Crown of Dragonfire (30 page)

I'm a dragon. A true
dragon of Requiem.

She flapped her wings.
She soared into the sky.

She spun as she flew,
pointed upward in a straight line, rising and rising, and she blasted up her
fire. The flames shot skyward, a white pillar. Her wings spread wide, and she
laughed as she spun, sending forth her flame.

With a cry of joy,
Elory flew too. The lavender dragon shot up beside her, laughing, and blasted
her own fire—orange flames flaring out into yellow. She was a smaller dragon
than Meliora, but when Elory roared again, the mountain shook.

Grumbling curses, Lucem
finally managed to fly up with them. He wobbled, dipped, yelped, beat his wings
madly, and finally steadied his flight.

"I think I'm getting
the hang of this," the red dragon said. "I—whoa, careful, Elory!"

The purple dragon
laughed and playfully slammed against him, tossing him into a tailspin. Lucem
cursed, righted himself, and kept flying.

The three dragons
spread their wings wide, found a wind current, and glided. The mountains and
hills rolled below in an endless landscape, and in the distance, the Te'ephim River
spread in a silver line.

"It's beautiful!" Elory
cried over the wind. "All my life, I knelt in the dust, looking up at the sky,
dreaming of it . . . and now I'm here, looking down. A dragon. No longer
afraid."

"I'm afraid!" Lucem
said, wobbling and dipping in the sky.

Meliora breathed deeply
as she flew and smiled. She had never felt such peace, not in all her years in
the ziggurat. She had never seen such beauty, not among all the artwork of
Saraph. She had never felt so noble, not even as a princess in an empire's
palace.

"Requiem!" she
whispered. "May our wings forever find your sky."

Elory and Meliora
repeated the ancient prayer—the same prayer the children of Requiem had been
singing for five thousand years, the prayer of outcasts in forests, of warriors
in battlefields, of survivors in ruins, of freed slaves seeking to return home.

"We fly now in the sky
of Saraph," Meliora said. "But we will fly in Requiem's sky again."

She turned to look
north. She could see far from up here, farther than she had ever seen. The
horizon lay many miles away, yet that distance was but a fraction of the way to
Requiem. Vast deserts, plains, and seas lay between here and her lost home, but
Meliora vowed that she would see that home, that she would fly in Requiem
again.

But not yet,
she
thought, turning away from the northern view.
This day we fly south.
She
let fire fill her jaws, and she growled.
This day we fly to Tofet.

 
 
TASH

He slept beside her on the
grass, covered in a blanket of palm fronds, and Tash's heart twisted at the
pain she would cause him.

"Sweetest Vale," she
whispered and kissed him.

The hint of a smile
touched his lips, but he did not wake. Tash lay beside him, looking at him. His
face was thin, still careworn, but handsome, she thought. She had let so many
seraphim into her bed—men tall, fair, of purest form and beauty—yet she had
loved no man until this one, until her sweet Vale, despite all his scars and
the pain written across his face, even now.

I began to heal your
pain,
Tash thought
. To see you smile, to hear you laugh. To place love
into your heart . . . only for me now to break that heart.

Silently, she slipped
out of their bed of grass and leaves. The landscape rolled around them: hills,
valleys, and the river that flowed between them. Somewhere in the west lay
Tofet—a hive of disease, chains, agony, death. Somewhere in the north or south
lay other lands . . . new lands, unexplored, lands of freedom.

Tash stared at the
Chest of Plenty.

It lay in the grass
beside them, so small. She could have cradled it in her arms. And yet it was
wealth. Freedom. Hope. Life—life away from war, from pain, from death. It was
the treasure she had dreamed of all her life. So many times as some drunken
lord had bedded her, Tash had closed her eyes, ground her teeth, and imagined
finding the Chest of Plenty. So many times, Tash had lain awake at night as the
other girls slept, working on her map, coming up with a thousand plans: how she'd
escape Shayeen, find the chest, build a great treasure and sail away to
freedom.

Tash fingered the jewel
in her navel. As Vale still slept, Tash unpinned the jewel and pulled it free.
She held it in her palm. A small diamond, impure and pinkish, inlaid in a ring
of gold. Some seraph or another had gifted her that jewel in the garden. It
wasn't worth much on its own; perhaps enough to trade for a sturdy cloak,
boots, and a leather belt, with enough left over for a couple nights in a
tavern and a bottle of wine. Hardly a fortune. But with this chest . . .

