A Memory of Fire (The Dragon War, Book 3) (21 page)

So fast Leresy could not react,
Valien spun around and grabbed him. Leresy yelped and Valien twisted
his arm behind his back.

"You..." Leresy
sputtered, clutched in the man's grip. "You... you should be
dead! What kind of man wears armor under his tunic?"

Valien growled and tightened his
grip. Leresy struggled, but the man was too large, too strong;
Leresy would have better luck breaking iron shackles.

"Unhand me!" he
screamed, tears budding in his eyes. "Leave me alone, savage!"

Resistors were gathering around,
shouting. Some eyes widened with shock; others blazed with hatred.
All the faces swam around Leresy. He could barely see them. He
thought he saw Kaelyn there, her eyes sad. Sila was shouting
something. Miya was gasping and pointing at him. A thousand others
swirled around him like some mad puppet show.

"I did nothing!"
Leresy screamed. "Let me go."

Valien gripped him only tighter;
Leresy thought the man would break his bones.

"I think," Valien
rasped, "we have found our villain. Is this the man, Miya?"

She nodded tearfully, and Leresy
screamed louder.

"She's lying! I never
touched her. Let me go!"

Valien began manhandling him
forward. "Make way."

Leresy screamed and howled, but
the men pushed and dragged him. A path cleared through the crowd.
He kicked and pressed his feet into the dirt, but too many hands now
gripped him, moving him forward. When Leresy saw the fallen log
ahead, he began to weep.

"Please," he said,
mucus and tears running down his face. "Please, don't... don't
kill me. I didn't do anything."

Valien growled. "You
assaulted a woman, and you stabbed me in the back, Leresy Cadigus.
If I hadn't been warned of your treachery, you'd have killed me. Now
be silent, place your neck upon this log, and I will make your death
painless. Struggle and I will make it hurt."

Leresy howled to the sky. He
kicked wildly. He could barely see through his tears.

"Treachery!" he cried.
"Who warned him? Who? I've been betrayed!"

He panted, shaking and
trembling... and he knew.

He had told only one soul.

Oh
stars, no...

Icy water seemed to flow through
him, drowning his fear and rage, replacing it with something colder
and deeper—the ghostly stab of betrayal.

"Erry..."

He looked through the crowd,
seeking her. Not Erry. No... she couldn't have betrayed him.
She... she was his woman. She was his love. Not Erry...

"Erry," he said,
weeping. "Erry, where are you?"

He raised his head, still
clutched in the grip of so many men, and saw her ahead.

His tears fell.

She
stood among the crowd. Men almost hid her from view, but he could
see her face. She gazed at him, her expression hesitant, almost shy.
Her eyes were soft, the eyes of an abandoned child. Suddenly she
seemed so young to him. She
was
only a child, only a little doll.

"I vowed to protect you,
Erry," he whispered. "You were my woman. You told him?"

She looked at him and her eyes
dampened, but she said nothing. And he knew the answer.

She
betrayed me. Erry Docker, the love of my life, the only woman I've
ever loved... betrayed me.

They
shoved him toward the log. Hands gripped his neck, pushing it down.
Steel hissed against leather. Cheek pressed against the wood, Leresy
raised his eyes, and he saw Valien drawing his sword. The sword was
massive, a hunk of steel wide enough to behead an ox.

Leresy did not want to gaze upon
this. No. He did not want to see this bear of a man and his steel;
that would not be his last vision.

He turned his eyes back toward
Erry.

He looked at her—at her soft
face, her small features, her short hair he would always mock. She
was beautiful. He would die gazing upon her.

"I love you, Erry Docker,"
he said, waiting for the steel to fall.

The camp fell silent all around.

Leresy held his breath, waiting
to die.

A single, high voice broke the
silence.

"Wait."

Leresy twisted his head and saw
her there, golden through the veil of his tears.

His twin.

The second half of his soul.

"Kaelyn," he
whispered.

She held up her hand, a sign of
redemption, of mercy, pointing upward to the heavens and stars of his
forebears.

"Wait," she said.
"Valien, wait. Don't kill him. He is my brother."

