Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (3 page)

I stand in chains,
the daughter of many generations of slaves, and yet I still remember Requiem. I
am still proud
.

Ishtafel's brow furrowed
as he stared at her.

"Look at how she
raises her chin, how she stares at me, not at her feet." Ishtafel tilted
his head. "A proud one. Not yet broken."

Ishtafel's companion,
Shani the overseer, snarled. "I will break her, Your Excellence."

The seraph raised her
whip and Elory winced, expecting the pain, but Ishtafel reached out, staying
Shani's hand.

"Wait."

Elory released a shaky
breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She stared up at the seraph, her
chest rising and falling, her arms shaking. Sweat dripped into her eyes, and she felt blood trickling down her back, and the damn fear wouldn't
stop crawling along her spine.

Ishtafel stepped
closer. Elory felt as small as a child before this giant of a god. He reached
down his hand, a hand large enough to encase her head. While the rest of him
was all wealth and might—the gilded armor, the pale wings, the flowing
hair—Elory noticed that his hand was not soft. Calluses covered his fingers,
and thin scars trailed across his palm. The hand of a warrior.

With that large hand,
he rubbed tar off her brow, the movement almost like a caress. He stared down
upon her, and in his golden eyes, Elory saw herself reflected—covered in tar,
sweat, and blood, a young collared woman with a shaved head and dark eyes, a
slave, only a slave with dreams of ancient glory.

"You do not look
away?" Ishtafel said, his voice soft, his words only for her. "Most
slaves avert their eyes from the sight of a god."

"I did not avert
my eyes from Mayana's corpse," Elory said. "I will not avert them
from you either."

"Impudent
worm!" Shani raised her whip again, teeth bared. The seraph stood nearly
two feet taller than Elory, her arms strong, her whip crackling with fire.
"I'm going to flay you alive and toss your skinless corpse into the tar."

"You will do no
such thing," Ishtafel said, voice calm. "Lower your whip, Shani. This
slave intrigues me. Not yet broken. Still some spirit to her." He smiled
thinly, and he stroked Elory's cheek. His fingers came back sooty. "Once
the dirt is removed, and she's clad in livery, her hair growing longer, her
body perfumed, she would do well in the palace. There's fire to this one.
There's strength to her. I like that." His smile widened—a thin, predatory
smile, the smile a wolf gives a sheep before devouring it. "She will last
longer than the previous one."

Elory's eyes stung. Her
heart felt ready to shatter her ribs and thump into the dirt. She turned her
head and saw the corpse still there. Mayana's eyes were still open, staring at
Elory, her face twisted with pain. Her teeth had been bashed in. Her eye socket
had shattered. Drying blood soaked her fine cotton livery. The finger marks
around her throat were long, powerful—the same fingers that had just caressed
Elory's cheek.

"Sir, I . .
." Elory gulped. "I know not of the palace's ways. I'm only a yoke
bearer, sir. I—"

"You will address
him as 'Your Excellence!'" Shani said, and now her whip did lash. The
fiery throng slammed into Elory's chest. Her rags tore. So did her skin. She
cried out, wobbling, nearly dropping her yoke. If she spilled the bitumen, she
knew the overseers would not allow her a quick death. Bitumen was the glue that
held the empire of Saraph together. To lose buckets of the black gold meant a burning
in Malok, the bronze bull on the hill. Recalcitrant slaves cooked within the
belly of the idol, their screams flowing through pipes and rising from the
bull's mouth as a melodious song.

"Shani!"
Ishtafel's voice barely rose above normal volume, yet it carried the rage and
authority of a great cry. His hand—that hand that had beaten Mayana to death,
that had stroked Elory's cheek—swung and backhanded the overseer.

Shani hissed and
clutched her cheek. Ichor dripped down her alabaster skin. Her golden eyes
flashed with pain, with surprise, with rage . . . then dropped to stare at her
feet. The mighty seraph, the overseer who had beaten so many slaves into
submission or to death, knelt in the mud. She lowered her head, letting her
hair hang down.

"Forgive me, Your
Excellence," she whispered.

