Tsiory took a spear through the back. Taifa screamed as it went in and was still screaming when the head of the spear burst through his chest and leather armor. Taifa saw the look of surprise on her lover’s face and saw it turn to pain, his mouth open, gasping for air that his torn lungs could no longer breathe.
The spear was ripped free, and he looked—she swore he looked right to her. Then she watched him fall, fall onto this cursed land’s unnaturally white sand. There to stay, there to die.
Dimly, Taifa knew she had not stopped screaming, but that part of her felt far away when compared to the overwhelming presence of the dragon that had come into her range. She merged with it.
MONSTER
Taifa’s vision, sense of self, and purpose split. She could see the battlefield from the air. The women and men, dying by the scores, looked small and insignificant.
She could see the two and a half thousand ships of her people, most of them cannibalized for parts, lying on the beach like the half-eaten quarry of some greater predator. She could see Omehi women and men scurrying from the makeshift shelter of those broken ships to the sand to the battle. She could see the ocean behind them all, stretching beyond the horizon, endless.
But it wasn’t endless. She’d crossed it with what was left of the Chosen of the Goddess. She’d saved her people from eradication, and it was not their fate, having found this distant land, to die on its sands. Her people’s sacrifice, Tsiory’s sacrifice, would have purpose, and the natives, heathens one and all, would learn what it meant to oppose her.
The merging completed, and the dragon’s power, its fury, flowed into Taifa. Quickly, she coiled these thick tendrils of consciousness and fashioned them into the ropes that would hold her tight to it.
It was then the savages on the beach spotted the creature, and through its eyes, she saw them turn and point. She could see their fear, smell it, and Taifa tapped the dragon’s anger, stoking it, fueling it, turning the creature’s need for vengeance into a compulsion.
It dove, spiraling toward the beach, and, using its gift, drew more from Isihogo than any human ever could. The dragon took its power from there, from the Goddess, and brought it into the world, igniting its blood. The beast burned, and when the heat threatened to overwhelm it, it blew fire, lighting the world ablaze.
Two dozen women and men, people of this strange land who thought to defend its shores from her, erupted in flame beneath the blast of Taifa’s first attack. She could hear their screams as their lives ended in suffering. Her dragon, twice the size of her warship, with scales harder and sharper than bronze and blacker than tar, swept down and snatched two more of the heathens from the beach, slicing them to pieces in its massive claws, before landing on the sand. The dragon blew fire again, arcing the inferno across the gathered enemy horde.
Those hit by the blast were incinerated, and that was a mercy. The women and men on the attack’s edges were seared by the heat, their flesh bubbling and sloughing off their bones. The ones this didn’t kill choked to death on the fumes of the creature’s acrid blood.
The daughters and sons of these white sands and withered trees, once so fearless in battle, mounted no more attacks. They fell back in terror, scrambling to flee, and in retreat, they faced the rest of the rage.
Taifa’s Entreaters, the most powerful of her Gifted, merged with the two other dragons that answered their call. Together, the rage blew fire so hot that Taifa, only half in her body, still felt its heat from her warship.
The savages, the ones not dead or dying, ran for the safety of the trees, but Taifa pushed her dragon to follow. It rose into the air, chasing those who fled, burning down the tangled foliage that hid her enemies from her. The heat of its fires melted white sand to black glass and where the flames fell left nothing but ash.
As her dragon scorched the earth, Taifa prayed. She prayed to Ananthi, the Goddess, for two things. The first was forgiveness. She begged for it, knowing no mortal would have the grace to offer it, given what she was going to do to the people of this land. After that, after forgiveness, she asked for the power to destroy and the will to see it done.
“My queen,” Taifa heard the KaEid say through the fugue of the merging. “They’re retreating. We’ve won.”
But Tsiory was dead and Taifa would honor him with a funeral pyre built from the corpses of her enemies. She urged her dragon on. She killed and killed, until her wrath cost the lives of most in her Hex, and until there was no one left to burn.
Exhausted, and with the shroud that masked her soul’s light collapsing, Queen Taifa Omehia sacrificed one more Gifted, released the dragon, and folded back into herself. The beach was a smoldering ruin, and with a remnant of the creature’s senses, she could smell the charred flesh, death, and stink of fear that suffused the sand.
She looked skyward as her dragon beat its way higher into the cloudless dusk, making for its nest. As it went, it belched a twisting column of flame, bright as the sun, and let out a mournful keen that almost started her crying. She refused to shed a single tear. The day was won, and though there were many more to come, the Goddess had already answered one of her prayers. Queen Taifa had the will to do what must be done.
Striding past the bodies of the Gifted she’d sacrificed and ignoring the horrified faces of her Ruling Council, Taifa turned away from the foreign land that would be her people’s new home. She quit the ship’s deck, descending stairs that took her from light to dark, and, finding herself alone in the false twilight, placed a hand to her stomach. She had so little of Tsiory left, but what she had she would protect.
“Let them think me a monster,” the Dragon Queen thought. “I will be a monster, if it means we survive.”
CHAPTER ONE
HEIR
One hundred eighty-six cycles later
Tau stumbled as he avoided the Petty Noble’s swing. He tried to regain his footing, but Jabari was on him and he had to hop backward to survive the larger man’s attack.
“Come on, Tau! You can’t always run!” Aren yelled from outside the fighting circle, the words made indistinct by the booming of the ocean below.
Tau’s sword arm was numb and he couldn’t wait for the day’s training to be done. “I’m baiting him,” he lied as Jabari pushed him closer to the cliffs. Another step and Tau would be out of the fighting circle, losing him the match.
For Aren’s benefit and to prove he’d learned something that season, Tau made a halfhearted attack, cutting for Jabari’s leg, but Jabari bashed the sword aside and launched a counter, catching him on the wrist.
Tau yelped and, having had enough, was about to step out of the circle when Jabari leapt forward, swinging for him. Tau threw himself back, hoping to avoid being hit again, but his heel hit one of the stones marking the circle’s boundaries and he went down with enough force to wind him.
He was on his back, near the cliff’s edge, and the ocean was loud enough to set his teeth chattering. He glanced down and wondered if rolling over and letting himself fall could hurt any worse than his wrist and bruised ribs already did. Far below, the water roiled like it was boiling, crashing against itself and spewing froth. Tau knew falling into the Roar was death.
“Get up, Tau,” Aren said.