Infinity (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

“Allie?” Winston called out from the far side of the clearing, and I looked up, my eyes filling with tears. He was alive. There was a dragon body being burned to a crisp not ten feet from me, but I didn’t care because the dragon that mattered most to me was still okay.

“Winston!” I pulled away from Kitsuna and Rhys, sprinting for him. “I thought you flew north.”

“Oh, thank God, Allie.” He pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips against mine, not bothering to be gentle as he let his fingers tangle in my hair. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m okay. We saw the dragons attack, and we came as fast as we could. There wasn’t much I could do. What are you doing here, though?”

“There are more fires in the White Mountains,” he said. “Bavasama’s soldiers are leading raids. Ardere and I came back to report it and get more soldiers. What happened here?”

“They just attacked us,” I whispered. “This dragon flew toward the aerie and started breathing fire, and then the sky was filled with dragons. Mercedes shot at them as quickly as she could but—”

“Is she okay?” Winston asked.

“She’s fine.” I pulled him close, more to hide my own shaking than to comfort him. “She’s with the Woodsmen and John now, making sure that there aren’t any more dragons in the forest. But while they were shooting things, the rest of us just sort of stood there, waiting for something to attack from the ground. But nothing came and then Dravak…”

Winston’s head jerked up, and I saw the flames from the dragons’ fire glowing in his dark eyes as his shoulders slumped. “Oh no.” He winced. “Not Dravak. He’s just a—”

“No, he’s fine.” I grabbed Winston’s shoulders and gave them a quick shake. “He’s fine. That’s not him. Well, it is him. Not the dead body, though. He’s just over there with the rest of them. He’s the one that killed the enemy dragon… Actually, Mercedes shot it in the wing and brought it down, and then Balmeer fought with it for a bit, but then it started for the aerie, and Dravak just went after it. He charged at this huge blue dragon even though it was at least three times his size, and Win—”

My knees buckled, and he grabbed for me, pulling me up before I could completely fall apart, and wrapped his arms around my waist, holding me against him. “He ripped off the other dragon’s head. He ripped it clean—”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” I took a deep breath and pushed away from him. “It’s just all the adrenaline. I’m fine.”

“You’re in shock.” Winston tried to tighten his grip on me, but I stepped back, steadying myself and then straightening my shoulders and lifting my chin.

“I’m a queen,” I said, “and someone just declared war on us. I don’t have time to go into shock.”

“Allie—”

“I have to keep moving, Win.” I swallowed and looked up at him. “I can’t crumble right now. I can lose it in private later, but right now I have to keep going. People have to see that I can keep going.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “So what do we do?”

“I don’t know. Where are the rest of the dragons you were on patrol with?”

“They kept moving north. They should be back by morning. The thing is, we hadn’t made it any farther than the Forest of Ananth before Ardere and I turned back. We should have seen the other dragons as they came over the mountains. How did they get past us?”

“They came from the south,” Kitsuna said. I looked up to see her standing in front of us, her eyes hidden by the shadow of night. “The black dragon that we saw first, he came from the south. From Dramera.”

“No.” Winston shook his head. “Allie?”

“Yeah.” I nodded as he stepped away from me, and I felt my heart sink. “At first we thought it was you. That you had gone for the Dragos Council to bring them here. I thought it was you…”

He pointed at me, and I could see his finger shaking. “You and Kitsuna stay here with Ardere. Stay with the others. Help them protect the aerie.”

“What about you?” I grabbed his arm and turned to look at him. “Where are you going?”

“Allie, we have all the dragon warriors that can fight here. The Dragos Council is here. All of them but Mysanthe”—he nodded toward the gold dragon still circling with the others, flames pouring from their mouths as the fire between them rose higher—“are on patrol with their clans. Dramera was left with only a small guard to protect the weak and those with hatchlings.”

“Oh God.” I felt my knees start to tremble. “You think they…”

“I have to go check.” He let go of me and took a step back. “I have to check on the ones we left behind.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Allie—”

“I’m going.”

He opened his mouth to protest again.

“Don’t make me order you because I will. I’m going with you. I won’t let you go there alone.”

I wasn’t going to take that chance again. Not after Mercedes. I’d seen too much death since we’d arrived in Nerissette to send him out into the unknown alone.