"Nobody will hurt
this one anymore," Ishtafel said to the kneeling overseer, then looked
back at Elory. That thin smile returned. "Nobody but me." He reached
out his hand. "Come, child. Take my hand. Join me in my chariot of fire,
and I will take you to live in a great palace, a place of jewels, of fine wine,
of wealth you cannot imagine. A place away from the tar and filth and stench of
this place."

But not away from
the whip,
Elory thought.
Not away from the rage of a master. Not away
from my chains, my collar, and the threat of death every dawn and dusk.

The fear grew in her.
She had known nothing but the tar pits all her life. For eighteen cruel
summers, the palaces of Saraph had been but a glimmer in the distance, a land
of wealth on the southern horizon, a place whence came the masters, came death
and pain. The place where the bitumen she mined held together bricks, roofs,
jewels, mosaics, cobblestones, an empire. To walk upon those cobbled streets?
To live in one of those palaces? To serve a seraph not as a yoke bearer but as
a personal servant, a girl to wash his feet, polish his armor, pour his wine,
serve his food, perhaps warm his bed at nights? To suffer his hand—stroking
her, beating her, choking her when he pleased?

Elory glanced behind
her. To leave her family?

Her breath shuddered.
The land of Tofet, these pits of slavery, sprawled into the distance, a realm
of nightmares, of sweat and blood and agony. Hundreds of thousands of slaves
toiled here. Many, like her, bore yokes and baskets. A handful, like her
mother, served as dragons, digging the wells of tar. Others, like her father
and brother, labored in the rocky fields to form and bake bricks. Elory did not
see her family much—only for five precious hours a night, a time to pray, to
nurse one another's wounds, to huddle together, to sleep in their mud hut. And
yet Elory could not imagine her life away from them. Her kind mother. Her wise
father. Her strong and noble brother. How could she leave them here to a slow
death while she flew off in this seraph's chariot to a new life—a life only a
few miles away, yet a life different from any she had ever known, a life she
would return from only in death?

She looked behind her.
Across the torturous landscape, they were watching her. Men, women, children,
elders, all in chains and collars. The yoke bearers. The brickmakers. Farther
back, in the center of the pit, even the diggers—those few Vir Requis allowed
to remove their collars, to dig in dragon form—were watching her. Her own
mother stared across the distance, a chained silver dragon.

Elory's eyes burned.

"I cannot
leave," she whispered. The land of Tofet, home of the slaves, was a land
of blood, chains, and endless death, but it was her home now. The only home she
had ever known. Here was the only family she had ever known. She would not
abandon her family, not even to escape the yoke and tar for a palace of gold.

"I cannot leave,"
she repeated, turning back toward Ishtafel. "Please, Your Excellence.
Choose another."

Ishtafel's brow
furrowed. A flash of anger crossed his eyes. He reached out and grabbed her
arm, his grip like a vise. He tugged her forward.

"Do you think that
I take orders from weredragons?" He stared down at her, his smile
stretching wider, revealing his canines, a smile almost like a snarl. "Do
you think that I crushed your kingdom, dragged your ancestors here, and chained
you in the muck so that I, defeater of Requiem, slayer of giants, a god of
Saraph, should take orders from a worm that crawls in the dirt?" He
backhanded her, rattling the teeth in her jaw. "You will do as you're
told, or you will end up like your friend, a crushed wretch in the tar."

Pain flowed across
Elory's jaw. She tasted blood. She knew she should kneel in the dirt, kiss his
feet, beg for mercy. She knew she must obey or she would be cooked in the
bronze bull, dying slowly as she screamed. She knew she should cower, worship
him, fear him.

Yet Elory stared into
Ishtafel's eyes, and she spoke softly.

"Our name is not
'weredragons.' We are Vir Requis, children of Requiem, a great nation that
still blazes in our hearts. Requiem still lives, even in chains. You cannot
extinguish her light."

And now Ishtafel's
smile stretched into a grin, showing more teeth. He grabbed her yoke, that hunk
of wood and iron that had weighed upon her shoulders for years, and he snapped
it between his hands. All her life, Elory had struggled, bound to this burden;
the seraph shattered it like a man crushing twigs. The baskets of bitumen fell
to the ground, spilling their precious contents. Chips of wood and metal
showered. Before Elory could feel any relief, he grabbed her, twisting her
arms, nearly snapping her too.

"No!" she
cried out. "No! I won't go. Release me! I won't!"

