Breathe, she thought. She inhaled slowly as Master Lan Tao had taught her. Brea—
"Up!" the gruff soldier shouted. He grabbed her by the ear and tugged, and Madori screamed in pain and scrambled to her feet, sure he would rip her ear straight off. "Now go. Walk! Move—the lot of you. Go, nightcrawlers!"
Madori blinked and turned around. She gasped. Before her gaped the great sinkhole that had swallowed Pahmey; only a few walls and homes surrounded the chasm in a ring. Those few Elorians who had fled the city stood outside the devastation.
Fresh tears filled Madori's eyes. She saw a thousand survivors, perhaps two thousand—no more. Blood covered many of them. They wore ragged burlap tunics; no more silk dresses, scale armor, or simple fur garments distinguished between Elorian nobles, soldiers, and commoners. All stood trembling, their bodies bruised and bleeding, their wrists and ankles bound with chains. The prisoners gazed at Madori with their gleaming Elorian eyes, large and blue and purple like lanterns in the night. A few were only children, weeping and unable to even cling to their parents, their limbs chained.
When Madori looked down at her body, she saw that she too had been dressed in burlap rags. Dust, mud, and blood covered what parts of her the ragged tunic did not. Manacles encircled her ankles and wrists, and chains ran between them, long enough to let her walk but not run or fight. She pawed for her locket, but it no longer hung around her neck. Grayhem, her dear nightwolf, was nowhere in sight.
She spun back toward the squat, scruffy Magerian who had struck her. He wore golden eclipses upon his pauldrons, she saw; this one was a commander. She spoke in a slow, steady voice simmering with rage.
"Let. Us. Go." She bared her teeth. "I don't know who you are, but if you don't release us, I will—"
He drove his fist into her belly.
She doubled over, coughing and spitting out blood. Her eyes burned. She could barely breathe.
"Chop off her head, Sir Gora!" shouted a soldier.
"Gouge our her eyes!" cried another.
Through her tears, Madori saw the gruff captain—Sir Gora—shake his head and spit. "This one's a mongrel. Only half nightcrawler, she is. Her hair ain't white and her skin ain't pale enough to be full-crawler. Serin said to keep mongrels alive." He shook blood off his fist. "She'll get to the emperor, one way or another." He pulled a whip off his belt and cracked it in the air. "Nightcrawlers—move!"
Around the chained prisoners, the Magerians soldiers mounted horses and cracked whips. Several of those whips landed across Elorian backs, shedding blood.
"Move!"
One by one, the Elorians began to shuffle forward; their chains only allowed them to take short, heavy steps. A few wept as they walked, their manacles clattering, their chests shaking. Others glanced around nervously. Some walked while staring with defiance, eyes hard, fists clenched. A few were were strong and healthy; they walked straight. Others were too old, too young, wounded, or weak; they limped and swayed as they hobbled forward.
Her mouth still bleeding, Madori walked with them. When she missed a step, Gora—he now rode upon a stallion beside her—cracked his whip. Stones cut into Madori's bare feet, her chains felt heavier than boulders, and her head spun so wildly she barely knew north from south. As the convoy of prisoners moved, the Magerians kept shouting and lashing their whips. They herded the prisoners into a long, snaking line, three or four Elorians wide.
"March!" Gora shouted from his horse. "Move, nightcrawlers! Stop and you die."
One Elorian, a little boy barely ten years old, swayed and collapsed.
"Move!" Gora shouted. "Up!"
The Radian's whip hit the boy's back. Blood splattered.
"Stop that!" Madori shouted. She lunged forward, trying to reach the fallen boy, but Radian soldiers grabbed her, tugged her back into the line, and shouted at her to keep walking.
"Let go!" She managed to tear free, even with her chains, and hurried toward the fallen boy. Gora was leaning across his saddle, beating the child, whip landing again and again. Madori screamed and placed herself between the boy and the whip. The lash struck across her chest, and she yowled.
"Back into the line!" Gora shouted.
"Let me help him," she said, blood dripping across her. She knelt and tried to raise the Elorian boy, to revive him.
Oh stars . . .
She lowered her head, weeping.
The boy was dead.
