Requiem's Song (Book 1) (30 page)

Tanin was flying toward the
melee, but it was too late. Sena fell from the inferno, scales
cracked, and slammed into a house below. The roof collapsed under
him, and the dragon-prince vanished into a pile of rubble and dust.
Only his tail rose from the debris, flicking weakly.

Smoke rose from Issari's hand as
the amulet seared her. The pain drove up her arm and along her ribs,
and the tip of her braid crackled with fire. Clutching the dragon
tightly between her thighs, she raised her chin, and she held her
amulet high.

"Hear me, Angel!"

The demon looked toward her,
eyes white-hot, searing, blinding Issari. All the princess could see
was the white light, two unholy suns.

She shouted louder, "Angel,
hear me! I am Issari Seran, Princess of Eteer, a priestess of Taal,
heiress to the throne. My father flies across the sea. My brother is
fallen, maybe dead. I rule Eteer now. You will stand back! You will
let us pass!"

She gripped Tanin's horn, and
she rose to her feet upon the dragon's nape. She raised the amulet as
high as she could, and it blazed to life, humming in her hand. The
fire spun all around. Rings of flame burst out, thudding into her
dragon, and wind whipped Issari. Burn marks spread across her tunic,
and her skin reddened. Yet still she shouted.

"Stand back, Queen of the
Abyss! I am Issari Seran, and you are bound to my house. In the name
of Taal, god of purity, I banish you. Stand back or my light will
burn you!"

The Demon Queen screamed. An
inferno of fire and wind, greater than typhoons, burst out from her.
The shock waves slammed into Issari, knocking her down. She clung to
Tanin's horn, her legs swinging over open air. The dragon rolled in
the sky, wings beating, trying to steady himself. The world spun
around Issari—a flaming sky, collapsing buildings, and everywhere
that horrible light of the underworld, those two white eyes, those
great bat wings.

"You will be my whore!"
shrieked Angel, lava spraying from her mouth. "I will take you
into the Abyss, Princess of Eteer, and I will break you, and I will
feast upon your living flesh, and my demons will thrust into you, and
you will feed us. Your blood, your pain, you sex, your flesh; they
will be ours to feast upon, and you will scream forever in the
depths." Angel beat her veined wings, rising from the holocaust,
and came flying toward her. Her claws stretched out, and her teeth
gleamed white in her red, fiery smile. "You will scream for
mercy. You will scream for thousands of years. And I will answer you
with more pain—your soul, your sanity, your secrets—all will be
mine to shatter."

Overcome by the fiery winds,
Tanin howled and began to fly backward, fanning back the smoke.

"Fly to her, Tanin,"
Issari said softly, straddling his neck. She patted his cracked, hot
scales. "Fly to her and be brave."

"We must flee, princess!"
he said, panting. Blood filled his mouth.

Issari shook her head. "I
will not flee from her. Fly, my friend. For Eteer and for Requiem."

As Angel laughed, spitting out
flame, Tanin roared—a roar so great it tore across even that demonic
laughter. Cobblestones below shattered. Palm trees cracked and fell.
And Tanin, red dragon of Requiem, drove forward into the blaze.

Angel hovered before them, wings
churning the smoke.

Issari rose to her feet upon the
dragon's head, clinging to his horn, and leaped forward.

She sailed through the air, legs
kicking, and slammed into Angel.

It felt like falling into the
sun.

Issari screamed.

The heat and light engulfed her.
Wings wrapped around her, and claws slashed her, and those eyes
peered into her, those white forges tearing through her veins. She
closed her eyes, but still that light blazed.

She felt herself fading.

No.
No, Issari.
A voice spoke within her—perhaps the voice of her lost mother,
perhaps of her soul.
You
will not die here tonight. For Laira. For our home.

Issari screamed and opened her
eyes.

She dug her fingers into a crack
on Angel's body. Clinging on, she drove her amulet forward. The metal
slammed into Angel's face, shattering stone, and light flared out in
a dozen beams.

Angel screamed again, and this
time it was no scream of rage. This time she was hurt.

Stone cracked and melted. The
light of Taal flared, washing over the world, and silence fell.
Issari heard only the ringing in her ears.

She plummeted.

She smiled as she glided between
sky and earth.

