Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (13 page)

Elory wanted to cry
again, to cower, to submit. But instead, she found herself staring back
steadily into those angry, brown eyes.

"And we're all Vir
Requis." Elory squared her shoulders. "We're all children of Requiem.
We're all dragons, not rats. Did you forget that, Tash? Did you forget who you are, where we come from?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Did you
forget Requiem?"

The rage in Tash's eyes
only grew. "I forget nothing. Requiem?" She scoffed. "A dead
land. As dead as your precious mother. Dragons?" She tugged at her collar.
"Not so long as we wear these, my darling, and there's only one key in the
empire that can open this lock. And that's one key I don't own."

The Keeper's Key,
Elory
thought. A key imbued with ancient magic. The key that had removed her mother's
collar, letting the woman shift into a dragon to dig for bitumen. The key that
fit into no padlock, but whose runes of power could unlock the collar around
her neck. The key that removed the collars of the brick lifters, those who
hauled stones as dragons, carrying them to the tops of temples. Just a single
key, only one ever made, the most precious one in the empire.

If Elory could somehow
steal that key—surely it was kept here in this palace!—and if she could
remove enough collars . . . if enough dragons could fly against the chariots,
blow their dragonfire . . .

But no. Elory dismissed
that idea. Back in the war, five hundred years ago, tens of thousands of
dragons had fought Ishtafel and his chariots. Tens of thousands had fallen from
the sky. Even an army of dragons could not stop the seraphim. They were a race
of immortal demigods. To them, even dragons were no more dangerous than animals
were to men. As men in olden days had ruled beasts several times their size, so
would the seraphim forever rule the Vir Requis, collared or not. Even should
Elory find the Keeper's Key, it would not save them.

"Stop
daydreaming!" Tash said. Her eyes rolled so far they almost looked into
her skull. "Gods above, a simpleton, this one is. Now get out of my room.
Go!" She pointed at the curtain of beads. "Go, go! Out with you."

"But . . ."
Elory hesitated. "I was told that I'll learn the ways of . . ." She
felt her cheeks flush, and she couldn't speak louder than a whisper. "Of
pleasuring a man."

She glanced around her.
Between the curtain's beads, she could see the rest of the pit. The women
slumped across pillows, smoking the hintan that muffled their minds, waiting
for men to claim them. Did Elory truly want to join them, to learn from them?
She had come here to gain time, to hope to find a way to sneak through the
palace, to contact her sister. Not to learn how to become a . . . pleasurer.

Yet if I don't
learn, Ishtafel will know. He'll send down his men to check on me, or he'll
come down himself.
She gulped.
I'll have to learn this trade or I won't
even last a week here.

She looked back at
Tash. "Will you teach me?"

Tash let out a groan so
loud it was a wonder the sleeping woman in bed didn't wake. "Does a
tigress teach a rat to hunt? Get out of my room. Go ask one of my girls to
mentor you. I can't be wasting time on a hopeless cause."

Elory glanced through
the curtain beads again. The other women barely seemed conscious enough to
breathe, let alone teach her the skill. The one by the statue was jangling the
bracelet again, laughing hysterically as it chinked.

"I'll try to learn
from them." Elory sighed. "I promised Ishtafel that I would. The
prince said that I have only a week here, and then I'm to return to his chamber
in the ziggurat's crest, and—"

Tash grabbed Elory's
cheeks and tugged her face toward her. "What did you say?"

She gulped. Tash's
fingers were digging into her cheeks, as painful as talons. "I said that
I'll try to learn from them. Maybe once the smoke clears, they can teach me,
and—"

"Not that
part!" Tash's eyes flashed. "What you said after that."

"That I promised
Ishtafel that I'd study here for a week, that—"

"Liar!" Tash
shouted, raising her hand to slap Elory again.

"I tell the
truth." Elory pulled the scroll from her pocket; it bore Ishtafel's seal.
"I bear a letter from him."

Tash snatched the
scroll, examined the seal, and blanched. The slave could almost certainly not
read—virtually no slaves could—but all knew Ishtafel's seal, the eye within
the sunburst. Tash shoved the scroll back at Elory, unopened.

