A Night of Dragon Wings (2 page)

Zar lay on the ground, staring at the twisting pillar of stone.  The red clouds swirled above it like pools of gods' blood.  Was it possible?  Could one of them—even Zar himself—find the key and receive freedom?

He clenched his jaw and winced when his shattered teeth touched.

"No," he whispered.  "There will be no freedom if she unlocks the door this key can open.  There will be no place to hide in the world."

He watched the tower.

Silence fell.

Solina stood before Tarath Gehena, hands opened at her sides, fingers twitching over the hilts of her sabres.  Her soldiers stood like statues; not a piece of armor clinked.  Zar pushed himself to his feet and watched.  At his side, the second prisoner—a gaunt dusteater caught licking the forbidden spice in Irys's dregs—stood watching with sallow eyes; those eyes seemed dead, and her skin was already pale like a corpse.  Even the wind stilled; the land itself seemed to be watching the tower with bated breath.

A deep, gravelly sound rose from the tower.

Again sweat drenched Zar.

Sun God, oh Sun God, save us.

His body trembled with new vigor.  At first he thought that sound the creaking of stones, but then he realized:  it was laughter—an inhuman, impossibly deep, demonic laughter. 

A shrill scream pierced the air, cascaded down the mountainsides, and echoed across the desert.

"We must flee," Zar whispered.  He turned to run, but soldiers grabbed him.  Gloved fingers dug into his arms.

The deep laughter rolled, a sound of ancient evil, of pure malice, a sound like a parasite feasting as it bore through its host toward the heart.  Wincing, Zar turned his head away from the tower; he could no longer look.

His gaze fell upon Queen Solina.  He expected to see his queen shaken or remorseful, to see her skin pale and her eyes fearful, to hear her order them away from Tarath Gehena and back to their city.  What he saw in his queen's eyes, however, terrified Zar as much as the laughter that rose from the tower.

Solina's eyes were wide, her grin toothy.  Her chest rose and fell with excited breath.  She seemed like a woman in ecstasy.

The deep laughter rose to a shriek, a sound so loud that Zar wept and even the soldiers cursed.  Zar whipped his head back toward the tower and saw it shaking.  The screams rose from it:  the screams of demons and the anguished scream of a man.

Blood seeped from the doorway, so thick and dark it seemed almost black.

The human scream died, and the laughter of demons rolled across the mountain.

"Rael," Zar whispered.  "I'm sorry, my friend."

A shadow stirred on the tower's top, moving between the crenellations.  Zar froze and stared, heart hammering.  He wanted to look away.  He wanted to close his eyes.  He wanted to do anything but stare at that shadow.  And yet the darkness that stirred there held his gaze, as powerful as the soldiers who held his body.  It seemed a human figure, Zar thought—a man cloaked in black, a hood hiding his face.  The cloaked sentinel moved atop the tower, a thing of darkness; Zar saw no head within the shadows of that hood.  The figure raised its hand.  Zar's throat tightened and he winced; the hand was long and deathly gray, the fingers tapering into crimson claws.

A thing of darkness,
Zar knew and wept. 
A demon of the Abyss.

The demon knelt and rose again.  In its claws it held a bloody, lacerated corpse.  The demon tossed the body from the parapet.  It tumbled and thumped against the ground only feet away from Zar.

He couldn't help it.  Zar screamed.

It was the corpse of Rael, gutted like a fish.  They had cracked open the man's chest, scooped out his innards, and tossed aside this bloodied shell.  Rael's dead eyes stared into his own.

Please,
the eyes seemed to say. 
Please, Zar, tell my wife I love her.  Tell her that I'm sorry.

Finally Zar could close his eyes.  A tear streamed down to his lips.

"Goodbye, my friend," he whispered through chafed lips.  "May your soul rise to the Sun God's courts of eternal light."

Solina walked toward the body, stood above it, and shook her head ruefully.

"Sad fool," she said.  "He could have had his freedom; he was too weak."  She turned toward her soldiers and raised her voice.  "Send the next one in!  Send the woman!  Give her a sword; she can slay whatever evil lies inside or fall upon the blade."

