Dragons Rising (6 page)

"I
raise them for you, Spirit!" Beatrix cried out. The reptilian
skeletons kept digging themselves up from the soil, raising a din of
shrieks, moans, roars. Beatrix cried out above them all. "Bless
them with your light, Spirit, so that I may lead them in your name!"

She
felt the light glow within her--the light of holiness. The Spirit had
heard her prayer. The Spirit answered. His light grew within Beatrix,
mightier than starlight, than the light of dragonfire. She held out
her arms and opened her palms, and the light gathered within them,
balls of luminescence.

"I
give you life!" Beatrix shouted, laughing, wreathed in the
light. "I give you holiness!"

They
kept rising around her, dozens of the great skeletons, their wings
beating, their jaws opened wide in roars, no flesh left to them, no
hearts to beat, no lungs to breathe, no gullets to blast fire, beings
of nothing but bone, nothing but pain, but she would make them great.
She would make them greater than any living being.

Beatrix
stretched out her hands, and the holy light flowed through her
fingertips, coiling toward them.

The
skeletons of firedrakes turned toward her, and her strands of light
crawled into them, slithering like glowing serpents seeking new
burrows. The skeletons gave high, yelping sounds like drops of water
falling into pools, echoing against metallic walls, the eerie bugling
of another world. The light spread through them, running along their
bones, limning their wings, coiling along their spines. Beads of
light shone in their eye sockets, jewels of the heavens gazing
through the darkness. Strands of light spun, coiling together into
tightly woven balls within rib cages, thrumming, beating like hearts.
On their backs, the skeletons of riders--fused to the spines of their
mounts--cried out to the sky, bones shedding dust.

"Rise
and live again!" Beatrix cried, the light flowing through her,
thrumming in her chest, pulsing through her fingertips. "I grant
you new life!"

Around
her, they kept rising, dozens, hundreds of the fallen, the bones of
great dragons, hearts of light beating within their ribs, eyes of
heaven lighting the darkness. They flapped their wings. Shreds of
leather swung between bones. Their jaws opened wide, dangling their
last strips of skin, and all cried out to Beatrix, weeping for the
touch of air again, the night upon them, the holiness of life again
in their bones. Their cries were deafening, rising again and again,
hundreds of voices calling out together. The land vanished beneath
them, and all the world was bone, sound, light, darkness, and her
dominion. Her power to raise the dead. To hunt the living.

"You
will seek the life of weredragons!" Beatrix cried out, laughing
now, her hair crackling, her robes storming. "You will sniff out
their pulsing hearts like bloodhounds. Find the weredragons! Find
them and kill them and bring their corpses to me. Fly! Fly!" She
pointed to the midnight sky. "Fly and crush the flesh of
dragons."

With
echoing cries, the skeletons beat their creaky old wings. Old bones
snapped. Joints shattered. Shreds of skin tore. Maggots and worms
rained from them, shed from burrows in bones. But still they rose.
Their wings beat, pounding the air, and their claws kicked off the
earth, and their spines rattled like primordial snakes. Within their
rib cages, their hearts of light thrummed madly, spinning, coiling,
pulsing out light that blazed out of their eye sockets. They rose.
They lived. They ascended.

"Fly!"
she cried, laughing.

And
they flew. A storm of bones. A maelstrom of rot, of wonder, of
miracles. Life reborn, transfigured, holy. Blessed, beautiful
children of the Spirit. The skeletal firedrakes rose, and on their
backs, their old paladins raised rusty lances and chipped shields,
their bones creaking within their crumbling armor. Their eyes too
blazed with light, each rider fused to its mount, great centaurs of
glory. They filled the sky. Their light beamed against the clouds,
and they swirled above in a whirlpool, countless flying beasts.

"My
bonedrakes," Beatrix whispered. "My children."

"What
are they?" Mercy asked, voice shaky, finally coming to stand at
Beatrix's side.

"Our
champions," Beatrix said. "Our holy warriors. Those who
will do what you could not." She raised her voice to the sky.
"Fly out! Fly now! For the glory of the Spirit, for the death of
weredragons, for the Falling! Fly!"

