Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (26 page)

No children played here
as they did in Shayeen; here children hobbled in chains, scrawny, their ribs
pushing against their skin, digging for beetles, worms, scraps of food in the
dry earth. No happy mothers idled in gardens here, playing with plump babies;
here mothers sat in what shade was available, heads shaved, too weak to even brush
aside flies, their breasts ravaged as their babes suckled for whatever drops of
milk they could drink. No flowers grew in Tofet, filling the air with sweet
perfumes; Meliora smelled only disease, filth, death. No birds sang; she heard
only the clanking chains, crying babes, distant whips lashing, and screams.

She kept walking
through the nightmare, the guilt and horror battling for dominance within her.
She was deep in the labyrinth of huts when she heard a nearby scream, stepped
around a bend in the dirt road, and gasped.

A seraph overseer stood
ahead, his back to her, clad in a fine breastplate and flowing white robes. No
dust or blood marred his wings of purest white feathers. His whip of fire
flailed, the blows landing on a slave in the mud. The slave raised her arms,
begging for mercy, gravid with child.

"Silence, you
guttering rat!" the overseer shouted, landing his whip again, the thong
tearing into the pregnant slave's arms.

"Stop!"
Meliora marched forward. Her chest shook and she could barely breathe. She had
never seen such cruelty. "Seraph, stop!"

The overseer spun
toward her, snarling, not recognizing her in her filthy rags. "Stand back,
girl. This slave only produced nine hundred bricks today. Quota's a
thousand." He spun back toward the slave, raising his whip again.

"I told you to
stop, son of Saraph!" Meliora leaped toward him and grabbed his arm,
tugging him back.

The overseer spun
toward her again, face flushed, teeth bared. "And I told you to stand
back, you whore. You ain't no overseer. Go fly back to your momma." He
raised his whip, then brought it down hard against Meliora.

She yowled in pain. She
had always known whips were painful, had always known that people screamed
beneath them. Yet Meliora had never imagined such pain—searing, all-consuming
pain, almost too much to bear, pain that flooded her, impossible pain. She
fell.

The overseer brought
the whip down again, hitting her shoulder and back, and Meliora screamed.

"I ain't afraid to
teach a seraph pup a lesson either." The overseer smirked and raised his
whip again. "I'm going to stripe you just as good as any slave,
girl."

His whip lashed.

Meliora grabbed a rock
from the ground.

The whip tore into her
shoulder, and she hurled the stone.

The projectile streamed
through the air and slammed into the overseer's brow.

Blood spurted and the seraph
fell. He hit the ground and did not rise.

Everything suddenly
seemed so silent. Her wounds aching, Meliora rose to her feet and limped
forward. She stared down at the seraph. He lay on his back, his forehead
shattered and bleeding, his eyes staring lifelessly.

Dead.

Meliora stared down,
feeling nothing.

I killed. I took a
life.

And still she felt
nothing. No horror. No guilt. She was a killer. A murderer. A slayer of her own
kind.

No. Not my kind.

She stepped over the
fallen overseer and knelt by the wounded weredragon.

No. Not a
weredragon. A Vir Requis.

Meliora lowered her hand.
"Rise, friend."

But the slave did not
rise. She knelt and bowed her head. "Meliora the Merciful. Praised be your
name, child of starlight. May the stars bless you, daughter of Requiem."
The woman looked up, eyes shining and damp. "Our savior. A savior from the
palace of gods, from the stars of our home."

Meliora shook her head.
"I'm not a savior. I was sent by none."

A new voice spoke,
coming from behind her, a soft, high voice, trembling with awe. "You are
my
savior, sister. The stars sent you here."

Elory.

Meliora turned around
and saw a family.

Elory stood there,
wearing cotton rags, her legs hobbled again, her head stubbly. With her stood a
young man—the same young man who had, only hours ago, been nailed into the
ziggurat, now healed. Behind them stood an older man, his head shaved but his
beard long, brown streaked with white, and he held a staff in his knobby hand.

A family.

My family.

