City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market))

by Yep, Laurence

  And then, with a vengeful malice, the dragon brought his tail down upon the Jade Lady herself. Jade rectangles and gold wire flew in all directions as the dragon pounded the fragile body into dust.

  “No!” Nishke cried.

  While everyone else’s eyes had been upon the dragon, Nishke had been the only one to charge forward. Desperately she raised the halberd over her head to fend off the thief.

  With an evil laugh, the dragon swung his tail so that the heavy column of bone and muscle struck her, tossing her backward like a doll.

  Still laughing, the dragon flapped his wings so that clouds of dust flew everywhere as he flew toward the domed ceiling.

  He struck the shatterproof panes with his huge paws and his mouth bellowed magical spells that made the listener’s hair stand on end. Finally, the glass broke in a rain of crystal shards and the magical wards dissolved.

  With a cry of triumph, the dragon’s massive body soared through the hole and into the sky.

  Scirye

  Kles circled through the dusty air, the battle rage ebbing away, leaving only the taste of pulverized concrete thick in his mouth. The light flickered wildly as primitive fire elementals, their brains no bigger than gnats, darted about in the air from their broken homes. Voices moaned and a man was whimpering.

  When Kles spotted his mistress, her face was white as chalk as she knelt besides her fallen mother. She had retrieved her discarded cloak and folded it into a pillow for her mother, who was unconscious but still breathing.

  When the griffin settled upon Scirye’s shoulder, he felt her body still shivering with anger and fear. So he wrapped himself lovingly about the back of her neck, crooning to her as he rubbed his soft feathered cheek against hers.

  When she had made her mother comfortable, Scirye turned toward her sister. Nishke lay crumpled against a wall like a broken doll. Her eyes stared blankly, never blinking.

  Scirye got up to go to her but saw Prince Etre. A banner proclaiming the glories of the Kushan Empire dangled down from one end just above his head. He was making no effort to stanch the blood flowing from his shoulder, but was staring with a vacant look instead at the shattered case where the Jade Lady had once rested. The other survivors also sat in shock within the wreckage. No one was doing anything. They might as well have been statues.

  Scirye glanced at Lady Sudarshane, who was breathing softly. Her mother was the one who always made things right; since she was unconscious, Scirye would have to try her best to take her mother’s place. And she knew what her mother would say: Their family always put others before themselves.

  So Scirye forced herself to rise to her feet. Half in a daze, she walked as slowly and stiffly as a zombie. Her boots crunched across broken glass and shattered antiques until she reached a Pippal who was lying down, gazing at the blood streaming from a gash in her arm.

  Tearing off a strip of cloth from the hem of her tunic and with a piece of broken spear shaft, Scirye fastened a rude tourniquet above the injury. When she twisted the wood, the flow stopped. From far away, she could already hear the sound of ambulances rushing to the museum. This would do until they came.

  When Scirye tried to speak, her first words came out as a croak so she made herself swallow. “Can you move?” she asked the Pippal.

  When the Pippal nodded, Scirye used the same commanding tone her mother used when she wanted Scirye to do something without any argument from Scirye. “Then take care of Prince Etre.”

  To Scirye’s relief, the Pippal dipped her head respectfully and got up to do what she had been told. The girl went among the Kushana and the museum guards, rousing those with minor injuries to tend to those who were worse off. To Scirye’s surprise, they all obeyed.

  Finally, she reached the two boys. They had braced their feet while they tried to shove the fallen monster off of their friend. Despite their best efforts, the monster’s corpse didn’t move at all. There was no sign of the man and Scirye was sure he could not have survived the crushing impact.

  The brown-haired boy was panting as he pushed, calling out “Primo!” over and over. He ignored the blood pouring from the cut on his cheek.

  Scirye grabbed the larger boy’s shoulder. “Stop your friend’s bleeding.”

  The larger boy spread out his arms in frustration. “I’ve tried. Leech won’t let me.”

  The brown-haired boy looked furiously over his shoulder at them. “Koko, we have to save Primo!”

