Pillars of Dragonfire (20 page)

Til reached out
hesitantly. When he turned around, would his eyes be purest white, his face
twisted and dead, still a dybbuk?

"Bim?"

With a shaking hand,
she touched his shoulder.

He spun toward her.

He shed tears.

"Til," he
whispered.

She cried too, and she
pulled him into her arms and embraced him, and they shivered together.

"It's over,"
she whispered, rocking him gently. "It's over, it's over. We did it, Bim.
We reached the coast. We'll be safe here. We're safe. The seraphim dare not
enter the city."

"Stars, I wonder
why," Bim said.

She laughed through her
tears. "You were right to fear that place. But we're safe now. We—"

In the distance, the
fires burned.

They did not rise above
the city, but they flew along the coast, having skirted that hive of
possession. Now they stormed along the beach, heading toward her and Bim.

Countless chariots of
fire that lit the darkness. The most Til had ever seen since the failed
rebellion five years ago. Countless seraphim flew between them, and above all
rose the great light of the Overlord, a sun in the night.

"Hello, Til!"
rose a voice from the effulgence. "Welcome, child, to your grave!"

Til and Bim shouted,
shifted into dragons, and soared. The countless seraphim flew toward them from
all sides, burning the world.

 
 
MELIORA

They had been flying over
the sea for days now, no food, no water, growing weary, getting scared. And
always behind them cried out the harpies, forever on the horizon. Growing
closer.

The leagues of water
spread ahead, and still no sight of land.

"Will it never
end?" Elory whispered, flying at her side.

Meliora glided on the
wind and licked her dry palate. Her voice was hoarse. "It will end."

"You should
drink," said the purple dragon. "We still have some canteens with
water in the camp. Shift with me into human form and—"

"No." Meliora
shook her head. "There are those who need water more than I do. The elders
and children will drink first. Not us, the young and strong."

Young Meliora might have
been, but it was hard to feel strong. Not after this endless flight from Tofet.
She had not touched ground since her speech on the hill outside the walls of
their captivity, and with each day, her strength waned. Her throat and mouth
were so dry that even when she tried to sleep, riding on another dragon, the
pain woke her up. Some of her cuts were infected, she thought. The welts leaked
pale ooze. She had barely slept since leaving Tofet, barely eaten, and the
weariness made her head spin.

But worse than all was
her fear.

She feared that Requiem
lay too far, that they would perish and drown in the sea, a nation of six
hundred thousand souls drowning only leagues away from their homeland. She
feared that even should they reach Requiem, that a great enemy would await them
there, one too powerful to vanquish. She feared that Ishtafel would catch them,
would end their dream of rebuilding their nation.

And she feared
Leyleet's words, that curse that would not stop echoing.

You will never see
Requiem, daughter of dragons. With my dying breath I curse you.

She forced those words
out of her mind. Requiem surely lay just ahead, just beyond the horizon. Soon
they would be home.

"Soon it will be
over," Meliora told her sister. "After all your pain, Elory—it will
be over. For all the children of Requiem. I cannot imagine the pain you went
through in Tofet, my sweet sister. I cannot imagine the agony so many endured
for five hundred years, while I lived in comfort." She lowered her head.
"Leyleet told me that I would never see Requiem, and perhaps I don't
deserve to lead our people home. Not I, who dined in palaces and slept on beds
of silk while you toiled in the mud. It should be Jaren, or you, or Vale who
leads this camp, not I."

The lavender dragon
flew closer to her. Her eyes shone damply. "And yet it was you who gave us
hope. You who gave
me
hope. You who marched with us, a multitude of
slaves, into the City of Kings to demand our freedom. You who first flew as a
dragon, soaring above us, letting us see your majesty. And you who led us out
of the land of Tofet. And you will lead us home, Meliora. You will lead us
through the gates of Requiem, and you will rebuild our land. And you will be
our queen in the rebuilt marble halls."

