Requiem's Prayer (Book 3) Page 14

  I'm going to find you, Jeid. I'm going to fly with you again.

  "Where are all the others?" rose a voice behind her.

  The other men spat and cursed. "Damn maggots hiding deep. We'll find 'em."

  Bryn did not think she could keep running. Every step was too painful, and every breath shot an inferno through her lungs. Dorvin had wanted to stay behind, to guard the entrance while the others fled, but Bryn had insisted on this task. She wanted to do this for Jeid, for the man she loved, for her king.

  I will not let you down.

  She kept racing, step by step, until she saw it ahead—the crude, narrow tunnel the demon had carved, a burrow leading out of the caves and into the sky.

  The Widejaws laughed behind her, taunting and jeering. Bryn ran, leaving a trail of blood.

  JEID

  The demon was growing restless, tugging at its harness, snapping its teeth, and clawing the air. Jeid dug his heels into the mountainside, clutching the wooden shaft which connected to the digger's harness. Dorvin stood across from him, grumbling as he tugged his own shaft.

  "Free me . . ." hissed the demon. "I released you. Free me . . ."

  Jeid shook his head. "So you can devour more of us? No. Not until we're all out of the mountain. Not until we shift as dragons and fly, scales protecting us from your claws."

  Golgoloth hissed out its laughter. "My claws can cut through granite and metal. They can easily pierce the scales of a dragon." The creature licked its lips, and its tongue flailed, the blades upon it flashing.

  Jeid looked back at the tunnel. The last few Vir Requis were emerging: a wounded man, his legs bandaged; an elderly woman wrapped in a thick cloak; and a mother and her young child.

  "That's all of them," Dorvin said, grimacing as he struggled against the thrashing demon. "I counted."

  The survivors huddled together—seventy-three in all, pale and thin, shivering in the cold night.

  The demon gave a mighty tug, nearly lifting Jeid off his feet. Yanking the creature back, Jeid stared down the mountainside. Far below upon the slopes, a good mark away, the sphinxes hadn't seen them yet. Most had already entered the cave in pursuit of Bryn; perhaps only fifty still flew outside, awaiting their turn to fly into the mountain.

  Jeid glanced down to the hole at his feet, the tunnel the demon had carved. It wouldn't be long before Bryn emerged.

  "Remember, Dorvin," Jeid said. "As soon as Bryn's here, we shift and blow fire into the hole. We'll roast the Widejaws chasing her, then fly off."

  Dorvin nodded. He glanced down the mountainside. "Almost all the sphinxes are inside the mountain now." He tapped his foot. "Where are you, Bryn?"

  The demon hissed and tugged at its harness. "Free us . . . free us . . ."

  Dorvin spat. "Be quiet. Once we're done with you, I think I'll roast you like the sphinxes. Nice cooked demon on a stick."

  The demon squealed. Its tongue lashed out, and its legs clawed the air. It gave such a mighty yank upward, both Jeid and Dorvin were tugged onto their toes.

  "Hush!" Jeid said. "The sphinxes will hear." He glanced down below; a good forty-odd sphinxes were still outside the mountain. One seemed to look up toward the mountaintop, and Jeid's heart sank.

  Oh stars . . . don't let them hear us. Not until Bryn's here.

  But the demon on the harness kept struggling. Its voice rose louder. It let out a shriek.

  "Damn it!" Jeid tugged the creature down. "Dorvin, we have to silence it."

  The young man nodded, grinned, and drew his sword. "With pleasure."

  Tugging Golgoloth's harness with one hand, Dorvin swung his blade with the other. The sword clanged against one of the creature's legs, doing it no harm.

  The demon yowled and gave such a mighty pull, the wooden shaft tore free from Dorvin's hand.

  Jeid tried to hold the creature down himself, but alone he wasn't strong enough. Screeching madly, Golgoloth broke loose, flew into the air, and spun in the sky. Its scream rolled down the mountainsides.

  Below, near the cave, sphinxes roared and began flying up the mountain.

  The Vir Requis gasped, whispered, and pointed toward the approaching beasts.

  Jeid looked down into the hole at his feet.

  Bryn . . . come on,

  "Scum on the mountains!" rose a hoarse cry from the sphinxes. "Weredragons on the peak! Widejaws, slay them!"

