Song of Dragons The Complete Trilogy - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,217

They spread for a league across the iceberg, built of ice and snow, glistening like stars. Most of those palaces were abandoned now, she knew, only ghosts left to haunt their halls. Only two hundred icelings lived today, but their ancestors' palaces still stood, their ice never melting, their beauty never fading.

These remaining icelings glided around Memoria between the columns. Their sealskin robes swayed, and their hair was white as snow, even the hair of the children. Their eyes were azure, like clear pools under the sun, and they bore whalebone staffs crowned with their birth crystals.

Memoria wore furs now too—her woollen clothes from Requiem had gone threadbare years ago—but she bore no staff like the icelings. Like her brother, she wore a sword of Requiem at her hip, a glimmering shard of steel she had named Luna Nova.

Why do we still wear these swords? Memoria thought, as she thought every day. We swung them in Requiem's tunnels, in darkness too narrow for dragonfire. But they couldn't hold back the enemy. They couldn't save our parents... and they couldn't save Kyrie. So many times, Memoria had wanted to toss her sword into the ocean, watch it sink forever from her memory, but she could not. She was still a soldier, even after all these years, even as Requiem lay in ruin. She still had a soldier's pride.

"Sky friends!"

The words echoed across the hall. Memoria looked up to see Amberus, the Elder of Elders, walking toward them. His flowing robes hid his feet; he seemed to float. His beard was so long, it trailed five feet behind him like a wake. A necklace of icicles hung around his neck, and he held a staff crowned with a garnet the size of a man's heart.

"May your hunt today bring you much fortune," he said, "better than the days before it." His bony fingers tightened around his staff. He looked around at the other icelings, who moved silently between the frozen chambers. "They do not run or laugh, not even the children. They are hungry. They are thin."

Memoria bowed her head. "We will fly far today, Amberus. We will fly close to the Jet Mountains, but we dare not fly beyond them."

The elder's eyes darkened. "If the giants keep eating, we must abandon the Ice City."

Memoria's eyes widened. She gasped. "Abandon it? But Amberus, the icelings have lived here for a million years, since the dawn of ice. How could you abandon it?"

Amberus swept his arms around him, his bracelets of icicles clinking. "We have already abandoned it, sky child. Countless icelings once lived here. Two hundred remain, their bellies tight. I will let no more starve. The day will come, and we will have to leave, to move north, to the very feet of the Jet Mountains where seals still gather. We cannot let the giants eat so many. Their appetite is greater than that of snow craving clouds."

Terra placed a hand on the elder's shoulder. "Do not move north, Amberus. The giants hunger for more than seal flesh. You know how many icelings they've killed for sport. You cannot fight them."

The old iceling shook his head. The icicles strewn through his beard chinked. "No. But you can. When you take the sky spirit forms, you are mighty warriors."

Memoria took a deep breath. "May it never come to that. Let us fly on one more hunt. The giants would not eat all the seals, or they too would starve. There are more. We'll find them." She turned to her brother. "Come, Terra, we fly."

Even here, a thousand leagues north from her home, the Draco stars blessed her. Memoria drew her magic, the magic of Requiem. Scales flowed across her body, green like the forests of her home, glimmering in the morning light. Wings grew from her back. Claws, white as bone, grew from her fingertips and toes. She flapped her wings, took flight as a dragon, and flew between ice columns into the sky.

Terra shifted too. Soon he was flying beside her, a bronze dragon with white horns, his scales frosted. They flew north, leaving the Ice City, gliding over sheets of ice and snow toward the cruel Jet Mountains that marked the end of the world.

Memoria breathed deeply, relishing the wind. True, it was too cold here in exile, at the northern fringe of the world. And true, she missed seeing forests and rivers below her, not endless leagues of white. But at least she still had flying. To spread wings,