Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (8 page)

"Slaves?"
Kalafi laughed. "You take them for granted, as if they're as inherent a
part of our lives as our wings. It's thanks to Ishtafel, the conqueror of
Requiem, that slaves now serve you. Yes, thanks to this brother you spurn. And
so you will learn to live without them." Kalafi's lips stretched into a
thin grin. "Your two house slaves will die tomorrow. Come see them burn in
the bronze bull, daughter. Come hear them scream, then return to your chambers
where you can make your own bed, pour your own wine, and wipe your own
backside."

Meliora gasped.
"Mother!"

She thought of Kira and
Talana, her two slaves, young women who served in her chambers. The two were
meek things without sin—aside from the sin of their lesser race. To burn them in
the bronze bull?

Meliora had heard
Ishtafel speak of the bronze bull before—of Malok. Her brother used to terrify
her with those stories. As a child, Meliora had believed them and would cry and
cower. Ishtafel had described how soldiers pulled an unruly slave into a great,
hollow statue of a bull. Fires were lit under the bull until the bronze heated,
boiling the slave within. The slaves' screams would rise through a network of
pipes, emerging from the bull's mouth in a melodious song.

If you're a bad
girl,
Ishtafel had once taunted her,
I'm going to toss you into Malok's
belly and dance to your screams.

Meliora had cried so
much that Ishtafel had hugged her, soothed her, confessed that he had lied. Yet
now her mother resurrected that old threat. How could Malok be real? How could
the cruel bronze bull truly exist in Saraph, this realm of light and beauty?

"You lie,"
Meliora said. "Those are just stories Ishtafel invented. There is no
Malok."

Queen Kalafi laughed.
"Yes, daughter. Mere stories. And little fairies conjure up our bitumen
with the snap of their sparkling fingers, and unicorns bear us the tar on their
backs. I have sheltered you for too long, girl. You will accompany me tomorrow
at dawn to see your precious slaves sing in the bull. And then you will return
to your chambers, where you will pray to never see true horror as I have seen.
And in two moons, on the blessed summer solstice, you will marry your brother.
And nine months later, you will bear me a pure heir. You will do this or it will
be you burned in the bull."

Meliora's chest shook,
her head spun, and her eyes burned with tears. She spun and fled the chamber.

 
 
VALE

He stood in the blood, dust,
and agony of Tofet, burying his mother.

My people languish
in chains.
Vale's eyes burned, and his fists trembled.
My sister was
taken captive.
His breath shuddered, and the chains around his legs
rattled.
My mother is dead.

For all his twenty-one
years, Vale had labored in this place, making bricks with his father while his
mother and sister mined the bitumen that would hold those bricks together in
palaces and temples. For all those twenty-one years, Vale had sweated, wept,
screamed when the masters whipped him, yet still clung to hope—clung to a
desperate dream that someday Requiem would rise again, that someday he would
fly free with his family.

Now that family is
broken.
Tears burned in his eyes.
Now I bury my hope along with my
mother.

The grave yawned open
before him. A pit. A mass grave for all the slaves killed that day, over a
hundred souls. A hundred slaves worked, starved, beaten to death. Some mere
children, the whips of their masters too cruel for their frail bodies. Others were
elders, slaves who had toiled for decades under the sun, clinging to a hope to
see Requiem again, finally to end up here, bodies in a land of despair.

And one woman, torn
apart, her severed limbs and battered torso wrapped in a shroud. A woman who
had dared to fly, dared to fight. A lost light of Requiem. A mother.

"I'm sorry,
Mother," Vale whispered. "I'm sorry I wasn't there, that I couldn't
fly with you, fight with you."

A soft voice spoke at
his side. "Her soul will rise to the celestial halls of Requiem. She will
shine there in palaces of starlight, drink wine, and sing among our ancient heroes.
She is at peace now. She is at peace."

And yet pain filled
that voice. Vale turned to see Jaren, his father, standing at his side in the
crowd of mourners.

"There is no such
thing." Vale's voice was a hoarse whisper, yet the pain of an anguished cry
filled it. "Celestial halls? An afterlife of starlight? Just dreams. Just
stories." His tears burned in his eyes. "Maybe Requiem itself is but
a dream, a land that never was."

