A Memory of Fire (The Dragon War, Book 3) (28 page)

"Silence, liar! For years
I suffered under your heel. For years I fought you. Tonight you
die."

He parried languidly. He did
not even bother attacking.

"Do you not see, my wayward
child? I knew of your island all along. I let you linger there. I
placed the lure and watched you come. I drew you into my trap... and
now you are here. Your warriors lie dead outside. Your friend
Valien seeks me in the twisting halls; his men too are dying."
He shook his head in mock sadness. "Oh, my poor child. You and
Valien have done exactly what I wanted. Soon you and he will scream
here together. The boy Relesar will scream too. Who will scream the
loudest, I wonder?"

She trembled as she fought. Her
eyes stung.

"You lie!" she
screamed. She slammed her sword against his breastplate, but could
not pierce it. "All you do is lie."

"And yet you shiver. And
yet you weep. Your Resistance is fallen; you know this. All your
hope is faded like the starlight of old gods." His face
hardened. "My eldest daughter proved herself weak. My son
proved himself a fool. And you, Kaelyn... you are the worst among
them. You are a traitor." He snarled and his eyes blazed.
"Now is your time to suffer."

Finally he thrust his blade.

Fellwair, black and wide and
over five feet long, swung through the air. The blade caught the
firelight and burned red. Kaelyn raised her sword, her slim and
short Lemuria, and the blades clashed. Sparks rose in a fountain.
She wanted to thrust again, to chip at his armor, to crack the steel
and slay him. But she was too slow. She had lost too much blood.
It was all she could do to parry.

Frey fought with bared teeth,
eyes narrowed, his face demonic. He swung his sword again and again,
slamming it into Lemuria, showering sparks. With every blow, pain
shot up Kaelyn's arm. She thought her shoulder would dislocate.

She panted. Sweat and blood
drenched her. Fellwair swung down. With a scream, Kaelyn raised her
sword and parried.

The blow knocked her to her
knees.

She knelt before her father,
panting, bleeding, praying. He raised his sword again.

No,
she thought,
no,
I can't die now. I must live. For Requiem. For Valien. For Rune
and my brother and everyone else.
She took a shuddering breath.

"I am Kaelyn Cadigus,"
she whispered. She struggled to rise, legs shaking. "But I
foreswear your name. Know this, Father. When you are dead, I will
marry Valien Eleison. Your grandsons will carry his name." She
stared into his eyes and raised her bloodied blade. "But they
will not know of you. They will not know you are my father. Your
legacy will die."

With a howl, she drove forward,
exposing her left side, ready to suffer his sword for a chance to
pierce his neck.

But he did not take the bait.

He could have stabbed her left
arm, severing it. He could have attacked and maimed her, allowing
her right arm to slay him. But he only stepped back defensively.
His blade swung sideways, biting Kaelyn's fingers.

Her blood spurted.

She screamed. Her sword flew
from her hand; so did two of her fingers.

She howled. She tried to grab
the dagger in her boot, but her left arm was numb from the arrow.
Her right hand gushed blood. And Kaelyn knew she had lost this
battle.

The chamber spinning around her,
she tried to retreat. She took a few steps back, her heels banged
against a corpse, and she fell. She landed upon bodies. Before she
could scramble up, he was upon her.

Frey's hands reached out. His
one hand clutched her throat and squeezed. The other pulled her
hair. He leered down, his face twisted into something between a grin
and a snarl, something monstrous and insane.

Please,
Father, I'm sorry I ate the fruit! Please, don't hit me.

Again she huddled under her bed,
a screaming child, as his hands reached into the darkness, clutched
her, pulled her into this very chamber to beat her.

"Please, Father," she
whispered.

His grip on her throat
tightened. Her eyes rolled back. Darkness fell into nightmare and
endless screams echoed.

 
 
VALIEN

He stumbled down the corridor,
bleeding and alone. With a final gasp, the last of his warriors—a
young woman with flaming red hair—fell dead.

So weak he could barely see,
Valien leaped forward. He swung his sword, shattering the head of
her killer. The axehand, his blade dripping, crashed down.

