Requiem's Song (Book 1) (17 page)

A
hint of dawn gilded the east, and landforms emerged below, charcoal
beneath the black sky—the whisper of hills, valleys, and fields of
grass. Jeid turned and flew back north until he saw it, a great shelf
of stone that split the world. The escarpment spread across the
horizon, the cliffs gleaming bronze as the sun rose. He flew across
the river, rose above the mountainside, and saw the canyon there—a
den, a hideaway, a seed of a home. He opened his wings wide, catching
air, and glided down into the gorge.

As
soon as he touched the ground, he saw it.

Blood
on the stones.

His
nostrils flared. The place stank of injury. Jeid moved his head from
side to side, clinging to his dragon form.

"Father!"
he called out.

His
heart pounded. Had the rocs finally dared attack the escarpment,
overcoming their fear of the place? Had the townsfolk invaded?

"Father!"
he shouted.

Finally
the old man's voice rose in answer. "I'm here. It's all right,
Jeid. Come into the cave."

Exhaling
in relief, Jeid released his magic. He hopped between boulders in
human form, entered the eastern cave, and crawled through a short
tunnel and into a chamber.

He
straightened and lost his breath.

"Stars
above."

His
father sat on the floor, clad in his blue druid robes, blood staining
his long white beard. Before him, a shivering young man lay upon a
rug. The stranger's foot was missing. The stump was raw and red,
still gushing blood, the shattered bones exposed.

"Hold
him down, Jeid," Eranor said calmly. "Quickly. I need you
to hold him down."

"Who—"
Jeid began.

"Now."

Jeid
nodded, stepped forward, and knelt behind the injured man. The
stranger was shivering, his skin gray, his eyes sunken. Jeid held
onto his arms.

When
Eranor reached into the wound, the man bucked and screamed.

"Hold
him firmly!" Eranor said.

Jeid
nodded and tightened his grip, pinning the young man down. Eyes grim,
Eranor fished out the sputtering vein. Fingers red, he tied the vein
shut.

"Keep
him still." Eranor swiped his beard across his shoulder. "This
will hurt him."

"Who
is he?" Jeid asked. The young man relaxed in his grip; he
shivered upon the rug, his skin the color of the cave walls.

Eranor
replied calmly. "A Vir Requis."

Jeid
lost his breath. He stared down at the injured man. "You are . .
. you can become a dragon."

The
young man looked up at him. He managed to nod wanly. "I've heard
of you." His voice was weak and hoarse. "You are Jeid
Blacksmith of Oldforge. The whole north is speaking of you." He
coughed, licked his lips, and managed to keep talking, his voice
barely more than a whisper. "I'm from the Redbone tribe. When
they discovered my curse, they chained my ankle to our totem. I
shifted into a dragon. When my body grew, the chain dug through me. I
rose as a dragon." He managed a wry smile. "My human foot
remained behind. I—" Coughs overcame his words, and it was a
moment before he could speak again. "I heard of the escarpment.
I had to find you. I had to . . ."

His
eyes rolled back, his body became limp, and he fell silent.

"Keep
him down," Eranor said. He reached for a bronze saw and a bowl
of boiling water. "He's unconscious, not dead, and he might
wake. It's best if he sleeps through this part."

When
Eranor raised the saw, Jeid felt himself pale. "By the stars,
what . . ."

"It's
not a clean cut." Eranor squinted at the wound. "The bone
is jagged. If I sew shut the stump, the bone would only cut through
it. I must file it down."

Jeid
grimaced as his father worked, sawing through bone, filing the edges
down, and cutting out infected flesh. The young man woke once and
screamed, and Jeid held him pinned down. When the man fainted again,
Eranor pulled skin over the wound and stitched it shut.

"Will
he live?" Jeid asked, kneeling above the stranger.

Eranor
wiped his hands on a rug. "I pray to our stars that he does."

Jeid's
fingers trembled. He stared down at the pale young man, and
strangely, despite the blood and horror, joy kindled in him. His eyes
stung.

We
are not alone.

