A Dawn of Dragonfire: Dragonlore, Book 1 (9 page)

Elethor shook himself free.  "There are still people in the houses!  We must get them into the tunnels.  We must find Mori!"

"We can't help anyone if we're dead!"  The flames burned around Bayrin; his scales blazed red.  "The phoenixes are—"

Three firebirds dived and slammed into them.  Elethor shut his eyes under the flame.  He felt weight and heat pushing him down.  He crashed against a road, cracking the cobblestones.  When he opened his eyes, he saw bodies everywhere.  No more people ran through the smoke.  Bayrin was gone.  The phoenixes screeched above him, beaks and claws lashing him.  Elethor leaped aside, dodging the flames, and soared.

"Mori!" he called.  "Mori, do you hear me?"

Was his sister still alive?  Had she managed to flee the temple where Mother Adia had taken her?  He'd already lost a brother; if he lost his sister too, there would be no meaning to his life.

Elethor looked around, but saw only phoenixes, an endless swarm of them, and smoke, and fire, and bodies burning into bones.  Nova Vita flamed.  The smoke was so thick, and the light was so bright, he could barely see.

"Elethor!" rose a voice from the distance.

"Lyana!" he cried.

"Elethor, we're sealing the tunnels!  Come on!"

Ten phoenixes soared toward him.  Elethor cursed, snarled, and swooped.  He shot through walls of fire.  He crashed against a temple's column, cracking it.  Bricks rained.  The body of a child burned below.

"Lyana, where are you!"

"Elethor, here!  In Benedictus Square!"

He could just make out the columns surrounding the cobbled square.  Only yesterday, philosophers, priests, and scribes would wander this square between the birches, praying and singing and studying the stars.  Today bodies and smoke filled it.  Elethor dived toward it, the forge of phoenixes in pursuit.  He barely discerned Lyana standing at an archway; beyond it, stairs led underground.  Elethor hit the cobblestones and shifted into a human.  He leaped into the stairwell with Lyana, then spun to face the archway.

Phoenixes landed outside, screeching.  Their flames shot into the tunnel, forcing Elethor and Lyana to leap back several steps.  The craggy staircase led into darkness below.  Hundreds of people crowded the stairs, weeping and moaning and screaming.

"Quick, seal the doors!" cried a burly man in armor, his red beard singed.

Elethor recognized Lord Deramon, father to Lyana and Bayrin.  He had never liked the man.  A harsh soldier with a face like a craggy cliff, Deramon seemed to always scowl and mutter around him.  Elethor's hatred had only grown seven years ago, after Deramon caught him kissing Solina in the forest.  The lord had marched to the king, revealed the secret love, and doomed Solina to exile.

"There are still people out there, Deramon!" he shouted.  "They're dying!"

The phoenixes scratched at the archway but were too large to enter.

"They're dead already!" Deramon shouted back.  His face flushed as red as his beard.

Elethor wanted to run outside, to find and save whoever he could.  Had Bayrin made it into the tunnels?  What of his father and sister; where were they?

"You don't know that, Deramon!" he shouted and drew his sword.

He watched the tunnel entrance and grimaced.  Before his eyes, the phoenixes shrank, twisted, and took human forms.  Soon they stood as warriors in bright armor, golden suns upon their breastplates. 
The sun of Tiranor,
Elethor knew.  The Tirans drew sabres.  The Vir Requis in the tunnel shrieked in fear.

Lord Deramon drew his own sword—a thick, heavy blade of northern steel.  Lyana already held her blade before her; it was bloodied and darkened with ash.  Flickers of fire still clinging to them, the Tirans ran onto the staircase and blades clashed.

Elethor parried a thrust, grunted, and riposted.  He was no great warrior; his father and Orin were the fighters.  Today everything his swordmasters had taught him vanished, and he swung his blade with blind fear and fury.

"You will die, weredragons," said a Tiran, a tall man with blazing blue eyes.  A crystal hung around his neck, a flame trapped inside it.  His sword swung, and Elethor parried, raising sparks.  Deramon fought at his side, his thick sword slamming at the enemy's thin, curved sabres.  The tunnel was only wide enough for two men to fight side by side.

A dagger flew over Elethor's head and slammed into a Tiran's neck.  Blood spurted and the man pitched forward, hit the stairs, and crashed down between Elethor and Deramon.  Standing behind them, Lyana slammed down her sword, finishing the job.  Vir Requis guards were racing up from the shadows below, drawing their own swords.

