Dragons Lost (18 page)

He led her out of the
bathing chamber, up a staircase, and through a doorway. They entered a
bedchamber whose windows overlooked the dark sea. A meal waited on a table by
the window, steaming and filling Domi's nostrils with delicious scents. Her
mouth watered. When she approached the table, she saw a silver platter with a
roast duck upon a bed of leeks and spiced mushrooms, diced potatoes fried with
onions, bread rolls topped with grains, a stick of butter, and a bowl of
grapes, dates, and cherries. White wine filled a jeweled pitcher.

"Oh Spirit," she
whispered.

As a firedrake, she had
been given nothing but raw meat in rusty old buckets. Those had been her only
meals for years. To eat proper human food . . . by the stars of Requiem, it
would be divine, perhaps the thing Domi had missed most about being human.

She looked up at
Gemini, seeking his approval. A smile split his face, and he patted her flat
belly. "Go and fill this thing."

She raced toward the
table and began to feast. She scarfed down the food so fast she barely had time
to breathe or swallow. Gemini sat across the table from her, eating little,
watching her with a small smile on his face. She ignored him. She stuffed
pieces of duck into her mouth, chewing vigorously, and chomped on bread and
potatoes between bites of meat. She gulped down the wine straight from the
pitcher, holding the vessel with both hands. Grease and wine dripped down her
chin.

"Careful or you'll need
another bath," Gemini said.

She kept eating.
Finally—she must have consumed more food than an army—she could not eat another
bite. She slouched back in the chair, patting her rounded belly. She thought
she'd never be able to walk again, just sit here and digest for days and days.
She couldn't help but hiccup, then covered her mouth with embarrassment,
feeling her cheeks blush.

"I told you, Domi,"
Gemini said. "I'll watch over you. I'll always make sure you have fine clothes
to wear, hot baths whenever you'd like them, delicious meals and the best wine
in the Commonwealth. You're mine now. You're my woman. My love. You will live
like a queen."

A queen in a gilded
cage,
she thought, and guilt filled her. She was eating the food of the
enemy. She was living in splendor while her family fled for their lives. She
was dining with a paladin while that paladin's sister led an army to hunt Domi's
family.

She lowered her head,
the guilt suddenly heavier in her belly than the food.

Gemini rose from his
seat, walked toward her, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "We'll keep it a
secret," he said, voice soft. "Your disease. We'll tell my sister that Pyre,
the firedrake, is dead and buried under the sea. We'll tell her that you're my
lover, a pure woman. Nobody will know that you're ill with the dragon curse. We
won't tell them."

Domi closed her eyes.

Disease.

Yes, he still thought
her diseased of course. He still thought the ancient magic of Requiem a curse,
not the blessing Domi knew it was.

He's your enemy,
Domi,
she told herself.
Never forget that. Never forget who you are.

She pushed away the
empty plates and looked around the room. "There's only one bed. Where do I
sleep?" She narrowed her eyes. "I'm not sharing a bed with you, Gemini."

"Of course not," he
said quickly, but she saw the hint of embarrassment in his eyes; he had hoped
she would. "I'll take the floor. I'm sure you wouldn't mind letting me have one
of the blankets, at least."

They lay down to sleep—she
on the bed, wrapped in a sheet, he on the floor atop a thick blanket. Soon he
was breathing deeply, lost in slumber.

She looked down at him.

Kill him,
whispered a voice in her head.
Kill him now. Stab him with the knife on the
table, then flee out the window. He's your enemy.

She closed her eyes.
She trembled. She could not.

Sleep was slow to find
her, for so much confusion and fear filled her—for her family, for her own
life, for the memory of Requiem fading from the world. Finally she thought of
Cade again, as she often did before sleeping. She brought to mind his kind,
honest face, his large hazel eyes, his messy brown hair. She imagined that he
was lying in this bed with her, that it was Cade she shared this chamber with,
not a cruel paladin. Finally she slept, pretending that she lay on the beach
with Cade under a blanket of stars.

Yet her dreams were
different. In her slumber, she saw herself as a paladin, clad in white armor,
hunting her family, shooting them with arrows, killing them and laughing with
Gemini as they died.

