A Night of Dragon Wings

ELETHOR



He walked along the beach, blood sluicing around his boots. The dead rose in hills around him, stinking under the pounding sun. Crows and gulls flew everywhere, picking at the flesh. Nephilim lay broken and burnt, their foul innards leaking from their mouths. Griffins and salvanae lay in heaps. Men and women too lay dead, torn apart into mere hints of humanity.

"Elethor," Lyana said softly at his side. "Are you sure?"

He nodded. "We'll find one here."

They kept walking—him, Lyana, and a dozen of their men. The tide was rising, grabbing bodies and pulling them to sea, then tossing them back ashore covered with seaweed and salt. Crabs and flies bustled across severed limbs and heads and burnt corpses.

Wounded Tirans, their armor and bodies broken, writhed in the sand among the dead. Half were wyvern riders, their mounts dead beneath them, slashed with griffin talons or burnt with dragonfire. The rest had flown in phoenix forms; bolts of salvana lightning had crushed their magic and charred their bodies. Most were dying, barely able to whimper, common soldiers with no ranks upon their shattered armor.

They will know nothing, Elethor thought.

"El," Lyana said softly. "Should we heal them? We can't just… just leave the wounded here to die. We—"

"First we will find what we seek," he said. "Then we will heal whoever we can."

They kept moving through the bloody sand, at times climbing over the corpses of beasts. Finally Elethor found what he sought and stopped walking.

The Tiran officer lay on the beach, clutching her slashed stomach. Blood seeped between her fingers. Her breastplate was shattered—it showed the form of dragon claws—but upon her pauldrons Elethor could still see golden suns. This one was of high enough rank to serve him. He knelt by the woman.

"You are a captain," he said to her.

Blood covered her lips. The sides of her head were shaven, revealing sun tattoos, and several rings pierced her lips and brows. The hair that grew from her scalp spread out around her, platinum stained red, and more blood splashed her golden skin.

"I…" She licked her lips and coughed. "I will not talk."

Elethor tightened his lips. Rage flared in him. She would not talk? He would make her talk. He would stab at her wound. He would stab her eyes. He would hurt her until her bones cracked, and she screamed, and—

No. He clenched his jaw and looked away. No, I will not torture a prisoner. I am not Solina. I will not let that rage overcome me.

He looked back at the wounded officer. She lay clutching her belly, and her blood kept trickling; so much of it already soaked the sand.

"We can heal you," he said. "You need not die here, bleeding in the sand among the corpses of your comrades. We can give you silverweed to ease the pain, bandages, and water to drink. But you must tell me what I need to know."

She gave a weak cackle, spitting blood. "My queen was right." She laughed hoarsely, a hideous sound, and blood stained the rings piercing her lips. "She told us this King Elethor was a weakling, a soft boy. I never imagined how soft you were." She managed a snarl. "But we are strong, boy king. We will never fall. The Tiran empire rises, and Queen Solina leads her to glory. You will die, weredragon, you and all your kind."

He leaned down; their faces were but inches apart. He stared into her mocking blue eyes.

"We will die, Tiran? We crushed you at this beach. We claimed your shores. We drove you out of our lands, and now we drive into yours. Who is weak, Tiran? I, a king who conquered, or you, a wounded soldier in the sand?"

She laughed, and more blood trickled down her chin, and her armor clanked as her chest shook.

"Drive into our lands? Weredragon, you have seen nothing of our strength. You fought but a drop from our ocean, and this drop ravaged half your forces. Do you think you can move beyond these shores?" She coughed a laugh. "The might of Tiranor still awaits you, weredragon. I wish only that you live to see it all, but you will be crushed too soon. Even as you linger here, my queen breeds new hosts. Even as I lie dying, she gives life to a million more nephilim."

He bared his teeth and glared. "My father burned Irys to the ground and killed its monarchs; I will do the same."

The Tiran spat blood at him. "You are not fighting Irys now, boy. You fight the Palace of Whispers, a god of stone, a city in the mountains. You will crash against its walls. From within its chambers, Solina will send forth her wrath, and you will die, weredragon. You will die screaming and begging to worship her."

