Dragons Reborn (19 page)

Her firedrake's
wings beat, and the beast soared toward the sun, moving in a straight line.
Thousands of feet above, it turned in the sky and swooped, roaring, Mercy
clinging to the saddle. The firedrake opened its jaws wide, and dragonfire
cascaded down to slam into the Old Wheel tavern.

Fidelity leaped
back, the heat bathing her. The ancient tavern, a relic of Requiem, the place
where Prince Relesar Aeternum himself had lived during Requiem's great civil
war, burst into roaring flames. Sparks showered out, landing against Fidelity's
robes. She hurried back, brushing off the sparks, and stared in horror at the
inferno.

"Surrender
yourselves, weredragons!" Mercy shouted as her firedrake soared again. "Surrender
yourselves or the destruction of this city will be upon you."

Fidelity stared at
the flames, the heat blasting against her, stinging her eyes, singeing her
nostrils and throat. Screams rose inside the tavern. Children leaped out of the
windows, burning. A man burst out of the doors and ran across the boardwalk, a
living torch. Timbers cracked and shattered, and the screams fell silent.

More death.
More killed. Because of us.
Fidelity trembled.
Because of us.

"Fidelity, we
have to get out of here!" Cade grabbed her arm.

Roen held her
other arm. "Come, Fidelity. Away from the fire."

She let them drag
her away. People were screaming now and running all across the boardwalk and
streets. A few leaped into the water and began to swim, only for firedrakes to
blast down flames, burning them.

"None will
flee this city!" Mercy cried. "None will live unless the weredragons
surrender themselves!"

Mercy's firedrake
turned in the sky, plunged down, and blasted fire. The flames crashed into a
hut, baking the clay dome. The firedrake's claws slammed into the hot clay,
tearing it open, and more beasts blew fire into the hole. The flames blasted
out of the windows. People screamed inside. Firedrakes flew along the streets,
torching hut after hut. Fire exploded across Lynport. Smoke raced along the
streets like demons, and the firedrakes kept roaring, and Mercy kept screaming.
Burning people ran, screaming. A firedrake skimmed along the boardwalk, claws
outstretched, scooping up people and tossing them into the air.

"Gemini!"
Mercy cried above, laughing. "Where are you, dear brother? Will you burn
with them all?"

Mercy's firedrake
dived across a street, roaring out fire. The street burned. People screamed and
ran.

Fidelity ran with
them. The fire crackled all around her, and cries of pain tore across the city.
She clung to Roen with one hand, to Cade with the other. Domi and Gemini ran
ahead. The narrow streets burned around her, and huts kept collapsing at her
sides, firedrakes tearing into their roofs. Thousands of people clogged the roads,
clawing over one another, desperate to flee the inferno.

We'll burn here
with them all,
Fidelity realized, heart sinking.
Mercy will kill every
last soul in this city to slay us.

Fidelity stopped
running.

The huts crackled
around her, and people ran back and forth, screaming. Yet Fidelity stood still,
lips tight.

Cade tried to tug
her forward, but she wouldn't budge.

"Fidelity,
come on!" the boy shouted. "The whole damn street is burning!"

They'll burn
the whole city,
Fidelity thought.
They'll burn the whole world to find
us.

"We have to
fly," she whispered.

The others stared
at her, eyes wide.

"Are you mad?"
Gemini shouted. "There are a hundred firedrakes up there!"

Fidelity nodded,
eyes burning. "Enough to burn the whole city. Enough to kill us all. A
hundred thousand people." She clenched her fists. "My father is
alive. So is Amity. I know this. I know it! They're in the south across the
sea. It's time to fly. And it's time to find them."

She stepped back,
shouted wordlessly, and shifted into a dragon.

She beat her
wings, blasting back the flames and smoke, and soared into the sky.

Around her,
countless firedrakes screeched, spun toward her, and began flying her way.

Fidelity flew
higher, spun in a circle, and blasted out a ring of fire.

"Remember
Requiem!" she cried, flew higher, and charged toward the enemy.

She screamed as
she slammed into them, as fire washed over her, as claws drove against her. She
roared, blasting out fire, and snapped her jaws.