  Jeid cursed, shifted, and rose as a dragon.

  "Rise, dragons of Requiem!" he cried. "Rise and fly!"

  He beat his wings, soaring higher. Below him, the other Vir Requis took dragon forms and rose too. A silver dragon, Dorvin blew fire, roasting the fleeing tunnel demon.

  The sphinxes shrieked.

  Do we flee? Jeid growled. No. The sphinxes would chase them, and their comrades in the mountain would join the pursuit. It was time to fight.

  "Burn them, dragons of Requiem!" Jeid shouted. "Burn them down!"

  He roared and flew down the mountainside toward the forty sphinxes. Dorvin flew at his side, and dozens of other dragons flew behind them.

  We must burn them before hundreds more emerge behind Bryn.

  "Requiem!" Dorvin howled. "Slay the enemy!"

  The silver dragon blew his dragonfire. Jeid joined his flames to the blaze. Around them, a dozen other dragons blasted out their wrath.

  Shooting up the mountainside, the sphinxes screeched and spewed their demonic miasma.

  Fire and smoke crashed together.

  The inferno blazed across the mountain. Jeid's fire tore through the smoke, roasting the tiny demons that buzzed within. At his side, Jeid saw the noxious cloud wrap around a lavender dragon, saw the demonic parasites flow into the dragon's nostrils and throat. The dragon screamed, her face bloated, and her scales cracked as the demons coursed through her. She fell against the mountainside, writhing, and lost her magic.

  Jeid grimaced and blasted flames again. Two sphinxes ahead caught fire and shrieked. Two more swooped from above, and Jeid soared, goring one with his horns and lacerating one with his claws.

  "Die, you toad-licking sons of sows!" Dorvin laughed as he fought, clawing, biting, burning. The silver dragon streaked across the battle, fangs dripping blood.

  Dozens of sphinxes and dragons tumbled, spun, and shot across the night sky. Fire rose in pillars. Foul smoke blasted everywhere. A blue dragon breathed in the poison, twisted, and crashed down in human form. A blast of fire took down a sphinx; the creature became a man again and tumbled, his skin ablaze. Two sphinxes crashed into a dragon, ripping into her hide. The Vir Requis fell as a screaming girl, slammed onto Jeid's back, then rolled off and tumbled down to the mountain.

  Corpses rained in the night.

  Jeid refused to let the horror overwhelm him.

  "Fight them! Don't breathe their smoke. Burn them dead!"

  The battle swirled like a typhoon of red and black and blazing blue fire.

  Jeid sliced open another sphinx; its blood and organs rained down, and Jeid roasted the sphinx as it screamed. He glanced back at the mountain. The hole still gaped open.

  Where are you, Bryn? Jeid blasted out more fire, roasting more of the creatures.

  The hole remained dark and empty.

  Bryn, and hundreds of other sphinxes, still waited to emerge.

  BRYN

  She raced through the tunnel, stumbling, an arrow in her thigh. The Widejaws howled and hooted behind her, getting closer. Their torches crackled, and their shadows fell upon her. Bryn grimaced, sweat and blood covering her, and ran on, limping, dizzy, seeking the exit, seeking the sky.

  "Requiem!" The words shook as she panted. "May our wings forever find your sky."

  The tunnel sloped up steeply, forcing Bryn to climb on hands and knees. Her blood kept dripping. Her head spun. When she looked behind her, she saw the Widejaws climbing in pursuit, only feet away now. Their mouths opened with lurid grins, tongues licking their chops, their saliva dripping.

  If they caught her, Bryn knew they would batter her
, strip off her clothes, then slice off her limbs and devour her flesh. Tears stung in her eyes, and she was so weak; she could barely cling to the stone. She ground her teeth and kept climbing.

  Another arrow flew from below.

  She roared with pain. The flint head tore into her shoulder and emerged bloody from the other side.

  She fell. She slid down several feet.

  A Widejaw grabbed her ankle. His teeth drove into her calf.

  It's over.

  She closed her eyes.

  I can't defeat them. They'll slay me. They'll emerge on the mountaintop, hundreds of beasts. Jeid and the others will fall.

  The teeth kept biting, and the Widejaws laughed and jeered, and her blood spilled.

  And she saw him again in the darkness.

