"It's over," Laira whispered again, holding Issari close as the dragon glided beneath her.
She did not just mean the battle in the Abyss. She did not just mean the war against the demons and their hosts. She did not just mean Requiem's struggle to rise from scattered refugees into a kingdom. The great pain of their life had ended. Laira's longer struggle—from exile, to slavery in the Goldtusk tribe, to war and fear, to losing her magic in the shattered hall of Requiem—was over. Issari's own war—against a cruel father, against the nephilim in the south, against the deeper pain in her eyes of which her lips would not speak—too had ended.
"Our family is healed," she whispered. "Do you hear me, Issari?"
Her younger sister lay upon Jeid's coppery scales, smiling softly, held in Laira's embrace. Blood and ash stained Issari's robes, and dragonfire had burned the hems and sleeves. If the fire had burned Issari's skin too, the stars had healed it. Indeed Issari's skin seemed to glow with inner light, as if the strands of starlight still filled her. Threads of light glowed around Issari's fingernails, between the lines of her palms, through the slits of her closed eyelids, and between her lips, as if the starlight filled her to the brim, aching to spill out.
"Laira," she whispered softly, and luminous wisps fled her lips like frost on a cold day. "I'm so glad I met you again. I love you, Laira. I always have." She opened her eyes—they shone like two stars—and caressed Laira's cheek. "My sister. I will always look after you. Always."
Laira frowned and squeezed Issari's hand. "I'll look after you. I'm your older sister. We're going to Requiem now, and we'll live together again. A new family. Tanin can live with us too if he likes." Her eyes dampened. "We'll build a little hut, and we'll spend our lives among the birches, in the shadow of Requiem's columns." Tears rolled down her cheeks to splash against Issari. "We'll finally have the life we always should have lived—together."
Though even as she spoke those words, Laira knew they were a lie.
Life is not like that, she thought. Tragedies and hardships fill life, and one can always fight against them, always hope to defeat them, but victory leaves one changed. Triumph, after so much pain and heartache, leaves one broken, scarred, sometimes too hurt to ever feel peace. Perhaps peace earned with blood and tears is forever stained.
Thus were they hurt. Laira had saved Requiem, but not without sacrificing her magic; she could live in the hall among the columns, but she could nevermore fly above them as a dragon. Sena had overcome an army of demons, only to find that the true demons lurked within him, even in the peace of Requiem's forest, and those demons of the soul had overcome him. Issari had defeated their father, but she too was changed, soaked with starlight, burning up in Laira's arms. Three children of starlight and of evil. Three children too hurt, too haunted, too broken. They had found victory but Laira knew that they would never find peace.
War leaves us all dead, some dead underground and others dead inside. Some remain upon the killing fields. Others forever carry those ashes inside them.
Laira smelled fresh air above. The tunnel ended, leading up into the ruins of Eteer. The dragons of Requiem emerged into the night. Stars covered the firmaments. The Draco constellation shone over the sea, but its light seemed faded despite the clear night. The dragons flew across the toppled city and landed on the beach, claws sinking into the wet sand. The waves whispered ahead, their crests limned with moonlight. Of the thousand dragons who had entered the Abyss, perhaps only five hundred remained; the rest had fallen to the horrors of the underworld.
Laira climbed off Jeid's back and laid Issari down upon the sand. The young woman smiled up at her, eyelids fluttering, and ten beams of light flowed out from her fingertips and toes.
A red dragon landed beside them and released his magic. Tanin ran up to Issari and clutched her hand, the one which contained the amulet. Laira held her other hand, the one embedded with a star.
"Issari," Tanin whispered. "Can you hear me? You have to let it go. Let out the starlight." He looked up at Laira and barely forced the words past his lips. "She's burning up."
The others gathered around: Jeid, his fur cloak gone to the fire, his bare chest covered with welts and cuts; Maev, blood staining the dragon tattoos along her arms, her eyes hard but her trembling lips revealing her fear; Dorvin, his stubbly hair caked with ash and blood, his eyes wide with horror. All stared down at Issari.
"Is she dying?" Dorvin whispered. "She's lit up like a bloody lantern."
