Crown of Dragonfire (5 page)

"To the land of Tofet.
To the house of my father." She squared her shoulders. "To rebellion. Perhaps
to death. To a fight I perhaps cannot win but one I will fight nonetheless."

Tash raised an eyebrow.
"A life of pampered languor, surrounded by jewels, spice, endless love and
friends . . . or a life of blood that will end too soon. Perhaps we both have
the same choice. And we choose the same path." Tash nodded. "I go with you, to
whatever end. For Requiem."

Meliora's eyes
dampened, and for an instant, she envied Tash, envied that the girl was pure
Vir Requis, a whole daughter of Requiem. She herself was still half a daughter
of Saraph, half a shameful thing.

She nodded. "For Requiem."

They had taken just a
step forward when he swooped from the sky, wings wide, and landed in the
courtyard before them.

Ishtafel.

Stars of Requiem.

Meliora's heart burst
into a gallop, and she hissed and reached into her cloak for her spear.

"My dearest Meliora!"
He held his lance in one hand, his shield in the other. "And if it isn't the
little pack rat with her collection of jewels. Such lovely ladies shouldn't
stray far from the beauty of the palace."

Meliora froze for an
instant, staring at him. The man who had slaughtered countless souls. Who had
lied to her, cut off her wings, locked her to rot in the dungeon. Rage. Rage
filled her, and her halo of dragonfire crackled to life around her head, and
she tossed back her hood before the flames could burn it.

"Stand aside, Ishtafel."
Meliora lifted her halved spear. "Stand aside or I will—"

He laughed. "Or you
will what? Cut me, my dear sister? Perhaps I underestimated you; you have,
after all, found your way out here rather quickly. But you don't truly think
that you can defeat me in battle, do you? A pampered little princess against an
ancient warrior who has conquered the world?"

"I am no longer a
princess." Meliora stared into his eyes. "I am a warrior of Requiem."

Ishtafel hefted his spear.
"I slew a million warriors of Requiem. Only days ago, sweet sister, we danced
in the grand hall of our palace. Come to me now. We will dance again."

Tash drew her dagger,
claimed from the prison guard, and held the blade before her.

Before her courage
could abandon her, Meliora raced forward, spear lashing.

Ishtafel swung his
lance in an arc. Meliora had snapped her spear in half to hide it in her cloak,
abandoning the lower half in the dungeon. With his longer range, Ishtafel
easily parried her thrust. Almost lazily, he drove his lance forward, nicking
her left arm.

Her blood sprayed
across the courtyard, pattering against Tash, and Meliora cried out.

Tash screamed, blood on
her face, and tossed her dagger. Yawning, Ishtafel raised his shield, and the
dagger slammed against it and fell to the ground. Ishtafel kicked it aside.

Fear flooded
Meliora, but she refused to surrender to it.

I am starlight.

I am
the wind.

I am
dragonfire.

She could not become a
dragon with her collar, but Meliora roared with her rage.

"You murdered
thousands!" she screamed, lashing her spear again.

He snorted and parried.
"Millions."

"You are a monster!"
She leaped forward, trying to spear him, but he parried again.

He yawned. "All the
best kings are, my dear."

"You—"

He drove his lance
forward, and this time he cut her right arm, spraying more blood. She had
barely registered the blow when he swung his lance again, hitting the side of
her knee with the flat of the blade.

Meliora yowled and fell
to her knees before him.

"Good." He nodded. "That
is how I like you. Kneeling before me."

With another thrust of
his lance, he cut her fingers. She cried out, losing her grip on her spear. It
clattered to the ground, and he kicked it aside.

Meliora began to leap
up. Ishtafel swung his shield, knocking the rim against her face.

Pain.

Light.

Searing fire.

Meliora fell to the
ground, slamming her cheek against the cobblestones, blinded with agony.
Blinking feebly, she thought she saw Tash run forth, grab the fallen spear,
thought she saw the shield fly again, knocking Tash down. All was white,
blinding pain . . . and beyond it a red light, crackling, hot. The light of
dragonfire.

Ishtafel knelt above
her, reached down, and stroked her stubbly head.