I thought about the sound of Mercedes sobbing into my back earlier that day when we’d found her. I remembered the sound of her broken voice telling us that she was alone now, and I knew I couldn’t take the chance of Winston going through the same thing. I just couldn’t. “Please.”

“No. You have to stay here. You have to raise an army, and if Bavasama’s soldiers are in Dramera, I can’t guarantee that I can protect you.”

“But—”

He shook his head and then brushed past me, making his way into the aerie so that he could shift in private. I watched him go with my arms wrapped around my own waist and tried not to tremble.

“Allie?” Kitsuna reached for my arm, and I stepped away from her.

“Take care of Mercedes for me,” I said, my voice no more than a whisper. “If something happens to me before all of this is over, I need you to take care of Mercedes. She’s not really there right now. I mean she’s not crazy or anything, but she’s not herself. Our Mercedes would have never—”

“I know.”

“She isn’t a killer. She doesn’t hunt things. I can’t even believe that she knew how to shoot that stupid bow. I mean, I know she was learning but actually
killing things
?”

“She’s a dryad,” Kitsuna said. “They may love peace and nurture life, but they have been trained for war, Your Majesty. Mercedes would have been trained to defend herself and her tree along with her sisters.”

“We were never supposed to learn how to do this stuff,” I said, my eyes still fixed on the top of the aerie where I could see the faint green glow of Winston’s change taking place. “This isn’t the life that we were supposed to live. This isn’t her world. Or Winston’s.”

“You’re all fighting to keep Nerissette alive. I’d say that gives the three of you just as much claim to this world as the rest of us.”

“Maybe.”

“Your—”

Winston roared, and I broke my gaze away from Kitsuna’s, looking up at him instead as he launched himself from the roof of the aerie’s tower and climbed higher as he turned to the south, toward Dramera.

“Be safe.” I whispered as I watched him disappear into the night. “Please be safe.”

Chapter Twelve

The next morning I paced in the dew-drenched grass of the Crystal Palace’s back garden as the sun came up over the darkened plain where the labyrinth had once been, waiting for Winston to return. I could see what was left of the mermaid’s pool—empty, forgotten, drained—and clenched my hands around the Dragon’s Tear hanging around my neck. The necklace was one of the Great Relics, and it would never leave me again. I wouldn’t let anyone else take it—and the power it possessed.

“Widric the Headman from Kavallaro,” I said slowly, keeping my eyes focused on the lightening horizon. “Jesse. Heidi. Timbago. Mistress Tibbs. Twenty-four helpless mermaids. The three thousand soldiers lost fighting in the battles of the Fate Maker. My half brother, Eamon. Darinda and the Dryad Order. Esmeralda. My mother, the rightful Golden Rose of Nerissette—”

“Allie?” John asked quietly. I didn’t bother to turn around. I heard the rustle of his footsteps across the grass and swallowed. “What are you doing?”

“Remembering.”

“Remembering what?”

“All the people we’ve lost, the ones who’ll never get the chance to see what Nerissette can be like when it’s brought back to its former glory, when it’s beautiful again.”

“Hey.” He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

“I’m their queen. It’s my job to remember them and what they gave their lives for.”

He didn’t say anything, but I felt two brawny arms wrap around me as he gave me a brief hug. “It’s good to remember them, but you can’t forget the living while you make your apologies to the dead.”

“I know.” I nodded but didn’t turn to look at him.

“Come on, then.” He loosened his embrace and instead wrapped one arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go get some breakfast. I remember your grandmother used to say that it was the most important meal of the day. And on a big day like today, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

“Why?”

“The last of the Council of Nobles have arrived with their troops. And we’ve had reports from the patrols that went toward the deserts of the Firas.”

“And?” I asked, my heart clenching. I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t actually want to
know
if the things we’d heard had been true. Could all of the Firas be gone? An entire civilization that had once stretched across the entire bottom half of Nerissette and Bathune just gone as if it had never existed?

“They found a small group that managed to escape,” John said quietly. “Seven of them. The great Firas…reduced to nothing but four tradesman, one woman, a six-year-old boy, and a king.”

“None of their Fire Dancers survived?” I asked, my heart sinking as I tried to remember what few details I knew about the Firas culture.

The Firas were a tribal people. They’d moved from place to place on the backs of enormous beasts that looked like a cross between a camel and a wooly mammoth except their fur was a brilliant purple instead of the usual matte brown of animals from my world. Their soothsayers were known as Fire Dancers—mystics who claimed to speak with the Pleiades on behalf of men and kings through rituals that they kept secret.

