A Dawn of Dragonfire: Dragonlore, Book 1 (21 page)

"It is time," she said, "for a fire in the deep."

This would be no long siege.  She would not wait here for moons, even years, until the weredragons' food and water dwindled.  She would break through their defenses.  She would burn them all, and her men would take their women, and her blades would cut her old love.

"For your glory, Sun God," she whispered and looked to the heavens.  The sun burned there behind smoke and cloud; it was smaller here in the north, and colder, but Solina would bring all its wrath to this place.  She would serve her lord with the flames he'd given her.  Her hand clutched the firegem around her neck and its heat shot through her, rivers of flame in her veins.

Soon they reached the tunnel entrance, where a hundred Tirans stood with drawn steel.  The archway rose around the darkness, stained with fire and blood.  The stairs plunged into shadow.

Elethor waits down there.

Lord Deramon had raised barricades of stone, sealing her outside.  He would find that no rock could face the flame of Tiranor.

As her troops stood behind her, swords raised, Solina opened her pack.  Delicately, as if handling a holy artifact, Solina withdrew the long box of olive wood.  It thrummed and its runes blazed, nearly blinding her.

She whispered a prayer to the Sun God.  "May your light forever cast out the darkness.  May your fire forever burn out the cold."

She caught her breath and opened the box.

Six clay balls lay there, placed into holes lined with cloth.  They nearly burned her hand when she touched them.  Decorative red lines, shaped as flames, ran across them.

"Tiran Fire," she whispered.  A hungry smile touched her lips.

Her priests had labored for moons to produce these weapons.  Each clay container had taken many nights of work and prayer.  One alone could destroy a phalanx of troops.  Six would destroy Requiem.

She raised the box over her head, ignoring the heat that ran down her arms, and faced her troops.  Firelight blazed in their eyes.

"For the glory of the Sun God!" she called.  "We cast out the darkness!"

Her troops howled and waved their weapons.  Their roar shook the ground.  Snarling, Solina turned back toward the tunnel, thrust the box forward, and sent the six balls of Tiran Fire tumbling into darkness.

She stood facing the stairway, panting, teeth bared.  She let the empty wooden box thud to the ground.  The clay balls clanked down the stairs, and Solina snarled and waited… one breath, two, three…

An explosion rocked the city.

Fire and wind blasted from the darkness, and Solina turned aside, gritting her teeth.  Dust flew and coated her.  Rocks fell.  The ground shook beneath her boots.  The flames roared so loudly she could hear nothing else.

Soon she heard more sounds—screams from below.

A smile spread across her face, becoming a grin.

When the dust settled, she found the staircase coated with debris, some stained with blood.  Black lines stretched along the walls.  Solina drew her twin blades, Aknur and Raem, and the golden runes upon them blazed.  She would lead the charge.

"For the Sun God!" she shouted.  "And for Tiranor!"

Her army answered the call behind her, shouting so loudly, the ruins shook.  "For the Sun God!  For Tiranor!  For Queen Solina!"

Solina charged into the darkness with her light and heat.  She raced down stairs covered with dust and rock.  Her men charged behind her, shouting for sun and glory.  The walls rushed at her sides, stained with blood and ash and weredragon stench.  Her blades blazed like the sun, casting out the shadows.

This is my purpose,
Solina thought with a snarl. 
This is my glory.  I will banish the darkness of reptiles with my lord's light.

At the bottom of the staircase, the barricade Deramon had raised was gone.  The boulders were smashed to shards.   Grooves dug into the walls.  Blood, dust, and chunks of flesh covered everything.  Blades raised, Solina stepped over the debris… and crashed against an army of weredragons.

Dozens of them filled the darkness, thrusting their straight, heavy blades of the north.  The stains of fire and blood coated them.  Stubble covered their faces and pain filled their eyes.  They were desperate men, pushed into a corner, and wild; but Solina was glorious and strong and she would defeat them.

Her twin sabres lashed.  Aknur, her left blade of nightfire, parried a blow from a weredragon's sword.  Raem, her right blade of dawn, sliced into a man's neck.  Blood sprayed like sunrise.  Her troops roared behind her and burst into the chamber, sabres clashed against longswords, blood spilled, men fell.  They fought over the bodies of the fallen, boots snapping bones and crushing faces.