"Remember
Requiem!" she cried, battling countless firedrakes, surrounded with scales
and steel and dragonfire.

"Remember
Requiem!" rose more cries below, and the other dragons soared around her.

A green dragon, Roen
barreled into several firedrakes, and his fire washed across a paladin in his
saddle. Cade shouted beside him, a golden dragon, and closed his jaws around a
firedrake's neck and ripped out flesh. Domi rose too, the heat melting the
black paint off her scales of many colors, and Gemini rode on her back.

"Slay them!"
Mercy howled, and Fidelity raised her head to see the paladin flying her firedrake
toward the battle. A hundred other firedrakes flew around the paladin, and
their riders readied their lances.

This is a
battle we cannot win,
Fidelity thought.
Not yet. Not this day.

"To the sea!"
she cried. "Requiem, to the sea! Follow!"

Fidelity could
barely make out the coast ahead, only flashes of blue amid the smoke, the fire,
and the drakes. She beat her wings, screamed as a firedrake's claws tore at her
blue scales, and blasted forth a great river of fire. Cade flew at her side,
adding his flames to hers. Roen and Domi joined her, and the four streams wreathed
together, forming a gushing torrent of heat. The inferno slammed into a
firedrake, melting its scales, melting its rider. The four dragons flew forward,
cutting a path through the enemy.

Arrows flew from
behind, clattering across Fidelity's scales. Pain blazed across her haunches,
and she yowled but kept blowing her fire. Gemini screamed on Domi's back,
tearing off his burning cloak, but the paladin laughed and shouted at his
sister.

"I'm free,
Mercy!" Gemini cried, face sooty, chest shaking as he laughed. "I'm
free and strong, and I'll be back, you dog's daughter! I'll be back with an
army!"

More arrows flew,
and fire washed across Fidelity's tail. She kept flying, kept blowing forth
flames, melting all in her path, bathing the sky with the light and heat of a
sun. A firedrake swooped from above, and she flipped over, lashed her claws,
and tore its belly open. As its innards spilled, she righted herself and kept
flying forward, and her companions flew with her, and they blasted back the
last firedrakes and flew across the beach and over open water.

The firedrakes
chased them, scores of the beasts. Mercy still howled curses behind, and arrows
still flew. But the four dragons kept flying—singed, bleeding, but still
crying out for Requiem, still beating their wings.

"Remember
Requiem! Remember Requiem!"

Four dragons, one
outcast paladin, and a host of firedrakes streamed across the sea, leaving a
blazing city behind.

 
 
MERCY

Again she had killed.

Again she had slain
innocents on her quest for purification. Purification of her empire.
Purification of her soul. Purification from her mother's grip that reached
Mercy even here, far above the southern sea, gripping and squeezing her heart
like an iron vice, like chains that forever bound Mercy to the glittering Cured
Temple that rose from her empire like a crystal shard from flesh. The fires
blazed behind her, consuming the city of Lynport, consuming any last traces of
pity Mercy might have felt for those under her domain.

The blood of infants
coats my hands. There is no more compassion in my heart. There is no more
cruelty I will shy away from. There is no more mercy for those who harbor the
enemy.

Even if she had to burn
down her entire empire, lay waste to cities and forests, dry the sea, topple
the mountains, build new mountains of bones—Mercy would do these things to
catch them. To end this curse. To bring about the Falling even if the world
itself fell with it.

The city burned behind
her, and the weredragons flew ahead, carrying her brother with them. All those
she sought, all her enemies—all flew ahead of her, not even a mile away, yet
Mercy knew that she had lost them. She knew that they would cross the sea,
escape her again. She led a hundred firedrakes, but strong as the beasts were,
they would eventually tire and need to find land. The weredragons could take
turns riding one another, alternating between human and dragon forms, able to
fly for days on end. They had escaped her this way when traveling to Leonis in
the east; they would escape her this way today, flying south to the continent
of Terra.

"Turn around!"
Mercy said. She tugged the reins, spinning her firedrake around in the sky. "We
return north."