Above her Angel writhed, clawing
at her face, and shards of stone fell from her. The demon let out a
shriek so mighty that buildings shook. In the distance, Aerhein Tower
cracked and fell with a shower of dust and bricks. Above, caught in
the winds, Tanin beat his wings, spinning.

Issari's back slammed down
against a palm tree.

She crashed through the fronds,
fell through hanging vines, and thumped down onto a patch of grass.

She lay in the rooftop gardens
of her palace, she realized. Plants burned around her. Smoke unfurled
and flames spread, drawing closer. When she looked aside, she saw
Maev lying beside her. The Vir Requis was in human form again, her
hair singed; she coughed and rose to her knees.

"I'm alive," Issari
whispered, lying in the grass, the ringing still filling her ears.
When she looked at her hand, she found the amulet fused with her
flesh, embedded into her palm like a jewel into a crown. "Taal
saved me."

Wings beat above. A red dragon
and a blue one—Tanin and Sena—landed in the gardens.

"We must leave," Tanin
said, panting. "Now. Angel retreated but she still lives. She
will summon a new horde of demons." He lowered his wing by
Issari like a ramp. "Climb onto my back."

Issari rose to her feet, shaky.
Past the flaming gardens, she caught glimpses of her city—pain and
terror still filled it. She could not abandon this place.

She shook her head. "I
stay. You are children of Requiem. Go north, find safety, and build
yourself a home. But I don't share your magic. My battle is here. My
home is in Eteer."

The blue dragon shifted back
into human form. Sena approached her, hair singed and face sooty. He
held her hands.

"Are you sure, sister?"
the prince whispered. Tears filled his eyes. "You can come with
us. Please come with us."

Tears streamed down Issari's
face. "I don't know where Father flies upon his demon; perhaps
he has found Requiem, and you will meet him in the north, and perhaps
he heads back home, and I will face him in the ruins of Eteer. But I
know this: Here is my battlefield, and here is the kingdom I must
fight for." She embraced her brother. "If you find Laira .
. . if you find our sister . . . tell her that I love her. Tell her
that I will fight for her."

Scales clanked as Maev shifted
and took flight. "Come on, let's fly out of this place!"
She growled. "Demons are gathering. Boys, shift and fly for
pity's sake! No time for goodbyes."

Sena gave Issari a last look—a
look that said everything, that spoke of his love for her, of their
loss, of their fear. He kissed her cheek, stepped back, and rose as a
dragon.

Coughing in the smoke, Issari
made her way to the roof's trapdoor, entered the palace, and walked
down corridors and staircases. She stepped onto her old balcony, the
same place where the demons had eaten the crone, the same place she
would always stand and gaze toward the sea and think of her missing
mother and sister. She stood gazing at that sea now, hand raised.

In the darkness, almost
invisible in the night, three dragons flew across the water.

"Goodbye, Tanin and Maev,"
Issari whispered. "Goodbye, my brother. I love you."

The light blazed out from her
hand, a beacon of farewell.

 
 
LAIRA

Warmth.

Safety.

Love.

For several days now, these
strangers—these foreign feelings, these new spirits—surrounded her.
And for several days now, Laira had been scared.

Life in the escarpment felt like
a dream, like a strand of gossamer trembling in the wind, ephemeral,
vanishing when the light caught it wrong. She spent nights in a cave
by a fire, not a muddy pen of dogs. She ate real food—stews of wild
game and mushrooms, bowls of berries, apples, wild grains—and not
once did she root in the mud for bones or peels. No one beat her
here. No one scolded her. Jeid and Eranor told her tales by the fire,
wrapped warm blankets around her at night, and tended to her wounds.
They treated her not as a creature, but as a friend.

And Laira had never felt more
afraid.

Love and warmth. These were new
feelings for her. She didn't think she was worthy of this love.
Whenever Jeid approached with a bowl of stew, she expected him to
toss it at her, not serve it to her. Whenever Eranor approached with
healing herbs, she flinched, expecting him to strike her, not heal
her.

"I'm not worthy of love,"
she would whisper every night, curled up in the cave, the fire
warming her. "I'm ugly. I'm deformed." She shivered. "Why
do they love me so?"

Every morning she expected it to
end—to wake up, to realize it had been a dream, a cruel joke, a
trap. She kept waiting for Zerra to step out from a cave, to reveal
that he'd been working with Jeid and Eranor all along, to shout,
"Maggot, how dare you flee me?"

