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Bring her to me alive and bring the pack rat too!"
    Meliora and Tash
glanced at each other silently, then looked forward and kept running along the
shadow path, vanishing into the City of Kings as screams of seraphim and the fire
of their chariots filled the sky above.

 
 
VALE

    "Faster!"
    The whips flew.
    "Move, slaves! Toil!"
    Burning leather slashed
through flesh.
    "Faster! Toil or die!"
    Sweat dripped across
Vale, stinging his eyes, drenching his burlap loincloth, burning the whip's
welts across his bare back. Those welts ached like scorpion stingers forever
digging into him. His muscles were cramping, begging for relief, and the
sunlight burned his shoulders and shaved head, leaving him dizzy, gasping for
breath.
    "Toil!"
    The flaming whips
cracked. The overseers smirked as they flew above upon swan wings, whipping any
slave who dallied—a handful of masters ruling over thousands of slaves.
    For a day, hope
rose, Vale thought, back bent. All hope has burned away.
    He spilled the basket
of straw into the pit of clay. Joints aching, he lifted the barrel of bitumen
and spilled the tar into the mix. He climbed into the sticky pool, sloshing
through it, mixing the ingredients with his hobbled legs. His feet burned, and
the manacles chafed his ankles; he bled into the mix. Across the field,
thousands of other slaves waded through their own pits of clay, straw, and
bitumen.
    "Faster!" cried an overseer,
and a whip cracked over Vale's head. "Shape the bricks. Move!"
    Vale nodded, back striped
too many times. Another blow, he thought, would kill him. Perhaps that would be
a mercy. Perhaps he should resist, let them whip him to death, join the poor
souls around the pits. He raised his head, blinked out sweat, squinted in the
sunlight, and saw them. A hundred slaves or more rose around the field, impaled
on spikes, their flesh food for crows. Most were rotten. Some still twitched
and moaned.
    Poor souls? Vale
thought. The dead are the lucky ones.
    "Go!" cried the
overseer. "Mix! Two thousand bricks a slave."
    The whip lashed again,
and this time it slammed into Vale, tearing his back, knocking him into the hot
clay. The seraph was still shouting above him, but Vale could barely hear. He
lay facedown in the hot mixture of clay, straw, and tar, and he felt like he
was back there—back upon the crest of the ziggurat, a thousand feet above the
city, nailed into the platinum.
    I almost rose to the
stars of Requiem, he thought. I was almost free from the pain.
    He wanted to lie here
in the mud until the pain fled again.
    He still remembered the
shock of Ishtafel swinging his hammer, driving the nails into Vale's hands and
feet, nailing him to the ziggurat. He still remembered his body convulsing, his
soul beginning to rise . . . and he had seen them. The celestial halls of
afterlife. A Requiem that still stood, woven of starlight, and the spirits of
the fallen awaiting him. His mother. His grandparents. The ancient kings and
queens of his fallen nation.
    And I saw you,
Issari. The Priestess in White.
    The ancient princess of
Requiem, among the founders of the nation, had descended from the stars, a
great healer. Forever shining in the sky, the eye of the Draco constellation,
she had descended to the world for him. She had gazed at him with sad green
eyes, and she had placed her hands upon him, passing her starlight into him,
healing his wounds, returning his broken body to life. In his mind, she had
whispered soft words.
    You will live, son
of Requiem.
    "Let me rest," he had
whispered to her.
    She had wept, her tears
warm, healing his soul. Your path of thorns has not ended, son of Aeternum,
for you are descended from the great family of Requiem, a child of King
Aeternum and all the kings and queens who followed in his dynasty. Your battle
still looms ahead, Vale. We will watch you. Our light will forever fall upon
you. You must find our sky.
    Vale had awoken then,
his lungs filling once more with air, the holes in his hands and