He
was about to speak again when he felt warm wetness against his knee.
He looked down to see blood seeping from under the young man's back.
When he raised the man to a sitting position, he saw it there—a
broken arrow beneath his shoulder blade, sunken deep into his torso.

Dawn spilled into the cave when
the young man died.

Jeid held him in his arms,
remembering the night Requiem had died in his embrace, and here he
was a father again; all these cursed, lost souls were his children
now.

"Rise, friend," he
whispered and kissed the man's forehead. "Rise to the Draco
stars. Their light will guide you home."

That evening, Jeid buried the
young man in the valley beside his daughter, and he placed a boulder
above his grave. Eranor stood beside him, his beard flowing in the
wind, and prayed the old prayers of druids.

Two
fallen Vir Requis,
Jeid thought, staring at the twin graves.
Two
more burdens to bear.
He looked up at the sunset. The first stars emerged, and the dragon
constellation glowed above.
Two
more souls to guide me.

"Who am I, Father?" he
asked softly.

Eranor placed a hand on his
shoulder. "You are a son. You are a father. And you are not
alone." The old man stared south across the plains of swaying
grass. "Others are blessed. Others need you. You will build them
the tribe that you dream of. They will find you, or we will find
them, and we—the Vir Requis—will gather here. We will have a home."

That night Jeid did not fly
again. He sat in the cave by his father, and he stared at the embers
in their brazier, and he thought of Tanin and Maev who were flying
south, and he thought of those who had died.

I
will fly on
,
he thought.
But
I will no longer fly lost in darkness. Our lights shine across the
world. I will be a beacon to them until we shine together.

 
 
LAIRA

"So this is how I end my
first hunt," Laira muttered to herself as she crawled through
the forest. "Bruised, bound, and covered in mammoth shite."

She
sighed, then winced with pain; even sighing hurt now. She supposed it
could have been worse. If those rocs caught her, it
would
be worse.

Laira could still hear the birds
above. It had been a full day and night since she had escaped the
pyre, and the sun was rising again, yet still they hunted her,
scanning the skies in pairs. Every few moments, she heard the fetid
vultures fly above the canopy, and the oil they secreted fell like
foul rain. Thankfully the trees were thick and autumn leaves still
covered the branches, shielding her from view. Even in areas where
the canopy broke, Laira—covered in mud, dung, and dry
leaves—appeared like nothing but a clump of dirt.

Zerra
always said I was nothing but filth,
she thought, a wry smile twisting her lips.

The latest roc vanished
overhead, leaving his stench—like moldy meat—to waft down upon her,
mingling with her own smell, which was no more appealing. Laira
crawled under a tilted oak, rummaged in a pile of fallen leaves, and
finally found a stone the right size. She smashed it against another
stone, chipping it into a blade. She sat upright, her head dizzy, and
worked for a while, rubbing the sharp stone against her bonds.
Finally the rope tore, and she brought her arms back forward and
examined her wrists.

They were a bloody, muddy mess,
and her hands blazed as fresh blood pumped into them. She cut the
ropes around her ankles next and winced. Her feet were in even worse
shape. Not only had the ropes chafed her ankles, the fire had burned
her soles; ugly welts now rose there. She didn't know what was worse:
her burns, bruises, cuts, or the foul paste coating her, but she
thought it was the burns. She needed speed now more than anything,
and with burnt feet, how could she walk or run? Even with her ropes
cut, was she still bound to crawl to whatever safety she could find?

Laira sighed. Was there even
safety in this world for her? Even if she did escape the Goldtusk
tribe—the only home she'd ever known—would she starve in the
wilderness or freeze once the snows began to fall? As a babe, she had
lived in a distant land, a sunny kingdom named Eteer, but they had
banished her. Eteer too hated and hunted weredragons. Even if she
could find her way back, no home awaited her across the sea.

A roc's cry sounded above, and
Laira flattened herself down. When it had passed, she winced and bit
her lip, spat out the foul taste, and attempted to stand.

Her soles blazed as if new fires
burned them. She fell into the dry leaves, moaning and dizzy.

"Maybe I'll just crawl for
a while longer."

