Dragons Reborn (22 page)

Gemini raised an
eyebrow. "It sounds like I'm the only family you have left."

Cade growled and
grabbed Gemini's collar. "Be silent! Don't think that I trust you."
He twisted the collar in his fist. "I know that you hurt Domi. I know of all
those that your family hurt. I am not one of you." His cheeks flushed and
his eyes reddened. "Do you hear me? I'm not part of your sick, twisted
family."

Gemini sighed and pried
Cade's hand off his collar. "Sick, twisted family." The words tasted
flat. "Yes. We are that. My mother. My sister. They're . . . not the most
pleasant of people. I know of their sins—the people they killed, tortured,
imprisoned, deformed." He shuddered, the nightmares of the dungeon never
far from consuming him. "But that's them. They're the ones in power. I've never
been like them, Cade. They hurt me too." Gemini winced, closed his eyes,
and took a shaky breath. "You can't imagine what it was like—growing up
with Beatrix as your mother, with Mercy as your sister." He barked a
laugh, opened his eyes, and looked at Cade again. "Can you?"

Cade's fists loosened. "No."

Gemini placed his hand
on Cade's shoulder. "Listen to me, brother. I'm here now. Helping you.
Fighting with you. You are my brother, and I swear to you . . . we will fight
back against our family." He sneered. "We will kill Mercy and Beatrix,
and then we—the Deus brothers—will rule the land."

"I want nothing to
do with your land." Cade glowered. "I fight only for Requiem."

Gemini nodded. "Requiem
is what you'll get if you fight with me. Against my mother and sister.
Our
mother and sister." His eyes stung. "Spirit, Cade, their cruelty,
their bloodlust . . . Such horrors, brother. Such horrors. And I've always felt
very alone. I sought love with women. With wine. With Domi. With firedrakes.
Seeking some relief, somebody to understand." He was surprised to find
tears stinging his eyes. "But I found you. A brother. A real brother.
Somebody to fight with me."

Surprising himself
again, Gemini hugged Cade. The boy stood stiffly at first, then relaxed.

"My brother,"
Gemini whispered. "My little brother. I promise that I'll never hurt you
like Mercy hurt me. I promise to always fight with you."

Cade pulled himself
free. He stared at Gemini with a mix of confusion, contempt, and wonder, then
turned and walked several steps away. The boy stood with his back to Gemini,
staring toward the water.

I don't know if we
can ever be friends,
Gemini thought, gazing at the boy.
I've never had a
brother, never had a friend, never had anyone love me, never loved anyone but
Domi who betrayed me.
His damn eyes stung again.
Please, Spirit, let
this boy, this brother, be a friend to me. Let him fight with me against the
world, against all those who hurt us.

"Gemini!" The
voice rose behind him. "Cade, you too! We're going to find something to
eat. Gemini, come on!"

Gemini turned around to
see Fidelity gesturing to them. He raised his chin, dried his eyes, and nodded.
He walked toward the others, the weredragons, those who had captured him, who
perhaps would fight with him, who perhaps would be the only people in the world
to love him.

 
 
MERCY

Her firedrake perched upon the
tower, the tallest point in Altus Mare, and from the saddle Mercy watched her
armada muster.

"Altus Mare,"
she whispered into the wind. "The great Eastern Light of the Commonwealth.
From here our greatest beam of righteousness will shine forth."

Below her spread the
second largest city in her empire, the greatest port of the Commonwealth,
larger than three Lynports. Altus Mare was an ancient city, harkening back to
the days of the Osannan civilization which had first built a port here three
thousand years ago. The eastern sea pushed into the continent here, a cove of
calm warm water, and the city spread along the coast, embracing the bay.
Hundreds of monasteries rose here, their steeples white and soaring, and great
tillvine blossoms shone in their stained glass mirrors. Between the temples,
thousands of cobbled streets rolled along hills toward the water, and countless
houses rose alongside them. The homes were all built of the same white clay,
their windows round, their roofs domed. Among them rose libraries, silos,
workshops, and fortresses.

Altus Mare—fabled for
its beauty, for its white spires like crystal shards, for its crystal blue
waters, for its wisdom, its music, its history and holiness. Altus Mare, the
Jewel of the East.

Today it was home to an
army.

