Pillars of Dragonfire (13 page)

"May we find that
home again," she whispered. "May we see those birches, those golden
mountains. May we pray again in the light of our column, and may our wings
again find the sky of Requiem."

"We will find
Requiem," Jaren said. "I promise you, Elory. Our road is long and
strewn with thorns. Like Laira, we are in darkness, but we are not lost. Our
homeland awaits us, and we will raise her halls again."

The sun was setting.
The children on her back awoke, and Lucem flew up to carry them onward. Elory
released her magic for the first time in a night and day. She lay on her
father's scaly back, closed her eyes, and slept. For the first time in many
nights, Elory did not dream of the horrors of Tofet; she dreamed of a lost
girl, wandering a dark forest in the north, seeking a home, moving by the light
of the stars.

 
 
BIM

Claws reached out from the
darkness, grabbed him, shook him, cut him.

"No," he
mumbled in the shadows. "No. Release me. Stop!"

But the creature kept
shaking him, a beast in the darkness.

"Up, Bim!"
the troll said. "Up. Run!"

Bim's eyes fluttered
open. Shadows spread around him, and orange light crackled in the distance. The
trees swayed, branches creaking and scattering snow. His sister knelt above
him, gripping his shoulders and shaking him.

"Up, Bim! We have
to run."

Bim moaned. He didn't
want to run again. He wanted to return to sleep. He wanted to sink into the
snow, to let them burn him. To finally die, finally rest.

But groggily he rose.
He rose like he did every hour or two. And he ran through the darkness with his
sister, fleeing the fire.

He didn't look over his
shoulder. He never looked anymore. But Bim heard them. Thunderous hooves in the
sky, beating wings of fire, and the voices of seraphim, calling to him, calling
for his blood, vowing to bugger him and his sister with their spears, to snap
their bones, to tug out their entrails. He smelled them too—the smell of
burning wood, of brimstone, of sulfur, of dried blood. The light of their
chariots painted the forest red, and still Bim and Til ran.

"Here!" Til
whispered.

Her hair was red as the
flames, and snow dusted her cloak. Her pieces of armor, collected from many
corpses, lay strapped across patches of fur, silent as they ran. She pointed
toward a fallen tree, its roots rising like a wooden fairy fort. Below the
roots, under the trunk, gaped a black burrow. The firelight grew closer behind,
the chariots closing the distance.

His sister all but
shoved him into the burrow. He crouched in the den, the icy trunk above him,
the roots rising like the bars of a cage. Til crawled in next and huddled
beside him, pushing herself deeper.

The chariots stormed
above.

Ash fell outside the
burrow like gliding snow.

The wooden burrow
creaked, and the seraphim laughed above. Bim cringed, hugging his sister. Her
arms nearly crushed him. He screwed his eyes shut, the smell of them filling
his nostrils.

"Find the
weredragons!" cried a voice above.

"Skin them
alive!"

"We'll make coats
from their skin and flutes from their bones!"

Bim huddled deeper,
pressing his back against the tree. Til squeezed him so tightly he could barely
breathe.

"It's all
right," she whispered into his ear. "They'll fly by. Count with me.
One . . . two . . . three . . ."

Shuddering, he counted
with her, forcing the words out in a hoarse whisper. He had to just think of
the numbers. Just numbers and nothing else. Not the blades peeling off his
skin. Not the hooks cutting into his belly, pulling out his insides. Just
numbers, that was all. He pretended that he was counting dragons.

His heartbeat slowed.
Til's grip relaxed and he forced himself to breathe.

"Twenty-three . .
. twenty-four . . ."

Moments until life or
death. The number of breaths before torture or another hour of dreams.

"Twenty-seven . .
."

And their sounds faded.
The firelight died down. The seraphim flew onward, leaving only ash, shadows,
and echoes in their wake.

Bim relaxed, closed his
eyes, and slept in his sister's arms.

Again he dreamed, the
troll lurking in the shadows, circling him, sniffing. Again its claws grabbed
him, tugging him, the fangs biting.

"Up, Bim! Up. We
have to move."

