Stephen Deas - The Black Mausoleum

‘You walk?’ he asked when got back to Jasaan. Jasaan shook his head.

‘Ankle’s done. I can hop.’

‘Not down here with no light. You can crawl, right?’

‘I can crawl.’

They shuffled along in the darkness, quiet as they could, Jasaan on his hands and knees, Skjorl inching his way beside him until they reached one of the cistern walls. Here and there they passed more eggs. With a bit of care, Skjorl could still swing his axe with one hand to smash them. It took Jasaan to cut off the unborn hatchlings’ heads. Skjorl tried but he couldn’t find a way to make his buggered hand work and he just made a mess. Quicker to prop Jasaan up to finish the job.

He didn’t know how long they’d been going when they finished the eggs. Long enough he wanted to sit down. Back where the roof had collapsed there was sunlight filtering down through the hole, giving a dim light so he could finally see. The dust had mostly settled except where the two of them kicked it up again. He put his back to a stone and rummaged in his pack for something to eat.

‘It just needs a hatchling small enough to squeeze through one of those tunnels and we’re finished,’ said Jasaan. Skjorl shrugged. Obvious really. Wasn’t sure why it needed to be said.

‘We’re finished anyway,’ he muttered. ‘Look at us.’ No place among the Adamantine Men for cripples.

‘We’ll heal.’

Skjorl took a deep breath and sighed. He passed Jasaan some of Vish’s herbs to mix with his water and took some himself. Something to numb the pain. ‘Sun’s up. We’ve smashed a good few eggs but not all of them. There’s others somewhere. As soon as one hatches, it’ll be small enough to come after us. We could barely face an angry old crone, never mind a dragon.’

Jasaan offered some of his bread. Brothers together. Sharing everything. Live together, die together. Old traditions like that stuck with you, even in places like this. ‘We did what we were asked to do.’

Skjorl shook his head and took his own bread instead. ‘Some of it. There’s no one left at Bloodsalt, but we won’t be getting back to tell anyone that. And there’s still dragons. We didn’t kill the dragons.’

‘We killed one of them.’

‘Vish and I killed it.’ Skjorl stood up. He was tired enough to drop and he had nothing he wanted to say. ‘I’m going to look around for a bit. Get some rest. When it’s dark we’ll see if we can find another way out.’ Which didn’t make any sense — no point spending the day hiding somewhere when the dragons already knew where you were — but Jasaan didn’t argue, and Skjorl left him sitting there, busy trying to make some sort of splint for his ankle. He walked on through the cisterns. Not really looking for a way out because he wasn’t expecting to find one, but just to be on his own.

After a bit he walked back to where the roof had come in, to where there was some light, and looked at his hand. Tried to take his gauntlet off, but that hurt too much, so he was left with poking and prodding. Half pulverised. Two fingers shattered, a third one broken. At least the burns on his palm weren’t too bad.

He stopped there, in a ray of sunlight, and listened. If the second dragon was anywhere nearby, there was no sign of it. No sounds, no tremors in the earth. It was almost a disappointment. Being eaten would have been easy, the quick way out, but when that didn’t happen he looked at the rubble instead. A man with two good hands and two good feet could climb that. Scramble straight up. Simple. Might not be any holes big enough for a dragon to get through, but a man, now he wouldn’t have any trouble at all.

Dragons had good eyes in the daylight. Could spot a man moving through the desert from a mile away. Couldn’t pretend the temptation wasn’t there, though — just start climbing. Never mind that he’d be leaving Jasaan behind. Never mind the noise it might make. Never mind being seen, just get up and go, and keep on going until claws and teeth closed around him.

Something scraped on the ground behind him. He spun around, fumbling for his axe, ready for a hatchling, but it was Jasaan.

‘I thought that too. Could be the only way out.’

‘Could be.’

‘When it gets dark, then?’

‘If the dragon doesn’t come back.’ Which it would. It knew they were there and it knew what they’d done.

‘Perhaps we should look for another.’

‘You go do that then.’ The adult was away. Hunting. Had to be. The young ones, they could be anywhere, but the big one would come back in the evening. It would tear its way in and then they’d die.

No. No, by the great Flame, that wasn’t going to happen. If he was going to die, it was going to be his way. ‘Come on.’

‘What?’

‘Come on!’ He started to climb up the rubble.

‘What are you doing?’

‘We stay here, we die. So we don’t stay here. We get out before the big one comes back again. We get as far as we can. We hide up in the afternoon. As soon as it’s dark, we press on. It’ll look for us here but we’ll be somewhere else. Not up the Sapphire valley. We head up towards the moors. Until we can kill dragons again. Then we come back and we finish what we came here for.’

Jasaan was shaking his head. ‘There’s hatchlings. They’ll see you.’

‘Us, Jasaan. If they see anything, they’ll see us. And maybe they will and maybe they won’t, but I’m not waiting down here to die, and you’re coming with me.’ Jasaan would slow him down, but in truth, neither of them was much use in a fight any more.

‘No! Skjorl, stay here. Wait until night! There might be another way. There might be other tunnels somewhere.’

He was halfway up the pile of broken stone already. Didn’t bother to look back or even to shake his head. True, there might be another way out of the cisterns, but he didn’t care. There weren’t any tunnels for people to hide in, not in a place like this. No catacombs like in Sand, no endless caves like there were under the Purple Spur. Just desert. Hot, harsh and much too bright. No, and Jasaan wouldn’t stay down here on his own either. Skjorl reached the top and waited, squinting against the fierce daylight. The cisterns had been built underneath some sort of palace, not that there was much left of it now. Dragons had taken their time over destroying it. Burned it from the outside and then smashed it down with tail and claw and trampled it and burned it again. Same as they’d done to Outwatch all those months ago. Pieces of carved masonry lay heaped about, broken statues, fragments of walls and floors covered in patterns of tiny coloured tiles. That sort of thing. All the pointless finery that had once surrounded the great lords of the realms. Looking at it now made him want to laugh. The sun was high in the sky, blistering hot. He took a swig of water from his skin. That was all he needed. The sun on his back, a splash of water and something to fight. None of this pointless pride.

A stone head stared at him sideways from the rubble, its body lost amid the tumbled stones. There was something familiar about it. When Skjorl turned and stared back, he recognised it. Speaker Hyram. The last one to serve out his years. The speaker under whom this had started. One dragon gone missing, that was all, the white he’d seen at Outwatch. One dragon and the realms were all but destroyed. Speaker Zafir had followed him. Easy on the eye, that one. Then Speaker Jehal, the one they called the Viper. Now Skjorl served Jehal’s queen, Lystra. Or at least he had when he’d left the Purple Spur. For all he knew she might be dead by now too, another speaker raised in her place. Speakers came and speakers went. He shook his head at Hyram’s still face. ‘What does it matter now? What do any of you matter?’