  Scirye was finding it hard to control her own hysterical grief. She grabbed hold of the frantic smaller boy and shook him. “You have to take care of your injury or you’ll hurt yourself worse. That’s what Primo would want.”

  The boy stood stunned, as if she were speaking a foreign language. Taking advantage of the lull, Scirye tore a strip from her sleeve and pressed it against his wound. Luckily it did not seem to be very deep and the pressure stopped the bleeding. He stared at her with a sorrow so great that it made her forget her own losses for a moment. “Here. Hold this.”

  He let her guide his hand to the temporary bandage. When she let go of him, he burst into tears. “He gave his life for us.”

  His words renewed her own fears. “So did many others,” she said.

  Checking the gallery, the girl saw that the rescue effort was well under way. The severely injured were being taken care of and made comfortable. They no longer needed her.

  Now came the moment she had been dreading. Pivoting, she headed over to Nishke.

  Her sister’s eyes, which had once danced with such life, were now dull. Her face was a mask of anger and despair.

  Hoping against hope, Scirye knelt and took her sister’s wrist to feel for a pulse. She waited a minute. Then two. Then three. Then she stopped counting.

  She wished with all her heart that Nishke would suddenly smile and tell her gullible little sister that she had fallen for yet another prank. But Scirye knew that Nishke never would. The girl’s shoulders sagged as she gently placed Nishke’s wrist over her stomach. Then she closed her sister’s eyes.

  Scirye faced Nanaia. The goddess’s statue had become twisted around somehow during the battle so that she tilted at an angle, staring sorrowfully at the carnage.

  In her lower right hand, Nanaia grasped a scepter with a flowering head to symbolize the power she had over the dead, for the same earth that gave its bounty to the living also embraced the dead. Nanaia the Peaceful also granted eternal sleep and renewal.

  Scirye asked the goddess to grant her sister peace, but as she used what remained of her sleeve to clean the dust from her sister’s face, Scirye knew that Nishke could have no rest until the dragon was killed and the ring recovered.

  Kles straightened upon his mistress’s shoulder as he folded his wings and brought his forepaws respectfully together. “It was the way she would have wanted to die,” he said, “keeping faith with her duty.”

  “I was looking at her just before the monster fell on her. I saw her face, Kles. Nishke thought she had failed.’ The realization made Scirye double over as if a knife had stabbed her.

  The girl rocked back and forth for a moment as she covered her ears. “And I can still hear that dragon mocking her.” She shook her head violently as if trying to toss the sound out of her memory. And inside her, she could feel the anger swelling until she thought she would burst.

  Nishke could not recover the ring. She could not restore the honor of the Pippalanta or her family. Well, then, Scirye would just have to do it for her. For all of them.

  Scirye turned to Nanaia yet again. Sometimes she was the Kind and sometimes the Peaceful. But her upper left hand clutched a bow, for when the laws of Kindness and Peace were broken, Nanaia became the Hunter. Terrible, unforgiving, and above all relentless until she had exacted her revenge.

  And now Scirye’s heart asked the goddess for a second boon: Make me like you until I’ve punished the dragon, the girl prayed. I don’t care what happens to me afterward.

  A breeze blew in from the broken skylight
, brushing the dust before it. Scirye’s eyes followed the little white cloud along the floor until it stopped against the wall just beneath the flying carpet.

  Was it a sign or a coincidence? Whichever it was, she knew deep in her heart that this was Tumarg. Afraid, yet determined, the girl rose and walked toward a corner of the room.

  “Where are you going?” Kles asked as he adjusted to her getting up.

  “I wanted to be a warrior,” Scirye said. Angrily, she remembered Leech’s harsh words to her. “Well, pretending is for children. There’s only one thing to do.”

  “This is no time to do something wild,” Kles said.

  “If my ancestors hadn’t been a little wild, they couldn’t have fought their way across a wilderness and taken an empire,” Scirye said as her eyes searched the room.

