Requiem's Hope (Dawn of Dragons)

by Daniel Arenson

  She was Issari Seran, daughter of the Demon King. She was a Priestess of Taal, the silver amulet of her god embedded into her palm. She was a daughter of Requiem, blessed with the starlit magic of dragons. She was a leader of outcasts. She was a bringer of hope. She was the shepherdess of a lost flock.

  "Bless you, Priestess," said all those who approached her, seeking a blessing, seeking to touch her dusty garment. "Blessed be Issari, True Queen of Eteer, True Daughter of Taal."

  She nodded to all those who approached, whispered prayers, and touched them with her silver palm.

  "The Light of Taal!" one old man whispered, tears in his eyes.

  "Blessed be Queen Issari!" said a young mother, holding her babe. "True Lady of Eteer."

  One boy, a scrawny thing clad in rags, approached her on bare feet. He touched her gown—a sign of respect in Eteer—and whispered in awe, "Issari, Daughter of Requiem." The boy's eyes shone. "The White Dragon."

  Issari had spent the past few days staring ahead as she walked, rarely removing her eyes from the hazy horizon that shimmered in the heat waves. Now her heart skipped a beat, and she took a closer look at the boy. All others had spoken of Eteer and its gods; this child was the first to mention Requiem, her second home, her land across the sea. The boy was too thin; his ribs showed through tatters in his tunic. His skin was tanned bronze, and dust filled his black hair. He looked like a typical street urchin, one of the many who had once lived in Eteer, aside from his curious left arm. That arm was no larger than a babe's, ending with a hand the size of a walnut.

  "You know of Requiem?" she asked him.

  The child grinned. Despite being half-naked and half-starved, his teeth were remarkably white and straight. "I was a beggar on the canal. I know more than the wisest scholar." He raised his chin proudly. "I watched as you smuggled Vir Requis onto ships, letting them sail north to safety. I watched as you wandered through the city, fighting the demons with your silver hand, hiding weredragons in cellars and attics. They've all left north or died. I was the last." He gave a little bow. "I am Fin, the last Vir Requis of Eteer."

  The boy hopped into the air, shifted into an azure dragon, and flew a circle above. The people below pointed and gasped. The boy landed by Issari and resumed human form, eyes bright.

  Issari stared at him in disbelief. "If you knew I was saving Vir Requis, if you knew of Requiem, why did you stay in Eteer? Why didn't you approach me for aid?"

  He shrugged. "What would I have in the north? Nothing. Would Requiem welcome me, a beggar and thief? Perhaps, though I would only be an orphan there too. In Eteer I knew how to survive, how to hide, how to steal. At least, I did until the demon spawn destroyed our city." He bowed his head. "My life as an urchin is over. Now my life is to follow you, Issari Seran." Suddenly tears filled his eyes. "You are a great leader. You are a great light. We will follow you to redemption. To a new home."

  Issari sighed and turned to look at the people walking behind her—haggard, wounded, close to death. She looked at the landscape around her, a lifeless desert, the ground cracked and rocky, the horizons wavering with heat, the sun heartless and beating down on them. Redemption? A new home? What hope could she give these people?

  A distant speck appeared in the sky, soon growing to reveal a red dragon, smoke from his nostrils leaving two trails. The dragon circled once above the Eteerian exodus, then landed beside Issari, claws tearing into the cracked earth. Tanin released his magic, returning to his human form, and walked closer to Issari. The bright-eyed young man she had met last winter was gone. Instead she saw a haggard traveler, dust coating his dark hair and weary face. His cloak billowed in the sandy wind, tattered and charred. He had taken a khopesh, breastplate, and shield from a fallen soldier, replacing his old dagger. If not for the stubble on his face and tall frame—Eteerian soldiers shaved their faces and rarely grew so tall—Issari would have thought him a soldier of her fallen kingdom.

  "I flew for many marks," Tanin said. "No water. No food, not even birds to hunt. Nothing but dry, cracked earth and stones, and . . . in the south, as you said, a great mountain range, and within it a single pass—a city like a gateway." His face darkened. "Goshar."