 
 
FIDELITY

She sat among the trees, staring down
at the codex on the table. She caressed the book's cover, trailing her fingers
over the silver words worked into the leather:
The Book of Requiem
.

I gave up so much
for this book,
Fidelity thought, passing her fingers over and over across
the leather.

She could have found a
better life. She could have sought purification, burned the magic out of her
with tillvine, and perhaps found a life in the Cured Temple. She could have
taken a husband in the town of Sanctus, found a life as a wife, content and
peaceful, with no dreams of old kingdoms and fallen glory. She could have even
joined Roen in the forest, her sweet lover whom she had spurned, and spent a
life in his strong arms, kissing him every day, sleeping every night in his
arms.

But I chose this
book,
Fidelity thought, staring at it through the thick lenses of her
spectacles.
I chose the memory of a dead land, a lore that is all but lost .
. . lost but for this single volume before me.

She looked up from the
book, pushing her spectacles up her nose; with her nose being so small, the
damn things kept sliding off every moment.

The others
stared back at her: Cade, a boy with messy brown hair, eager hazel eyes, and a
nervous energy that had him bouncing in his seat; Korvin, her father—gruff,
grizzled, and grumbling, an aging soldier with old pain in his eyes; and Amity,
the newest member of their group, her short blond hair falling across her ears
and forehead, her one eyebrow raised, her lips twisted into a mocking smile
that Fidelity suspected hid a deep fear. The trees of the island rose all
around them, walls of greenery, and the song of birds, monkeys, and rustling
leaves rose all around. The Horde's camp lay some distance down a dirt path;
here, in the forest clearing, the Vir Requis spoke alone.

You should
be here with us, Roen,
Fidelity thought, feeling hollow without him, a deep
emptiness, a sadness that her lover had chosen his life of solitude in the
forest, forgetting Requiem, forgetting all that Fidelity fought for.
You
should be with us, a man of Requiem, fighting for our kingdom.

Fidelity took a
deep breath and finally spoke.

"We had ten
copies of
The Book of Requiem
in the library. Only one remains." She
caressed the codex. "Here is all that is left of our kingdom, of Requiem, and—"

"I'm left!"
Amity leaped to her feet, pounded her fist into her palm, and snarled across
the table. "
We
are left. We're more important than some dusty old book."
The tall woman huffed. "No star-damn piece of rotten parchment can replace
living, breathing warriors." She spat into the dirt. "The pages of a book are
good for wiping your arse, not rebuilding a kingdom."

Cade stared up
at the older woman from his seat. "You can't read, can you?" He scoffed. "Even
I can read, and—"

Amity growled
and grabbed the boy's collar, yanking him from his seat. She stood a couple of
inches taller than Cade, and she probably had a few pounds on him too. Korvin
had to growl, step between the two, and separate them.

"Return to your
seats!" the old soldier barked. "Cade, stop taunting the woman. Amity, if the
boy bothers you again, let me slap him silent." When both were seated, Korvin
looked back at Fidelity, some of the rage leaving his dark eyes. "Daughter,
continue."

Fidelity
nodded. "Thank you, Father." She cleared her throat and pushed her spectacles
back up her nose. She looked at Amity; the older woman sat fuming, fists
clenched and eyes shooting daggers. Fidelity met her gaze. "Amity, you are a
warrior, and you are brave and strong; I don't doubt that. But we cannot all be
warriors. The world needs librarians too. And the world needs books. Requiem
needs its book. This volume contains the lore we fight for. In these pages, we
can learn the history of our people: how Aeternum, the first King of Requiem,
united the wild Vir Requis of the forests and deserts and raised a column of
marble, founding our kingdom; how Queen Gloriae, heroine of Requiem, rebuilt
the kingdom after the griffins toppled its halls, ushering in a new era of
peace and plenty; how King Elethor and Queen Lyana fought invaders from the
south, saving Requiem as the phoenixes burned its forests; how King Valien and
Queen Kaelyn defeated the tyranny that had seized the throne, returning Requiem
to a path of—"

"Boring!" Amity
yawned theatrically. "Bloody bollocks, girl, don't recite the whole damn book.
Get to the point before we die of old age."

