Free Pillars of Dragonfire by Daniel Arenson Page A

innocence had burned away in the bronze
bowels of Malok. Today Kira and Talana served her not as handmaidens but as
scouts, two of the fastest dragons in Requiem, their eyes sharp, their wings
swift, their loyalty unquestionable. As the nation of Requiem flew across the
wilderness, Kira and Talana were its eyes in the distance. But the two looked
not to the north, their destination, but south—back toward Tofet, the land
they were fleeing, the land where Ishtafel still lurked.
    "My queen!"
they said, kneeling before her. "You're wounded!"
    "I'm not queen of
Requiem," she told them. "I am her beacon, her voice in the
wilderness. Never mind my wounds. Tell me what you saw."
    They rose, eyes
darting.
    "We saw an
army," Kira whispered, her black eyes wide. "A great army that darkened
the sky, with more warriors then grains of sand in the desert."
    Talana shivered, even
more pale than usual. "Ishtafel leads them, my que—I mean, my lady. But
he's no longer fair. He's all clad in steel and gold—not just armor but new
skin, even covering his face, and his wings are now featherless like the wings
of a bat. But the creatures he leads are even fouler." She hugged herself.
"They . . . They . . ."
    "They look like
this," Meliora finished for her, voice soft, and pointed at the steaming
corpse of a harpy.
    The two scouts turned
to look and shuddered. The harpy lay only a few yards away, the size of a
dragon. Gray blood and maggots seeped from its wounds, and its tongue hung from
its mouth, long and white and bustling with ants. A few snakes still lived on
its head, hissing and spitting venom.
    Kira and Talana nodded.
    "Harpies,"
they whispered together, for they too—once slaves in the palace of Saraph—had
heard the tales of these creatures.
    Meliora stepped closer
to her scouts and placed her hands on their shoulders. She looked into their
eyes, one after the other.
    "How many were
there?" she asked. "By your best estimate, how many?"
    Kira gulped. "More
than the seraphim who flew against us in Tofet. I'm good at counting. I always
used to count seraphim from the window of the palace. But here is a greater
army than I've ever seen, ten times the size of the greatest garrisons of
Saraph. A million harpies fly toward us, moving fast. As fast as dragons."
    Talana nodded, lips
trembling. "A million."
    Frost seemed to flow
across Meliora again. She stared into the bulging, bloodshot eyes of the harpy
corpse. Her wounds flared with pain, and the voices of the dead Vir Requis
seemed to cry out to her.
    You promised us
freedom! You promised us a home. Now we die. Now we all die.
    Meliora turned away and
closed her eyes.
    A thousand harpies
ravaged our ranks, she thought. A thousand nearly tore through our
defenders, nearly reached our children, nearly crushed our hope. A million will
kill every last dragon.
    "We must
rise," she whispered, opening her eyes. "Jaren! Vale! Raise the dragons.
Let the wounded ride on those dragons strong enough to fly. Rise, dragons of
Requiem! Fly! Fly with all your speed. Leave the dead."
    Meliora tried to shift
into a dragon, tried to fly with them, but she was too weak. Her magic petered
away. Elory rushed forth to grab Meliora as she wavered.
    "Ride me,
sister," Elory said, turning into a dragon. "Ride me until you're well
enough to fly."
    A few dragons began to
rise. Others were digging quick graves—with dragon claws and sandy soil, the
work didn't take long—and soon they too rose.
    Perhaps Meliora would
never know how many had died here—thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. But as
the dragons of Requiem flew onward, she knew one thing: If Ishtafel caught them,
none of them would survive.
    Bleeding, grieving for
their lost, the dragons of Requiem flew into the north. Just beyond the
southern horizon, just out of the dragons' sight, the foul army followed.

 
 
VALE

    We were a
nation in the dust, Vale thought as he flew. We've
become a nation of the sky.
    He looked across his
people. Hundreds