"Walk!" Gora shouted. He dismounted his horse, grabbed Madori under the arms, yanked her to her feet, and shoved her back into the line with the other prisoners.
She kept moving, her chest constricting with fear. Before her, the two thousand survivors stretched across the dark plains. They moved on, leaving the ruins of Pahmey behind.
Madori could barely walk. She had lost too much blood, was too hurt, and her chains were too heavy. Yet she forced herself to keep moving one foot after another, refusing to fall.
Breathe. Focus. Be a still pond.
The procession continued to move across the landscape. Madori counted several hundred Radian troops on horseback, their whips ready to strike any Elorian who fell.
At first the Elorians marched close together, some weeping, most silent. But the road stretched on. After walking for several hours, some began to fall. An old woman. A wounded soldier, his hand severed. A young girl. They fell to their knees, begging for rest, begging for mercy.
They found neither.
The Radian whips tore into flesh.
"Up! March!"
A few of the fallen rose and shuffled on. Other simply lay on the ground, too weak to continue. The whips kept cutting into them, and Radian lances drove into their backs. As the march continued, the prisoners moving deeper into the darkness, the fallen remained behind upon the barren land—broken bodies for the night to claim.
As Madori walked, she kept scanning the crowd of prisoners. She stood at the back of the line; the two thousand Elorians stretched ahead of her, heads lowered. Their long white hair flowed like banners, and blood and dust covered their bodies.
"Are you here, Mother?" Madori whispered. She kept rising onto her toes, even hopping in her chains, trying to find Koyee in the crowd. But she could barely distinguish between the Elorians ahead; bloodied and chained, they had become a single mass of broken souls.
And they kept falling.
Whenever one prisoner crashed down, the Radian whips landed, and spears thrust. Most of the fallen never rose again. Every few moments, Madori found herself stepping over another corpse. And with every corpse, her heart trembled, and she expected to see her mother lying dead beneath her. She saw so many dead faces: children, elders, wounded soldiers . . . but never Koyee.
"Are you still alive, Mother?" Madori whispered, trudging on. "Have you fallen in the battle of the dusk? Or in the ruin of Pahmey?" She trembled. "Or do you march here ahead, so close to me?"
"Silence!" Gora shouted. He rode his horse beside her, swung his whip, and lashed Madori across the shoulders. "Walk!"
She cried out in pain, and she kept walking, blood trickling down her back.
The moon rose and fell above. The stars moved. The Magerians changed their shifts; some retired to a wagon to sleep, and others emerged to ride the horses and goad the prisoners on. They had soon walked for a full turn—the length of a day and night back when the world had still spun—and the Magerians gave them no rest. The second turn of marching stretched on, and the whips and spears kept lashing, and the Elorians kept falling. Their captors laughed as they rode their horses, drank wine, and feasted upon meat and bread and grapes. Whenever an Elorian fell dead, they roared with laughter and trampled over the body, leaving it crushed behind. Whenever Madori looked over her shoulder, she could see the trail of the dead—hundreds stretching into the north.
They had left Pahmey with two thousand Elorian survivors. By the time the second turn of marching ended, only a thousand still lived.
The moon and stars kept moving across the sky. Based on what Madori
knew of their dance, they must have been walking for three turns now. The Magerian shifts changed again, the sleepers emerging from their wagon with renewed cruelty. Madori swayed as she walked. Tears streamed down her face. Her knees ached and her lungs could barely suck in air. She kept trying to summon her magic, to break her chains, but could not; she was too weak, too wounded. Dying.
Breathe, she thought. Like Master Lan Tao taught you. Yet how could she breathe when her lungs blazed with fire?
"Hurry up, mongrel!" Gora called from his horse. He swung his spear, cracking the wooden shaft against her back. "You're slowing down."
The pain was too much.
Madori fell to her knees.
An instant later, her face hit the dirt.
I can't go on. It's over.
Gora dismounted his horse and knelt beside her. He grabbed her hair and tugged her head up.
"Stand!" he barked. "Serin insisted you live. Stand! Walk."
She tried. She pushed herself onto her elbows, but her arms wobbled, and she crashed back down.
Gora's boot drove into her belly. "Up!"
She wept. She could no longer move.
