<em>Mother, <br/><br/>   When last I wrote to you, my lord husband Koshak Kahn, Chosen of The Unconquered Sun, had found a girl of his own kind with hair as fiery as any sister of Sorsa Endi—Gears of Heavenly Delight.  She is an engineer of the ancient crafts more than a warrior, and a leader of many d’jalla.  We three smiled at the light in our lord’s eye and took wagers on how long his next conquest would resist him.  Viridian Dawn and I laughed at Ember Rose’s idle speculation that he might bring a fourth bride too our tent.  <br/><br/>   As time progressed, and our lord did not come to us with the scent of her passions on him, we began to think perhaps Ember Rose’s playing at human romanticism was not so idle, for we each suspected in our heart of hearts that we won our Lord’s enduring flame by fleeing so long from his courtship even as his persistence so thoroughly bound us into this—alien love.  <br/><br/>   Of the Delzhan riders our lord still commanded—the Band of the Red Eagle—five and twenty still remained.  I have written to you before, mother, of my fondness for the bravery these fragile mortal warriors show every time they ride with us and our lord against immortal foes, and how they have taken a special fondness for me in return, and call that they fight for my honor in one of their war cries.  <br/><br/>   These fine men are armed and armored—like my lord--with carefully reforged and polished glass from the shattered towers of Chiaroscuro.  Gears was taken with this material and—shortly after completing the exploration of the first age city wherein we had met, she declared her intent too travel to Chiaroscuro and research the process.  <br/><br/>   Our lord could not return to Chiaroscuro without placing his kin in danger of the Wyld Hunt, but offered too escort her too a nearby trade oasis.  We three grew increasingly convinced of our lord’s enamored state as he worked hard too find ruins with sufficiently interesting technology to distract her, but Gears was not to be drawn away.  <br/><br/>   We encountered another woman of power in a city where we paused to rest on the route, and she joined the trek for the last week, but when we turned back, and the wind of the open desert flowed through our hair once more, Koshak looked to each of us, and gave us each a red hot kiss, then whispered where we three alone could hear, “For give me, my beloved.  In the joy of finding those like myself, I was beginning too loose my grip on the truth that the three people most important too me are most beautiful in their difference.”  <br/><br/>   Very few weeks past, though, before a kinsman of my lord found us encamped at a remote oasis two weeks hard ride from Chiaroscuro.  <br/><br/>   “Cousin,” Quoth he.  “Dark and terrible things occur in the city of glass.  In our very household, the craft masters who forge glass for us are dying in gruesome tragedies, only to have their families beggar themselves in funerals, even those who paid little attention to their ancestors in the past.  The cities thaumaturges and priests are plagued by fevers and nightmares of the deceased.  The same fevers plunge the cities slaves, it seems.  I’ve seen it in my prize d’jalla.  The loyal girl woke screaming from her fever three times in one night, confronted by the image of her grandmother’s head falling from her shoulders each time.   <br/><br/>“The Khan’s do not yet realize it because of the lack of direct attacks against the military, cousin, but the city is primed for invasion.  Merchants fear too approach with food.  Rats foul the stores.  I look to Thorns and fear what is to come, cousin.  <br/><br/>“I fear the Dead will march on Chiaroscuro.”  <br/><br/>Our lord rose, and looked out across the open sands.  They held his gaze for many moments.  <br/><br/>“Cousin,” he replied.  “The Unconquered Sun had given me great strength, but I am one man.  I command 25 soldiers and 3 Flame Ducks.”  <br/><br/>“Koshak,” the mortal replied.  “You are one man, yes.  You 29 have stood against the Dead, the Wyld, and things even the Court of Orderly Flame itself cannot Name.  Come back to Chiaroscuro, my captain.  You do not command 25 men, you command 250.”  He drew his blade in salute, and 225 delzhan followed suit, their horses smartly dropping to one knee.  <br/><br/>   *   *   *<br/><br/>Mother, my lord husband is human, yet immortal.  He is flesh, and he is fire.  <br/><br/>I never knew Sorsa Endi save in you.  To me, she is not the dragon you knew, loved, and betrayed.  She is the light in your life when you speak of her.  The vital energy that radiates from deep within the core of an eternally tired harlot when she speaks of the time when she was the shield-sister of a dragon, and forgets her own conviction that she cannot be so again.  <br/><br/>Mother.  I am the shield bride of a God-King of Creation.  Today, when my lord husband turned too return the salute of his new army and called that the Band of the Red Eagle would ride for Chiaroscuro, I know what you felt when you soared beside Sorsa Endi.  Walk away from your despair, I pray you.  <br/><br/>Let you light shine.  <br/><br/>---Love always, Ember Rose</em><br/><br/>Recorded in Haman Osirian’s “For the Honor of the Rose of the Sun: The Birth of a Dragon”<br/>