A Night of Dragon Wings

A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson

ZAR

The ropes chafed his wrists, and the blindfold squeezed his head like a vise, but Zar kept walking. He must have been walking for hours. A spearhead goaded his back, and he stumbled forward, breath rattling in his lungs. They had stabbed his back so many times, he imagined that it looked raw and red like minced meat. He could smell his own blood.

"Move it, scum!" said the guard behind him. Again the spearhead goaded him, a thrust too weak to puncture his flesh, but strong enough to shoot pain through him. "We haven't got all day!"

So it's still daytime, Zar thought. He would have thought night had fallen hours ago. The gravelly road stabbed his bare feet. His calves, his back, his head—they all throbbed. The wind blew hot and sandy against him. His throat was parched, his lips cracked; he wondered if thirst would kill him before the guards could.

Around him, he heard a hundred boots thumping, armor clanking, and scabbards clattering against greaves. A grunting sounded to his side, then a whip lashing flesh and a croak. Zar wanted to call out to his friends; even just speaking their names would comfort him.

They're taking us to die, he thought. They will whip and stab and march us until we perish, and our bones will lie in the wilderness for crows to pick on.

"Move, damn it!" cried the guard behind him, voice as gravelly as the road. "Faster!"

A whip cracked and pain exploded across Zar's back. He bit down on a scream. If he screamed, they would hurt him further. He had learned that lesson in the bowels of Solina's palace. Never scream. Never make a sound. If you show pain, they will laugh, and they will crave more.

He tried to remove his thoughts from this march, this thirst, this pain. He thought of his wife, a demure desert daughter, her hair so pale it was almost white, her skin deep gold, and her eyes blue like sky over dunes. He thought of his son, a suckling babe who would never know his father. He had done it for them. All my crimes—for you.

He had left his phalanx only for his family, only to be with them. He had abandoned his barracks to squeeze his wife's hand, to soothe her, to help the midwife guide his son into the desert. He had left for but a day, that was all—a dawn, an evening, a night of stars. That was all. The barracks guards had caught him holding his son, wrenched the babe from his arms, and dragged him back in chains.

But I saw my son. I saw him. I will die with a memory of his eyes.

He thought of those eyes as they walked the road, moving higher and higher, climbing a mountain that seemed to never end. As his feet bled and his back blazed, he thought of his son's eyes and his wife's smile, and Zar knew that no matter how much they hurt him, he had a pure memory. This memory they could not take away, not with all the blades and whips in the desert.

The wind lashed him. They marched. They marched endlessly.

Finally, after what seemed the ages of empires and the lifespan of mountains, he heard the guards inhale sharply.

"The tower," one man whispered.

Cold sweat washed Zar.

There was only one tower—the tower—which men spoke of with such reverence, such fear. The Ancients had called it Tarath Gehena—Tower of the Abyss—but few dared speak that tongue now. In his childhood, his grandmother would whisper that demons punished errant children in this tower. His friends would point at steeples in the city of Irys, trying to convince one another that here stood Tarath Gehena itself, the place of whispers and screams.

The tower. The place of the key. Sun God, the queen seeks to open the Iron Door.

Zar's knees shook and his breath rose to a pant. In the dungeon, he had prayed for death, comforted himself with the thought of thirst or injury sending him to eternal rest. In the shadow of Tarath Gehena, no such comfort could find him. No pure memory or hope could soothe him here.

Here there were only screams, terror, and undying agony.

They kept walking, quiet now. Zar could barely hear the clank of armor, the thud of boots, or the moans of his fellow prisoners. Until now every step had seemed an eternity; now Zar wished time would slow down. Too soon, far too soon, they stopped. Rough hands ripped the blindfold off his eyes.

Sun God save us, Zar thought, blinked in the sunset, and trembled.

