"Ma," the griffin cub said, and his voice was relieved, some of the pain cleared from it.
Volucris released her, and Lacrimosa raised her head. She looked at the cub in amazement. The infection had left him! He looked up at her, his eyes clear.
"Dragon tears," Lacrimosa whispered. "They heal griffins."
Volucris nodded. Then he tossed back his head and cried in joy. The other griffins did the same. The young prince rose to his feet, limped, and then flapped his wings. He flew a few feet, landed, and squeaked.
Lacrimosa laughed and cried. Requiem enslaved you, she thought. With our tears we find some salvation.
The cub embraced his parents. Then Volucris moved toward Lacrimosa. He knelt before her, bowed his head, and looked into her eyes.
Lacrimosa smiled.
"Will Leonis be our ally? Will Requiem and Leonis fight together, fight against Dies Irae?"
Volucris gave her a long stare. He looked to the west. He looked at his son. Then he walked to the eggs, and retrieved from between them the candlestick. He placed it at Lacrimosa's feet.
She shifted into human form and lifted the candlestick. It seemed made of pure gold, and when she turned it in the sun, its emeralds glinted.
"It's beautiful," she said. "Is this a gift for saving your son?"
He squawked and pawed the nest. There was more he wanted to tell her. Lacrimosa examined the candlestick more closely. When she turned it over, she saw words engraved into its base. Summoning Stick. Lacrimosa gasped.
"I've heard of the Summoning Stick," she said. "Only two were ever made, one of silver, one of gold. When lit, they call for aid."
Volucris nodded. Lacrimosa embraced his great, downy head.
"Thank you, Volucris, King of Griffins," she said. "When I need your aid, I will light the candlestick." She drew back and gave him a solemn stare. "When we rebuild Requiem, there will be war with Irae. We will need your wings."
Volucris nodded, staring at her, and she saw the answer in his eyes.
Our wings are yours.
AGNUS DEI
At the bottom of the staircase, Agnus Dei froze. The tunnels under Requiem stretched before her, all darkness and moaning wind. She held her dagger with one hand, her makeshift torch in the other.
"How deep are the scrolls?" she whispered. She wasn't sure why she whispered. Surely the Poisoned—those Vir Requis turned scaly and webbed with Dies Irae's black magic—no longer dwelled here. But Agnus Dei found it difficult to speak any louder. Just in case.
"They were buried deep in the darkness," Father said, "to protect them from snow, fire, rain... or war."
Agnus Dei glanced at him. She reminded herself that Father was more than just an annoying, gruff old man who hummed and creaked and scolded her whenever she growled. He was King Benedictus, the Black Fang. He had once ruled these lands and worn fine silk and steel. He had once led this land to war and seen it destroyed. He had once fought in these tunnels and watched as others burned, and drowned, and became creatures of fish scales and bulging eyes and—
Enough, Agnus Dei told herself. Don't dwell on it. Get the scrolls. Get out. Learn about the nightshades. Let the past remain in this darkness.
She took a step deeper into the tunnels.
The winds from below moaned, rustling her cloak. She clenched her jaw and kept walking, Father at her side. Their torches crackled, and shadows danced like demons. The walls were black stone, hard and smooth, too close to her. Agnus Dei hated enclosed spaces. There was no room to shift into dragons here. What if creatures attacked—ghosts, or... the Poisoned? Could she fight them in human form, with only her dagger? Agnus Dei growled.
Her feet hit something. A clattering sound echoed. Agnus Dei lowered her torch and grimaced. She had kicked a skeleton, scattering its bones. Several more skeletons lay within the sphere of light, covered in dust and cobwebs and tatters of leather. The flickering torch made them seem to shiver.
"Irae's men," she said. They bore chipped, wide blades in the style of Osanna, and one wore a breastplate engraved with a griffin.
Father nodded. "Many of them died here too."
They walked over the skeletons, careful not to further disturb their bones. The tunnel plunged deeper, its slope steep. Shattered swords, arrowheads, and helmets littered the floor. At one point, the skeleton of a griffin cub blocked their way, and they had to walk between its ribs. A rusty helmet topped its skull. The air grew colder and the wind moaned. Once, Agnus Dei thought she heard a cackle from deep below, but when she froze and listened, she heard nothing more.
