Stephen Deas - The Black Mausoleum

Ancestors! The ground was coming closer. Slowly, but it was. Underneath, it went past her so fast! Left hand down to turn left. Right hand down to turn right.

She tugged, very gently, with her right hand. Nothing happened. She tugged harder and then pulled with all her strength. The wings tipped her sideways. She started to fall, fast. When she let go, heart thumping so hard it seemed ready to burst out of her, the wings straightened and levelled and she was gliding again. She shivered. The ground was nearer now. She was lower. Never mind the canals. Ground, any ground, would have to do.

Buildings and streets rushed beneath her, mercilessly fast, dead empty houses, roads covered in weeds and patches of grass. There were trees, here and there, starting to sprout. They’d called this the Harvest Realm once. Now the fields and the meadows that had made the Silver City so rich were eating it.

The heart of the city reached up for her. The Golden Temple surrounded by its gardens, its esplanade, its lake and more of the old canals. Kataros could see the temple’s dome, half staved in by some idle dragon. A livid green by day, but in the moonlight it was as grey as everything else. Next to it an open space. She could land there. Nervously, she pulled on the left wing, trying to guide herself towards the temple. Gently but firmly; and slowly the wings turned her, this time without plunging her towards the ground.

A shape passed through the air beneath her. For a moment her heart almost stopped, because even though it was night, it still could only be a dragon, gliding straight towards the temple; but then she understood: it was the Adamantine Man. Just like he’d said, he was flying faster than her, much faster and he was already lower down. She saw him fly on ahead towards the temple, but he came down short of it, into one of the canals. She saw his wings flare as he reached the ground, saw a splash of water and then he was lost as she flew over him.

The ruins fell away. For a moment she was over a wide square leading towards the gardens, then the temple walls reached out like hands. She tried to turn, but not enough. At the last she pulled down hard on both wings, the way the Adamantine Man had told her.

One wing hit a wall. She pitched forward. Something cracked and then she was falling, but slowly, strangely slowly. There was another crack, this time louder as the wing twisted and snapped. The ground flew at her face; she tumbled and then the world hit her on the back of the head and the broken pieces of Prince Lai’s wings crashed on top of her.

Eight months before the Black Mausoleum

The little ones had given it a name. In its disdain for them, the dragon had forgotten. It had lived a thousand years and more, almost a hundred lifetimes. It had seen the world change beyond all recognition, but in the first of its lifetimes it had had another name. Black Scar of Sorrow Upon the Earth. Blackscar.

It had had a rider in those days. A true rider, a worthy one, a man made of silver. The god-men of the moon, whom the little ones called the Silver Kings. It had gone to war with them. It had known then, as it knew now, that the Silver Kings had made it, and made it for that one purpose. It had raged and stormed and slaughtered, burned little ones and consumed them, and in its turn had been burned by the sorceries of the lesser gods.

The Silver Kings had made it well. Death was not the end. Death was the little death, the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. It had been reborn. It had watched the world shatter, and then the last of the Silver Kings were scattered and gone, hidden or lost in the new and broken world. It had looked for them. They had all looked at first, all the dragons, left alone, forgotten and abandoned.

The dragon called Blackscar had looked for longer than most. A lifetime passed and then another, and by then few of them cared any more. The world was a new one. The lesser gods had been made quiet. The Silver Kings were gone. There were other creatures but they were ephemeral things. The dragons ate them and the world became theirs.

Between its lives, in its passing through the realm of the dead, it saw that something had changed since its first rebirth. A hole had been made, a tear, a rent from the shattering of the world, patched whole again by a web of something that tasted of the moon and of the earth and of something else, of some wrongness. Other dragons saw it too. For a while they had wondered together what it was. But the web held fast. The dragons avoided it. In time they lost interest.

The young ones said the web was gone now. Broken or destroyed. The dragon had yet to see. The dragon’s mate, Bright Lands Under Starlight, that one would see now. Careless and reckless, but what was a dragon if not those things? What did a dragon fear? And they had not expected that any little ones would come. Now the dragon’s hatchlings had scattered into the hills in search of cooler climes. Only the dragon remained.

It hunted.

The little ones had not gone far. It felt them, tiny senses of them at the fringes of thought, a flicker and then gone. It felt them when it searched, but never for more than a moment. Never for long enough to know where they were.

I know you are here! it raged at them, but they never answered. It flew up and down the river, burning the stone, searching.

In the night it crept down to where its mate lay under the stone. It tore the boulders away one by one until there was space for it to squeeze into where the little ones had been. It had not expected to find them still there, but the little ones were always surprising and the dragon was amused to see that one had, after all, remained. It walked aimlessly back and forth, so oblivious to the dragon’s presence that the dragon paused from simply burning it.

Little one. Why are you still here? There is nothing but death for you here.

There was something wrong with it, this little one. It wasn’t made right. The dragon touched its thoughts, but there were none. It lived, and yet it didn’t. And there again was that touch of wrongness that it remembered, now untainted by the tastes of the moon and the earth.

The dragon picked the little one up. Its head was floppy. It seemed broken. It didn’t speak. It didn’t even seem to noticed that a dragon held it.

The dragon carried it out into the moonlight. Where are the others? it asked. There were more, it knew that much. How many of you came?

The little one didn’t answer. It took the dragon a while to realise why: the little one was dead. It had been dead for some time. Its head was crushed and broken from flying stone, but some part simply wouldn’t let go.

The dragon hadn’t seen a walking dead thing for a long time. Not since its first lifetime. It wondered for a while what that meant. It thought about eating this little one. Dead or not, they tasted the same, but it had learned about eating little ones. They poisoned themselves. So it set this one down on the ground and watched to see what would happen. Eventually the sun rose. The little one stumbled away looking for shelter. Each time it did that, the dragon picked it up and put it back in the sun again.

It didn’t last long. The walking dead had never lasted long out in the sun.

The dragon called Blackscar looked at the broken body for a while and then tossed it far out into the salt lake where it would be less of a temptation. Then it went back to searching for the ones who had killed its mate.

It would find them. And when it did, they would burn.

Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum

Kataros crawled out from under the broken wings, stopping now and then to untangle herself from pieces of the harness. Sharp pains laced her side and her shoulder hurt when she moved it, enough to make her cry out.