by Stephen Deas
11
Kataros
Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum
She screamed. The world spun around her. Stone rushed towards her face and then a huge hand reached down from the sky and plucked her up and she was flying, the wind in her face, tugging her hair.
Prince Lai’s wings.
She forced herself not to panic, forced her mind to be still. The ground seemed a lot closer than it had from the cave. She tried not to look at it, but that was wrong – she had to look at it, didn’t she? The Silver City was a jumble of shapes, of outlines, all reduced to a dim grey in the moonlight. The city had burned before the dragons had broken free. They hadn’t smashed it like they’d smashed the City of Dragons. There were long streets and wide, open squares. There were canals, yes! The city had had canals since the time of the blood-mages. Long straight lines of water. One of those would do.
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.
12
Blackscar
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.
13
Kataros
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.
When she was free, she stood up. In front of her was the Golden Temple, what was left of it, its broken dome a silhouette against the night stars. She’d never seen it in all its glory before it had burned in the death throes of the realms. Now, lit up by the moon and the ten thousand constellations of the night, all she could see were shapes and greys. On this side were a series of flying buttresses, looping out of the stonework down to the wide space where she stood – what had once been a gathering place running the entire length of the temple. Behind her, the dark waters of one of the city’s canals whispered quietly in the night.
The pain in her ribs was something she could live with if she walked carefully. The shoulder was getting worse though. Under the Purple Spur with her potions and half a hundred herbs, roots and powders, the injury wouldn’t have mattered. They weren’t the sort of things that could mend a fracture, if that’s what it was, but she could have done something about the swelling and the pain. Here she had nothing, not even a knife, or a pestle and a mortar. All she had was her blood.
She hadn’t given much thought to what came next. The Adamantine Man and his tunnels under the city. She had to find him. They needed to reach shelter before dawn, and now that she was hurt, she was still going to need his help. More than the pain, that was what irritated her.
She reached through the blood-bond, searching for him. It was harder than before, the distance between them making it more difficult to reach him. She hadn’t expected that.
There!
He was raging, fury surging through him. One of them was on his back, scrabbling at his neck. Another one was hissing and dancing around in front of him. Two more were dragging off the body of the outsider. He hurled himself backwards, slamming into a wall to shake loose the one grabbing at his shoulders . . .
Kataros reeled. The emotion of the fight surged through her, almost making her trip over her own feet. Her fists clenched. She had a vague sense of where he was, somewhere back towards the black tower that was the mountain from which she’d come, the Fortress of Watchfulness.
He had the one off his back by the arm now. Wrenched it over his shoulder and crashed it down onto the ground. Didn’t have a sword but he was used to that. No hesitation. Stamped down twice. First stamp the feral man’s head hit the stone ground. Stunned. Second stamp crushed his throat. Dead.
He’d done what she needed of him. Maybe, on her own, she could survive out here without him. Adamantine Men had their ways and tricks but so did alchemists . . . but she wasn’t on her own. There was the outsider, Siff. Without the outsider and what he knew, she might as well have stayed in her cell and let them starve her to death, and there was no way she could drag him or carry him, not with a damaged shoulder.
Damn it! She still needed him. There was no getting away from it.
The one doing the dancing and hissing was backing away. Scared. Three of them and one of him and they were the fearful ones. That was how it was to be an Adamantine Man. Three against one. No fear!
Don’t let him take Siff ! But the Adamantine Man was already roaring and bounding on, head filled with blood and murder.
The fight was making her head spin. She let the blood-bond go and started to walk towards him. Running would have been better, but that hurt too much, and either way the fight would be over before she got there. Calm and steady, that was the alchemists’ way, and so she let her mind wander to the emptiness of the Silver City around her, what was left of it. A hundred years ago it had been the hub of the world, home to tens of thousands. It had been a fading glory even then, its power already being leached away by Furymouth and the City of Dragons, but it had been a glory nonetheless. Out here on the esplanade beside the temple, with the gardens on one side and the canal on the other, there should have been people. She could almost see them, moving in little knots and clusters in the moonlight, even in the middle of the night. Now the gardens were overgrown, the canal choked with rubble and weeds, the temple dome tumbled and its marvels in ruins.
It was easy, she thought, with the skies filled with fire and angry monsters, to imagine the death of the Silver City was the work of the dragons, but that was wrong. The ruin wrought here had come when men still rode on their backs.