Around a bend, she saw a new skeleton. She paused and grunted. This skeleton was strange. It was shaped like a man, but the skull was too long, the eye sockets too small. Its fingers were twice the normal length, and its femurs were twisted like ram's horns. At first Agnus Dei thought it an animal—an ape, like those drawn in picture books—but this skeleton held a sword, and wisps of a tunic clung to its ribs.
"A Poisoned," she whispered.
Father nodded.
As they walked around the Poisoned, Agnus Dei couldn't help but stare into its eye sockets. Even in death, it seemed in agony. She could imagine it being a Vir Requis like her once, maybe a girl, poisoned until her bones twisted, and her eyes popped, and—
No. No! Don't think of it. Agnus Dei gritted her teeth and kept walking.
Soon she and Father reached a staircase. The steps were chipped and narrow. Agnus Dei's boots stepped on old arrowheads, a dagger's blade, and a skeleton's hand. Once she kicked a helmet. It clattered down the stairs, echoing. She winced, and Father grumbled, and they froze until the clacking stopped.
Past the staircase, they found a crossroads of three tunnels, and Father led them down the left one. Their torches guttered. Agnus Dei tore fresh strips off her cloak, and wrapped them around the stick she carried, so that it blazed with new light.
In the firelight, she saw many more skeletons. The main battles must have been fought here. Bones covered the floor. Shattered shields, swords, crossbows, and arrowheads lay everywhere, threatening to cut her boots. The air here was so cold and dry, skin and hair remained on the bodies, shriveled and white. Their fingernails were yellow and cracked like rotten teeth.
"How much farther are the scrolls?" she whispered.
"Not far," Father said, his voice low, his eyes watery. Agnus Dei looked at him, and all her irritation and anger at her father faded. She realized that he'd known many of these fallen Vir Requis. Some had been soldiers under his command. Others must have been his friends, cousins, uncles.
They stepped gingerly over the skeletons, and plunged deeper into the darkness. The tunnels kept sloping down; Agnus Dei could not guess how far underground they were. As horrid as the burned forests of Requiem were, with their ash and bones and fallen columns, she longed to return there now, to see the sun, and to see life, even if life meant only vultures and bugs.
Soon they reached the remains of a doorway in the tunnel. Once it had sealed the passageway beyond; today it was but splinters of wood and old hinges. They stepped through it, and found themselves in a towering chamber.
Father pointed with his torch. "There, in the alcoves."
It was hard to see in the darkness, but it seemed like hundreds of alcoves covered the walls, maybe thousands. Rolled up scrolls nested in them.
"Here lies the wisdom and knowledge of Requiem," Father whispered.
They walked deeper into the chamber. Agnus Dei tried to walk lightly, but her boots clanked and echoed despite her best efforts. The walls rose thirty feet tall. So many scrolls! She thought it must have taken a thousand years to write them all, and would take a thousand more to read them. She moved her torch left and right, scattering shadows.
"Which scrolls do we need?" she asked.
"In the back, near that tunnel," Father said. "You see where—"
A cry pierced the darkness.
Agnus Dei and Father froze. The only movement was the fire of their torches.
/> The cry sounded again, coming from the second tunnel, the tunnel that led beyond the chamber of scrolls. It sounded hurt, mournful.
"What—" Agnus Dei began, and then a shadow leaped at her from the ceiling.
She cried, thrust her dagger, and heard a scream. Blood splashed her hand. She had cut something, something of dangling eyeballs, of webbed fingers with cracked nails, of clammy pale flesh. And then it was gone, scurrying into the shadows.
"The Poisoned!" she said. She raised her torch, hand sticky with blood. The firelight reflected in a thousand eyes and fangs.
"Friends!" Father said, voice trembling slightly. "We can end your pain. Do not—"
The Poisoned lunged at them.
"Stay back!" Agnus Dei shouted. She waved her torch and dagger before her. A hundred Poisoned reached with cracked claws. Some of them stared with eyeballs that bulged, bloodshot. Others had eyes that dangled down their cheeks, but even those eyes stared with hatred. Agnus Dei slammed her torch into one; it screamed and fell back, burning. She cut another with her dagger. One cut her, slicing claws down her arm. The cuts blazed and raised green smoke.