"Bloody
stars," the pleasurer whispered. "Oh bloody stars above." She
stared at Elory, eyes narrowed. "It's true. He chose you. A rat."
Suddenly her eyes softened. "You poor thing. You poor, poor little
rat."

Elory remembered
Ishtafel returning her friend to the bitumen mine, how her friend Mayana had
slammed down at her feet, beaten, strangled. She wondered how many other slaves
Ishtafel had stolen from Tofet, how many of them Tash had trained, and how long
they had lasted.

Elory gulped. She
turned to step between the strings of beads. "I'll find a little spot of
my own, I'll watch what the others do, and—"

Tash grabbed her arm,
pulling her back. "No you won't." Her eyes flashed again.
"Ishtafel himself chose you. Prince Ishtafel, the Fire of Saraph, the
Breaker of Worlds. Do you know what this means? Do you know how dangerous this
is? Do you know what would happen if you don't please him?" Tash
shuddered. "He'd blame me. Me! I run this place, and you're my responsibility
now. I will teach you. From now on, you follow me everywhere. From now on, you
are my ward." She sighed—a huge sigh that flowed from head to toes.
"Why do the gods curse me so?"

One week,
Elory
thought.
One week to linger here in smoke . . . to find a way out.

She lifted one foot,
placed it down, and lifted the other. No more shackles. Free to walk, to slink
through shadows, to roam the palace . . . to find her sister. To find hope for
Requiem.

 
 
ISHTAFEL

He walked through the
shadowy halls of his palace, feeling like a wolf trapped in tunnels, hungry for
flesh, thirsty for blood, ravenous for a mate.

He was not meant for
this. Not for dark halls, gilded and jeweled though they might be. Not for
languor, for splendor, for the pampered idling away—the languishing!—that his
sister favored. No. Ishtafel had been born, bred, breastfed for conquest. For
the conquering of lands. For the conquering of women. For the conquering of a
world and all that was in it.

I should not have let
the slave leave.
Roaming the shadowy halls, Ishtafel clenched his fists so
hard blood dripped from them. To let her learn how to pleasure him? Was he some
weak king who lies on his back, like a turtle unable to right himself, seeking
a harem to deliver their pleasures upon his withering flesh? No. He should have
taken what he wanted from the girl, shattered her body if she resisted. He
should shatter them all. Reptiles. Sick, disgusting, slithering snakes who hid
in human forms, who—

"My lord!"

Several of the
slaves—young women, collared, barefoot—appeared in the corridor before him.
They knelt in the shadows.

Ishtafel did not slow
his step. "You, up!" he barked, pointing at one.

The woman rose to her
feet, quivering. "My lord? How may I—"

He shoved her head
against the wall, a movement so fast she never saw it coming. Palm open, he
grinded her skull against the limestone, crushing the bone, sending the blood
and brain spurting out like juice from a shattered melon. The stone cracked,
and still he grinded the mush of flesh and bone fragments until nothing was
left, nothing but a body topped with ruin.

"Clean it
up!" He walked onward, leaving the corpse to slump to the floor.
"Slaves, clean!"

The other women
screamed. Shrill sounds. Infuriating. Screaming and weeping, fretting about the
hall, crying out wordlessly—terrified animals, that was all. No more than
livestock.

Hand dripping, Ishtafel
walked on, leaving them behind. The dark halls spread before him, and as
Ishtafel kept walking, he imagined that he was back in Requiem, back in his
first great war. A young man—not much older than Meliora was now. Many of the
glorious battles, the famous ones, the ones engraved onto walls and columns and
sung of in glittering halls, were the battles in the sky. Battles of countless
chariots of fire flying against countless dragons. Battles of fire, rain,
lightning, glorious battles for tapestries, paintings, epic poems. But the true
battles, Ishtafel remembered, the true horror that had tested his mettle, had
happened in places like this. In dark halls. Surrounded by stone. Underground.

In the last days of the
war five hundred years ago, in the tunnels of Requiem, he had roamed like this
in darkness. Battling the weredragons' human forms in their burrows, claiming
step by step, life by life. Trapped in darkness, shining out his light, tasting
their blood.

Watching his beloved Reehan
die.

