FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  Maev slowly sat down again, loosening her fists. At her side, she saw Tanin ease too. He slipped his dagger back into his boot.

  “The Prince of Eteer?” Maev said, letting her voice carry across the table. “Eteer’s just a myth.” She snorted. “A land of stone towers, of men bedecked all in bronze, of thousands of souls living in a town the size of a forest?” She spat. “Ain’t no such place in the world.”

  The villagers looked at her, scratching chins and stroking beards.

  “Eteer’s real enough,” said the old man with the muttonchops. “My cousin, in the next town over, he’s been there himself. Trades there, he does. He ships in furs and brings back jewels and spices and metal tools. Aye, a land of stone towers it is, of walls taller than trees.” He gestured around at the village; a few scraggly huts rose around the muddy square. “There’s more to the world than the north. We here, we’re a mole on the arse of the world. But Eteer now—that there’s a golden crown.”

  Old Wag leaped onto the tabletop, spraying mud from his boots across plates and knocking over a mug of ale. “And there’s a weredragon there! It’s true, it is. Traders talking all about it. My old nan swears she heard it from one who saw the beast. A blue dragon flying over the sea. Locked in the tower now, he is, chained in his human form. Can’t hurt no decent souls like that. His own father put him there.” Wag nodded emphatically. “If my son were a weredragon, I’d lock him up too.”

  Men roared with laughter. “Your son can’t even work a grinding stone, let alone become a dragon!” one woman called out. “Head of mush, that one has.”

  Maev looked at her brother. He stared back at her, eyes somber.

  “Maev,” Tanin whispered. “Tell me you’re not thinking of . . .”

  She grabbed his hand and tugged him up. She pulled him away from the table. Ignoring calls from the villagers, she walked around the well, between two huts, and into open fields.

  The stars shone above, crickets chirped, and an owl hooted. Fireflies danced above the tall grass. After the heat and noise and smells of the village, it felt good to walk here in darkness. They moved through the grasslands, heading deeper into shadows, for they were Vir Requis, creatures of the night.

  “There is another,” Maev whispered, eyes watering.

  In the darkness, she heard Tanin groan.

  “The drunken talk of fools,” he said. He shoved aside the tall, wild grass, moving through the darkness. “People also say dragons eat babies, drink the blood of virgins, and piss molten gold. So they say a prince in a far-off land is a dragon.” He barked a laugh. “What are you going to do, fly all the way across the sea, find this mythical land of Eteer, and look for a tower?”

  Maev sighed and looked up at the stars. The Draco constellation shone there, comforting her, easing the pain of her wounds.

  “Fifty years ago, these stars began to shine,” Maev said softly. “Grandfather was among the first in the world to become a dragon. The stars gave him this magic.” She smiled to remember his stories. “And he gave it to our father. And that great grizzly bear passed it on to us. If the stars blessed our family, perhaps they blessed another family too. Perhaps they blessed Prince Sena of Eteer. And if it’s true . . . if he’s imprisoned . . . we have to save him.” She clutched her brother’s hand. “We have to bring him home.”

  They kept walking in silence, listening to the crickets and rustling grass. When they were far enough from the town, Maev closed her eyes and summoned her magic. It flowed through her, warmer than mulled wine, easing the pain of her wounds. She beat her wings, rising into the air, a green dragon in the night. At her side, more wings thudded, and she saw her brother soar too, a red dragon with long white horns.

  Silent, keeping their fire low, they rose and caught an air current. They glided through the night, heading away from the villages that hunted their kind . . . heading toward that distant mountain, that new home, that place of safety and warmth in a cold world.

  ANGEL

  SHE CROUCHED IN THE DARKNESS, a queen of rock and fire, and licked the blood off her long, clawed fingers, savoring the coppery heat, shuddering as the hooks upon her tongue lapped the goodness, and she unfurled that tongue, stretching out a dripping serpent, and Angel howled in the depths in her hunger and lust.

  “It is sweet, my children, my terrors,” she hissed. Saliva dripped down her maw to steam against the stone floor. The cracks upon her body widened, leaking smoke and fire. “The blood nourishes. The blood is darkness.”