One night as she lay shivering,
thinking these thoughts, she heard Eranor and Jeid whispering above
her. They thought she was asleep, but how could Laira sleep? How
could she dare sleep when so many nightmares filled her—visions of
her mother burning, of Shedah and her leechcraft, of Zerra and his
fists? And so she lay still, eyes closed, and listened.

"The poor child," said
Eranor, and she could imagine the old druid stroking his white beard.
"When will we see her smile?"

Jeid sighed. "My brother
shattered her jaw. Maybe she can no longer smile."

"She could smile with her
eyes, but still they are sad." Eranor too sighed. "I can
heal the wounds of the body. The wounds in her soul run deeper. Those
may never heal."

Jeid grunted. "To heal
wounds, first the poison must seep out. Healing hurts. Her soul is
healing now and it pains her. And I promise to the stars: I will
protect her. I will keep her safe until she is healed."

That night, for the first time
since arriving in the escarpment—perhaps for the first time in her
life—Laira slept the night through, no nightmares haunting her.

The next morning, Jeid and she
went into the forest to collect wild apples, berries, nuts, and
mushrooms. They walked atop the escarpment's ledge, the trees
rustling around them. It was late autumn, and many of the leaves had
fallen, but small apples still grew upon the trees, and mushrooms
still peeked from the carpet of red and orange leaves. A waterfall
cascaded, raising mist, and geese honked above.

Laira wore the new fur cloak
Jeid had given her, the best garment she had ever worn, and leather
shoes—the only shoes she had ever owned—warmed her feet. As she
walked, she gazed upon piles of fallen branches, mossy stones, and
leaves that lay within bubbling streams, imagining faces. She had
often played this game, seeking eyes, mouths, and noses in the
forest, imagining that someday one of these creatures—perhaps with
boulders for eyes, a log for a nose—would open its mouth and speak
to her, an ancient spirit of the woods.

For a long time, Jeid walked
silently. There was sadness in him too, Laira thought—something
deep, dull, older than her pain but no less potent. Whatever his pain
was, he never spoke of it. And Laira never spoke of hers. And so they
walked silently, and that silence comforted her.

Finally, upon a slope thick with
brush, he spoke. "Here, look. Wild apples."

Laira smiled to see the apple
tree. She began to collect what fruit had fallen. Jeid—burly and
tall, his arms almost as wide as Laira's entire body—proved
surprisingly agile at climbing the tree. He tossed the fruit down to
her, and she collected them in a pouch.

"I didn't know grizzly
bears could climb!" she said, and for the first time in many
years, she felt something strange, something that tugged at her
crooked mouth. For so many years, her slanted mouth had remained
closed, stiff, sad. Yet now warmth spread through her, and her lips
tingled, and Laira smiled.

Jeid smiled down from above—a
huge grin that showed his white teeth. "Grizzlies are excellent
climbers. We—"

Suddenly he wobbled. Laira
gasped. The branch he stood on creaked, and Jeid fell. He landed hard
on his feet, wobbled for a moment, then fell onto his backside. He
blinked up at Laira, seeming more confused than hurt.

"I guess not," he
said.

Laira sat down beside him, the
leaves crunching beneath her. She leaned against him. He was beefy
and huge; she was a wisp of a thing. She thought that if anyone
passed by, they would mistake them for a gruff old bear and a scrawny
little fox.

"I like it here." Her
voice was quiet, and she played with a fallen oak leaf. "I like
the rustle of the wind in the trees. I like the cold wind. I like . .
. I like who I am here."

He held her hand in his—a pale
lily in a paw—and something broke inside her. The pain flooded her,
gushing out like blood from beneath a scab peeled off too soon.

And she told him.

She needed to talk.

She needed to share this with
him or she thought it would never leave her.

She told him of fleeing Eteer
when she had been three, almost too young to remember, but old enough
for the fear and pain to linger. She told him of Zerra burning her
mother at the stake as she watched. She spoke of Shedah leeching her
for potions, of Zerra beating her, of years of hunger, cold, neglect,
and pain. Of the shattered bones, of the shivering nights in rain,
and of her hope—her hope to find others, to find the escarpment, to
find him. Her voice remained steady, and her eyes remained dry, and
she simply spoke—remembering, sharing, healing.