The boy hopped into the air, shifted into an azure dragon, and flew a circle above. The people below pointed and gasped. The boy landed by Issari and resumed human form, eyes bright.

Issari stared at him in disbelief. "If you knew I was saving Vir Requis, if you knew of Requiem, why did you stay in Eteer? Why didn't you approach me for aid?"

He shrugged. "What would I have in the north? Nothing. Would Requiem welcome me, a beggar and thief? Perhaps, though I would only be an orphan there too. In Eteer I knew how to survive, how to hide, how to steal. At least, I did until the demon spawn destroyed our city." He bowed his head. "My life as an urchin is over. Now my life is to follow you, Issari Seran." Suddenly tears filled his eyes. "You are a great leader. You are a great light. We will follow you to redemption. To a new home."

Issari sighed and turned to look at the people walking behind her—haggard, wounded, close to death. She looked at the landscape around her, a lifeless desert, the ground cracked and rocky, the horizons wavering with heat, the sun heartless and beating down on them. Redemption? A new home? What hope could she give these people?

A distant speck appeared in the sky, soon growing to reveal a red dragon, smoke from his nostrils leaving two trails. The dragon circled once above the Eteerian exodus, then landed beside Issari, claws tearing into the cracked earth. Tanin released his magic, returning to his human form, and walked closer to Issari. The bright-eyed young man she had met last winter was gone. Instead she saw a haggard traveler, dust coating his dark hair and weary face. His cloak billowed in the sandy wind, tattered and charred. He had taken a khopesh, breastplate, and shield from a fallen soldier, replacing his old dagger. If not for the stubble on his face and tall frame—Eteerian soldiers shaved their faces and rarely grew so tall—Issari would have thought him a soldier of her fallen kingdom.

"I flew for many marks," Tanin said. "No water. No food, not even birds to hunt. Nothing but dry, cracked earth and stones, and . . . in the south, as you said, a great mountain range, and within it a single pass—a city like a gateway." His face darkened. "Goshar."

Issari nodded. "If any hope remains for us, it lies beyond Goshar's walls. That is where we head."