Mortal Coil. Derek Landy

tall, and she wore black Necromancer robes. From the very start, Melancholia had never made a secret of the fact that she despised Valkyrie utterly. Valkyrie, for her part, thought this was astonishingly amusing, and revelled in the many opportunities she had to annoy the older girl.

      “What you doing?” Valkyrie asked, smiling a friendly smile.

      “I’m standing here,” Melancholia responded, not looking at her.

      “And a fine job you’re doing of it, too. Do you know where Solomon is? He said he was going to come today, but I didn’t see him.”

      “Cleric Wreath is on an assignment.”

      “Cool. What kind?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Is it exciting?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Right. So you’re just waiting here for the others, then? Waiting for ol’ Tenebrae?”

      Melancholia stiffened. “You should show more respect for the High Priest. You should use his full title when referring to him.”

      Valkyrie shrugged. “High Priest Tenebrae just takes so long to say, you know? I usually just call him Tenny. He likes that.”

      “If you were truly one of us, you would be severely disciplined for such behaviour.”

      Valkyrie frowned. “Do you really talk like that, or are you just putting it on?”

      Melancholia finally looked at her. “You are mocking me?” she snarled.

      “Is that a statement or a question?”

      Melancholia was taller than Valkyrie, and she loomed over her. “I should punish you myself, on behalf of the High Priest.”

      “I don’t think Tenny would like that very much.”

      “You are not our saviour.”

      “Solomon seems to think I am.”

      “Cleric Wreath has spent too long out in this decadent world. He’s lost his objectivity. He looks at you and he sees the Death Bringer, whereas everyone else looks at you and sees a pathetic little child.”

      Valkyrie grinned. Despite how sinister it sounded, the Death Bringer was a title that she was beginning to actually like. She found Necromancers creepy on a very fundamental level – Solomon Wreath aside – but even so, it was nice to be thought of as a possible saviour. Certainly, it was a change from having to think of herself as Darquesse. The chance, no matter how slim, that instead she might turn out to be the Death Bringer was a source of comfort to her. Two possible destinies – one where she saves the world, and one where she ends it. Her future couldn’t get any starker than that. “Maybe I am the Death Bringer,” she said.

      “Don’t be absurd. You’ve been studying Necromancy for just over a year. I’ve been studying death magic since I was four years old. You’re nothing compared to me, or anyone like me.”

      “And yet,” Valkyrie interrupted, “I’m the one they’re all making a fuss of.”

      Melancholia scowled. “You’re nothing but an Elemental playing at being a Necromancer.”

      “And you’re a Necromancer, through and through. You’ve wanted to be nothing else your entire life. And yet, I’ve been invited to all the important meetings and you get to stay out here and mind the car. I’ve been told things about your art and your religion that you won’t be told for another year or two.”

      “Ridiculous.”

      “Is it? When were you told about the Passage?”

      Melancholia hesitated. “I learned about the Passage when I was ready, when I had completed my studies on over three dozen—”

      “It was pretty recently, wasn’t it?”

      Melancholia gritted her teeth. “Yes.”

      “See, I was told about it ages ago. Now, I’m not saying I’m an expert. In fact, I have loads of questions about the whole thing. You must have noticed that some of it just doesn’t seem to make any sense. Your religion is based on the idea that when you die, your energy passes from this world to another one, right?”

      “It’s not an idea,” Melancholia said tersely. “It’s a scientific fact.”

      “It’s little more than a theory,” Valkyrie countered. “But I’m OK with that. So you guys are waiting for the Death Bringer to come and collapse the wall between the two worlds, so the living and the dead can exist in the same place, at the same time, meaning that there will be no more strife, no more war, and everyone will live, or at least exist, happily ever after.”

      “Yes,” Melancholia said.

      “And yet, no one has told me how this is possible.”

      “You can hardly expect to understand the advanced stages of our teachings, if you do not have the patience or the skill to master the basics.”

      “Do you know how it’s possible?”

      “I will. Soon. Once I experience the Surge, once I am locked into Necromancy for the rest of my life, all of its secrets will be laid open for me.”

      “Oh, that’ll be nice. I still don’t know if it’s for me, though. I really don’t want to draw my power from death, and that’s basically what Necromancy is. I’d rather not have to rely on other people’s pain to use magic.”

      “I hardly think it will be up to you. The sooner the Clerics realise what a mistake they’re making, wasting their time on you, the better. Then you can run along with your skeleton friend and have lots of fun together, and you can leave the important stuff to us.”

      “Sometimes I get the feeling that you don’t like me.”

      “Trust your feelings.”

      “So we’re not going to be friends?”

      “I’d rather gouge my own eyes out.”

      Valkyrie shook her head sadly, and started to walk back to the Bentley. “Your leaders are looking to me to be their saviour, Melancholia. You might have to learn to love me.”

      Melancholia’s voice was laced with venom. “You are not our saviour.”

      Valkyrie looked at her over her shoulder, shot her a smile. “Better start praying to me, just in case.”

      

      ack when Vaurien Scapegrace was alive, he had briefly owned a pub in Roarhaven that catered, almost exclusively, for sorcerers. That had been before he’d found his true calling as a Killer Supreme and, later, as the Zombie King, but he’d enjoyed it nevertheless. He knew there were pubs and clubs and bars around the country, around the world, whose clientele were magical, but he liked to think that his pub offered something a little different. A home away from home perhaps. A refuge from the pressures and stresses of modern living.

      But now that some time had passed, now that he was viewing it all with a more objective eye, he realised what it was that his pub had really offered. It had offered dim lighting, bad drinks, grumpy bar staff and a toilet that smelled of wet cabbage. There was absolutely nothing to take pride in. Nothing to feel good about. But that, of course, was the whole point. Sorcerer pubs were bad pubs by necessity. If they were good pubs, everyone would be going to them.

      Sitting in this particular sorcerer pub in Dublin, Scapegrace reflected on the trials and tribulations