The strands of light began to flee Issari, flowing out from her body and coiling around her, wrapping her in a cocoon.
"The light of Draco shines within me," Issari whispered, and her voice thrummed, high, harp-like. "I've taken the light into me, a conduit for the stars, and now those stars call me home." Tears like diamonds fell from her eyes. "I will find Requiem's sky. Do you see it, Laira? Do you see?"
"What?" Laira whispered, holding her sister's hand. "What should I see?"
Issari smiled tremulously. "The palace of Requiem. The halls of our kingdom. All silvery, rising from the forest, hundreds of columns and Vir Requis in white robes, playing harps, and leaves upon the tiles. I see them above. The celestial halls." She squeezed Laira’s hand. "You will build them, Laira Aeternum, Mother of Requiem. Your descendants will grow into a great nation that will rise in their light." She looked at Tanin. "And you will forever fly with her, Tanin, Prince of Requiem, the light of my heart, the love of my soul. You will build these halls together, and I'll watch over you. Always. Always."
Tears dampened Tanin's cheeks. He pulled Issari into his arms and kissed her lips. "Don't speak like that. As if you won't be there with us." His chest shook. "Don't you leave us, Issari Seran. Don't you dare."
She cupped his cheek in her hand and kissed his forehead. "Never, Tanin. Never. I love you." She turned toward Laira. "I love you, sister." She turned to look at the others, and her smile became warm, deep, a smile of pure joy. "I love you all, children of Requiem."
"Issari, no!" Tanin cried as the starlight intensified, spinning around her.
He cried out as Issari began to rise, and he tried to hold her back, but she broke apart in his arms into a thousand strands of light that rose higher, coiling and singing, a great white pillar that spun, rising higher, singing with the song of harps.
The Vir Requis stood in the sand, watching as the astral light ascended, taking the form of a white dragon in the sky, a spirit of Requiem. The dragon let out her cry, a song of dragons, a prayer of Requiem, an angelic choir. The spirit rose higher, growing smaller, flying toward the Draco constellation. There in the sky, the light coalesced into a single point, a silver star, and settled into the constellation, forming the eye of the celestial dragon.
"She became a star in the Draco constellation," Dorvin whispered. "Bloody barnacles." He whistled appreciatively. "Never knew the girl had it in her."
Laira stared up at the constellation, and she laughed through her tears. Jeid approached her and placed his arm around her.
"A new star shines in the sky," said the King of Requiem. "The eye of the Draco constellation will always watch over us, always guide us, always remind us of our war, of our victory, and of those we lost."
Tanin walked up to them, his eyes damp, and hugged them with a crushing urgency. Dorvin and Maev looked at one another, then held hands, approached the others, and joined the embrace. All across the beach, the dragons of Requiem whispered, prayed, sang, and pointed at the new star.
We begin an era of peace, Laira thought, holding her family close. The pain and joy mingled inside her, and she knew that both emotions would never leave her. She knew that this loss would forever be an emptiness within her, greater even than her missing magic. I found a home. But I lost you, Mother. I lost you, Sena. I lost you, Issari. How can I, the last of my family, still feel joy?
Jeid was looking at her, and she met his gaze. She saw the compassion there, the pain he too felt, and he held her tightly. Laira laid her head against her husband'
s chest, and the song of the sea and the prayers of Requiem flowed around her.
JEID
He had flown south with fewer than fifty dragons, the last survivors of the northern wars. He flew back with five hundred. They crossed the sea in three days and nights, sometimes flying as dragons, sometimes resting as humans on the backs of their comrades. On a rainy evening they reached the coast, then flew over the forests and plains, heading home. Heading to Requiem.
On a cold dawn, they finally saw them in the distance: the columns of Requiem rising from charred trees, calling them home.
Only King's Column still shone, unmarred and pure. Several other columns had fallen and cracked. Some still rose, but their marble was chipped, their capitals shattered. But unlike the ruins of Eteer, a portal to darkness, here was a glimmer of hope, Jeid thought. A place not of death but of dreams, of seeds that could still sprout even through the ashes.