Hundreds of warships
filled the cove: towering brigantines with many sails, their decks lined with
cannons; carracks topped with archers and soldiers ready for war; longships
lined with oars and shields; portly cogs laden with barrels of gunpowder and
siege engines; and a hundred wooden hulks bearing firedrakes upon their decks.
Ships had come here from across the coasts of the Commonwealth, forming the greatest
armada the empire had ever seen. On the horizon, Mercy saw many more masts
rising, drawing closer, more ships come to join the greatest invasion of the
age.

Thousands of troops
gathered here too. They stood along every boardwalk, mustered in every square.
They wore white robes painted with tillvine blossoms over chain mail, and they
held shields and swords. A thousand paladins commanded them, clad in white
plate armor, bearing great lances and banners. As Mercy watched from the tower,
hundreds of rowboats were busy moving back and forth, ferrying troops from the
boardwalks and onto the warships. Dozens of firedrakes flew overhead,
gliding down to land on decks. Hundreds more would fly above the armada as it
sailed, swapping places with the beasts on the decks every few hours, forever
forming a cloud of scale and fire above the fleet.

Lynport lay far southwest
from here, and Sanctus far north. Altus Mare was not only the largest of the
Commonwealth's port cities but also the closest to her destination: the great
tent city of Hakan Teer in the continent of Terra . . . the great army of the
Horde.

"We will face them
in battle, Talis," Mercy said, leaning across the saddle to stroke her
firedrake's white scales. "We will burn them all."

Talis was a young firedrake,
not yet fully trained, jittery but fast and mean and strong. He was smaller than
Felesar, her old mount which Gemini had stolen, but quicker, crueler. Scales as
pure and pale as snow flowed across his muscular form, and his jaws kept
snapping, and his claws kept digging into the steeple of the monastery he
perched on. He gurgled and cackled as she stroked them, then spread his wings
wide, tossed back his head, and blasted upward a great fountain of fire, an
inferno that shrieked and roared, blue in its center, spreading out to white
and blazing red.

"Yes, Talis,"
Mercy said. "Soon you'll blast this fire onto the weredragons. Soon they
will cower before you and die in your flame."

Suddenly pain drove
through Mercy, and she closed her eyes. Again she felt the agony in her belly,
her husband's fists killing the child who had slept within. She shivered, biting
her lip so hard she bled, and her eyes snapped open. She stared at the fleet
below.

"I do this for
you, Eliana," she whispered. "I will lead the Temple to its greatest
battle, and I will purify the world so that you never know pain. So that you
never know war. I will bring about the Falling and raise you in a world of
light . . . even if my life is one of shadow and flame."

She dug her spurs into Talis's
tenderspots, and the beast took flight. His wings beat madly, and he cried out,
a bugling cry, eager for the fight. They dived over the city streets, over
thousands of domes, thousands of soldiers. They soared, scattering flame,
rising high above the cove, and they circled above the hundreds of ships that
spread for miles. Mercy's banner rose high, thudding in the wind, displaying a
golden tillvine blossom upon a white field. The sun beat down, shining on Talis's
white scales and her white armor.

"Hear me!"
Mercy cried to the army below, to the multitudes, to the wrath of the Temple. "I
am Mercy Deus, and I will lead you to victory! We are the light of the Spirit!
We are the blade of the Cured! Sail forth, armada! Sail forth, holy warriors!"

Across hundreds of
decks, men blew into silvery horns. The cries rose from below, growing and
multiplying, a thousand clarion calls, calls for holiness, for war, for
triumph. The last rowboats reached the warships, and the last soldiers climbed
onto the decks, and with the roar of drums and horns and chanting men, the armada
began to sail.

Talis turned toward the
east and flew, leading the way out of the port, blasting fire and screeching,
his cry rolling across the cove and city. A thousand other firedrakes took flight,
blowing fire, their cries shaking the sky. Below them, the ships raised their
anchors and began to sail: brigantines, carracks, hulks, hundreds of vessels
bearing a hundred thousand soldiers. Cannons blasted out in triumph. Priests
led chants, and countless voices rose in song upon the decks. All along the
cove, men and women cheered, waved flags, and blew horns. Sunbeams fell upon
the water, and Mercy felt as if the Spirit himself watched from above, blessing
her with light.

It was an army the Horde
could not stop. It was a light the weredragons could not extinguish. It was the
great battle of Mercy's life—for her mother, for her daughter, for her god.

