that had once connected the two walkways had been smashed through by something falling from above. Or perhaps exploding from below. Chunks of black rubble littered the other pier, and Finn wondered what kind of weapon or force had been powerful enough to shatter something that was supposed to be unbreakable.

Together they gazed down into the chasm that was the city of Adamant, speechless for a while at the vastness that lay beneath them. Much of the building the Ironwise had done over the ages was damaged or had collapsed, but what remained to be seen—columned arcades, great arched doorways, sweeping staircases, slender bridges—struck Finn with amazement. This city had been beautiful once.

“The fetches will be drawn to the
gaal
in the ships sooner or later,” Corr said. “We’ll have to be vigilant. They may not be under the Night King’s power, but their touch can still freeze the blood.”

As if to fulfill Corr’s words, Doctor Alazar gave a cry of warning. A pale figure had risen from the depths in front of them and hovered now just beyond the edge of the walkway. It was a fetch in the vague, wavering shape of a bearded man in long, flowing robes. Finn and the doctor stepped back in alarm, but Corr stood his ground.

The fetch hung in the air only steps from the broken end of the walkway, his sunken eyes fixed on Corr but without any expression in them that Finn could read: not fear or malice or even curiosity.

“Who were you in life, I wonder,” Corr said. “A leader
of men, I think. Yes. A great lord or a king. That’s why you came forward first, before the others. You were always first, weren’t you?”

The fetch slowly raised a hand toward Corr and drifted closer to him, growing more solid and distinct the nearer it got.

Finn murmured, “Be careful, Corr.”

“He won’t harm me,” Corr said over his shoulder, then he turned to the fetch again.

“It’s
you
, isn’t it?” he said. “The first Sky Lord. The one they named me for.”

The fetch gave no sign of recognition.

“Hear me,” Corr said. “I rule here now and the
gaal
is mine. There is nothing left for you or the others. Fade and depart as you should have done long ago.”

The fetch gazed at Corr as if it had not heard, then at last it began to move away, dimming and growing thinner, its arm still outstretched, until finally it could not be told apart from the ash and smoke whirling up on the drafts from below.

“Will they all obey you like this?” asked Alazar.

“They bend to a stronger will, Doctor. Any stronger will. We’ve seen it before. One must face them down, and then there is nothing to fear.”

The dwarfs’ ship was the last to set down. When it had been secured like the others, Nonn appeared with his fellow elders, descended the gangplank and crossed the pier to where Corr and the others stood. To Finn’s surprise the dwarf chieftain was no longer wearing the drab ring-mail and leathers he’d had on earlier. Instead he was dressed in a robe of sleek white fur embroidered with silver, and his lined brow was ringed with a thin circlet of bright gold. He walked with a staff now, too, a rod of roughly finished iron but topped with a spike of red stone.

The dwarf came toward them slowly and solemnly, like a monarch to his throne. He did not look at Corr or anyone else but strode past them all and halted at the very tip of the pier. He stood there for a time in silence, his head bowed, then he raised a hand.

“City of our fathers,” he said in a deep, booming voice. “Great Qarqanaq. Adamant the imperishable. Your children have returned home. I join my life’s blood with that of my fathers, and I vow I will not leave here again while yet a drop of that blood remains in me.”

With that he drew the red spike of his staff across the palm of his hand and closed the hand in a fist. As the dark blood oozed from between his fingers, he held his arm out and let the drops fall into the depths.

Finally he turned away and strode back to where Finn stood with Corr and the doctor.

“This was our great public gathering place,” the old dwarf said, gazing around the pier with its strewn bodies. “We gathered here on feast days and to welcome the sun at the end of winter. Oh, yes, we dwarfs loved the sun in those days. It wasn’t always hidden behind veils of smoke and we weren’t forced to hide in our tunnels then. We called our city Ban nor qalu, the circle of light and song. And now … now it is a charnel pit.” He cursed in his own language. “The slaves of the Night King have defiled this ground, as they defile everything they touch.”

“You and I will make this a living city once again, Nonn,” Corr said. “And for that we will need the mines, if they can be reached.”

“I have walked the path to those mines in my thoughts every day, Sky Lord,” the dwarf said. “There is a main road that winds down through the city to the mine entrance, though it was damaged in the upheavals of the earth that
killed many of my people. The Nightbane may have repaired the road, but they are not Ironwise and it is very likely that way is still difficult to pass. It would be best if a company of my finest delvers go first, before anyone else.”

“Until we’re certain the Nightbane have left, nobody is going anywhere without an armed escort,” Corr said.

Finn thought the old dwarf would bristle at Corr’s words, but instead he smiled coldly.

“I agree,” he said. “That’s why I’ve brought one.”

Nonn gestured toward his own ship. From its far side now emerged a troop of thirty or more dwarfs in thickly plated armour, carrying great square-headed hammers and broad-bladed axes. Corr’s eyes narrowed at the sight of them, and Finn guessed that his brother had known nothing about this.

Corr studied the armed dwarfs in silence. Then he nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Have your delvers send messengers back as soon as they’ve secured the mines. For now, though, I would ask that you yourself stay with me. We’re going to establish our base camp here, as you suggested, and I will need to consult you about many things.”

“Of course. But one more thing, Lord. There may be blockages and cave-ins that will be hard to clear, and that creature of clay is stronger than thirty men. The work of reaching the mines safely will go much faster for my delvers with his help.”

Corr turned and studied the silent, unmoving man of clay.

“The golem stays here for the time being,” he said at last. “If and when your delvers need him, I will reconsider.”

Nonn’s eyes burned. It looked as if he would protest, but he nodded slowly and marched off without another word. Finn watched him go. His suspicions about the old dwarf’s loyalty had been rekindled by the sight of the armed dwarfs
and Nonn’s request for the golem. But before he could voice them, Corr spoke.

“Adamant has two masters now, it would seem,” he said. “Nonn is no happier about that than the fetches.”

“Can we trust him?” Finn asked.

“His little army isn’t enough to protect him if the Nightbane return,” Corr said. “He knows that. Nonn needs us as much as we need him.”