The dragons flew toward Requiem. They spoke different tongues. They came from distant lands: from Bar Luan in the west, from the city-states of the south, from wandering tribes in the north. Some were tall and fair and blond, others smaller and darker, some old, some only children. They were hunters, scribes, masons, farmers, mothers, fathers, orphans. But flying as dragons on the wind, they were all the same. Their scales all shone in the dawn, and their wings all beat together. Here they were all Vir Requis.
They landed among the columns, and at once their work began. They pulled aside fallen stones. They cleared out gardens and collected seeds. They flew to the mountains to carve out new marble. They cooked, they sang, they wove fabric, they prayed. They built a home.
As Jeid bustled from garden to hut, from quarry to campfire, an absence gnawed on him.
"Have you seen Tanin?" he asked, approaching a campfire.
Turning a spit of venison, Maev shook her head. "Not since we arrived. I thought he was at the quarry. I— Dorvin!" Maev leaped to her feet. "Stars dammit, you're burning it."
The dark-haired young man was kneeling by another campfire, holding a spit. The chunk of meat upon it was smoking. "It's not my fault! Dammit, I'm a hunter, not a cook. Back in my tribe, only women did the cooking."
Maev smacked the back of his head. "Well, you're not back with your tribe. You're in Requiem now. Move over." She shoved him. "Damn good meal and you ruined it."
Jeid left the two, seeking his son, but could not find Tanin at the quarry in the mountains, nor the gardens, nor the work sites where men and women were building houses of stone. Finally it was deep in the forest, as the sun set, that Jeid found his son.
Tanin sat on a hill, staring up at the sky as the stars emerged. If the young man heard Jeid approach, he gave no note of it. Tanin simply stared up at the stars, silent, leaning back. Jeid approached his son, sat down beside him with creaking joints, and stared up at the sky with him. For a long time the two men said nothing.
Finally it was Tanin who broke the silence. "I know I'll see her again someday, but the wait seems so long. The years ahead seem so empty without her."
Jeid thought back to his own years of grief. For over a decade after his wife had died, Jeid had hidden in the escarpment, wasting away, imprisoned not only within walls of stone but by his grief. That time now seemed a haze to him. An entire decade—just a blur, just missing time, for he had barely been a man in those years, only a shell. He looked at Tanin, and he refused to let the same happen to his son.
He spoke slowly. "The pain never really leaves you. Loss is an eternal emptiness inside us, and time does not heal all wounds. But that doesn't mean we should let the grief claim us. That doesn't mean we cannot go on. And you will go on, Tanin. You will build. You will plant gardens and raise walls of stone. You will help build our kingdom, and you will build a new life for yourself. With me. With Laira. With Maev and Dorvin. With all those who love you."
Tanin nodded. "But it hurts. And I miss her."
"It always will hurt. And you always will miss Issari. Pain is like that. Sometimes comfort, time, even love cannot banish it. Sometimes pain is like a scar, forever with you. But that doesn't mean you can't feel joy too. Old pain doesn't chill the warmth of new happiness. Old shadows cannot extinguish new light. Saplings still rise from burnt forests; thus can new happiness rise in a broken soul. We'll find new happiness, all of us. Together."
They sat together in silence then for a long time, watching the stars, and the Draco constellation seemed to gaze back down at them, its eye shining.
LAIRA
Spring bloomed in Requiem—a spring for a charred forest, for a united people, for shards of scattered life.
Many of the birches were still black with soot, but some still lived; leaves sprouted from their tips and birds fluttered between their branches. Saplings grew between them from ash. And beyond them, past where the battles had raged, older birches shrugged off the cloak of winter and gave forth new leaves, fresh and sweetly scented. The song of birds rose across the land, and bluebells bloomed upon the forest floor, a lavender carpet that hid the soil.
The palace of Requiem too found new life in the spring. The dragons of Requiem toiled, clearing the rubble of those columns that had fallen in the war. They raised new columns, and they mended the broken tiles, and a dozen columns soon rose in two proud palisades. Several masons from Eteer now lived here as Vir Requis, men and women with the wisdom to raise great halls. Laira spent much time among them, and she found herself adept at building, gradually mastering the art of balancing stones, of understanding their weight and pressures, of understanding the secrets of raising great halls like those in Eteer. Into clay tablets she etched the plans for a great palace, a roof resting upon its columns and halls leading to many chambers.
