“—again.” The poet put out a hand. “Shall we shake and say peace, at least until Gleamdren is returned to my arms?”
Captain Glomar hacked at the hand. The poet darted back with the air of a slandered saint, drawing his cape close about him. “Very well,” he said with a sniff. “If that’s the way you feel about it, allow me to make another proposition. It’s hardly a fair one to you, but—”
“I’ll hear none of your propositions!” The hatchet sank into the trunk of the elm tree. A shudder ran from the roots to the topmost branches and back again. The hatchet stuck.
“You’ll hear this one,” said Eanrin. “I propose we part ways, here and now. And to make things interesting, I propose a race.”
The captain, tugging at his hatchet, paused. A tremor passed through the ground, like the rippling of roots beneath the soil, but neither he nor Eanrin noticed. Glomar’s face sank into a deep scowl, yet there was interest in his eyes. “A race, you say?”
“Aye. Rather than drag me down with your sour company and lumbering blundering, I suggest that you race me instead. To Etalpalli and back. He who rescues my lady Gleamdren first and carries her triumphant back to the Hall of Red and Green will be declared victorious. And,” he added slowly, “the loser must agree to forgo his suit to the winner forevermore.”
Here, Glomar smiled so knowingly that Eanrin, for all his confidence, felt a twinge of concern. He masked his discomfort, however, and answered smile for smile, even as Glomar said, “You may not like that so much as you think, poet. This meathead may possess more knowing than you realize.”
The poet gulped, but he spoke lightly. “That risk I am willing to take.”
With a final heave, the captain pulled his hatchet free. “Well—”
That was when the tree snarled.
There is only burning. Forever and ever, it seems.
But this fire, like all fires, must run out of fuel and dwindle until nothing remains but smoldering embers. When that happens, she begins to remember.
At first there is little enough for her mind to grasp. She sees a girl whom she recognizes but whose name she does not know. A lovely creature with wings of many vivid colors spreading from her shoulders. Upon her head she wears a simple crown, and her hair and her eyes are as vibrant as those wings. Such a fair creature is she!
Why, then, does Etanun not love her?
Hri Sora’s eyes flew open.
She stood, she discovered, at the summit of a high tower on a wide, flat roof. The stones beneath her feet were blackened. All embellishments that might once have made this tower beautiful were obliterated, all greenery long since killed.
She knew this place. Turning about, her dry eyes studying every cranny and crevice, Hri Sora recognized Omeztli, the Moon Tower. It was the queen’s tower, had been hers ever since her brother died. Before she herself died.
It was not the sight Hri Sora had seen in her dream. No colossal bonfires engulfed the green towers—the flames were gone, leaving behind blackened, flaking stone through which the red rock beneath showed like raw wounds. Many of the towers had crumbled into the streets, carcasses fallen in war. She searched for Itonatiu, the Sun Tower, which should stand opposite Omeztli. The home of her brother, the home of kings.
Where it had once stood was a great, gaping hole.
“Lights Above be eaten!” she cried, but the words caught and strangled in her throat. Fire rushed to her mouth, ready to drag her into madness and oblivion. When she had been a whole dragon, that rush of flame inside had led to her bursting into true dragon form, wings pounding the air, great, sinuous body tearing and destroying as the furnace erupted from her belly.
But now she had only a woman’s body, wingless and weak. A body that could not support such a fire. To let it build, to let it take over, meant to give herself up to the blaze, to sink into burning dreams and lose all memory.
No, Hri Sora could not allow herself to succumb to those fires again. Not yet. Slowly, she forced the fire down into her belly. As she did so, more memories returned.
“I did this,” she said. Once upon a time, leafy vines had cloaked those stark walls, causing the entire city to look alive, lush, and growing. “I burned it all.”
She stood like a statue, watching smoke rise from the pit where Itonatiu had stood so proud and golden.
Then she smiled.
She knew who she was again. The memory of her death and rebirth as a dragon returned to her, and her teeth gleamed with a smile.
“The queen is dead,” she said and laughed. “Long live the queen!”