14
Skjorl
Seven months before the Black Mausoleum
Dragons were quickly bored. No patience. That was the way of it as far as Skjorl knew. A dragon sniffed you out in some cave somewhere; you curled up deep and waited and waited and eventually it found something better to do than sit outside wanting to eat you. Skjorl couldn’t say for sure because most of the dragons he’d ever seen had got in plenty of eating, thank you very much, but that was the way he’d heard it.
Apparently the dragon from Bloodsalt had heard different.
He’d seen it enough times to recognise it before they even left, while he and Jasaan were still hiding, nursing their aches and pains and their stomach cramps and eating dried and salted bits of Relk and washing him down with brackish river water. He’d seen it lots of times, flying out of the salt desert every day, gliding off, away along the Sapphire, coming back again in the twilight. Hadn’t occurred to Skjorl that the dragon was looking for him though, not then. Time passed. The dragon flew away for longer. Didn’t come back for days sometimes, but it still came back. Never got to see what colour it was beyond a black shape up in the sky, but there was the size of it, the sound of it, the shape and the beat of its wings. Always the same dragon.
When they moved, they moved at night. Jasaan wasn’t going to be winning any prizes for his running or his climbing, that was for sure, but at least he could walk and keep walking for hours. There was still pain there, Skjorl could see that, but still some bits of Jasaan were made of adamantine and he kept his hurt to himself. Skjorl’s hand wasn’t much use for anything any more except gripping a shield or his axe – Dragon-blooded, he’d settled on calling her – but that was all he had ever asked of it anyway. Besides, the first days were easy enough. They’d come this way before, when there had been more of them. Knew places they could shelter in the day, deep out of sight of the sky. No shortage of potions to keep their thoughts hidden. Wasn’t much food to be had out in this part of the world, but there was enough. They’d already found out the hard way which roots and berries they could eat and which they couldn’t, back when they’d had Vish and Jex and Kasern and Marran, and the others who hadn’t even made it as far as Bloodsalt.
As the days and the nights wore on, they started to pass the places where the last few of their company had fallen. Vellas, stung by a scorpion that had taken a shine to the shade inside his boot for the day. Goyan, who’d eaten something he shouldn’t have and become too weak to march. Him they’d put out of his misery. Couldn’t leave him to die on his own. Couldn’t take the risk some dragon might fly past and see him either, that he might not be careful enough, that he might give them away; but he was an Adamantine Man, so he took his fate like he should have when they bled him out into the river. They’d weighted him down with stones like they had with all the others and given him to the water. Dragons wouldn’t see them under the glint and glimmer of the Sapphire. Or so they thought.
The fourth day was when Skjorl saw the vultures. Shouldn’t have been out of cover, but he was bored with listening to Jasaan snore and in desperate need of a piss. Came out all careful, but there wasn’t a sign of anything in the sky until he looked to the south and saw specks. First thought was dragons because that’s what the first thought always was, but he could see right away he was wrong
about that. Half a dozen specks, maybe more, and they were circling, which dragons never did. Dragon saw something it wanted, it went right down and helped itself. Either that or it flew on about its business. Maybe swooped down for a closer look, but never circled.
Vultures then.
Took another two nights of walking to find what the vultures had been eyeing from up in the sky. Hard to be sure, on account of there not being too much left, but there couldn’t be much doubt in the end. Erak, who’d had his arm bitten off by a snapper. Snappers had died, been eaten, been buried under rocks to keep them out of sight, but something had found them and something had found Erak too. Hauled his fish-pecked corpse up out of the water and scattered its shreds all about.
‘Dragon.’
Jasaan shrugged. Skjorl didn’t think much about it either. Dragon had dug him up out of the water, or else maybe a snapper – so what? They walked on past the bones, and it was only later, when they were settling in to rest up for the day, that Skjorl had got to wondering; and that was when he remembered the vultures.
‘Dragon dug him out of the water two days ago,’ he said.
Jasaan shook his head, but only until Skjorl told him about what he’d seen. Neither of them had much to say, but thinking on it set Skjorl on edge. Dragon had been here just a couple of days ago, down on the ground, rooting and nosing about. Had to ask yourself why a dragon would be doing that.
They saw it again that evening, flying back towards Bloodsalt. Low over the valley, head sweeping from side to side. Searching.
‘It’s still looking for us,’ said Jasaan. Skjorl frowned. Couldn’t be right, because that wasn’t what dragons did, but if he took a moment to forget about all that and just looked, he’d have to say the same.
