Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (14 page)

Elory shook her head.

Tash rolled her eyes.
"They sent me an idiot." She scuttled closer. "I have a lot to teach
you. When you kiss a man, you have to start slowly. Not just leap onto him.
First . . . you kiss his ear. Nibble it a bit. Blow on it. Move down to kiss
his neck, just brushing your lips along, so lightly. Just like this. Slowly.
Tease him until he's mad with desire, but let him linger." Tash moved her
lips up, whispering now. "Kiss the corner of his mouth, and then—"

Elory kissed her, just
a peck on the lips, that was all, then pulled back, blushing. "I'm
sorry." She gasped. "I don't know what I did."

Tash laughed.
"Gave me a little bit of hope."

That night—at least,
Elory thought it was night—the pipes and hookahs were laid down, and the
pleasurers slept. Some lay on mattresses, others on the floor, and some slept
sprawled across piles of pillows.

A few times, bells rang
on the doorway, and a seraph or two wandered in, sometimes drunk, always loud.
They never lingered. They chose a woman. Sometimes they took her back to their
chambers, sometimes they bedded her right here in the den, and the cries and
groans kept Elory awake until the men were done, until the slaves all slept
again.

Not that she would have
slept much even in silence. Her mind was a storm. Over and over, she kept
seeing it—her mother dying, torn apart. Over and over, she kept remembering
them—her father and brother, wondering if she'd ever see them again. Over and
over, she kept feeling it—Tash's hands and lips upon her, the fire it had
kindled in her, that she couldn't extinguish. How could she hope to sleep when
her world collapsed around her?

Finally the stream of
seraphim died down. Elory lay on the bed, waiting for more to arrive. Yet they
never did. Tash slept to one side, and two other pleasurers slept on a mattress
a few feet away, one of them snoring, the other drooling. The candles burned
low and guttered out, and darkness filled the pit.

Finally, when nothing
stirred, when all the world was stillness and shadows, Elory rose to her feet.

She left the bed.

She tiptoed in the
darkness.

I still wear a
collar and I can't shift into a dragon. But my legs are free. I can walk,
climb, run.

She inched between the
sleeping women, hands held out before her.

I will find her—my half
sister.
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
I will find the child my
father created before he met my mother, the child who had grown up in this
palace, the child of Queen Kalafi.

Tears filled Elory's
eyes as she found the exit, as she crept into a corridor, as she climbed a dark
staircase that rose into the ziggurat.

I will find my
sister. I will find Meliora.

 
 
JAREN

Night had fallen, and the
toil of the day ended, yet the Draco constellation did not shine above. Not in
this distant land. Not in the land of Tofet in the empire of Saraph. Not here
in the dust, captive, forgotten, in the dark.

The huts of Tofet
spread around him, simple clay dwellings, their walls a mix of mud, straw, and
bitumen. Unpaved roads spread between them, and the stench of tar rose on the
wind; the pit lay only a mile south. Just over the horizon, only a quick flight
for a chariot or dragon, rose the City of Kings—the jewel of the empire, a
wondrous realm of soaring temples, golden palaces, lush gardens, wonder and
wealth. Here in its shadow lurked the underbelly of Saraph, surrounded by
walls, the realm of a broken nation, of dragons collared into human forms. Of
death. Of loss. Only shadows and no starlight to light them.

"But we still
remember you, stars of Requiem," Jaren whispered, kneeling in the dust.
"The memories of your light have passed through the generations. As my forebears
worshipped you in Requiem, as our first king prayed to your light thousands of
years ago, so do I pray." He looked up toward the sky, seeing only the
stars of a different land. "Requiem! May our wings forever find your
sky."

For thousands of years,
he knew, the Vir Requis had sung that prayer. It never had more meaning, Jaren
thought. Throughout all of Requiem's wars—against the demons, the sphinxes,
the griffins, the phoenixes, the thousands of others who had risen to slay
Requiem—the Vir Requis could always look up, see their sky above. Yet now that
very sky was lost. Those very stars, which had blessed Requiem for millennia,
shone across the horizon, invisible to him.

