At the sound, small figures wearing saffron robes spilled out from the temple, looking all around. At last one looked up; with his sharp dragonsight, Linden saw the tiny figure pointing at him. Then all looked up.
He roared again, and spat forth a long gout of fire to warn them. Now he was close enough to hear shrieks, and the priests ran in panic. None, he was certain, would stand against him.
He landed and, letting the rage that burned deep within him—Rathan, his dragonsoul’s rage—fuel his strength, Linden wrapped his tail around the column and heaved.
It came free. Though it was heavy, he flung it into the columns that supported the roof of the walkway around the courtyard. The roof collapsed, burying the stone under a pile of rubble.
Then Linden leaped into the air, knowing where he must go next.
It was silly what irrelevant detail could catch your attention when you faced death, a detached part of Maurynna’s mind observed. The hot dust stirred up underfoot tickled her nose, just as the dust in the riding arena did during the practice bouts. She wanted to sneeze.
With the dust came a memory: If your opponent has the longer reach, get inside it if you can.
Before Pirakos could strike, Maurynna sprang forward, snapping at his throat. She missed—just barely—as he scrambled back.
Pirakos snarled and sprang into the air. Startled, Maurynna hesitated, losing her chance to stop him.
*Thee will not again prevent me from slaying truehumans.* With the taunt came an underlying image of city after city bursting into flames. *I will cleanse this la—*
He stopped in mid-word. His wings beating furiously to hold him in place in the air, Pirakos cocked his head as if listening to someone else.
This was her chance. Despite knowing she had no more likelihood of stopping Pirakos than a kitten had of stopping a snow cat, Maurynna took wing, straining to close the distance.
A roar as sudden and loud as a clap of thunder surprised her so much that she ducked and almost forgot to fly. A thought raced across her mind: Pirakos had seen her and was attacking.
But when she looked, the green dragon paid her no attention. Instead, he still listened to a voice only he could hear. His eyes glowed with excitement.
If that wasn’t Pirakos, then who—?
*The first stone falls—I feel it!* Pirakos howled in her mind with mad glee. *I go—I go!*
Maurynna watched in bewilderment as Pirakos raced away. Then she remembered the mysterious roar and searched the heavens.
There! A black dragon dove out of the sky. Maurynna’s heart beat faster. There was only one such dragon in Jehanglan. And if Jekkanadar were here, Linden could not be far behind. Wild with excitement, she flew to meet the new dragon.
There it was! A column of white quartz in a temple courtyard.
How to do this … Lleld knew she might not be strong enough to pick the thing up. Besides, she didn’t want to land—what if they had spears?
Yet strength wasn’t all in a fight. She dove at the glittering stone. At the last instant, she spread her wings, slowing herself just enough so that she wouldn’t break every bone in her body. She hit the top of the column at a sharp angle, all four feet together.
The thing went over like a toy soldier. Lleld tucked her wings and rolled, then came out of it, winging for the sky before anyone could even think of stopping her.
Jekkanadar! Maurynna cried as she neared the other dragon. She looked eagerly beyond him, but neither Lleld nor Linden were in sight. Where are the others?
Her gaze returned to the black dragon swooping down to her level. Wait; something wasn’t right … . Her breath caught. This wasn’t Jekkanadar. This was a dragon she’d never seen before.
Who are you? she demanded, baring her fangs for battle as the other closed inexorably on her. When the answer came, Maurynna nearly fell from the sky in astonishment.
A snuffling brought Murohshei out of his half doze. He went over to the bed.
Xahnu and Xu smiled up at him; Murohshei returned the smile, saying, “Awake at last, little Phoenix Lords? Good; your mother wants to see you. She has a wondrous thing to show the both of you.”
He stood up and clapped his hands. The nurses hurried over.
She wanted to soar into the sun in pure joy. For if both she and Shima had been unheralded Dragonlords, how many more might there be? Their kind still had a chance. She had a thousand questions for Shima, and all of them danced on the tip of her tongue at once.
