by Colt, K. J.
Past campfires, the totem pole, and a mammoth carcass buzzing with flies it rose—the pyre.
Upon the pile of wood and kindling she stood tied to the stake—Laira’s mother.
For five days in her tent, Laira had shed many tears, yet none would now flow. The crone who dragged her forward paused, and Laira stood in the dead grass, staring, feeling dead herself, feeling empty.
Mother wept.
Her face was so beaten Laira barely recognized her. It looked less like a face and more like a slab of bloodied meat. Tears poured from bruised, bloodshot eyes to flow down lacerated cheeks. When Mother spoke, her voice was slurred, thick with blood and shattered teeth.
“Don’t make her watch. Turn her aside. Please . . . Laira, my sweetness, please, close your eyes.”
Laira bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She wanted to run away, but how could she? She wanted to close her eyes, but Shedah had promised to rip off her eyelids. The crone gripped both her arms now, fingers digging, hard as bronze, and Laira wondered if those fingers could shatter her bones, rip off her limbs, kill her right here with the pain. Mother wept upon the pyre and Laira wanted to do something—to use her curse, to scream, even to weep, some act of defiance or emotion . . . but she only watched.
“Behold the reptile!”
The voice, high-pitched and raspy, tore through the camp like a blade through flesh. Goose bumps rose on Laira’s skin. Wincing, she turned to see him—the man who ruled the Goldtusk tribe, the man who would sentence Mother to death, the man who filled Laira’s nightmares.
“Zerra,” she whispered.
The chieftain limped toward them, tall and swaying like a wicker effigy in the wind. He wore patches of fur, leather boots, and necklaces of bone beads. His prized possession, a bronze apa sword, hung upon his belt. The blade was leaf-shaped, double-edged, and as long as a man’s forearm, sprouting from a semicircular crossguard. In some of the villages across the river, men now forged metal, plowed fields, and raised huts, but Zerra had always scorned them. His were the old ways, the ways of hunting and gathering, of tents and campfires, of blades taken from corpses rather than forged in smithies.
More than his towering height, his sword, or his mane of grizzled hair, it was Zerra’s face that frightened Laira. Half that face was gone, burned into something wet, raw, and dripping. Mother had given him that wound—or at least, the creature Mother had become, a monster of scales, fangs, and fire.
The disease, Laira thought and shivered. The curse that had us banished from Eteer, our old home across the sea. The curse that lets my family turn into reptiles. Into monsters. Into . . . dragons.
“Zerra, listen to me!” Mother cried from the pyre. “Banish us. Banish us to the escarpment. We will not hurt you. We—“
“You will burn and scream for me,” Zerra said, his left eye blazing from his melted flesh. “You are lower than one who lies with pigs. You will squeal.”
You screamed, Laira thought. You squealed.
She had seen it five days ago. She had dreamed it every night since. She knew those nightmares would fill her forever. The memory pounded through her, shaking her bones.
While the men had hunted upon their rocs, Mother had taken Laira into the woods to gather berries, nuts, and mushrooms. Mother’s amulet gleamed around her neck, a silver talisman bearing the sigil of Taal, a god of their old home across the sea, a god unknown to any others in this northern hinterland. Past a grove of birches they had found a pond, a place of water lilies, golden leaves, and mist. It was a secret place, a perfect place. A place for dark magic.
The curse always itched within Laira and her mother. The disease forever cried for release. They stepped into the pool, submerged themselves in the water . . . and shifted.
Hidden underwater, Laira opened her eyes, and between algae and the roots of lilies, she saw Mother change. White scales flowed across her body, the color of moonlight, and wings unfurled from her back. Her body grew, becoming almost as large as a roc, slick and graceful and thin. Laira changed too, letting the curse raise golden scales across her. Her wings stirred the water, and she blasted sparks from her mouth.
Their claws rested on the pool’s floor. Their tails braided together. Their heads—long, scaled, and horned—rose to the surface. Nostrils and eyes emerged into the air. Men called it a curse, but to Laira it felt so good. This felt more like her natural form than the scrawny, raven-haired girl she was at their camp. Scaled and winged, a golden dragon, Laira felt whole. She felt true. Looking around the forest, she tried to imagine flapping her wings and flying, seeing mountains, forests, and rivers from high above, so high nobody could hurt her.
