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, th
e 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.
"Mori, you're shivering," Bayrin said. He looked at her, his black cloak now white with snow. Snow even coated his eyebrows. And yet he began to doff his cloak. "Here, wear this too."
She held up her hands. "No, Bay. You're cold too. Keep your cloak, I'm all right."
His words, if not his cloak, warmed her. She wasn't sure why, but since battling Acribus underground, Bayrin had seemed much nicer. He sighed and rolled his eyes less often. He made fewer quips. He even held her hand when they stepped over ice—the hand with six fingers, which he would mock so much back at home. Had something happened underground to change him? Maybe he was only scared too… scared that the other Vir Requis were all dead, that the city of Nova Vita had fallen, that they would die out here.
Mori did something she never thought she would dare, something that a moon ago would terrify her. She stood on her tiptoes, leaned forward, and kissed Bayrin's cheek. His red stubble tickled her lips.
"But thank you, Bay."
He raised his eyebrows and whistled. "Oh my." He made to remove his boots. "Here, take my boots too! And my pants and shirt. Would you like some nice warm socks?" He wiggled his eyebrows. "Does that get me a kiss on the lips?"
Mori couldn't help but giggle. She shoved him back. "It'll get you frostbite, that's what."
As they kept walking, Mori hugged herself and wondered: What would it be like… to truly kiss Bayrin on the lips? Mori was eighteen already, but she had never kissed a boy. Her mother had been married at her age, and Lyana had kissed her first boy at age fourteen, but Mori had always feared it. Would it be painful and cold like… like when…?
She shook her head wildly, scattering snow. No. Don't think about that, Mori. Love isn't like that night, and if I ever kiss a boy, it will be for love. He would love me, and I would love him, and it will feel like those old days, when I'd sit by the fireplace and read books with maps.
She slipped on some ice, and Bayrin caught her hand to steady her, and she let him hold it as they kept walking. The forest spread cold ahead, as far as she could see. In the distance, upon the eastern wind, she thought she could hear a phoenix shriek.
LYANA
They walked down a twisting tunnel. Its floor was rubbery like skin and strewn with eyeballs like pebbles. Shattered spines rose in ridges along the walls, seeping blood. Fingers rose in tufts from nooks and crevices, nails cracked, snagging at them.
Lyana could see only several feet in each direction; shadows pushed deep around her, swirling and cackling, red eyes blazing in their depths. When the tunnels forked, Elethor did not hesitate, but always chose the path that sloped deeper down.
"Do you know where we're going?" she asked him.
He stared ahead, holding his tin lamp high. The flames flickered. They had oil enough for another day, two days at most.
"This tunnel is steeper," he said. "So that's where we go. Deeper into the darkness."
"You don't know that'll take us to the Starlit Demon," Lyana said. "This labyrinth is vast, Elethor. It might be larger than Requiem itself, larger than the world. According to the stories, the Starlit Demon is locked behind the Crimson Archway, and I haven't seen a single archway here. We need to find a map, or a source of knowledge, or—"
He spun toward her and glared. "Lyana, what map? What 'source of knowledge'? The last creatures we met who could talk were dangling on cobwebs, mumbling nonsense about numbers not lining up, and hairs that grew too slowly, or stars know what else."
"So your answer is to just walk blindly?" she demanded, voice rising now. She swept her sword around her. "Elethor, we are getting lost down here. You have no idea where to go. No idea what to do. No idea how to get back home. You—"
"Well, do you?" He raised his eyebrows. "Do you have answers? You're just as much in the dark. So unless you have suggestions, keep walking."
"Well, I…" She searched for words but found none and fumed. All her life, she had always had an answer to any question. She knew everything about geography, heraldry, warfare, swordplay, history, astronomy. She was the smartest person in Requiem, she was sure of it; yet now she felt so lost, so afraid.
She raised her left hand and shivered. Bandages covered
her fingers, hiding the gray, withered flesh. A day ago, only her fingertips had been shriveled and pale. Now lines of rot stretched from under the bandage, spreading across her palm to her wrist. The skin looked old, spotted and wrinkled, the bones beneath it brittle.
Elethor looked at her, his eyes softened, and he sighed.
"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head. "I can't feel my hand anymore. At least there's no pain."
She shivered and lowered her eyes, remembering the withered creatures back at Nedath's lair. She had hung among them for hours. Most were no wider than snakes, nothing but spines with loose skin, their limbs wilted stalks. Their skulls had long crumbled to dust, leaving loose faces like old rags.
"We are the Shrivels," one had told her, swinging on its cobwebs. "We are the lost ones, the cursed, the counters of the numbers… or maybe the numbers themselves." It grinned, showing toothless gums. "Soon you will be one of us, soon you will help us count, we will count all the numbers, we will line them, or she will hurt us, she will eat us, she will feed upon our sweetest meat."
How long will it be? Lyana wondered. She no longer doubted that their curse infected her. How long until her palm withered completely, and the disease spread to her arm, then her body, and finally left her a shrunken creature that could not die? Would she remain here in the Abyss, mumbling of shattered teeth that must be found, screws to turn, and more ramblings of the dark? Or would they hang her on a post in Requiem, a thing to pity, and she would linger there as the seasons turned, unable to die?
Suddenly she laughed. She couldn't help it.
"Imagine it, Elethor!" she said, tears in her eyes. Laughter shook her. "Me, only a piece of shriveled skin on a hook! Would you hang me by your throne so I could still watch the court?"
She laughed so hard that she didn't realize she was crying, that her laughter was becoming a panicked pant. She jerked when Elethor touched her shoulder, sure for an instant that it was her, Nedath, the demon who had bitten her shoulder and spoken of sucking her bones. She found herself wrapped in Elethor's arms, like the cobwebs had wrapped her, and she wept against him.
A Dawn of Dragonfire (Dragonlore, Book 1) Page 16