  “That was all very fine for a band of refugees, but it’s completely out of place in 1941,” Kles argued.

  Energy suddenly surged through Scirye, warm and electric. She went over to the goddess, and with a bow to Nanaia, picked up the halberd that Nishke had tried to use in her last desperate attack. Scirye thought the shaft was still warm from her sister’s hands. It was so heavy that she dragged the shaft behind her until she reached the old flying carpet still hanging within its gold frame.

  “You don’t know how to fly,” Kles objected.

  “When we were at the Paris embassy, I rode a griffin,” Scirye countered. The Kushan ambassador there had been fond of flying about the city on his griffin, to the delight of the Parisians. As a bribe for behaving at an important reception, Lady Sudarshane had gotten the ambassador to reward Scirye with a ride.

  “Only in the embassy courtyard,” Kles pointed out, “and no more than a meter up. A carousel horse could have taken you even farther above the ground.”

  She had, indeed, only gone about in circles, but even so … “It still counts,” Scirye insisted, and shifted her grip on the shaft so that she was gripping it near the halberd blade.

  Kles gave a startled cry and flapped away from her as Scirye swung the halberd up clumsily. The gauntlet was still on her hand and she held it up to protect her eyes as her other hand swung the halberd against the glass.

  The tempered glass cracked but did not break, crystalline lines spreading across the surface.

  “That’s a priceless antique!” Kles gasped as he hovered near her.

  “I need it to go after that dragon.” Scirye struck furiously at the glass over and over until it finally shattered into small bits.

  The brown-haired boy called Leech had come over to see what she was doing. His wound had stopped bleeding but blood had smeared with the dust so that his face had become a gruesome mask.

  “That rug’ll never fly,” he said.

  He was just so typical of the brash, overconfident idiots in school that she did not even bother glaring at him. “It did once,” she countered. From past experiences, she knew it would be a waste of time to try to correct someone who was as happy wallowing in ignorance as a pig in mud. So rather than explaining more, she went on hacking the carpet from the frame with the halberd blade. The old, brittle threads broke easily and the carpet was curling down on her before she realized it.

  She was surprised when she glimpsed another pair of hands catching the top of the rug before it could engulf her. Leech said nothing as he helped her lower it to the floor.

  Koko was wiping the grit from his face with his handkerchief as he came over. “The girlie’s gone cuckoo.”

  Kles snapped his beak haughtily. “You will address the Lady Scirye properly and keep your insults to yourself.”

  “Calling her a lady doesn’t make her one.” Koko smirked. “And she’s still crazy.”

  “Shut up, Koko,” Leech said, but he seemed to share the opinion because there was pity in his eyes as she spread the carpet on the glass-covered floor.

  Scirye did her best to ignore them. “Can you read the spell, Kles?” she asked her griffin.

  Kles had earned the knowledge painfully enough after all the pecks from the eyrie keeper. “Yes,” he said as he settled again on her shoulder, “at least I think I can. But is there any point in trying to talk you out of this?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so,” the griffin said regretfully. “Then we’ll need a small bit of your life flow.”

  Scirye cut a finger of her free hand with the stiletto Prince Etre had given her and squeezed a ruby drop out onto the fingertip. “What next?” she asked, holding her finger poised over the rug.

  “This is madness.” Kles sighed. But he pointed a claw at the upper left corner. “Let the carpet drink there. And then say the words after me.”

  Scirye was startled when she touched the spot and felt the carpet almost kiss her finger. The gold threads around her fingertip began to burn with an inner fire.

  “Ytarte yentantse” Kles began in the Old Tongue.

  When Scirye repeated the words, the carpet’s edges began to flutter slightly. Within the center, the image of Oado, the god of the wind, seemed to waken as if from a long slumber.

  Koko sidled in close to his friend and whispered, “Let’s go.” He looked about the room and then said conspiratorially, “We’ll cram what we can into our pockets and put the blame on the dragon and his buddies.”

  Leech shook his head. “I’d feel too rotten inside if I ran away now. If she can get this thing to fly, I’m going with her.”

