Crown of Dragonfire by Daniel Arenson

captivity began five hundred
years ago, slaves escaped into the wilderness.

 
 
VALE

    The world.
    Sitting in the boat,
Vale stared around him as dawn rose, unable to speak, overcome with awe.
    The world beyond.
    Rushes and reeds swayed
along the riverbanks, and farther back grew palms and fig trees. Ibises and
herons waded through the shallow water, and hippopotamuses rose like boulders
between lilies. Hundreds of sparrows and finches flew overhead. Looking
westward along the river, Vale saw no signs of civilization. Gone were the huts
of agony, the quarries of breaking backs, the fields of desolation and despair.
Gone were the obelisks, temples, and palaces capped with platinum and gold.
    The world. The true
world beyond. It's real. It truly does exist.
    Vale's eyes dampened.
In five hundred years, only one Vir Requis—the hero Lucem—had ever made it
past the walls. Often Vale had thought the world only a myth, and yet here it
was—legend become reality.
    Elory sat at his side.
She smiled at him, wriggled closer, and leaned her head against his shoulder.
    "It's real," she
whispered. "We made it. There is an outside." Her eyes shone. "And Requiem is
real too. It lies thousands of miles away, but it too exists. We will see the
birch forests again."
    Meliora and Tash sat
before them in the boat, also looking around with wide eyes; neither one of
them had ever seen the world beyond, for both had spent their lives in the
ziggurat, one in the glittering pits underground, the other in the glittering
halls of its crest.
    Vale turned around and
looked behind him. A few miles away, he could still see the great walled heart
of the empire, divided in two—the city of Shayeen and the land of Tofet. As
they sailed onward, he thought of those he had left behind. His father. His
fellow workers in the quarries and bricklaying fields. Hundreds of thousands of
other slaves. All of them were his family too.
    I found the world,
but not for my own freedom. To find the Keymaker and the Chest of Plenty. To
find our magic.
    Meliora pointed and her
sunburst eyes narrowed. "Chariots."
    Vale saw them. A
hundred chariots of fire, maybe more, rising from the city, spreading across
the land.
    "They know we escaped."
He grabbed an oar. "We must leave the river. Elory, help me oar. We make to the
northern bank."
    As the chariots
streamed nearer, they rowed toward the riverbank and stepped out into the
shallow water, scaring away several herons. Their boat was made of reeds, and
when they pulled it between the reeds that lined the water, it seemed to
vanish.
    "Down," Vale whispered,
kneeling in the shallow water between the rushes. "Hide anything reflective."
    The others crouched
around him, lowering their weapons into the water. Algae floated around them,
and the rushes swayed, rising over their heads. Frogs trilled, dragonflies
buzzed, and a snake coiled across the water.
    Fire roared.
    The air screamed.
    A dozen chariots
charged overhead, raining fire.
    "Burn the rushes!"
cried a voice above—Ishtafel's voice. "Burn them all down. They're hiding
here. Burn the riverbanks! Burn every tree and every reed."
    Vale looked up between
the rushes and saw the tyrant there. Ishtafel flew in a great chariot, a
shining god of gold. His lieutenants spread around him, nocking flaming arrows.
Vale's hands balled into fists.
    You murdered my
mother. You cut the wings off my sister. You slaughtered millions. He
grabbed his collar, wishing he could tear it off, rise as a dragon, fight
Ishtafel again as he had over Shayeen. Someday I will face you again,
Ishtafel. I swear this. I will fly as a dragon again, and when I do, you will
burn in my fire.
    But for now he wore a
collar. For now the only fire was raining from the sky, the fire of Saraph.
    The flaming arrows
slammed into the reeds. Despite growing from water, the reeds—at least the
part of them above the river—were dry and brittle. They caught flame at once,
and the fire began to spread around Vale and