A Memory of Fire (The Dragon War, Book 3) (4 page)

"Do not think such
thoughts," he said. "Do not, Kaelyn. They will haunt you.
They will hurt you. We don't know that Rune is tortured. The
dragon who captured him—the white one—was his friend. She is
protecting him."

Kaelyn nodded and leaned back
against him. "Maybe you're right. I pray that you are. I just
wish we could be with him. Fighting for him. Saving him and
everyone else."

"So long as I breathe,"
Valien said, "so long as I can stand and fly, I will fight. We
hide now, but we will seek allies, and we will regroup, and we will
not abandon Rune. We will not abandon Requiem. I swear this to
you."

The sun was nearing the horizon,
casting a golden path across the water, when they saw Maiden Island.

Valien now understood how the
island got its name. It rose from the water like a woman lounging on
her side, a forested hill forming her hip. A waterfall cascaded from
a smaller hill like hair from a head.

"Welcome, welcome!"
Bantis said, hopping around the raft. "Bantis led you to Maiden
Island. To hope. To his army. Together we will fight, yes."

As they oared closer, Valien
looked for signs of life but saw only seagulls and trees. The waves
whispered across virgin sands. No huts, no smoke from cooking fire,
no men or women to be seen.

"Bantis," Kaelyn said,
"how many survivors did you say live here?"

He pirouetted upon the raft,
nearly falling into the water. "Thousands! Thousands of
survivors live here, yes. Bantis's friends. Bantis's son leads
them, yes. Bantis lived here too. Bantis loves explosives. Bantis
lives alone now."

They oared closer. Valien
guessed the island stretched two miles long, maybe three. He still
could see nobody. The shores were smooth. No trees had been hewn.
No huts or tents rose. Valien let out his breath.

Crazy
old loon,
he thought.
He's been alone too
long. He invented himself an army of friends.

They let the waves carry them to
shore, then walked along the sand. Cliffs rose above them, topped
with palm trees. Pelicans and gulls flew overhead. Kaelyn chewed
her lip as she walked, staring up at the trees, while Valien
grumbled. No footprints marred the sand; Valien wondered if they
were the first to ever walk here.

Yet Bantis ran ahead, eager as a
dog released from a house, kicking sand and spinning in circles every
few feet.

"Come, come! Follow old
Bantis. He will lead you to them. Hurry, Vir Requis!"

Valien sighed. He looked at
Kaelyn and saw her sigh too.

"Let's humor him," he
said in a low rumble; Bantis was running too far ahead to hear.
"We'll see what he wants to show us."

Kaelyn hefted her bow across her
shoulder. Her cheeks were reddening in the sun, and sand clung to
her clothes.

"Might be we'll find only
thousands of skeletons."

"Or thousands of ghosts,"
Valien said.

Bantis scampered ahead, leading
them toward a rocky hill. He raced up the slope, turned toward them,
and gestured for them to follow. They climbed the Maiden's waist,
moving between boulders, mint bushes, and rustling pines. Frogs
trilled and herons flew overhead. The waterfall sang in the
distance.

When they reached the hilltop
and saw the southern sea, Bantis stopped walking and stretched out
his arms. "Here! Here is my army. Meet them! Meet them!"

Valien looked around and saw
only the trees, the frogs, and the birds. He grumbled and heaved the
longest sigh of his life.

"Not skeletons," he
muttered to Kaelyn, who stood by his side, chewing her lip and
searching the trees. "Not ghosts either. He led us to an army
of frogs."

She grinned and leaned against
him. "I suppose we could unleash them in the capital. We'll
teach them to swarm the emperor and give him warts."

Valien grunted, wiped sweat from
his brow, and hefted his pack across his shoulders. "Come on.
Let's go back."

He had taken two steps downhill
when the forest leaped at him.

A hundred people or more sprang
from the trees. They wore clothes of grass, leaves filled their
hair, and mud smeared their faces. They bore what looked like
miniature cannons mounted upon wooden shafts.

"Capture them!" spoke
one, a tall man with blue eyes peering from a painted face. "Take
them alive."

Valien growled, shifted into a
dragon, and soared.

He shot through the trees.
Kaelyn flew beside him, a green dragon, her wings bending the trees
below.