“Why must we hide?” she asked, sticking her snout over the water. Lilies tangled around her teeth. “They say that other cursed ones live at the escarpment in the north. They say it’s safe. They say Zerra’s own twin brother hides there, cursed with the same disease.”
Mother blasted smoke from her nostrils. Her eyes narrowed. As a dragon, her voice sounded deeper, stronger, almost musical. “There are no others, Laira. That’s only a myth. The world is cold and large and empty. The lone wolf perishes. The pack survives. The tribe of Goldtusk is our home, and Zerra is a kind master.”
“A master who would slay us if he knew our secret!” Laira said. “I hate hiding. I hate this curse. Why did you have to give me this disease? You infected me.” Tears burned in her eyes. “If I must be a dragon, let me fly. Let me be free. I won’t cower in the water.”
Anger flowed through Laira, rattling her scales, and flames filled her maw. With a cry, she beat her wings. She rose from the pool, water and algae dripping off her scales, claws scratching at the air. Mother gasped and stared from below. Laira knew the rule—only become a dragon underwater, in darkness of night, or in deep caves, never in the open. They had been caught shifting in their last home, a place Laira could hardly remember, and they had barely escaped. But Laira didn’t care. Laira was done caring. She hated hiding and she would fly.
She beat her wings, rising higher, soaring between the trees until she crashed through the forest canopy with a shower of orange leaves. The cold wind streamed around her and Laira laughed. This was freedom. This was who she was. They called it a disease but she felt healthier than ever, not a monster but a noble spirit of fire.
“Laira!”
She looked down to see Mother rising from the forest—a slim white dragon with blue eyes.
“I can fly!” Laira shouted and laughed. “I can fly to the escarpment. I can find the others. I know they’re real. I—“
“Laira, come back here!” Mother shouted, flying toward her.
The white dragon reached out her claws, grabbed Laira’s leg, and tugged. Laira screamed and tried to free herself, and her wings beat, and—
Shrieks pierced the air.
Laira fell silent.
Mother spun around in the sky, stared east, and cried out in fear.
“Rocs,” Laira whispered.
The great birds, larger even than dragons, covered the sky, fetid things like oversized vultures. Their heads were bald, their necks gangly, their black feathers damp with the oil they secreted. Their talons reached out, and upon their backs rode the hunters of the Goldtusk tribe.
At their lead, riding upon a massive roc that dwarfed the others, rode Zerra.
“The curse of the reptile rises!” cried the chieftain, his hair billowing. He raised a flint-tipped spear in his hand; feathers and scrimshawed raven skulls adorned its shaft. “Behold the weredragon.”
Mother hovered and snarled, hiding Laira behind her. She faced the advancing horde. Dozens of rocs flew toward them.
“Fly down into the forest,” Mother said softly, still facing the foul birds; it took Laira a few heartbeats to realize Mother was talking to her. “They haven’t seen you yet. Land among the trees, become human again, and return to the camp.”
“We have to flee!” Laira said.
“They’re too fast,” Mother replie
d. “They will catch us if we flee. Into the forest, go! I’ll hold them off.”
The rocs shrieked, drawing nearer. Their stench filled the air, thick as fog, and their cries split the sky, slamming against Laira’s eardrums.
Laira shook, hesitating, wanting to fight too, wanting to drag Mother to safety, wanting to fly north and find the other dragons fabled to exist . . . but she simply obeyed.
She flew down past the leafy canopy. Before she hit the ground, she heard screams above. Fire blazed overhead and blood rained. Laira landed by the pool, shifted back into human form, and gazed up at the sky.
She trembled. She wanted to cry out but dared not. Past the branches, she caught only glimpses of the violence. She saw Mother blowing fire, a blaze greater than any pyre, tinged blue and white with horrible heat. She saw Zerra ignite, scream, and burn upon his roc. And then only smoke, talons cutting into scales, and pattering blood on fallen leaves.
A human again—ten years old, scrawny as a twig, and clad only in her buffalo pelt—Laira ran.
