Stephen Deas - The Black Mausoleum

Skjorl seized Jasaan back, pulled them even closer together until their noses were almost touching. ‘So what, Guardsman? She was mine to have if I wanted her. If you wanted her too, you should have done something about it. Was she nice, Jasaan, was that what you were thinking? Because nice has no place in the life of an Adamantine Man.’ He broke Jasaan’s grip and threw him off. The man was weak, always had been. Was never right for the Guard. ‘We are swords. We sate ourselves in flesh and then we move on.’

Jasaan spat on the floor. ‘Do you remember what happened after? Do you remember her brother coming at you with a knife.’

Skjorl grinned. ‘I remember slitting his throat with it.’

‘And then?’

And then? Waking up in a prison. With a stinking hangover.

‘You passed out. You fell on top of the man you’d killed, whose sister you’d raped, and started snoring. You’re a beast. An animal. A monster.’

Skjorl nodded. All of those things, yes. That was what he was. All those things and proud of every one. He caught a glimpse of something moving fast at the entrance to the cave. He jumped at Jasaan and hurled them both against the far wall. A boulder the size of a man came flying past, bouncing from wall to wall. He laughed and raised a fist to the unseen dragon outside. ‘Old trick, dragon! Is that the only one you’ve got?’ He could almost hear it talking to him. Bits and pieces and fragments amid its fury. It would wait for them for as long as it took. It would smash these cliffs apart if it had to. If it could. He turned back to Jasaan and hissed, ‘Yes. I’m an Adamantine Man, and I am proud.’

Jasaan shook his head. The dragon was watching them. ‘You’re the monster, Skjorl. Not them. People like you.’

‘You’re a Guardsman, Jasaan.’ Skjorl threw back his head again. ‘A poor example, but you are. We’re kin, and I’m your older brother. You should learn from me.’

‘I have.’ Jasaan drew out his sword. ‘Oh, I have.’

Skjorl blinked. He started to laugh. ‘Are you drawing a blade on me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve lost your mind.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll gut you like a pig. You were never my equal.’

Jasaan shook his head. ‘I’ll not let you do to this alchemist what you did in Scarsdale. Not again.’

‘As if I could.’ Skjorl bellowed with laughter, because what did Jasaan know? What did he know about alchemists and what she’d done to him? ‘I’ll fight you, Jasaan, if you so want to die in such an easy way. If you can’t find the courage to meet a proper end. That!’ He pointed to the mouth of the cave. ‘That’s what you should draw a blade for! There is your monster.’ Fury and rage crackled through the air. Made him want to get on with murdering Jasaan just for something to do. He drew his own sword. ‘But if that’s what you want, if you don’t have the balls to face a dragon then so be it!’

‘I’m facing something worse.’ Jasaan roared and hurled himself forward. Skjorl caught the blade against his own and pressed close, both swords squeezed between them.

‘I don’t want to kill you, little man. You’re not worth it. I want to kill the dragon.’

‘And you think that gives you the right to take whatever you want?’

‘Yes!’ Skjorl snarled and threw Jasaan to the ground. ‘Yes I do!’ He put away his sword and unslung his axe, his lover and mistress, Dragon-blooded. Towered over Jasaan with it. Watched him lying there, sword in his hand still, quivering and afraid of death. ‘Yes, Jasaan,’ he roared. ‘By the laws of Narammed, yes, it gives me the right!’ He brought the axe down. Jasaan rolled away, quick as an Adamantine Man should be. Skjorl howled and swung again. ‘Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel the dragon rage? The power? The glory?’

‘No!’ Jasaan rolled back to his feet, the axe missing him by a whisker. He ducked inside Skjorl’s swing and lunged in the gloom. Hard and fast, straight into Skjorl’s ribs. Skjorl grunted and stumbled back. For a moment they stood apart. Skjorl looked down at himself. Jasaan stared.

Skjorl was wearing dragon-scale. Battle armour. He laughed. ‘A soft poke from a short sword? You’ll have to do better than that, little man.’ He swung the axe, weaving patterns in the air with the blade, stepping towards Jasaan, backing him towards the dragon at the mouth of the cave, the dragon whose rage was like a song in his head, fierce and terrible and beautiful all at once. ‘Your axe, Jasaan. You need an axe to pierce a dragon’s hide.’

‘You’re just a man.’ Jasaan stumbled away. ‘That’s all you are.’

‘No. I am the dragon and the dragon is me. Do you not feel its rage, Jasaan? Can you not feel its hunger?’

‘No, Skjorl. All I see is you.’

Skjorl bared his teeth. ‘You don’t feel the burn of its desire? How much it wants us?’

‘No. Just you.’

He let the axe slow. ‘You don’t feel it at all?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve taken the potion of the alchemists?’

‘Yes.’

Skjorl stopped. He let his axe drop as a sudden glorious new possibility rose before him. He put Dragon-blooded back over his shoulder and smiled. ‘Then if you can’t feel the dragon, the dragon can’t feel you. It knows you’re here but it can’t find you.’ The smile grew. Here at last was an ending of glory, one for both of them. ‘Then I’ve got a better death for you, Jasaan. You can stop being a fool and do what an Adamantine Man would do.’ It only needed one of them to escape, after all.

Skjorl pushed Jasaan away and started to run towards the mouth of the cave — towards the dragon. As he drew close, the dragon drew back its head. He saw its mouth open and the fire build within. He ran faster. Roared a battle scream and let the dragon’s anger devour him. ‘You and me, dragon. Just you and me!’

When he’d carved and smashed his way out of the prison they’d made for him in Scarsdale he’d hunted them down, the ragged folk who’d made a home for themselves in the mines. Hunted them down and killed them, every last one. Man, woman and child. Killed them and skinned them. Being locked in a cell had left him hungry.

‘I am Skjorl!’ he bellowed as the fire rushed to meet him. ‘And I kill dragons!’

She was everywhere. Felt everywhere. Spattered around the dome.

With exquisite care she opened her eyes. Care in case Siff was looking, but of course he wasn’t. He thought she was dead because he was stupid. Because he’d forgotten, as he took her blood, that she was an alchemist, which was little more than being a blood-mage dressed up in some pretty morals, and a blood-mage never bled out unless they wanted to, not even if you opened their throat from ear to ear.

He was standing by the gate, lost in his own world full of wonder. She watched through half-closed eyes and found she couldn’t blame him because the wonder was hers too. Other worlds. Was that really what he’d found? Was this where the Silver King had gone? No, she knew better than that, but perhaps it was how he’d come to the realms in the beginning. Or perhaps there were others. The realms remembered the Isul Aieha who’d tamed their monsters, but there were whispers, if you looked deep in their histories of that time, of others. Of an age lost even further in the past, when the dragons had been young, of silver half-gods who strode the world in their thousands.

She looked at the silver sea. Had they come from this place? Was this where they’d been born?

Her blood was spattered over the arches. She’d lost a lot. Almost too much, and the stones were drawing their power from her now, from her essence. She explored them but they were beyond her comprehension. Artefacts of another time. They needed her, just a tiny little bit of her, to function. She could take that away from them, close them. Past that they were a mystery.