A Fire of Roses

by Melinda R. Cordell

  Nauma screamed in the dark language that the Gorm had taught her, flung her hand out at the roses, and struck them with a curse that turned the air around her black and boiling. She struck them with the curse again and again, smashing that blackness against them.

  But the roses shook it off. Some of the leaves looked a little burned as if they’d had sunscald. The rest of the hedge rustled and grew up a couple more inches as if it had been fertilized.

  Nauma caught her breath, lowering her hand. “It’s just wrong,” she said aloud to her troops. “You came all this way to earn your share of the glory. You came here to kill these people for me, to raise these dragons from the dead. I want those dragons!” she said, slamming her fist into her hand. “Come on! Go with me to the dragon barrow. There has got to be a way I can raise them without these wretched rose-lovers. We can try that hands thing that they were doing,” she added. “All of you can feed me power. Come, let’s try it.”

  She gathered her troops and led them into the barrow. They followed with many a curse and backward glance at the roses. Some spat at the hedge with disgusted glares.

  But their anger quieted as she led them into the dragon barrow among the bodies of the dead. They cast their eyes up at the high ceiling, placed their hands over their talismans to ward off spirits, whispered prayers to whatever god they followed. Nauma narrowed her eyes, then got down to business, measuring the nearest dragons with her eyes, then looking through her soldiers, then back again, calculating what power she had available and what she would be able to raise from that. Not much, she realized bitterly. Her fury boiled up again, and she gripped her sword.

  “Fighters, gather close.” Nauma chose a spot to stand between several dragons. “Do your best to stand where you can lay hands on me or somebody else who is connected to me. I need straight conduits of power, and I need all of you as close to me as possible.” She drew her sword and wrote some runes on the ground before her. Then she waved her second-in-command, Illugi, to stand beside her. He was known as the wrecker of mead halls, and he often told her that every great hall he wrecked was in her name. He did this to impress her, apparently.

  Illugi joined her, laying one big hand low on her waist, and pursed his lips at her in an air kiss.

  “You can wait until tonight,” she said, and moved his hand from her waist to her shoulder. “You,” she said to the soldiers nearest Illugi. “Hands on him.”

  All her soldiers lay their hands so they could direct their power to her. She had over fifty men here, standing where they could in the narrow spaces between the dead dragons. None of them dared to step on the dead. That will be helpful, Nauma thought.

  “Let us begin,” she said. “Ready?”

  She took a deep breath and began to sing in the language that she’d been taught, calling up power from the earth, feeling her soldiers feed power to her through each other. This was much easier than going it alone, she was surprised to find. She could pull power from each person this way. Interesting.

  She took a deep breath and sang. She drew power hard from each one of them, and she drew more power, and more. Men cried out, sank to their knees, as she pulled their strength to herself in one hard yank. Their eyes went blank, their faces went white, and some swayed, eyes closing.

  She took every bit of power that she could wring from them.

  And then, once they were gasping for breath, utterly drained ...

  ... she swung her sword up and jammed it into Illugi’s chest.

  His eyes and mouth came open in shock as she yanked her sword free and his life’s blood spurted over her. She still sang, accepting his power, accepting his sacrifice. Then she spun and cut the throats of the three men next to him. Their life-blood drenched her.

  A wild scrambling as the rest of her troops tried to run. But they were all weak after she’d pull their strength from them, and now she was strong, far stronger than they, and filled with the life they’d all given to her. She gloried in it. And now she sacrificed each one of them to the great dragon army she would raise. Each life she cut loose with blood. She grabbed their crying souls and laced them into her music.

  Her soldiers fell, slipping on the blood of their comrades, or tripped over the dead dragons that filled nearly every space on the floor in this barrow. Nauma had no compunctions about stepping on the dead, whether they were dragons or human, as she charged after her screaming army. They were terrified, and she rejoiced in their terror, for when she cut their souls loose, they brought that much more energy with them for her purposes.