Meliora's eyes stung.
"I don't deserve a crown. I would see Jaren sit upon a new throne in a
rebuilt Requiem. Or if not him, then Vale. Or you. Or Lucem, for he is a great
hero of Requiem, one who gave our people hope long before I led you in a march.
I just . . . I just want to undo all this. Everything that my family—my other
family—has done." She stared at Elory pleadingly. "Do you
understand? I caused you so much pain. I lived in a palace your hands built,
wore clothes you wove, ate food you farmed, lived as a princess of an empire
that rested upon your yokes. I need to atone for all that. I must be the one
who fights this war, who fights for our freedom. But I deserve no honor. I
don't deserve a place in songs of epics, and I should not be the first to enter
the gates of Requiem, nor the first to wear her new crown."

Elory smiled thinly. "Let's
focus right now on finding Requiem, and then we can argue about who'll wear the
crown."

"I
volunteer!" A red dragon shot toward them, wagged his tail, and grinned.
"Let me do both. I'll be the first to set foot in Requiem, and I'll be her
first new king. King Lucem the Lovable. Has a nice ring to it."

Elory rolled her eyes.
"You are nothing but a peasant. Perhaps when I'm princess, you can be my
lovable servant."

Lucem's eyes widened.
"Peasant?
Peasant
?" The red dragon clutched his chest with his
claws. "She wounds me! Do you hear how she wounds me, Meliora? Yet I heard
what you called me—a great hero of Requiem. At least somebody respects
me."

The sisters sighed and
kept flying.

Requiem flew onward
across the sea.

The sun set and the
stars emerged. High above them, no longer on the horizon but rearing across the
zenith, shone the Draco constellation. Meliora was prepared to shift back into
human form, to ride for a while on her father or another dragon, when cries
rose across the camp.

"The stars!"
dragons cried.

"Praise the stars
of Requiem!"

The cries swept across
the camp, and dragons stared upwards, calling out in joy and awe.

Meliora looked up and
gasped. Her eyes dampened.

"It's true,"
she whispered. "The stars bless us."

Above in the sky,
luminous strands were coiling out from the Draco stars, flowing across the
darkness like milk spilled from jugs. Slowly the strands of starlight connected
the stars of the constellation and flared out in filigree, forming the shape of
a great celestial dragon. The Draco constellation was no longer just stars but
a beast of the sky, its tail coiling, its head rearing, its claws gripping the
firmaments, all woven of light. Draco's eye shone brightest, Issari's Star
gazing upon her children.

"The stars guide
us home," Jaren said, rising up to fly at her side. "Requiem is
close. Look, Meliora. Look ahead."

She gazed northward,
and there she saw it.

Tears streamed down her
scaly cheeks.

"Thank you, my
stars," she whispered, trembling, and she could not stop
shedding tears.

You were wrong,
Leyleet. You were wrong. I see her. I see her ahead. I see Requiem.

The coast lay on the
horizon, still many miles away. But Meliora could see Requiem even in the
darkness. Lights lined the coast, shining like the stars. Great cities rose
there—perhaps the cities of seraphim, perhaps even settlements of Vir Requis
said to have survived the war five hundred years ago.

Once more, Meliora
raised her pillar of white dragonfire, a beacon for her people to follow.

"Hear me, children
of Requiem!" she cried. "Our homeland awaits us. Requiem lies before
us. We are home!"

"We are
home!" her people cried. "We are home!"

They flew onward,
crossing the last few miles of dark water, the Draco stars shining above. The
coast grew brighter ahead, the many lights shining, and joy swelled in
Meliora's heart, and—

She gasped.

She narrowed her eyes.

Those were no city lights
along the coast, she saw.

The coast was burning.

"Chariots of
fire," she whispered. "Thousands of them."

Across the flight of dragons,
cries of fear replaced the cries of joy. The dragons all stared ahead, and the
firelight blazed, washing out the light of the stars.

Even in the heat of
dragonfire, cold fear flowed over Meliora as the dragons flew onward—toward
Requiem, toward the seraphim, toward war.

 
 
TIL

She flew, an orange dragon,
rising above the beach, blasting her fire. Bim flew at her side, a small black
dragon, his fire rising with hers.