  Scirye shook her head. “You’ll only get in my way.”

  “The dragon killed my friend, Primo,” Leech said. “Primo saved our lives. I never knew anyone so kind as him.”

  Scirye saw the determined look on his face. Just like her, he had a purpose now. A hunger for revenge was so much better than wallowing in their earlier despair. Whether he knew it or not, he had given himself over to the goddess so, for Nanaia’s sake, she would have to put up with him.

  She pointed to the shattered window on a nearby display. “Then get the throwing axes. They won’t travel as far as the stars, but they’ll do more damage when they hit.”

  He nodded patronizingly. “Not a bad idea.”

  Koko followed Leech over there and watched as his friend reached carefully through the window and took out six of the small gleaming axes, the rubies and diamonds on the shafts gleaming as they caught the light momentarily.

  “Okay, okay,” Koko said desperately, “I’m sorry about Primo, too, but this won’t bring him back. Let’s just take the axes and get out of here.” He seemed disappointed when Leech stuck them in his belt and headed back for the rug. “There’s nothing you can do against that monster.”

  “We can try,” the girl said grimly as she took a pair of axes and slung them in her belt.

  Leech stared at Koko challengingly. “We’ve always had one rule: No one hurts one of us. If they do, we get even. Well, Primo was our friend.”

  Koko looked yearningly at the exit but his eyes came back to his friend. “I knew you were trouble when I saw you in that alley just after you ran away from the orphanage. I should have left you there.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Leech asked.

  “Because I felt sorry for you. You were shivering and scared of your own shadow. So I broke my own rule about thinking of my own skin first.” Koko tugged at his hair. “And now I’m going to do it again.” Disgusted with himself, Koko picked up an axe, too. “Argh, I’m such a moron.”

  Bayang

  Bayang trembled with rage and frustration as she watched her enemy escape. Her hatred for Badik was so deep, she felt it in the very marrow of her bones.

  Get a hold of yourself, she scolded herself fiercely. Mindless fury won’t help your people. Badik is gone so think about what to do about the remaining target.

  She took several deep breaths, rejecting all emotion and focusing on the hard facts as she had trained herself to do.

  Her prey had saved her, a complete stranger, and later had been so heartbroken when his bodyguard had died. These were not t
he actions of a heartless monster who murdered brutally and wrecked so many innocent lives. Instead, he had shown a hatchlinglike trust when he had turned his back on her. She found it touching that, despite all his hardships, he still had the same kind of faith of the young: simple but deep.

  Many believed that a person could improve with each new lifetime. She found herself hoping that was what had happened to her prey—the cycle of deaths and rebirths slowly washing away the callous murderer from his soul like dirt stains from a shirt. If that was true and she killed him, who would be the real monster then?

  As she wound the discarded chain around her waist, she looked about the wreckage, searching for her prey. She saw him sitting on the floor with his friend and the bossy little Kushan hatchling. They were all looking very scared but also very determined about something.

  The bossy little Kushan noticed Bayang at the same time. “When my mother wakes up,” she called to Bayang, “please tell her that I’ve gone after the dragon.”

  The dragon? Bayang stared at the hatchlings skeptically. Had they all taken knocks to their heads during the battle? Then she noticed the rug for the first time. Its edges were rippling, curling, and then straightening out as if it were alive. The Kushan hatchling must be of the Old Blood and either she or her griffin could read the Old Tongue.

  Bayang had thought there was only one flying carpet left in the world and she had flown on it several times while on a mission in disguise in the New Persian Empire. The secret of their creation had been lost centuries in the past, and since then no one had been able to figure out the complicated process of simultaneously casting the complex spells as the threads were woven.

  This one might have flown when it was new, but slashed from its golden frame and lying on the floor, the threadbare rug looked more like trash than a valuable antique. She was sure that it would fall apart at the first attempt at flight, but even if it held together by some miracle, these hatchlings had no idea of the trouble they were getting themselves into. Carpet flying was not for amateurs.