  She struck them down, one after the other, though her sword-arm soon got so exhausted that it hurt, from lifting it and slamming the sword home and then pulling it loose. Occasionally one of them would have a sword or a spear and would try to fight her, but she would not be stopped.

  Finally they all lay dead around her, blood and bodies piled around the dragons. Eyes open and unseeing, faces left in an eternal scream of pain, bloody fingers clenched or open as if pleading for mercy.

  She looked about her with great satisfaction.

  “It’s for the best,” Nauma told them quietly. “Think of all I’ll save on provisions.”

  A smirk tugged at her lips.

  She waded through their blood that had pooled between the dragons, thick and hot, steaming in the cold air. It was a good smell. It always made her hungry.

  Blood filled her boots, squishing with every step. She sat down on a dragon to take them off, and turned them upside down to let some of the blood drain out. She didn’t want to get blisters. The good thing was that the blood was still hot enough to walk in barefoot. The magic might work better with her boots off, anyway. This was, after all, holy ground.

  Then she stood, sword in hand, and began singing again, standing over the head of the first dragon. The light from the burning vein of coal guttered and faded as she called the darkness down, as she sang to raise the dragons from the dead.

  The dragon nearest to her shivered once. She sang more rapidly in her excitement, calling it up, calling up the dragons around it. An angry, dark redness rose in the dark around her hands and face. Red curled from her mouth like breath-clouds on a freezing day, wisping and fading, each curl of speech adding to the faint illumination.

  The air grew thick and cluttered as the magic took effect. Dragons lurched where they lay. A tail thumped. Something hissed. A wing unfolded halfway, then lay still.

  Then Nauma set the magic loose with one word. She sank to her knees, gasping for breath, holding herself out of the blood that lay puddled between the dragon bodies. Don’t faint unless you want to drown, she thought.

  Groans. Nothing that sounded human.

  She raised her head, though it hurt, because all her muscles were beginning to ache from her magic-casting.

  Three dragons were pulling themselves up from the floor. One was missing part of its face. But they all had their wings. They would do.

  And she was surprised to see the army she’d just slaughtered groaning and rising to their feet.

  An additional benefit, she thought, excitement rising in her.

  Humans were such pointless trouble. She hated having to lead and direct them and feed them. Not to mention she had to interact with them. It had been something of a relief to kill them.

  But now? as the undead? She only had to say “Go,” and they’d obey.

  Nauma could barely stand, but this thought gave her the strength to pull herself to her feet and start singing, to bend them to her will.

  And when the undead stood, docile and waiting for her command, she walked to the nearest dragon, the one that was missing part of its face. She dipped her hand into the blood that was beginning to cool and clot at her feet, then went to the dragon, whose scales had whitened over time.

  “After all, it is easier to raise an army once you have some dragons ready,” she crooned. “But first, I need to send a message back to Varinn’s keep.”

  22

  CORAE

  Dyrf
inna

  Dyrfinna stood at the window, unable to sleep, staring at the silent world outside. Aesa breathed softly in her bed behind her, lying sideways across the whole bed. Dyrfinna had straightened her twice already, only to wake up a third time to find herself, once again, on the very edge of the bed with Aesa’s cold little feet in her ribs.

  So, instead of sleeping in the chair, she stayed awake, formulating a plan to find her crew, break them free from their prison, and steal them away to go rescue her friend … or former friend.

  There was really no way that she could make it up to Gefjun for killing the man she loved. There was no way on earth she could. Dyrfinna wanted, with everything in her, to get back to where they used to be, where they’d been all their lives—friends, close friends. She wanted to get back all the joys and sorrows they’d shared with each other over the many years since they were small.

  But this was gone now. Gone forever.

  All the same, Dyrfinna could rescue her from Nauma. The sooner she killed Nauma, the better. All this talk about undead dragons made her skin crawl.

