Crown of Dragonfire (16 page)

The creatures all lay
across the hill, legs twitching, then falling still.

Tash scampered back,
panting. The creature's claws had torn her silks and left bloody gashes. She
fell onto her backside and stared at the coins that lay strewn around her. When
she picked one up, it disintegrated between her fingers.

Vale knelt beside her.
She stared at him, shivering, her eyes damp.

"I'm sorry," she
whispered.

He examined the cuts on
her arms. Most of the wounds weren't deep, but one looked like it needed
stitching. "Let's get back to the river to wash those wounds."

She looked at the wound
on his shoulder—an ugly ring of teeth marks—and winced. She lowered her head.
"I'm sorry, Vale. It's my fault. I almost got us killed." Sniffing, she moved
closer and embraced him. "I'm sorry. It's just . . . the sight of gold. For so many
years, it was what the seraphim gave me for my services, what I thought I was
worth—precious metals and gems. I'm sorry."

They rose to their
feet, and Vale looked around them. He counted seven humanoid skeletons that lay
beneath the trees, half-hidden beneath ivy and branches and ferns. Two seemed
to be seraphim—Vale could see the bones of their wings. The others were humans.
He wondered how ancient the latter were. Were here the original inhabitants of
these lands, killed before the seraphim had fallen from Edinnu? Or were here
other Vir Requis, perhaps survivors of the ancient war, perhaps even escaped
slaves?

He knelt by one of the
skeletons. Its leather pack had opened, spilling out its contents. Most of what
had been inside had rotted away, but a glass bottle still lay here, half-buried
in the soil. When Vale pried it loose, he found amber liquid inside. He pulled
off the cork and smelled something stinging and vaguely sweet.

"whiskey!" Tash said,
eyes widening. "As good as gold." She froze. "Maybe there's real gold here too.
Real gold the skeletons had!"

Vale rolled his eyes. "Tash,
we're not grave robbers."

"They're not in graves,
so it's fine." She darted between the skeletons but found nothing. "Damn, they're
not even wearing any clothes or armor. Not a belt buckle to be found. What
happened to their stuff?"

She kept exploring the
area until she found a burrow, its entrance draped with vines and lichen. When
Tash pulled the curtains aside, she revealed a cavern dug into a hillside, and
she gasped. At once she crawled inside.

"Tash!" Vale groaned
and followed her. He knelt before the burrow, lay down on his stomach, and
crawled in after her.

They found themselves
in a rounded den, not much larger than the cave outside of Tofet. It was so small
they had to remain on their bellies, and their bodies pressed together.

"It's where the
creatures lived," Tash said. "Stinks in here. But look—back there."

She burrowed deeper,
pushed aside dry leaves, and uncovered a cache of rusted old metal. A few
pieces were nearly disintegrating but others looked newer. Vale helped her
excavate the treasure, and they laid out their findings on the grass outside
the burrow. They found a coat of chain mail, two steel helmets coated with
silver leaf, a bronze shield inlaid with silver stars, and a battle axe
engraved with old runes in the language of ancient men. The artifacts were
rusty but still usable. In addition to these tools of war, they found a
decorative lantern, shaped as a dragon's head, complete with a tinderbox for
lighting its fuel.

"I'm taking the axe,"
Tash said. She darted forward, tried to lift it, and groaned. Its steel head
thumped back down onto the ground. "I think I'll just take a helmet and shield
instead. And the whiskey. And the lantern. And the skeleton's fancy leather pack
for my fancy things."

Leaving the centipede
creatures to rot, they traveled downhill—him in armor, both wearing helmets.
The axe felt good in Vale's hands. For so many years, he had swung a pickaxe at
stone. Next time he saw his masters, he silently vowed, he would swing this axe
into their flesh.

 
 
LEYLEET

They flew through the night,
creatures of darkness, sons and daughters of sin. They laughed. They hissed.
They drooled. They rutted in the sky, groaning, screaming, bat wings beating.
They flew onward on the hunt, nostrils flared, inhaling the scent of the world
they had not seen in so long.

"We are free!" Leyleet
shrieked, voice rolling across the landscape. "Free to hunt! Free to breed!
Free to taste blood and suck marrow from bones."

