A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,32

table. Now it was Nemes who ruled this tower and its secrets.

He stepped outside into the night, laughed, and raised the key. Lighting crashed into it, lighting the desert. Nemes saw Solina, her men, the endless leagues of sand and rock. Wind shrieked, blowing back his hair.

"The key, Nemes!" Solina shouted in the storm. She reached out for it. "Hand me the key and the trophies of Tiranor will be yours."

He stood in the tower doorway, laughing, the wind roaring. The shadows swirled and laughed around him.

"The key!" he said. "You want the key."

And why should he share it? Why should he, Nemes, give this desert queen her prize?

I can free the nephilim myself! This power can be mine, not hers. Why should I still serve? For years I knelt! For years I groveled. Now Nemes can rule; with the nephilim, no power could oppose me.

"The key, Nemes!" Solina demanded.

He laughed and snarled. "Why should I give it to you? Will you beg me, Solina? Will you kneel and—"

She leaped toward him.

Her blade flashed.

Nemes tried to pull back. She was so fast. She was a streak of gold and steel.

He screamed.

When her blade severed his arm, blood sprayed in a mist. His arm tumbled. His hand still clutched the key when it hit the ground.

"You will die for this!" Nemes screamed, clutching the stump.

Solina knelt by his severed arm. She wrenched the key free from his fingers.

"Chain him up!" she shouted to her men. "Drag him in irons to Irys. He will see the glory of the nephilim before we hang him to die upon the walls."

The guards stepped toward him, chains in their hands. Nemes hissed and turned to flee. He fell. His blood spurted. Hands grabbed him, yanked him up, and Nemes screamed before his eyes rolled back and darkness spread across him.

My glory… my power… I promised it to him.

"I'm sorry, Father," he whispered. "I'm sorry…"

Demons laughed, and dark claws grabbed him, and his soul sank into a long black night.

TREALE

"Pomegranates, fresh pomegranates, grab one to eat!" cried the boy.

He stood upon the banks of the River Pallan, a scrawny thing with deep golden skin, holding a basket laden with the red treasures.

"Grab a pomegranate, a copper a fruit!" he shouted.

Around the boy, a dozen other children stood upon the boardwalk, hawking their own wares from baskets. Behind them, longships rowed up and down the river, laden with more baskets and crates of goods.

"Carobs, dried carobs!"

"Fresh oysters, grab them while they're fresh!"

"Seashell bracelets for fertility! Wear them in bed for healthy babes!"

Treale stood upon the cobbled boardwalk, shaded under the awning of a chandlery. She wore her dark cloak draped around her and hid her midnight hair and eyes—foreign in this land of platinum hair and blue eyes—under her hood. The scents of the foods filled her nostrils. Her stomach growled and her mouth watered. She had not eaten in… how long had it been? She could barely remember; certainly she had eaten nothing since landing in Irys yesterday. Fingers trembling with hunger, she reached into her pocket, fished around, and produced a single copper coin. It was all the money she had in the world—not enough for a nice fish or crab, even if she had a place to cook them—but perhaps enough for a pomegranate.

She walked onto the boardwalk, leaped back as a peddler came trundling down upon his donkey-drawn cart, and kept moving. When she reached the boy hawking pomegranates, she held out her coin in her palm.

"I'll have one if you please," she spoke from the shadows of her hood.

The boy took the coin, squinted at it, and Treale felt faint. This was a coin from Requiem; she had smoothed its surface, effacing its image and lettering, but would the boy still recognize its origin? Would he sound the alarm and shout "Weredragon, weredragon!" for the city to hear?

"It's good copper," Treale said. "An old coin, but solid metal and pure. Feel its weight. That's worth two pomegranates. You have to sell me two."

Her legs trembled with hunger as the boy squinted at the coin. Treale had never felt so lowly. Only moons ago, she had been a lady of Requiem's courts, and now… now she trembled before a boy half her age, so weak with hunger she nearly wept.

Finally the boy nodded, pocketed the coin, and offered her the basket of fruit. Not a moment later, Treale crouched between a brothel and a shoemaker's shop, scooping seeds from a split pomegranate and