Fool's Gold (17 page)

High above Lette, in the belly of Mattrax's castle, an alarm bell rang loudly.

“What's that?” said a guard, looking up.

Much to Will's chagrin, however, he did not remove his knees from Will's kidneys.

“What's his bloody nibs doing opening up the gate?”

Will thought this was an excellent question and one that the guards should probably go and investigate posthaste, and he would have happily offered up that opinion had not his mouth been, at that precise moment, pressed directly into the mud by several meaty hands.

“Who gives a fuck?” said the guard Will had come to identify as Kurr. He, Will had also discovered, was the guard whose face he had burned with soup. There were, he thought, extenuating circumstances surrounding that situation, which, again, he would have been willing to discuss at considerable length. The dialogue Kurr was more interested in, though, was the one going on between his steel toe caps and Will's ribs. He kicked Will again. Hard.

Will brayed pain into the mud.

“If Mattrax wants to go flying, let him go. Give us another hour before he comes back and eats someone,” said one of the guards holding down Will's legs.

Another kick. Tears ran down Will's cheeks.

“He don't go bloody flying about at night,” said the first guard. “Sleeps for bloody hours that bastard does.”

“That is true,” said another voice.

Another kick.

“I said, who gives a fuck?” Kurr was a man of narrow focus, Will was learning.

“Well,” said the first guard, “all I'm thinking is that here we are with this intruder—”

“This whoreson,” said Kurr, giving Will another kick. Will bucked ineffectually.

“Yeah,” said the first guard. “This whoreson. But he's an intruding whoreson.”

“You got a point?” said the guard up by Will's head.

“Well, it just seems,” said the first guard, “that here we are with this intruder—”

“Whoreson.”

“Intruding whoreson—”

“Seriously, just get to your fucking point already.”

Will couldn't agree more.

“So here we are with this intruding son—”

“Yeah you said that already.”

At this point the first guard seem to lose his patience a bit. “I bloody know I've said it three times, but every time I say it you go and bloody interrupt about how you want to know more. If you shut your fucking trap you might actually learn something. Like how to wipe your arse probably, you smelly arsehole.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Uncalled for,” muttered the guard near Will's head.

“So an intruding whoreson. And we know Mattrax sleeps through for a solid night's sleep every night.” A pause, which allowed Kurr to get in another kick. “Except now the alarm is going off to say his portcullis is opening.”

Another longer pause. Will braced for the next kick.

“Oh,” said Kurr at last. “Balls.”

“Shit,” said the guard at his head. He let up with his hands. Will pulled his mouth out of the mud, gasping and gagging.

Kurr filled his vision. “Who did you come with, arse-wipe?” he spat. “Who's down there?”

“There's no bloody time for that!” yelled the first guard, grabbing at Kurr's shoulder. “He's tied up. Let's just get down there, kill whoever is crapping on our evening's entertainment, and then come back here and finish him off. He's not going nowhere.”

Kurr's face twisted in irritation. Then finally he spat in Will's face and stood up. “Go anywhere,” he growled at Will, “and I'll kill you.”

That, thought Will, was not much of an incentive considering his other option was to stay exactly where he was so Kurr could kill him.

He watched his trio of torturers run from him, heard other boots pounding past. Everyone heading to the portcullis.

Lette must have opened it, he realized. Because she hadn't known about the alarm bell. Because he had never told her about the alarm bell. Though, to be fair, he'd never known about an alarm bell. Firkin had never mentioned it.

In the end, though, he was forced to conclude that trying to figure out his own level of culpability was probably less productive than actually sitting up, escaping, and attempting to rescue Lette from the castle's-worth of guards that were about to descend on her.

On the other hand, his ribs were making a pretty convincing counterpoint about the merits of curling up into a fetal ball and sobbing.

The process of sitting up was long, laborious, and punctuated with curse words that he thought even Firkin might shrink from.

Getting from his arse to his feet was even worse. He tottered across the keep grounds, gasping, head spinning.

Lette. He needed to get to Lette. He wasn't sure why, or what help he could offer, but surely… surely that was what he had to do. He couldn't just leave her to die. Will didn't know much about what was going on anymore, and perhaps the middle of a robbery was an odd time to find his moral compass, but still, he knew that you did not run from a fight and let your friend take all the blows.

More blows
. He cringed inside. He wouldn't be surprised if he pissed blood tomorrow. But he kept moving.

He staggered toward the keep, a plan forming in his mind. Inside the torchlit entrance hall, he searched desperately for a sharp surface. He found it in the form of an axe lying abandoned in a weapon rack against one wall. Carefully he backed up to it, then pushed his bound wrists against the blade.

A minute later, taking a break from massaging life back into his numb hands, he tried the pad of his thumb against the blade of the axe. It was far sharper than the sword his captors had confiscated from him. He hefted it, tested its weight. He nodded to himself. Perhaps not as good as his father's old wood-cutting axe back on the farm, but he suspected it was good enough to do some damage, and it was light enough to be wielded single-handed.

