Magic, Myth & Majesty: 7 Fantasy Novels Page 49

  I can shift into a dragon, Tilla thought. I can fly away from this place—back to Cadport, back to Rune.

  She stood alone in the snow and looked at the southern wall. No, she could not fly back home, she knew. If she fled the Legions, she would be an outlaw; the Cadigus Regime would hunt her down and slay her.

  I can join the Resistance, she thought, if I can find them. Yet the stories she had heard returned to her: stories of the Resistance slaughtering babes, snatching children and forcing them to fight, burning farms and killing peasants simply to punish the emperor. As bad as Nairi was, surely the Resistance was worse. Even if Tilla could find the resistors, would she only stumble into a den of monsters? Would they kill her like they had killed her brother?

  She sighed. No. There was nothing over those walls—Cadport was now banned to her, the Resistance frightened her, and Tilla did not fancy a life on the run, hiding in caves and forests.

  All she could do now, she decided, was survive this training. Nairi would not command her forever. If Tilla completed her training, she would advance in the ranks. She would be assigned to a better fortress. She would become a warrior, a proud legionary of the empire, clad in steel and glory. Surely that was better than living as a filthy, frightened outlaw.

  I’m going to show Nairi. She clenched her fists, and marched across the courtyard. I’m going to be the best damn soldier in Castra Luna.

  She marched out the gates, took a deep breath, and headed back to her tent.

  The clock chimed.

  The snow fell.

  Day and night molded into a blur of pain and weariness.

  Every night, as the clock chimed one, the Black Roses emerged from their tent to carry their cannonballs around the camp. Every morning, as the clock chimed four, Nairi woke them with screams, threats, and thrusts of her punisher.

  They fought with blunted swords, then sharpened ones.

  They ran through the forest for hours, tasting the punisher when they fell.

  They ate scraps. They slept shivering in moldy blankets. They drank melted snow when they could steal it. They were always hungry, always thirsty; they would fight for the last slice of stale bread.

  Castra Luna brought them to the edge of humanity. The Black Roses did not bathe; they stole snow, melted it in their tent, and shivered as they rinsed their grime. They had no outhouses or chamber pots; when Nairi looked aside, they sneaked into the forest and dug holes, praying that Nairi would not shout and order them back into formation. Whenever the young lanse slept or ate, she left with them the hulking siragis, and they were worse; they thrust their punishers with glee, and once they whipped a recruit until she passed out.

  More than the hunger and thirst, and more than the pain, Tilla longed for sleep.

  I can live without food, she thought during the endless runs, marches, and swordplay. I can live without water to drink or bathe in. But sleep… sleep I long for with every aching fiber in my body.

  And yet sleep, this most precious of lovers, was only allowed brief visits. An hour here, two hours there; that was all.

  “Whenever they march us,” Tilla whispered to her fellow soldiers, “I want to sit down. Whenever they sit us down, I want to stand and march.”

  Marching was agony—it was blisters upon her feet, cramping muscles, aching breath, and her spine twisting under the sacks of cannonballs. Whenever she marched, she prayed for it to end. She prayed only for rest—to sit, to rub her feet, to breathe again.

  Yet whenever Nairi ordered them to sit—while they ate, while they listened to her speeches, while she demonstrated new sword thrusts—Tilla prayed to please, please stars, only to stand up, only to walk. Sitting down meant a visit from her greatest foe: weariness.

  Whenever she sat, sleep leaped onto her at once, tugging more powerfully than all the ropes Tilla had ever woven. Blackness began to spread across her. Invisible demons tugged at her eyelids, forcing them down.

  Sleep, Tilla, voices whispered. Sleep, sleep…

  One time, sitting with her fellow Black Roses to hear Nairi praise the emperor, Tilla could not help it. Her eyes closed—just for an instant, barely more than a blink.

  At once, Nairi pounced upon her. The punisher drove into her chest. Lightning crackled.

  “You will not sleep as I speak, dog!” the lanse shouted and pulled her punisher back, leaving Tilla gasping. “Anyone who closes her eyes, I’ll cut off her eyelids!”

  And so whenever they sat—or even stood—Tilla bit her cheek, dug her fingernails into her palms, and used every bit of strength to stay awake, to keep her eyes opened.