He rose to his feet and wiped her blood off his cheek. He turned to Lyana and his men.

"I've heard enough," he said. "Fetch healers; treat her as well as you can. If she dies, bury her with the rest."

He shifted into a dragon, took flight, and soared above the cliffs. Before him, plains of rock and dry scrub rolled for leagues, finally giving way to dunes and distant southern mountains. Heat rose in waves. Even in winter, the sun pounded the Tiran landscape; it baked Elethor's scales and blinded him.

When he looked east, he could just discern a distant green line leading to a delta—the Riven Pallan and the city of Irys, capital of this land. They still lay a day's flight away. When he looked west, Elethor saw the desert roll to distant tan mountains against a white sky, mere hints of color from here. Somewhere in those mountains rose the Palace of Whispers, he knew, the ruins where Solina lurked and bred her beasts.

He looked down at the desert below him. His camp spread here, a league from the sea. Whoever had survived the slaughter upon the beach bivouacked upon the plain. Griffins stood to one side, frozen like sentinels of stone. Salvanae hovered around the camp, coiling and chinking, their beards dipping into the sand. Soldiers of Osanna were erecting tents and campfires, and the scents of sausages, breads, and wine filled the air.

Finally, the Vir Requis camped to one side, the smallest of the hosts. They stood in human forms, gazing south upon the desert, solemn and silent. Most of them were not soldiers; they were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. They were the few who'd survived the attacks on Nova Vita and the slaughter in Bar Luan. They were the last light of Requiem, and they stood here wounded and gaunt and grim, and they comforted Elethor even more than the might of griffins or the wisdom of salvanae. They were his people, and their fire burned deep and hot within them.

As the sun set, spreading orange and red fingers across the desert, Elethor met with his generals upon a rocky hill.

At his right stood Lyana, clad as always in her silvery armor, her helmet upon her head, her sword and dagger hanging from her belt. Beside Lyana stood her squire, the young Lady Treale; she wore armor engraved with a sheaf of wheat, the sigil of her house, and the wind played with her long black hair. To Elethor's left stood Princess Mori, clad in the armor they had forged her, its steel engraved with a two-headed dragon, sigil of House Aeternum. Bayrin stood there too, the wind in his red hair.

Elethor looked upon them—a wife, a sister, his dearest friends. His heart gave a twist. Suddenly he loved them so much that it hurt. These were the dearest people in his life, the people who had flown through fire and blood for him. There were none braver in the world, he thought.

I wish you were here with us, Orin. I miss you, brother.

He thought of those who had died in this war: his brother, his father, Deramon and Adia, Piri Healer, and so many others. So many extinguished lights.

But we still fight for you. Your light still guides us—always.

Before him upon the hill stood his allies: the Griffin King Vale, his fur kindled with sunset; wise old Nehushtan, High Priest of Salvandos; and King Shae, his beard white and flowing, ruler of Osanna. Between the allies stood a table topped with candles, wooden carvings of griffins and dragons, and a parchment map of the desert. Standing over the map, Elethor looked at his companions one by one. They stared back in the sunset. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

"We invaded Tiranor with a hundred thousand warriors. Twenty thousand of them died upon the beaches." He lowered his head. "Their memory will light our path. We will forever sing of their sacrifice and courage in our halls."

The others bowed their heads and whispered prayers. A few had tears in their eyes. When the moment of prayer ended, Elethor spoke in a deep, firm voice.

"We cannot rest here long," he said. "We won a battle, but Solina is not idle. Already she musters new forces; we must continue our assault with all the might and speed we can muster. We believe that Solina lurks here." He tapped a western mountain upon the map. "The Palace of Whispers—a great fortress built into a mountain, once the domain of the Ancients, now a lair of her devilry. She is… creating, summoning, or breeding nephilim there. It won't be long before she hears of our invasion and strikes our camp."

Bayrin snarled and pounded his fist against the map. "Then let us fly to her! We'll attack that mountain with everything we've got. Soon it'll be called the Palace of Solina's Blood… and Guts." He tapped his chin. "Yes, Guts too; I like that."