She fought for hours.  Aknur and Raem spun like disks of light.  Blood coated her armor when she finally drove into the deeper chambers, where tunnels snaked wide and tall, lined with doors.  The women and children of Requiem cowered here, wailing.  They began to flee, a mad rout into darkness.

"Kill the reptiles!" Solina cried hoarsely.  "Kill them all."

She marched through the tunnels, swinging her blades.  Soldiers still hacked at her.  A child ran to her left, wailing.  Solina swung Aknur and cut him down.  More soldiers raced up from the darkness, blades lashing.  She parried and thrust, shedding their blood upon the fleeing survivors.

"Solina of Tiranor!" howled a deep voice, and Lord Deramon himself marched toward her.  He bore a sword in one hand, an axe in the other.  His armor was thick, his arms wide, his face cold.

She smiled at him and raised her sabres in salute.  "Come die at my feet."

They circled each other, blades raised, and blood pounded in Solina's ears.  It was Deramon who had caught her making love to Elethor.  It was Deramon who had told her secrets to the king—who had her burned, exiled, torn apart from her lover.  It was Deramon who would now die in pain and fear.

Her sabres lashed.  He parried.  His axe flew and she blocked, riposted, shouted in rage.  Steel rang and pain thrust up her arms.  Men fought around them, but Solina would not remove her eyes from her foe.  He was a tall, broad man—almost twice her size—and his blades were heavier than hers.  But she was younger and faster.  Aknur blocked a thrust of his sword, and Raem, her blade of dawn, slammed against his breastplate.

Steel dented and Deramon grunted.  His axe thrust, and Solina fell to one knee as she parried.  Aknur, blade of nightfire, clanged against his axe.  Raem swung against his leg, steel sparked against steel, and Deramon grunted.  She leaped up and swung both blades down.

He blocked one.  The other hit his shoulder, cleaving his pauldron, and blood seeped.

She lashed again at once.  This was her chance to slay him.  But despite his wound, he did not miss a step of the dance.  His sword rose, blocked her blow, and his axe slammed against her breastplate.

Steel bent.  Pain blazed.  She gasped for breath and found none.  His sword clanged against her pauldron, and she thought her arm would dislocate.  She fell, armor dented, by the body of the child she'd slain.

Deramon stood above her and stared down, eyes cold, blood seeping.  A lesser warrior might have given her some last words, spoken some poetry of farewell or justice.  Deramon wasted no time on dramatic partings; he lusted for nothing more than the kill itself.  His axe swung down.

On her knees, Solina raised her blades and crossed them.  The axe slammed down, chipping Aknur and shooting pain down her arms.  Keeping Raem raised, Solina dropped Aknur, snarled, and grabbed the dead child's hair.  She tugged the head up and tossed the small, lacerated body at Deramon.

The child slammed against him, and Deramon fell back a step.  Solina leaped up, swung her blade, and hit Deramon's helmet.  He staggered.

She would have killed him then.  She would have ended this.  Yet Deramon had no honor; he would not even duel her to the death.  Five of his men rushed forward from the shadows, blades lashing.  With a snarl, Solina grabbed the fallen Aknur, parried a blow, and stepped under an archway.  Here she could slay them one by one.

Men lashed at her.  Moans and wails rose behind her.  Solina glanced at the reflection in her blades.  A wild smile tingled across her face. 
Perfect.

As men thrust blades at her, Solina retreated through the archway and into the chamber of wails.  She found herself fighting in Requiem's old armory, now a hospital crowded with dying weredragons.  They lay around her on the floor, bandaged, burnt, some with severed limbs, others with gaping wounds.  A hundred filled this place.  A single healer, a young woman with a stern braid of dark hair, huddled over the wounded.

Soldiers of Requiem came spilling into the chamber, and Solina fought alone.  The hospital was wide, fifty feet deep, its ceiling twenty feet tall.  She licked her lips. 
It is large enough.  It is time for fire.

She parried a blow, clutched the firegem around her neck, and smiled.

She summoned her lord's gift.

At once, she burst into flames.  They raced across her, scorching, intoxicating.  She reached out her arms, and flaming feathers grew from them.  She howled, and her voice became the shriek of an eagle.  Men cowered before her.  The wounded burst into flame.  The young healer screamed and ran, a living torch.  Solina grew in size until she was a great phoenix, dragon-sized, an inferno of flame and smoke and wind.

