A Night of Dragon Wings Read Free Page B

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