“Just those seven,” he reiterated.

“So what do we do then? What do I say?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he led me toward the house. “I don’t know what you say. I think—” He stopped. “I think you simply have to be kind. Now, come on, let’s get breakfast.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I want to see Melchiam. I need to tell him I’m sorry for what happened to his people.”

We’d reached the back of the ruined palace by then, and I nodded to one of the guards standing watch. “Could you please ask the Rache of the Firas to meet me in what’s left of the throne room?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” The young man snapped his heels together and then bowed his head sharply before he hurried away.

“Allie—”

“Bavasama won’t stop doing evil just because I’m having breakfast,” I said quietly. “She’s not resting, and we shouldn’t be, either.”

He sighed, but instead of arguing, he just followed me into the large room where I’d once heard royal audiences. It now acted as a communal bedroom for all the nobles and other refugees that were now calling the palace home.

The dais, along with my throne, was still in place, the area behind it curtained off as a sort of locker room where people could bathe and change their clothes with some sort of illusion of privacy. I pushed the curtain back and made my way into the changing area, snagging the tiny hand mirror one of the new maids—a woman from the city of Neris—had given me when she realized the sad state of my personal possessions.

I glared at myself in the mirror and used a free hand to push back the few locks of hair that had managed to work free from my braid. “Just be kind,” I said to my reflection. I took a deep breath before setting the mirror down and running a hand over my stiff, dirt-smudged tunic and filthy brown trousers.

I stepped back out from behind the curtain and climbed onto the dais. Once I was standing there, I put my hands behind my back so that no one could see my fidgeting while I waited.

Within minutes, the room began to fill with army commanders and nobles and the leaders of the various races within Nerissette.

“Your Majesty,” Arianna of the Veldt said. I held a hand up, silencing her.

I watched as a tall, thin man with long, dark hair, wearing a plain black robe with a high neck and long, billowing sleeves came slowly into the room, his head down. Melchiam, Last Great Rache of the Firas Nation.

Instead of waiting for him to make it all the way into the room, I started down the stairs toward him. “Melchiam.” I took his hands in mine when I reached him, and he looked up at me with sunken black eyes.

“Your Majesty.” He bowed his head slightly, and I could see his shoulders trembling.

“I—” I sniffled as tears built up in my eyes.

“Your Majesty?” He looked up at me again, and I could see that he was trying not to cry as well. One tear slipped out of his left eye and made a lonely trail down his cheek.

“I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.” I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed, trying to give him a comforting hug, like the ones my mom had always given me when I’d had a really bad day.

“Oh, Your Majesty,” he sobbed softly.

“Come now,” Tevian, the head of the Dragos Council, said. He came forward, wrapping his strong arms around Melchiam and letting the taller man sob on his shoulder.

“Come now and dry your eyes, both of you. We’ll cry when the war is won. Once there is peace, the entire world will mourn those we’ve lost but not now. Not when there are battles yet to fight.”

“Right.” I let go of Melchiam and started back up the aisle, wiping my eyes with my shirtsleeves as the nobles stepped out of my way and Tevian led the Rache of the Firas away.

“Your Majesty,” Rhys said as he moved forward to help me to my throne. “Your army has assembled. Or at least as much of your army as we could get. The rest will join us on the road.”

“Good.” I let go of his hand when I reached the top of the dais and turned to stare at the assembled nobles. “How many?”

“Every man in Nerissette who is able to hold a sword on his own and every woman who doesn’t have a child at home that needs her care.”

“The women, too? We didn’t have that many women soldiers when we fought the Fate Maker the last two times. They stayed behind to take care of the crops and protect the villages.”

“Everyone who can fight”—he looked at me, his eyes flat—“will fight. We’ll protect the villages by pushing our way into Bathune and not giving Bavasama’s army the chance to set foot in Nerissette again.”

“How many soldiers?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

“What?” My eyebrows raised in shock. Nerissette wasn’t that big of a country. I didn’t think we had more than a half million people in it if you counted every man, woman, and child.

“You have an army of two hundred thousand swords ready to fight in your name, Your Majesty. Everyone over the age of sixteen that can hold a sword has volunteered. Your army is five times the size of the largest army that has ever been raised in this world—and that army is one that only exists in legend.”

