Dragons Reborn (18 page)

Gemini raised his
eyes and saw that Roen, Cade, and Fidelity were listening from several feet
away. He returned his eyes to Domi.

"I want to
build you a kingdom, Domi. A safe place. I . . . I realize we can't be together
again." Gemini's voice shook, and he clasped her hand, that soft, slender
hand he had held so often, had dreamed of holding for so long in the darkness. "I
know we can never go back. Never be together again in the Temple, walk through
the gardens, laugh together, whisper together. I know that we can never return
to Sanctus, never return to that fort where we first ate a meal together. Do
you remember that fort over the sea, Domi? That life is over. I know this."
He reached out to touch her cheek. "But I still want to protect you. I
still want to give you a new life. If that can't be a life with me, let me give
you a life of your own, a land of your own. For you. For your kind. Let me give
you Requiem."

Domi narrowed her
eyes. "What do you mean? The Cured Temple rises around our column upon the
ruins of our fallen palace. The Commonwealth spreads across our land."
Anger filled her eyes. "How will you give me Requiem?"

"I cannot
give you a new palace, nor can I dismantle the Temple around King's Column. I
cannot return to you all the lands of my family." The tide was rising, and
the water flowed around Gemini's feet, stinging the wounds around his ankles. "But
I will give you a stretch of land. Maybe here along this coast. A place to
build a village. For you. For your friends. A small kingdom, a new Requiem, a
buffer between my empire and the Horde in the south. A place where you can be
free, Domi. Free to fly as Pyre again. Free to live with the others. The kingdom
you dreamed of. It's what you wanted. Let me give you this gift."

Feet stomped across
the sand, and Roen approached and knelt above Gemini, fist raised, teeth bared.

"You're in no
position to give us anything!" The woodsman spat on the sand. "Your
own mother imprisoned you. You're no longer a paladin. You're nobody. Nobody
but our prisoner, disgraced."

Gemini turned his
head to gaze into Roen's eyes. He spoke calmly. "I'm nobody now. I'm only
a prisoner now, bound in your ropes. But I'm still the son of High Priestess
Beatrix. I'm still of holy blood. I've come here to form an alliance with Domi.
I ask you to join me, Roen, you and the others." Even with his arms bound,
Gemini managed to push himself up. He stood on the beach, staring at them one
by one. "Fly with me back to the capital. Storm the Cured Temple with me,
four dragons roaring fire. We will kill the High Priestess. And we will kill
Mercy. And then . . . then the Temple will be mine, and a kingdom will be
yours."

 
 
FIDELITY

"We can't trust him,"
Roen said. "A man who'd kill his own mother and sister? Such a man is
fully corrupt, and he won't hesitate to stab us in the back once it suits him."

They stood along
the boardwalk of Lynport, the southernmost border of the Commonwealth. To one
side stretched a row of buildings: seaside temples, libraries of holy books, a
silo of grain, an ancient windmill, many domed huts of clay, and several old
buildings from the days of Requiem, their wooden timbers hundreds of years old.
On the boardwalk's other side stretched the port. Two breakwaters embraced the
sea, forming a cove. Piers stretched into the sunlit water, and a hundred ships
docked here, mostly the small boats of fishermen. Farther back, near the edge
of the cove, several great brigantines had set their anchors, massive warships
of many sails. More brigantines sailed in the open sea, patrolling the coast,
their sails painted with tillvine blossoms.

Fidelity stood
with her companions, the sea breeze caressing her face, the afternoon sun
warming her. With one lens of her spectacles broken, she found the world
flatter, less alive, less real; only her right eye now saw clearly. Spectacles
were a treasure, a lens worth more than gold. It would perhaps be many years
before she could afford a new lens. Fidelity sighed, hugged herself, and stared
out at the port. She watched a merchant ship, a great carrack with tall masks,
navigate into the cove and set down its anchor, and she wondered what treasures
it brought from foreign lands, if it had perhaps even been to the Horde itself at
the continent of Terra.

Roen was talking
some more, and Cade and Domi nodded and added their own words, but the
conversation faded in Fidelity's ears, seeming as blurred as the world in her
left eye.

The Horde lies
beyond that sea . . . where my father fell.

