A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,15

across the city, a peal that hushed the crowds.

Treale felt like an icy snake was crawling down her back. She did not like this sound; it was a keen like columns crashing, like a fallen race crying from graves, the sound her heart had made when Nova Vita fell. Around her, the people stood hushed for a moment, then roared to the sky. Their faces changed; anger and fear suffused them, and they pounded the air and chanted to the Sun God. Thousands began to move down the streets, catching Treale in their flow; she could not help but move with them.

The crowds swept forward, a simmering sea, and pulled Treale along the cobbled street. They passed under a great archway embossed with golden suns; it was large enough for three dragons to fly through abreast. Beyond the archway, the crowd swept Treale into a great square where myriads roared.

Treale stood in the throng, head spinning and breath panting. The sun beat overhead. She had never seen a square so large; it seemed larger than all of Nova Vita. She could not guess how many people filled it; they were an ocean of rage, a hundred thousand strong or stronger. A temple rose to her right, columns soaring and topped with platinum. Before her, across the square, rose a palace; it was easily the largest building Treale had ever seen, dwarfing even the fallen halls of Requiem. Its towers scratched the sky. Faceless statues guarded its doors, standing above a staircase with hundreds of steps. Soldiers surrounded the square and covered the roofs of the buildings; some sat upon wyverns, whips in their hands. Above in the sky, phoenixes circled the sun, screeching.

Treale wanted to flee this place. She wanted to shift into a dragon and fly from here, fly as fast and far as she could. Something was happening here, something dark and horrible, something she desperately wanted to escape. The square felt like a boiling pot about to overflow. And yet she stood among the crowd, hood pulled low.

If you shift now, you die, she told herself. A thousand wyverns surround this square, and phoenixes fly above. Stay. Hide. Whatever happens in this square, you must live.

The palace doors ahead, towering things of gold and ivory, began to creak open. The crowd roared even louder. The faces of the people swam around her, red and howling and twisted with rage. Fists pounded the air. Several people were climbing the base of a great statue of Queen Solina; Treale elbowed her way toward them, climbed onto the statue's pedestal between howling youths, and stared ahead.

When the temple doors were opened, the real Queen Solina emerged.

The crowd roared to the sun. Solina raised her arms, a deity of platinum. Soldiers in gilded armor flanked her. The procession marched across the palace's dais, stood above the stairway, and looked down upon the city. One of the soldiers held a leashed, haggard creature, perhaps a beaten dog. As the crowds roared, the soldiers lifted the creature and chained it between the towering, faceless statues that flanked the palace doors.

"Behold the weredragon!" shouted Queen Solina. "Behold our victory! We will never fall!"

All around Treale, the people of Tiranor pounded their fists and roared the call. "We will never fall!"

Treale stared, eyes dampening. This was no chained animal, no creature.

It was Mori.

Memories floated around Treale: childhood summers in Nova Vita when she played with Mori in the palace gardens; the royal family visiting Oldnale Manor in winters, and Mori sleeping at Treale's side in the great oak bed upstairs; stargazing with Mori and her brothers on autumn nights, then sneaking away from the boys to whisper of future husbands, wedding gowns, and all the other dreams of youth. And now… now this: Treale hidden in a cloak among a crowd of rage, and Mori in chains and rags, her skin sallow and lacerated.

"I will save you, Mori," Treale whispered as the crowd roared. Her knees shook. Her belly roiled. She dug her fingernails into her palms. "I swear to you, I will save you."

As the phoenixes circled above the square, leaving wakes of flame, Solina cried to the sky. The queen appeared to be in rapture, head tossed back and arms raised. Her raiment of gold and platinum shone upon her, reflecting the sun and fire.

"The weredragons burned your homes!" she cried, and the crowds roared. "They slew your sons and brothers and fathers, brave men of Tiranor who flew to banish their darkness.