Elethor was about to reply, but to his surprise, it was Mori—shy, timid Mori who never spoke in their councils—who replied first. Her voice was soft, and her lips trembled, but she clutched her luck finger tight and spoke for all to hear.

"We must attack Irys too." She looked at the map and spoke as if to herself. "Maybe Solina now lives in the mountains. But Irys is where her palace is, where the capital is, where she…" Mori swallowed and reached out to clutch Bayrin's hand. "We have to attack it. We have to burn it down."

Bayrin held her hand tight and pulled her closer to him. Mori bit her lip and said no more.

"Princess Mori is right," Elethor said and nodded. "We will attack Irys too. The city still holds the garrisons of her men, phoenixes, and wyverns. It still holds her palace, her greatest symbol of power. We must topple that palace, crush her forces there, and cut off the capital from the rest of this desert."

Lyana spoke up, chin raised.

"Irys gets its supplies from the river," she said. She ran her finger along the map, tracing the Pallan down from Irys in the north. "It snakes many leagues down to here, its sister Iysa." She tapped the map at the southern city. "Here in Iysa is where Solina forges her steel, grows her grains, and mints her coins. The supplies flow up the river on a thousand ships." Lyana snarled. "We will boil the river. We will burn all ships along it and crush southern Iysa. Without the river and her southern sister, the capital will dry up and die like an old fruit."

Elethor nodded. "We'll have to guard the northern sea too. Solina still commands many forces in the ruins of Requiem—wyverns and riders, men-at-arms, warships, phoenixes, and hordes of nephilim. These forces will not sit idle in Requiem's ruins when Tiranor itself is under attack. They will fly to Solina's aid. We must prevent them from returning into the desert."

For a long time the council talked. The sun disappeared and the stars emerged, brilliantly bright above the desert. No moon shone. The camp slept below. And still the council talked.

Finally at midnight, Elethor rolled up the map and nodded.

"We all know our tasks." He looked at the wise salvana who coiled before him, crystal eyes glimmering. "Nehushtan, you will guard the northern seas, preventing Tiran aid from the north. Take with you five thousand salvanae; you will need them to patrol the coasts."

The High Priest nodded. "The dragons of Salvanados shall keep the coasts secure. This I vow to the stars of Draco that shine above. They bless us this night. We will succeed, King Elethor."

Next Elethor turned to look at Lyana, and he felt some of his fear melt. His wife looked up at him with her green eyes—eyes that for years had taunted him, that for years he hated to see, yet which now spoke of her love, which now lit his heart.

"Lyana," he said. "You I will send south. Fly along the Pallan; burn any ships that sail north. Fly until you reach southern Iysa and burn her smelters, her mines, and her shipyards. Take with you a thousand dragons and ten thousand griffins; bear on your backs soldiers of Osanna to fight among the streets. Nehushtan will cut off Irys from the north; you will crush the south."

Lyana nodded and held his hands. "I will not let you down, my king. We will take Iysa and the river."

Mori spoke up again, chin raised. Her lips trembled but her voice was strong. "And I will attack the capital of Irys." She clutched the sword that hung at her side. "I will fly there. Bayrin can fly with me. We will burn them." A strange fire lit her eyes; Elethor had never seen such fire in her. "We will burn their palace, and burn their soldiers, and burn them all." She nodded, face pale. "We will burn them all."

Elethor placed a hand on her shoulder. "Are you sure, Mori?" he said softly. "You can fly south with Lyana if you want; she will keep you safe."

Mori shook her head. "No, El. I'll do this. I… I have to. I want to fight in Irys; that is where my battle lies." She held his arm. "I promise you, El, I will fight well. We will take the city."

"And I'm going with you!" Bayrin said. He placed an arm around Mori's waist and pulled her close. "Just don't fly so fast you leave me behind."

Elethor smiled softly; seeing his friend hold his sister close comforted him. If anyone could keep Mori safe, after all, it was her personal guardian.

"Yes, Bay, you will fly with Mori to Irys," he said. "And you will take with you twenty thousand griffins, dragons, and men." His voice hardened. "The Palace of Phoebus must fall."

Mori nodded. "It will fall."

