Asha reached back and pulled Omar forward to look around the corner beside her, and she asked, “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
“A woman with strange animal features?” Omar smiled at her. “Once or twice.”
“I mean the wings,” Asha said. “Have you ever seen that before? Or her before?”
“I don’t recognize her,” he said. “Though I can’t see her terribly well. She is dressed in the old Aegyptian fashion, I think. But I’ve never seen a person with wings at all.”
Asha looked out again and saw the winged woman leap into the air several times and use her outstretched arms to glide across the rocky heap to another spot, where she resumed sweeping the dust and debris aside with her long, shining wings.
Then Asha turned her attention to the second figure, the one who was screaming and roaring. On the far side of the temple where she could barely see him at all stood a man wearing a black robe. His back was turned to her and all she could glimpse of him were the golden bracers on his forearms and the black sheen of his hair. The man was kicking and clawing at the fallen stones, lifting and hurling huge beams and mortared bricks aside as though they were nothing more than rotten apples, causing the soldiers to run left and right to avoid being crushed by the jagged missiles. And after several long moments of this violent tantrum, the robed man turned and moved in Asha’s direction.
She inhaled sharply.
For a moment, a very brief moment, she thought the man wore a black mask carved with the features of a deformed sort of dog, like the ceremonial masks she had seen as a child in Ming. But then she saw the way the light played over him, and the way the long muzzle moved, and the way the tall black ears twitched, and she knew.
“He has the head of a dog!” she hissed at Omar.
The man stuck out his head again to squint at the robed figure. “I think you’re right, though it’s no dog that I recognize. But the rest of him looks human enough.”
Asha looked again and saw that the dog-headed man did indeed have human hands at the ends of his arms and what appeared to be human legs striding about between the flaps of his robe. She also saw that the fine sheen of the black fur on the man’s face only fell as low as his throat, and from that point down he had the same smooth brown flesh as a normal man. “It’s only his head, just like Wren’s ears, isn’t it?”
“Possibly.”
“What are they doing? What do they want?”
“Well, if they’re digging in the rubble, I can only assume they want to find someone or something that was in the temple,” Omar said. “Something of value to them. But of course, that only raises more questions.”
They watched the strange pair leaping and digging at the ruined Temple of Osiris. When the soldiers approached the woman, she would shriek and blast them back with a sweep of her wings, and then glide away to another part of the ruins. No one approached the man in black. And gradually, the raging bellows from the dog- headed man receded into soft growls and the winged woman’s quick flitting about became a calmer procession of walking and gliding.
“I think they’re getting tired,” Asha said. “Should we do something? They seem crazed, and people could be hurt by all the rocks flying around. Should we go out there?”
“Are you joking? This is what I do, kind lady.” Omar grinned, straightened up, and strode out from the corner and waved to the two strangers, calling out, “Hello there!”
“Lunatic!” Asha grimaced and then followed Omar out, keeping him between herself and the two creatures, and wondering what sort of angry memory she should use to summon the dragon, should its power be needed. She saw the soldiers looking at her, but they held their ground and kept their weapons pointed at the monstrous looters.
Are they holding spears? They look very short and heavy for spears.
“Hello!” Omar called again, his right hand raised in greeting as his left hand rested on his sword. “My name is Omar. Can I help you?”
The winged woman and the dog-headed man both jerked up and peered at him, and then both of them screamed. The woman leapt into the air and man dashed across the street with his canine fangs snapping and dripping with white foam. Several of the soldiers’ weapons fired from every side, barking and echoing sharply off the walls.
“Good Lord!” Omar drew his seireiken and the blazing white sun-steel blade lit up the shadowy street, painting every stick and stone in milk white, charcoal grays, and deepest blacks. He waved the flashing sword over his head as the woman soared down at him, and at the last moment she bent her feathered arms and streaked up into the evening sky.
Asha squinted against the glare of the seireiken and saw the dog-headed man veer around Omar in a wide circle and come racing toward her instead. For a moment, a cold panic washed through her breast and she couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. But then she felt her own fingernails biting into her palm and she remembered what she had to do.
In a flash, she recalled a small house in the mountains of Rajasthan where she had argued with a young mother over the life of her child. Asha had been angry that day, and regretted it later, but now as she looked back on that day her anger wasn’t directed at the mother but at her younger self, at her own arrogance and close- mindedness.
It was a very specific sort of anger, and it woke the golden dragon in a very specific sort of way.
Asha felt the heat rippling down her arms as the golden scales armored her flesh from the elbows down to her fingers and her shining ruby claws. The hot scales formed over her neck and chest, protecting her vital points, and the last of the transformation was in her lower legs, armoring her with golden greaves and ruby talons to grip the earth at her feet. When the beast man finally reached her, she was rooted to the street and already swinging one of her armored fists at his head.
The black snout of the creature snapped aside as she struck it, and in that instant she saw it clearly, saw that it was no dog’s head at all, that it was some other animal entirely. The muzzle was too long and slender, and the ears were too tall and square. Whatever it was, it was hideous.
He stumbled, but only barely. The robed man swung back with his own bare fists and Asha shielded her face with her scaled arms. The first three punches glanced off with only a slight tremor, but then his open palm slammed into her chest just beneath her arms. Again the golden scales protected her, but the force of the blow threw her back several steps as her ruby talons tore free of the dusty road, and she fell back on her rear.
“Asha! Stay down!” a young female voice cried out as the soldiers’ weapons barked again in a haphazard pattering like hail on a metal roof, and many small white clouds of smoke appeared around the men.
Asha threw up her arms to shield her head again as the man in black rushed at her, his eyes a bright white haze unbroken by pupil or iris. It had the uncanny effect of making him appear blind, and of hiding where he was looking. But Asha’s only concern was his bare foot as he leapt at her, intending to stomp her into the earth.
A cold white wind ripped across the street and Asha felt herself being gently tugged and lifted, but she stayed right where she lay. And as she sat there, protecting her head with her golden gauntlets, she saw the white wind yank the robed man up into the air and hurl him back across the road onto the pile of broken bricks.
Asha hastily looked around for the source of the cry and the wind, and found both standing behind her at the corner of the building where she herself had hidden a moment ago. There, standing in a dust cloud, was the pale girl in black, Wren. She was just beginning to lower her arms and the silver bracelets rang out on her wrists. Priya stood just behind her, one little hand resting on the northern girl’s shoulder.
“What was that?” Asha asked.
“Look out!” Wren pointed at the temple.
Asha looked up just in time to see the robed man rush at her again, this time ducking low and scooping her up from the street with both arms to lift her up over his head. Asha twisted about in his grasp and reached down to grab his shoulder with her left claws and his throat with her right. She knew the intense heat of the dragon’s ruby talons would burn him and he would be forced to drop her.
But he didn’t.
The inhuman head screamed at her, its vicious white eyes stretched wide, and the man shook her body up over his head. Asha dangled above him, kicking and struggling, but she couldn’t twist free of him.
“Enough!” she yelled, and she felt the dragon soul in her chest unwinding, expanding, reaching up farther into her flesh. The scales swept outward to cover the rest of her arms and legs and back just as the robed man dropped
