Dragons Rising (5 page)

She
nodded. "Of course I do. Once we put on Templer armor, nobody
will know we're Vir Requis." Her grin widened. "We just
have to decide who flies as a dragon, and who rides as a paladin."

"I'm
riding, you fly," Cade said. "That there's a man's armor.
Go on, shift and I'll put the saddle on you."

Amity
gasped. "Man's armor? Boy, I've slain more men than all the
droplets you've ever pissed. I've got bigger bollocks in my pants
than you." She glanced at the armor. "Besides, you're too
short for that armor. That there's armor for a tall, strong adult
like me, not a little boy." She lifted the paladin's breastplate
and placed it across her chest for size. "Fits a bit awkwardly,
and it'll squeeze my breasts a bit, but I think it'll work."

Cade
gulped, really not wanting to think about Amity's breasts; he had
been struggling not to think about them for days now. "It
doesn't fit you. Give it here."

She
shook her head. "Too late, I've claimed it. I'm riding you,
Cade, so shift back into a nice dragon and I'll strap on your saddle.
Besides, your scales are golden, almost like the dead firedrake's
scales. If anyone searches for our buried friend, you'll look a bit
like him from the air. My scales are red and would stand out for
miles. Go on--shift, my noble steed!"

Cade
knew it was pointless to argue with her. And besides, his feet were
aching, and his boots weren't getting in any better shape from the
long miles on the road.

It'll
be nice to fly,
he tried to convince himself
. To spread my
wings, glide openly in the daylight, a firedrake in disguise.
It
was risky, he knew, but then again, Domi had disguised herself as a
firedrake for years. Surely he could survive a few days as a dragon,
just until he reached Draco Murus. He swallowed a lump in his throat.
Are you heading there too, Domi?

"All
right, Amity." He stepped back, grumbled, and shifted. "But
it's going to be damn hard carrying your backside with all those ribs
and taters you ate."

The
sun was low in the sky when Cade took flight, a golden dragon clad in
Templer armor. He soared higher until the tavern looked like a toy,
the road like a thread.

"Faster!"
Amity cried on his back. Clad in white armor, she laughed and jabbed
him with her spurs. "Faster, mighty mount, or I'll whip your
hide!"

Cade
twisted his head to look over his shoulder. She sat in his saddle,
her visor raised. He puffed smoke from his nostrils onto her.
"Silence or I'll roast you."

"Hush!
Firedrakes don't talk." She hoisted her banner, displaying its
tillvine sigil. "Now fly. Fly north! To the mountains!" She
spurred him again. "Fly, my mount!"

He
grumbled but he flew onward. The sun sank in the west, and darkness
engulfed them. The stars emerged, and as Cade flew, he wondered if
Domi, Fidelity, and the others were looking at those same stars now.
He missed them. In the darkness, their faces floated in his memory,
and he didn't know if he'd ever see them again.

 
 
BEATRIX

On a
midnight of cold wind and no stars, Beatrix stepped into the
graveyard of dragons.

A
few scattered oaks creaked in the wind, their bare branches reaching
out like the gnarled fingers of lecherous old men. Dry leaves
rustled, scuttled along the ground, and crunched underfoot. The full
moon peeked between the clouds, bloated and pale like the waterlogged
face of a drowned corpse, then vanished again. Boulders rose in the
darkness like tombstones. There were no true tombstones in this
graveyard, no true graves, no names for the fallen--yet a graveyard
this was. Here underground lay buried the greatest warriors of the
Cured Temple, the firedrakes who had fallen for the Spirit.

"The
firedrakes were human once, did you know?" Beatrix said. She
turned toward her daughter. "They were born as human babes,
cursed with the ancient disease of reptiles, able to shift into
dragons."

Mercy
walked alongside her, clad as always in the pale armor of a paladin.
Her hand rested on the pommel of her sword. "And you killed
them."

Beatrix
raised her eyebrows. "Killed them? Yes, I suppose so. In a
manner of speaking. I burned their human forms away, then collected
dragon eggs from the ashes--eggs to hatch firedrakes. But firedrakes
too can burn. Firedrakes do not live forever." She sucked in the
cold night air. "The Vir Requis showed us that. They slew too
many of our mighty reptiles. But tonight, Mercy . . . tonight we will
create champions that no man or beast can kill."