And
they flew. Coiling out in great rivers of bone and dry shreds of
skin, of streaming light, they soared out from the valley, spreading
across all horizons, vanishing into the darkness. All that remained
were the echoes of their cries and their lingering aroma of rot and
divinity.

 
 
KORVIN

The
first snows of winter fell as Korvin and his daughter walked across
the wilderness. It was too cold to be traveling. Too cold to be
without a home, lost in a world with but a flicker of hope.

"We
must seek shelter for the night," he said. "A burrow or a
cave if we can't find a village or farmhouse."

Fidelity
looked up at the sky. She walked beside him, wrapped in a green
cloak. It was an old cloak, tattered, its hems burnt, bought from a
farmer for a copper coin. They had spent more money on food, and they
both carried packs full of turnips, sausages, apples, and bread,
perhaps enough for a few days--not enough to reach the mountains of
Dair Ranin. Like Korvin, Fidelity wore the armor of the Horde under
her cloak, and a curved saber hung at her side, its hilt shaped like
a falcon's head.

"It's
only noon." She squinted up at the veiled sun. "I think. We
should find a place to hide and sleep until nightfall."

She
was always squinting these days, struggling to see. Her spectacles
were in even worse condition than her cloak. One lens was missing,
the other cracked, and a string held the frame together.

We
need to buy her new spectacles,
Korvin thought, looking at her.
But the only coins they had left were old Requiem gold, worth a
fortune and a barrelful of questions. And Korvin dared not enter a
city where new lenses might be found. Not with soldiers patrolling
every street.

"We'll
keep walking for a while longer," he said. "We'll find some
shelter. We can't rest out here in the snow."

He
looked around at the snowy landscape. It was strange to think that,
only several days ago, they had been in the hot southern lands,
delivering the survivors of the Horde to a new home on the Terran
coast. Now they were traveling across the Commonwealth, a different
world. Gone were the cypress trees, twisting pines, clear waters, and
yellow sun of the south. Here was a land of rolling hills, a pale sun
veiled behind gray clouds, and only a few scattered aspens and oaks.
Crows circled under the clouds and the wind moaned. The snowfall was
light--they were still too far south for the great gales that could
bury villages--but it would get colder as they traveled farther
north, the snows deeper, the food scarcer.

Fidelity
sighed and lowered her head. "I'm sorry, Father. In the heat of
battle, I didn't know what other meeting place to name. Lynport in
the south burned. Altus Mare is a bastion of Templer might. So I
shouted out Draco Murus, the ancient ruins I read about so often in
my books, the ruins where the great old heroes fought." She
looked at him, eyes full of guilt and fear. "I didn't pause to
think that it's so far north, ruins across a landscape Beatrix
controls, a landscape now falling to winter. I'm sorry. I don't know
if I’ve doomed us all to death, if we'll ever see Domi and the
others again."

Korvin
patted her arm. "Domi is strong and swift, and she's been
surviving on her own for many years. Last I saw them, Amity and Cade
were flying together. The Red Queen is looking after the boy. We'll
see them again."

Fidelity
nodded and lowered her head, and a tear flowed down her cheek. "But
not Roen."

Korvin
felt a twinge to his heart, a blend of guilt and grief. For many
years, he had mistrusted Roen, seen him as a man who tried to steal
his daughter. Yet the green dragon had fought bravely. Had saved
Fidelity's life.

I'm
sorry that I was always so cold around you, Roen,
Korvin thought,
head lowered.
I thank you for your sacrifice.

"I'm
sorry, Fidelity." Korvin's voice was low and hoarse. "I
know no words of sufficient comfort for this loss."

She
raised her chin and the wind dried her eyes. "We will keep
fighting as he fought. We will honor his memory by keeping Requiem
alive, by reaching the mountains, by finding the others. Requiem will
rise in the ruins, reborn. King's Column will stand."

As
they kept walking across the wilderness, Korvin kept his fears to
himself. He tried to be strong for Fidelity, tried to lift her
spirits, to be the father she needed, dependable, calm as the world
crumbled. But secretly his heart seemed to crumble too. He did not
know if the others had survived. He did not know how he could survive
losing them. To lose Domi, his youngest child, the girl he loved more
than anything. To lose Amity, a new woman in his life, the first
woman he had loved since Beatrix had murdered his wife.