Meliora blinked at
them, and now—now all those feelings she could not feel when killing a man
flooded her. Grief. Fear. But also love, also joy.

She stepped toward
them, hesitant, breath trembling in her throat.

"You . . . you are
my brother," she whispered to the young man. She turned toward the older
man. "You . . . are my father. You are my family."

Elory smiled
tremulously and nodded.

"This is Vale . .
. your brother," the girl whispered, gesturing toward the young man.
"And this is Jaren . . . your father. We're your family, Meliora. We're
the people who love you."

Tears flowed down
Meliora's cheeks, and for once they were not tears of pain or grief; they were
tears of joy. She stepped closer and pulled her family into an embrace. They
wept too, holding her in their arms.

"Welcome home,
Meliora," her father whispered. "Welcome home."

 
 
LUCEM

He stood on the hill,
singing.

He curled up in his
cave, watching the rain.

He talked to stones. He
laughed with trees. He laughed. He laughed and laughed. He wept.

He watched the sun rise
and set thousands of times.

"Good morning.
Good morning." The sunlight streamed into the cave, and Lucem gazed at the
drawings on the walls. His friends. Animals. Men and women. Funny creatures he
had invented. "Good morning."

They could not speak,
but he could hear them in his mind. They greeted him.

He took one of his friends
with him today—a lump of wood with two knots, two eyes, and a little smile he
had carved. A beautiful woman. His dearest companion, a wife, a confidant.
Together they walked across the hill, chewing mint leaves. Together they
speared fish in the river, and they even caught a wild goat, and that night
they feasted.

He sang around the campfire.

"Old Requiem Woods,
where do thy harpists play, in Old Requiem Woods, where do thy dragons fly . .
."

He spread out his arms, and
he danced around the fire, clad in his tattered tunic. A dragon. In his mind he
was always a dragon. He blew out his breath, and the campfire flared—his
dragonfire.

He fell to his knees, and he
howled.

He grabbed his collar, tugged
it, smashed it with rocks again and again. He fell to the ground, crawled into
his cave, and shivered.

It's all right,
his
friends whispered—the drawings on the wall, the little wooden blocks with
eyes.
You're safe here. You're far from pain. You're far from Tofet.

"I'm far from
Requiem," he whispered.

Requiem. The home of his
ancestors, the place he had heard of so many times as a child. His parents had
told him—his parents whom the seraphim overseers had murdered. His parents who
lay buried in Tofet in a mass grave. His parents whose bodies he had left
behind—along with so many living, with so many suffering souls, crying out
under the whip, begging for mercy that would never come, pleading for freedom .
. . which he had found.

Lying in the cave, Lucem
balled his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. He screwed
his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry," he
whispered. "I'm so sorry. I left you. I climbed the wall. I escaped Tofet.
I left you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

His tears stung. He had been
only eleven years old—only a child, yet broken, too thin, covered in cuts and
bruises, the marks of whips on his back. He had been small enough to climb in
the dark, to escape the guards, to come here, to leave them, to betray them . .
.

"I miss you,
Mother," he whispered. "I miss you, Father. I'm sorry. I'm
sorry."

He dreamed of
Requiem—dreamed of flying in the night, flying with his parents, with
countless dragons, no collars around their necks. Flying in their sky, their
columns rising below from the birch forest.

Dawn rose—as it had risen so
many times. He crawled out of his cave again. He fished in the river. He chewed
his mint leaves. He chewed carobs and wild figs. And he walked.

The wilderness rolled by
around him. Hills speckled with mint bushes, white boulders, and carob trees. A
few goats ambled on a hill, and the river streamed at his side. The sun beat
down, and grasshoppers bustled in the rushes.

He slept in the tall grass.
He caught another fish with his spear. He walked on.

When he finally saw it, he
paused and stared. His guilt rose inside him like a demon, struggling to crash
through his ribs, to consume his flesh.

"Tofet," Lucem
whispered.

The wall of that cursed place
rose in the distance, hundreds of feet tall. Atop it stood the seraphim, guards
and overseers, mere glints of sunlight on metal from here. Behind that wall,
they still languished—six hundred thousand souls, children of Requiem. All
those he had grown up with, worked with, suffered with. Crying out to him.

