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?"
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 sl
aves. 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.
Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) Page 10