The moon vanished
behind the clouds as if it too feared the Rancid Angels. No stars shone. But
the eyes of the fallen were sharp, piercing the night. Their ears picked up the
stir of every mouse in the fields below, the scent of every living thing that
cowered. And as the Sixteen flew over the fields, their dark wings spread wide,
and all the land below cowered. Insects burrowed deeper underground. Birds
awoke in their nests, frozen in fear. Those seraphim who lived outside the city
of Shayeen, dwelling in villages and villas upon the hills, woke from their
slumber, drenched in cold sweat, not knowing the danger but sensing it in every
bone. Babes screamed. Children hid under their beds, preferring to face the
ghosts in those shadows than the nameless terror that flew above. Even the
farmlands wilted, the trees cracked, and dead fish washed onto the banks of the
Te'ephim.

The Sixteen were out
tonight, flying again after centuries in their prison of stone. The dark
seraphim. The traitors to the crown. The cursed. Their screams shattered the
sky and rotted the land like tar spilling across fields.

"I smell her, comrades!"
Leyleet screamed. She laughed, dipped in the sky, beat her wings, and soared
higher. "The girl traveled here. The girl is ahead! Meliora is near."

Leyleet raised the girl's
nightgown, brought the silk to her nose, and inhaled deeply. Pleasure tingled
through her, making Leyleet shudder. The half-breed whore smelled like
innocence and sex, like purity and corruption, like a princess and a queen of
rebels. The aroma was intoxicating, almost too powerful to bear.

When I catch you,
Meliora, I will bring you back alive to your brother . . . but not before I
hurt you. Not before I smell your blood, your insides.

She stuffed the
nightgown back into her breastplate. No longer did Leyleet wear the stinking
rags her captors had clad her in, but neither did she wear the gilded armor of
seraphim. An iron breastplate, black as the night, covered her torso, and her
white hair streamed out from the back of a dark helm. In one hand she gripped a
sickle of jagged steel. Around her, her comrades were similarly armored. Their
bat wings spread wide, their white hair streamed as banners, and their eyes
blazed in the night like cruel stars. As they screeched, the sound cracked
trees below and seemed to shatter the air itself, louder than thunder, and the
light of their eyes blazed brighter than lightning. They were the Sixteen. They
were the cursed ones. They were a storm unleashed upon the land that would
never be imprisoned again.

"Smell her, comrades!"
Leyleet cackled. "I smell her in the water, on the wind, the sweet stench of
her skin, her blood, her beating heart. Follow, friends! Follow to Meliora."

They flew around her,
laughter like snapping bones, drool falling like rain, wilting the trees below.

Leyleet was licking her
lips, imagining Meliora's taste, when she saw the fire ahead.

Twenty flames burned in
the sky ahead, leaving trails of smoke. When Leyleet inhaled, she smelled their
stench—brimstone, metal, holiness. She spat.

"Chariots of fire," she
hissed.

Around her, her
comrades howled. Their wings beat in a storm. Their faces twisted, fangs bared.

"Seraphim!" they cried.
"Cruel seraphim! Seeking our prize, seeking our prey!"

The distant chariots of
fire were moving fast, heading in the same direction as the Sixteen, but they
were not fast enough. Leyleet and her comrades kept gaining, and soon she could
make out the firehorses, four of the flaming spirits pulling each chariot.
Inside the vessels she saw them: the seraphim.

"Cruel masters," she
hissed. "They imprisoned us, my brothers and sisters!" Her voice rose to a
roar. "Halos shine upon their heads, while ours were stripped and we were
locked in stone. Now they fly to claim our sweet Meliora, the virgin whose
blood was promised to us. Fly, my Rancid Angels! Show them the darkness of our
shadow."

Crying out in fury and
joy, they flew.

Their screams tore the
land below, ripping canyons into the earth. A tree burst into dark flames, and
the fires spread. The clouds churned above, raining ash. With black wings and
leering smiles, the dark ones swarmed.

The chariots of fire
wheeled in the sky, turning to charge toward them.

"The dark seraphim!"
their riders cried. "The fallen ones have escaped!"

Leyleet cackled, her
laughter so loud it slammed against the chariots ahead, scattering their
flames. "Kneel before us, holy ones! Kneel and beg for mercy as you made us
kneel. Beg us for your lives!"

Yet the seraphim—noble
fools!—kept charging to battle, sure they could be heroes, holy warriors
facing evil, as if the Cursed Ones were beasts like weredragons or griffins.

We are not beasts,
Leyleet thought, laughing.
We are not monsters to vanquish with holy light.
We are the greatest sons and daughters of Saraph, the cursed among the cursed,
those who shed their feathers and halos to reveal the purity within.