"But your light
still shines within me." Jaren clutched his amulet, a simple piece of tin.
Upon it he had engraved a constellation shaped as a dragon. Brightest among its
stars was the dragon's eye, Issari's Star, its light woven from the soul of an
ancient princess of Requiem. "I still remember you, stars of Requiem. I
will find your sky."

"The stars are
only a myth." The voice rose behind him, hoarse, torn with old pain.
"Requiem itself is only a myth. Only a story slaves tell to cling to a
fool's hope."

Jaren rose to his feet,
turned around, and saw his son walking between the clay huts toward him.
Manacles encircled Vale's ankles, the chain between them only a foot long. The
collar circled his neck. His tunic was ragged, reduced to little more than a
loincloth. Ugly, charred lashes striped his chest, arms, and shoulders, and
bruises covered his face.

The seraphim had beaten
him. They would have burned him in Malok had Meliora not climbed into the bull,
aborting the day's burnings. Yet Vale looked little better than a burn victim,
a flicker of life in a raw shell.

Such pain filled Jaren
that even the memory of starlight could no longer soothe him.

My firstborn
daughter lives in a great palace, pampered, surrounded by gold and jewels. My
son barely clings to life, and all his hope is lost.

Jaren lowered his head.
The memories seemed too great to bear. Twenty-eight years ago, he had worked in
the palace, a house slave, a young man to tend to the queen in her pool of
heated, salted water. A young man to brush her hair, paint her nails. A young
man she had taken into her arms, had loved.

A young man who had
given her a daughter. A young man she had cast out into the heat, the dust, the
agony of Tofet.

A young man who had
grown into this old, weary man. A father mourning. For lost Meliora, unaware of
her heritage, raised as a princess of Saraph. For lost Elory, kidnapped, taken
to serve the cruel Ishtafel. For Vale, his son, perhaps more lost than even his
sisters.

"You must
believe." Jaren hobbled toward his son. "That the stars still shine
beyond the horizon. That King's Column, our most sacred pillar, still rises
from the ruin. That we can return to Requiem someday. That we can be
saved."

They stood together on
the dusty road outside their hut—the home that only the two of them now
shared.

Vale's eyes were as
chips of heated stone. "We've waited for five hundred years in Saraph for
salvation. The stars have abandoned us, if they ever existed at all. No savior
will rise to lead us back to Requiem. We must save ourselves. Or die." He
took a step closer to Jaren. "Father, I leave before dawn to work in the
city. The masters will transfer me. I will work on the new Temple of Ishtafel,
hauling limestone in my claws." His eyes blazed with fire. "I will
fly as a dragon."

Jaren had not thought
it possible to feel more pain—not with his life shattered. Yet now new fear
flowed through him. He gripped his son's arms.

"Vale, you must always
obey the masters." His eyes dampened to see the wounds still covering his
son. "You were saved once from the bronze bull. If you defy the seraphim again,
they—"

"—will kill
me." Vale nodded. "Good. Maybe I want to die fighting. Better than
this. Better than to die as a slave in chains. But no, Father. I won't
die." A chaotic smile stretched across his lips. "I must stay alive
for Elory. To save her."

Jaren stared into his
son's eyes, and he saw the desperation there, and iciness filled his belly.

"Son," Jaren
whispered. "You cannot do this. You cannot hope to fly to her, to find her
in the palace, to save her. They will kill you, son. I cannot lose you."
Jaren dropped to his knees, shaking. "I already lost a wife. I already
lost my daughters to captivity in the palace. I cannot lose you too."

Vale only stared at
him, eyes hard. "You already lost me," he whispered. "We've all
been lost. Always. Since we were born into this cursed land. But I will not
fade into shadows. The fire of Requiem will rise again . . . one last
time."

Fists clenched, the
young man turned and walked away.

"Son!" Jaren
cried. He tried to follow. His legs were too weary, too old. He tripped. He
pushed himself up, elbows bloody. "Vale!"

He tried to find his
son, but Vale disappeared into the labyrinth of huts, dirt roads, and chained
slaves. Gone into shadow. Gone to fire.

Finally Jaren could
walk no more, his legs too bent, too weak from a lifetime of toil. He fell to
his knees in the dirt between the huts, despair coursing through him.

I lost my wife. I
lost my daughters. Do I lose you now too, my son?