The gaunt woman's eyes barely flicked as the guards untied her wrists, shoved her forward, and placed a sabre in her hands.  After so many years crouched in alleys, licking the dust of the south, could she even feel pain and fear?  Her eyes were sunken, already dead.  She clutched the sabre before her; the blade reflected the red sunset as if already bloodied.  Her only sign of life was sweat upon her brow and a tremble to her arms.  Her lips, pale and dry, finally opened to speak.

"If I slay the evil inside," she rasped, "and if I find your key, I want the dust."  She looked at Solina and her eyes reddened.  A tear streamed down her cheek.  "Please, my queen, if only a spoonful, if only a taste.  I will find your key not for freedom, not for jewels, only for a sprinkling of the dust, my queen."

Solina sighed and shook her head.  "Pathetic creature.  You are a daughter of the desert!  You are the stock of a noble breed, a warrior race of steel and sand and glory.  And all you crave is that southern spice that twists you into a beast?"  The queen spat.  "But I will grant your wish.  Bring me the key, and I will give you not a spoonful of dust, but great barrels of the stuff, so you may lick your desire for all your remaining days."

The dusteater's eyes widened, and she wept and trembled.  "Thank you, my queen!"  She could barely speak; her chest rose and fell as sobs racked her body.  "I will find your key.  I promise you, my queen."

With that, the dusteater turned, stepped toward the tower, and entered the darkness.

Zar stared, not daring to breathe.  Queen Solina and her men stood frozen, eyes upon the tower.  A single crow circled above, the only movement in the desert.

A scream rose.

Clashing steel rang.

Cruel, deep laughter bubbled.

Zar closed his eyes. 
Sun God, oh Sun God.

When a screech shattered the desert, Zar looked up to see the dark, cloaked figure reappear atop the tower.  Once more, no light pierced its hood.  Once more, its crimson claws rose.  In its grip, it held a twisted corpse.

The creature tossed the body down, then disappeared back into the tower.  When the body thumped against the ground, Zar stared for an instant, then doubled over and gagged.  Whatever paltry scraps they had fed him—dry old bread and cheese—he now lost.

Please, Sun God, please, how can you let such horror exist under your light?

The dusteater had entered the tower a gaunt, nearly cadaverous woman.  Now her body was bloated as if waterlogged.  Her head bulged, twice its previous size.  A twisted, parasitic creature melted into her body like a conjoined twin.  Red eyes blinked upon her chest, and a shriveled hand thrust out from her belly, grasping at the air.  A mewl rose from the wreck of a body; she was still alive.

Solina stared down in disgust.  Even the queen finally seemed shaken, and her face paled.  Her lips curled back in a snarl.

"Kill it!" she hissed to her soldiers.  "Sun God, kill this thing."

The soldiers approached the twisting, gurgling creature.  The parasite writhed across it, molded into the bloated body.  The dusteaster's eyes twitched and shed tears, and her lips whispered.  Zar could not hear her, but he could read her lips.

"Please," she begged.  "Please kill me."

The soldiers thrust down their swords.  Blood spurted.  The creature convulsed, then lay still.

Solina shouted.  "Send in the last one!"

Zar's knees trembled so badly, he'd have fallen had soldiers not grabbed him.  When they began dragging him toward the tower, he kicked and struggled; it was like trying to break iron chains.  As the tower grew closer, Zar saw shadows stir beyond its doorway, and he screamed and kicked and wept.

"Untie him!" Solina ordered.  "Give him a sword!"

A soldier drew a dagger, pulled Zar's arms back, and sawed through the ropes binding his wrists.  His arms blazed with pain as he raised them, and he found his wrists chafed raw and bloody.  His fingers trembled and throbbed as the blood rushed back into them.  Before Zar could even gasp with the pain, the soldiers shoved a sabre into his hands.

"Go on, you wretch," said one soldier, voice echoing inside his falcon helm—the man who had whipped and stabbed his back so many times.  "Fetch us the key, maggot, and you'll have your sweet freedom, and you can return to your whore and miserable whelp."

Zar's eyes stung, the memories coursing through him: his son, his beautiful son with the blue eyes, fingers that clutched his, and soft hair like molten dawn.  He could see him again.

All I must do is be strong, be brave, find the key… and I can go home.

Before him loomed the shadowy doorway.  When he looked over his shoulder, he saw the queen there, her armor bright in the sunset, her eyes like sapphires.  He saw her soldiers, fifty men clad in steel, swords in hand.