"Back, friends!" Father called, slamming at them with his torch. Their scales flew. "We can help you."
But they could not, Agnus Dei knew. There was no cure for these Vir Requis. With a growl, she shifted into a dragon. The Poisoned shrieked, strings of saliva quivering between their teeth. A dozen raced at her, and Agnus Dei blew fire.
"No, Agnus Dei!" Father cried. "You'll burn the scrolls."
Agnus Dei was beyond caring. Blood roared in her ears. She blew flames again. A dozen Poisoned caught fire. They fled into the tunnels, blazing.
Father shifted too. Soon the burly black dragon was kicking Poisoned, biting them, clawing. Tears sparkled in his eyes as he fought. "You'll feel no more pain, friends," he said.
Suddenly, in her mind, Agnus Dei didn't see creatures of scales and claws. She saw men, women, children. Her cousins, her schoolyard friends, her uncles and aunts. How many of these Vir Requis had she known before Dies Irae malformed them? How many had Father known? She blew fire, weeping now, until the Poisoned all burned. They writhed on the floor, screaming, clawing the air. The sound was like steam from a kettle. The stench of their burning flesh filled the air, the stench of rotten fish.
"The scrolls!" Father said. Agnus Dei saw that they too burned. Across the chamber, fires filled the alcoves. The scrolls were curling, smoking, and burning away.
Still in dragon form, Agnus Dei began pulling the burning scrolls from the alcoves. She dropped them to the floor and stepped on them. But the fire was spreading. Smoke filled the chamber. A thousand Poisoned blazed; some dead, others screaming and dying. Father too was collecting scrolls, but soon there was no place to extinguish them. The entire chamber became an inferno, all flame and smoke and screams.
"Let's get out of here!" Agnus Dei cried.
"We must save the scrolls," Father shouted back. She couldn't even see him behind the fire and smoke.
Agnus Dei coughed. "We'll die in here! It's time to go!"
She scooped up what scrolls she could, shifted into human form, and raced into the tunnel they had entered from. A moment later, Father joined her, also in human form, also carrying smoldering scrolls. Smoke and ash covered him.
They raced through the tunnel, smoke and fire and screams chasing them. One Poisoned, who had somehow survived the inferno, ran behind them. He rose in flame, screamed, and reached out crumbling fingers. Agnus Dei stabbed him with her dagger, weeping, and kept running.
When they finally reached daylight and burst into the ruins of Requiem, Agnus Dei fell to her knees. The scrolls fell from her arms, rolled across cracked cobblestones, and sizzled in the rain. Agnus Dei lowered her head, sobbing. Thunder rolled, and mud flowed around her.
Father knelt beside her, breath ragged. The rain streamed down his face. He embraced her, and Agnus Dei clung to him, weeping against his shoulder. He smoothed her hair.
"Their torture is over now," he whispered to her. "They are now among our forefathers in our halls beyond the stars."
Agnus Dei trembled. "There were so many. So many remained...."
Father nodded. "They bred in the tunnels."
Agnus Dei pulled her head back from his shoulder. She stared into his eyes, still holding him. "Papa, are they all dead now?"
He nodded. "They are. I promise."
It was long moments before she could stop trembling. She could still imagine those screams, the hisses, the eyeballs. Finally the rain softened, and she saw a rainbow over the ruins. Even here, in this land of ruins, skeletons, old curses and pain... even here there was beauty. She looked at the rainbow, and calmed her breath, and pulled herself free from Father's embrace.
"I burned most of the scrolls," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."
He squeezed her shoulder. "But we recovered a few scrolls. Let's look at them."
They pulled the scrolls from the mud and cleaned them as best they could. Several yards away, they found a mosaic floor. Most of the floor lay buried in mud. Bones, ash, and dragon teeth covered the rest. They brushed an area clean, revealing part of the mosaic; it showed a scene of dragons flying in sunset. Agnus Dei and Father unrolled the scrolls there and examined them.
They were badly burned. Several crumbed in their fingers. Others were burned beyond reading. A few had survived the fire, but they contained no knowledge of nightshades; one was a prayer scroll, three others contained musical notes, and another two traced the lineage of Requiem's kings and queens.