Valien stood in place, panting.
His chest rose and fell, and his breath wheezed. He looked around
and saw nothing but dead. They filled the hallway, axehands and
resistors alike. Their blood pooled and splashed the walls.

And
so the Resistance ends,
he thought. If Kaelyn and her men fell too, he was the last. The
last resistor. The last hope of Requiem. And his light too was
flickering. Valien wanted to fall, to lie down, to join his
comrades. He would close his eyes, let his blood flow, and his soul
would rise to the starlit halls of his ancestors.

He fell to his knees, head
spinning, blood flowing down his arms. His sword clanged to the
floor.

The dead woman stared up at him,
and her face did not seem pained or frightened, but soft, welcoming,
her eyes large and green. She was at peace. She sang among the
white columns of their forebears, a land of eternal glory.

On his knees among the corpses,
Valien looked up. The ceiling was black and bloody, but Valien
imagined that he could see beyond it. The old palace of Requiem rose
among the stars, celestial and shimmering.

"The true palace still
shines above," Valien whispered, gazing up at the ceiling. "A
reflection in the stars. You wait for me there, Marilion. You wait
for me there, all those who fell."

He took a shuddering breath and
reached up, almost feeling that warmth, almost seeing that glow.

A scream shattered the illusion.

Valien lowered his gaze and
stared down the hall.

The scream sounded again—high,
pained, and pleading.

Valien inhaled sharply.

"Kaelyn," he
whispered.

With a raspy breath that burned
his throat, he pushed himself to his feet. He lifted his sword and
took a step forward. Grunting, he trudged on.

He wanted to shout her name but
forced himself to remain silent; he would not reveal his location.
He stepped over corpses, moving silently, barely daring to breathe.
His hair dangled over his face, slick with blood.

The scream sounded again, then
died off. Valien hissed and clutched his sword. The call had come
from nearby, only a chamber or two away. He kept moving down the
corridor. Torches crackled on the walls and blood trickled between
the floor tiles. No more guards filled this place; he saw only
bodies.

I'm
coming for you, Kaelyn,
he thought. His chest shook and he plowed on. He could no longer
hear the scream. Had Frey killed her? Would he find her dead,
Frey's sword thrust into her belly, like he'd found Marilion all
those years ago?

A whimper rose down the hall.

Kaelyn. It was her; he was sure
of it.

Breath shuddering, Valien
trudged onward. He held his sword in bloodstained hands. As he
walked down the hall, he realized that he knew this place. He had
walked here before. Twenty years ago, white tiles had covered the
floor, and instead of an eastern wall, a portico of marble columns
had revealed forested hills. Today the hall was black and narrow
but... this was the same place. Valien could feel it.

Sweat beaded on his brow and his
fingers shook. A few more steps and he saw a door—a door he knew
would be there.

He stepped forward. Hand slick
with blood and trembling with weakness, he pulled the door open. He
stared into the chamber.

His breath left him and his eyes
watered. He felt like ash melting in the rain, all his hardness
fading into shimmering memory.

In the past twenty years, this
palace had spread and rotted like a canker, but his chambers had
remained untouched. His old tapestries still hung from the walls,
depicting scenes of sunset over forests and mountains. The same
vases and mugs still stood upon his table; even the dried roses were
still there. His bed stood by the wall, topped with the quilts
Marilion had woven—the bed where he would love her, where he'd sleep
holding her, where he'd found her dead.

"He kept it the same,"
Valien whispered. "Why?"

A voice answered him. "Because
I knew you would return."

Valien growled, stepped into the
chamber, and turned to his right.

His world seemed to burn and his
heart froze.

"Let them go," he
rasped and raised his sword. His heart unlocked and burst into a
gallop. His fist shook around his hilt. "Let them go, Frey."

The emperor smiled thinly.
"Welcome to my bedchamber, Valien Eleison. Welcome to your old
home."

Frey Cadigus stood clad in his
imperial armor, a suit of black plates that covered him from toe to
neck. His pauldrons flared out, and motifs of golden dragons coiled
across his breastplate. His sword hung across his back. He held an
arquebus, the gun bloody. The fuse was crackling like a pipe, the
flashpan full of powder.