A boom tore through the air.

Smoke blasted from one of the
men's sticks. Fire blazed out. A projectile whizzed by Valien's
head.

"I said alive!"
shouted the tall man below.

Valien beat his wings, rising
higher, and growled. At his side, Kaelyn sucked in her breath, and
flames crackled between her teeth. She rose, then turned and assumed
a swooping position, prepared to blast her fire downward.

"Kaelyn, no!" Valien
shouted, flew toward her, and knocked her aside. Her flames cascaded
down the hillside, missing the men. "They're refugees. They're
frightened. They're—"

Metal creaked below upon the
hill.

Men covered in leaves and mud
raised metallic tubes and pulled levers. Grapples shot skyward,
dragging chains behind them. Valien banked, but two grapples swung
across him, then tugged down. Chains wrapped around him, and one
grapple dug into his leg. He howled and dipped in the sky.

At his side, chains swung around
Kaelyn too. She howled and drew more fire into her maw. When she
blasted the flames downward, the men scattered and vanished between
the trees. The fire crashed down against boulders. From the canopy,
more grapples flew.

Chains encased the two dragons.
They beat their wings, struggling to rise, but the chains tugged
downward, and Valien glimpsed men turning winches.

Valien and Kaelyn, dragons of
Requiem, crashed against the hillside. A dozen chains swung from the
trees and crashed down atop them. Men cheered.

"Cursed be Requiem!"
cried one man.

"For the glory of Tiranor!"
cried another.

Men leaped onto their backs, and
Valien howled and tried to shake them off, but the chains held him
down. Arms reached across his head, fastening a muzzle over his
mouth. He growled and blasted fire from his nostrils, but he
couldn't free himself—not without killing the men, which he wasn't
prepared to do. From the corner of his eye, he saw a dozen men
muzzling Kaelyn too as she flailed.

"Death to Requiem!"
they cried. "The dragons are ours!"

 
 
LERESY

He pulled her along the beach.

"Come on," he said and
rolled his eyes. "Will you stop leaning down to collect
seashells?"

Crouched in the sand, Erry
glared up at him. Leresy held her hand, trying to tug her along.
With her other hand, she lifted a large pink shell.

"This is a
conch
,
you fool," she said. "This isn't an ordinary seashell.
It's rare and— Ow! Stop pulling me."

He kept walking, squeezing her
hand, forcing her to trail behind. She glared and spat and kicked
sand.

"It looks like a damn
seashell to me," he said. "Do you want to collect shells
like a little girl, or do you want to find this big weapon the crazy
old man talked about?"

"Collect shells."

He paused, turned toward her,
and held out his hand. "Let me see."

She shook her head.

He grabbed the conch, wrenched
it from her fingers, and tossed it into the sea.

"You bloody piece of pig
shite!" she shouted and tried to kick him, but he held her
shoulders at arm's length, and her short legs only kicked the air.

"Call me what you like,
soon I'll be pig shite with a weapon to take the throne." He
spat. "You'll be thankful I let you trail behind me then. Now
come along. This is where the old loon landed with his raft. Shift
with me and let's find this damn Genesis Isle he came from."

She raised her hands to the
heavens. "Damn it, Leresy, how are you going to find his
island? Kaelyn said it's barely bigger than a rock, and there are
about a million islands around here. The man was crazy! Cawing like
a bird and dancing around. What weapon could he possibly have been
seeking?"

"I don't know. We'll find
out."

With that, he shifted into a
dragon and took flight.

Damn,
flying feels good,
he
thought.

That grizzled fool Valien had
insisted nobody shift upon the island. The man was paranoid, sure
that imperial dragons were scouting the sea and would see their fire.
But Leresy knew his father. The old man had his prize; the boy
Relesar was his.

Give
the dog a bone to chew, and he'll keep himself busy,
he thought.

He rose higher on the wind,
inhaling the salty air. The southern sun, warm even in winter,
heated his red scales. He sucked fire into his maw and blasted it
skyward.

"Erry!" he cried down
to her. The urchin still stood upon the beach in human form,
scowling up at him, hands on her hips. "Are you coming, or are
you going to stay and sulk like a baby?