  Then she thought of Skeggi and Rjupa, and her stomach dropped. She couldn’t believe what Gefjun had said—that they were dead. She had no details, no stories. But Gefjun would not lie about something so important. She just wouldn’t, however much she hated Dyrfinna.

  She leaned her hot forehead against the cold, wavy glass, closing her eyes. It didn’t seem possible. But it didn’t surprise her that Skeggi had gone into the water after Rjupa. She could imagine him trying to buoy her up, killing himself in the process, both of them sinking at last, arms around each other.

  Never got to tell them goodbye. Just that last, poor embrace that Skeggi gave her, when he was still angry that she’d killed one of his closest friends. And however much Dyrfinna racked her brain, she could not remember the last words that she and Rjupa said to each other. That poor gentle girl. Dyrfinna loved them both.

  Now she was alone in the world except for Aesa, and her mother—if she could ever get back to her. Her mama still hadn’t any news of either of them, and Dyrfinna hated that. She had to be worried sick, alone at home.

  Just then, something flickered out of sight behind a mountain. Something white.

  Dyrfinna peered into the darkness. A bird? No—the glimpse of white from behind the mountian didn’t match any kind of bird she’d seen in her life. It was far too big to be a bird.

  Another flash of white from behind the mountain.

  And then it came around the trees and the rocks. Now she could see it.

  She stepped back from the window, her breath going fast.

  It was a dragon like she’d never seen. Off-white. But odd. All skin and withered flesh, skinny and wasted. But what was wrong with it? Dyrfinna squinted. The way it was flying was was stilted, crooked, like it was wounded … like something dead.

  And she froze.

  The dragon was dead.

  The dragon that was flying toward the keep was dead.

  Her hand fell on the scabbard of her sword as she stared. Her heart plummeted as if a nightmare had opened around her.

  Just then, from overhead, six black dragons shot from the keep toward the undead dragon—riderless! Their wings cut as swift as diving hawks. The white dragon reared up toward the nearest black dragon, jaws snapping blindly, and lunged with a spurt of its ragged wings.

  Every black dragon backwinged out of the range of those biting fangs, and every one of those dragons opened their mouths and blasted fire at the undead one.

  A brilliant star of fire.

  The ball of raging flame was so bright that Dyrfinna had to shut her eyes. She could feel that awful heat through the glass. She understood why none of the dragons waited for their riders; they flew into that flame, still blasting more fire at their enemy. Every rider would have been killed from the heat of that intense fire.

  She fell to her knees from the memory of fire she’d recently endured, when she was on her emberdragon and had been blasted with flames.

  But when the flames died down and she looked up, the undead dragon was sliding through the flames, its mouth gaping, the edge of a wing on fire. But it was still flying toward the keep, and the flames on its wing burned themselves out.

  Bomething was written on the front of the white, dead dragon in runes.

  She squinted.

  Then she gasped.

  HELP VARINN

  Written in runes of dried blood all down its front.

  “No,” Dyrfinna breathed.

  Screams came from outside. A pounding on her door came just before Sóma burst in. “Dyrfinna! Have you seen?”

  “Yes,” she said, her hand on her sword.

  “Come with me. We are taking all the children inside the mountain to keep them safe from that awful beast.” Crying, Sóma wrung her hands. “Who did this? Who did this to our king?”

  “I have a pretty good idea,” Dyrfinna growled, looking back outside at the dragon.

  But this time, when she looked at the dragon, Dyrfinna’s eyes went wide.

  How did she not see this before?

  “I know that dragon,” she breathed softly.

  It was Corae.

  Corae.

  That dragon had given her life for Dyrfinna. She’d fought off an army for her, shot to death by a thousand brutal arrows. Dyrfinna’s life had never been the same after that valiant sacrifice of her dear friend’s life.

  “Oh, dear Freyja,” she breathed through gritted teeth. “Not her. Never her.”

  But it was.

