Free Pillars of Dragonfire by Daniel Arenson Page B

of thousands flew around him, dragons in every color. On their
backs rode others in human forms, living out their lives in the air. Mothers
nursed their babes. Elders sang old songs. Healers changed bandages and chanted
prayers. Every once in a while, dragons would spot a herd of animals
below—wild deer or sheep sweeping across the land, sometimes merely a stray
rabbit—and then dragons would swoop, capture the prey, rise with it again. On
scaly backs, men and women lit braziers and cooked the meat. All life—eating,
sleeping, praying, singing, dreaming—all in the sky.
    Vale rose higher,
ascending until the air thinned and he could barely breathe, until he flew
above all other dragons. Then he turned to look behind him.
    From up here, the
horizon spread farther, and he could just see them. Just a hint. A dark stain
across the miles, its details invisible. If he hadn't known better, he'd have
called it a dark cloud.
    But Vale knew what that
distant, southern darkness was.
    "Harpies," he
muttered. "A million harpies following a twisted king."
    He looked below at the
dragons gliding northward, seeking their homeland—a home that still lay days,
maybe weeks, maybe even months away. He might never know how many dragons the
thousand harpies had slain. Some estimated—those good at counting great
numbers—that ten thousand Vir Requis had fallen to the ice and talons.
    If only a thousand
harpies slew a myriad of dragons, Vale thought, this southern army will
kill us all.
    He dipped lower in the
sky, beat his wings, and darted forward. He flew over the other dragons—this
flying city spread for miles—until he reached the head of the camp.
    Meliora flew there, her
scales silvery-white, touched with gold when the sun hit them right. Every few miles,
she raised a pillar of white fire that soared like the fabled King's Column in
the north, a beacon for her people to follow.
    Can Ishtafel see
that beacon from the south? Vale wondered.
    He descended until he
flew by his sister.
    "He's still
following," Vale said. "I can now see him when I fly high enough. I
flew as high as I could, higher than any bird, so high I could barely breathe
and the air was cold even under the sun. The horizon must be a hundred leagues
away from up there, and Ishtafel is just on its edge."
    "Too close,"
Meliora said.
    Vale nodded. "We
must prepare for meeting him, Meliora."
    She spun her head
toward him, and her eyes narrowed. Smoke plumed from her nostrils. "No. We
will not face him in battle. Not here. Not in Saraph. If we must face him, it
will be in Requiem. In our homeland. If we must have a final stand, let it be
in our holy sky, fighting beneath our sacred stars."
    Vale closed his eyes
for a moment, remembering that day—that day of more horror and awe than any
other. The day he had beheld Issari Seran, the Priestess in White, the Eye of
the Dragon. The day he had died.
    Ishtafel had nailed him
to the top of the ziggurat, driving the spikes deep into Vale's hands and feet,
leaving him to die in the sun. As his last breath fled his lungs, as his heart
stilled, Vale had seen her.
    Issari.
    A woman woven of
starlight.
    Thousands of years ago,
Issari had fought alongside King Aeternum himself to found the kingdom of
Requiem. She had risen then to the sky, forming the eye of the fabled Draco
constellation, the stars they said shone upon Requiem—the stars one could not
see here in the south. For millennia, they say that Issari gazed down upon
Requiem, and she had decended to heal Vale, to return him to life.
    As he flew here,
Issari's words to him echoed in his mind.
    A great battle
awaits you, son of Requiem, she had said, placing her luminous hands upon
him, healing his wounds, returning his soul into his body. Live, child of
Aeternum. Your war has not yet ended.
    Vale opened his eyes,
looking again across the kingdom of dragons in the sky. He had thought his
life's battle had been in Tofet. Yet now it seemed a greater war awaited. Had
Issari meant