She crawled until she reached a
stream, the shallow water gurgling over smooth, mossy stones. She
ached to wash off the dung, which had dried into a flaky paste, but
dared not; the rocs could return anytime, and without the stench to
mask her scent, they could sniff her out. She couldn't resist washing
her feet, however. Dipping them into the stream shot a bolt through
her, but soon the cold water soothed her. They had tied her
barefooted to the pyre, and so she ripped off squares from her fur
cloak, washed them in the stream, then tied them around her feet with
vines.

When she stood up gingerly on
the riverbank, she did not fall. She took one step, wobbled, and then
another. She held a tree for support and limped a few more steps. It
hurt and her head still swam, but she could walk.

Probably looking like some evil
spirit from a fireside tale, covered in filth and leaves, she wobbled
onward. There was only one place she could go now.

"The escarpment," she
whispered.

For years, she had dreamed of
traveling there. Her mother had claimed it was just a legend, yet it
had to be true. The rocs dared not fly near the cliffs. Even Zerra
never dared hunt in its shadow. Why else would they fear the place if
not because . . .

"Dragons live there,"
Laira whispered, and tears stung her eyes. "Others with my
disease. Other banished, cursed souls. I can find a home there."

Her head felt full of fog, and
she struggled to remember the last movements of her tribe. Goldtusk
had been traveling south throughout the fall, planning to spend the
winter in the warm, southern coast. That meant the escarpment would
be northwest from here—many days away.

"I can walk," she
whispered, shivering. "I can survive the journey. I can drink
from streams and I can gather berries and mushrooms. I can make it."

A roc dived overhead, and Laira
pressed herself against a tree and remained still until it passed.
Then she moved again, limping but trudging on. Using the rising sun's
location, she could determine north easily enough. The moss grew on
only one side of the trees, another marker to guide her.

"Step by step, Laira,"
she told herself. "Just keep going and you'll find the others."

A small voice inside her
whispered that she was mad, that she could never find a humble
escarpment in the endless world. In the vastness of the wilderness,
even creatures as large as dragons were small. But walking—even
limping—was better than curling up and dying, and so she kept going.

"I will always keep going,"
she promised herself. "If I die, I die moving."

She kept walking until the sun
reached its zenith, its heat dispersing the mist. Dapples of light
revealed mushrooms, berries, and fallen pine cones. Laira spent a
while collecting a meal upon a flat rock. She had not eaten since . .
. she couldn't even remember the last time; it had been at least two
days, maybe twice that long. She dared wash her hands and face in a
nearby stream, sit down, and eat. The food tasted like the dung. She
had hoped the meal would invigorate her, but it only made her belly
swirl, and she gagged.

For long moments, she lay on her
back, struggling to breathe. She wasn't sure how many scrapes and
cuts covered her. It felt like dozens, some mild—mere scratches from
brambles—others deeper, like the cuts along her wrists and ankles.
She didn't mind the pain, but as she lay watching the rustling
leaves, she began to worry about infection. The tribe warriors
sometimes rubbed their arrowheads with mammoth dung; they claimed
that it would spread rot through a wound. After her splash in the
mammoth's waste to conceal her scent, had she doomed herself to slow
death by disease? Had she fought, fled, and gone through this pain
simply for a lingering demise in the wilderness?

If
no more rocs arrive by afternoon, I'll wash myself in the nearest
stream,
she decided.

For now she had to keep moving.
The farther she walked from the tribe, the safer she'd be. She knew
Zerra. Sooner or later, he would spit, curse her name, and give up
the chase. He would claim she had died in the wilderness, then keep
traveling south with his tribe, not willing to abandon his journey
for a mere maggot like her.

"But I won't die in the
wilderness," she whispered, rising to her feet. "I will
find others like me. I will live through this."

She kept walking, every part of
her aching, until the sun dipped into the afternoon. Only three times
did she hear rocs, and they were farther away, still hunting her but
confused, not sure where to look. Slowly Laira's fear of them eased,
but her fear of infection kept growing, and her dizziness would not
leave her. She needed healing herbs but didn't know the craft. Back
at Goldtusk, only the crone Shedah knew healing, and she would share
the art with none.