Dragons Reborn (10 page)

He
waited. He slept again. His throat dried up and his lips cracked. He shouted
himself hoarse. And still no guards approached, and still the corpses rotted in
the corridor. Had Domi burned down the entire Cured Temple? Did Gemini now languish
buried underground, the marble and gold palace toppled above him?

"I
would have toppled this Temple myself for you, Domi," he whispered. "Why
did you betray me?"

He
closed his eyes, imagining that she was here with him, that he could hold her
body, kiss her pale skin, stroke her red hair, gaze into her green eyes,
protect her from the evil of the world, cherish her like a treasure.

He
was drifting back into sleep when he heard the footfalls.

He
bolted up, slammed himself against the bars, and stared out into the corridor.

Oh
bloody Spirit spit.

His
knees trembled. His heart sank. Walking daintily across the ashy floor, holding
up the hems of her robes, came High Priestess Beatrix. His mother.

She
came to stand before the bars and stared at him, face stoic.

"Hello,
my son."

He
pressed himself against the bars. "Get me out of here!" His voice was
hoarse. Every word tore at his throat, yet still he shouted. "Get me out!"

The
thinnest of smiles stretched her white lips. She took a step back. "You
must learn to calm yourself, son. Hysteria does not become a son of Deus."

He
blinked tears away, letting rage consume him. "The weredragon imprisoned
me here. She escaped. Let me out! I will hunt her."

Beatrix
sighed. "Both weredragons escaped, son . . . both your whore and your
brother."

"My
brother?" He laughed, spraying spit. "Has Mercy finally grown a pair?
Mother, you've gone mad!" He grabbed the bars and shook them. "Get
the keys! Open this door. I have to find Domi, I have to—"

"You
will not utter that name here!" Beatrix frowned. "You brought that
sniveling little reptile into my home. You brought a weredragon into the
holiness of the Cured Temple."

"I
didn't know that she—"

"You
lie!" Beatrix sneered. "What kind of paladin are you? I raised you to
slay weredragons, not to bed them, not to bring them into my home. She flashed
her teats at you, and your brain turned to fog." She barked a laugh. "Perhaps
now you learned of their treachery. Your weredragon whore imprisoned you here,
the reptile you love. You wanted a weredragon? Enjoy her gift to you."

The
High Priestess turned to walk away.

"Mother!"
Gemini shouted, tears coursing down his cheeks. "Mother, damn you! Come
back here! You're the whore, Mother! You are! You cannot leave me here. Release
me!" He pounded against the bars. "I am your son! Your son!"

She
paused in the corridor, turned around, and stared back at him. "I have
another son now. A son I will recapture. A son who will join you here."

"You
can't leave me here!" Gemini cried.

Beatrix
raised an eyebrow. She stepped back toward him, reached past the bars, and
caressed his cheek. "Oh sweet child . . . sweet, innocent child. Don't you
remember?"

He
wept. "Remember what?"

She
stroked his hair. "When you were very small, I told you that if you
misbehaved, you will end up in this dungeon. You've been a very bad child. You
have misbehaved. Enjoy the rest of your life, Gemini. A life of darkness."

She
walked away, and she would not turn back even as Gemini screamed.

 
 
CADE

He woke up to a dawn of ash, of
fading hope, and of a woman he loved sleeping against him.

Crimson smoke veiled
the sun, and only soft red light fell upon the land. On the distant horizon,
fire still blazed, and the smell of burnt wood wafted across the grasslands
where they lay. Cade turned his eyes toward Domi and watched her sleep. Her
hair was like a flame itself, wild and red and orange and shining yellow. Her
body was slender, pale, dotted with freckles like the stars. The woman who had
whispered "Requiem" into his ear. The woman he had dreamed of in
darkness. The woman who had tied him, had borne Mercy upon her back, had ruined
his life and then given him hope—here she lay in his arms.

She woke slowly, her
eyes opening to slits.

"Cade," she
whispered.

He pulled strands of
her hair off her eyes and tucked them behind her ears. "Hello, Domi."

She nestled closer to
him, her leg lying across him, and touched his cheek. "You're real. You're
really here. Everything that happened—the burning city, the forest, the flight
through the smoke—I thought it was a nightmare. But I can feel you, Cade.
You're real."