She kicked, but her
ankles were still hobbled, and she could not reach him. She tried to strike
him, but he held her wrists, laughing, mocking her resistance.

She growled.

I can become a
dragon. I can fly, blow my dragonfire, burn him.

Elory sucked in air,
trying to summon that ancient magic, the magic only the diggers were allowed to
use, the magic that had once let millions of her kind find the sky.

She felt it deep within
her, a reservoir of starlight, there since her childhood, waiting to tap into
like the bitumen buried underground.

She let it fill her.

Held in the grip of
this cruel angel, she felt the magic flow through her.

She felt the nubs of
wings begin to sprout from her whipped back. Her skin thickened, hardened,
began to rise in scales. Her fingernails lengthened into the hints of claws,
and she felt her teeth bite into her lip, forming fangs. Flickers of fire
filled her mouth, and her body began to grow, lengthening, ballooning into a
dragon that could fly, slay her enemies, escape to—

She gasped for air.

As her body grew, her
collar tightened further, constricting her, nearly snapping her neck.

Keep shifting!
she
told herself.
Tear through the collar! Fly! Burn him!

She croaked for air,
yet she clenched her fists and kept tugging on her magic, kept growing, and—

Something seemed to
crack in her neck. Blackness spread across her. Stars exploded and spun. She
lost her magic. Her body shrank, and she gasped for air, sucking it greedily.
She would have fallen to the ground were Ishtafel not still holding her.

He dragged her across
the dirt, then lifted her and slung her across his shoulder. Elory screamed,
struggling against him, crying out to Requiem, to her stars, to her mother. He
walked across the barren hill. They moved toward the chariot of fire, prepared
to fly away from this place, fly to a palace of gold and danger and death. All
around, the slaves knelt again, yet their heads were raised, and their eyes
stared into hers. Those eyes shone with tears.

"Farewell,
daughter," one old woman whispered, her shoulders stooped under her yoke.

"Farewell,
Elory!" said a child, a young boy carrying a yoke larger than himself.

One slave broke free
from the others, hobbled forward in his chains, and cried out for the camp to
hear. "Requiem!" The man's voice tore with agony, a voice broken like
the backs of a thousand slaves. "Requiem, may our wings forever find your
sky!"

The prayer of their
people. The ancient prayer of dragons, of starlight. A prayer for a home lost,
a sky they must reclaim. The seraphim overseers raced forward, whips lashing,
spears thrusting, cutting the slave who had prayed aloud, then dragging him
off—to the bronze bull Malok, to a burning in the belly of the beast.

"Requiem!"
Elory called out, answering the cry. Let them burn her too in Malok. Let them
all cry out together, one voice, one prayer, one—

A roar.

A roar tore across the
camp, rising louder, shaking the earth.

Iron chains snapped.

Leathern wings beat.

A dragon, silver and
thin, scales chipped, wings punched full of holes, soared through the air.

"Mother!"
Elory cried.

Nala, a digger of Tofet,
a dragon of Requiem, flew across the sky toward her. Shackles still encircled
her legs, their chains snapped and dangling. The marks of countless whips
covered her scales and underbelly, and her horns had been sawed off, her teeth
uprooted. And yet still fire flickered in her mouth, and still her claws
reached out—claws sharp enough to dig through rock for bitumen, claws sharp
enough to tear even through a seraph.

"Elory!" the
silver dragon cried. "Elory, I'm here! I'm here, I—"

The javelins of the
overseers flew. The shards of steel stormed across the sky, pale and reflecting
the sun, to drive into the dragon.

Scales cracked. Blood
spilled. The dragon cried out in agony, yet still she flew.

"Elory!" she
cried. "Daughter!"

"Mother!"
Elory shouted, still caught in Ishtafel's grip. She reached out to her mother.
"Fly back, Mother! Back to the pit. Please!"

Tears filled Elory's
eyes as she watched more javelins drive into the dragon. Seraphim beat their
swan wings, flying around the silver dragon, thrusting lances, firing arrows,
thrusting swords. The weapons cracked more scales, drove deep into the flesh,
shed more blood. A lance ripped into Nala's wing, tearing through it, making a
horrible sound like ripping leather. A cry, equally torn, emerged from the
dragon's throat.