They stood upon a mountain that rose from the desert: three haggard prisoners, bloodied and clad in rags; fifty soldiers in pale armor, golden suns upon their breastplates and their helms shaped as falcon heads; and a desert queen all in gold and platinum, twin sabres drawn in her hands. These soldiers of steel had tortured him, and this desert queen had ordered him broken, yet as night fell around them, Zar did not fear them. They were mere mortals. Before him it rose, a skeletal finger reaching into a crimson sky. The tower.

Zar had never before seen this place, not with his waking eyes. But he had dreamed of it countless times, then woke up in a cold sweat. He had seen it in his mind—when his grandmother whispered of its secrets, when his childhood friends bragged that they would climb it, and when Queen Solina's guards whipped him until the pain exploded into dreamscapes.

"The tower," he whispered, lips chapped and bleeding. "The place of the key."

Tarath Gehena rose knobby, black, and twisting like a melted candle of stone. The sun set behind it, spilling rivers of blood across the sky, the mountain, and the desert below. The tower's jagged crenellations rose like the crown of a demon king. At its base loomed a doorway, gaping and black like a cave. As the crimson clouds moved, the tower seemed to tilt. A shadow stirred between the battlements, and Zar's heart thrashed. He expected to see demons swarm toward him, but then the shadow vanished, leaving his heart racing and his clothes drenched with sweat.

Tarath Gehena, he thought. A shattered bone of the Abyss risen into the world.

Queen Solina walked forward, shoving her guards aside. Her eyes gleamed and a smile twitched across her lips, those lips twisted with an old scar. Despite the long march, she seemed unwearied, and little sand or dust clung to her breastplate and silken cloak. Her hair billowed, a pale banner.

"This is the place," she whispered, eyes alight and teeth bared in a grin. "This tower holds the key."

The sunset blazed against her, painting her blood-red, and madness shone in her eyes.

"You cannot open the door!" The words fled Zar's mouth, hoarse and shaking. "You will unleash something you cannot contai—"

A whip lashed his back, and a soldier kicked him, driving a steel-tipped boot into his side. Zar fell to his knees, gasping for breath. Tears budded in his eyes.

"Please," he whispered, trembling, remembering the stories his grandmother would tell: stories of demons peeling the skin off children, of reptiles writhing, of a horde of chaos with tarry wings and fangs to suck the souls of men. "Please, my queen, do not enter this tower. Do not take the key from within."

The soldiers raised whips and spears above him, and Zar winced, expecting the blows, but Solina held up her hand. The soldiers froze, weapons raised.

The Queen of Tiranor walked toward Zar, head tilted and lips still smiling, though no mirth filled her eyes, only cruelty like a scourge. She stood above him, a golden queen and him a wretched, bleeding shell of a man, wrists bound and body emaciated and broken. She spoke, voice soft and smooth like a morning breeze stirring the desert sands.

"You fear the tomb the key can unlock." She reached down and touched his forehead. Her hand was gloved in white moleskin, soft and warm. "You fear the creatures that dwell beyond the Iron Door."

Zar shivered on the ground. He feared this tower, this jagged sentinel; his stomach clenched and his skull seemed ready to crack. Yet this tower, for all its evil, merely contained a key.

But the door this key unlocks… The fortress it will allow her to enter…

He found himself weeping. "Please, my queen, please. Listen to the priests of the Sun God. Listen to the whispers of desert tribes, to the tales of grandmothers, to the horrors in old scrolls. Do not take this key."

Her face softened, the face of a woman seeing a wretched, kicked animal. She caressed his forehead, dirtying her gloves with his sweat and grime.

"Oh, dear miserable beast," she whispered. "I will not take the key from this tower. You and your friends will."

Sun God. Oh, Sun God, please no.

He flattened himself on the ground and kissed the dust at her feet. His body shook.

"Please, my queen, forgive me, I only… I only wanted to see my son, to—"

She spat on him. "Stand this wretch up," she said to her soldiers. Disgust now suffused her voice. "Let him enter last. I want him to watch his friends suffer first."

