Crown of Dragonfire (6 page)

Vale labored in the
sunlight among the thousands of slaves. In the old days, under Queen Kalafi's
reign, each slave had needed to mix a thousand bricks a day—backbreaking labor
that had them working from dawn to dusk. The cruel Ishtafel, new king of
Saraph, had doubled that quota. With thousands of others, Vale filled baskets
with the sticky mixture of mud, straw, and bitumen. He hauled basket after
basket into the field, where he poured the mixture into wooden molds, mold
after mold, like filling a great honeycomb. After the sun had dried the clay,
he pulled out the brittle rectangles, and he placed them into stone kilns where
they baked, hardening into bricks that would build homes, schools, armories,
and monuments to Ishtafel across the empire.

He worked in a daze,
repeating the process over and over, suffering the whip whenever he faltered,
moving as fast as he could, falling, crying out in pain, rising again.

Two thousand bricks a
slave.

Countless lashes.

Each slave who fell
short—more flesh upon the pikes. More food for crows.

In the fields of Tofet,
they labored in chains, screaming, falling, dying, some surviving. Decimated. One
in ten fallen to Ishtafel's spears, more falling every day. The nation of
Requiem—crying out in greater anguish than ever before, withering under a
cruel sun.

When finally that sun
had set, and his two thousand bricks were loaded into carts, Vale shuffled back
toward his home.

In the darkness, he walked
between the huts where the slaves lived. His chains clanked between his legs,
and his breath rattled in his lungs, full of dust from his labor. He could not
stop coughing, a raw cough that tore at his throat like his shackles tore at
his ankles.

He raised his eyes to
the sky, hoping against hope to see it again—the Draco constellation, the holy
stars of Requiem, which he had seen only once, that night Issari had healed
him. Yet those stars were gone now, if ever they had truly shone.

The wind gusted, and
three gibbets swung at his side from posts. Within the rusted cages languished
three slaves, close to death—their only sin having failed to meet the new,
doubled quotas. Vale had only a small waterskin, barely enough water to keep
himself alive, yet he approached the cages, prepared to let the dying slaves
drink. They stared at him with glazed eyes, reached out from the bars, bleeding
lips smacking, desperate for a drink.

Vale turned away. Their
agony was almost over. He would not prolong it. He shuffled onward, their
screams echoing in his ears.

He tugged at his
collar. If only he could remove this collar, could shift into a dragon again, could
break the bars on the gibbets. He could free them. He could fly to the
ziggurat, challenge Ishtafel again.

Vale raised his head,
closed his eyes, and remembered how wonderful it had felt. To become a dragon.
To see his scales gleam in the sun, deep blue like the evening sky. To let the
fire fill his mouth. To spread his wings and rise in the sky. Freedom. It had
been freedom.

He looked back down,
saw the gibbets, the huts, the agony of Tofet, and balled up his fists.

I will fly again.
Someday I will fight as a dragon once more. I fought Ishtafel over the streets
of Shayeen, but my greatest battle awaits.

He kept shuffling
forward until he reached his hut, a simple clay dwelling, barely larger than a cage
itself. A birch leaf was engraved onto the door, an old symbol of Requiem. Vale
opened that door and stepped into his shadowy home.

His sister, Elory, lay
facedown on a pile of straw, biting a piece of wood. Ugly lashes crisscrossed
her back, and she bled where the shackles chafed her ankles. Above her knelt
Vale's father, wise old Jaren. The bearded priest was dripping ointment into
the wounds on Elory's back. She grimaced with every drop that fell, and sweat
beaded on her shaved head.

Rage flared in Vale.

"Who?" he demanded, speaking
between gritting teeth. "Which overseer? Was it Karah? The new one, Eldor?"

Jaren raised his hands,
silently urging calm. Elory pushed herself onto her elbows, staring at Vale
with damp eyes.

"It was my fault!" she
said. "I almost failed to meet my quota of bitumen."