Her one eye might
now be blurred, but Fidelity could still clearly see that old vision; she had
been seeing it for months now whenever she gazed into the distance, whenever
she closed her eyes, whenever she thought of him. Her father, the brave gray
dragon Korvin, facing Mercy. The paladin's lance driving into his neck. The
gray dragon losing his magic, falling as a man into the sea, and Amity burning,
and Fidelity wanting to fly to them, and Cade dragging her away, and tears and
so much pain and fire, and—

"What do you
think, Fidelity?"

She blinked,
realizing that Roen had stepped closer to her. His eyes softened as he looked at
her, and he reached out to hold her hands. Fidelity breathed deeply, feeling
some of her anxiety ebb away like the retreating tide. In a world of death and
chaos, Roen was her anchor, no less grounding than the anchors of the merchant
ship before her.

She wrapped her
arms around him and leaned her head against his broad, warm chest, seeking
shelter in his embrace. His beard tickled her forehead. The tall woodsman held
her and kissed the top of her head.

"He offers us
a kingdom," Fidelity whispered. "Yet he wants us, only four souls, to
attack a temple full of an army."

She glanced aside,
peering out from Roen's embrace. Gemini stood several feet away, talking to
Domi in hushed tones. Both wore heavy burlap robes and cloaks, and both kept
their heads lowered.

"Do you trust
him?" Roen said.

Fidelity sighed,
watching the paladin talk to her sister. A gull landed between the two, and
Gemini tried to kick it away, incurring a curse and glare from Domi.

"No,"
Fidelity confessed. "I don't trust him. This could all be a ruse, a plan
for Gemini to lure us back into a trap. He would profess to lead us on an
assassination attempt, only for soldiers to leap onto us. Domi believes him. I
don't even fully understand her relationship with him. I don't think she does
either. She trusts him, but I don't." She raised her head and stared into
Roen's eyes. "Yet if we cast Gemini aside, what other hope awaits us?
There are only four Vir Requis left that we know of, that's all. We have no
army to storm the Temple with, no other aid, no—"

"I'm telling
you!" rose a voice along the boardwalk. "Two bloody weredragons in
the south. They lead the bloody Horde, they do."

Fidelity frowned
and spun toward the voice. Roen stared with her.

The merchant ship
had docked along the boardwalk, and dockworkers were busy offloading its wares:
wooden crates, burlap sacks, and bundles of canvas. A portly man in lavish,
purple robes and a plumed hat stood on the boardwalk by the gangplank, speaking
to a lanky priest.

"You been
drinking Terran spirits again, Yaran?" said the priest, frowning.

"Aye, I have
been," said the rotund merchant. "And you should drink your fill too
before the fire reaches this town. Abina Kahan, old ruler of the Horde, is dead
and burned. Weredragons killed him, and they're mustering, my friend. Mustering
for war. The Red Queen rules there now, and she's thirsty for the blood of the
Temple, they say."

Fidelity gasped.
Leaving her companions, she rushed toward the merchant. Her knees shook, and
her breath rattled in her lungs.

"Pardon me,
sir," she said, struggling to keep her voice calm. "The . . . Red
Queen?"

The merchant
turned toward her, and his eyes softened. Fidelity supposed that she made
rather a pitiful sight: a girl wrapped in a tattered burlap cloak, one lens
missing from her spectacles, bruises and scrapes covering her skin. She
probably looked like a dock rat, an urchin who lived on the boardwalk,
scrounging for fallen morsels and whatever seaweed washed ashore.

"Get out of
here, scum!" the tall priest said, glaring at her. His lip peeled back in
disgust. "You're speaking to Ferin of Vale, a wealthy man. He has no time
for dock rats."

"It's all
right, Yaran!" said Ferin, raising a pudgy hand in a conciliatory gesture.
"It's all right. The child has a right to good, juicy merchant gossip as much
as any priest." He gave a jovial laugh, turned back toward Fidelity, and
his eyes gleamed. "Aye, the Red Queen they call her. A weredragon woman.
In the days, she's a tall proud warrior, a barbarian of the Horde. In the
nights, she turns into a great red reptile, beating wings like sails and
blowing fire."

Fidelity trembled.

Amity.

"You . . .
you said there were two dragons?" she whispered.

"Were you
eavesdropping?" demanded the gaunt priest.