So armed, he turned to the dark spiraling corridor and began to descend.

Quirk stood in the depths of Mattrax's cave and gaped. She had never seen anything like it before in her life.

“Betra's sagging tits,” Lette breathed. “I've seen gold in my time, but this…” She trailed off with a small sigh of contentment.

Quirk took note of the gold for the first time.
Yes,
she supposed,
there was a lot of it
. Coins, crowns, medallions, necklaces, brooches, bracelets, scepters, gilt frames, earrings, emeralds, rubies, topaz, diamonds, pearls…

She looked away, disinterested. She looked back to
him.

Mattrax slumbered atop his treasure trove. A vast coiling column of muscle and scale. His wings drooped down forming leathery blankets over the slopes of his hoard. His head was a vast angular wedge. Each nostril was wide enough that she could thrust a clenched fist into it and barely tickle the fine hairs that lined it. Each claw upon his foot was longer than her forearm.

She could hardly breathe. Her chest felt full of air, the confines of her ribs too tight for her lungs. The room was bright despite the cloying night. The edges of the world were fading to mist.

She walked toward the dragon as if in a dream. Coins and jewels gave way beneath her feet as she mounted the hills of his fortune. She stretched out her hand. She had to touch him.

Would he feel rough? Smooth? Warm? Hard or soft? Would the skin give beneath her hand?

She remembered the first time she had touched magic. A child in the dark of her parents' hut. Hiding from her brother, Andatte. Curled up in a nest of dirty laundry while he tried to seek her out. Half-asleep. The heat of summer mounting where she lay. Becoming almost unbearable, almost beautiful. And then the sense of something pushing through that heat. Some vast, unknowable intellect manifesting in it. And it was reaching out to her. Pressing through layers of reality. And she had reached out, pushed back. And then… they had touched. Been briefly connected. She had touched something that had redefined her utterly. Left her branded. Left her different.

This felt like that moment.

She was vaguely aware of Lette scooping vast armfuls of wealth into her pockets, letting out small giddy noises.

Quirk was almost annoyed. Such petty concerns in the face of such… such… magnificence. Was the woman blind to the beauty of the world? Did she spit in its eye on purpose?

No
. Quirk stilled herself. Nothing was going to spoil this for her. This moment would be pure, unsullied by the world, by her past, by her need for constant control. This was what she had worked so hard for, for all these years. She wouldn't let anything ruin it now. She could feel the heat of Mattrax's breath gusting over her hand, playing between her fingers—

A noise from the mouth of the cave. A shout. And another.

Quirk froze.

“Shit,” Lette cursed.

And no. No. This couldn't be happening. This was her moment.

Another shout.

“Balur,” Quirk breathed. “It's Balur. And Firkin. With the wagon and the sacks. That's all.”

She reached once more for the beatific peace of biological rapture. Toward epiphany. Toward Mattrax.

From the cave entrance came the sound of steel clashing against steel.

“Lawl's balls!” Lette cursed again. Then the mercenary was moving. She dashed along the contours of the golden hoard, heading back toward the cave entrance. Rivers of coins tumbled and tinkled in her wake.

As she dashed past Quirk, the ground gave way.

No. No!

Quirk lunged, desperate, grasping. Her fingers were almost there, almost touching Mattrax's skin. But there was nothing to gain purchase on. She felt herself falling. She screamed. Everything was slipping away from her. Epiphany fluttered away.

Then she was tumbling, arse over heel, landing unceremoniously, feet in the air, hands splayed and empty.

For a moment, Quirk lay and seethed. She recognized the signs, felt the mask of control slipping away.
No!
screamed some last rational part of her.
No! That's not what this is. Not what this was meant to be! This was my moment.

She picked herself up. Her teeth gritted. Her palms hot. Steam rising from between her fingertips.

Someone was running around the corner of the cave. A guard, chain mail glinting in reflected moonlight, mouth open in a yell, sword raised. He saw her, let loose a fresh howl, and charged.

Quirk did not see the man. Not as he was here and now. She did not see the cave around her. She did not feel the hot breath of Mattrax gusting over her.

Instead, she felt the hot breath of the Tamathian scrublands blowing at her back. She saw the shallow sloping hills of her childhood, dotted with scrubby bushes that held more thorns than leaves. She saw a bandit dressed in tatters charging, scimitar raised above his head, the desperation of a starving man glinting in his eyes.

No!
screamed the voice.
This is over. This is past. This is not who you are.

But the mask of control was slipping, almost gone. And in her rage, her frustration, her fear, Quirk reached up and tore it away.

She reached out her hand. Heat rose in her palm. She felt divine power within her. She felt words she had never learned forming on her tongue, words that pushed back at the skin of reality stretched over the world. Felt them punch through.

The guard was almost on her. His sword hung above her head.

The heat in her palm became a physical pain. A scalding, searing expression of hate and rage. She howled, loud enough to match the guard's battle cry.

And then, there, in the darkness, she gave birth to fire.