"Sister," Leresy
whispered. "Kaelyn... he hurt you... I'm sorry. Please. He
hurt you so much. He would beat you. I have to kill Father... I
have to..."

His twin looked upon him, eyes
soft and full of pity. She stared at him, but she spoke to Valien.

"He is miserable, he is
sad, he is drunk and pathetic and a wretch. But he is my brother.
Please, Valien, spare his life."

Valien growled, a deep sound
like a wolf disturbed in its den. He held his sword high above
Leresy's neck.

"He assaulted Miya,"
he said, eyes staring down, cold with fury. "He stabbed me in
the back. And you would spare his life?"

Kaelyn nodded and now tears
streamed down her cheeks. "He deserves death, it's true. I've
tried to kill him myself in our years of battle; I gave him that scar
on his cheek. But now I look down upon him and I pity him. And I
see myself. His soul is bound to mine. Our father would beat us; he
would beat us until we bled, wept, and blacked out. He nearly beat
us to death. I fled from my father, but Leresy was not as strong.
My father broke his soul. All my brother does—all his sins—are
driven by his madness."

Valien refused to lower his
sword. "Life is hard in this land. Many children suffer under
the scourge of Frey Cadigus. Past suffering does not excuse present
cruelty. Leresy is no longer a child but a man—a man capable of his
own choices, a man responsible for his actions."

He raised his sword higher.

Leresy whimpered.

"He
saved my life!" Kaelyn blurted out. "Please, Valien. He
saved me. When we were children... one night... oh stars." She
trembled. "One night Father beat me so badly, all because I
picked fruit from a garden tree. He meant to kill me. He
would
have killed me. Leresy begged. Leresy pleaded with our father.
'Beat me instead!' he said. 'Kaelyn did nothing, beat me! I picked
the fruit!'" Kaelyn lowered her head. "And he beat Leresy
so badly he broke his arm. My brother saved my life that night. Let
me save him now. Let me repay that debt. Please, Valien, I cannot
watch him die. Banish him from our camp, but let him live. I love
him."

Leresy lay still, face pressed
to the log, watching his sister, and the pain of that night returned
to him. He remembered his father's fists striking him, his punisher
burning him, his boots bruising him. But as bad as that pain had
been, it was better than seeing Kaelyn hurt. He had saved her that
night; it was the best thing he'd ever done.

"I love you too, my
sister," he whispered. "I'm sorry for what I became. I'm
sorry for the man that I am. I'm sorry I could never be strong like
you. I know what I am... and I'm sorry. I love you."

The silence seemed to stretch
forever.

Valien stood, sword held above.

Nobody spoke. Even the wind
seemed to die.

Finally, with a grunt, Valien
swung and slammed his blade down. It banged against the log an inch
from Leresy's face, scattering chips of wood.

Leresy gasped and flinched, for
a second not sure if he was alive or dead.

"Get up," Valien said
in disgust.

He grabbed Leresy's collar and
yanked him to his feet. Leresy stood on shaking legs. His pants
clung to him, and he realized that under his cloak, he had wet
himself.

"Thank you," he
whispered.

Valien shoved him away from the
log.

"Leresy Cadigus," he
rasped, "I will spare your life tonight, but if our paths cross
again, I will slay you. Do not doubt that. Leave this camp. Leave
into whatever exile you choose. Fly from here now and thank the
stars for my mercy."

Leresy wobbled. The world still
spun around him, and he fell to his knees. The resistors all
wavered, a sea of faces, and Leresy hissed at them.

"Stand back!" he
screamed. "Do not touch me!"

He leaped up and shifted.

He beat his wings. He soared as
a red dragon, a legendary beast, a monster none could hurt. He blew
fire, lighting the sky.

"You will regret this!"
he howled. "I am your prince. I will be your emperor. The
throne will be mine, and I will hang you all!"

He soared uphill. The tents
rose ahead. Cackling, Leresy stretched out his claws, grabbed
Valien's tent, and tossed it aside, exposing the bed and table
within.

"You will all kneel before
me, and I will break you!" he shouted.

Laughing madly, he reached down
his claws.

"Leresy, no!" Kaelyn
shouted.