Or I can fight them,
he thought. 
I can swing my sword at them.  I can try to cut them down.  I can't kill them all, but maybe I can kill enough to run between them, to flee into the desert.

He gritted his teeth, sending pain blazing down his jaw.  Even if he did escape them, what then?  They would hunt him.  They would catch him.  They would return him to the dungeon—to the whips, the pincers, the rats, the endless agony and screams.  Here at least, in this tower, death could relieve him.  It would be a gruesome death; the creatures inside could gut him, or mangle him, and he would scream… but at the end, they would kill him.  That was more than Solina's dungeon offered.

And maybe…
  Zar swallowed a lump. 
Maybe I can find the key.  Maybe I can return home to my wife and son, a hero bearing jewels and glory.

He squared his shoulders, swallowed again, and stepped into the tower.

Darkness swirled around him.  Wind whispered like voices.  He walked, step by step, sword trembling before him.

"Find the key!" Solina shouted behind him, but her voice was muffled and distant, an echo from a different lifetime.  "Find the key for your freedom!"

He kept walking.  His knees shook.  The shadows engulfed him, then parted like a curtain, and Zar found himself standing in a round chamber.

His breath died on his lips.

The walls and floor were built of rough gray bricks.  The room was empty but for a large, obsidian table engraved with a peering eye.

A creature sat at the table, fork and knife in hand.  Zar nearly gagged; he had never seen a creature so grotesque.  It looked like an obese, naked man, its folds of pale skin hiding its features—a creature like a great slab of melting butter.  It seemed to have no eyes, only two slits.  Two white folds opened to reveal a raw, red mouth and a wet tongue.

Zar wanted to stab the creature.  He wanted to turn and flee.  He wanted to close his eyes, curl up, and pray.  Yet he stood frozen in disgust and terror as the creature raised its hand.  Its fingers were fat as bread rolls, pale and glistening and ending with small claws.  It pointed at a staircase behind the table; the stairs seemed to rise to a second story.

"Do I…"  Zar's voice cracked, and he swallowed and tried again.  "Do I climb?  Is the key upstairs?"

The obese, pale creature said nothing, only kept pointing at the staircase.  Its wrinkled slits stared at Zar like eyes.  Its mouth opened again, revealing small sharp teeth.

Zar took a step toward the stairs, keeping one eye on the creature.  Sword trembling in his thin hands, he began to climb.  The stairs corkscrewed up, craggy under his bare feet, until they emerged into the second floor of the tower.

Zar felt himself blanch.  He raised his shaking sword.

"Shine your light on me, Sun God," he whispered.

Fight it,
he thought and clenched his jaw. 
Kill it or your body too will fall from the tower.

The second story looked much like the first, round and rough and empty.  A creature lurked here too.  At first Zar thought it a dog with two heads.  But this canine creature was larger than a dog—closer in size to a horse—and its two heads were humanlike, bloated and staring with beady eyes.  The two mouths opened and tongues unrolled, each a foot long and oozing.

"Stand back!" Zar said and sliced the air, blade whistling.  He had been a soldier once.  He had languished in Solina's dungeon for long moons, maybe for years, and his limbs were thin and shaking now, and his head spun.  But the old soldier still whispered inside him, the soldier who had swung his blade in battle, fighting the weredragons in the tunnels of their northern lair.  He could still wield a sword, and he could still kill.

As his blade swung, one of the creature's heads growled—a deep sound like thunder.  The second head screeched—a sound like ripping skin.  The dog bared sharp teeth, its muscles rippled, and it leaped toward him.

Zar screamed and swung his blade.

For the Sun God.  For my wife.  For my son.

His blade slammed into the creature's shoulder.  Black blood spurted and clung to the steel, and Zar screamed again.  The blood raced up the blade like a black, sticky demon.  When it reached his hand, it drove into his flesh, and Zar realized:  This was no black blood but a swarm of ants.  The insects burrowed into his hand.  He saw them crawling under the skin of his arm, racing to his chest.

His sword clanged against the floor.

The canine creature yowled.  Its mouths opened wide.  Its tongues reached out, red serpents, growing longer and longer.  Zar stumbled back, and the tongues caught him, wrapped around him, and began to constrict him.

"Sun God!" he shouted.  "Blessed be your light!  Bless—"

A tongue twisted around his throat, squeezed him, and his voice died.