Fire Root,
Balur thought in one of his increasingly rare lucid moments,
is being the absolute shit
. He had heard certain whores discussing the improvements certain herbs and powders could bring to their area of expertise. But, honestly, they were going to have to try mass murder while high on this stuff. This was being absolutely fucking great.

“Whee!” he cried, spinning in a circle, war hammer held out at full stretch, feeling his shoulders take the weight, his heels spinning on the sandy floor, watching the bodies flying through the air. Their blood painted the air in spiraling arcs, glistening like streams of rubies. He could smell it, like a shooting star exploding in the back of his throat.

He hadn't expected to find guards here. He was unsure what he had expected now. But it hadn't been them. Not that he was sad about it. Rather, when he had come running out of the woods below the cave and seen them streaming out of the castle gates, he had let out a howl of joy. At his back, the villagers had echoed the sound.

The guards had turned, seen them, charged. The two forces had crashed into each other like newlyweds.

Balur reached out, grabbed someone nearby, bit their face off, and laughed giddily as blood ran down his chin.

This was what he lived for. This moment. This surrender. To say farewell to thought, to morals, to civility. To live beyond the boundaries of culture, and societal norms. This was life at its most pure, its most bestial. This was life without pretenses. All masks removed. Life reduced to meat, and bone, and fury.

He pirouetted, brought his hammer up, clean through the body of… someone. Factions were meaningless at this point in the fight. The head of the hammer glistened above the fray, dripped blood. He brought it down and listened to the meaty crack of impact.

Someone stabbed him. He felt the blade find a spot where his scales met, its tip slide inside him, puncturing muscle. He felt the pain, bright and hot. He laughed again, grabbed the sword blade, and then its owner. The sword wielder's neck snapped in Balur's fist.

He descended into a bloody haze. The world was red and wet for a while. When he emerged he was, for a moment, disoriented. He pummeled a man in the face, trying to get his bearings.

People were screaming, running, pushing to get past him. Villagers and guards alike. “Dragon!” they screamed. “Dragon! Mattrax wakes!”

And then Balur saw it, bright and beautiful, blossoming in the back of the cave. Great gouts of fire that sparkled yellow and red in his dilated pupils.

The dragon
. That was why he had come here. To show the world that he could defeat a dragon. To make the dragon know his name even as he took its life.

Some small, sobering part of Balur saw that fire and questioned if, just this once, wisdom shouldn't be prevailing over bravado. A larger, drunker part of his mind shouted at that part to be fucking off. He was totally knowing what he was doing. Why was the other voice always nagging at him with its rational good sense? He was being a
warrior,
gods' hex upon it. He was having to do certain things because they were being there. His actions were not having to make sense.

He set his shoulder and charged into the depths of the cave, toward heat, fire, rage, and glory. Bodies bounced off him, scrambling to get away. All around him screams rose.

“The dragon!”

“The dragon!”

“It's going to kill us all!”

No,
thought Balur with a drunken grin.
I am.

He rounded the bend in the cave, skidded to a halt.

Quirk stood there.

No, floated there.

The thaumatobiologist's feet were a clear foot off the floor. Her robes billowed around her, rippling through the heat haze. She held her arms out, palms raised.

And she was beautiful.

Ribbons of fire danced from her hands. They wove together in complex patterns of slaughter. A hapless guard was caught in a stream of liquid flame. He didn't even have a chance to scream. His blackened body skittered and danced. The dead lay all around her.

She didn't say anything, didn't fix her gaze on anyone. She just wove her ribbons of fire back and forth in front of her. Where they struck the floor, explosions bloomed, spattering the bodies with glowing shrapnel.

I,
thought Balur, taking the scene in at a glance,
would be totally hitting that.
Then his eye fell on the dragon beyond her.

Mattrax lay slumped over a vast hoard of gold and jewels, wings splayed in a sloppy half-collapsed pile. Drool was spilling from one corner of his mouth in a thick, ropy stream.

Momentarily, Balur lost the power of speech. All he could utter was a single, guttural roar of hate. Rage. Bloodlust. Desire. He
wanted
that dragon. He wanted its blood on his skin. Its bone shards stuck into his cheeks.

Waves of rage carried him forward, a misty cloud of hallucinogenic fury. He ducked and darted through Quirk's tapestry of fiery destruction. Mattrax loomed in his vision, the vast face eclipsing everything else. The dragon was his world. Its death at his hands was as inevitable as the turning of the sun in the heavens. His hammer was above his head. His muscles burned with power, with the churning potential of death.

He brought the hammer down, felt the impact run up his arm, felt the hammer head glance off the scales. He stepped back, slipping in the piles of coin that mired his feet.

For a moment he thought he had achieved nothing. That this was all just a paltry lie, some drug-addled fantasy he had concocted to make himself feel better about the ignominy of his earlier defeat.

But then he saw it. The thin hairline crack that ran down the scale he had struck, the clear fluid seeping out. Mattrax's hide was not impenetrable. The dragon could be defeated. All that was needed was time.

Balur brought his war hammer down again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again.