You left us, Lucem!

"I'm sorry," he
whispered.

You betrayed us!

"I had to leave, I had
to." He trembled. "They hurt me so badly."

Now they hurt us! Now we
suffer while you dance and sing around your fires.

Lucem took a step closer.
Then another. His fists shook at his sides.

"I'm coming home,"
he whispered. "I'm coming back. They'll let me back in. They have to! They
have to."

He kept walking, moving
closer to the wall. Soon the guards would see him. Soon they'd cry out, fly to
him, lift him up, take him home—back into Tofet. To his people. To the grave
of his parents. To an end to this guilt, to this torture, an end to this
madness in the wilderness.

Back to the whips,
his
friend said.
Back to the mines, to the stench, to the death all around you.

The block of wood stared at
him. Lucem stared back.

"You know nothing,"
he said.

You are a fool!
she
said, staring with her knot eyes.
You will die in there. Die! Die and leave
me. Tofet is not your home.

"It's my only
home," he said. "And you're only a block of wood, and you know
nothing, so be quiet."

She glared at him.
Requiem
is your home!

He hurled the wood as far as
he could, then winced, ran after her, lifted her, cradled her.

"I'm sorry, I'm
sorry."

Go away from this place,
she said.
Go! Go! Never come back.

"Stop talking, you block
of wood."

Then stop acting like a
fool.

He turned around, and he
walked away, leaving the wall behind—leaving them all behind. And that guilt
screamed, tearing at his insides.

He walked along the river. He
walked past his cave. He hunted. He fished. He ate fruit. He chewed leaves. For
many days and nights he traveled, singing, laughing, telling old stories again
and again. He kept talking—always talking. It was important not to forget how
to talk. It was important to remember his name. "Lucem, Lucem," he
said, over and over. He found a small rock shaped like a woman, a new friend,
and he slept holding her.

He crossed hills, mountains.
He hid in caves. He roamed through forests. He kept singing. He kept talking.
You had to keep
talking
. You had to remember. He made new friends on the
way.

Finally Lucem reached the
coast, and he stood on the beach, and he stared out at the sea.

The waves were cobalt, almost
gray, crested with foam. Clouds covered the sky. Lucem stood for a long time,
staring.

"Requiem," he said.
"Requiem. Requiem." You had to keep talking.

His homeland lay beyond the
water. The land of dragons, the land his people had lost. In ruins. Devastated!
But . . . maybe some had survived. Maybe some still hid there—hid in the
ruins, waiting for him, waiting to welcome him home.

Lucem inhaled deeply, spread
out his arms, and reached for his magic.

His skin began to harden,
forming the first hints of scales. His fingernails began to lengthen into
claws. The nubs of wings rose from his shoulder blades. His neck thickened . .
. and the iron collar tightened around it.

He choked.

He grinded his teeth and kept
tugging on his magic.

Pain. Pain flared through
him, squeezing his neck, creaking his bones, blazing through his head.

Keep shifting. Become a
dragon! Break the collar! Fly, fly home, fly—

Stars spread out before him,
endless, the stars of his people, hovering over blackness. He fell into the
sand, and he floated among them, gasping.

He slept.

When he finally awoke, it was
night, and clouds hid the true stars. He shivered, feverish, and when he
reached to his neck, he felt blood.

As always, he was a human.

Lucem howled.

He clawed at his collar until
his fingers bled. He grabbed a sharp stone. He stabbed the collar again and
again until he cut his neck, and the stone fell, and Lucem fell after it into
the sand. He shivered.

"Lucem, Lucem," he
whispered. "I have to remember, I have to keep talking."

A crab walked up and examined
him, then scurried away. Lucem reached for it desperately. He needed to talk to
it. He needed to hear its voice. And yet it scuttled away and vanished in the
darkness.

Dawn rose, and Lucem rose,
and his guilt rose, and he walked along the beach. Thirst clawed at his throat
and hunger rumbled in his belly.