  Jeid.

  She reached out. She could imagine his kind face in the shadows, an apparition, a dream before her death.

  His eyes stared into hers. His voice cried out.

  Fight them! Climb, Bryn! Flee them.

  She shook. She could not. She was too weak, too hurt.

  She sucked in air as the Widejaws tugged her down, as their teeth ripped into her, eating her alive.

  For Requiem.

  She reached up a shaking hand. She could see it above in the darkness—the stars of Requiem.

  For you, Requiem. For our eternal halls.

  She screamed and kicked madly, slamming her foot against the Widejaw's face. She felt his nose crush. She heard him scream. She scurried up the tunnel, leaving them behind, as her blood spurted.

  Two arrows filled her. The Widejaw teeth had torn into her leg; she feared to see the wound, to find her foot gone, consumed down to the bone. She kept climbing, dragging herself forward, digging her fingers into the rock. They roared behind her, laughing.

  "Stop playing with your food, Shog!" one voice cried out. Others laughed.

  "The playful little minx is making this fun. Slick as a fish!"

  She kept climbing, bleeding, gritting her teeth, until she felt the cold wind, and she smelled it above—the sky.

  She laughed and wept.

  She climbed a few more feet, and she saw them above—the true stars of Requiem, bright and beautiful in the sky, calling to her.

  Bleeding, maybe dying, Bryn reached out and felt the wind upon her fingers. She saw him fly above, a great copper dragon limned in moonlight—Jeid, her king.

  I'm going to live, she thought. I'm going to fly with Jeid again. She clutched the edge of the hole and began to climb. I'm going to climb out, and we'll fill this hole with dragonfire. I—

  Pain blazed anew across her leg.

  She turned her head and saw the Widejaw biting into her again, ripping into her flesh, eating her.

  She screamed and reached up, struggling to climb out. She looked back at the stars . . . and could no longer see them. Fire and smoke washed across the sky.

  Bryn gasped.

  "Dragons of Requiem, fight them!" Jeid was crying above. Sphinxes mobbed him. Poisonous smoke enveloped him. Dozens of dragons and sphinxes flew above.

  Bryn could barely breathe.

  I must climb out! she thought. I must join them!

  She looked behind her at the Widejaws biting into her feet, ripping off her flesh.

  If I climb out, I'm too weak to blow fire, maybe too weak to shift into a dragon. The Widejaws will emerge. They'll become sphinxes—hundreds of them. They'll kill the others. They—

  The jaws tightened, hitting her bone, and she screamed.

  Climb!

  "Flee, Jeid!" she tried to cry out. "They're going to slay me, to fly out, to overwhelm you, you have to flee."

  But her words were only a whisper; she was too weak for anything louder.

  Her fingers released the rim of the hole.

  She slid down, and another Widejaw grabbed her, and teeth tore into her thighs, eating their way up, eating her alive.

  Bryn closed her eyes.

  "I love you, Requiem. I love you, Jeid."

  With her last sparks of strength, she summoned her magic.

  Still inside the tunnel, the sky hidden behind smoke and flame, Bryn became a dragon.

  Wings burst out from her back. Her body grew, slamming against the tunnel walls. Her jaws rose toward the exit, puffing out smoke, trying to call out, to blow fire. Her tail lashed out from her back, slamming into the Widejaws.

  As she kept growing, the pain cut through her like a thousand arrows.

  The tunnel was too narrow for a dragon. The walls pressed against her, cracking her scales. She felt her ribs snap, driving into her organs.

  She lashed her claws.

  She swung her tail.

  Keep shifting.

  She slammed her head from side to side, banging the stone walls. Her tail thrashed. She dug madly. Chips of rock and clumps of soil fell. Below her, the Widejaws screamed. Around her, the walls crumbled.

  Stones rained.

  Dust flew.

  The burrow collapsed.

  The pain was too much. Bryn lost her magic and tumbled down, a human again, falling into endless darkness, into blood, into a sea of enemies, teeth, eyes, reaching fingers, pain that flowed into warmth and numbness.

  Above her, the tunnel crumbled. The walls cracked and caved inward, and stones rained, and the mountain shook, and Bryn could no longer see the sky.

  She closed her eyes. She smiled.

  Farewell, Requiem.

