A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,17
skin was smooth and pale like the silks Nemes's mother would dream of owning. Lyana would regret her words to him; Nemes vowed that. They would all regret how they'd hurt him; he swore that to the rain, to the worms, and to the body rotting beside him.
His arms shook. He was tired. He had never been so tired. He turned away from the grave—it was deep enough—and knelt by the body. It was a famished, scarred thing, barely better than the worms that crawled across it. Nemes touched the body's cold cheek, closed his eyes, and thought of Lyana.
"How sweet it would be to touch your cheek," he whispered. He licked his lips and imagined licking her skin. "Someday I will bring you here, Lyana, into this forest, and I will tear your clothes so that I can touch all of you, see all the pale flesh of your body, and know you here upon this grave."
Eyes closed and breath fast, Nemes caressed the corpse's hair. The rain pattered around him. When a worm crawled across his fingers, he opened his eyes. The corpse stared up at him, mouth open in a toothless grin, flesh a pasty white—as white as Lyana's. This dead, decaying thing was not as beautiful as Lyana, but it was close. It was close. It could soothe him for this night.
Nemes looked around him, a snarl on his lips. And why not? The weaklings were back at their camp—lying down to sleep, or to pray, or to hug and whisper their pathetic, weakling dreams. But he, Nemes, was strong; not of arm perhaps, but of spirit, of mind, of tooth. He was a scavenger of the night. He was a vulture, tall and dark and proud. He pulled his Iron Claw from his cloak, a curved obsidian blade. He thrust it into the body's neck and pulled down, gutting the torso. His nostrils flared, inhaling the sweet smell of death.
The light faded, and Nemes lit his tin lamp. In the red light, he studied. He dissected. He placed organ by organ. He clutched the heart in his palm and breathed in ecstasy. This felt almost like that first time, years ago, when he'd been only a boy in the woods. Back then he would catch only squirrels, crush their heads, skin them, and study their innards. But squirrels were for boys, and Nemes was a man now, a vulture, a future lord to Lyana. He craved the humans, and he savored this human. Every piece he removed sent shivers through him.
The others, he knew, would not understand. King Elethor had always craved the beauty of sculpture. The Princess Mori had always craved the beauty of music. Lyana, his eternal love, craved the beauty of marble columns and steel blades. Their minds were so small, their worlds so dark. This was beauty: a smell of blood, a glimmer on bone, and the secret worlds that pulsed under skin. Nemes inhaled sharply, imagining the beauty of the organs Lyana hid under her pale skin. He vowed to someday see them too, to touch them, to study them.
He buried the man and his organs. He covered the grave in darkness. He cleaned his hands in a stream. His work was done.
He wrapped his black cloak around him, clutched his staff, and whispered the words he had learned—the words of Lord Legion. Shadows rose from the earth like serpents of smoke. Nemes welcomed them. He let the wisps caress his legs, then rise and swirl around him, until he inhaled their clammy scent. Soon the shadows cloaked him and he vanished into the night.
A thin smile twisted his lips. He had learned the words from the Old Books, the ones buried deep in Requiem's library. Only the noble house carried the keys to that chamber, filigreed works of art they bore on chains around their necks. Knowledge was power, Nemes knew, and he craved it—the power in corpses and the power in books. On many cold nights, he had crept into Princess Mori's chamber, watched her sleep, and gently lifted the key off her breast. He would spend the night in darkness, surrounded with books, studying the ancient scrolls of Lord Legion, the nephil whose voice still whispered in the night, the child of a demon king and his human bride.
"Now your shadows cloak me, my lord," Nemes whispered. "Now I slither in darkness, hidden, like you."
Nemes's fists and jaw tightened in anger. Lord Legion had fallen; he languished