  “Sóma, take Aesa with you, please.” She ran to her sister as Sóma lifted her from the bed. Aesa didn’t wake up, though she made a grumbling noise. Dyrfinna planted a kiss on her brow. “I’ll come back,” she promised.

  “Where are you going?” Sóma cried.

  “I know that dragon.” Dyrfinna threw on her light armor and grabbed her shield.

  “Wait! Stop! Are you out of your mind?” Sóma cried, her voice following after Dyrfinna sprinted out of the room.

  “No more than usual,” Dyrfinna said to herself as she ran for the stairs.

  Dyrfinna, her heart breaking, took the stairs two at a time toward the top of the keep, racing toward the dragon stables. “Let me pass!” she cried to the people who were coming down the stairs to go into the heart of the mountain, running to safety.

  Finding the usually guarded door unlocked and partway open, Dyrfinna rushed through and came out at the top of the cliff. The dragon stables loomed up over her. Dragon stablers and dragonriders stood in the middle of the wide, obsidian landing area, exclaiming over the undead dragon still flying toward them, even as the dragons dived and mobbed it the way a flock of songbirds would attack a hawk—diving at its back, but staying well out of the reach of its teeth. Below Dyrfinna’s feet was the whole side of the keep, carved into the side of the mountain. The keep faced the ocean, and over that ocean, flying toward them, was Corae’s undead body.

  Dyrfinna had forgotten how gracefully Corae used to fly, those flicks of her wings at the end of each long sweep, the lazy way she used to glide along in the breeze, and she was a joy to watch. Now all of that grace and beauty had been destroyed. Corae’s wings were tattered, her movements mechanical, and what was left of her mouth hung open. She struggled through the air, broken, like a lizard that had been stepped on and dried in the sun.

  In tears, Dyrfinna cried into the wind, “Freyja, Odin All-Father, Thor of the hammer, I beg of you, to let me kill without mercy the one who did this to your noble servant, no matter the cost.”

  Thunder answered her.

  She realized, too late, that the gods had accepted her plea.

  “No matter the cost,” she murmured.

  Then she breathed deeply and faced it. There was nothing to be done about that now.

  Corae, all undead, slammed against the outer wall of Varinn’s keep like a blind thing. She scrambled up its rocky side, wings beating, digging in with her talons, up toward some
armed warriors leaning over a balcony, shouting drunkenly and waving swords at her. But as soon as the dragon reached them, her jaws blindly snapped at them, breaking one of their swords in half. They all fled inside and barred the door against her. Corae screamed at them, biting and tearing at the door, trying to break through.

  She’d never acted like this when she was alive. Her mind was gone, swallowed by the insatiable hunger of the dead.

  “Who did this to you?” Dyrfinna raged. “Who did this?” Even though she knew perfectly well who did.

  People rushed inside, but Dyrfinna grabbed a torch off the side of the stable wall. She held the torch up as she ran to the cliff, then swept it in circles.

  “Corae,” she cried. “Come here! It’s me, Finna! Come, let me help you!”

  Her old friend, her undead friend, came limping up the wall of the keep, turning her head left and right, shrieking at nothing.

  “Don’t be a fool, Finna,” Dyrfinna told herself, sweeping the torch in circles as she tried to attract Corae’s attention. “What do you remember of those old stories whenever some treasure-seeker breaks into a burial barrow? How does the dead one act? All friends, right?”

  No, the corpse would attack, wanting blood, wanting to grab the living man and bite out gobbets of living flesh. The dead wanted nothing more than to feed on life. They were starving for it. Their hunger was endless, insatiable.

  Dyrfinna did notice one thing, however: the dragon was not throwing flames at all. One good thing.

  “Hey, up here! Fresh meat!” she shouted at the dragon, waving the torch, holding it so it was obvious, to even a dead dragon, that she’d make a tasty meal. Even now she could remember those awful sounds Papa Ostryg made when the emberdragon had eaten him up.

  A dangerous game to play, she thought.