Tash closed her eyes.
It'll
be like I always dreamed.
Enough diamonds to bribe seraphim guards at any
port in the empire, enough to book passage on a ship—to
buy
a ship!
Enough to sail far away, find an outpost in the distance, someplace far from
Ishtafel. Maybe she would even reach the end of the empire, find a land beyond
that still stood, where seraphim would not find her. She could buy a mansion,
servants, all the fine wines and food in the world. The collar would remain
around her neck, but she would gild it, encrust it in jewels, be a queen in a
distant land.

Fingers trembling, Tash
opened the chest and placed her jewel within. She closed the chest top.

Nothing happened. No
glowing light. No angelic song. Not even a rattle to the chest. She opened the
lid.

Diamonds spilled out.
Thousands of tiny diamonds on golden rings. Tash bit her lip, dipped her hand
into the chest, and ran her fingers between them. She was wealthy. Just like
that—wealthy. She turned the chest upside down, spilling them all out into the
grass, then placed a single diamond back inside. She closed the lid. She opened
it. Thousands more diamonds shone inside.

"Endless wealth," she
whispered. "Endless freedom."

She looked back west
and winced.

And there lies
endless pain.

Tash closed her eyes,
shuddering. How could she go back to Tofet—after all she had seen there? After
Ishtafel had murdered a hundred thousand souls, after all the pits of corpses,
the dead upon spikes, so much pain, bloodshed . . . How could she walk that
path when the other way lay freedom and wealth?

Tash opened her eyes.
She lifted the chest, leaving all but one diamond in the grass. Vale would find
them, at least. Have a treasure to carry with him wherever he wanted to go.

"I wish I could take
you with me, Vale," she whispered. "But you'd never understand. You'd never go
with me."

She looked away from
him. She could not stare at his face for an instant longer; it stabbed her full
of pain, as cruel as spears. Holding the chest under her arm, tears in her
eyes, Tash began to walk north.

She took ten steps,
then stopped, trembling. Her body shook. Her tears fell. She wanted to return
to Tofet. She couldn't. She couldn't.

I can't go back
there. I can't. I've dreamed of this for so long. I can't go back.

Weeping, she took
another step away.

"Tash?" rose his voice
behind her.

Her heart sank to her
pelvis and shattered.

Stars, no. Stars,
don't let this happen.

She turned around and
saw Vale standing there, the diamonds around his feet. At first he seemed
confused. He stared down at the treasure, then up at her, head tilted. Then his
eyes narrowed, and he understood. Something terrible filled his eyes, something
not angry, but more pained than a slave under a whip. The shattering, icy pain
of betrayal.

"Tash," he whispered.

She wept. She trembled.
"Come with me," she whispered.

"Where?" He spoke so
softly she could barely hear.

"Anywhere." The chest
under her arm rattled as she trembled. "Away from war. Away from pain and
torture. Away from this empire. We can be rich, Vale! We can be free." She
placed the chest down, walked toward him, and tried to embrace him. "We can find
a new life, and—"

"You tried to leave me
here." He stared at her with shock and agony in his eyes. "You tried to take
it. To steal the chest away. To . . . to leave me and Requiem, and—"

"There's no hope for
Requiem!" Tash shouted. "Don't you understand, Vale? Don't you see? Millions of
dragons fought Ishtafel in the old days. Millions of dragon warriors, soldiers
in a great army, trained for battle. And he killed them! He killed them all,
and he took everyone else captive. And now you think slaves can kill him, even
without our collars? He's going to kill us, Vale. Kill us all! There's nothing
in Tofet but pain, blood, death—"

"Then I will die!" he
shouted, face red, gripping her arms. "Then I will die again, as I died upon
the ziggurat. I will die a thousand times for Requiem. Tash!" His tears fell. "How
could you do this? How could you betray us? You're a daughter of Requiem, a Vir
Requis, a—"

"A slave!" She shoved
against his chest, trying to break free. "Just a pleasure slave! Not even a
whore. Whores get paid. I'm nothing but a slave to them, Vale, and I won't do
it anymore. Never again. Never! I won't let them touch me, bed me, toss jewels
onto my naked body. I . . . I finally found someone I love, Vale. Someone I
love truly. And now you just want to go there, to go back to what we fled. You
remember what it was like. The whips, the spears, the fire. You want to go back
and die. And I can't see that. I can't see that happen. I can't . . . I can't .
. ."