I
don't know if you survived the flight over the sea. I don't know if
you'll reach the mountains. And I'm scared, but I have to be brave
for Fidelity. I have to let her believe there is hope, that we can
reach the mountains, that we can find new life there.
Perhaps
Requiem is but a dream, a memory we can never resurrect. But if
that's so, at least let me see the others again. At least let me hold
Domi and Amity one more time, let me grow old with them, if not in
Requiem then in hiding.

He
did not even know who he prayed to. The Spirit? That god, if real,
held no love for him, a weredragon. The stars of Requiem? Korvin did
not know if there was any consciousness to them anymore, any love for
the last survivors of a dead realm. Perhaps he prayed to no one,
perhaps his thoughts were hollow, as meaningless as their fight. But
without that fight, without that hope, there was nothing left but
death. And so Korvin nurtured that hope like a man fanning the last
embers of a dying fire. It was all that could still keep him warm.

They
kept traveling across the wastelands of the southeastern
Commonwealth. Hundreds of years ago, these had been the lands of
Osanna, a kingdom long fallen, its survivors having fled to the
Horde. The land was still barren, though as they traveled, Korvin saw
signs of the lost kingdom that had once risen here. Several columns
lay fallen upon a hilltop, corroded and cracked, perhaps the remains
of a temple. A great boulder rose ahead, the size of a hill. It took
a moment for Korvin to realize that it was the head of a lion,
half-buried in the soil, perhaps thousands of years old, pounded down
with so much wind and rain it had lost nearly all its features.

The
snow still fell when they reached the ruins of the town.

"A
relic of Osanna," Fidelity whispered. "Ancient enemy of
Requiem, fallen to ruin."

Most
of the town lay buried under centuries of soil. Korvin could not see
the old roads that perhaps had once run across this place. A portico
of columns rose like the spine of a buried giant. Ridges of chipped
walls twisted like a labyrinth. An orphaned archway, the walls around
it long fallen, led to a courtyard lined with twisting oaks. A statue
of a bearded king lay fallen, half-buried in the dirt, and the shell
of a temple stood overrun with ivy, nests upon the remains of its
roof.

"We'll
find shelter here," Korvin said. "Maybe even build a fire
inside that temple, if we can find some dry branches on those oaks.
We'll rest until nightfall, then fly in the darkness."

Fidelity
shivered. "This place looks haunted." She smiled wanly. "Do
you remember how, when I was a child, you'd frighten me with your
ghost stories?"

A
small smile stretched his own lips. "You used to pretend to be
brave. But Domi would squeal in fright, especially when I'd lean
forward and moan like a ghost. I used to terrify the poor kid. You'd
comfort her, the strong older sister, but when you held her tight, I
knew you were scared too." He laughed. "Were my stories
really so terrifying?"

"No."
Fidelity's smile turned sad. "They were wonderful. And even
after pretending to be a ghost, you'd always smile and laugh and
scoop Domi and me into your arms. Then we'd sit by the fire and sing
old songs. Those were good days."

"Those
days will return." Korvin stared at the ruins ahead, the crows
on their old walls, the scattered stones, the whispers of ghosts.
"The whole world feels like this now, a place of ruin, of death,
of lost life. No more songs rise around the hearths of this place,
and no more fire burns here. Even the memories of this place are long
forgotten, and perhaps only the stones still remember the joy and
light that had filled this town. So does life seem in times of
hardship. Joy always feels lost when tragedy befalls us. Memories of
warmth and family always feel like sinking ships, soon to be
swallowed in darkness, when one is swimming through a storming sea.
But as fire can be rekindled, as ruins can be rebuilt, so can joy
resurface. So can new memories be made. We'll find Domi. And we'll
rebuild our home, rebuild our family, rebuild our lives. We'll light
new hearths and tell new stories, create new memories to warm us in
future winters."

Fidelity
leaned against him as they walked. "We can start tonight. Here
in these ruins. Let's light our first new fire here."

They
approached the remains of an old temple--a portico of mossy columns,
a chipped wall, a few little hideaways under the remains of a roof.
They stepped into a shadowy hovel and laid down their packs.