He saw how those words
wounded his father. Jaren winced and his lips tightened into a line. Dust
coated the priest's long grizzled beard, and chains hobbled his ankles. Years
of brickmaking in the sun had weathered his face; Jaren was only in his
fifties, yet he looked like a man of eighty—wrinkled, weary, his hair gray.
Despite the chains, despite his rags, despite his years of labor, Jaren still
clung to the old stories. Still called himself a priest of the Draco
constellation, the stars that supposedly had once blessed Requiem, that would someday
save them again. Still believed in that lost, distant realm the seraphim had
burned five hundred years ago.

But Vale no longer
believed, no longer cared if he hurt his father. There was so much pain in this
place, so much anguish. What was more pain? Why even live on, why linger, why
cling to stories? Perhaps his mother had taken the only sensible path. Perhaps
it was best to rise up, to fight, to die in battle rather than linger here in
chains.

Vale expected Jaren to
argue, to insist that Requiem was real, that stars truly blessed them, that a
dragon constellation truly shone in the northern skies. But the old priest
merely lowered his head, and tears streamed down his cheeks into his beard.

Vale felt all his anger
fade. He stepped close to his father, his own tears falling, and embraced the
old man. They stood together, crying together, their chains rattling, watching
through the veil of tears as the corpses were lowered into the pit.

Several dragons, their
collars removed but their limbs chained, pulled forth the wagons of corpses.
Upon a hill, an old slave with a white beard chanted prayers to the Eight Gods,
the vengeful deities the seraphim worshipped, the religion forced upon the Vir
Requis slaves in the land of Tofet.

"Praise the Eight!"
the white-haired slave cried upon the hill. "Blessed be their light!
Praise the seraphim masters for their mercy, and may their light guide the
souls of our dead to rest."

"Praise the Eight!"
answered slaves in the crowd, hundreds come to see their dead buried, as the
dragons tilted the wagons, as the dead spilled into the mass grave.

Curse the Eight,
Vale thought, staring at the bodies sliding into the pit. One among them was
his mother; he didn't even know which one anymore.
Curse the foul gods of
this place. Curse the seraphim. Curse the land of Tofet. Curse these chains.
And curse Ishtafel.

The memory filled Vale,
burning inside his skull. It had happened only hours ago, yet it seemed
eternal, an event ancient and current, a flame consuming all time, a terror
that he knew would always fill him. His father stepping into the quarry. Mother
dead in his arms.

Vale closed his eyes,
and his fists shook at his sides.

"You killed her,
Ishtafel," he whispered. "You killed my mother. You kidnapped my
sister."

I should have been
there,
Vale thought.
I should have flown with you, Mother.

He should have flown,
blown his dragonfire, lashed his claws. Yet this collar kept him chained. Kept
him in the dust, a worm, a wretch.

"Praise the
Eight!" the priest on the hill cried. "May the gods bless their
souls."

At Vale's side, his
father closed his eyes and whispered so softly Vale could barely hear.

"As
the leaves fall upon our marble tiles, as the breeze rustles the birches beyond
our columns, as the sun gilds the mountains above our halls—know, young child
of the woods, you are home, you are home." Jaren took a shuddering breath,
raised his head, and gazed up at the sky. Tears filled his eyes, and awe filled
his whisper. "Requiem! May our wings forever find your sky."

The ancient prayer of
Requiem. The words that, the stories claimed, King Aeternum had sung six
thousand years ago in a distant land, forging a home for the Vir Requis. A home
for dragons.

Vale raised his eyes,
seeking the Draco constellation, seeking those stars his father claimed blessed
Requiem. But he saw no stars that looked like a dragon, only a field of cold
lights like so many dead eyes.

The stars had abandoned
them. His mother was gone. His sisters were gone—both Elory and the sister
they never spoke of. All hope was gone.

The wagons dumped the
last corpses of slaves into the pit. The dragons—the few slaves allowed to
shift into their ancient forms—began shoveling dirt into the grave, hiding the
dead, hiding the shame. Soon Vale would return to his hut with his father, but
his mother won't be there, nor his sister, and in a few hours he would rise,
and he would toil in the sun, and the chains would chafe his body, and the
whips would cut his back, and it would continue. Year after year. Generation
after generation. Endless pain in the land of Saraph as Requiem remained but a
memory, fading to myth.