The rage was blinding.
Vale sneered and took a step back toward the door. "That's because Ishtafel
doubled the quotas. I'm going to find who did this. I'm going to kill them. I
don't care if they arrest me again, if—"

"Son!" Jaren reached
out, trying to grab him, to pull him back into the hut. "You cannot help your
sister by dying. Please, son. We must bide our time. We must—"

"Must what?" Vale said,
voice hoarse, eyes damp. He shook himself free. "Bide our time for what? Our
people have been waiting for five hundred years, Father. Waiting for a savior.
Waiting for some hope. I thought that some hope rose. When we marched behind
Meliora, I thought that finally the stars have heard our cry, that they sent us
a savior. I thought that Meliora—your daughter, my sister—is the hope we've
been waiting for all these years." He laughed bitterly. "But I was there. I saw
Ishtafel cut off Meliora's wings, saw him drag her into his palace, saw our
hope shatter. So yes. Let me go out and fight. Let me die avenging my sisters."

A voice, melodious and
soft, rose behind him, piercing through his rage like a ray of light through
storm clouds.

"Do not die for me, my
brother. Together we will live."

Slowly, Vale unclenched
his fists and turned around. He saw her outside, stepping toward the doorway,
cloaked in wool. Within the shadows of her hood, her eyes shone, golden, the
pupils shaped as sunbursts with many rays. She smiled at him tremulously.

"Meliora," he
whispered.

 
 
JAREN

He sat with his family at
the table, knowing that this brief moment of peace would soon shatter and burn.

We are together
again, united in the shadow of a great, burning hatred that will soon spew its
flames upon us.
Jaren looked up at the ceiling where he had engraved the
Draco constellation.
May we savor this moment, for it might be long years of
blood, sweat, and tears before it returns . . . if ever we sit like this,
together again.

He looked at them all,
one by one. They stared back from around the table, silent, all waiting for his
words. Vale, his son, gaunt and scarred, his eyes blazing with fire. Elory, his
sweet daughter, her brown eyes kind and soft, even after so much pain. Meliora,
his eldest, her head now shaved like a slave's, crowned with a halo of dragonfire.
And with them, too, sat Tash of the pleasure pits, a young woman with long
brown hair, perfumed skin, and many jewels, and though Jaren had just met her,
she too was like a daughter to him. She too was family. Perhaps all in Requiem
were a family under the heel of Saraph. They all sat here in this small hut,
surrounding the small table, sitting before clay bowls of gruel—a warm meal,
perhaps a last meal.

Their chains, which had
once hobbled their ankles, lay in a pile on the floor. Tash had come here with
an iron key, which she had used to unchain new girls arriving into the pleasure
pit. Now she had freed the chains that had bound Jaren and his family's legs.
And yet their collars remained, preventing them from using their magic, for no
simple key could unlock that cursed iron. So long as they wore those collars,
slaves they would remain.

I am old, and I am
frail,
Jaren thought. He was not yet sixty, yet he felt over a hundred,
wearied by years of toil. He could not fight this battle as the younger ones
could, yet they looked to him for guidance, for wisdom . . . for leadership.
For gifts he didn't know that he had to give. Perhaps that was the folly of
youth—that the young, when faced with hardship, looked to their elders for
aid, not knowing that even the very old wished for a teacher.

Yet Jaren was the only
teacher they had now, and the young ones needed him. He would give them
whatever guidance he could, would shepherd them through a storm he was not sure
any of them could survive.

He spoke softly. "This
is a precious moment. This is a moment of sweetness, of family, of peace. Our
family sits together, bound by love and light, though darkness surrounds us.
Before we face that darkness, let us pray."

He sang in a deep,
rumbling voice as he lit candles on the table. He sang the old prayers of
Requiem—songs of distant hills in dawn, rustling birch forests, blue mountains
kissed with mist and sunlight, marble tiles and white columns. A song of
dragons. A song of home. A song of their lost sky. The others sang with him as
the candles burned, little lights shaped as the Draco constellation. The
brightest candle he arranged to shine as the dragon's eye—Issari's Star.

"Many small lights can banish
even the greatest shadow." Jaren looked across the candles at his family. "And
now a great shadow surrounds us. The cruel tyrant seeks Meliora in every corner
of Shayeen and Tofet, and he will not rest until he finds her. He will seek our
dear Tash too, a new daughter in our family. And he will continue to enslave
the rest of us, to grind us down, to break us, to slay us. And now we must
decide: how can we keep our lights shining in this darkness?"