The troll kept shaking
him, burning him with torches, and his eyes snapped open. Firelight blazed all
around, and heat drenched Bim. He still lay under the log, the roots rising
before him. Beyond them, the forest was burning in the night.

"Burn them down!
They hide here. Burn them!"

His sister pulled him
out of the burrow, and again they ran. Through flames. In shadows. Down valleys
and up hills, moving between the trees, fleeing the inferno. They ran until
they found ruins—a village of Old Requiem, a mere well and silo and the shells
of a few homes—and they hid between crumbling brick walls. They shivered in
the darkness as the fire burned below the hill, and they slept again.

"We'll reach the
coast," Til vowed, holding him close, smoothing his hair. Her voice rose
in his dreams—the voice of the clawed beast, of a mother, of an ancient queen.
"We'll find safety, Bim. I promise. We'll find a home."

 
 
LUCEM

As he flew with the camp,
Lucem kept looking over his shoulder at Elory; she slept in human form, curled
up on his scaly back. Again and again, every mile, he turned his head to check
on her, to see that she still rode him, that she was
real
.

Every time he looked,
he half expected her to vanish, half expected this all to be some fever dream.
He kept waiting to find himself back in his cave, talking to his clump of wood,
or to a pinecone, or to a rock he had painted a face on. He kept waiting for a
brief moment of clarity, just enough to realize he had finally gone completely
mad.

How can this be?
Lucem kept thinking as he flew with the dragons.
How can she be?

He
didn't deserve this. This couldn't be real. He was a coward! He was the boy who
had climbed the wall of Tofet, had escaped, had abandoned his people. He was
the man cursed to linger in a cave, to go mad with loneliness, his punishment
for his betrayal. What had he done to deserve this blessing? To fly with so
many dragons, fly by Meliora the Merciful herself, Queen of Requiem? To bear on
his back Elory Aeternum, princess of dragons—a woman he loved and who loved
him?

He could not imagine a
better life, a more precious moment. This couldn't be real. He had lost his
mind. These dragons must be leaves in the wind, and Elory must be another block
of wood with knots for eyes. He must be back in his cave. He was not a good
enough man to deserve this.

Neck twisted around, he
watched her as she slept. Elory lay across his back, her cheek resting on her
palm. Her face was calm as she slept, and her brown hair was growing, no longer
stubble but a messy mop that fell across her brow; soon it would be long enough
to completely cover her missing ear. Her burlap tunic was tattered, revealing
many scrapes, cuts, and bruises, and her frame was still too thin, her skin
burnt. The marks of her collar and manacles still showed around her neck and
ankles.

Gazing at her, both
love and pity filled Lucem, and he knew: This was real. He truly was flying
here, Elory on his back, and she was hurt, and she was scarred, and though her
wounds would heal her soul might not.

While I was in my
cave, all those years, safe from pain, she was suffering under the whip. For
ten years as I lingered—just a few miles away—she was suffering.

The old guilt filled Lucem,
worse than ever—guilt mingled with love.

He began to descend in
the sky. He flew below the other dragons of Requiem, heading lower in the sky,
leaving the others above. A forest sprawled across the land of Saraph, and he
kept gliding down.

"Lucem!"
Meliora cried above. "Lucem, you all right?"

He looked up at the
white dragon who flew above. "Just a quick break to water the trees!"
he called back to her.

She nodded and Lucem
kept gliding down. Despite their haste, few dragons had agreed to act like
birds, dropping their waste from above, and many commonly dipped down for some
quick privacy before rising again.

Elory rose on his back,
stretched, and blinked. "Lucem, why are we flying down?"

He spotted a clearing
in the forest below, and he spiraled down toward it. "Because I wanted to
tell you something."

She raised an eyebrow
and scampered onto his neck. "You know, I can hear you in the sky
too."

"And so can thousands
of other dragons. This stuff's private."

He glided into the
clearing. Cedars and pines rose around them, and dry needles and pinecones lay
strewn across the earth. Cyclamens grew in the shade of chalk boulders. The sky was bright with thousands of streaming dragons in every color. Elory
climbed off Lucem's back, and he released his magic, returning to human form
too.