“So we’re ready?” I swallowed and tried to picture two hundred thousand people in my head and realized that I couldn’t actually do it.

“Not even close,” Rhys said. “We’ll take the soldiers we have, and if we’re lucky, the rest will join up before your aunt attacks us again.”

“But—” I started.

“If we wait,” he said, his voice even, “we leave ourselves open to another attack like the one last night. If we’re going to fight back, we have to strike now.”

I nodded.

“All we need is the final Council vote,” John said.

The Council of Nobles was allowed to cast a vote about whether or not they wanted to go to war. In the end it wouldn’t matter if they voted against me—I didn’t have to do what they said—but if they all voted no, then any of them could refuse me their troops. But, if I won by even a single vote, then all of them had to commit whether they liked it or not.

“People of Nerissette.” I stepped forward as Rhys stepped back, away from me. “My Council of Nobles.” I bowed my head toward the huddled mass of people in the center of the room.

“Woodsmen of the Leavenwald.” I nodded at my father. “Distinguished members of the Nymphiad, my friends on the Dragos Council, Melchiam—Rache of the Firas.” I stopped as they all stared at me. What was I supposed to do now? I mean, surely they didn’t need me to persuade them to keep us all alive? Did they?

“Vote.” I held my hands out to my sides. “All those in favor?”

“But shouldn’t we discuss—” one of the nobles began. I squinted and thought I recognized him as Thurston of Drazzletop, one of the minor lords of the Veldt.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked as I clenched my hands into fists and put them on my hips. “Do I think Bavasama will continue to come over the mountains and burn your homes and kill your families until she has turned our world to ash? Yes. Do I think she won’t stop until she has eaten the entire world? Again—yes. There is nothing left to discuss. There is war, or there is waiting here for death. Now, vote.

“All those in favor of taking our army across the White Mountains to reclaim the kingdom of Bathune, imprison Bavasama, and burn the Palace of Night to the ground?” I asked.

“Aye.” The room seemed to shake with the echo of a hundred voices all screaming their answer together.

“All opposed say ‘nay,’” I said quietly.

“Nay,” Thurston of Drazzletop said, his voice clear and strong. “I am sick of war, Your Majesty. I am sick of fighting and dirt and death. I would go home to my books and the deer that live in my forests. I would live at peace with all who seek peace with me.”

“When we’re safe,” I said quietly, “I’ll be the first to join you in your search for peace. But not now. I choose peace today…”

Thurston bowed his head low before me. “When the time comes, Your Majesty, I will be happy to help you find the peace we both desire. Now, since everyone else has voted for war, I need to go and prepare my men.”

He turned his back on me and started toward the door, the room so silent that we could all hear the
click
of his shoes against the scarred marble floor. There was a creak as he pushed the door open and then a dull
thump
when he closed it behind him.

“Queen Allie?” Rhys asked. I looked over at him and my father who raised an eyebrow at me. “The Council of Nobles has voted in favor of war. Ninety-nine to one.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Had I told Thurston of Drazzletop the truth? Was there some other option to save our world without an army? Without war? Was there a peaceful solution to our current situation, or was there only this? I couldn’t see a different way to handle my aunt, but maybe I didn’t want to look for one, either. All I knew was I couldn’t let any more people die.

“Okay?” Rhys asked. I locked eyes with my father once more before turning to Rhys.

“So what do we do?” Arianna asked. “What’s our strategy?”

“Our strategy?” I asked. “We march into Bathune, and we burn it to the ground. When we get to the Palace of Night, we drag my aunt outside, we take her prisoner, and then we turn her palace into dust. How’s that for strategy?”

“It certainly sends a message,” Rhys said.

“Yeah, the message that we aren’t going to let ourselves get kicked around anymore,” I said. “Tomorrow morning we march to war.”

Rhys turned back to the assembled mass and pulled his sword. All through the room, the men who wore swords did the same. Those that were carrying staffs beat them against the floor while the rest of the men and women present stomped their feet, a low, thumping sound like a heartbeat vibrating off the walls.

“To war!” Rhys yelled.

“To war!” the assembled nobles howled back as the chaos around me got louder, my people working themselves into a frenzy.

I stared at my father—the only other person in the room who was just standing there, watching as the world around us fell apart.