Across the rest of the forest, other buildings were sprouting—a foundation here, a wall there, homes of stone. The Vir Requis would no longer live in caves, in huts, in tents, but in permanent dwellings like those in the south. In Requiem they would build their own kingdom, a kingdom to last for eternity.
"It will take many years to complete," Laira said, pointing at her clay tablets. She tapped her engraving stick against one drawing; it showed many halls and homes rising from the forest. "But once this city is complete—when we are old and gray—it will be a wonder to the world."
Dorvin chewed his lip. "Which one's my house?"
Laira raised her stick to point at the true columns that rose ahead, the skeleton of their palace. "In there. In the palace. With us." She smiled. "You're to marry Maev, I presume, the princess of Requiem. You're going to be a prince."
He thrust out his bottom lip and nodded appreciatively. "A prince. I could tolerate that." He glanced over his shoulder. "I only need to get the old mammoth arse to agree to marry me now."
Maev came walking toward them, clad in furs and a bronze breastplate. "We better get married. I'm not raising our child without a husband."
Dorvin tilted his head. "Our . . . what now?"
The golden-haired warrior nodded. "You didn't think you could poke into me so often and not put a little baby inside me, did you?"
Dorvin looked at Laira, then back at Maev. His eyes widened, and he began to hop around. "Bloody dragon shite! I mean— I can't curse anymore, can I? A baby. A little Dorvin." He shifted into a dragon, rose into the sky, and roared.
Laira stared up, smiling softly, and placed her hand upon her own belly.
Spring brought new life to Requiem, and when those leaves finally turned orange and gold and glided upon the marble tiles, more light lit the halls of Requiem. Maev walked across the tiles of the palace, holding her son, and came to present him to the king.
"I name him Eranor," Maev said, and for the first time in many years, there was softness to her eyes and voice, a deep love and compassion she let emerge through the brick walls that had always guarded her soul. "Eranor Eleison, a noble prince of Requiem."
The baby slept in her arms, his hair dark like his father's. Dorvin gazed at his son with pride.
"A f
uture warrior," he said.
Maev shook her head. "May he never know war. May Eranor become a man of peace and wisdom, and may he never swing a sword, and may he never blow fire in rage or fear." She kissed her son. "May he know nothing but the song of wind in birches and the light of our halls."
The carpet of dry leaves was thicker, and the branches of trees almost bare, when Laira too entered the palace, holding her own babe. The little girl gurgled, her hair black like her mother’s, but her eyes were large and brown like her father's.
Laira placed the newborn in Jeid's arms. "Your daughter. Issari Aeternum, Princess of Requiem. May she forever be blessed." Laira raised her eyes and gazed up at the stars that emerged in the sunset. "May those we lost forever protect her. May they look down upon us now from our celestial halls, and may they feel blessed."
Jeid rose from his throne and held his newborn daughter to his chest. The King of Requiem beamed with pride, and a smile rose on his lips, but sadness filled his eyes too. Laira stepped closer and placed her hand upon his chest.
"I see grief in you," she whispered.
King Aeternum nodded. "As new life rises, I think about those we lost. As the laughter of babes rings through our halls, I remember my tears for those who fell. But I know they're up there. That they watch over us." Holding his daughter with one arm, he wrapped his other arm around Laira. "We lost families, but we found new life, and we build new homes. Together, Laira. Always."
That evening, all the people of Requiem stepped into the hall of their king. They wore white tunics, and many held scarves of silver and green, the new colors of their kingdom. Above the hall fluttered a great standard of cloth, green like spring leaves, and silver stars were sewn in the shape of the Draco constellation. The largest among them was the dragon's eye, which they called Issari's Star. The true constellation shone above, its light falling upon King's Column and the children of Requiem.
A girl named Tilai played a harp, and men and women lit many clay lanterns. With light and song, Jeid and Laira, King and queen of Requiem, presented their daughter to their people.
Requiem's Prayer (Book 3) Page 22