Guards grabbed Zar and yanked him to his feet. He writhed and kicked, heart thrashing, but could not free himself. After moons in Solina's dungeon, he was too weak, his arms thinned to the bone, his head always spinning, his heart always like a wild hare caught in his ribcage. To his right, he saw his fellow prisoners, two more souls who had languished in the queen's dungeons. They too were struggling in the grip of soldiers. They too were pale and emaciated, mere shells of humanity, their hair wispy and their eyes bulging.

"Send the first one in!" Solina shouted, voice echoing across the mountain. Zar thought that even the desert below, for leagues around, could hear her voice, the cry of a gilded goddess.

The soldiers dragged forward a prisoner—a cadaverous, bare-chested man named Rael, his back lashed and his left eye swollen shut. The man struggled, whimpered, and begged, but he could not free himself from the soldiers' grips. These were Queen Solina's personal guards, towering men—they stood near seven feet tall—bedecked in steel and platinum, automatons of metal, their faces hidden behind visors shaped as falcon beaks. Sometimes Zar wondered if any flesh lived beneath that metal, or if inside their armor they were nothing but godly flame.

"Please, my queen," Rael pleaded. As the soldiers dragged him toward the tower, he looked back, and his good eye met Zar's gaze.

Zar froze, his breath dying in his chest. He saw such horror, such grief in the man's one eye—a soul crumbling.

"Rael," he whispered.

"If you make it back, Zar, tell my wife I'm sorry," the haggard prisoner said. Blood flecked his lips. "Tell her I love her and I'm sorry."

Zar nodded, throat constricting. Rael had stabbed the man raping his wife; he had been caught, knife bloody in his hands.

"I'll look after her, Rael," he said, knowing that he was lying, knowing that he would never make it back home. "I promise. I—"

With a grunt, a soldier kicked Zar's back, sending him facedown into the dirt. His cheek hit a rock; he felt it pierce his skin. He coughed and spat blood, raised his head, and saw the soldiers shove Rael into the dark doorway of the tower.

"Find me the key and you will have freedom!" Solina shouted into the darkness, voice echoing. A grin played across her lips, twisting her scar, the old burn the weredragons had given her. "Find the key and the jewels of Tiranor will be yours!"

Zar lay on the ground, staring at the twisting pillar of stone. The red clouds swirled above it like pools of gods' blood. Was it possible? Could one of them—even Zar himself—find the key and receive freedom?

He clenched his jaw and winced when his shattered teeth touched.

"No," he whispered. "There will be no freedom if she unlocks the door this key can open. There will be no place to hide in the world."

He watched the tower.

Silence fell.

Solina stood before Tarath Gehena, hands opened at her sides, fingers twitching over the hilts of her sabres. Her soldiers stood like statues; not a piece of armor clinked. Zar pushed himself to his feet and watched. At his side, the second prisoner—a gaunt dusteater caught licking the forbidden spice in Irys's dregs—stood watching with sallow eyes; those eyes seemed dead, and her skin was already pale like a corpse. Even the wind stilled; the land itself seemed to be watching the tower with bated breath.

A deep, gravelly sound rose from the tower.

Again sweat drenched Zar.

Sun God, oh Sun God, save us.

His body trembled with new vigor. At first he thought that sound the creaking of stones, but then he realized: it was laughter—an inhuman, impossibly deep, demonic laughter.

A shrill scream pierced the air, cascaded down the mountainsides, and echoed across the desert.

"We must flee," Zar whispered. He turned to run, but soldiers grabbed him. Gloved fingers dug into his arms.

The deep laughter rolled, a sound of ancient evil, of pure malice, a sound like a parasite feasting as it bore through its host toward the heart. Wincing, Zar turned his head away from the tower; he could no longer look.

His gaze fell upon Queen Solina. He expected to see his queen shaken or remorseful, to see her skin pale and her eyes fearful, to hear her order them away from Tarath Gehena and back to their city. What he saw in his queen's eyes, however, terrified Zar as much as the laughter that rose from the tower.