  Every time they sat or stood, a few eyes closed. A few recruits screamed under the punisher. Twice recruits fell asleep while marching, a feat Tilla had thought impossible; Nairi’s punisher burned them.

  How long had it been? A moon now? Two moons? Three?

  Whenever we marched, we wanted to sit. Whenever we sat, we prayed to march.

  That was how, Tilla knew, she would remember her training for the rest of her life—marching in pain and hunger, sitting through the agony of forbidden sleep, one or the other, again and again, day after day. A dreamscape. A blur. A nightmare of weariness, hunger, thirst, dirt, chiming hours, and endless pain.

  During these moons, Tilla found comfort only one hour a day—her favorite hour of the day, the hour that kept her going, that made this agony bearable.

  The morning hour right after dawn.

  The hour they trained as dragons.

  All her life in Cadport, shifting into dragons was forbidden. Dragons were not docile citizens. Dragons could blow fire, slash claws, and rise up against the Cadigus family. Dragons were outlawed.

  It was one law that Tilla, all her life, could not obey. Since she was old enough to shift, she had craved Requiem’s ancient magic, the magic that flowed from the Draco stars. And so she and Rune would walk upon the beach at night, shift into dragons in darkness, and fly over the water. She knew that many others in town shifted too; she had seen other youths above the waters at night, even some older souls.

  But this—this was new. This was flying in daylight, in the open, not concealing her fire behind her teeth, but roaring it in great pillars of fury.

  This was life in death, light in darkness, the beacon of her soul.

  “Warriors of the Black Rose!” Nairi shouted, pacing along the courtyard before her troops. She drew her sword and raised it high. “Shift and fly!”

  With that, Nairi shifted into a gray dragon, beat her wings, and took flight. Across the courtyard, her ninety-nine soldiers shifted and followed.

  Tilla inhaled deeply and let the magic flow across her. For the first few days of training, her armor and sword would constrict her; she had ripped one breastplate trying to shift. Today her armor and blade were like parts of her, as familiar as her own skin. They shifted with her, melting into her body. Her wings sprouted from her back. Her white scales clanked across her. She soared and blew a pillar of fire.

  All around her, the other dragons ascended too. Her flight crew flew around her, one defender at each side. Erry flew to her right, a slim copper dragon with blazing eyes. Mae flew to her left, a lavender dragon with white horns.

  “Flight one!” Nairi shouted. “Flight two—charge!”

  Three dragons swooped in from the east. Three more charged from the west. They crashed together with beating wings and blasts of smoke.

  “Flight three, four—charge!”

  When it was Tilla’s turn to fly, she led her flight in assault. She screamed and blew streams of smoke, charging toward another flight of three dragons. Sparks and smoke flew. Their claws and horns, tipped with cork, slammed against scales.

  In real battle, Tilla knew, she would breathe fire, not just smoke, and slash bare claws. Day by day, she practiced with cork and smoke, and she grew faster. Her defenders whisked around her, holding back the enemies, letting Tilla charge into battle.

  Every day her flight won more rounds. Within a moon, Tilla
’s Three, as they called them, was ranked top flight in their phalanx.

  Some days, Nairi cracked open cages of doves and sent hundreds of birds flying. The Black Rose dragons chased, blew jets of fire, and roasted the birds; for every dove that escaped, Nairi docked them a meal. Other days, they flew for hours over the forests, shifting from attack formation to defense and back again a hundred times—changing shape in the sky from arrows, to rings, to great V’s like skeins of geese.

  In the long days of impossible pain, it was freedom.

  It was joy.

  It was the song and light of dragons.

  It’s why I stayed, Tilla thought, flying over the forest with her phalanx, roaring fire and howling the might of the Legions. It’s why I never ran away when I had a hundred chances to. It was for this—wind in my wings, smoke in my nostrils, and fire in my heart.

  As the dragons of Requiem flew, Tilla thought: I wish you were here with me, Rune. I wish we could fly together again—one more flight like those above the sea.

  That night, when she lay in her tent, Tilla thought of him. Her fellow soldiers slept around her, a great mass pressed together. Tilla closed her eyes and tried to remember Rune: his dark hair, his somber eyes, and his hand holding hers. Yet hard as she tried, every night his face seemed more blurred to her, and he seemed farther away.

