Crown of Dragonfire (9 page)

"Stay low," Meliora
whispered, crouching in the boat. The others followed her lead. "Cover anything
metallic so it doesn't glint."

They flowed onward, a
lump of black on black. The riverbanks were now each a hundred yards away or
more; if the guards along them saw the boat, they gave no sign of it.

We're nothing but a
hippopotamus,
Meliora thought.
Just a big hippo floating in the water.

Ahead she saw it: the
western walls of the city. One wall flowed northward, topped with battlements,
curving to surround Tofet, trapping the slaves within. The other wall flowed
southward, cradling the city of Shayeen, home of the seraphim. Each wall ended
with a stone idol, three hundred feet tall, of a god with a hippopotamus head.
The two guardians stood with hands raised, shadows in the night, torches lit
within their eyes. The river flowed between them, leading out into the
wilderness.

"Behold Ur and Talan,"
Meliora whispered, raising her eyes to stare at them. "Ancient twin gods of the
water. Legends say that they set the first stones in this city, that—"

"Mythology later," Vale
muttered and pointed. "Fire in the sky."

Meliora looked up and
cursed.

Two chariots were
descending through the sky toward them, diving to fly between the statues. She
could see the seraphim within, raising their lances and shields. Four
firehorses pulled each chariot, scattering brimstone and ashes, flaming wings
opened wide.

"Bloody stars," Tash
whispered, gripping her dagger.

Meliora rose in the
boat. "Halt!" she cried out. "I lead lepers out from the city. I—"

But the chariots kept
charging down, swooping to skim along the water, showering sparks, heading
toward the boat.

"Escaping slaves!"
cried a seraph in one of the chariots. "Burn them. Burn them down!"

Meliora readied her
lance.

The chariots stormed
forth, and she stared up into the eyes of the seraphim—of her people. Of the
people she had once led. The people she would now kill.

"Meliora!" Elory
shouted in fear.

She narrowed her eyes.

I am the wind.

The chariots charged
toward the boat.

Meliora leaped into the
air, vaulted skyward toward them, and beat her phantom wings.

"Meliora!" Elory
shouted again below, but this time Meliora could barely hear. She heard nothing
but the fire above, the wind in her ears, the beat of a million dragon wings.

I am the sky.

She had no more seraph
wings, but in her mind she flapped the great wings of a dragon, and she soared,
spear thrusting upward, and grabbed one of the flaming chariots.

Her fingers burned. She
screamed. The fire raced across her arm.

I am fire. I am
dragonfire.

The seraph in the
chariot grunted and lashed his lance. Meliora thrust her own spear, parrying
the blow. She swung her legs, and she leaped into the flaming chariot beside
the seraph.

The man snarled and
shoved against her. The wind whipped her hood off her head, revealing her halo
of dragonfire. The flames crackled in a great expanding ring like the whips of
fire the overseers used. The flames lashed the seraph's face, and he screamed,
and Meliora shoved his lance aside and thrust her spear.

For Requiem.

Elory screamed below in
the boat. The second chariot was circling above it, and the seraph fired down
arrows. One arrow slammed into Vale's shoulder, and the young slave shouted.

Meliora thrust her
spear again, driving it deep into the seraph's torso, and shoved him off the chariot.
She grabbed the reins. She snarled.

Just like the
chariot race down the boulevard.

She grinned savagely
and drove the firehorses forward. She slammed into the second chariot of fire,
and she leaped through the air.

The chariots blasted
out flame.

Meliora soared skyward,
then plunged down, spear lashing, and drove the blade into the second seraph.

His lance scraped
across her thigh.

Fire seared her blood.

The firehorses tangled
together, the chariots shattered against each other, and the great ball of fire
plunged from the sky.

They crashed into the
river.

Black water flowed
above her head, dousing the fire on her arm, extinguishing her halo. She sank.
Around her in the water, she saw the firehorses still kicking, sinking, their
flames dying, leaving them as pale, withered things that faded into nothing.
Her blood danced around them.

Meliora kicked
underwater.