He took her hands in
his. "Elory."

She stared at him with
soft eyes, her hands warm. "Lucem?"

She's beautiful,
he thought.
She's kind. She's strong and brave and wonderful. And I don't
deserve this.

"Elory, I want to
say that I'm sorry." He gazed into those brown eyes, marveling at their
beauty, still holding her hands. "I'm sorry for everything."

"For what?"
she whispered.

"For running away.
For leaving you in Tofet—leaving everyone. I knew the agony of Tofet for the
first eleven years of my life, and I can't imagine suffering another decade in
that fire. I'm so sorry, Elory, and I don't know if this is real. I don't know
if the dragons above us, if you here, if your hands in mine . . . I don't know
if this is real or just a dream. Because this is too good. Too wonderful. More
than I deserve."

Her eyes softened, and
she kissed his cheek. "It's real. And we all deserve this—a homeland. A
nation. A family."

He kissed her lips.
"I love you, Elory." He caressed her cheek, marveling at its
softness, at how large her eyes were, how her soul shone through them. "I
love you more than I thought it possible to love another. I love you
always."

They kissed again, arms
wrapped around each other, a long, deep kiss as dragons flew above. She felt so
frail in his arms, half his size, small and thin from her years of servitude,
but stronger than great queens and heroines.

"So that's why you
brought me here." Elory bit her lip. "To ravage me."

Lucem couldn't help but
grin. "If I tell you the world might end tomorrow, that this might be our
last moment, would you allow the ravaging to continue?"

She tapped her cheek
and tilted her head. "I might just be the one ravaging you."

He glanced up at the
sky. Thousands of dragons were still flying above; it would be a while before
the camp passed them by. Lucem took Elory by the hand, and he led her under the
cover of a twisting pomegranate tree, its canopy rich and rustling. He had
barely made it under the tree before Elory grabbed him, all but leaped onto
him, and kissed him again.

They fell onto the
grass, lips locked, and Lucem closed his eyes. He reached under her tunic, and
her hands slipped under his, and he pulled his cloak over them. Their naked
bodies pressed together under the burlap, and his hands explored her body. Her
frame was slender, her bones delicate, and he winced when his fingers passed
over the many scars on her back.

"Does it
hurt?" he whispered.

She shook her head and
nuzzled his neck, kissing him. "Keep stroking me."

Their hands explored
each other and they closed their eyes. They had never made love before, but it
felt natural, as if they had been made for this, had waited years for this. He
moved atop her, her short brown hair tickling his nose, and she wrapped her
limbs around him. It felt better than flying, better than blowing fire. It was
joy—pure, distilled, perfect.

This is real
,
Lucem thought.
Thank you, stars. Thank you. I don't know what I did to
deserve her. But right now, this moment is perfect. Right now is pure joy.
Tomorrow the world might burn, but here, now, this instant in time—this is
purest joy I never thought I would feel.

"I love you,"
he whispered.

She nibbled his bottom
lip. "Right back at you, O hero of Requiem."

They lay together under
his cloak, holding each other, still naked, watching the dragons fly above
beyond the branches.

"I never want to
leave this place," Elory said, nestling against him.

He kissed the top of
her head. "When we reach Requiem, I'm going to build us a little home. Not
too large, not too fancy. Just a comfortable little house. And we'll have a
garden, and we'll plant a pomegranate tree like this one." He frowned. I'm
not sure if pomegranate trees can grow in the cold north—they say Requiem is
very cold. But they have birch trees there, and they say birches are beautiful
too. And in the summers, we'll lie like this under our tree, in our garden,
outside the house. And we'll just lie all day, being lazy, and naked,
and—" Suddenly he felt his cheeks flush. "I mean, I don't want to
dream too far ahead. I don't want to pressure you. Maybe you'll want to live
with Meliora, not with me, and . . . oh dear, I'm not scaring you away, am I?
Because if I am, I—"

"Oh, hush."
She kissed his lips. "Of course I want you to build me a home. And of
course we'll live together and have a little garden."

"And . . . the
being naked a lot part?" he asked hopefully.

She rolled her eyes.
"Depends how much housework you do."