  “I miss you, Rune,” she whispered.

  But I also have a new home now. And I have new friends and a new purpose to my life. I have Erry and Mae and all the others—and an hour a day of wings and fire.

  He faded into the shadows. She slept.

  22

  RUNE

  “So I suppose you want to know about that night,” Valien rasped, took a swing of spirits, and slammed down his mug. “The night I saved your life. Don’t deny it, boy; you’ve been burning to ask. I’ve seen it in your eyes since Kaelyn dragged you into this place.”

  Rune stood at the entrance to Valien’s dark, dusty chamber. Candles, bottles, and books covered the shelves. A spider wove a web in the corner. A log crackled in the hearth. Valien sat at an oaken table, his scruff thickening into a beard, and drank from his mug. His grizzled hair hung wild around his face—a face as rough and leathery as the ancient codices around them.

  “Did you summon me here,” Rune asked from the doorway, “to tell me the tale?”

  Valien grumbled and snorted something that sounded like a laugh. He drank again, swishing the spirits before swallowing, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  “Ah!” he said. “Seemed as good a night as any to remember. I’ve had a bit… to drink. In with spirits, out with secrets, they say.” He slapped his palm against the table. “If I didn’t summon you, you’d be coming here soon enough to ask. I reckoned we’d talk when I’m nice and ready, with a hearth fire warming my bones and rye warming my belly. Come on. Step in. Sit down. Make yourself at home and all that, as you innkeepers say.”

  Rune hesitated. He had seen Valien gruff before. Stars, the man was always scowling and rasping and cursing. But this—this was worse. Valien’s voice was slurred and scratchier than ever, and something about that invitation seemed less than welcoming.

  “Come on, boy!” Valien said again. “Aye, I’m a bit drunk, but I won’t hurt you. Sit down. I have some memories to spill, and well… you’re the one to listen.”

  Rune did not want to enter this room. He wanted to return to the main hall, walk outside and look at the stars, or seek Kaelyn in her chambers; he had begun to teach her mancala, using a board he’d carved himself. At the same time… Valien was right. Rune had wanted to ask these questions, to learn more about that night. He knew the story, of course—everyone in Requiem did. He too had heard of Valien Eleison battling Frey Cadigus, snatching the last heir, and smuggling the babe out of the palace. Yet all those stories had been told in taverns, or at military rallies, or in dark caverns. Here before him stood the man himself, the great outlaw, the rebel leader; here was the story of Rune’s life.

  Rune entered the room, pulled back a chair, and sat at the table. Valien leaned forward and fixed him with a red-rimmed glare.

  “They say you battled a hundred men with a broken sword,” Rune said, “all the while holding the Aeternum babe—me—in one hand.”

  “Aye,” Valien agreed. “They also say that Frey Cadigus stands eight feet tall and the sun waits for him to piss every morning before it rises. What do you believe, Rune?”

  He thought about this for a moment. He answered carefully.

  “I think,” he said, “that I would very much like a bit of whatever you’re drinking.”

  When Rune too held a mug and the warmth spread through him, he allowed himself to lean back. Valien seemed less frightening through the glaze of spirits, and after all, Rune had seen many drunken warriors at the Old Wheel.

  “You’re eighteen now, are you?” Valien asked after another gulp of the rye.

  Rune nodded. “Almost—a moon away. If I were eighteen already, I’d have been drafted last recruitment with my friends.”

  He had almost said: with Tilla. He had stopped himself just in time. Valien did not need to know about Tilla Roper. Nobody did. That memory was pure, and Rune would not stain it with this war.

  Valien sighed and leaned back. “Aye, still a youth. I was only a squire when I was your age. It was another few years before I was knighted—I was twenty-one and still too young for wisdom.” The grizzled man’s eyes seemed to be looking back upon better days. “Had my proper armor and all and a good sword; I still carry it. I served your father, and he was good man. And those were good days.”

  “Until Frey Cadigus flew with his troops into the capital,” Rune said. “We’ve heard the story countless times in Cadport. They always tell us how Frey Cadigus, the hero, saved Requiem from its weakness, from the old corrupt blood.”