"Get down into the tunnels, boy!" Deramon howled at Elethor, swinging his sword.  "We'll hold them back."

Elethor cursed and grumbled.  "You will not call me 'boy'.  I am still your prince, Deramon."

The man growled.  "You are a boy, and you will enter the tunnels.  Make room for men to fight by my side."

As he parried blows from Tiran sabres, Elethor fumed.  He was no warrior, but he was still these people's prince; how could he run and cower among the women and children?

"I'm staying here to fight and die, old man!" he shouted, parried a blow, and thrust his blade.

Deramon slew a man.  The body crashed down the stairs into darkness.  "I'm not risking your life, not until I know if your father is alive.  We're not losing another prince.  Down, into the tunnels!  Take my daughter with you."

A blade flashed.  Elethor parried.  Blood spurted and the enemies crowded at the doorway; there seemed no end to them.  Nova Vita's survivors wept and shouted behind in the darkness.

"You think I'll run and hide instead of fight?"

"You will do what I tell you!" Deramon shouted, still swinging his blade.  "As you like to remind me, you're our prince… not our champion."

Lyana rushed up behind him and grabbed Elethor's shoulder.  "Come on, El.  He's right.  With me, down into the darkness.  We have to protect you."

A Tiran broke past Deramon, leaped three steps, and lunged at Elethor.  Blades clashed.  Elethor grunted in pain.  The Tiran's sword sliced his shoulder.  Lyana's blade thrust, the Tiran leaped back, and Elethor drove his sword into the man's neck.  He stared, gritting his teeth, at the blood dripping down his blade.  It was the first man he'd killed.

More Vir Requis warriors, clad in the armor of the City Guard, raced upstairs from the shadows.  Their heavy longswords clashed with the Tirans' sabres.  Blood flowed down the stairs.

"Come with me, El," Lyana said, voice soft.  "You're hurt."

He stared at the tunnel entrance.  Deramon and three of his men now fought there.  Thousands of Tirans seemed to fill the night outside.  With a curse, Elethor tore his gaze away and took several steps down into the shadows.  Survivors crowded around him, reaching out to touch him.

"Our prince," whispered an old woman, hands patting his shoulder.

"My lord," said a child, bowing his head.

They filled the darkness around him, burnt, bloodied, and weeping.  Their arms reached to him and their eyes shone.  The stench of burning flesh and blood and fear filled the tunnels.

Lyana held Elethor's arm and led him deeper into the darkness.  "This is where the people need you, Elethor.  They need to see you, to know that you lead them.  You need to be their leader, not their soldier.  You will be our king."

He froze, grabbed her arms, and stared at her.  "What do you mean, Lyana?" he said through clenched teeth.  "My father is king."  His voice shook.  "King Olasar, son of Amarin, descended from Queen Gloriae herself."  His fingers shook around her arms.

Lyana lowered her head.  "Elethor," she said softly.  "Oh, Elethor."

She embraced him, this girl who would steal his toy swords when they were little, who once peeked into the bathing chambers as he undressed, who always looked down her nose at him and Bayrin and scolded them for being immature, good-for-nothing layabouts.  Today this girl, now a woman stained with the blood and fire of war, placed her head against his shoulder, shed tears, and whispered into his ear.

"I'm sorry, Elethor.  I'm so sorry.  He fell."  She touched his cheek.  "Your father is dead."

The flames roared outside.  Steel rang and the screams of dying echoed.  Elethor closed his eyes.  A tremble took him and he could not breathe.  It felt like a vise clutched his head, twisting and cracking his skull.  He forced himself to breathe.  His head spun and he had to hold the tunnel wall for support.

Calm down,
he told himself.
  Don't panic yet.  Not when these people need you… when Lyana needs you.

Breathing through clenched teeth, he opened his eyes, still holding Lyana.  She looked at him with huge, damp eyes.

"I'm sorry too, Lyana," he said.  He tried to sound strong, comforting, a powerful man who could protect her—but his voice cracked.  It sounded to him like the voice of a frightened child.  He took another deep breath.

The survivors in the tunnel jostled and moved aside.  Bayrin walked through the crowd, heading upstairs toward Elethor and Lyana.  Burn marks covered his arms, and his face was damp and red.  He stared with cold eyes.

"I found Mori," he said.  "She's in the wine cellars.  She's banged up and a little singed, but she's alive."