"Yaran!"
barked the merchant, turning toward his friend. "Let the girl ask! She's
certainly a better audience than you. Go bless the crates and pull that stick out
of your arse." As the priest stormed off, the merchant turned back toward
Fidelity, and a grin split his face. "Oh, quite an audience! Very nice."

Fidelity glanced
to her sides and saw that her companions had joined her. Roen stood to her
left, while Domi, Cade, and even Gemini stood to her right. Others from along
the boardwalk stepped up: fishermen and their wives, scrawny urchins, and a few
boys busy chewing on apples and jangling dice in their hands.

As dockworkers
continued to offload crates, the merchant raised his arms, voice booming out,
the consummate performer with a captive audience. "Aye, they said the Red
Queen slew a hundred griffins herself, tamed the great Behemoth, and wears the
old abina's shrunken head around her neck as an amulet. She has a companion
too, they say, a dark, hulking, brutish warrior." The merchant stamped his
feet and leaned forward, his face twisting into a demonic mask. Children
squealed and fled behind their mothers' skirts. "He's a weredragon too,
you know. Aye. The brute can turn into a great gray beast with blue fire, and
he follows the Red Queen wherever she flies, burning any who dares challenge
her reign."

A gray dragon,
Fidelity thought, trembling.
Korvin. My father.

"Do you know
their names, kind sir?" she asked, unable to hide the tremble in her
voice. "Of the red and gray dragons?"

"Ah!"
said the merchant, raising a finger. "They are known by many names. The
Red Queen and the Brute. The Weredragons of Leonis. Queen Am—" The
merchant slapped his mouth shut, and his eyes widened, staring over Fidelity's
shoulder. "Oh Spirit."

Fidelity spun
around, and her chest seemed to shatter into a thousand pieces.

Oh stars no.

A hundred
firedrakes or more darkened the sky, paladins on their backs, flying over the
city of Lynport.

"Surrender
the weredragons!" shouted a familiar voice from the sky. "Surrender
Gemini, the rogue paladin! Bring me the outlaws or this city will burn!"

Fidelity stared up
and saw her there, flying on a pure white firedrake with ivory horns.

"Mercy,"
she hissed.

Footsteps thumped.
Cade ran up to Fidelity and grabbed her arm. "Come on! We have to run!"

She shook her
head. "No! Cover your face with your hood." She stared at the others.
"Be calm. Follow me. Walk slowly."

She pulled her
hood over her head, and she walked along the boardwalk. Her heart thudded and
her fingers trembled, but she forced herself to walk calmly. Her fellow Vir
Requis walked at her side, as did Gemini; the paladin was cursing and hissing,
but Domi guided him onward, whispering soothingly.

"We seek four
weredragons and an outlaw paladin!" Mercy shouted above. Her white
firedrake dived. It glided so close above the boardwalk its belly nearly hit
Fidelity's head. The blast of its wings ruffled her cloak, and Fidelity had to
grab her hood to hold it down. "Surrender the criminals or your city will
burn!"

Fidelity kept
walking, leading the others. Many other people crowded the boardwalk, some
staring at the firedrakes and pointing, others rushing back to their homes, and
a few even knelt and prayed as if the beasts were deities.

A hundred
thousand people live in this city,
Fidelity told herself, taking a
shuddering breath.
We'll vanish into the crowd. Mercy will never find us.

The firedrakes
screeched overhead, a hundred or more, diving and racing over the city roofs,
streaming across the sea, blasting out fire. Their roars were deafening. Their
beating wings blasted down storms of air. Debris scuttled across the boardwalk,
and fiery streams crisscrossed the sky.

"Surrender yourself,
vermin!" Mercy shouted from her firedrake. "Do you hear me, Gemini?
Do you hear me, Domi, you harlot? I know you're here! You've been seen,
maggots!"

Fidelity turned
her head to stare at the others. They stared back from the shadows of their
hoods. Fidelity's heart sank. The battle over the beach, kidnapping Gemini,
killing his firedrake . . . somebody had seen them in the night, perhaps a
fishermen, perhaps a pair of lovers walking along the shore.

"Keep moving,"
Fidelity whispered, tugging her hood as low as it would go. "We return to
the tavern." She looked ahead and saw the Old Wheel only a few steps away.
"She won't find us. She—"

Mercy's firedrake dived
again, skimming along the boardwalk, and the paladin's voice pealed. "I
will burn one house at a time until you emerge, Gemini!"