"Come, son."
Jaren placed a hand on his shoulder. Tears still streamed down his lined cheeks
to dampen his beard. "Let us return to our hut. Let us pray. Let—"

Laughter.

Laughter rolled across
the darkness, interrupting Jaren's words.

"Mother!" A
voice rose in mocking falsetto. "Mother, please!"

Slowly, his chains
rattling, Vale turned around.

He saw them there on a
hill. Two seraphim, a woman and a man. Both wore gilded armor, the breastplates
curved to mimic bare torsos. Both carried round shields and lances. Vale was
tall for a Vir Requis, almost six feet tall—a giant among the malnourished slaves—yet
these seraphim dwarfed him. The immortals were beings of beauty, hair long and
lustrous, pupils shaped as sunbursts in their golden eyes, lips full and pink,
wings the color of milk. Fallen angels. Masters. Destroyers.

"The little whore
whined like a babe," said the male seraph. He raised his voice to falsetto
again. "Mother, Mother, please don't let the bad seraph take me! Don't let
him spread my legs and thrust his holy spear into me!"

The female seraph
laughed. She raised a flaming whip. Vale recognized her. Here stood Shani, an
overseer of the tar pit, a woman who had beaten Elory with her whip too often
to count. So many nights, Elory had lain shivering on her straw bed, feverish
and moaning with pain, as Vale rubbed ointments into the wounds on her
back—wounds Shani had inflicted.

"Ishtafel's new
whore was in my work team," Shani said to her companion. "Worked as a
yoke bearer. I striped her back many times. Squealed like a pig every
time."

Rage flowed through
Vale, a fiery explosion. His fingernails drove into his palms, shedding blood.

They're talking
about Elory. About my sister.

"Come, son," Jaren
said, voice still choked with grief. He placed a hand on Vale's shoulder.
"Let's go. Leave them be."

But Vale could not look
away from the laughing seraphim on the hill. The pair were still talking, laughing
as they stared into the grave.

"Little harlot
will be back in Tofet in no time." The male seraph snorted. "The
weredragons never last long with Ishtafel."

Shani barked a laugh.
"Not weak as that one is. I beat her bloody too many times. She'll be back
as a corpse soon. Next time the wagons roll around, we'll spit on her body."

Jaren was speaking
behind him, urging calm. But Vale could no longer hear. The fury blasted
through him, shaking his limbs, constricting his chest, painting the world red.

He could not fly as a
dragon, not with the cursed collar around his neck, the metal engraved with
runes to crush his magic. But he could still fight with tooth and nail.

Better to die
fighting. Better to end this now, to die young rather than languish into old
age. The pit awaits us now or after years of pain.

With a roar, Vale raced
forward.

He charged uphill,
fists raised.

In the old stories, the
ones passed from father to son, the Vir Requis would rise as dragons, fight in
great armies in the sky, blowing dragonfire. Vale had never become a dragon;
the collar had constricted him since birth. But in his mind, as he charged
forth, he was a dragon roaring, a beast of fury and fire.

The two seraphim turned
toward him, eyes widening.

"For
Requiem!" Vale shouted. "For stars and dragonfire!"

He leaped forward,
fists swinging.

He was weakened by
years of servitude, feeding on gruel while building bricks for eighteen hours a
day, but the wrath of an ancient nation burned within him, and he moved fast.
He reached the seraphim and landed the first blow, driving his fist into the
male's chin.

It felt like punching a
cliff.

Vale's knuckles
cracked, and pain blazed through him.

"Rabid dog!" Shani
shouted. The beautiful seraph, her blond hair flying in the wind, swung her
whip.

The lash of fire
slammed into Vale, tore across his back, and wrapped around him to sting his
chest. His skin tore, and the fire cauterized the wound, burning his blood.

"Vale!" Jaren
shouted, racing uphill. "Vale, no!"

But Vale ignored his
father. Too much pain. Too much fury—the fury of a dragon, dragonfire blazing
even within his famished human form. He roared and attacked again, driving his
fist toward Shani.