He nodded, a lump in
his throat. "I wish it were all a dream. Everything. From the first day
when you arrived in my village, a wild firedrake, Mercy on your back."

She looked down. He saw
the pain that caused her. When she looked back up, her eyes shone damply. "I'm
sorry, Cade," she whispered. "I'm so sorry for that day. For who I
was. For the things Mercy did while I watched and didn't stop her. I'm so sorry
for your parents, for your village."

He nodded, looking away,
not sure how he felt. Did he hate Domi? Did he love her? Was she his ally or
his enemy, a great warrior for Requiem or one who fought against that fallen
kingdom?

"You told me about
Requiem," he whispered. "I never forgot how you whispered that word
into my ear, how much I could feel it meant to you, to everyone. How much it
came to mean to me."

She crawled up to
straddle him, looked down at his face, and touched his cheeks. "And I
never forgot you, Cade. Another Vir Requis, the first one I had met in years. I
never forgot how, in a world of cruel paladins and the searing light of the
Temple, you seemed good to me. Innocent. Almost childlike but . . . but strong."
She lowered her eyes. "I often thought of you too. In the darkness of my
lair, as I curled up, hurt, the lashes Gemini had given me blazing on my back,
I thought of you. I pretended sometimes, when I lay in darkness, alone and
afraid and cold, that you lay there with me, that I could hug you, kiss you,
and—" She bit her lip and blushed furiously. "I've said too much."

Cade lay on his back,
never wanting to move, never wanting her to leave. She seemed almost weightless
upon him, her pale knees pressed against him, her feet folded underneath her,
her head lowered, her hair brushing his face. He reached up to touch that hair,
to tuck it back under her ears, and found himself stroking it again and again,
then caressing her face, drowning in her eyes. She leaned down, and her lips
brushed his, and he kissed her.

It was a hesitant kiss
at first, a few pecks of the lips, but it morphed into a deep, passionate
thing, a kiss he could drown into. Cade pushed himself onto his elbows, and Domi
sat in his lap, her legs spread around him, and he kept kissing her,
intoxicated by her, sure this too was a dream. This could not be real. It felt
too good, too sad, too hazy, like thoughts after too much wine. And yet she
felt real, her body soft and warm in his hands.

"Cade," she
whispered into his ear, kissing him. "Requiem."

She straightened, still
sitting in his lap, and pulled off her tunic and tossed it aside. She remained
naked above him. Her body was white as milk, strewn with countless freckles,
her waist slender, her breasts small, and he kissed every part of her. He did
not know what he was doing. He had never made love to a woman before, but he
had made love to Domi countless times in his dreams. Perhaps this too was but
another dream. If so, it was one he never wanted to wake from.

They made love in the
grass, slowly, gently, then wildly, desperately, and Domi bit her lip so hard
he thought she would bleed, and she wrapped her limbs around him so tightly it
almost hurt. Finally he cried out, and she gasped, and they lay together for a
long time on the grass, spent, too weak to rise, too uncertain of what they had
done, of the reality or dreams of this landscape and their lovemaking.

"Requiem," he
whispered into her ear. "Domi."

He held her close
against him, and he loved her—loved her more than Requiem, maybe more than he
had ever loved anyone.

Finally
they rose to their feet and got dressed again. They dared not fly as dragons;
the firedrakes would be patrolling the skies. They walked through the grasslands,
hand in hand, silent, afraid to speak, as if words could wake them up from this
dream. The smoke spread above, and the sun did not emerge.

 
 
AMITY

She stood on
the mountaintop, watching as her army drained away like sand between her
fingers.

"They're
going with him," she whispered to Korvin. "Oh bloody stars, they're
going with the beast."

Below
in the valley, she saw Shafel upon his griffin. A hundred other griffins flew
around him, riders on their backs. Below them, thousands of men, women, and
children were heading south, carrying their belongings in wagons or upon their
backs. Gosh Ha'ar, the great settlement beneath the mountains, was falling
apart.

"Follow,
Horde!" Shafel's voice rose on the wind, distant but just loud enough for
Amity to hear. "Follow your king!"