The water beckoned to
her, demons of the deep tugging at her feet. The pain flared through her, and
the river whispered,
Sink, join us . . . let us soothe the pain . . . there
is no pain down there, only warm darkness.

She sneered and kicked
with all her might.

I do not die this
night.

She rose in the water,
shoving her way through the last, crackling pieces of the chariots. She saw nothing.
She barely knew up from down. She kept kicking. She could not find the surface.
She sank again.

"Meliora!" The voice
rolled through the water, and she swam toward it. "Meliora!"

She bumped into him,
and she cried out wordlessly, and arms wrapped around her. His legs kicked, and
they rose together, and their heads burst over the surface.

Meliora gulped down
air, coughed, inhaled again. The air was hot, full of ash, and beautiful.

Vale swam in the water,
his arms still around her, breathing deeply.

"You saved my life,"
she said, love for this man—the brother she had never known—filling her with
warmth.

He smiled thinly. "Just
returning the favor, sister."

Hands reached down
toward them—Elory and Tash leaning over the boat—and they climbed in,
coughing. Scraps of fire still burned on the river, fading one by one like
extinguishing stars. They sailed onward, passing between the towering idols . .
. and out into the open darkness.

The boat flowed onward,
leaving the walls of the city behind. Soon the darkness was complete, cloaking
them like a blanket.

Meliora lay in the
boat, letting Vale bandage her wounds with strips from his cloak, and she
stared back at the city, at the lights fading in the distance, at the chariots
of fire that still streamed overhead. The lights of Shayeen shone, and from
dark Tofet still rose the screams of the dying.

"We will return to you,
my people," Meliora whispered, guilt and pain in her heart. "We will return
with the key, with the chest, with hope to see Requiem again."

The river pulled them
onward. For only the second time since Requiem's captivity began five hundred
years ago, slaves escaped into the wilderness.

 
 
VALE

The world.

Sitting in the boat,
Vale stared around him as dawn rose, unable to speak, overcome with awe.

The world beyond.

Rushes and reeds swayed
along the riverbanks, and farther back grew palms and fig trees. Ibises and
herons waded through the shallow water, and hippopotamuses rose like boulders
between lilies. Hundreds of sparrows and finches flew overhead. Looking
westward along the river, Vale saw no signs of civilization. Gone were the huts
of agony, the quarries of breaking backs, the fields of desolation and despair.
Gone were the obelisks, temples, and palaces capped with platinum and gold.

The world. The true
world beyond. It's real. It truly does exist.

Vale's eyes dampened.
In five hundred years, only one Vir Requis—the hero Lucem—had ever made it
past the walls. Often Vale had thought the world only a myth, and yet here it
was—legend become reality.

Elory sat at his side.
She smiled at him, wriggled closer, and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"It's real," she
whispered. "We made it. There is an outside." Her eyes shone. "And Requiem is
real too. It lies thousands of miles away, but it too exists. We will see the
birch forests again."

Meliora and Tash sat
before them in the boat, also looking around with wide eyes; neither one of
them had ever seen the world beyond, for both had spent their lives in the
ziggurat, one in the glittering pits underground, the other in the glittering
halls of its crest.

Vale turned around and
looked behind him. A few miles away, he could still see the great walled heart
of the empire, divided in two—the city of Shayeen and the land of Tofet. As
they sailed onward, he thought of those he had left behind. His father. His
fellow workers in the quarries and bricklaying fields. Hundreds of thousands of
other slaves. All of them were his family too.

I found the world,
but not for my own freedom. To find the Keymaker and the Chest of Plenty. To
find our magic.

Meliora pointed and her
sunburst eyes narrowed. "Chariots."

Vale saw them. A
hundred chariots of fire, maybe more, rising from the city, spreading across
the land.

"They know we escaped."
He grabbed an oar. "We must leave the river. Elory, help me oar. We make to the
northern bank."

As the chariots
streamed nearer, they rowed toward the riverbank and stepped out into the
shallow water, scaring away several herons. Their boat was made of reeds, and
when they pulled it between the reeds that lined the water, it seemed to
vanish.