  Her meal writhed before her, all but drained, a gray husk of a thing. Once it had been three; she had molded them together, cutting and sewing, stitching twins like dolls, bloating the beast with embers and meat and sweet drippings of fat, letting it fester, letting it grow. Now she drank from her twisted creation, her living wineskin of meat and marrow. She drove her head down, thrusting her hollowed teeth through its skin, and sucked, sucked, lapped the sweetness, the red and black, the heat and stickiness. Its many arms twitched, and its mouths, sewn together, whimpered and begged, and its eyes blinked and wept where she had placed them, and still Angel drank, leaving it an empty shell, a shriveled thing, only skin over bones.

  “Yes, my dears.” She licked the creature, her conjoined twins, her meals in the darkness. “You will live. I will fatten you again, and you will grow, and more will join you. I will sew you into a great feast.”

  It begged her for death, tears pouring. She laughed. She shoved it aside, leaped, and scuttled through the depths. Her leather wings beat, wafting smoke and stench, and her four arms flailed, ending with claws, cutting into the stone. Around her they lay, the creatures she had sewn together. The largest was a hundred strong, bodies morphed into a writhing hill, sacks of blood and rot, meals to last through her long, ancient banishment.

  Upon their anguished faces she ran, cutting into them, digging, spurting, scattering flesh, until she scampered up the craggy cavern wall. Her wings stretched wide, and the blood coursed through her, heating her, and flames blasted from her cracked body of stone. She let out a howl of lust, a cry that echoed through the chamber, for blood was not enough, and filling her belly could never sate her, for her loins burned with the greatest heat, crying for release, begging to feast like her maw had feasted.

  She left her chamber of blood, her hall of husks, her place of feeding, and she scuttled through the tunnel, a creature of fire, until she burst into a new hall, fell, spread her wings, rose, crackled in an inferno. Her flames blasted out, and she shrieked until her voice echoed, and the fire rose from her loins to crawl across her cracked belly, her stony breasts, her four arms of rock and her claws of metal.

  Before her they knelt, shuddered, sang, cowered, begged, shrieked, mocked, prayed—her soldiers of the Abyss, her endless twisted things to praise her, to worship her, to thrust into her in a vain attempt to satisfy her lust, for only human flesh could silence her craving. She gazed upon them. Creatures of oozing flesh, their skin peeled away, their muscles dripping, their bones white and wet. Creatures of stone like her, their bodies cracked and dry and leaking smoke. Creatures of fat, slithering, sliding, seeping, leaving their wet trails, stuffing their folds of fat with worms and maggots and snakes and all things that crawled and burrowed. Creatures hooded. Creatures naked. Creatures inside out, organs glistening. Creatures of smoke, of horn, of scale, of rot. All filled the chamber before her, from beasts thrice her size to rotting, clattering centipedes that crawled around her legs, their segments formed of human heads.

  All praised her.

  She was Angel.

  She was fire and light and a beacon of darkness.

  “Kneel before me!” she cried, voice slamming against the stone walls, this place far under the world, this trap, this prison. “Worship me and fill me. Send one forth.”

  They rustled, clattered, squealed, and groaned beneath her feet. Angel screamed, her cry shattering flesh below, breaking bones, snapping eardrums, scattering blood. She pointed a dripping claw, selecting one, a
mummified thing, its head long and topped with a disk of bone, its mouth rustling with maggots, it belly sliced open to reveal nests of snakes. It moved toward her on hooves, and Angel lowered herself on her four elbows, and she howled when the creature thrust into her with its barbed tool, and she dug into the stone, and she spewed flame from her maw as he took her. Around her in the cave, smelling her sex, the other creatures of the Abyss clawed and grabbed one another, copulating in pools of drool and rot, howling to the stone ceiling, filling the chamber with stench and whimpers and groans.

  Yet it was all for naught. Even as her paramour took her, she knew no filling of her craving, and she knew no life would quicken within her, for thus was her curse. Thus was her banishment, her prison, to forever crave a child, to forever feel the emptiness in her womb, for only the seed of living men—of the flesh that moved above the rock—could fill her with life, with a rotting, pulsing spawn.

