Dragons Reborn (14 page)

"Fidelity!"
she shouted.

The blue dragon
streamed overhead, and Roen followed. Their fire blasted forth, hitting the
archers. Cade swooped at Domi's side, scattering flames, burning more tillvine.
The fire was spreading below now, engulfing the field.

When Domi looked
over her shoulder, she saw a dozen more firedrakes rising from the town, riders
on their backs. Their cries shook the world.

"We're done,
let's get out of here!" Cade shouted.

Domi nodded and
beat her wings. Two arrows were still embedded into her. When she tried to fly
higher, a firedrake flew her way, and she roared out her flames; they washed
over its rider, and the man screamed, burning. Domi flew higher.

"Come on!"
she shouted. "Roen! Fidelity!"

More arrows flew.
More firedrakes cried out, and the beasts' flames shot across the night. The
fields blazed below. The four dragons joined together and rose higher.

"Remember
Requiem!" Cade shouted and laughed. "Requiem is reborn!"

The clouds spread
above them, thick and charcoal. The dragons flew into their cover.

"On my back!"
Domi said.

One by one, her
companions flew above her, released their magic, and landed on her back as
humans. The firedrakes still screeched behind, but only one small dragon, her
scales painted black, Domi vanished into the clouds.

"Find them!"
rose a cry behind. "Find the weredragons!"

Columns of fire
rose through the clouds. Domi banked, dodging them, swerving left and right.
The flaming columns rose everywhere, a burning cathedral.

One of the drakes
rose ahead of Domi, its black teeth ringing a maw of fire, and its eyes
smoldered like molten metal. Domi hissed and dived, flying beneath it, then
soared through the clouds. More fire blasted ahead; she glimpsed another
firedrake flickering through the clouds, only flashes of its scales showing and
vanishing. She soared higher, rising above it, and flew onward.

Arrows whistled
through the clouds, but the paladins firing them were blind in here. The
firedrakes kept blowing their fire, revealing their locations. Streaks of
orange and glowing red splotches spread everywhere. Domi flew like she had
never flown, silent, barely letting her wings churn the clouds, dodging the
flames, avoiding the light.

It seemed hours
before the sounds and lights of pursuit finally faded.

Domi dipped in the
sky, emerged from under the clouds, and beheld wild grasslands leading to
distant mountains. No more firedrakes. No more flame.

A weight lifted off her
back. The other Vir Requis fell through the sky, then shifted and rose to fly
around her.

Even as she bled and
hurt, Domi allowed herself a tight grin.

For the first time in a
hundred years of the Cured Temple's reign, the dragons of Requiem were fighting
back.

She spoke through the
fire in her mouth. "Requiem is reborn."

 
 
MERCY

She stood in the Chamber of Birth,
staring at the bursts of light appearing and fading on the map, at all those
diseased souls flickering into a broken world.

Her mother stood beside
her on the balcony, staring down with her at the craggy landscape carved of
white stone. "They are diseased." Beatrix's face was blank, her hands
tucked into her long sleeves, but her rage showed in the slight downward curve
of her lips, the stiffness of her back. "They are born diseased, and the
beasts burned the only medicine to cure them. What do we do, Mercy?" The
High Priestess turned toward her daughter, piercing Mercy with those cold blue
eyes. "How do we deal with a poison when the anecdote has been stolen?"

Mercy stared down from
the balcony again. Whenever she stood here, Mercy felt like a goddess staring
down from the clouds at the world. The chamber was massive, as large as an
emperor's throne room, and a great map of the Commonwealth covered the entire
floor. Hills and valleys, carved of white stone, rolled hundreds of feet
across. Great mountain ranges, tall as a person, rose like the spines of dead
dragons. Towns, cities, villages, farmlands—all rose on the map, their little
buildings carved of clay. Directly in the center rose a crystal sculpture of
the Cured Temple, a beacon of light.

And other lights glowed
here. Every moment, a light flickered to life somewhere on the map, glowed
bright, then faded. Whenever such a glow appeared, scribes in other balconies—a
dozen balconies rose around the chamber—scribbled into scrolls. Each flicker
of light was a flicker of life, a child born in the Commonwealth—babes here in
Nova Vita, babes in distant farmlands, even babes born in the wilderness.

