by Stephen Deas
‘Look!’ Siff waved his hands at the silver mirrors all around them. The snakes from his fingers slithered through the air, touching one after another and, as they did, each mirror changed. In one he was looking at a lake of fire. Another gave him the clouds, broken, looking down on them from above, high over a huge forest. The third opened on to a small dark chamber, round with no exits, but with a mosaic on the floor, half lost to age and three skeletons lying upon it, each clad in bronze mesh armour. Deep underground by the feel of it, although he wasn’t sure how he knew. The next showed him a room full of more archways exactly like these, high up at the top of some tower; then a man with a strange gold-handled knife on his hip riding a horse; then another man, riding on the back of a dragon, high above the clouds; then another, a man with one eye and a face half-ruined by the pox. The next opened on to a place of shimmering rainbows and a woman, achingly beautiful with a circlet of gold around her brow.
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.
65
Skjorl
‘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.’
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!’
66
Kataros
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.
‘Everything is wrong,’ whispered Siff to the emptiness. ‘The Great Flame? No. This. This.’ He sobbed, overwhelmed, and maybe he was right.
With exquisite caution Siff reached one foot through the gateway. His boot touched the silver beyond. He gasped.
His boot had her blood on it. She reached through it to touch the silver sea with her mind. To see.
And so she saw.
67
Skjorl
The fire came. Skjorl threw up his arms to shield his face. Flames licked past them, around his gauntlets, searing the skin off his cheeks, burning them to the bone. They crept past the rim of his helm, under and around, burning his hair and scorching his ears. The pain was immense, but the rage was stronger. He ran faster. The heat found its way through the joints and cracks of his armour. His wrists were the first to feel it, facing the fire head on. His elbows next.
And then it stopped.
He pulled his hands away. The dragon was right in front of him, head down on the ground, staring at him, eyes gleaming with hate, jaws open and ready for him. He kept straight at it, as if he meant to run right down its throat. Pulled Dragon-blooded down from his shoulder. Swung.
Straight into the side of the dragon’s jaw. Used the force of the swing to push himself sideways. Careened off the dragon’s teeth and past its head. Pulled Dragon-blooded back out as he went.