And for the fear
inside me,
she thought.
For the emptiness that I cannot fill.

The great army of the Cured
Temple sailed out of the cove into open water. Ahead, across the horizon, they
waited: the continent of Terra, the weredragons, her brothers, and her triumph
or her death in fire.

 
 
KORVIN

A gray dragon,
he perched atop Elamar, one of the great horse statues that guarded the coast
of Terra. The colossus rose three hundred feet tall, almost as tall as the
Cured Temple in the north. Clutching one of the horse's raised, gilded hoofs,
Korvin felt as small as an eagle on an oak's branch.

Amity
sat perched on the horse's second kicking hoof. The red dragon spat out fire,
and smoke rose from her nostrils. She turned her scaly head toward Korvin and
grinned, showing all her teeth.

"We're
almost ready," she said.

Korvin
grunted, puffed out smoke, and stared at the coast below. Behind him sprawled
the tent city of Hakar Teer, the great northern garrison of the Horde. Before
him in the water, the ships of this empire spread across the sea. Many were old
ships captured years ago from the Commonwealth in battle: brigantines,
carracks, and caravels, the tillvine blossoms scratched off their hulls, their
banners now displaying the serpents of the Horde, and cannons lined their
decks. Among them sailed hundreds of vessels built here in Terra: dhow ships with
lateen sails, some small with only one mast and a dozen men, others sporting
three masts and a crew of a hundred; massive baghlah ships, long and curved,
their hulls masterworks of engravings and precious metals; hulks and cogs,
massive ships the size of forts; longships like great centipedes lined with
oars; and countless smaller vessels, some oared and some raising single sails,
like bustling flies around the larger warships.

On the fleet's decks, the warriors of the Horde roared for battle and
brandished their weapons. Osannans, the descendants of outcasts from their
lands in the north, wore scraps of iron, leather, and wool, and they wielded
axes, hammers, spears, and longswords. For the first time in hundreds of years,
they would sail back to their ancestral home in the northeast, the home the
Temple now ruled. Among them roared warriors of the Terran tribes, survivors of
the fallen civilizations of Eteer, Goshar, and the other city-states that now
lay buried under the sand. They were shorter and darker, their skin olive
toned, their hair black, their eyes green, and they wore bronze breastplates,
suits of scales, and ring mail, and they brandished scimitars and khopeshes and
spears tipped with iron. Thousands of Tirans sailed here too, tall and noble people
with golden skin, piercing blue eyes, and long platinum hair, warriors hailing
from the deserts of the west, come to join the great Horde in its conquest.

Not only men and women topped the ships but beasts too. A thousand horses
stood within the hulls of lumbering cogs, and several ships even held elephants
in their bowels. Griffins stood atop massive wooden hulks. Salvanae lay curled
up on other decks like serpents, scales bright in the sun.

Finally,
on the beach, loomed Behemoth itself. No ship was large enough to ferry the
beast; he was large as the largest carrack. Crow's nests had been attached to his
many horns, and archers stood within. More men stood on the beast's back in a
great wooden howdah. As Korvin watched, riders shouted commands and lashed
crops, guiding Behemoth into the sea. The creature walked through the water,
moving between the ships. He would swim the ocean as he had in eras long ago,
before the ancient lords of the Horde had imprisoned him in the mountain.

"This
host has the might to sweep across the Commonwealth," Korvin said. "Lynport
burned to the ground. We will land there in the ruins, facing little
resistance, and make our way north—north across charred forests, north to the
capital, to the Temple, and we will send that Temple crashing down." He
looked at Amity. "And I don't know what land we will find when the Horde
has done its work."

"We
will find Requiem," Amity said.

Smoke
seeped out of Korvin's nostrils. "The Horde might not be as willing as you
think to retreat."

Amity
snarled, and fire flickered between her fangs. "I will slay anyone who
resists me. I will grant the Horde the lands of Osanna in the east, from
Lanburg Fields to Altus Mare. I will grant them the forests of Salvandos in the
west, the mountains of Fidelium in the north, the swamps of Gilnor in the
south, all those lands annexed to the empire that was once our kingdom. Those
will be the prizes of the Horde for their war—more than half the Commonwealth.
For us, Korvin, I will keep our ancient kingdom, the classical realm of Requiem
as it was in the days of King Benedictus."