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.
Blackness began spreading across his eyes. He fell to his knees, and the tongues pulled him closer, and teeth shone, and eyes blazed, and Zar wept.
The blackness overcame him, and he fell into a deep, endless void.
In the night, he walked through tunnels in a cold, northern land. His brothers walked behind him and fire roared ahead. The weredragons—shapeshifters of the north—filled the underground, and they knew these caves, they knew every tunnel and every bend, and they cut Zar's brothers down at every turn. Their blades thrust from shadows, and his brothers fell, and blood sluiced their feet, and everywhere he turned, he saw their pale skin and s
hining eyes. Zar wanted to flee, to find his way back into the light of the world, to let the heat of the Sun God warm him, yet more Tiran soldiers surged behind him, and his queen screamed for death and glory, and Zar kept moving deeper into darkness. Finally a weredragon all in armor, his beard fiery red and his eyes wild, thrust his sword into Zar's leg. He fell. His comrades pulled him back. So much blood poured from him; Zar had not imagined the human body could store so much. He knew that he would die here. He tried to crawl back but saw only darkness, only stone walls, only wild eyes and shadows and his blood pooling beneath him.
When his eyes opened, he found himself back on the ground floor of Tarath Gehena. He lay upon the obsidian table, bleeding across the engraving of the great staring eye.
Zar screamed and blood filled his mouth.
The obese, pale creature sat before him, fork and knife clutched in its hands, bloodied. More blood smeared the creature's slit of a mouth and rolled down the folds of its skin. When Zar looked down at his own body, he wept and begged and closed his eyes.
Please, Sun God, please, no, make him stop eating me, make him stop, make him give me my legs back.
Claws dug into his shoulders. He slid across the tabletop and thumped against the floor. When he opened his eyes, he saw a hooded creature clutching him, dragging him across the floor and onto the staircase. Zar's body thudded against each step, dripping, spilling, eaten away, so much of it gone, so much blood. Zar screamed and wept and begged, but still they climbed and climbed until they emerged onto the tower top.
The sky roiled red above, whirlpools of ash and blood and shadow. The hooded creature raised Zar above his head, half a man, still weeping. The creature screeched to the sky, a sound rising and shattering in Zar's ears until it cracked something inside him, and Zar could hear no more, nothing but ringing.
The world spun around him.
Wind whipped him.
He tumbled from the tower and crashed down, shattering, at Queen Solina's feet.
She looked down upon him, and her lips tightened sourly, and she turned to speak to her men. She is beautiful, Zar thought. She is my beautiful queen, a deity of gold and purity. He wept to see such light and beauty at the end.
He closed his eyes, thought of his wife and son, and walked toward the fiery halls of his lord.
ELETHOR
He lay in his bed—a mere pile of furs—and held Lyana close but could not forget the pain. She lay naked and sleeping against him, her head of fiery red curls upon his chest, and as he held her he thought: She is beautiful, and she is all I ever wanted, and I should be happy now but this hurts too much. This is all the sadness in the world.
He looked up at the cave's ceiling, rugged stone carved by dragonclaw into the mountainside. He looked at the walls where candles burned in alcoves. He looked back at Lyana and marveled at the milky pallor of her freckled cheek, the flame of her hair, and the warmth of her breath against him. He held her under the furs, his one hand on her thigh, the other on the small of her back. He never wanted to let her go. She was an anchor to him, and all around roiled a sea of blood and tears.
One thousand and fifty-seven.
Such a small number—a mere few trees from what once was a forest. Such a multitude—so many souls to lead, to defend, to give hope to. One thousand and fifty-seven. They survived the fall of Nova Vita. They slept in these caves and in the forest around it. They wore furs, and they ate what they caught, and they needed him, they needed their King Elethor to bring them hope, to lead them home, to defeat their enemies and bring new life to Requiem.
They need me to be my father. To be like the great kings of old. He closed his eyes. They need me to be a man I am not.
Lyana stirred against him. She mumbled something of poison that burned, crowds that chanted, and whips that lashed. When Elethor opened his eyes, he saw her wincing and biting her lip. She kicked under the furs, and he held her tight like holding a flouncing fish, and he kissed her head and whispered to her until she calmed. Lyana too, for all her strength in battle and fierceness by day, was afraid, was haunted, and was dependent on her king.
Sometimes Elethor envied her for her nightmares. They meant that she could sleep. He himself lay awake most nights, staring at this ceiling, holding his wife, whispering to her, trying to swallow the pain that filled his throat. Some nights the wyverns shrieked outside, seeking them as they hid under rock and leaf. Other nights his own demons called inside his head, memories of the Abyss, memories of children dead beneath him, memories of seeking his sister among the bodies.