Jaw tight, she flew
away from the weredragons, heading back to the burning city, to the
Commonwealth, to the lands she would someday inherit.

She would need more
than firedrakes. She would need a great army, an armada of a thousand ships.

This would not be
merely a hunt, she knew.

This would turn
into a war.

She flew over the
burning city. She kept flying north.

She flew over the
village where she had first found Cade, the village she had razed to the
ground. She flew over the forest she had burned, the forest where the
weredragons had hidden from her. She flew over towns and farmlands where
mothers still cried to the heavens, weeping for their slain babes, babes Mercy
had killed after the weredragons had burned her tillvine. As she flew, no pity
filled her, only ice, only iron.

My babe died too,
she thought.
My babe died and so I will kill everyone, I—

Mercy gnashed her teeth
so hard she almost chipped them.

No. No, she would not
let that thought fill her. That life was gone. That life was false. That life
was only a nightmare. She was Mercy the paladin, her soul, her steel, her womb
dedicated to the Spirit. That was all she was, a sword for the Spirit to wield.
Never more a priestess. Never more a mother. Never more one to heal, only one to
kill.

They flew for days,
crossing the bleeding lands of the Commonwealth, flying over ruin, over graves,
until finally they reached the city of Nova Vita, capital of her empire.

The city still
screamed.

No tillvine grew this
year, and paladins marched across the streets, shattered doorways, grabbed
babes and slit their throats. Screams of parents rose. White flags of mourning
rose from clay huts across the city, as inside parents grieved.

Let them grieve.
Mercy's fists trembled around the reins of her firedrake.
Let them grieve like
a young priestess once grieved. Let the whole world feel this pain.

Mercy left her
firedrake in the courtyard and entered the Temple, walking alone. She passed
through lavish halls and sought her mother in the Holy of Holies, but could not
find her there. She searched the libraries, the chapels, the gardens, but the
high priestess was nowhere to be found.

As she searched, a fear
grew in Mercy, and she placed her hand atop her belly, feeling the pain there,
the emptiness. She quickened her step, and soon she was running. She raced down
marble corridors, priests and servants leaping aside. She ran until she reached
her bedchamber, yanked the door open, and barged inside.

High Priestess Beatrix
stood within, holding baby Eliana in her arms.

Mercy froze.

She reached for her
sword.

"Put her down,"
Mercy hissed.

Beatrix stared at her,
and a smile stretched across her face, though it did not touch her eyes. "Welcome
home, daughter! I was just putting the babe to sleep. One cannot trust servants
to do all child rearing. Eliana is like a granddaughter to me now."

Mercy would not release
the hilt of her sword, ready to draw the blade. "Put her down. Never touch
her again. I would burn the world for her."

The High Priestess
sighed, rocking the sleeping babe. "It seems that you've already burned
the world. The forests burn. The city of Lynport burns. And still . . . no
weredragon corpses. No sign of your brother either. Fire and death and nothing
but defeat." Beatrix tsked her tongue. "All your battles, all your
flights, and still you fail me." She raised her eyes and stared at Mercy. "This
babe has softened you."

Amity took another step
closer. "Put. Her. Down."

Beatrix stared at her,
eyes hard, burning cold, and her fingers tightened around the babe. One hand
strayed toward Eliana's throat, a menacing caress. "This child is a
privilege for you, Mercy. Not a right. I would not hesitate to steal this prize
from you, just as you've stolen babes from mothers across this city."

"I did as you
ordered me!" Mercy shouted, rage and pain blinding her. Eliana woke up and
wailed. "I killed them for you! I killed them because you ordered me to
kill! I killed them like he killed my son, like—"

Mercy froze, trembling
wildly. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't speak. She couldn't weep. She could
only stand, frozen in horror. No. No. No, that was only a dream, only another
life, not real. Not her. Not her life. Not her past. And yet she had spoken of
it, made it real. She fell to her knees.

"Please," she
whispered. "I beg you, Mother. Please."

Beatrix glared at her
just a second longer, eyes blazing, and then her face softened all at once, as
quickly as if she had placed on a mask. She knelt, laid the wailing Eliana on
the floor, and embraced Mercy.