Babes diseased with
dragon magic,
Mercy thought, staring at the new life appearing in her
empire.
Babes we must cure with tillvine.

"Well?"
Beatrix said. "Solve me this riddle, Mercy. The dragons which you let
flee, which you failed to kill, have burned five tillvine farms so far. Our
stocks run short. How do we burn out the dragon curse?"

"We dip into our
stores." Mercy watched a light flicker in Lynport, an ancient city in the
south. "We have plenty of tillvine in the cellars from last harvest, and—"

Beatrix interrupted
her. "That tillvine is meant to last until next harvest. That next harvest
was coming up this month. It will be another year before the fields yield new
crops. Our stores will not last until next autumn." She narrowed her eyes,
staring at Mercy. "So I ask you again, daughter. Without enough tillvine
this year, how do we deal with diseased babes?"

Mercy stared into her
mother's eyes, and she saw the answer there.

"Spirit,"
Mercy whispered and took a step back.

Beatrix smiled thinly. "So
you understand."

Mercy shook her head. "They
are children of the Spirit, people of the Commonwealth. I will not do such a
thing."

The High Priestess's
smile stretched a little tighter. "You will, my child. I have no tolerance
for disobedient children. Ask Gemini how I treat a child who defies me. I will
not tolerate the disease in my empire. Leave. Now. Seek them out. And . . .
cure
them." Beatrix turned to leave, then paused and looked back. "And
Mercy? That babe you adopted, the precious little thing you call Eliana? If
you fail at this task, it will be Eliana who pays the price. Get rid of these
diseased babes . . . or I'll get rid of yours."

With that, Beatrix left
the balcony, robes swishing.

Mercy stood for a
moment longer, staring down at the map. Her jaw tightened and her fingernails
drove into her palms. For that moment, all she could do was stand stiffly,
barely able to breathe.

Finally she shouted, "Give
me the lists!"

Within an hour, three
hundred firedrakes took flight from Nova Vita, paladins on their backs, and
flew to all directions of the wind.

"To purification,"
Mercy whispered and leaned forward in the saddle. Below her, Felesar grunted
and snorted out sparks of flames. The firedrake's wings creaked, and his scales
clattered. He was an aging beast but the largest in the capital, scarred and
sturdy and ruthless in a fight.

As they flew beneath a
shimmering sun, Mercy reached across the saddle to stroke Felesar's copper scales.
They were hot and smooth, and Mercy thought back to her years riding Pyre. She
had chosen Pyre because of her scales; she had been the only firedrake of
multiple colors, each of her scales a different shade of fire, ranging from
deep red to bright yellow. What Pyre had lacked in size and strength, she had
made up for in speed, stealth, and beauty.

Mercy closed her eyes,
trembling, disgusted, betrayed, shocked.

For years I rode
you, Pyre . . . and you were a weredragon. The weredragon Domi. The weredragon
my brother bedded.

Mercy wanted to
gag.

So many truths were
collapsing around her. About Pyre. About her missing brother—Cade, a
weredragon she had hunted, a weredragon who had fled her again. About her
mother and the depths of her cruelty, a mother who'd send her out to slay
innocent babes.

"But I must
protect you, Eliana," Mercy whispered, tears in her eyes.

For the past few
months, Eliana had become like a true daughter to her. Mercy had found wet
nurses to feed the babe, servants to change her swaddling clothes, and priests
to pray over her. But every evening, Mercy would enter the babe's chamber, lift
her, hold her close, vow to protect her.

Mercy shivered.

"And now you would
kill her, Mother? Kill her unless I slay a thousand babes?" She grimaced,
eyes stinging. "How you know our weaknesses. How you use them against us,
High Priestess. How you know how to terrify your children."

A mile outside the
city, Mercy spotted the farmhouse. Two other drakes flew with her, paladins
upon them. They descended, their wings beating back the stalks of wheat, their
cries ringing across the land.

"Purification!"
Mercy shouted, as she had shouted on so many missions. "Bring out your
babe to be purified!"