He ignored her. His eyes damp
with laughter, he could barely see. He grabbed Valien's Genesis
Scope from the table. He soared.

"Stop him!" rose a
voice behind. "Bring him back! Kill him if you must."

Leresy beat his wings and flew,
racing over the hill, a field, and trees. A jet of fire blasted
above him, searing the tips of his horns. He looked over his
shoulder to see dragons chasing, a hundred or more. Fire blazed his
way.

"Requiem will be mine,
fools!" he cried. He tore the lid off the scope and pointed it
at them.

Red light bathed the world.

The dragons lost their magic and
tumbled.

Laughter in his throat, tears in
his eyes, and fire in his heart, Leresy turned and flew. He raced
into the night, blowing flames, leaving his love, his sister, and his
hope behind. He wept and laughed as he flew.

"You banished me," he
said into the darkness, "but I will not forget you, Requiem. I
will win my throne. You will all see and you will all be sorry, but
I will not forgive you. I will be Emperor Leresy Cadigus and you
will worship me."

Over a dark forest, miles from
the camp, he crashed down onto a bed of pine needles. He shifted
back into human form. He lay down, pulled his knees to his chest,
and shivered until the dawn.

 
 
VALIEN

They crossed the border of Old
Requiem at dawn.

Sunbeams broke between the
clouds, shining golden over frosty forests and fields. The southern
islands had been warm, but here in the north winter covered the land.
A distant ruined castle caught the sun and blazed, a beacon of
molten bronze. A frozen stream snaked across the land, glimmering
silver in the light. Hills rose from mist, earthen children waking
from slumber.

For days now, they had been
flying over the ruins of Osanna, a fallen kingdom Frey had burned and
annexed into his empire. Yet now... now they flew over the ancestral
home of the Vir Requis, an ancient land of memory and starlight.
Flying at the head of his army, Valien whispered the Old Words, the
prayer of his people.

"As
the leaves fall upon our marble tiles, as the breeze rustles the
birches beyond our columns, as the sun gilds the mountains above our
halls—know, young child of the woods, you are home, you are home.
Requiem! May our wings forever find your sky."

At his side, Kaelyn spoke the
prayer with him. He turned to look at her. The green dragon bore
four riders on her back: a Tiran scope bearer and three Vir Requis
in human forms, resting from flight. All four slept, wrapped in
their cloaks. Gliding on the wind, Kaelyn met his gaze, and her eyes
shone.

"We're home," she
said.

Valien looked to the east. The
sun was rising, but they would not see the capital this day. Even
flying without rest, Nova Vita still lay days away.

"If Frey knows of our
scopes, he will send no more dragons our way," he said. "He
will hole up in the capital, ready his cannons, and sharpen his
swords. He will fight house to house, chamber to chamber, not in the
sky. We should have a clear flight to the city, but once there..."

He let his voice trail off. The
thought had been rattling through his mind for days now. The boy
Leresy had lost one scope in the sea, then stolen another. Valien
looked over his shoulder at his army, and his heart sank deeper.
Four thousand fighters, that was all. Four thousand against the
might of the Legions.

"We're down to two scopes,"
he finally said. "We are outnumbered more than a hundred to
one. We are home, Kaelyn, yet my heart is heavy. We might be flying
to our deaths."

She nodded. "I am willing
to die for Requiem."

"Yet I want to live to see
you live." He spat flames. "Kaelyn, we can still turn
back. We can return to our islands. We can find another life
together, you and me, away from all this."

The idea had been taking root
inside him. With every disaster—the lost scopes, the fallen men
upon the beaches, the betrayal in their camp—the temptation had
grown stronger. He could flee. He could find new life with the
woman he loved—with Kaelyn, the light of his heart. He needn't fly
here to war, to blood, to death.

"We can," Kaelyn said.
"We can find a small island, and we can grow old together, and
we will never know war again. But we would not know peace, Valien.
Forever we'd be haunted. Rune would languish in his prison. Requiem
would moan under the scourge." She shook her head, scattering
smoke. "I don't want to die. I want to live too. I want to
win."

"Can we still win?" he
asked. "We were to fly here with four scopes, one on each side
of our army. We shouldn't have lost so much so soon."