"We fight." Vale rose
to his feet, nearly knocking back his stool. "We've collected and hidden two
spears in this very hut. Other slaves have hidden weapons too. We rise! We
march to the palace again, this time armed. And—"

"No." Jaren shook his
head. "We marched once. We lost too many." He lowered his head, overcome by the
grief, the memory of the decimation. "We cannot face the enemy, not in human
forms, not while collared."

Vale slammed his fist
against the tabletop. "Then we storm the ziggurat. We find the Keeper's Key.
We—"

"I already found it,"
Meliora said, voice barely more than a whisper. She reached into her pocket,
pulled out a crumpled ball of crimson metal, and placed it on the tabletop. The
edges of golden runes were still visible; most of the ancient symbols were
hidden within the crushed, metallic embrace.

Elory spoke for the
first time, eyes widening. "The Keeper's Key! It's . . ."

"Useless." Meliora
sighed. "Many times I tried to use it on my collar, to no avail. With the key
crushed, its runes won't work. Ishtafel crushed it in his palm." She nudged the
crumpled ball across the table. "Try it on your collars. Perhaps you'll have
more luck than I did."

They all stared at one
another, silent. Jaren reached across the tabletop first and lifted the broken
key. The crimson metal was cold. Jaren had never touched ice before, but he
imagined that it felt like this. Yet whenever his fingertips passed across what
remained of the runes, he felt warmth. He had seen this key from a distance
before—the overseers would use it when unlocking his wife's collar, allowing
her to become a dragon and dig through the bitumen—though he had never come so
close. Slowly he raised the ancient relic to his throat, bringing it near his
collar.

Elory gasped. "Father,
the runes on your collar! They're glowing! They're . . . fading."

Warmth surrounded Jaren's
neck. The runes on the key too glowed, but then their light fizzled and dimmed.
The collar remained around his neck.

He passed the key to
Elory, and she tried it on her collar, then Tash and Vale both tried on theirs.
In each case, the runes only flickered, glowed softly for an instant, then
faded to darkness.

"There must be another
key," Elory whispered. "Surely in the palace, there is another."

"There is only one."
Meliora returned the crumpled key into her pocket. "There was only ever one."

"Then we fix this one."
Elory nodded. "We'll heat the metal just enough, unfold it, return the key to
its former shape."

Meliora shook her head
again. "We would only melt the golden runes, perhaps beyond restoration. No. I
dare not try to fix it myself, for fear that I would damage it further. But . .
. there is one who can fix this key."

They all turned to
stare at her. Meliora seemed to stare into nothingness, perhaps lost in memory.

"Who, daughter?" Jaren
said, reaching out to touch her hand. "Who can fix it?"

She looked at him, eyes
haunted. "He who made this key five hundred years ago. He who still lingers in
a mockery of life, banished from our realm. He of whom the seraphim rarely
speak." She shuddered. "The Keymaker."

 
 
ISHTAFEL

He lay on his bed, face aflame,
grinding his teeth so hard they nearly chipped. He dug his fingernails into his
palms, drawing blood. Every breath burned. All was fire. All was rage.

You burned me.

His fists shook.

You escaped me.

His hand rose, shaking.
His fingers uncurled, dripping his own blood, and reached to the bandage on his
cheek.

"My lord!" said the
healer, a young woman in white robes, her halo glowing. "You need to leave the
bandage on, my lord, you—"

He roared, swung his
hand, and knocked her down. The effort tore through him like a demon, leaving
him gasping for breath, coughing. His face blazed as if covered in embers. As
the healer mewled on the floor, Ishtafel grabbed the bandage on his face.

He tore it off with one
swift movement.

For an instant,
silence.

For an instant, nothing
but cold, white shock.

Then he screamed.

He rose to his feet,
stumbled across the chamber of healing, and stared into the bronze mirror on
the wall.

Slowly he began to
laugh.

A dripping, red welt
ran across his face, rising from the left side of his jaw, crossing his cheek
and forehead, and finally running across half his scalp. The mark of Meliora's
flaming halo. As he laughed, the wound twisted, lined with blisters. A second
wound glared from his chest, the stitched cut from her spear.