Korvin
stood at her side, the wind whipping his long grizzled hair. "Let him leave."
The old soldier grunted. "For years, many warriors in the Horde spoke of
conquests in the south, of uniting the wild tribes who live beyond the rivers."
Korvin scratched his stubbly cheeks. "Let Shafel go conquer. Let him get
out of our hair. Enough have stayed loyal to you, Amity."

She
spun toward Korvin, clenching her fists. "He's taking too many! The
griffins. Thousands of warriors. Warriors we need to conquer the Commonwealth."

She spun back south. Only a few thousand remained camped before the marble
archway in the shadow of the mountains. A few dozen salvanae—long coiling
dragons with no wings or limbs—hovered between them. But the griffins were
flying south. Tens of thousands of warriors were walking south with them.

"Enough
have stayed loyal?" Amity whispered. "Korvin, he's taking two thirds
of my army."

Korvin
placed a hand on her shoulder. "So what will you do? Challenge him to
battle? Risk dying? We came here to find an army. We have an army." He
pointed below at the forces that remained. "And more soldiers of the Horde
await us along the northern coast. Amity, let us take those of Gosh Ha'ar who
remained loyal, and let us travel north back to Hakan Teer on the coast. Many
there, seeing us approach with the salvanae and thousands of warriors, will
swear allegiance to you. It will be enough."

"No."
She trembled with rage. "No, I will not. I will not allow this! I will not
allow the Horde to split in two, to rule in the north while Shafel lurks in the
south, growing his forces. We'd be trapped between the southern Horde and the northern
Commonwealth." She glared at Korvin. "The Horde must stand united.
You don't understand. You're not one of us."

She
saw the pain that caused him. His eyes hardened, and his cheeks flushed beneath
his white stubble. He pulled his hand off her shoulder. "No. I'm not. I'm
not one of the Horde. You're right, Amity. I'm a man of Requiem. The kingdom of
dragons is all I care about. I thought you did too. Ask yourself, Amity, where
your true loyalties lie."

She
raised her chin. "I'm a daughter of Requiem. All my life, Korvin, I fought
against the Cured Temple that rules it. The Temple that murdered my parents.
The Temple that crushed Requiem, that raised the Commonwealth from its ashes.
You want Requiem back? That will take a united Horde under one rule. Mine!"

With
that, Amity spun around, raced across the mountaintop, and leaped into the air.
Before she could fall and slam down against the mountainside, she shifted into
a dragon, beat her wings, and flew. She blasted out a stream of fire, and she
roared.

"Hear
me, Horde!" She soared across the crowds below, crying out for all to
hear. Her voice rang across the mountains and valleys beyond. "I am Amity,
your queen! I will lead you to conquest across the sea. Turn aside from Shafel
the False. Join me in the north! Join your queen!"

Yet
Shafel kept flying away on his griffin, moving across the southern grasslands,
heading toward the distant lands of wild tribes. The other griffins and the
people below kept following. The warriors traveled along the rims of the camp,
many riding horses, holding spears and swords and shields. Women, children, and
elders walked in the center, leading donkeys and sheep, carrying their
belongings across their backs or in wagons.

"Hear
me, Horde! Turn back now!" Amity blasted fire across the sky. "Turn
back and serve your queen. I will lead you to conquest!"

Ahead
of her flew the griffins; there must have been over a hundred. Their riders
turned toward her, and Shafel laughed—a deep, ringing laughter.

They
cannot kill me here,
Amity knew, baring her teeth.
We still fly over
holy ground.

But
a few more miles, and they would swarm toward her.

Wings
beat, scales clattered, and a charcoal dragon came to fly beside her. Korvin
glared at her, eyes narrowed, smoke rising from his nostrils. "Amity, come
back. Let them leave. The salvanae have remained loyal, and they're as fierce
as griffins. Many warriors too remain, and we'll find more in the north."

Amity
turned her head and gazed back toward the mountains. The salvanae still hovered
over the foothills, the legendary true dragons of the west. Their bodies were a
hundred feet long, slim and scaled and gleaming, and beards grew from their
chins. From this distance they seemed like serpents floating on water. They
were mighty warriors, Amity knew, able to cast lightning from their maws.
Beneath them, thousands of men remained, armed with swords and spears, loyal to
her, the slayer of their old king.