  As the mountain shook and closed in, burying her and the hundreds of Widejaws beneath her, Bryn smiled, for she had saved her king, her people, her kingdom. And then she saw them above—the halls of Requiem, woven of starlight, calling her home.

  ISSARI

  She glided upon the wind, a hundred dragons flying behind her, myriads of people walking below.

  "A flock of them on the horizon." Flying at her side, Tanin narrowed his eyes and pointed his claws. "Looks like . . . maybe twenty. No more."

  Issari nodded. "We fly out. We take them down."

  She looked behind her. The dragons she had freed from Goshar flew there in several V formations. Their scales gleamed under the bright noon sun, and smoke trailed from their nostrils. Many had never flown before, too ashamed of their magic, and some still wobbled with every gust of wind.

  But they're growing stronger, Issari thought. They're growing proud.

  Below them, upon the grasslands, walked a great swarm—the refugees of Eteer and Goshar, mingled together into one people, fled from their ravaged cities. They wore tunics of canvas and wool, white cloaks, and sandals, and they carried only staffs and sickles as weapons. Their cattle walked before them, a multitude of sheep and goats and pigs—their last belongings. Babes swayed in baskets strapped to mothers' breasts, and elders hobbled on canes. The nephilim had toppled their cities and ravaged their farms, and now they were Issari's to protect; they were her people just as much as the dragons who flew above.

  "Dragons of Requiem!" she called out, for now these hundred were children of Requiem too. They had never seen King's Column, had never met King Aeternum, but the magic of the Draco constellation flowed through them. That made them Vir Requis. That made them her kin. "Dragons of Requiem, nephilim in the west. Fly! Fly with me and burn them."

  The dragons sounded their cry, flocked toward her, and raced across the sky.

  They had been traveling south for days now, seeking the ancient city-state of Tur Kal, the largest and oldest of the thirteen. Nephilim had plagued their journey, emerging every hour—a cluster here, a scout there, sometimes as many as fifty flying together. Once Issari had even seen a great swarm of them—perhaps a thousand together—upon the horizon, flowing south like a cloud of locust.

  They're breeding, Issari thought. Maybe with humans, maybe with one another, but there are more every day.

  She winced and fear washed her with ice, the same fear that hadn't left her since Goshar. Her belly twisted—whether with terror or with lurking life, she did not know.

&n
bsp; A demon knew me in my tent, she thought and shivered. Her scales clattered. A demon planted his seed within me. Her belly twisted again, and Issari winced, wondering if the seed had quickened, if a nephil—one of these twisted, rotting creatures—now festered within her, growing larger, growing stronger, soon to—

  "Burn them!" Tanin cried and blasted out his fire.

  Issari shook her head, banishing her thoughts. The nephilim were close now, only moments away. She opened her jaw wide, and she blasted out flame, replacing her fear with the rage of the battle.

  The nephilim screeched and attacked, claws outstretched. The dragons circled them, blew fire, and roasted the demon spawn. They had slain many before, and they slew these ones, sending their carcasses down toward the fields where they shattered, spilling rot.

  But we cannot kill all the nephilim in the world, Issari thought as the dragons cheered around her. There are too many. They breed too quickly. Her belly gave a twist. They breed inside me.

  "Kinat!" she said to one of the Gosharian dragons. "How far is the city of Tur Kar?"

  The bronze dragon glided at her side, old and creaky, his wings peppered with holes. "I have not been there in many years, White Priestess, but it does not lie much farther. The great Tur Kal, the Jewel of Terra, lies beyond the hills upon the border of grasslands and deserts. We'll be there soon."

  Issari looked toward the distant tan hills.

  I must find a home for the people of Eteer and Goshar, she thought. I must find more dragons. And I must find a cure for whatever rots inside me.

  As the sun set, they reached the hills, and the people cried out and pointed and sang. Gliding high above the exodus, Issari looked to the south and saw the city there.

  "Tur Kal," she whispered.

  The city sprawled across the horizon, many marks wide, surrounded by ocher walls. A river flowed around it, feeding fields of wheat and barley. Beyond the wall stretched many narrow streets lined with tan, domed homes. In the city center rose three pyramids, hundreds of feet tall, structures even taller than King's Column in the north. All of Eteer and Goshar, Issari thought, could fit within these walls.