She ran through the forest, across the meadow, and into their camp. She ran until Shedah—wizened, cackling, covered in moles—grabbed her. She screamed in the crone’s grasp as the hunters returned with their catch. Mother was now in human form, beaten and bloodied, tied with ropes. She was trying to shift into a dragon again; scales appeared and disappeared upon her body, but whenever she began to grow, the ropes dug into her flesh, shoving her back into human form. Men tossed Mother onto the ground, kicking, striking with sticks, and Laira wanted to run to her, she wanted to shift into a dragon and save her, but she only raced into her tent, and she only trembled.
For five days she cowered as Shedah guarded the tent, sealing Laira in the shadows.
And now she stood here, staring, all her tears spent, watching her mother upon the pyre, watching Zerra lift a torch and bring it toward the pile of wood and kindling.
“Please,” Laira whispered, and finally her eyes dampened. “Please, Zerra, please don’t kill her. Please.”
The chieftain slowly turned toward her. He stared, the ruined half of his face dripping pus and blood. Slowly a smile spread across his face, displaying crooked teeth.
“One day, little worm . . .” he said, voice like wooden chips rubbing together. “One day I will find the curse in you too, and you will scream like this.”
With that, Zerra spun back toward the pyre and tossed his torch into the kindling.
Oil soaked the straw, twigs, and dried leaves. They burst into flame with the speed and ferocity of dragonfire.
Mother screamed.
The fire spread across her, blazing skyward, licking skin off muscle, flesh off bones. And still Mother screamed, writhing in her bonds, begging, wailing.
And Laira screamed too.
She tried to close her eyes, but Shedah grabbed her eyelids with rough fingers and held them open. She tried to break free, to run to her mother, to flee into the forest, but the crone held her fast.
“Mother!” she cried. “Mother, please!”
Please, she prayed silently. Please die. Please stop screaming.
Yet she would not. The screaming and writhing continued within the inferno, the fire eating Mother’s flesh as if slowly savoring a meal. The smell of cooking meat filled the camp, as savory as spiced game. The flames tore through the ropes, and Mother fell from the stake to land in the blazing kindling. She managed to roll off the pyre, to run several steps through the camp, a living torch. She soon collapsed, rolling and whimpering. Zerra stood above the charred mockery of life and laughed.
“Yes, reptile.” The chieftain smiled thinly and the firelight blazed against his own wound. “You burned me. Now you will forever burn in the depths of the Abyss.”
When finally Mother was silent and still, Shedah spat a green glob, huffed, and released Laira.
She stood for a moment, staring at the corpse of her mother. It still burned, crumbling away into charred ashes. Laira wanted to embrace the corpse. She wanted to save her, to beg the shaman to heal her. But she knew: Mother was dead.
Men tossed rugs over the corpse, stamped out the flame, and bound the remains with ropes. They hung the charred, blackened thing from the tribe totem, a sacrifice to Ka’altei. Mother swung in the wind, banging against the carved pole, shedding ash. She barely looked human, just burnt meat upon bones. The rocs beneath the totem rose, reached up their talons, and snapped their beaks, but they dared not yet eat. The great vultures looked back at Zerra, their master, begging.
“Eat, my friends.” Zerra nodded. “Eat, hunters of the sky. She is nice and crunchy.”
With shrieks and flying feathers, the birds leaped up, grabbed the hanging corpse, and tore it apart. The beasts tossed back their beaks, guzzling down legs, arms, the head, then fought one another for the torso and its dangling, smoking entrails.
Laira turned and fled.
She ran between the tents, tears in her eyes.
She wanted to keep running—to flee the camp, to head across the open fields, to enter the forest and never emerge. Other weredragons lived in the world; she knew that they must. But Mother’s words returned to her.
There are no others. The world is cold and large and empty. The lone wolf perishes. The pack survives.
She ran back into her tent, raced toward her pile of fur blankets, and grabbed her doll. She clutched the wooden girl to her chest, and her tears flowed.
“We must never shift again,” she whispered, rocking the toy. “I promise you, Mustardseed. I promise. We’ll never become dragons again.”
She shivered, the fire still burning in her eyes, the screams still echoing in her ears. She would remain. She would keep her disease secret. And she would grow strong.
“We’ll become hunters, Mustardseed.” She knuckled tears away from her eyes. “We’ll grow big and strong and become hunters like Zerra, and he’ll never be able to hurt us. Ever. I promise.”