Solina's eyes were wide, her grin toothy. Her chest rose and fell with excited breath. She seemed like a woman in ecstasy.

The deep laughter rose to a shriek, a sound so loud that Zar wept and even the soldiers cursed. Zar whipped his head back toward the tower and saw it shaking. The screams rose from it: the screams of demons and the anguished scream of a man.

Blood seeped from the doorway, so thick and dark it seemed almost black.

The human scream died, and the laughter of demons rolled across the mountain.

"Rael," Zar whispered. "I'm sorry, my friend."

A shadow stirred on the tower's top, moving between the crenellations. Zar froze and stared, heart hammering. He wanted to look away. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to do anything but stare at that shadow. And yet the darkness that stirred there held his gaze, as powerful as the soldiers who held his body. It seemed a human figure, Zar thought—a man cloaked in black, a hood hiding his face. The cloaked sentinel moved atop the tower, a thing of darkness; Zar saw no head within the shadows of that hood. The figure raised its hand. Zar's throat tightened and he winced; the hand was long and deathly gray, the fingers tapering into crimson claws.

A thing of darkness, Zar knew and wept. A demon of the Abyss.

The demon knelt and rose again. In its claws it held a bloody, lacerated corpse. The demon tossed the body from the parapet. It tumbled and thumped against the ground only feet away from Zar.

He couldn't help it. Zar screamed.

It was the corpse of Rael, gutted like a fish. They had cracked open the man's chest, scooped out his innards, and tossed aside this bloodied shell. Rael's dead eyes stared into his own.

Please, the eyes seemed to say. Please, Zar, tell my wife I love her. Tell her that I'm sorry.

Finally Zar could close his eyes. A tear streamed down to his lips.

"Goodbye, my friend," he whispered through chafed lips. "May your soul rise to the Sun God's courts of eternal light."

Solina walked toward the body, stood above it, and shook her head ruefully.

"Sad fool," she said. "He could have had his freedom; he was too weak." She turned toward her soldiers and raised her voice. "Send the next one in! Send the woman! Give her a sword; she can slay whatever evil lies inside or fall upon the blade."

The gaunt woman's eyes barely flicked as the guards untied her wrists, shoved her forward, and placed a sabre in her hands. After so many years crouched in alleys, licking the dust of the south, could she even feel pain and fear? Her eyes were sunken, already dead. She clutched the sabre before her; the blade reflected the red sunset as if already bloodied. Her only sign of life was sweat upon her brow and a tremble to her arms. Her lips, pale and dry, finally opened to speak.

"If I slay the evil inside," she rasped, "and if I find your key, I want the dust." She looked at Solina and her eyes reddened. A tear streamed down her cheek. "Please, my queen, if only a spoonful, if only a taste. I will find your key not for freedom, not for jewels, only for a sprinkling of the dust, my queen."

Solina sighed and shook her head. "Pathetic creature. You are a daughter of the desert! You are the stock of a noble breed, a warrior race of steel and sand and glory. And all you crave is that southern spice that twists you into a beast?" The queen spat. "But I will grant your wish. Bring me the key, and I will give you not a spoonful of dust, but great barrels of the stuff, so you may lick your desire for all your remaining days."

The dusteater's eyes widened, and she wept and trembled. "Thank you, my queen!" She could barely speak; her chest rose and fell as sobs racked her body. "I will find your key. I promise you, my queen."

With that, the dusteater turned, stepped toward the tower, and entered the darkness.

Zar stared, not daring to breathe. Queen Solina and her men stood frozen, eyes upon the tower. A single crow circled above, the only movement in the desert.

A scream rose.

Clashing steel rang.

Cruel, deep laughter bubbled.

Zar closed his eyes. Sun God, oh Sun God.

When a screech shattered the desert, Zar looked up to see the dark, cloaked figure reappear atop the tower. Once more, no light pierced its hood. Once more, its crimson claws rose. In its grip, it held a twisted corpse.

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 shining 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.