She wanted him to
embrace her, to comfort her, to stroke her hair, maybe even tell her that he'd
go with her. But he only stared at her, the pain in his eyes. And a new emotion
crossed his face.

Rage.

His lips peeled back,
his eyes blazed, and his cheeks flushed. His hands balled into fists.

"Still you lie," he
whispered. "Love?"

"I love you—" she
began.

"You lie!" He raised
his fist as if to hit her, and she cringed. "All you do is lie. Love me? You
tried to leave me! To betray your people, to leave us to torture, to death. You
tried to leave Requiem to ruin. Do you have any notion of what you've done?" He
gripped her so tightly his fingers dug into her arms. "For thousands of years,
we fought for Requiem, we died for Requiem, we—"

"Do you know who you
sound like?" she shouted, struggling to free herself, her hair whipping around.
"You sound like them! Like the ghosts in the shipwreck. Like the cruel Vir
Requis of the Cadigus regime. They too boasted of fighting and dying for a
cause. But I don't want to fight, Vale. I don't want to die. I don't want to
suffer, to bleed, to kill for some ideal, for some nation that fell five
hundred years ago. Requiem is gone, Vale. It's gone forever, but I'm still
here.
We're
still here. You and I." She gave up on freeing herself and
lowered her head, sobbing. "We can leave all this behind. We can find a better
life—a life of wealth. We have all the money in the world now, enough to sail
away, to buy palaces, or just buy a humble home if you prefer, somewhere beyond
the empire. I only tried to leave without you because . . . because I knew you
wouldn't want this, and it broke my heart. It broke my heart, Vale."

"The only heart you
broke is mine." He shook his head, his whisper barely audible. "How could you?
After all we suffered . . . knowing that Meliora and Elory are out there,
fighting for Requiem, that my father is back in Tofet, that . . . that we
finally had a chance. How could you?"

Tash fell to her knees
in the grass. She wept. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She tried to hug his legs. "I'm
sorry."

He lifted the fallen
chest. He stared down at her, and she saw it inside those eyes—shattering,
eternal pain of betrayal. He spun around and began walking.

"Wait," she whispered. "Vale,
wait . . ."

But he would not turn
back. He kept walking.

"Wait!" she shouted,
still kneeling in the grass.

He only walked faster,
heading west across the land, taking the Chest of Plenty. Tash shoved herself
to her feet, shaking so wildly she almost fell again. She followed him, blinded
by tears, leaving her jewels behind, and as she walked, it filled her—the
crushing guilt.

"I'm sorry," she
whispered. "I'm so sorry."

She kept following him,
not knowing if he'd ever forgive her, and if she could ever forgive herself.

 
 
VALE

She kept trailing behind
him, calling his name, but he would not look back. She kept begging him for
forgiveness, voice rolling across the land, but he would not answer.

He traveled by night,
hidden in shadows, carrying the Chest of Plenty under his arm. Traveling to
Tofet, for a hope to reunite with Meliora, to duplicate her key and raise
Requiem again. In those long nights, Tash calling behind him, the stars shone
above in a great blanket, and Vale felt very alone, very small, carrying the
hope of a nation . . . as the traitor of that nation followed.

"Vale!" she cried out. "Vale,
wait. Vale, forgive me!"

And yet, whenever she
called, he walked onward through the darkness.

In the days, he slept,
hidden in caves, in burrows, in tall grass. Tash would creep up to him then,
try to stroke his hair, to kiss him, to plead forgiveness. And each time he
shoved her away, rose to his feet, and walked onward, leaving her behind.

"I'm sorry," she
whispered. "Won't you forgive me?"

Yet how could he? He
had loved Tash. After so many years of pain, he had allowed himself to feel love,
to feel joy. And she had betrayed not only him but Meliora, Elory, Jaren, all
of them.