"So frail," he whispered.
"Still such a weak, innocent thing, a trampled baby bird, her wings clipped. I
will nurse you back to health, my sweetest sister. You will be mine. You will
watch your sons become great kings—kings to crush Requiem as I have crushed
her."

Her eyes burned. Blood
dripped down her face, pattering against the cobblestone.

I flew as a dragon,
she remembered.
I soared as a great dragon all in silver and gold, coated
with scales and feathers.
Her breath shuddered.
In my dreams, I flew
with great herds of my kind, the hosts of Requiem of past and future.

Ishtafel leaned down
and kissed her brow. "Soon you will be beautiful again, fed all the fineries of
the empire—strong enough to grow my child in your womb."

No. No, I will never
more be a prisoner. Not in a dungeon of stone, not in a palace of plenty.

Her halo crackled with
the flame of Requiem.

I will find the sky.
I am dragonfire.

Her flames roared,
blasting outward, and Meliora let out a howl, a cry of all her pain, her rage,
her memory, and she leaped up, soaring like a dragon, seeking her sky.

Ishtafel faltered, eyes
widening, the flames painting him red.

Meliora had once burned
in a bronze bull, and today she charged like a bull herself, ramming into him,
driving her halo of fire against his face.

Her crown of dragonfire
burned him, and Ishtafel screamed.

The halo of fire flowed
across his face, kindling his hair, melting his skin. He burned. He screamed
like a wounded animal, a primordial sound, and the flames showered back onto
Meliora, scattering across her scalp.

She knelt. She grabbed
her spear from the ground. She shoved it forth.

The blade crashed into
Ishtafel's armor, denting the metal, cutting through, driving into his skin.
Still he burned.

"Meliora!" Tash cried.

Whistles filled the
air, and Meliora glanced up to see arrows falling. Tash grabbed her, pulled her
back, and the arrows clattered against the cobblestones. More whistled above,
and Meliora glimpsed a hundred seraphim or more diving down from the sky.

"Meliora, run!" Tash
grabbed her hand and dragged her onward. "With me!"

She held her bloody
spear. Ishtafel burned before her, but still his lance thrust. She cried out as
it hit her. More arrows fell, and one scraped across her thigh.

"Meliora, run!"

She ran.

Arrows clattered around
them, and one drove alongside Tash's hip, tearing the skin. They raced onward,
holding hands, leaving the courtyard and entering a cobbled alleyway. The walls
of silos, armories, and temples rose around them.

"Hurry, with me!" Tash
said, pulling her through a gateway into a covered walkway between brick walls.

"Where are we going?"
Meliora ran with a limp, blood leaving a trail behind her.

"The underground of
Shayeen. The secret passageways of the slaves." As seraphim dived down behind them,
firing arrows, Tash tugged open a wooden doorway and pulled Meliora into a
shadowy tunnel.

They ran through
darkness, finally entering a wine cellar, and here Tash pulled her into a
second tunnel, and they emerged into a narrow alleyway in the shadow of the
ziggurat. A grove of palm trees rustled ahead, and they moved under the fronds,
hidden from the sky, as above the seraphim cried out and the chariots of fire
rained ash.

"We go into the city,"
Tash said. "We take the shadow path."

Meliora ran close
behind, and they circled a well and stepped onto a narrow street, the sky
hidden above the awnings of shops.

"The shadow path?"

Tash nodded and flashed
a weary grin. "There are eight boulevards in the City of Kings and eight
thousand secret roads. Ours is the shadow path, the way of slaves between the
ziggurat and the land of Tofet."

Meliora glanced around
her, seeking the palace soldiers, but the street was packed with a thousand
others—shopkeepers hawking spices and dried fruits, young seraphim of common
birth, and many collared slaves on errands from their masters. The chariots of
fire still streamed above, but the shadow path was hidden from the sky, no less
a labyrinth than the one beneath the ziggurat.

Is he still alive?
Meliora thought as they raced into an alleyway of metalworkers. The clanging of
hammers on anvils rose from smiths at their sides.
Is Ishtafel—

His scream rose in the
distance, answering her.

"Find her! Find the escaped
prisoner. Bring her to me alive and bring the pack rat too!"

