Requiem's Song (Book 1) (25 page)

"Well,
well," Tanin said, tongue still lolling as he panted. "Looks
like your older brother can still teach you a few things. I believe
my count is . . ." He feigned counting on his claws. "Two
demons. And you . . . well, technically one demon, though he was the
smallest."

Maev
roared, flew toward him, and barreled into him. Blood dripped down
her chin, and her eyes flashed.

"The
smallest—" She blustered, for a moment unable to form more
words. "You only killed two because I burned them! They were
already wounded."

He
nodded. "Sure, Maev. It was only because you helped." He
patted her with his wing. "You're a real warrior."

Suddenly
he winced. Pain drove through his wing where the creatures had cut
it. Maev was wounded too, several of her scales chipped.

"What
were they, Tanin?" she whispered, fear replacing the anger in
her eyes. "They . . . they were even worse than rocs, I think.
Evil spirits.
Demons.
"
She winced. "What kind of land are we flying to?"

Tanin
looked south. There upon the horizon he saw it—a faded tan smudge.

The
southern coast.

The
kingdom of Eteer.

"We're
about to find out," he said.

They
flew toward that distant coast, silent. Even as they left the smoke
and stench behind, the demon shrieks echoed in Tanin's ears and he
shuddered.

 
 
LAIRA

She flew until the dawn, letting
no fire fill her maw. She was weary. Her cuts still hurt. Her
forehead burned even in the cold air, the infection blazing through
her. She felt lost and afraid; she had never been alone before
escaping her tribe, and she did not know if she'd live much longer.
It was the longest, coldest night of her life.

It was also the best night of
her life.

"I am strong," she
said into the wind, and her laughter clanked her scales. "I am
fast and high and I am free."

Tears flowed down her scaly
cheeks. Zerra would nevermore slap her, shove her into the mud, or
spit upon her. He would nevermore shear her hair, clothe her in rags,
and give her only scraps to eat. For ten years, he had mistreated
her, turning her into a short, scrawny girl covered in mud and
tatters, a creature he made, a pet to torment.

And
he will nevermore bed me,
she thought. Scales clattered as she shivered. That night returned to
her—the night she had stepped into his tent, selling her body for a
chance to hunt. She remembered the burnt half of him pressing against
her, his tongue licking her cheek, his manhood thrusting into her.

"Nevermore," she
swore. "You will nevermore use me, hurt me, torture me. You kept
me hungry for years, and perhaps I will never grow taller, and I will
always be the size of a child. But I can be a dragon too. That you
cannot take away."

Her eyes stung, her wings felt
stiff, and she bared her fangs. As she flew in the night, she made
another vow.

"I will have revenge."
Fire filled her mouth. "You killed my mother. You hurt me.
Someday we will meet again, Zerra . . . and you will feel my fire. I
will finish what my mother began."

Dawn rose in the east like
dragonfire, a painting all in orange, yellow, and red. The autumn
forest below blazed with the same fiery majesty, rolling into the
horizon. Laira looked around, seeking pursuit. Up here in the air,
she would be visible for many marks. She saw only a distant flock of
birds, but she felt it safest to descend.

A silver stream cut through the
forest, and she dived down toward it, the wind whistling around her.
She landed on the bank, dunked her head into the icy water, then
pulled back with a mouthful of salmon. She gulped down the fish for
breakfast, then drank deeply. Back in the Goldtusk tribe, as the
lowest ranking member, she would always eat last, and always only
scraps. She could not recall the last time she had eaten a whole
fish. Since her mother had died, fish had meant nibbling on bones and
chewing rubbery skin. She dipped her head underwater again, caught
another salmon, and swallowed it down, relishing the oily goodness.

She could not walk through the
forest in dragon form, not without toppling trees, and she was not
ready to become a human yet. She yawned, releasing a puff of smoke,
and shook her body to hear her golden scales rattle. She squeezed
between a few oaks, curled up on a bed of dry leaves, and laid her
head upon her paws.

"Maybe I'm the only one
left," she whispered to herself. "If I am, I will live like
this, wild and free and solitary like a saber-toothed cat. But I will
never stop searching. I will seek the fabled escarpment in the north,
and if more dragons fly there, I will find them."