  Issari nodded. "If any hope remains for us, it lies beyond Goshar's walls. That is where we head."

  Tanin gripped the hilt of his sword. "Issari, I urge you to seek another path. Just looking at Goshar chilled me. Cages hung from its walls, dozens of them, men starving inside. Many of the prisoners were already dead, crows feasting upon them. I flew high above the walls, too high for the Gosharian archers to hit me. And what I saw . . ." He shuddered. "Many slaves, Issari. Slaves in great pits, whipped, dying, straining naked in the sun to build towers and great statues larger than ten dragons." He shook his head. "The whole city stank of blood; I could smell it even flying high above. Goshar would be our death."

  She gestured around her at the desert. "This desert would be our death. Goshar guards the path through the mountains to the fertile lands beyond. Would you have us die of thirst here, only days away from the desert's end?"

  For the first time since she had known him, Tanin glared at her, eyes full of anger. "Would you have us enslaved, broken, chained?" He grumbled. "That awaits us in Goshar, judging by the cages upon its walls. We did not flee Eteer to suffer under another tyrant's heel. We—"

  She placed a hand on his cheek. "Tanin." Her voice was soft, and she leaned forward and kissed him. "I would have us survive. I would do anything I could to stop more of my people from dying. Goshar is dangerous, and my father fought wars against its cruel king. But what choice have we? Return to Eteer? Its nephilim would slay us. Wander farther in the wilderness? We would not last long enough to seek fertile lands; the mountains stretch for hundreds of marks. Sail across the sea? We have no ships. We must choose between starvation in the sun or the hope of a vipers' nest. I choose the vipers."

  She hugged herself as she walked through the dust. Twelve city-states spread across Terra, the lands south of the sea. Eteer was the northernmost, the realm of seafarers and traders, once wealthy and bright, its arm stretching far across the sea. South of Eteer lay its old enemies. Their lands were dry, their sun blazing, their people cruel, and none among them inspired more terror than Goshar. While Eteer derived its might from the sea, Goshar had become wealthy by guarding the single pass through the mountains, a gateway from the desert to fertile lands. Closest to Eteer among the thirteen, Goshar was also Eteer's greatest enemy; her father had fought the city in several battles, and many of Eteer's sons lay fallen around its walls. Yet without supplies, wandering alone in the desert, it would be death or mercy from old enemies.

  They kept walking in silence. Behind Issari, the exiles of Eteer trudged on, the strong helping the weak. Men and women held their children, their elderly parents, their weary friends in their arms. Dust coated all their faces, and their eyes were large and haunted. Several women among them had survived birthing nephilim; they moaned, bleeding, dying, held in their husbands' arms. Night fell and the temperature plunged; the day had been sweltering but in the darkness they shivered, the air colder than any winter in Eteer. The stars burned above, cruel and small and taunting them, piercing their eyes, and even the sight of the Draco constellation could not soothe Issari as she shivered; it seemed too far, unreachable to her, unable to aid her, only able to stare down upon her pain.

  She tried to sleep in Tanin's arms that night, but even his body would not warm her, and the sound of his breath would not comfort her. Finally dawn rose, stretching orange and yellow fingers across the sky; that sky seemed vast here, ten times the size it had seemed from her old city. When the light fell upon the camp, it revealed a dozen dead—elders and wounded Eteerians too weary to cling on. They buried them beneath stones, and when the survivors walked again into the south, vultures circled above.

  It was the next day, leaving ten more graves behind them, that the Eteerian exodus saw the walls of Goshar ahead.

  Issari took a shaky br
eath, trying to swallow down the horror.

  From this distance, she could see little details. The mountains soared like a great wall of stone, covering the horizon, the border of the desert. The range dipped in only one place, a crack in the wall. Here, within this mountain pass, rose the city of Goshar. Its walls were the same tan color as the mountains; beyond them, Issari could just make out the slivers of towers. The people of Eteer pointed, whispering in fear, praying to their gods. As they walked nearer across the rocky earth, more details emerged. Goshar's walls seemed small next to the mountains, but they must have stood twice the height of Eteer's walls; the soldiers upon their battlements seemed small as insects upon the rim of a well. Turrets rose at regular intervals, bearing the banners of Goshar, displaying a nude woman with a snake's head. A gatehouse rose ahead, large as a palace, many archers atop its towers, and reliefs of snakes coiled across its bronze doors. After walking another mark, Issari winced to see the cages Tanin had spoken of. They hung off the walls, dozens of them, their prisoners languishing or already dead within; crows hopped around the bars.