Fidelity
nodded. "Very well. The bottom line is: Countless heroes and battles are
recounted in
The Book of Requiem
, and without it, our people have no
past, no memory, and thus no future. We need more copies. If this single volume
is lost, Requiem is lost."

Cade leaped to
his feet, light filling his eyes. "So we'll get to copying! I know how to
write. Unlike Am—" At a growl from Amity, he gulped. "I can write new copies.
Just bring me some parchment, a quill, some ink, and I'll get to work. If Amity
wants to help, she can stroke my hair or rub my feet as I write."

Again the
golden-haired warrior leaped to her feet. "How about I rip out your tongue,
boy? I'll make parchment from your skin and ink from your blood." She leaped
back toward him and knocked him off his seat, and Cade yelped and held up his
arms to ward off her attack. Korvin and Fidelity had to leap forward and drag
the combatants apart.

"Enough!"
Korvin thundered. He yanked Cade backward and shoved him into a seat at the
other side of the table. "Boy, you sit here, far from Amity, and you shut your
mouth."

Finally, when
everyone was seated again, Fidelity continued speaking. "I myself have written
a copy of
The Book of Requiem
; it was lost in the library. It can take
hundreds of hours to copy a book this size—there are over a thousand pages
here, all crammed full of tiny letters. And that's just one copy. We need
hundreds of copies, distributed all over Requiem." She took a deep, tingling
breath. "Before the paladins destroyed our library, we had acquired a small
book—a copy of
The Book of the Cured
—from a passing peddler. It was not
written with a quill but printed using a new machine. The peddler explained
that in his town, an inventor had created many metal letters, which one could
arrange onto a hard, flat sheet of iron. One then coats the letters with ink—like
stamps—and presses all these stamps down together onto the page. A single page
in a book can be created in a second—hundreds of the same pages can be printed
at once." Her eyes lit up. "That's what we need. We need this machine. Then we
could print hundreds of copies of
The Book of Requiem
."

Cade gasped and
his eyes lit up. "Blimey! We could distribute copies all over the Commonwealth.
Fly over towns and drop 'em down! Let everyone learn the truth, learn that the Cured
are a bunch of liars. Learn that we're not cursed, that we're Vir Requis." His
eyes dampened, and he rose from his seat, leaped toward Fidelity, and grabbed
her hands. "It's brilliant, Fidelity. Bloody brilliant! So where do we get this
machine?"

She sighed. "That's
the problem. They only exist in the city of Oldnale."

Cade's chest
deflated. "One of the Commonwealth's largest cities. A stronghold of the
Temple."

Silence fell
upon the assembly. Fidelity heard only the song of birds, the chirp of insects,
the howls of monkeys, and the hum of the Horde's camp in the distance.

Finally Cade
nodded. "Fine. No problem. We go to Oldnale. We're no firedrakes; we all have
human forms. We walk into the city, we buy this printing press, and we take it
somewhere safe."

Korvin
grumbled. "It won't be that easy. I've seen Oldnale. I served there as a
soldier before they shipped me off to fight the Horde across the sea. Hundreds
of Temple soldiers guard its walls and gates, inspecting every item that enters
and leaves. They search for anything contraband in the Commonwealth: fabrics
other than burlap, cosmetics, jewelry, and banned books. They'd find us smuggling
out a printing press, sure as a monkey's backside is red."

"Well, this
monkey is going to try anyway." Cade pounded his chest and scratched under his
arms.

Amity groaned.
She paced across the forest clearing, her leather boots snapping twigs and
crunching fallen leaves. "This is all ridiculous." She lifted a fig fallen from
a nearby tree and hurled it into the branches, scaring away a flock of parrots.
"Sneaking around? Smuggling metal letters up our arses? Writing bloody books
about rotting old kings?" She hawked noisily and spat. "To the Abyss with that
shite. I've been living with the Horde since I was a girl. I'm one of the
Horde." She turned toward Korvin and grabbed his arms. "Korvin, we have weapons
here. Soldiers. Griffins and archers to ride them. And we're only an outpost—a
hundred thousand Horde soldiers train in the mainland in the south. We must
incite war!" She snarled. "We'll convince the Horde that it's time to finally
invade the Commonwealth, to crush its paladins, to topple the walls of the
Temple."