I will die here, she thought, staring at the dust around her. I will die here under the stars of my home.
"Up!"
She stared up, and she saw them there—the constellations of Eloria. The racing wolf. The leaping fish. The proud warrior. She remembered seeing these constellations in her book back in the daylight. Her mother would read the book to her, describing all the great beings in the sky. Madori remembered the taste of the tea her mother would brew, the softness of Koyee's silken dresses, the warmth of the hearth in their home, the comfort of her dolls.
I miss that home, she thought, though it lies in ruins. And I miss you, Mother, though I don't even know if you live or lie dead. But I can't go on. I can't.
With her last drop of strength, Madori raised her head, and a glint caught her eye.
She gasped.
Gora, cruel captain of the march, was wearing her locket around his neck.
He must have been hiding it under his shirt until now. In his fervor of kicking and shouting, the locket had emerged from under his collar and swung open. Inside Madori saw the view from the second locket.
This time, it did not show Emperor Serin.
Instead, it was Lari's face in the locket.
The young woman was dressed in splendor: she wore gilded armor, a samite cloak, and a jeweled tiara. Her golden hair flowed across her shoulders, rich and lustrous. Powder and rouge hid the scars Tam and Neekeya had given her cheeks outside of Teel, and fine cosmetics adorned her eyelids and lips. Through the locket, she stared into Madori's eyes and smiled—that old smile that dripped both honey and poison.
"Look," Lari mouthed silently.
The view in the locket moved.
Madori cried out.
"Mother!" Tears sprang into her eyes. "Mother!"
Koyee lay in the dirt, covered in dust and blood. She was barely recognizable. Koyee too wore a burlap tunic, and her captors had sheared off her hair, leaving her scalp nicked and dripping blood. Bruises covered her face. But Madori knew it was her mother, and she cried out to her.
Trembling, Koyee looked up into the locket. She saw Madori and tears filled her eyes. She reached out a trembling hand, crying out words Madori could not hear.
Gora grunted, snapped the locket shut, and tucked it back under his collar.
Even through the pain and weariness, even as she lay on the ground, perhaps dying, rage flared in Madori.
Lari and Serin are torturing my mother.
She roared.
I will save you, Mother. I'm coming. I promise.
Teeth clenched and limbs shaking, Madori pushed herself to her feet.
She rejoined the Elorian procession. Her chains rattling, she walked with the others, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed.
Step by step, she thought. Walk. Ignore the pain. Pain is irrelevant. She focused only on her breath, letting the pain flow away like her thoughts. Even if your body blazes with agony, keep walking. Never stop.
Her eyes leaked, and she clenched her fists. She stepped over a fallen body. She walked on.
"I'm coming for you, Mother," she whispered. "And I'm coming for you too, Lari and Serin . . . and somehow, with magic, with my chains, or only with my fingernails and teeth, I will kill you."
Another body crashed down before her. Chin raised, Madori stared ahead across the marching prisoners and laughing Radians.
The march continued into the endless, cold darkness of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
INTO DARKNESS
The Red Flame Armada sailed up the Inaro River, driving deep into the dark wilderness of Qaelin.
Jitomi, the new emperor of Ilar, flew above his fleet upon Tianlong's back. The dragon coiled beneath him, red beard fluttering and black scales chinking. Below, upon the silver river, the five hundred ships formed a great serpent of lights, their lanterns red and orange. Battened sails rose high, catching the wind. Many oars pounded the river, driving the ships upstream. Cannons, soldiers in steel, and pagodas bearing archers rose upon the decks. It was the greatest fleet in the world, a machine of war, a floating empire. Tens of thousands of troops stood upon these decks or within the hulls, waiting to kill. Thousands of cannons stood ready to fire into the enemy.
"This is," Jitomi whispered, "the hope of the night."
Tianlong grunted, his scales chinking. "Ilar has always been smaller than Qaelin, but its armies greater, its ships mightier. For too many generations, we tormented the northern coast, slaying our own brothers and sisters." The dragon bared his fangs. "But now the might of Ilar will crush Timandrians, even if we must sail into the very lands of sunlight." The dragon looked over his shoulder at Jitomi, and his red eyes narrowed. "You will lead us to glory, my emperor."