Around them, the sky
burned with the holy light of seraphim.

The immortals rose
everywhere, covering the beach, the sea, and more flowing in. They hid the
night sky. Their light bathed the world. Flaming chariots flew in
rings, their firehorses thundering across the firmaments. Their seraphim chanted
from within, raising their lances and bows, their halos shining. Above them
all, in the center of the luminous maelstrom, flew the Overlord—a great light,
a sun, a god. All other seraphim nearly drowned in his light, and his glory
blasted down in great beams, falling upon Til and Bim, searing them.

"Til!" Bim
shouted. "Til, what do we do?"

Die,
she knew.

Die.

They had fled from
seraphim before, but never this many. Here was an army. An army larger than the
one that had crushed their rebellion five years ago, slaying all but her
family. An army like the one that had destroyed Requiem five hundred years
ago, crushing this ancient kingdom.

We die.

The seraphim surrounded
them. Til felt that she flew within the sun, light all around her, searing her
scales, nearly blinding her. Her brother screamed at her side. The city
vanished in the light. The sea no longer whispered, and flames hid the sky.

A melodious voice spoke
above, so fair, so holy that Meliora wept to hear it. The voice of a comforting
angel, of a kind god, of a father, of a mother. A voice that promised to soothe
all pain.

"Come to me,
Meliora," said the Overlord. "Come to me, Bim. Fly into my light,
children of Requiem, and let me relieve your weary heads. Come rest in my
brilliance. Your pain is over."

Til found herself
flying higher, ascending toward the light. Her pain could end. She could rise
into the Overlord's presence, bask in his light, let him claim her soul,
discard her broken body. She could forever seek comfort in his light, burned
away, becoming part of his light.

We can ascend,
she thought.
We can rest. We can become illuminated.

As she flew higher, his
figure came into focus, the light surrounding him with a great sphere. The
Overlord stood taller than most seraphim, nearly the size of her dragon form.
His long platinum hair streamed as if floating in water, and his golden armor shone.
His halo hummed with holiness, and he held a great lance longer than a man,
tipped with sunlight.

Til recognized that
lance.

The lance that had
driven into her father, piercing the dragon. The lance Father's human body had
hung on.

The lance the Overlord
would drive into her and her brother.

"Yes, we
die," she whispered. "But not ascending into light. We die as
dragons. We die in dragonfire."

She roared and blasted
up that dragonfire, a great fountain rising toward the Overlord.

Bim roared with her,
blasting his flames.

"For
Requiem!" the black dragon cried.

"For death!"
Til answered the cry.

For Father. For all
those you killed. For a last stand and death in glory.

The Overlord swooped,
lance plunging downward, light flaring. The two dragons soared to meet him,
breathing fire, rising toward death in flame.

And from the south,
countless voices answered their cry.

"For
Requiem!" rose a first cry, distant, barely audible.

"Requiem rises,
Requiem rises!" rose a thousand other voices.

"To war! To
victory! To our home!"

All around, the
seraphim shrieked. Their wings beat madly. They spun in the sky, breaking the
sphere they had formed around Til and Bim. Their lances thrust toward the sea.

"Requiem!"
rose the voices, and countless whips beat, and roars rolled across the sky, and
an inferno of fire blazed across the world.

Til spread her wings as
wide as they'd go, halting her ascent, and spun toward the south.

Her eyes watered.

There above the sea she
saw them.

"Dragons,"
she whispered, tasting her tears. "Dragons coming home."

 
 
VALE

All his life, Vale had been
fighting.

In the pits of Tofet,
he had fought against the sun that burned him, the thirst that bloodied his
throat, the whips that lashed him, the exhaustion that threatened to slay him
like so many of his comrades. In the great uprising against the overseers, he
had fought his masters, had battled Ishtafel in the sky, had blown his fire
against many enemies across the southern continent.

But now,
he
thought,
I fight a different battle. Now I fight for my homeland.

The sky exploded around
him.

Fire flared in great
streams.

Shadows burst and shattered.