As Ishtafel walked in
his palace, he raised his fingers to his lips, and he licked them, tasting the blood
of the weredragon he had killed. Coppery. Sweet. An intoxicating wine, finer
than all the vintages that poured from the jugs of the empire.

There is nothing
sweeter than death,
Ishtafel thought.
There is no finer nectar.

Finally he paused by a
portico of columns that afforded a view of the city beyond. Ishtafel stood
here, staring out at the night, at his empire.

Saraph.

Ishtafel had been born
on this world, this desolate rock floating in the darkness. He had never lived,
killed, conquered back in the fabled realm of Edinnu, had never seen its
fields, meadows, its trees that gave forth endless fruit. He had never fought
the gods, never suffered their wounds, never been cast out from paradise.

But I built a new
paradise here. I built a new realm with us as the gods.
He clenched his
fist, feeling the blood and brains squishing within
. Where we are the
masters.

And Ishtafel knew why
he felt trapped.

After five hundred
years, his war had ended. His paradise had been a paradise of blood, tunnels,
death, and now—with the giants fallen, his last enemies slain—he too had been
cast out from his realm of endless delights. He too was lost.

"I built this
empire, but do I have a place within it? How do I live without killing? How do
I stay strong in a realm of peace?"

There was only one
answer, he knew. Had always been only one answer.

"With you,
Meliora," he whispered into the night. "With the heir you will bear
me."

He would not see
himself soften, grow weak like his mother, a decadent queen who languished in a
salted bath, a pathetic strip of meat still dreaming of the olden days. No. He
would seize Meliora's womb. He would plant his seed there. He would grow a son
within her, and he would raise a great prince, a great heir, a god.

"You will be mine,
Meliora." He bared his teeth, sucking in the hot night air. "I
conquered the world for our dynasty. Now I will conquer you."

 
 
ELORY

"No, rat!" Tash's
brown eyes flashed with anger. "You have to ease into it. Slowly. To
stroke him . . . gently."

She grabbed Elory's
wrist and lowered her hand. Guided by her mentor, Elory stroked Tash's thigh,
slowly running her fingers up and down.

"Like this?"

Tash groaned.
"You're moving like an automaton! You have to relax. To be like a
musician. A musician doesn't just play the notes rigidly, she feels the music.
Feel me."

"I am!" Elory
kept stroking the woman's leg.

"I don't just mean
feel me physically, I mean . . . feel
me
. Who I am. Who
he
will
be." Tash moved closer to Elory. "Let me show you."

They sat on a bed
between the curtains of beads. The candles burned in their alcove, wax
dripping. The hookah smoke flowed through the pleasure pit. On the bed beside
them, two women lay asleep, drooling, deep in the slumber of hintan. Elory didn't
know the hour. There was no sunlight here, only the candlelight and the light
in Tash's eyes.

Slowly, the dark-haired
pleasurer ran her fingers along Elory's body, trailing them up her legs, up her
back, toward her ears, along her shoulders.

"See?" Tash whispered.
"I want to explore you. To know who you are. To see all the little places
where you're sensitive." She let her fingertips stroke Elory's earlobes,
then move down her neck. "I want to know you. That is what lovemaking is.
Any brute can thrust into a woman, and any woman can grab a man's stick and
make him feel good for a moment. That's not art. What we do, my little pet, is
music
."

Tash's hands moved down
her body, and Elory closed her eyes. She had to admit that it felt good. She
had never loved anyone before, not a man or a woman. In the pits of bitumen,
who had time or strength for such pursuits? Yet now, as Tash stroked her, new
feelings awakened in Elory, then grew inside her, trickling across her
body—her legs, her lips, everywhere that Tash touched. The woman's fingers
were indeed the fingers of a musician, playing her every part, igniting her,
lighting the notes upon her.

"I don't know if I
can do this." Elory opened her eyes. "I feel so clumsy."

Tash nodded. "You
are. Your hands are used to hauling buckets, not awakening fire in flesh. Try
again."

Elory nodded and tried
again, running her fingers along Tash, but she felt like a lumbering brute who
had stumbled upon a lyre, unable to produce any chord.

"Oh, stars above."
Tash groaned. "You really are useless. I'm doomed. Doomed! The seraphim
will have my hide. Have you ever even kissed a man?"