Chest shuddering, Jaren
raised his head. He had reached the edge of the camp. From here, when he stared
at the horizon, he could just make out the tip of the dynasty's ziggurat. The
rest of the City of Kings lay hidden, but the ziggurat soared, its top coated
in platinum, gleaming, displaying the Eye of Saraph—an eye within a sunburst.
Always watching over him.

You're there in that
palace, my daughters. You fly there now too, my son.

Jaren raised his eyes
to the heavens, and he prayed, and he did not know if any gods heard, if any
light but the light of Saraph could ever shine upon him.

 
 
KALAFI

She lay in her heated pool
in her chamber of gold and jewels, the candles burning low.

Her slave blood is
rising.
Kalafi winced as the burn across her belly flared, even in the
salted water.
Already Meliora sees the slaves as her people.

Kalafi's memories rose
like the steam. Long centuries of enduring her husband in bed, praying every
year for another child, a child that never came. For centuries, her husband had
railed against her, had railed against Ishtafel, claiming that his son had
sucked Kalafi's womb dry.

How he raged!

For so many years, King
Harash—her husband, her brother—had sunken into his wine, his stupor, his
hatred of his son, his hatred of his wife's womb that would not bear him a
daughter, a woman to mate with his son, to preserve the blood.

Lying in her pool, her
walls of opulence glittering around her, Kalafi clenched her fists.

"But my womb was
not barren. Your seed was as weak as your mind."

It was here in this
very chamber. In this pool. Nearly thirty years ago, the slave Jaren had tended
to her, a young man, handsome, tall for a slave, and she had taken him into the
water. She had loved him. She had fostered his seed in her womb, growing a
daughter, the daughter her husband could not give her.

Lying now in the same
pool, the water soothing her wound that would not heal, Kalafi passed her hands
down her legs, remembering his touch, the forbidden pleasure of slave flesh.
She knew that her son took slaves into his bed, that many of the seraphim did,
plucking beauties from Tofet and hiding them in the den beneath the ziggurat.
Kalafi had succumbed to her temptation just that one time, then cast the man
aside, let him grow weary and old in Tofet, to die far from her sight.

But her husband . . .

A smile rose on
Kalafi's lips.

"I wanted to
see
you die."

She inhaled sharply,
remembering how wonderful it had felt, seeing the king eat the poisoned fig,
hearing him choke, watching him fall to the floor. A child in her womb—a
slave's child—Kalafi had laughed as her husband died, and she had spat on his
body. She had taken his throne. And now, under her reign, Saraph rose to its
greatest glory—the empire's last enemies defeated, the world theirs, Edinnu
reborn in exile.

Kalafi rose from the
pool. Her wound, the ugly burn she had endured falling from Edinnu, bubbled on
her side, rising like a red serpent from her waist to her ribs. The pain was a
dull throb now, but she knew that within hours, it would flare again, never
healing, fading only when she soaked in the hot water again. Alone, her slaves
dismissed, she stepped out of her pool and walked toward the balcony.

She stood between the
gilded columns, naked in the night, the warm spring breeze drying her. From the
height of her ziggurat, she gazed at her city. Lanterns burned in the night, a
field of stars, their light falling upon the Paths of the Gods, the temples and
palaces, and the desert beyond. There, in the land of Tofet on the horizon, he
still lived. She had seen him at the bronze bull.

"Jaren," she
whispered.

Kalafi winced.

She too had wanted a
daughter—a woman to breed with Ishtafel, to give her an heir of pure blood.
Yet now the blood of weredragons flowed through Meliora. The girl did not know
her heritage; she thought that her father was the fallen Harash, that the king
had choked on a fig, not that Kalafi had pumped the fig fill of hemlock.

"But something
inside you calls out," Kalafi whispered. "You saw the slaves . . .
and you saw yourself. You burned yourself to save them."

Kalafi's fists
clenched. She spun around from the balcony, pulled on a muslin robe embroidered
with golden sunbursts, and strapped a dagger to her side. She left her chamber.

She walked through the
palace, still wet, water dripping from her wings onto the mosaic floor. Oil
lanterns glowed on the wall, illuminating ivory statues and murals of the gods.
Finally she reached a door of giltwood. Armored guards knelt before her, and
Kalafi stepped into the room.