  Valien raised his eyebrows. “Cadport? No, we don’t call it that here. Lynport is the name of your city. It was named after the great Queen Lyana Aeternum, an ancestor of yours. She fought a battle upon Ralora Cliffs outside the city. Cadport!” Valien snorted. “Frey Cadigus renamed half the cities in this kingdom after his miserable self. But it’s still known as Lynport here, Rune, and you should call it that.”

  “My father did,” Rune said. “My stepfather, that is, but I still think of him as Father. He would whisper ‘Lynport’ sometimes late at night after our tavern closed, but… it was a forbidden name. Once a man was caught saying ‘Lynport’ in our tavern. The soldiers dragged him outside, and…” Rune had to drink again. “Nobody’s called it Lynport since, not even in a whisper.”

  “It’s a good town,” Valien said softly. He stared at the wall as if lost in memory. “A good town. Good, honest folk. It’s why I took you there, Rune, why I placed you in the Old Wheel with your stepfather. And Wil Brewer kept you safe for seventeen years. Aye, a good town, and good folk.”

  “How did you know Wil?” Rune asked. “Why did he agree to raise me as his own, to place himself in danger, to protect me?”

  Valien said nothing for a long moment, only stared at the wall. Finally he took a gulp of spirits, grimaced as he swallowed, and slammed the mug down.

  “My wife, Rune,” he said and clenched the mug so tightly, it trembled. “My wife. Frey Cadigus slew her the night I saved you. He stuck his blade into her as she screamed for me. I couldn’t save her, but I could save you, Rune. So I took you to my wife’s hometown. And I took you to her brother.” He grumbled and sighed. “Yes, Rune. I took you to the only family I still had, to Wil Brewer. He lost his sister that night, but he gained a son.”

  Rune’s head spun, and it wasn’t from the drink.

  “Stars,” he whispered. “My father—I mean, Wil—spoke of losing a sister. I never imagined…”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Valien scowled into his mug. “I told Wil not to speak of it. You were never to know who you were—not until you were old enough, until you were ready to fight with us.”

  Rune l
owered his head, and his belly felt cold. Guilt and sorrow swirled inside him. He tried to imagine losing the woman he loved, losing Tilla. Of course, Tilla wasn’t his wife, and he had only kissed her once, but he loved her. She was his best friend, his companion all his life. If Frey killed her, Rune would become a ruin of a man.

  I would become like Valien, he thought. Hurting. Mourning. Seeking solace in my cups.

  “Valien,” he said and looked up at the man. “I’m sorry for your loss. For Marilion dying. I know it must hurt, and—”

  “Oh do you now?” Valien hissed and leaned forward, and suddenly fire filled his eyes, and rage twisted his face. “Do you know what it’s like, boy? Are you sorry? What do you know of loss, of—”

  Valien sucked in his breath, grimaced, and growled. He swallowed his words, then pushed himself back. He seemed to wilt. His shoulders slumped, and all the fire left his body.

  Rune watched, heart thrashing.

  “I…” he began.

  Valien waved him silent. “It’s not your fault, boy. I know you mean well. And… thank you.” He heaved a rattling sigh and drank again. “I don’t talk about her much, as you can imagine. She looked like Kaelyn, do you know?” He laughed bitterly. “Same age when she died. Same golden, wavy hair. Same eyes. When I look at Kaelyn sometimes, I… Well, never mind that.”

  “She was very pretty,” Rune said softly.

  Valien laughed. “Marilion was, and Kaelyn is.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rune was surprised to find his eyes stinging, and his voice shook. He clenched his fists in his lap. “They say that you saved me while Frey killed her. If… if you weren’t saving me, maybe you could have… you could stopped Frey from…”

  “Maybe,” Valien agreed. “But you were only a babe. What did you know? It was a bad night, Rune. It was a bad night for me, for you, for the land. Frey Cadigus and his battalions flew into the capital as heroes; we welcomed him, the great general returning home from the wars. He entered the palace unopposed. He was in the throne room before he drew his sword. I was there, and I fought him. I fought him well, and I suffered the wounds of his sword, and still I fought. But his men were too many; he slew your father, your mother, your older siblings. But you… you were a babe. You were in a nursery upstairs. I ran. I burst into your room. And I saw a soldier above your crib, a blade in his hand.”