Mercy
frowned. "Mother, I sank a thousand ships. I slew a hundred
thousand barbarians of the Horde. I slew two weredragons--the silver
beast Julian and the green beast Roen. I--"

"You
let five weredragons escape." Beatrix kept her voice calm. She
kept walking over the fallen leaves, holding up the hem of her robes.
"You were tasked with slaying them, and instead, you played
little games of war and conquest. Sinking ships? Burning barbarians?
Any brute can do these things. You wasted an army and still killed
only two weredragons. The others survived. Amity, the Red Queen, the
leader who almost rose to crush us. Domi, the traitor you once rode
as a firedrake, too foolish to recognize the ploy. Fidelity and Cade,
the sneaky worms who spread their books of Requiem across our empire.
And Korvin." Beatrix tightened her fingers around her skirt, and
her jaw locked. "And you let Korvin go."

Beatrix
sucked in breath and had to close her eyes.

Korvin.

She
scoffed at herself. Funny how that name still hurt her. Funny how
after all these years, thinking of him still raised that sickening
mixture in her breast, a rotting potion of hatred, rage, and love.

Korvin.
A brute. A traitor. An enemy to kill. The man a young priestess had
loved with all her heart. The man who perhaps, deep within this cold
heart of hers, a heart hardened after years of bearing the burden of
an empire, Beatrix still loved. Still loathed. Still swore to break.

You
will suffer more than them all, Korvin,
she thought.

As
she walked here in darkness, Beatrix remembered herself as a young
woman. By the Spirit, it had been thirty years ago! It was the curse
of the old that years flew by so swiftly. In her childhood, Beatrix
would measure the passage of time in days. As a young woman, a year
seemed an era, two years the passage of ages, the rise and fall of
empires. Now, a woman approaching fifty years of age, she marked the
passage of time by decades. Often she would remember a moment--only a
recent moment!--and realize it had occurred twenty, even thirty years
ago, yet still felt so fresh in her mind. Thus were her memories of
Korvin. Thus did he still remind her of her mortality, of the
impossible speed of time, of her looming death, or her lost love,
lost youth, lost innocence and joy.

I
was only a child, Korvin. I was only a child when you broke my heart.

She
no longer stood in the graveyard. In her mind, Beatrix was a young
woman walking through the city of Nova Vita, idealistic and pure,
dedicated to the faith of her mother. How she had prayed then! How
she vowed to serve the Spirit always, to bring light to all corners
of the world! If not for her faith, she would never have met Korvin,
never have met the man who saved, changed, and later ruined her life.

She
had been riding through the city that day, her horse a snowy mare of
splendor, seeking to preach her faith to the poorest folk of Nova
Vita. She had ridden up a hill, calling for others to gather, to hear
her words, when the mob attacked. For many years afterward, they
haunted her nightmares--crude men, wearing only rags, their faces
twisted with rage. They pelted her with rocks, and they cried out
against their hunger, against the wealth of the Temple. Beatrix had
tried to stop them, tried to beg, but their rocks kept flying,
cutting her, breaking her--until Korvin arrived.

The
young soldier had stood tall and wild. With bloody fists he beat back
the mob. He seemed to Beatrix less like a man then, more like a wild
stallion, his dark mane flying in the wind, his fists like hooves
pounding into the ruffians. When finally the mob retreated, he knelt
above her, helped her to her feet, and she loved him, and she knew
that she would always love him.

What
a summer that had been! The hottest summer the elders could remember,
a summer that wilted gardens, that beat down on crops, that made her
sweat on those long, sweet nights when she made love to him, riding
him as if he were a true stallion, crying out in her passion for him,
for Korvin, for this soldier, lowborn, who had saved her life, who
gave her life its light.

Until
you took my heart in your hands and shattered it.