Jitomi took a shuddering breath. Emperor . . . No, he had never wished to be Ilar's Emperor. His head still spun to consider it. For many generations, the Hashido family had been powerful, wealthy, a protector of the coast. But to usurp Empress Hikari, to begin a new, imperial dynasty . . .
"I never wanted this, Tianlong," he said softly. "I never imagined my father would seize the throne. I never imagined he would die and I would inherit that throne. I'm not a leader." He looked down at the hundreds of sailing ships. "They will know. They will find out that I'm not a warrior, not an emperor to fear. And fear has always been the glue holding Ilar together."
Coiling across the sky, Tianlong puffed smoke out from his nostrils. "Jitomi, I have protected Ilar for thousands of years, and I have seen many emperors rise and fall. I have seen a dozen dynasties claw their way up from the dirt, reach glory, and fade. One dynasty ends, another begins. This has always been the way of Ilar."
Jitomi nodded. "I know the history. But all those emperors were great warriors—like Hikari. Like my father. Like all the conquerors before them. What chance do I have?" He shook his head. "I defeated Lord Naroma, but how long until another lord rises to challenge me, to usurp my reign with armies and many ships?"
The dragon raised his eyebrows and thrust out his jaw. "Probably not very long." He looked back at Jitomi, and a hint of amusement filled his eyes. "Were you hoping I'd tell you that you're strong too, or that you can find inner strength and lead this nation for many years? No. That would be a lie." He laughed, spewing smoke. "Truth is, Jitomi, you won't last long upon this throne. You are gentle and kind—admirable qualities for a man, poor qualities for an Ilari emperor. If you were to seek my advice, I would tell you to flee into the wilderness, to hide, to never emerge back into the night, for you speak truth: the lords of other houses will rebel against you, and even within your own house you will face challengers, for your elder sisters will lust for the throne. They will see you for what you are: a mere boy. And they will crush you."
Jitomi tightened his hands around the saddle's horn. He stared forward along the Inaro River that snaked northward
through the dark lands of Qaelin. "So I cannot keep this throne. But maybe I can lead this fleet for just long enough—long enough to find her." His throat felt too tight. "To find Madori. And long enough to fight Serin. Tianlong, will you help me? Will you be loyal to me, at least until we can win this war? I can't do this without you. The nobles will not fear or respect me, but they still respect you."
The black dragon licked his chops. His fangs gleamed. "I am loyal only to Ilar, little emperor. For thousands of years, I fought only for the Red Flame, not for any mortal man or woman." He snorted. "Some emperors claimed to be immortal, to be deities of the night. They lie buried underground and I still fly." Fire kindled in his eyes. "I am the last dragon in all of Mythimna. Did you know that, Jitomi?"
Hail filled the wind, pattering against Jitomi's armor. He pulled down the visor of his helmet. The ice crashed against the steel. "I do." His voice barely carried over the wind. "Your two last siblings—Shenlai of Qaelin and Pirilin of Leen—fell in the War of Day and Night. The Timandrians slew them. I emerged into the world as Pirilin fell. I was born during that great last battle in Asharo."
Rage and pain twisted the dragon's voice. "The Timandrians slew them. I was there when Pirilin died. I saw the cruelty of sunlight. I fought with Hikari, a noble empress, against the hosts of the light." He tossed back his head and let out a roar. "And I mourn my siblings still. Now Timandra attacks again. Your father wanted to join the Timandrians, to lie down with demons. You, Jitomi, want to fight." The dragon's face split into a horrible, toothy grin. "So yes, I will help you for now. I will keep you alive even as the nobles may plot to slay you. And we will fight the sunlight together."
Jitomi closed his eyes. He thought back to his first battle. It had been on the road outside of Teel University in Mageria, his friends at his side. He had fought Lari herself then, and he had nearly died in the dirt. He had been only a boy, cast out from his father's court, alone, afraid.
He opened his eyes and looked back down at the fleet, the legendary mighty of Ilar. Upon hundreds of decks, men were beating drums. Thousands of oars rowed to the beat. Thousands of soldiers all in steel, their helmets shaped as snarling demon faces, prepared for war. Jitomi clutched the hilt of his own sword.
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