  When the summons hit her, Angel hissed and raised her dripping maw.

  A summons? After so long?

  She screamed.

  She sprayed lava from her mouth, and she pulled herself off the beast that mounted her, and she beat her wings.

  “A summons! I am called!”

  She flapped her wings, scattering the stench of the pit, churning smoke and fire. Flames burst across her, and the calling burned her. She shut her eyes, opened her arms, uncurled her claws.

  “Speak, sack of flesh! Speak, creature overground!”

  Astral arms pulled her, sucking her up into the stone, tugging her through tunnels. She laughed, wind shrieking around her, rock cracking against her. It had been so many years, so long since the creatures above had summoned her, weak and small and tempting, so beautiful, so warm.

  Inferno blazed, and the world cracked, and when she opened her eyes again, Angel stood in a new place, an old chamber, the hall of the kings aboveground.

  She laughed, spreading her wings wide, scattering her fire. The sparks landed upon tapestries, burning them, filling this place with her heat. Here was the Hall of Eteer, the throne room of the kings who ruled above her own rotted kingdom. Many times they had called her here in days of old, ancient lords of sunlight, and she had spoken with them, treated with them, and sometimes snatched them into the depths to sew into her sacks of blood.

  A new king sat before her upon the throne, younger than the last one, tall and broad. His head was bald, his skin bronzed from sunlight, and true bronze—that metal she had taught the smiths of Eteer to forge—covered him as armor.

  Angel hissed at him, sending out her tongue to taste him, licking, exploring. She cackled, drool spilling from her, burning holes into the mosaic beneath her claws.

  “You are new,” she said, smoke seeping between her fangs.

  The mortal stared, face grim, and she saw herself reflected in his eyes: a woman carved of volcanic rock, cracked and red and black, flames engulfing her, her leathern wings wide, her four arms long and tipped with claws, a queen, a barren thing, a goddess of lust and hunger and emptiness.

  “I am Raem Seran, son of the fallen Nir-Ur, King of Eteer.” Even in her heat, and even as she hissed and spat embers upon him, he did not cower, and he did not avert his eyes. “I now sit upon the kingdom’s throne. As is my right, I summon you to my service, Queen of the Abyss.”

  Angel cackled.

  Her laughter blasted back his cloak, seared his skin, and splattered him with her steaming saliva. She beat her wings and rose higher, leaving a wake of fire. She stretched out her arms, letting him admire her nakedness, her loins like burning embers, her pulsing womb that ached for his seed.

  “Serve you, King?” She spat out the last word as an insult. “Perhaps you would serve me in my pit. I will take you, copulate with you, and give you to my demons, so they might thrust into you, and you will feed us with your blood, and we will—“

  “Silence!” he said, rising from his throne. “You are a queen of banishment, ruler of a prison cell. My forebears bound you to my dynasty. As is my right, I command you. You will rise. You will fight for me.”

  Angel beat her wings, drew near, and placed her claws upon his chest. They dug grooves through his armor and into his skin, and his blood spilled, and she licked his cheek and hissed into his ear.

  “Your forebears never dared free me. If I fight, King, I will burn the world.”

  He reached into her flames. He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back, not flinching even from her heat.

  “You will burn only those I command you to. Weredragons infest my kingdom, diseased humans who can take dragon forms. They will be yours to slay. Raise your horde! Bring forth the creatures of the underworld. The demons of the Abyss will rise. You will live in the world once more, as you did in ancient days, and you will hunt weredragons.”

  Angel shrieked. Her cry cracked a column to her left. The tapestries burned all around, falling to the floor.

  “For ten thousand years, we lingered in the darkness. You will free us?”

  Raem shook his head. “No. I grant you no freedom. I grant you servitude in sunlight. Fight for me, Angel. You will feel the sunlight upon you. You will fly in open sky, covering my kingdom. But still you will be bound to me.”

  She tilted her head, snapped her teeth, and clawed at him. “I demand more! I demand . . .” She grinned, and smoke rose between her teeth to blind her. “I demand human wombs. Let my demons choose brides among your women. Let them breed with them. Let the seed of the Abyss infect mortal bellies, so that the daughters of Eteer may bear us children. Agree to this, mortal man, and I will slay your weredragons.”