She
had risen in power. He had not liked that. He could not accept her
zeal, her might, her army of firedrakes that hunted down weredragons.
He wanted her demure, weak, a petite little damsel to save. When she
grew older, grew stronger, groomed for High Priesthood, Korvin shied
away. He spoke of accepting weredragons--accepting them! He even
spoke the forbidden word, saying "Requiem" to her. He saw
her strength as cruelty. He saw her rising power as a threat. She was
no longer that young, frightened priestess he could defend but a
mighty leader, and he was lowly by her great light. And so he left.
And so she hunted him. And so she learned that he too was one of the
beasts, a treacherous weredragon, a filthy shapeshifter who had
sneaked into her bed, claiming her with lies, stealing her virginity
with his secrets.

"And
so I slew your wife, Korvin," Beatrix whispered, walking through
the graveyard. "I slew the woman you chose over me. And I will
slay your daughters. You will know this pain before you die too."

Mercy
pointed ahead. She raised her chin and spoke coldly like she did when
afraid, a show of defiance to hide that fear. She had been doing it
since her childhood. "We're here."

Beatrix
smiled thinly and tightened her robes around her. "So we are."

The
land sloped down here into a valley. The oaks crowded on the
surrounding hills, creaking in the wind, as if too frightened to
enter this vale of shadows. No moonlight reached this place. It could
have been a hole leading to another night sky, a pit leading to the
Abyss itself. But Beatrix carried the light of the Spirit within her,
and it burned strong, illuminating her path. She walked into the
valley of death, the Spirit her guide, even as Mercy's armor clanked
with the paladin's fear.

As
Beatrix paced over the soft earth, she could feel the slain life
below. She could hear the voices of the buried. Mighty firedrakes
screeched underground, a sound like wind. Softer, faded, almost
indiscernible rose the cries of the drakes' lost human forms. The
weeping of babes. The screaming of the burned.

"Yes,
my precious beasts." Beatrix's smile grew. "You were
children once before I burned you. You became dragons of flame. And
now . . . now after your long years in the darkness, your third cycle
arises. You will now become blessed warriors of light."

She
felt them scurrying below, their dark presence, their cries, their
need for her. They were her true children, more loyal and strong than
those she bad birthed from her womb. These creatures beneath her
would no longer know the weakness of flesh, the pain of the heart.
They would be pure. They would be beings of light.

And
they will hunt weredragons.

She
came to stand in the center of the shadowy valley. All around her the
darkness stretched. Even Mercy dared not approach nearer. The paladin
stood at the rim of the shadows, staring down, young, frightened,
weak. But Beatrix was old. She was strong. She raised her arms above
her head, sucking up the life from below, feeling the dark tendrils
rise up her legs to kiss her skin, her sex, her bones, her very soul.

"Hear
me, Fallen Ones!" Beatrix cried out, fingers tingling, head
tossed back. "Hear me, the fallen beings of fire and flesh! I am
your mistress. I am a conduit to the Spirit's light. Rise! I am
Beatrix Deus, your mistress, and I summon you! Rise and be fallen no
more!"

The
earth trembled beneath her feet. Shadows swirled. Moans rose from
below, mourning, crying out to her, babes desperate for milk, the
dead desperate for life. Grooves opened across the valley like wet,
toothy mouths, pulling down soil and fallen leaves. The sky swirled
above like a second valley of shadows. Upon the hills, trees shook
and branches cracked to rain down. And everywhere Beatrix felt them,
caressing her, whispering, screaming, enveloping her, sucking at her
skin--the spirits of the dead.

"Rise!"
she cried. "Come to me."

And
they rose.

Ribs
emerged from the soil like the columns of a cathedral. Claws, bone
white and gleaming, thrust up from the ground. The earth shook madly
now, dirt crumbling into pits, boulders thrusting up, and still they
rose. A spine ridge slithered like a snake. The long, thin bones of
wings beat against the ground, and the many segments of a tail
flailed like a bony whip. With shattering stones and sinking earth, a
skull emerged before Beatrix, eye sockets deep pits, fangs like
swords. Another skull rose to her left, a third to her right, and the
valley kept sinking, collapsing, churning. All around her they rose,
the skeletons of the dead, the firedrakes of old reborn, and on their
backs still rode the skeletons of paladins, buried with their mounts,
linked to the beasts even in death. Behind her, Mercy gasped and fell
to her knees, but Beatrix remained standing, a solid pillar in the
center of the storm, as true and ancient as King's Column that rose
in the center of her empire.

These
creatures will make King's Column fall.