She spat and shifted too. She
soared as a copper dragon, eyes narrowed and fire trickling from her
nostrils. They flew east, the direction Bantis's raft had come from.
The sea sprawled below them, blue and green under a clear sky, and
Horsehead Island—their home since fleeing Requiem—dwindled behind.

Erry shot up to fly beside him,
snorted a blast of fire, and glared. "I can't believe you're
still obsessed with your damn throne. I thought you gave that up
when we moved here. What about all that sweet talk? Living on an
island paradise. Forgetting about the war. Making love every day,
eating wild grapes, and wearing grass like beautiful savages."

"Well, that was before I
heard about this big weapon."

"And now I suppose if you
do find some weapon, you'll want to fly back to Requiem." She
growled. "Well, I'm not going with you, Leresy Cadigus. Not
for any throne or palace or gold."

He hissed. "You'd rather
stay alone on this island, a dirty and miserable outcast? You'll
turn into another Bantis." He shook his head. "I'm not
letting that happen to me. I'm not turning into some crazy-haired,
wild-eyed old man. I'll find that old bugger's weapon and slay my
father once and for all."

"Leresy!" She slapped
him with her tail. "There is no damn weapon. The man is crazy.
His weapon is probably just an angry sea sponge he thinks he can
slay monsters with."

"A sea sponge with teeth
can work," Leresy said. "I'll give it to my father and
tell him to wipe his arse with it."

She sighed. "Always poetry
with you."

He flashed a toothy grin and
flew on.

Their island dwindled behind
them, a patch of gray and green shaped like a horse's head. The sea
stretched on. The world became nothing but blue—the sky above, the
sea below, and two dragons in the middle. As they flew, Leresy found
himself antsy. Back at the island, there were many
distractions—swords to sharpen, huts to build, boars to catch, trees
to fell, and Erry to bed. But here, trapped between blue and blue,
nothing stopped his memories from resurfacing.

An image flashed before him, and
Leresy winced.

Suddenly he wasn't flying over
the sea but was back in Lynport.
The barrels of gunpowder rolled. Blasts tore the door open, and
outside, he saw them. Men torn apart. Limbs and heads severed. Men
screaming, clutching at spilling entrails and stubs. Beras the Brute
swinging his axe at Erry, and so much blood, and—

No.
Leresy growled and blasted flames down into the water.
No more memories. No more pain.

His heart thrashed, and he
wondered if Erry was right. Why did he need to return? Why not
leave Requiem—all that fire and pain—behind?

Or course, he knew the answer.

I've
left Requiem. But she did not leave me. She will not until I can
return and slay those ghosts.

He looked over at Erry who flew
beside him, grumbling and muttering to herself. He didn't want to
leave her. He didn't want to lose her. She was the only good thing
he had left, but the ghosts of his pain tainted her too. When he
looked at her, he still saw Beras with his axe.

So
I will slay those ghosts,
he
swore, flames crackling inside him.
For us.

They
flew until they saw a group of islets ahead, a dozen or more rising
like a spine ridge, leafy with palms. The two dragons made their way
forward, and Leresy lowered his altitude.

"I told you," Erry
said, "damn too many islands here. How are you going to find
the right one?"

He glided toward the first
island. "Well, Bantis said he was digging, so we find the
island with the big hole."

The first island he flew over
seemed a poor candidate—nothing but palm trees upon a cliff. The
second was barren, a mere pile of mossy rocks. He had flown over ten
islands, and his wings were aching with weariness, when he saw the
distant patch of green.

"There's another one there,
farther off," he said. "Erry, come on."

She panted. "Can't we land
on one of these? My wings hurt more than a mare in heat locked up
with stallions."

"We'll rest once we find
what we seek."

His own wings ached, and every
breath felt like a saw in his lungs, but he forced himself onward.
The sea streamed below. The distant islet lay miles away from the
others, an isolated rock no larger a humble house. When he flew
above, he twisted his jaw into a grin.

"Here we are. Genesis
Isle."

A rocky hill rose upon the
island. A hole had been blasted into the hillside, forming a cave.
Rocks and dust littered the slope. Leresy glided down and landed
upon the shore.