  Raem stared at her in silence, eyes hard, lips tight.

  He nodded.

  Angel laughed.

  She tossed back her head, stretched out her four arms, beat her wings, spread her flame, and her laughter rang and the ceiling rained dust.

  “It will be so!”

  She stamped down her feet, and cracks raced across the floor. Claws rose between them, widening the gaps, and mouths gaped, and tongues explored, and eyes peered, and smoke wafted. The mosaic shattered and they emerged: crawling, flying, slithering, seeping, dragging, scuttling, creatures of ooze, of fat, of scales, of horns, of dried flesh, of weeping sores. Large and small, they emerged into the hall of Eteer’s king, freed, famished—the demons of the Abyss.

  “We will hunt weredragons!” Angel shouted through her laughter, and they filled the hall around her. “We will mate with mortal flesh! Spread across the city, children of rot. Choose brides among the women. Sniff out reptiles and slay them. Kill and breed! Crush and bring forth life!”

  They stormed through the hall, a geyser of rot, cracking the columns, crashing through doors, shattering windows, flowing into the city and the searing sunlight that had been forbidden for so long. Their howls shook the world, almost drowning the screams of the mortals.

  They left the hall singed, globs of rot dripping from the charred tapestries, the floor shattered, the mosaic stones scattered like dragon scales. Still he stood before her, this new king, this human of hot skin and blood.

  She placed her arms around him.

  “I need no bride,” she whispered and licked his face, tearing his skin with the hooks of her tongue. “You will be mine.”

  She tugged and they fell upon the shattered floor, limbs dangling across the open pit’s ledge, and there she copulated with him, a sticky dance of stone and skin, of blood and fire, and she screamed as they merged, and she laughed and clawed the floor.

  She had found freedom. She had found release for her fire. And soon . . . soon she would find dragons to burn.

  JEID

  “GRIZZLY, I AM LEAVING.” MAEV crossed her arms, thrust out her bottom lip, and raised her chin. “I’m flying across the sea and into a bronze kingdom, and you can’t stop me.”

  Standing in the canyon, Jeid Blacksmith stared at his daughter, rage and fear mingling inside him. He clutched his axe so tightly he thought he might snap the shaft. His arms sh
ook. A growl rose in his throat. Finally he could not contain it; he tossed back his shaggy, bearded head and shouted wordlessly. His cry echoed within the mossy walls of the canyon, shaking the stones. This was an ancient crack in the world—boulders perched precariously atop pillars of stone, trees clinging to craggy walls, natural cairns of sharp rocks, and caves running into the depths of the earth. This natural fortress of walls, tunnels, and towers had stood here since the dawn of time. Now Jeid howled so loudly he thought the sound could shatter the old stones, burying him and his daughter forever.

  Finally his wordless cry morphed into words. “No! I forbid it. You will stay here in this canyon, in safety, with me.”

  Maev tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. She placed her fists on her hips and snorted, blowing back a strand of her long, dark blond hair.

  “You cannot stop me. I am twenty-three years old, Grizzly. When you were my age, you were already a father.” She gestured at the canyon around her. Vines and moss covered the craggy walls, and boulders lay piled up around her. “I’m a Vir Requis. I can shift into a dragon. I’m not meant to hide among stone.” Her eyes gleamed and she hopped to another boulder, moving closer to him. “Grizzly, there is another. I know it. Let me find him.”

  Jeid sighed.

  She looks like her mother, but she is stubborn like me.

  Jeid—tall, burly, and shaggy—sported a mane of wild brown hair, a bushy beard, and brown eyes that stared from under tufted brows. Clad in furs, he looked like something of a bear, earning him his nickname; even his own children now used the moniker.

  Maev looked like her late mother. Her hair was golden, her eyes gray tinged with blue, her skin pale. But Jeid saw himself in her too—the stubborn gaze, the strong arms, the way she raised her chin, stuck out her bottom lip, and dared anyone to challenge her. He had given her those.