Instead she said, Shima, Pirakos intends to lay waste to this land. I must follow, try to stop him, and I’ve already waited too long. But there are still soldiers here—
My cousin and the others can deal with them. This land is mine. I go with you.
It will be dangerous … .
So is living, replied Shima and dropped lower. Maurynna followed. Shima mindcalled, Amura!
Poor Amura nearly jumped out of his skin. “Yes, Sky Lord?” he called. His voice shook.
Shima’s mindvoice was pure exasperation. Amura, you ass, it’s Shima. But never mind that. We go to follow the mad dragon. The first Stone has fallen, cousin; you know what must be done.
Maurynna thought that if the poor man’s jaw dropped any more, a horse could walk right in. But Amura rallied valiantly and raised a hand in salute. “This one falls as well! Go!”
Maurynna turned beneath the vast blueness of the Jehangli sky and set off after Pirakos. Shima followed.
“Arm yourselves!” Amura yelled. He seized a pike from a fallen soldier and waved it above his head. “We must destroy the altar in the inner temple.”
The Tah’nehsieh and Zharmatians rallied to him. Even a few of the Jehangli came. Some snatched up weapons from the ground and used them against the soldiers yet standing. Others caught up rocks and pelted the troops as they tried to form ranks. Here and there a soldier dropped under a well-thrown rock and someone would dart in to seize his weapons—and cut the man’s throat.
It was not the way Amura liked to do battle, but they must fight this one however they could. They had numbers, but the enemy had armor and weapons and, more deadly yet, training. Even now, a few temple soldiers were beginning the formation Amura recognized as the “turtle.” If the soldiers succeeded, the rebellion was lost.
“To me!” Amura bellowed. Then, “Charge them!”
The men wavered; most were not armed yet, and to strike against those who had opressed them for so long … Amura despaired. Had they had the heart beaten out of them?
Defeat hovered in the air like a vulture.
Then another slave, Mad Senwan, driven insane long ago by the slaughter of his family, threw himself upon the soldiers, screaming the names of his wife and children over and over as he swung his mattock around his head like a whirlwind. Soldiers went down before him like grain to a sickle, their helmets crushed or faces smashed to pulp. Hot blood gushed onto the thirsty dust. In his frenzy, Mad Senwan penetrated deep into the still-forming “turtle.” The shock of his attack was so sudden that many soldiers retreated, crying out that a demon was upon them.
The fear in the soldiers’ voices was the goad the slaves needed. “Now!” Amura cried. The men roared their hatred, their rage, their lust for vengeance, and surged forward.
Some were not yet armed; it made no difference. Their bodies were their weapons. With bare hands they flung themselves upon the soldiers, gouging eyes, staying the swing of swords, dragging shield arms down so that their comrades could plunge a blade past the gaps in the armor. That they died themselves meant nothing; they had been dead men for years.
The end came suddenly. One moment the tumult of battle all was around him, the sound of sword against sword, the quiet, desperate grunts of men fighting for their lives, howls of anger and pain; then came a silence so profound that for the space of a heartbeat Amura wondered if he were dead or deaf.
Then the moans of the wounded broke upon his ears. He came to himself. Too many of the men who had become his friends lay dead or dyin
g in the hot, red dust of the valley. But among them were the soldiers left after the dragons’ onslaught—all the soldiers.
Moving stiffly, Amura dropped his pike and picked up a sword and shield. “Take their weapons. We storm the temple.”
Unbelieving faces stared back at him. Storm the temple, their eyes asked. But that was sacrilege unheard—
“Yes!” someone roared, and the others took it up. They swarmed over the bodies like ants. Amura watched as they armed themselves.
Mad Senwan lay at the bottom of the largest heap. Though his body was hacked almost beyond recognition, a peaceful smile lit the ruin of his face.
“He’s found them,” Chuchan said. “Tiala and the girls.” His voice faltered; he cleared his throat noisily. With a glare that dared Amura to say anything, the dwarf clapped a helmet on his head and stumped away.