Before the emperor, in sight of
his muzzle, Rune and Kaelyn sat tied to chairs.

Valien struggled for breath. He
took a step closer, reaching out to them, but Frey pulled the trigger
back a hair's width. The gun creaked. Valien froze.

"Rune," he whispered.
"Kaelyn."

They were wounded; they looked
within a few breaths of death. Burns and welts rose across Rune's
flesh, peeking from the tatters of his clothes, and he was thin,
thinner than he'd ever been. His cheeks were ashen, his eyes sunken.
He met Valien's gaze. His mouth was gagged, but in his eyes, Valien
saw relief mingling with fear.

Heart wrenching, Valien turned
to look at Kaelyn. Blood seeped between the ropes that bound her to
the chair. More blood dripped down a wound in her arm; it looked
like the hole of an arrow. A gash ran across her thigh, and two
fingers were missing from her right hand; the stumps bled. She too
was gagged. She too looked at him, her eyes wide and fearful but
loving.

"It's all right,"
Valien whispered to them. "I'm going to get you out of here.
This ends now."

Frey grinned, gun in hands.
"Yes... you can save one of them." He licked his lips,
turned his eyes away from his prisoners, and looked at Valien.
Mockery filled his eyes. "I have only one round for this crude
contraption I stole off one of your warriors. I can slay only one of
your little friends."

Valien
took another step forward, but Frey
tsk
ed
and hefted his gun. Valien froze.

"Frey, enough of this,"
he rasped. "Put the gun down and draw your sword. Face me like
a man, not a coward."

"Oh, but I will face you,"
said Frey. "We will duel with swords, the duel we should have
had years ago, the duel you fled from. But first... first, my old
friend, I will slay one of these two wretches. And I will let you
choose." His licked his lips. "Choose, old friend."

Valien snarled and raised his
sword. "Enough of these games. I've not come here to play, but
to fight you. Place down your gun. Do not toy with me."

Frey only laughed, a sickly
sound, and sucked in air between his teeth. "Will you have me
choose then? Perhaps the boy?" He turned the muzzle toward
Rune. "Ah... the young heir of Aeternum. The babe you saved
all those years ago. The whelp you fought this war for, the hope of
Requiem, the backside you hope will warm my throne." The
emperor chuckled, a sound like blood bubbling from a wound. "Should
I slay him with my single round?"

When Valien hissed and took
another step forward, Frey shook his head and turned his muzzle
toward Kaelyn.

"Or perhaps," Frey
said, "I will slay my daughter. The fair, beautiful Kaelyn.
The woman who betrayed me. The woman you love." He raised his
eyebrows. "She has spread her legs for you, I know it. She is
a whore and yet you love her. Perhaps I should fire my gun at her?"

Valien stood frozen, shaking
with rage and fear, daring not take another step. "Fire your
gun, and before you can draw your sword, you will die."

Frey nodded. "Perhaps.
But I think I should have enough time to draw my sword, to duel you,
perhaps to slay you too. Who would win a fight between us? I do not
know. I know only one thing." He stared at Valien, all
amusement gone from his eyes. "One of these two will die. Rune
or Kaelyn. The heir or the lover. Twenty years ago, you chose Rune
over the woman you loved. You saved him and let your wife die. She
died in this very chamber, in this very bed where I now sleep every
night. Choose again, Valien Eleison. Choose now or I will choose
for you."

Valien wheezed for breath. He
looked back at them. Both Rune and Kaelyn struggled in their bonds.
They stared at him, eyes pleading, and he saw the words in their
gazes. They each wanted him to choose the other.

"Choose!" Frey
demanded. "The fuse burns low; you have only a few heartbeats
left. Choose, Valien! The boy who can heal Requiem or the woman who
can heal your heart. Choose!"

The fuse flickered. Frey raised
his gun and bared his teeth, ready to fire.

Valien grimaced, his eyes
burned, and his breath froze.

I
cannot choose,
he thought.
I
cannot!

Again that night returned to
him, that night twenty years ago. Frey's men had swept through the
halls, killing all in their path. Marilion had waited in this
chamber, Rune in a nursery across the palace.