He finally slept, but it felt like only moments passed before dawn's light fell upon his eyelids, and he opened them to see Lyana blink, the candles melted to stubs, and rain falling like silver curtains outside the cave. The sounds of the camp rose outside: soft voices, feet shuffling, and leaves rustling under boots. Lyana moaned, stretched under the blankets, and touched his cheek.
"Did you sleep?" she whispered. "You still look so tired."
I don't want to leave this bed, he thought, and I don't want to leave this woman, and I don't want to fight this war.
Yet he was Elethor Aeternum, King of Requiem, Son of Olasar, and he knew that he would still fly, still bleed, still roar his fire, even if he died upon the sands of Tiranor. But not yet. Not yet. This morning he lay in warmth, his wife pressed against him, the beauty of rain and leaf outside the cave that had become their home.
"Elethor," Lyana said, propped herself onto her elbow, and made to rise from the bed, but he held her fast. He pulled her back toward him and kissed her, and she closed her eyes.
They had been married for a moon now. They had wed in this forest, among leaf and rock, for the people to see, for the survivors to know that a king and queen led them, that there was still hope in the world, still light to follow. A moon had turned, a moon of waiting, of pain, of more love than Elethor had thought his heart could ever feel again, not a flame like the love of his youth, but a strong wine in autumn and warm blankets as rain fell outside. He made love to her now. They kissed as the light of dawn poured over them, and gasped, and he held her tight as she moved above him, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed. He rolled her onto her back and lay atop her, and she felt so frail and thin, this woman who had fought in wars, survived the desert, and slain her enemies with steel—here in his bed, she felt like a doll, a flower he could trample. She buried her hands in his hair, moaning, her eyes closed, a fragile white thing, her hair still short, her every freckle as familiar to him as the stars of his fathers' constellation. Those stars seemed to burn around him, and all the lights of the heavens to flare, and he closed his eyes and tightened his fists and could barely bear this blend of joy and pain that still clawed inside him. His eyes stung.
He lay beside her, and she nestled against him. She kissed his cheek and played with his hair.
"You should have done that last night," she said. "You would have slept better."
He snorted a weak laugh. "Maybe I will sleep all day. You go lead them, Lyana."
Yet he rose from the bed. He dressed and donned his armor—old armor forged in dragonfire, dented and unpolished and feeling more heavy than ever. He clasped Ferus to his side, his old longsword his father had given him, and stared into a small mirror they had found and hung here. He barely recognized himself these days. It had been only two years since Queen Solina had led the phoenixes into Requiem, yet he seemed to have aged twenty. Where was the soft-cheeked sculptor he had been, a youth with sad eyes? He saw a hardened man in this mirror, his face gaunt and bearded, his eyes deep set.
Lyana walked up beside him, leaned her head against his shoulder, and whispered to him. She had donned her own armor—the silvery steel plates of a bellator, a knight of Requiem. Her sword Levitas hung at her side, slimmer and faster than Ferus, but just as strong and sharp.
"Let us face the day, Elethor," she said. "Let us see our people. Let us give them another whisper of hope."
They exited the cave into a forest red
and gold with autumn. Dried leaves carpeted the forest floor, and moss coated the trunks of birch, maple, and ash trees. Requiem lay but a league east from here; the forces of Solina dared not yet burn this land of Salvandos, still fearing the wrath of its leaders who dwelled far in the west, guardians of this forest.
Yet if her power grows, Elethor thought, she will burn this place too. Birds called overhead, flying south for winter, and Elethor watched them. They are heading to Tiranor. To Solina. Soon we will fly there too.
People moved about the camp, clad in furs and old cloaks, leaves in their hair and mud on their cheeks. Some wore armor; these ones guarded the palisade of wooden stakes that surrounded their camp. Others wore bandages, still wounded from the war. Some lay in carts, limbs missing, flesh scarred, eyes anguished or burned away. A few men stood around a mossy boulder, praying and chanting from old scrolls. A girl was weaving blades of grass into dolls, which she then handed out to younger children.
One thousand and fifty-seven.
They had set camp here nearly three moons ago—Elethor, Lyana, and fewer than a hundred others. Their scouts had since been combing these forests, seeking more survivors. At first they would find bloodied and bedraggled Vir Requis every day, and their camp had swelled rapidly. By now few other survivors remained; Elethor's scouts had found only two—young twins, a boy and girl—over the past ten days.
Is this all there is? he wondered, looking down upon the camp. Are these all who live from our nation? He grasped the hilt of his sword, and his throat constricted. Where are you, Mori?
Once more, Solina's words returned to him, echoing through his mind as they did every day and night.
She lives, Elethor. She lives.
He closed his eyes, and his fist trembled around Ferus's hilt.
"I will fly to your desert, Solina," he whispered. "I will rain my fire upon you. If you took my sister, I will free her, and you will burn forever in my flames."
A Night of Dragon Wings (Dragonlore, Book 3) Page 2