Elethor turned to look west. In the darkness of night, he could not see the distant mountains where Solina lurked, but still the shadows chilled him. He thought of that day long ago—their day, a perfect day in his home upon the hill—and he thought of Solina slaying children in Requiem, kidnapping Mori, and screaming that she would slaughter them all.

You wait for me there, Solina, in darkness. You vowed to light the world; now you lurk in shadow. We will meet again in the mountains. No more words. No more memories. Now we meet with flame and steel and blood.

He spoke softly. "And I will fly to the mountains. I will lead a host against the Palace of Whispers. And I will kill Solina."

For the first time in the council, young Lady Treale spoke. "And I'm going with you."

Her eyes shone in the moonlight. Her lips tightened. Elethor remembered that night upon the hill when those lips had kissed him, when those eyes had seemed so warm and comforting in the night. Her kiss had given him strength then, though he had never dared tell her that, and even now, looking upon those lips, those dark eyes, and her flowing black hair soothed him.

"But Treale," he said, "you squire for Lyana. Will you not fly south with her? Will you not fight at her side?"

The squire looked over her shoulder at Lyana, then back at Elethor. She raised her chin higher and shook her head.

"Lyana is no longer a knight, but a queen," Treale said. "And I'm a warrior. My lord, I…" She lowered her head. "When the wyverns attacked, I… I let you down. I am so sorry, my lord. I fled from battle then." She raised her eyes; they shone with tears. "But I will not let you down again. You are my lord, my king, my guiding star. Let me reclaim my honor. I will fly by your side, King Elethor, and I will sound my roar, and I will slay our enemies. For you, my king." She drew her sword and knelt before him. "My sword and flame are yours."

The council dispersed in the night, each member retiring to a quiet place to rest until dawn. Around the sleeping camp, salvanae circled in vigil, their bright eyes piercing the night.

Elethor stepped downhill toward a tent of lush, crimson fabric. He stepped inside to find beds soft with quilts, tables topped with untouched meals, and candles casting their flickering light.

His family shared the tent with him. Mori and Bayrin nibbled a cold dinner, then lay down in a plush bed; the princess slept with her head upon her guardian's chest. Treale, like family to them, curled up in her own bed and slept clutching her sword to her breast.

Elethor could not eat nor drink. He removed his armor, lay upon his bed, and stared at the tent walls. The pain still clutched his heart; it had not left since Solina had returned to Requiem two winters past. Perhaps this pain had not left him since Solina had fled into her exile nearly a decade ago.

Lyana slipped into bed with him. She huddled close, wrapped her arms around him, and her lips touched his ear.

"Will you sleep?" she whispered.

He looked aside and saw the others sleeping. He looked back at Lyana.

"I will sleep," he whispered. "Lyana, this… this might be our last night together. I don't know what tomorrow will bring."

She touched his cheek. "It might be our last night," she agreed. "But I don't think it will be. We've survived this long, and now we are strong. Now we fly with aid. We will win this, El."

He held her close and shut his eyes. They stung; he dared not open them lest they shed tears.

"I love you, Lyana," he whispered, holding her like a drowning man. "I am so sorry, Lyana, for the man that I was. For the man who pined for Solina. For the man—no, the boy—you tried to reach, but who pushed you back. I remember myself in Nova Vita before this all began—a dour youth who shunned you, who shunned the court. And I'm ashamed." His throat tightened. "Will you forgive me for those years, Lyana? For those years I yearned for Solina and forgot about you, about my family?"

She kissed him. "Only if you forgive the woman I was then—the woman who would pester and lecture you. Stars, I drove you crazy!"

He laughed, opened his eyes, and saw her smiling mischievously. He mussed her hair.

"Oh, I'll never forgive you for that," he said. "What was it I called you once? Intolerable and overbearing?"

"And supercilious," she said with a grin. "I think you called me that too. Big word for you, El. I was impressed."

He gave her a mock shove, then felt the coldness between them and pulled her back into his embrace. She laid her head upon his chest, and he stroked her hair.

"Goodnight, Lyana," he said softly.

She raised her head, kissed his lips, and cuddled against him.

"I love you too, Elethor," she whispered. "Always."

The candles guttered into darkness, and they slept.