With battle cries, with
shattering shrieks, the seraphim of light and the seraphim of shadow slammed
together.

Leyleet laughed as the
firehorses charged across her, as she flew between them, lashing her sickle. Her
blade sliced through the flames, cutting into the stony flesh within,
scattering embers and burning blood. The lances of seraphim thrust toward her,
and Leyleet soared, rising so fast the air slammed behind her in thunder. She
plunged downward, sickle swinging, knocking back the lances, slicing through
necks, faces, bowels, spraying red curtains. Her comrades fought around her,
laughing as they lashed their sickles.

"You have halos, holy
ones!" she screeched, voice as high as shattering glass, so loud it tore into
their eardrums. "Your halos still glow!"

She swooped toward a
chariot. Its rider charged toward her, and Leyleet parried its lance, streamed
overhead, and lashed her sickle. The blade sliced through the seraph's halo,
scattering light, and the man screamed. She swung her sickle lower, slicing
through the top of his skull, exposing the brain within, then driving down to
tear the firehorses apart. The chariot and the corpse within plunged toward the
earth like a comet.

"You still have wings!"
she cried. "The wings of angels!"

A few of the seraphim
still flew, their chariots fallen. Leyleet laughed, charged toward one, and
grabbed his thrusting spear. She snapped the shaft between her jaws, then
swooped and rose behind the seraph. She grabbed the man's wings, swung her
sickle, sliced them off, then kept digging.

"You will have cursed
wings like ours!" she cried, laughing, tugging out the screaming man's ribs
through his back, pulling out the lungs, forming dripping wings of flesh and
bones. "Now fly! Fly, cursed one!"

She tossed the man
free, letting him fall to the distant ground.

Five seraphim flew
toward her from all sides, enclosing her in a ring of light. Leyleet licked her
lips, her heart soaring.

They reached her. They
thrust their lances.

She spun in a circle,
sickle shattering their blades. They kept charging, and she spun faster, her blade scattering blood, tearing into their torsos, tugging out the
entrails. She grabbed the slick serpents, tugging, pulling them closer, weaving
them together, sending the corpses falling down. One seraph still made an
attempt to fly toward her. She drove her fist into his chest, tugged out the
still-beating heart, and feasted.

The seraphim had dared
to challenge her. They fell, a rain of blood. In the sky, the Sixteen still
flew, laughing as they fed upon hearts, livers, bones that crunched. They ate
greedily, staining their chests, licking their fingers, then mating in the sky,
slick with the blood of their enemies, singing for their victory.

"Fly on!" Leyleet
cried. "Fly on with full bellies, with bloodlust kindled. Fly on and we will
feast upon the blood of a princess."

They chanted all around
her. "To Meliora! To Meliora!"

Leyleet grinned as she
flew onward. Ishtafel had commanded her to bring his sister back alive, but
alive could mean many things, and the Sixteen would have their fun before
dragging what remained back to Ishtafel. Meliora's heart would still beat, but
Ishtafel had said nothing about feasting upon her limbs.

Leyleet licked her
lips, her wings ruffling over the wind.

I will drink you,
Meliora. I will gnaw on your living bones as I drag you back to your brother.
You might have escaped him, but you will not escape me.

 
 
ELORY

She walked through the
forest, her sword drawn, waiting for enemies to emerge from behind every tree,
boulder, and hilltop.

The land here is
beautiful,
Elory thought. Pines, carob trees, and cypresses grew upon the
rolling landscape. Boulders of chalk and granite dotted the land, and anemones
and cyclamens grew between them. Sparrows and finches bustled among mint
bushes, ants scurried in their hives, and gopher holes rose from wild grass.
The Te'ephim River gurgled to her left, lined with rushes, and ibises and
herons drank from its water.

And yet, despite the
beauty of this place, Elory still felt like she were back in Tofet.

Every bird that
fluttered out from a bush, Elory started and winced, expecting a lash's blow.
Every tree branch that creaked in the wind, she raised her arm protectively,
expecting a blow from a master's fist. Even walking through patches of grass,
no movement or sound around her, her heart kept racing, her eyes darting
nervously, her muscles tense and ready to bolt. At her side, Meliora walked
with her sword sheathed, but Elory kept her blade drawn, forever ready for more
violence; she could not imagine a day without violence.