  Goshar, Issari thought with a shiver. City of Bones.

  When she looked down at her feet, she saw the bones there. They spread in a field before her, picked dry by sand and beak. Thousands of skeletons, broken apart, littered the desert outside the walls of Goshar. Here were the bones of her own people, of Eteerian soldiers who had fought this city, who had perished in the heat far from home. Her father had fought two campaigns against Goshar, returning home with tales of triumph, of many enemies slain and towers felled, of the pride of Goshar crushed. Here lay those who had paid for his wars, and still the walls of that old enemy stood; despite Raem's boasts he had never breached these walls, only left fields of death before them. The skulls of her people stared at Issari as she walked by, entreating her, begging her to take them home.

  My father could never enter these walls, she thought. But I must. Not with swords and spears but with my words. If I fail, the thousands behind me will join the dead, just more bones for the sun to bake and the crows to pick clean.

  She looked behind her at her followers, once the proud people of Eteer, now ragged refugees covered in dust and dried blood. She returned her eyes to the gates of Goshar. She took a few steps closer, separating herself from the crowd, and raised her palm. The amulet upon it shone.

  "Hear me, Goshar!" she cried out. "I am Issari Seran, rightful Queen of Eteer! I come to speak with your king."

  For a long time nothing happened. The guards stared down from above, arrows nocked in their bows, silent and faceless, their helms blank masks. Issari wondered how many of those guards had lost brothers to her father's armies.

  If they fire upon us now, and if they slay us, they would only save us from a slower death.

  "Open your gates, Goshar!" Issari cried. "I do not come here as a soldier. I am not my father, for he has fallen from Taal's light and has relinquished his right to rule. I am a new queen. I come to speak of peace. Open your gates, City of Stone! I shall enter and speak to your lord, the Abina Sin-Naharosh."

  For long moments, silence.

  They won't let us in.

  Issari expected to feel fear, despair, anguish. Instead she felt rage. Without pausing to think, she shifted into a dragon and soared. Her voice pealed across the land, the howl of a cornered beast.

  "Hear me, Goshar!" Her wings beat back the cloaks of the guards upon the city walls. As she soared higher, she saw the city beyond, a land of many tan buildings, towers, and coiling ziggurats. "I am Issari, the Dragon Queen of Eteer, the Daughter of Taal, the Light of Requiem." She blew a pillar of fire skyward. "I can burn your city to the ground and lay waste to your people. My claws can cut through metal, and my fire can melt stone. Resist me and not even your bones will lie here in memory; all of Goshar will become naught but dust. If you do not open your gates and let me enter as a queen, I will enter your city as a dragon raining death. Open your gates to my people, Goshar! Or you will not feel my wrath, for you will die too quickly to feel anything."

  She landed back outside the gates, panting, and shifted back into human form.

  Tanin raised an eyebrow and spoke from the corner of his mouth. "So much for diplomacy."

  Issari raised her chin. "That is the diplomacy of the desert."

  For a long time, nothing happened. Then, with a creak and shower of dust, the gates of Goshar began to slide open. Issari gave Tanin the slightest of smiles, then turned to walk into the city. Before she could enter the gates, a dozen guards stepped forward, blocking her way. They wore copper scale armor, and their swords were broad and straight. Horned helms topped their heads, and the sigil of Goshar—a woman with a snake head—was engraved onto their round shields. Their captain approached her, a tall man with a golden snake's head upon his helm. A cloak of many beads hung over his shoulders, and his curly black beard hung down to his belt. He raised his palm.

  "Only Issari Seran, Daughter of the Demon Raem, shall enter. Your people will not set foot in the holy ground of Goshar."