They flew as fast as they could after Pirakos. At one point they saw him far ahead, but no matter how they pushed themselves, they couldn’t close the distance. Instead, their wings grew heavier; each stroke came slower and the distance between them and their quarry grew until Pirakos was but a speck on the horizon. Then even that disappeared.
His madness gives him strength, Maurynna realized at last, trying to ignore her aching wings, even though he hasn’t flown in a thousand years and more. But we’re too new to fly for so long at such speed.
Indeed, not long after, Shima’s wings missed a beat and he “stumbled” in the air. He caught himself, but Maurynna knew it was only a matter of time before one of them fell to a horrible death.
Glide! she shouted, hoping to break through the veil of exhaustion dulling Shima’s eyes. We must land and rest.
Shima snarled, but agreed. Wings outstretched, they spiraled down to the ground. Just before they landed, Maurynna said, Don’t Change.
Why not?
Because we might not be able to Change back to this form. Linden once told me that if a Dragonlord is too ill or tired, he can’t Change. It’s our magic’s way of protecting us.
Nor did she dare risk not being able to Change back to a dragon. She didn’t quite believe that bit of hell was truly over.
They both settled with a jarring thump. Maurynna groaned softly and sank to the ground. Morlen’s tale of the truedragons’ ill-fated attack came back to her; she imagined them sprawled over the ground, exhausted and wounded and heartsick. Her mind turned away from the images.
It was the better part of a candlemark later that she broke the silence. She still had a thousand questions for Shima, but only one had to be answered now: What did Pirakos mean, ‘The first stone falls?’
One of the others—your soultwin or the other two—has toppled one of the Stones of Warding, I think. If the others fall as well …
The Phoenix is free. Maurynna considered that, added it to what she knew of Pirakos. Do you know where the Phoenix is imprisoned? Because I think Pirakos intends everything to end this day.
Shima nodded. I think you’re right. As for where, the Phoenix is held at Mount Rivasha. I know what direction it lies in from here, but …
Just get us near there, Maurynna said grimly. I think we’ll be able to “feel” Pirakos once we’re closer. Even now she could dimly sense him. She heaved herself to her feet and crouched on her haunches. Shima did the same; Maurynna thought he looked as tired as she still felt—and she felt as if she’d run the length of Thalnia and back five times. Although it would put them well behind Pirakos, they would have to rest now and again, or risk overtaxing themselves and possibly damaging their wings. She remembered how afraid Linden had been that she’d done just that with her first—and heretofore only—flight a little over a year ago. Now she and Shima had already exceeded what she’d done that day, and they had much further to go.
Their only hope of catching Pirakos was that he would be so unused to flying after a thousand years of captivity that he would be forced to rest eventually as well.
Yet he’d already left them far behind; that, Maurynna thought, did not bode well. Her fanged jaws clenched in determination, she leaped heavily into the sky once more.
Up the steep, switchbacked road they marched, clad in a motley assortment of armor and armed with whatever weapons they could scavenge. What they would find at the top, Amura didn’t know. He remembered his aunt’s tales of the spells of the northern mages, and speculations that the Jehangli priests were in truth users of magic. He could only hope that none of them knew how to turn a man into a toad.
Beside him, Chuchan began singing. It was one of the marching songs popular in the soldiers’ barrack, but the words of the chorus had been subtly changed. Ripples of laughter ran through the band; Chuchan sang on, the rest joined in on the chorus, and the infectious rhythm invaded their feet. Soon they were marching, proud as the Phoenix Emperor’s elite guard, ready to fight—and win.
Amura squared his shoulders and stepped out boldly. Whatever faced them—mages, monsters, or more soldiers—they would prevail.
They had to. This was their chance to make the Vale truly live.
Fly, rest, fly. The world narrowed: to periods of increasingly painful flying; to shorter and shorter times of rest as her sense of urgency grew. Maurynna knew that that same urgency affected Shima as well. With each rest he fidgeted more and more, just as she did.