Outside rose the laughter of men, and the smell of burnt meat wafted into the tent. Laira lay down, held her doll close, and shivered.
RAEM
PRINCE RAEM STOOD ABOVE THE prisoner, khopesh raised, prepared to swing down the sickle-shaped sword.
“Look at me,” Raem said softly. “Look me in the eyes.”
Bound and bruised, her neck upon the block, the prisoner shivered. When she raised her eyes, they shone with tears.
“Please,” the woman whispered. “Please, my lord, I beg you.”
“Do not look away from my eyes.” Raem’s voice was still soft.
He always insisted his victims looked him in the eyes as his blade descended. Many called him a noble ruler for it. They said that Prince Raem, Son of Nir-Ur, held life so sacred he used no executioner but only condemned those truly worthy of death—those he could look in the eyes as he swung the sword himself, their guilt clear beyond doubt.
Raem had always found those claims amusing. Truth was he simply enjoyed the work, and when they stared into his eyes during the act, it felt more intimate—the ultimate connection of souls. It was better than bedding a woman, better than creating life.
Taking life, he thought, is the most intimate connection you can make with another living soul.
“Please.” The woman trembled. “I will never shift again, I promise. I am cured. I can no longer become a dragon. I—“
Raem swung down his khopesh.
The curved, bronze blade drove through her neck with a single blow and thumped against the wooden block.
Raem nodded.
“Good!” He took a cloth from a nearby bench and wiped the blood off his blade. “Single blow again.”
Around him in the courtyard, the spectators—nobles, priests, and slaves—applauded politely. A wrinkly old scribe, clad in but a loincloth, scratched the departed’s name onto a clay tablet.
Raem was pleased. The last execution had not gone as well. The man’s neck had been too thick, and Raem had slammed his sword down five times before cleaving it; the man had
lived through the first three blows. Every moon now, Raem found more of the diseased creatures infesting the city—men and women with reptilian blood, able to become great, winged beasts. Every moon now, blood coated his khopesh.
“The reptiles infest our city!” he told the crowd of onlookers. They stood upon the cobblestones, shaded by fig and palm trees. “Taal, Father of All Gods, teaches that the human body is sacred and pure. Followers of Taal do not pierce or tattoo their skin. We do not go fat or frail. We preserve the body.” Raem sneered. “The curse of weredragons is the greatest abomination unto our lord. To shift into a dragon—grow scales, horns, and claws, deforming the human form—is heretical.”
The people nodded in approval, their necklaces of faience beads chinking. A merchant in purple robes, his beard curled into many ringlets, even raised his fist and cried out in his passion; the man had turned in his own wife, a filthy weredragon, only last year.
“A plague has descended upon our kingdom,” Raem said, standing above the decapitated body. “Hundreds in our city are sick with the dragon disease, able to morph at will. Hundreds more hide their curse. But I, Raem son of Nir-Ur, Heir to the Seran Dynasty, Prince of Eteer, will find them. And I will purify our kingdom.”
They cheered. They cried out Taal’s name. They raised bone, stone, and tin figurines of the god—a slender man with a lowered head and forward-facing palms. Staring at the crowd, Raem wondered how many more of his followers—from nobles to slaves—hid the diseased in their homes.
Raem clenched his fist to remember that night years ago, the night he had learned that his own wife and daughter were ill. He had caught them shifting into dragons deep in the city cisterns, hiding their shame in darkness.
I will find you someday, Anai, my dear wife, he thought, trembling with rage. I will bring you back to me, my daughter, my precious Laira. And you will suffer.
Raem slid his khopesh though his belt. He walked away from the decapitated corpse, leaving his servants to clean up the mess. His sandals whispered against the cobblestones, and he inhaled deeply, savoring the smell of blood mingling with the aroma of fig trees, palms, and grapevines. As he moved through the courtyard, men and women bowed before him: nobles in garments of silk, silver disks, and gemstones, their feet clad in sandals; priests in flowing black robes hemmed in gold, their beards long and curled; and eunuch slaves in loincloths, metal collars around their necks. Only his soldiers did not bow; they stood between the columns that surrounded the courtyard, holding round shields and curved blades, and bronze helmets hid their faces.