Crown of Dragonfire by Daniel Arenson Read Free Book Online

feet only
faded scars.
    And so I must live. With
shaking arms, he pushed himself up from the mud. My battle still awaits me,
and I will fight for my priestess. For Requiem.
    He rose to his shaky
feet. He did not know what that battle was, what his task would be, but Issari
Seran, the Eye of the Dragon, had commanded him to live. And so he would live.
Whatever it took, however much pain he would endure, he would survive.
    His overseer stood
outside the pit of mud, smirking. "Pity. Thought you were crow food. Would have
liked to see them peck out your eyes. Now form the bricks! Two thousand a man.
Go!"
    Vale labored in the
sunlight among the thousands of slaves. In the old days, under Queen Kalafi's
reign, each slave had needed to mix a thousand bricks a day—backbreaking labor
that had them working from dawn to dusk. The cruel Ishtafel, new king of
Saraph, had doubled that quota. With thousands of others, Vale filled baskets
with the sticky mixture of mud, straw, and bitumen. He hauled basket after
basket into the field, where he poured the mixture into wooden molds, mold
after mold, like filling a great honeycomb. After the sun had dried the clay,
he pulled out the brittle rectangles, and he placed them into stone kilns where
they baked, hardening into bricks that would build homes, schools, armories,
and monuments to Ishtafel across the empire.
    He worked in a daze,
repeating the process over and over, suffering the whip whenever he faltered,
moving as fast as he could, falling, crying out in pain, rising again.
    Two thousand bricks a
slave.
    Countless lashes.
    Each slave who fell
short—more flesh upon the pikes. More food for crows.
    In the fields of Tofet,
they labored in chains, screaming, falling, dying, some surviving. Decimated. One
in ten fallen to Ishtafel's spears, more falling every day. The nation of
Requiem—crying out in greater anguish than ever before, withering under a
cruel sun.
    When finally that sun
had set, and his two thousand bricks were loaded into carts, Vale shuffled back
toward his home.
    In the darkness, he walked
between the huts where the slaves lived. His chains clanked between his legs,
and his breath rattled in his lungs, full of dust from his labor. He could not
stop coughing, a raw cough that tore at his throat like his shackles tore at
his ankles.
    He raised his eyes to
the sky, hoping against hope to see it again—the Draco constellation, the holy
stars of Requiem, which he had seen only once, that night Issari had healed
him. Yet those stars were gone now, if ever they had truly shone.
    The wind gusted, and
three gibbets swung at his side from posts. Within the rusted cages languished
three slaves, close to death—their only sin having failed to meet the new,
doubled quotas. Vale had only a small waterskin, barely enough water to keep
himself alive, yet he approached the cages, prepared to let the dying slaves
drink. They stared at him with glazed eyes, reached out from the bars, bleeding
lips smacking, desperate for a drink.
    Vale turned away. Their
agony was almost over. He would not prolong it. He shuffled onward, their
screams echoing in his ears.
    He tugged at his
collar. If only he could remove this collar, could shift into a dragon again, could
break the bars on the gibbets. He could free them. He could fly to the
ziggurat, challenge Ishtafel again.
    Vale raised his head,
closed his eyes, and remembered how wonderful it had felt. To become a dragon.
To see his scales gleam in the sun, deep blue like the evening sky. To let the
fire fill his mouth. To spread his wings and rise in the sky. Freedom. It had
been freedom.
    He looked back down,
saw the gibbets, the huts, the agony of Tofet, and balled up his fists.
    I will fly again.
Someday I will fight as a dragon once more. I fought Ishtafel over the streets
of Shayeen, but my greatest battle awaits.
    He kept shuffling
forward until he reached his hut, a simple clay dwelling, barely larger than a cage
itself. A birch leaf was