And they were getting closer. Pirakos must have stopped to rest as well—or to lay waste to the countryside, though she’d seen no evidence of that, thank the gods. May he be so consumed by his goal that he leaves the innocents of Jehanglan alone, she thought.
Still, they were catching up. He was not that far ahead of them; she could feel it. The link between their minds that he’d forced upon her now served her purposes.
And when they caught him? She would answer that question later.
At long last, Jekkanadar reached his quarry. It lay in a courtyard below him; groups of saffron-robed priests tended the area surrounding it. He saw some sweeping the marble paths, others tending to small gardens of flowers.
He roared to warn them off; they looked up, screamed, and scattered like leaves in a storm.
Jekkanadar landed beside the column. Rearing up onto his hind legs, he set his forefeet upon the top, and pushed. Slowly, slowly, the stone tilted. He snarled and pushed harder.
Just as it crashed to the ground, Jekkanadar felt a searing pain in his wing. He whirled, roaring in a draconic rage. Before him stood a young priest—a boy, really—wielding a sharp hoe. Though he was plainly terrified, the boy waved the hoe at him again.
Impressed by the boy’s courage, Jekkanadar merely knocked him lightly out of the way, and jumped into the sky. But at the first beat of his wings, he fell to the earth again.
Only then did he realize that the membrane of skin that stretched from spine to spine on his wings was torn. He was trapped.
Desperate, Jekkanadar bellowed, Lleld! Lleld! Help me!
Saffron-robed priests and acolytes were everywhere. Some cowered in little groups as they frantically searched the sky, afraid, Amura soon realized, that the “demons” would return and destroy them as well. Others ran back and forth, for all the world like a flock of chickens with a fox among them. Their cries and prayers filled the air. Some—mostly the very young and the very old—stood weeping in bewilderment. Amura saw one old man trying to comfort the three crying little boys clinging to his robes. The old man watched them approach, his eyes half defiant, half fearful. He wrapped his thin, stringy arms around the children as if to make of them a bulwark against all harm.
Amura led his men around the little group; he did not war with children and elders. He looked back once. The old man had caught up the smallest boy—a child of perhaps four years—and was hustling his charges away, his chin on his shoulder as he watched the former slaves. Relief filled the seamed face, relief that did not quite believe the reprieve.
The slave band marched on, heady with their newly won freedom. Most of the priests fled before them. Sometimes one of the older bo
ys, or the more vigorous of the old men, tried to bar their way. They were swept aside, not by sword and pike, but by a force as inexorable as a river freed from a dam.
At one point Amura thought he saw the old nira’s Oracle, half hidden behind one of the many prayer pillars that dotted the huge courtyard before the temple. But the boy scuttled away like a frightened beetle when he saw Amura looking at him.
Amura forgot about him in the next instant. For the temple doors opened, revealing a small group of sturdy men, all in their prime, all clad in robes of saffron and scarlet. Whispers flew through the slave band; these were the priest-soldiers of the Phoenix. They bore no swords, for it was forbidden to shed blood in the temple precincts, but each held a stout quarterstaff. And each slave knew only too well what these priests could do with those deadly staves. They had seen condemned prisoners die beneath the whirling staffs before being fed to the dragon.
And those were the lucky ones, Amura thought. He remembered the screams of the others as they were thrown into the Well of Death. He took a deep breath and raised his sword. “Shield men—to the front! Pikes ready!” he shouted.
A moment later it was done. “Now—charge the bastards!”
“Here they are, Phoenix Lady.”
Shei-Luin turned from her contemplation of the Palace of the Phoenix. It had drawn her from the comfort of the imperial rooms in the temple; she’d hoped to see the great shadow within it again.
Murohshei smiled at her; by his side was Zyuzin, his eyes wide in his round face. They stepped aside to reveal the rest of the little party.
Shei-Luin held out her arms to Xahnu, taking him from his nurse, and held him so that he could see into the crater. Xu’s nurse held her charge so that he might see, as well. He gurgled at the sight.
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