The three firedrakes
landed, their claws tearing through a vegetable patch, and Felesar blasted
flame skyward.

"Bring out the
babe!" Mercy shouted again.

The farmhouse door
opened, and a husband and wife emerged, clad in burlap, holding their newborn.
They knelt before Mercy, and the mother held out her child. The baby screamed,
face red.

"Here, my lady!"
said the mother. "Her name is Sania. Purify her, my lady, and may the
Spirit bless you."

Mercy took the babe in
her arms and gazed upon her. The child still cried, tears flowing, but as Mercy
held her, the babe slowly calmed. Her crying stopped, and she gazed up at Mercy
with inquisitive blue eyes. Her tiny hand reached toward Mercy's hair.

She looks so much
like Eliana,
Mercy thought, heart twisting.

Her two fellow paladins
placed down the wooden altar, and Mercy laid the babe upon it. She had
performed the purification so many times. She had performed it on Eliana
herself. She had done so with pride, with commitment to the Spirit, with a
prayer to bring about the Falling. Today Mercy moved stiffly, throat tight,
like a woman tying a noose.

She had always brought
two herbs to every purification ceremony: ilbane to test for the curse,
tillvine to cure it.

Today she had only one
of the two.

She produced the ilbane
from her pouch, the plant that burned the skin of weredragons. As she raised
the leaves above the babe, she prayed silently.

Please, spirit, let
this babe be one of the few. Let her be the one in a hundred who are born
without the curse. Let her be like Gemini, pureborn, raised to breed pureborn
children. Please, Spirit.
Her eyes stung.
Don't let her be cursed.

Her fist shook around
the ilbane—the only herb she had here this day. She winced, not even daring to
breathe, as she lowered the plant.

Please, Spirit, let
the leaves not burn this child. Please.

She touched the ilbane
to the baby's arm.

The skin sizzled red,
and the baby screamed.

Mercy lowered her head.

"She is cursed,"
she whispered.

Oh stars, she is
cured.

The babe's parents
looked at each other, relieved.

"She's not
pureborn," whispered the father. "She won't be forced to breed."
He wiped a tear from his eye. "Thank the Spirit. She will be purified and
returned to us."

Mercy's eyes clouded,
and when she stared down at the weeping babe, she couldn't tell her apart from
Eliana, couldn't tell herself apart from her mother.

She had no tillvine
today. But she had a dagger.

The blade rose.

The blade plunged down.

The weeping died.

The parents screamed.

Mercy rose onto her
firedrake, and as she took flight, her tears streamed down her cheeks, and the
hot blood stained her armor. Below, she could still hear the parents scream.

She flew onward. She
flew to the village in the valley. She landed and cried out: "Bring out
your babe!"

Her knife drove down
again.

Another babe's scream
died.

She flew again, blood
on her armor.

She flew from village
to town, from farm to city, and her dagger drank the blood of the curse. She
was Mercy Deus, a paladin, a purifier, a killer of infants, a savior of her
daughter, a holy warrior for the Spirit, a holy warrior for her mother. Her
knife rose and fell again and again, taking lives upon a hundred altars, a
purification of the Commonwealth, a sacrifice of blood.

"For you, Eliana,"
she whispered as she purified. "For you, my mother. For you, my god."

She flew on. She killed
on. She eradicated the disease with her steel and the ice in her heart.

As the sun set, casting
red light across the sky, Mercy turned to fly home. As she flew over farmlands
and villages, she heard the screams below. The lands of the Commonwealth wailed
with their sacrifice. All across the empire, hundreds of other firedrakes had
purified the land with steel.

"You did this,
weredragons," Mercy whispered, fists trembling. "You brought this
death, Cade the weredragon. You burned our tillvine. This blood is upon you."

She reached the walls
of Nova Vita and flew above them. A dozen firedrakes were still streaming
across the city, rising and landing, and screams rose from homes. The blood of
innocents flowed down the cobbled streets of the capital. Rising from the
center of the city like a rotting jewel, the Cured Temple reflected the setting
sun, blazing out with white and red light, blinding Mercy, blinding the world,
a heart of burnished metal and crystal, the heart of an empire, the heart of a
vengeful god.

A twin to my own
heart.