"Down," Vale whispered,
kneeling in the shallow water between the rushes. "Hide anything reflective."

The others crouched
around him, lowering their weapons into the water. Algae floated around them,
and the rushes swayed, rising over their heads. Frogs trilled, dragonflies
buzzed, and a snake coiled across the water.

Fire roared.

The air screamed.

A dozen chariots
charged overhead, raining fire.

"Burn the rushes!"
cried a voice above—Ishtafel's voice. "Burn them all down. They're hiding
here. Burn the riverbanks! Burn every tree and every reed."

Vale looked up between
the rushes and saw the tyrant there. Ishtafel flew in a great chariot, a
shining god of gold. His lieutenants spread around him, nocking flaming arrows.
Vale's hands balled into fists.

You murdered my
mother. You cut the wings off my sister. You slaughtered millions.
He
grabbed his collar, wishing he could tear it off, rise as a dragon, fight
Ishtafel again as he had over Shayeen.
Someday I will face you again,
Ishtafel. I swear this. I will fly as a dragon again, and when I do, you will
burn in my fire.

But for now he wore a
collar. For now the only fire was raining from the sky, the fire of Saraph.

The flaming arrows
slammed into the reeds. Despite growing from water, the reeds—at least the
part of them above the river—were dry and brittle. They caught flame at once,
and the fire began to spread around Vale and his companions. Smoke unfurled,
and more fire kept raining from the sky. Elory gasped at his side and clutched
his hand.

Vale grabbed a reed at
his side which hadn't yet burned. He snapped it off.

"Quick, take these." He
snapped three more reeds and handed them to his companions. "Now swim. Go!"

He placed the reed in
his mouth and sank underwater.

The water was murky,
full of algae, leaves, and scurrying fish. He could barely see, and his eyes
stung, but he made out the others sinking with him. Meliora's halo extinguished
underwater, and Tash's harem pants fluttered like spirits. Elory still gripped
his hand. They all closed their mouths around reeds, breathing through the
tubes.

Vale led the way,
swimming away from the burning riverbank, and the others followed. Only the
tips of their reeds emerged from the water. The seraphim flew above; Vale
prayed that the tips of the reeds would look like nothing but bits of leaf or
wood on the water.

They remained
underwater until they could no longer hear the chariots, then waited longer.
Finally Vale dared raise his head from the water for a look. The riverbanks
were burning, and the chariots flew in the distance, almost too far to see now.

Tash's head popped out
from the water beside his, and she spat out her reed. Algae filled her hair. "I
think we just lost a boat."

Meliora rose from the
water next, her halo crackling back into life, and Elory followed. The reeds on
the riverbank burned down quickly, and soon the companions found a patch of
barren, charred land. They climbed over the hot earth and cinders, wincing with
pain, and made their way onto a hilly, rocky land. Patches of fire burned
ahead, and a tree blazed on a hilltop. Most of the landscape was dry soil
strewn with limestone and chalk boulders, and Vale spotted a cave on a hillside.

"There." He pointed. "We'll
seek shelter in the cave before more chariots arrive."

The others nodded,
dripping wet. Vale couldn't help but notice that Tash's silken trousers and top
became translucent when wet. Her breasts pressed against the thin material, and
a jewel shone in her navel. She looked at him and smiled thinly, and he quickly
looked away, feeling his cheeks flush.

What was it about Tash?
He had been looking at the young woman too often since meeting her. Vale had no
use for such thoughts. He was only a slave, doomed to toil, to suffer the whip,
not to desire women, not to—

We're not slaves out
here,
he thought, still seeing Tash from the corner of his eye.
And why
shouldn't I desire a woman? Am I not a man?

But no. Out here in the
wilderness, he was a warrior of Requiem. The only love of his life was the
memory of that fallen land. He would allow no other desires to fill his heart,
only the desire to see Requiem again.

They walked across the
rocky land between burning bushes, climbed the hill, and made their way to the
cave. It was smaller than their hut back in Tofet, no larger than their burnt
reed boat. They crowded inside, covered with scrapes, bruises, and burns.