She yawned again, closed her
eyes, and slept.

When night fell again, she flew.

For three days and nights she
traveled, sleeping in the sunlight, flying the darkness, until at
dawn on the fourth day she saw it ahead.

The escarpment.

It rose across the land,
stretching into the horizon, a great shelf of rock and soil thick
with birches, oaks, and maples. Waterfalls—thin white slivers from
here—cascaded down its cliffs, disappearing into the forest before
emerging as streams to feed a rushing river. It was as if half the
world had sunk, dropping the height of a mountain, leaving the
northern landscapes to roll on to a misty horizon, unscathed.
Countless birds filled the sky, fleeing from the sight of her—a
golden dragon large enough to swallow them whole. Mist floated in
valleys, and boulders rose gray and thin from the forest like the
fingers of dead stone giants.

"It's real," Laira
whispered upon the wind, not even caring that she flew in daylight.
Tears filled her eyes. "The place where rocs dare not fly, the
place even Zerra fears. A place of dragons."

Geese and doves fleeing before
her, the golden dragon glided on the wind. Soon she flew along the
escarpment. The highlands rose to her left, the cliffs plunged down
beneath her, and the landscape rolled low to her right. Every
movement in the sky sent her heart racing, but it was always a hawk,
seagull, or other bird. The escarpment stretched into the horizon. If
others lived here, others like her, did they hide as humans?

She flew for a long time.

"Dragons!" she called
out and blasted fire, a beacon for her kind. "Answer my call! I
seek dragons."

Only birds answered, calling in
fright and fleeing the trees.

Laira flew as the afternoon cast
long shadows, as clouds gathered, and as rain fell. A few marks
ahead, the escarpment sloped down into the land. She had traversed it
all and found nothing.

A lump in her throat, Laira
turned around and retraced her flight, moving back west, surveying
the escarpment a second time.

"Dragons!" she cried
out. Maybe she had missed them. Maybe they had been out hunting and
were now returning home. "I seek dragons!"

The sun dipped into the forest,
and orange and indigo spread across the sky. The rain intensified and
soon hail pattered against Laira's scales and wings. A gust of wind
nearly knocked her into a spin. Yet still she flew, calling out,
hoping, dreaming.

There.

Warmth leaped inside her. Her
eyes moistened. She blasted fire.

"Another dragon."

She trembled and smoke rose
between her teeth. She could barely keep her wings steady. It was
hard to see in the shadows, but when she narrowed her eyes, she saw
it again—the dark form of a dragon perched upon the escarpment, all
but hidden under the trees.

Smiling shakily, Laira dived.

She had still not mastered
landings. The past few attempts, she had smashed through trees,
shattering half their branches and often their trunks. This evening
she billowed her wings, letting them capture as much air as they'd
hold, slowing her descent. With a few more flaps, she steadied into a
hover, pulled her legs close together, and gently lowered herself
between the boles. At least it was gentle compared to her earlier
landings; she still shattered a dozen branches and sent down a rain
of wood and leaves, but at least the trees remained standing.

The dark dragon rose ahead,
perched upon the escarpment's ledge, staring south across the cliff.
A waterfall crashed below the shadowy figure, vanishing into
darkness. If the dragon noticed her—and how could it have not?—it
gave no sign, only kept staring into the distance.

Laira
sniffed, and her scales chinked as she trembled.
Another
dragon. I'm not alone.

Panting, fire sparking between
her teeth, she hobbled toward the hulking shadow.

"Fellow dragon!" Joy
leaped inside her, emerging from her eyes with tears. "I knew
there were others. I knew it. You're not alone, my friend. You—"

She drew closer . . . and froze.

A statue.

Her tears of joy became tears of
frustration.

She reached the statue, placed
her claws against it, and yowled.

"Just a statue. Just . . .
just a totem long forgotten."

Her spirits sank so low she lost
control of her magic. She became a human again, slid down onto her
bottom, and lowered her head.

"There are no dragons
here." She balled her hands into fists and pounded her lap.
"Just a legend. Travelers saw this statue and told stories of
dragons. But there are no other dragons. Only me."

