Stephen Deas - The Black Mausoleum

The one-eyed man and the woman both seemed to notice Siff. He felt them turning their gaze towards him as though sensing his presence, as though they were looking for him, perhaps. The man with one eye smiled.

The snakes snapped away from the mirror and it abruptly became silver and blank once more. The last one he tried was dead. When he touched it, nothing happened, but he felt a warning of some all-destroying void. He let that one go, let even the silver mirror fall and fade. Left the arch the same dead stone as he’d found it

‘How do I know these things?’ he whispered to himself.

‘How do you do these things?’ whispered the alchemist.

‘Look though!’ He turned on her. ‘The Silver King! Who else could have made them?’

She bowed her head. ‘No one, Siff. You have found one of his palaces, of that I have no doubt, but he is not here, only relics of him.’

‘No! He is here!’

‘The Silver King was killed by the blood-mages, Siff. He gave them only a tiny piece of his power, but they became many. They overthrew him and they slew him.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, Siff. With the magic of the blood that he had taught them, and it cost them almost everything. But they did, and they took his body into the mountains and they used his essence for one great ritual of blood that forever bound the dragons to the potions we had learned to make. The Silver King is gone, Siff. Only his relics remain.’

Blood. Blood! That was what he had gone searching for! He looked at her and smiled. ‘No, alchemist. No, you are so very wrong.’

‘Look around you, Siff. He’s not here. Our only hope is to scour this place for whatever he may have left behind that we might use against the dragons.’

‘No.’ Blood. That was the answer. That was why he hadn’t stayed. He needed blood, and not just any blood. He needed the blood of someone special. Of the Silver King, except that wasn’t possible. But of someone who had touched the Isul Aieha. ‘Tell me, alchemist, how the first blood-mages were made.’

‘They tasted the moonlight essence of the Silver King. They tasted

…’ Her voice petered into nothing.

‘His blood.’ He smiled. The moonlight snakes withdrew into his fingers. His eyes began to gleam. He crouched down beside her, lifted her chin and made her look into his eyes.

‘You,’ he whispered. ‘He’s in you.’

She shook her head.

‘Yes. Yes, he is. I’ve tasted your blood. You gave it to me. You tried to use it against me but instead you roused something. He’s in you. A tiny, tiny part of him. Think, alchemist! What is it that makes you what you are?’

‘Knowledge,’ she said, her voice hoarse, but she couldn’t look at him.

She knew! The witch knew! All along! ‘You lie.’

‘No.’

‘Yes!’ He threw back his head and laughed, and then clamped a hand around her throat and forced her back until she was lying flat on the stone in the middle of the arches. ‘That’s what you are, isn’t it? All of you alchemists? Pale and ghostly reflections of the Silver King himself. Blood-mages in disguise. He is in you! All of you. Every one.’ Her hands were tied but not her legs, and she started to struggle hard. He pushed one arm across her throat until she couldn’t breathe and held her down with his weight. ‘I came here and I found something. No. It found me, something that had been waiting for centuries. A seed, I think, and now I need your blood to grow. My blood, for I am the Isul Aieha and I want it back.’

He pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the neck, cutting deep until her blood spurted in great arcs. Drops of it spattered the arches. Where it touched them, they began to glow.

‘Please!’ she gasped, although there was no hope for her now. She’d bleed dry in seconds.

‘Look, alchemist! Look! Look what you’ve done!’

One by one the arches shimmered to silver. He felt the power coursing through the vault. His power. The Isul Aieha. They would open now, if he asked them.

He waited until the alchemist became still beneath him. Then he got to his feet. He looked at her, almost sad. The flat stone was covered in her blood. It was everywhere. ‘Such a shame you couldn’t see this,’ he said. ‘Such a shame.’

He went to the gate that opened to the sea of liquid silver and let his moonlight serpents touch its surface. The sea and its giant moon appeared before him. When he reached to touch it with his hand, there was no resistance, no shimmer. This time the door was open.

Home.

‘Such a shame,’ he said again.

‘Yes, Skjorl, what would you do with her?’

Outside was a dragon. A dragon that had come for him. Just for him. ‘Shut up, Jasaan.’

‘No.’ In the darkness Skjorl felt hands on his dragon-scale and then he was shoved backwards. He stumbled on the uneven floor and almost fell.

‘Vishmir! What are you doing, fool?’ Jasaan? Jasaan had pushed him?

The dragon roared and bellowed flame, lighting the cave once more. Skjorl saw Jasaan’s face. Snarling and determined.

‘My, my, look at you. Never thought you’d make it back to Samir’s Crossing on your own.’

‘Neither did I. But I did.’

Skjorl looked at the dragon again. Rage came off it in waves, washing over him. He soaked it up. Revelled in it. ‘I’m right here, monster! Come and get me if you can!’ Caves. Men had been hiding in caves since time began. It was wrong. Men should face their monsters out in the open.

The dragon roared again. The flames died and plunged them back into darkness.

‘About time you grew a spine,’ snarled Skjorl.

‘You shit-eater.’

‘Vish died at Bloodsalt because you were a coward.’

‘Vish died because a dragon threw a rock at him!’ Jasaan pointed. ‘ That dragon.’

‘It should have been you!’ Skjorl clenched his fists and pushed Jasaan over. The dragon’s rage was coursing through him.

‘Again, Skjorl.’ Jasaan didn’t sound angry at all. Or if he did, it was cold and calculated, not the hot fury of the dragon tearing at the cave mouth. ‘If you reach her, what will you do with her?’

Press her face hard into the dirt and show her that no one, no one, buries an Adamantine Man alive. ‘That’s between me and her.’ He heard Jasaan moving, getting back to his feet. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Scarsdale.’

Skjorl threw back his head. If he wasn’t so angry he’d have laughed. ‘Scarsdale? Liouma? Still?’

‘Yes, Liouma. Still.’

‘When are you going to get over that, Jasaan. Don’t tell me you’re sweet on this one too.’

‘She’s an alchemist.’

‘Means nothing. You’re soft in the head, you are. Never should have been a Guardsman.’

‘I had the same choice as the rest of you. None.’

Skjorl snarled. ‘What I mean, Jasaan, is that you should have died instead of someone else. Someone worthy.’

‘Oh please, not Vish again!’

‘No. You should have died a long time ago.’

The dragon had moved away. Light was coming in from the mouth of the cave again.

‘I’m so sick of you.’ Jasaan hit him.

It was a good punch. Square on the jaw. Skjorl ran his tongue over his teeth. All still there. He grinned. ‘Scarsdale, Jasaan. Every bloody time. I took what was due to me by the old law. I did nothing wrong.’

‘She begged you to stop!’

‘I’m an Adamantine Man, Jasaan, and so are you. We face dragons and we die. I was entitled to have her, you cock! Her or any of the rest of that pathetic bunch of rags we found there.’

Jasaan was on him in a flash, gripping his armour, pressing their faces together. ‘You got drunk and you took her, screaming, in front of all of us and all of them, and then you pushed her over to Vish and told him to help himself. You’d had so much wine, you couldn’t even pull up your trousers when you were done. She screamed. Begged. Pleaded.’