Elethor inhaled shakily—a breath of such relief that his knees shook and he nearly collapsed. 
Thank the stars.
  His eyes stung. 
My sister
is alive.  Not all our family is dead.

"Thank you, Bay," he said, voice choked.

Bayrin stared back solemnly.  "And El… my mother is waiting for you.  Come with me.  She's going to crown you."

Elethor couldn't help it; he made a sound halfway between gasp and guffaw.  He stared over Lyana's head at her brother, his best friend since childhood.

"You've gone mad, Bay," he said.  "Adia wants to crown me?  Now, here?"  He shook his head wildly.

Lyana held him and stared at him.  A fire blazed in her eyes.

"Yes, now and here," she said, voice stern.  Curls of her red hair clung to her face with sweat and blood.  "The people need a king, Elethor.  They need a leader."  She sighed.  "You might be a blockhead, but you're all we've got now."

He laughed mirthlessly.  "You've both gone mad!  Both of you.  My father… my brother…"  His voice cracked.  "Oh stars, we haven't even buried them.  I don't want a crown.  I never wanted to be king.  Find somebody else."  He looked back over his shoulder at the fighting.  "Get your father down here!  Crown him; the people love Deramon."

He sounded like a child, he realized and cursed himself.  But what else could he say?  He had never served in the army like Orin.  He had never dreamed of the throne like Orin.  He had never gone to countless ceremonies and feasts and met with foreign kings.  He was just Elethor, the younger brother who'd count the stars, or sculpt, or walk for hours through the forest with Solina, or…

But those days are gone now, Elethor,
he told himself.  He clenched his fists. 
You must do this. 
They're right.  You can't abandon your people.  They need you.

As soldiers raced up the stairs and blood spilled down, his friends pulled him deeper into the tunnels.  The shadows spun around him.  Everywhere hands reached to him, the wounded lay moaning, and the stench of death spun his head.  He moved in a daze, eyes burning.

My father.  My brother.  Gone.   

Mother Adia, Priestess of Requiem, rose from the darkness toward him.  A tall woman, she looked nothing like her red-headed, light-eyed children.  Adia's hair was black and smooth as the night sky.  Her eyes were pools of darkness.  She could have been one of Elethor's statues—pale, beautiful, her skin like marble.  Ash and blood stained her white robes.

"Elethor," she said, voice as deep and solemn as her eyes, and took his hands.

She whispered prayers to the stars in a shaky voice.  Around them the people answered her prayers, reaching to the ceiling.  Elethor did not know if starlight could ever glow here—or in the world again—but he answered the prayers in a hoarse, low voice.

They had no crown to place upon his head, no holy oil to anoint him with.  There were no lords and ladies, no songs, only this stench of burnt flesh and sweat and nightsoil and death.

"Requiem!" Adia called, voice rising and shaking.  "May our wings forever find your sky."

The words of their fathers, their people, their life.  Those were the words the first kings had spoken when building temples in King's Forest.  Those were the words the legendary Queen Gloriae had shouted in battle against Dies Irae the Destructor.  The survivors in the tunnels repeated the prayer.  Elethor spoke with them, his voice finally finding some strength.

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

Mother Adia turned to the crowd in the tunnels.  Voice trembling, she said, "Kneel before King Elethor Aeternum, Son of Olasar."

Those who could, knelt, and Elethor looked over the survivors, his eyes dry.  They filled the narrow tunnels, disappearing far into the darkness.  Lyana knelt before him, holding her sword drawn, her eyes lowered.  As Elethor looked at her mane of curls, he realized that by the law of the land, he had inherited not only his father's throne, but his brother's betrothed.  If they survived this war, Lyana and he would be wed.

"Rise," he said to the people.  They rose and wept, blessing his name.

Lyana looked at him, eyes huge and haunted.  "My lord," she whispered, the first time she had ever called him that.  "There is something more you must know."

Elethor stared at her, silent.  His father and brother were dead.  He had inherited the throne, and he was now betrothed to the girl who would torment him throughout his childhood.  His city burned above him, and hundreds—likely thousands—were dead.  What more news could she give him?

"Speak," he said.

She stared at him steadily, holding his arm.  "Elethor… the leader of the phoenixes, and the one who killed your father and brother, is Solina."

He stared at her.  The memories of Solina pounded through him: her kisses, her naked body against his, their forbidden love in secret forests and chambers.  His world burned.  He saw nothing but fire.