Meliora and Tash
glanced at each other silently, then looked forward and kept running along the
shadow path, vanishing into the City of Kings as screams of seraphim and the fire
of their chariots filled the sky above.

 
 
VALE

"Faster!"

The whips flew.

"Move, slaves! Toil!"

Burning leather slashed
through flesh.

"Faster! Toil or die!"

Sweat dripped across
Vale, stinging his eyes, drenching his burlap loincloth, burning the whip's
welts across his bare back. Those welts ached like scorpion stingers forever
digging into him. His muscles were cramping, begging for relief, and the
sunlight burned his shoulders and shaved head, leaving him dizzy, gasping for
breath.

"Toil!"

The flaming whips
cracked. The overseers smirked as they flew above upon swan wings, whipping any
slave who dallied—a handful of masters ruling over thousands of slaves.

For a day, hope
rose,
Vale thought, back bent.
All hope has burned away.

He spilled the basket
of straw into the pit of clay. Joints aching, he lifted the barrel of bitumen
and spilled the tar into the mix. He climbed into the sticky pool, sloshing
through it, mixing the ingredients with his hobbled legs. His feet burned, and
the manacles chafed his ankles; he bled into the mix. Across the field,
thousands of other slaves waded through their own pits of clay, straw, and
bitumen.

"Faster!" cried an overseer,
and a whip cracked over Vale's head. "Shape the bricks. Move!"

Vale nodded, back striped
too many times. Another blow, he thought, would kill him. Perhaps that would be
a mercy. Perhaps he should resist, let them whip him to death, join the poor
souls around the pits. He raised his head, blinked out sweat, squinted in the
sunlight, and saw them. A hundred slaves or more rose around the field, impaled
on spikes, their flesh food for crows. Most were rotten. Some still twitched
and moaned.

Poor souls?
Vale
thought.
The dead are the lucky ones.

"Go!" cried the
overseer. "Mix! Two thousand bricks a slave."

The whip lashed again,
and this time it slammed into Vale, tearing his back, knocking him into the hot
clay. The seraph was still shouting above him, but Vale could barely hear. He
lay facedown in the hot mixture of clay, straw, and tar, and he felt like he
was back there—back upon the crest of the ziggurat, a thousand feet above the
city, nailed into the platinum.

I almost rose to the
stars of Requiem,
he thought.
I was almost free from the pain.

He wanted to lie here
in the mud until the pain fled again.

He still remembered the
shock of Ishtafel swinging his hammer, driving the nails into Vale's hands and
feet, nailing him to the ziggurat. He still remembered his body convulsing, his
soul beginning to rise . . . and he had seen them. The celestial halls of
afterlife. A Requiem that still stood, woven of starlight, and the spirits of
the fallen awaiting him. His mother. His grandparents. The ancient kings and
queens of his fallen nation.

And I saw you,
Issari. The Priestess in White.

The ancient princess of
Requiem, among the founders of the nation, had descended from the stars, a
great healer. Forever shining in the sky, the eye of the Draco constellation,
she had descended to the world for him. She had gazed at him with sad green
eyes, and she had placed her hands upon him, passing her starlight into him,
healing his wounds, returning his broken body to life. In his mind, she had
whispered soft words.

You will live, son
of Requiem.

"Let me rest," he had
whispered to her.

She had wept, her tears
warm, healing his soul.
Your path of thorns has not ended, son of Aeternum,
for you are descended from the great family of Requiem, a child of King
Aeternum and all the kings and queens who followed in his dynasty. Your battle
still looms ahead, Vale. We will watch you. Our light will forever fall upon
you. You must find our sky.

Vale had awoken then,
his lungs filling once more with air, the holes in his hands and feet only
faded scars.

And so I must live.
With
shaking arms, he pushed himself up from the mud.
My battle still awaits me,
and I will fight for my priestess. For Requiem.

He rose to his shaky
feet. He did not know what that battle was, what his task would be, but Issari
Seran, the Eye of the Dragon, had commanded him to live. And so he would live.
Whatever it took, however much pain he would endure, he would survive.

His overseer stood
outside the pit of mud, smirking. "Pity. Thought you were crow food. Would have
liked to see them peck out your eyes. Now form the bricks! Two thousand a man.
Go!"