Tears streamed down her
cheeks—all her unshed tears from all her troubles. They were tears
for Zerra burning her mother—the tears she could not shed as the
woman had burned. They were tears for years of pain, of suffering
under Zerra's heel. They were tears for her wounds, her weariness,
her loss of hope—a diseased girl, lost, alone in a world that had no
place for her.

"Because
it
is
a curse." Her voice shook. "It
is
a disease. This curse had me banished from Eteer. This curse had me
fleeing Goldtusk. This curse dooms me to forever be an outcast."
She turned back toward the statue and pounded her fist against it,
bloodying her knuckles. "A curse!"

She was panting, her head
lowered and her chest shaking with sobs, when the voice rose behind
her.

"Easy on the statue,
stranger! I'm still working on it. Don't scratch it."

Laira froze.

She spun around.

Night had fallen but firelight
blazed between fangs, reflecting in large dark eyes, copper scales,
and white horns. Among the pines and oaks, staring down upon her,
stood a living dragon.

 
 
RAEM

Flying
upon his demonic mount, King Raem stared down at the barbarian tribe,
grimaced, and brought a handkerchief to his nose. Truly this was a
benighted land.

It
was the tribe he sought, had been seeking for days. A wooden totem
pole rose upon a hill, and upon its crest hung a gilded mammoth tusk.
Tents sprawled around the pillar, dotting the hills and valleys like
warts, crude things of buffalo skins stretched over cedar poles. Raem
came from a land of stone towers, lush gardens that grew atop
palaces, and a canal that drove into a city in a wonder of
architecture. Below him festered a hive of worms.

The
tribesmen themselves were no more impressive than their tents. Back
home in Eteer, soldiers wore breastplates and bore bronze khopeshes,
yet these northern warriors wore only animal pelts, and they bore
humble spears and arrows tipped with flint. Their beards were long,
and tattoos and piercings marred their forms, abominations unto
Taal's teachings. Perhaps this distant land was beyond Taal's reach.

"Disgusting,"
Raem said.

His
mount—a gift from Angel, Queen of Demons—grunted beneath him. Raem
stroked the creature. The beast had been a woman once, perhaps a
girl, a soul who had fallen into the Abyss centuries ago, lost or
exiled or snatched. The demons had broken her, reformed her,
stretched her over a new frame. Her arms now extended, long as dragon
wings, the skin pulled back like obscene sails. Her head stared
forward, twisting in anguish, mute, her eyes leaking tears. Three
spine ridges now rose down her back, for the demons had added to her,
sewing and augmenting, stitching in new victims until they had
created this thing—a slave of flight, a demonic bat cobbled together
from shattered souls.

"For
long centuries, you flew in the dark caverns of the Abyss, feeding
upon the corpses of buried mortals," Raem said, sitting in a
saddle of bones. He stroked the creature's wispy blond hair. "Now
you fly for the glory of a king."

The
beast was ugly, deformed, an abomination. But she was the fastest
creature to have risen from the underground, and she had brought Raem
all the way here without rest.

"The
creatures I seek are just as fast and many times stronger," Raem
said. He looked down, saw them between the tents, and smiled. "There
they are."

A
hundred rocs stood outside the camp, tethered to pegs. Larger even
than dragons, the birds clawed the earth, snapped their beaks, and
cawed. Their feathers were black and oily, their necks scraggly, and
even from up here, Raem could smell their stench. The birds saw him
now, and they alerted the tribesmen. The hairy barbarians hopped
about, pointing and nocking arrows.

Raem
smiled grimly. "They are fools . . . but useful fools."

He
tugged his mount's reins, spiraling down.

Below,
the tribesmen shouted and fired arrows.

The
deformed bat shrieked and banked, dodging the assault.

"Warriors
of Goldtusk!" Raem shouted. He had studied their language as a
child, for all children of the Seran royal family spoke the tongues
of surrounding lands. "I am Raem. I come from Eteer, a distant
land of plenty. I come with gifts."

Circling
above the camp, he opened the sack at his side and spilled its
contents. Copper, tin, and bronze coins rained onto the tribe. The
warriors below lowered their weapons and knelt. They crawled in the
mud like worms, grabbing the coins, baser than hens pecking for
seeds.