The hundred wounded weredragons blazed.  A few were well enough to run, but none made it to the doors.  They fell, burning into charred bones.  The fire filled the chamber until it was a furnace, a pyre for her glory.  The weredragons at the door howled.  Some brought crossbows but their darts only passed through her flames, and Solina screeched, a great bird of sunfire.

She was a queen.  She was a goddess.  Soon she would destroy these tunnels, find her cowering Elethor, and she would burn him too until he screamed and begged and knew her glory.

 
 
MORI

She huddled under the trees, cloak pulled over her, and prayed.

"Please, stars, please
please
don't let him see us, please stars, send him away."

Above in the clouds, the phoenix dived and shrieked.  Its wake of fire spread behind it like a comet's tail.  Mori pushed herself against the tree, as close as she could.  Bayrin huddled at her side, also covered in cloak and hood.  They had strung branches and leaves over their cloaks, but would that fool the phoenix?  It circled the veiled sun, crackling.

Mori did not know if Acribus could still take human form.  Bayrin had smashed that crystal he wore around his neck, the one with the fire inside.  She knew little of southern magic, but thought that the firegem let the Tirans turn into phoenixes.  Solina had worn one too, which she never had back in those days in Requiem.  With his firegem smashed, could he still turn into a man?  A man who could choke her with cracked hands, tear off her clothes, thrust into her with such blazing pain that she wanted to die?  Or would he remain forever a phoenix, a questing demon of fire that would forever hunt her?

"Bayrin," she whispered.  She wanted to ask him about the firegem, but he hushed her.

They huddled together, frozen in the cold.  The wind cut through their cloaks, icy but scented of fire.  It seemed ages before the phoenix turned east and flew away, and its shrieks faded in the distance.  Mori shivered and rose to her feet.  She clasped the hilt of her sword, that sword she had never wielded in battle, and watched the wake of fire disperse above.

Bayrin too stood up.  He spat.  "Good riddance.  I thought the damn bird would never fly away.  Peskier than bees in your underpants, these phoenixes are."  He squinted and watched the skies for a while.  "We might be fine for flying soon.  The phoenix is heading east, and we're going north."

"No!"  Mori clutched his sleeve.  "Please, Bayrin, please don't make me fly.  He'll see us.  I know he will.  Phoenix eyes are sharp, and if we fly, he'll see us, and he'll burn us."  She trembled and tugged on his cloak, as if that could convince him.  "Please, Bayrin, I don't want to fly.  Not yet."

He sighed.  Circles hung under his eyes.  "All right, Mors.  We'll walk for a while under the trees.  But sooner or later we'll have to fly again.  Walking all the way to the sea can take moons; flying would take days.  And once we reach the sea, we'd
have
to fly, unless you know how to build a boat with your bare hands."

"We'll walk for today," she said and drew her sword, wondering if she'd ever dare swing it at an enemy.  She lowered her head, remembering how even in the dungeon of Draco Vallum, she had only cowered, and dared not fight like Bayrin did.  She took a shaky breath.  "We'll fly tomorrow."

They walked through the forest in silence.  The pines rose around them, frosted with snow, their branches snagging at their cloaks and smearing them with sap.  Soon snow began to fall.  The cold air drove into her bones.  Mori pulled her cloak tight, but the wind kept creeping under her clothes to caress her skin.  She missed home.  She missed sitting by the fireplace with a good book, maybe one with maps, or one about adventure.  She missed drinking mulled wine and talking to Lyana about what gowns the ladies of the court wore, or talking to Elethor about the stars, or even just cuddling with her pet mouse and whispering her secrets to him.  Would that world ever return?  So many had died.  So much of the city had fallen.

Mori lowered her head.  For the first time, she realized that she was an orphan now.  True, she had not stopped thinking about her dead father, not for an instant.  And even now, years after her mother's death, she still thought about the queen every day.  But that word—
orphan
—only now filled her mind.  To Mori, orphans had always been poor children with shabby clothes and hungry bellies, figures from books and stories.  She had never thought she would one day tread in the wilderness, her own clothes torn, her own belly twisting with hunger, her own two parents gone.

But I have Elethor,
she thought. 
He's still alive, and he'll protect me.  And I have my friend Lyana.
  She shivered and wrapped her cloak as tight as she could. 
Unless they're dead too.  Unless some creature in the Abyss killed them.