"We might have come all this way for nothing," Agnus Dei said, head hung low. She hugged herself in the cold and stared, eyes finally dry, at a broken statue of a maiden holding an urn.
"Here, daughter. Look at this." Father brushed off one scroll and unrolled it. At the very top, in delicate ink, appeared a drawing of a nightshade.
Agnus Dei gasped. "You found it, Father! You found the right scroll."
He gave her a wan smile. She wanted to jump onto him, to hug and kiss him, but froze. Father looked so tired. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks stubbly and haggard. For the first time, Agnus Dei realized that Father was growing old. He was no longer the young man who'd led Requiem to war. Gray filled his black curls, wrinkles appeared on his brow, and the cares of the world and a fallen race filled his eyes. She gave him a small kiss on that rough, prickly cheek.
"Let's see what it says," she said.
When they unrolled the scroll further, revealing its calligraphy, Agnus Dei frowned. Burn marks covered the parchment. Some bits had burned away completely. The scroll had more holes than a suit of chain mail. She groaned.
"There's not much left," Father said with a sigh.
They huddled over it, blowing ash and dirt away, brows furrowed. Only one paragraph was legible, and even that one was missing half its text. Agnus Dei read it over and over, but it made little sense as it was.
"In the days of the Night Horrors, King T______ite journeyed to the southern realms of G____nd sought the Loomers o_______olden pools. The Night Horrors stole the souls of Osanna, and cast them into the d___ness, and Ta__________________________omers, who were wise above all others in the land. He spoke with the Loomers, and prayed with them, and they crafted him th_________________e returned with th_________anna, an_____________m upon the Night Horrors. He tamed them, and drove them into Well of Night in the Marble City, and sealed it. He placed guards around it, armed wit___________________cape."
"What do you make of it, Father?" Agnus Dei asked, raising her eyes from the scroll. After reading it several times, it still made little sense to her.
He scratched his chin. The wind blew his cloak, which bore as many burn marks as the scrolls. "I think you'll agree that Night Horrors refers to nightshades."
Agnus Dei nodded. "That must be how the ancient Vir Requis called them."
"And Marble City refers to Confutatis," Father said. "That one is easy enough. Even today we sometimes call it th
at."
"So we know that some king, whose name began with T, tamed the nightshades, and sealed them in Confutatis. Which king began with T?"
Father sighed deeply. He rubbed his neck, joints creaking. "Most of Osanna's kings had names that began with T. There were several kings named Tanith, and two named Talin. There was a King Talon too, I believe, and a few named Thoranor. Before Dies Irae took over, the letter T denoted royalty."
"So we have no idea which king tamed the nightshades."
"No," Father agreed.
Agnus Dei also sighed. "So this scroll isn't much help. I'm sorry, Father. I burned it. Now it's useless."
Father shook his head. "Not useless. Some information is missing, yes, but we have clues. The scroll tells us to seek the Loomers of these 'olden pools'. The Loomers crafted something for the king. What was it? Great weapons?"
Agnus Dei bit her lip. "Probably. Weapons that could defeat nightshades. The scroll says the olden pools are in a southern realm that starts with a G. What place is that?"
Benedictus said, "Well, for one thing, we know it's in the south."
Agnus Dei raised an eyebrow. "Father, did you make a joke? That's a first."
Father watched two crows that flew above. "Let us go to Fidelium Mountains. We'll meet Mother, Gloriae, and Kyrie there. Maybe they'll have found better information."
Kyrie. The word sent fire through Agnus Dei. Her mind flashed back to that day at the Divide, the border with Salvandos, where they had first made love. A day of fire, heat, and sweat. Agnus Dei bit her lip to quell the thought. It was ridiculous. Did she miss Kyrie now? She snorted. The boy was a mere pup.
She rolled up the scroll, rose to her feet, and nodded. "Let's go."
They walked through the wet ruins, between the bones, cracked statues, fallen columns, and old weapons. The rainbow stretched before them across the horizon.
KYRIE ELEISON
After riding all day behind Gloriae, Kyrie was ready to throttle her.
"Gloriae, for pity's sake, my legs feel like they were dipped into lava. Can you please stop that horse of yours?"
Song of Dragons: The Complete Trilogy Page 38