  She glared at the man. "My people will die out here!"

  "That is no concern of Goshar," said the captain. "Many have died outside our walls. Let their bones join the others."

  She sneered. "Your bones will be those to litter the desert! Share your supplies with my people or I will burn your city with dragonfire."

  The captain stared back steadily, but she saw his fist tighten around the hilt of his sword, saw the fear in him. "You may speak of these matters to the Light of Goshar, our mighty abina, the Lord of the Desert, Sin-Naharosh, blessed be his name. You may follow, you alone, while your people wait outside our walls. If our blessed abina chooses to grant them his mercy, they will be given sustenance."

  She gestured at Tanin. "This man will join me. He is my half-brother and will not leave my side." She knew that if she called Tanin her bodyguard, he would be slain as an enemy. If she called him her husband, he would be slaughtered too, freeing her for a possible marriage between the kingdoms. A bastard brother, not noble but still of her blood, would be allowed to accompany her and live.

  She turned back toward her people and raised her palm, letting them see the light of her amulet. "Children of Eteer! Wait for me in the desert and do not despair. I will return to you with water for your thirst, with milk for your children, with food for hungry bellies. You have suffered greatly under Raem the Demon King, and you have traveled far in the heat and and cold, but I promise you: I will bring you deliverance. Your queen does not forget your pain. Taal will bless you, my children."

  They looked upon her, eyes huge and weary in their gaunt faces. One man cried out, "Blessed be Issari, True Queen of Eteer!"

  The others answered his call. "Blessed be Issari, the Priestess in White!"

  Her eyes damp, she turned and entered the city of her people's oldest enemies.

  RAEM

  "Hello again, Laira!" he shouted and laughed. "Hello, daughter!"

  She flew toward him, a golden dragon now, but he had seen her human form, and he had laughed at her wretchedness. Issari, his youngest, was a beautiful woman, her hair long and rich, her face fair enough to inspire poems and songs. Her sister, meanwhile, bore the marks of her shame upon her: a crooked jaw probably broken long ago, a frail frame denoting years of hunger, and short ragged hair. She had fled him years ago, and she had suffered for it, and that pleased Raem.

  "And you will suffer much more, Laira," he whispered as he flew toward her. "You will grow to miss your exile. Stitchmark will make you more wretched by far."

  He grinned to remember Stitchmark, the demon of needles and scalpels and spools, stitching a new face onto Ciana. The young woman was fighting nearby upon her own demon, her new face flushed with her lust for battle. But Laira—she would not become beautiful like Ciana. She would turn into a creature like the bat he rode. Perhaps he would ride Laira too, fly upon her to hunt dragons and ruin this world she fought for.

  "Warriors of darkness!"
he shouted. "Gather around me. To the golden dragon! Take her alive!"

  His soldiers mustered at his sides, a horde of demons of all shapes and sizes, leering, drooling, staring at the golden dragon. They flew through the darkness, passing through smoke and flame.

  Laira flew toward him, howling, her fire blowing. Raem raised his shield, and her flames crashed around it like waves around a tor. Golden dragon and demonic bat slammed together.

  Suddenly Laira did not seem a weak, hunted creature but an enraged beast. The dragon's mouth snapped open and shut again and again, ripping at Raem's bat, tearing into the animal's skin. Laira's claws lashed, and more flames blasted from her. Raem's mount screeched, skin lacerated and charred. Raem rose in his saddle, grabbed a spear that hung at his side, and tossed the weapon. The bronze head drove into Laira's back and wobbled like a fork thrust into meat.

  Laira roared and Raem grinned.

  "Look around you, Laira!" he said. "Look at the battle. You've already lost."

  As the dragon howled in pain, Raem gestured around him. The rocs were falling fast; barely any still flew. The pteros, across the fields, were not faring much better. Every moment, demons swarmed upon another one of the beasts, ripping into their leathery flesh. Tribesmen fell from the sky, blood spraying in a mist. The dragons of Requiem fought clustered together, blowing fire in a ring, but even they could not hold back the demon horde for long; only twenty of the reptiles flew here, powerless to stop the hundreds of demons around them.