"I do not kneel before reptiles." Shani hefted the chain she bore. "I know who you are, Meliora the weredragon. This chain bound your brother. Now it will shatter your bones."
Slowly, staring at the seraph, Meliora wiped the spit off her face. "I will give you one more chance, Shani the Overseer. Kneel now before your mistress, or—"
Shani snorted. "I serve only Ishtafel, not his half-breed, reptilian whore of a sister." She beat her wings, rose into the air, and swung her chain. "You will kneel on shattered legs before I let you die."
Behind Meliora, her family cried out wordlessly. The chain swung down, each link the size of a fist. Meliora did not step back. She raised her staff before her.
The chain slammed into the wood, wrapped around the shaft, and locked into place.
Meliora swung her staff like a sword, yanking Shani sideways, and slammed the seraph down onto the earth.
"I told you that you will kneel," Meliora said softly.
Shani leaped up, sneering, and beat her wings. She soared toward the sky, the rising sun at her back. With a howl, the overseer plunged down, a goddess of vengeance, swinging her chain in one hand, her firewhip in the other.
"Die now, reptile!"
"Meliora!" Elory cried.
Let the light of the stars flow through me. Meliora looked to the sky, calling upon the light of Requiem. Let me rise.
As flame and chain came down, Meliora rose.
Her wings grew longer, feathers gilded in the sunrise. Her claws reached out, and her pearly scales chinked, and she soared, a feathered dragon of sunlight and starlight.
Shani's chain slammed into her shoulder, cracking scales. The seraph's firewhip drove into Meliora's wing, cutting through feathers and burning the flesh beneath. But still the silver-and-gold dragon soared, and her jaws opened, and she blew out her fire—a white jet, spinning and humming, a great harp string, a column like the one Aeternum had raised in a forest five thousand years ago.
Shani screamed.
The white flames slammed into the seraph.
Meliora flew higher, blasting out her flames, bathing Shani. The seraph cried out, wings beating, burning, her feathers turning black and falling. Shani tried to emerge from the inferno, tried to reach Meliora, to swing her weapons. But the flames kept washing over her, stripping off her hair, melting her armor, melting her flesh.
Finally Meliora let her flames die.
Shani fell and landed on the riverbank, a blackened corpse, ashes fluttering off bones.
Meliora rose even higher in the sky and spread her feathered dragon wings. The sun rose in the east, bathing her with golden light. Her tail flailed, tipped with feathers, and she could see the city ahead, drenched in light.
"So shall happen to all who stand before the children of Requiem!" Meliora cried, her voice booming across the land. "I am Meliora. I was one of you, Saraph! I served as your princess! But now I serve a greater light. Stand aside and lay down your blades! I come here not in war, not to conquer, not to burn. I come to show Shayeen the plight of Requiem, to show them the chains, the scars, the horror they had never seen. I bring Requiem into the city it built, and we will stand before the palace whose mortar is mixed with the blood of dragons. I come with only light, but if you do not stand aside, my fire will burn you."
She spun in the sky, blasting fire skyward, a great column of white light, King's Column risen in the south. Below her, the multitudes of slaves—descendants of the great warriors of the north—raised their candles, many smaller lights adding together to a constellation, a sky, a beacon of hope, of rededication.
"Remember Requiem!" they chanted. "Remember Requiem!"
As the slaves sang, as the lights burned, and as Meliora blew her flaming pillar, the seraphim took flight off the bridge.
At first Meliora thought they would attack, thought that she would have to fight them all, that that they would swoop with whips and blades and slay thousands . . . but as she watched, the light in her eyes, the overseers flew down to the riverbank, lowered their heads, and lowered their weapons.
"Follow, children of Requiem!" Meliora cried down to them, still hovering above as a dragon. "We enter Shayeen. We march to Queen Kalafi. We demand our collars removed. We demand freedom."
She flew before the camp, blowing her fire, and the children of Requiem walked below her. They crossed the bridge, holding their candles high, singing the old songs of Requiem. One by one, thousand by thousand, the slaves entered the City of Kings, and Meliora flew above them, and across the city seraphim stared but dared not attack, for they saw a goddess of scales and white fire.
But I am no goddess, Meliora thought as the people of Requiem walked down the boulevard between statues of the Eight. I'm only a girl, exiled, torn, afraid . . . but I found new strength. In a world crumbling under lies, I found new truth. I found a new people. I found a new family.
They marched toward the palace, six hundred thousand strong, and their voices rose together in an old song.
"Requiem! May our wings forever find your sky."
KALAFI
The wound blazed.
Always it blazed. Always the hands of the gods flared on her side, an eternal curse of their cruelty, a holy leprosy that would never heal. Yet now, this dawn, it flared with a new intensity Kalafi had not felt since falling from the sky three thousand years ago.
Morning's light streamed between the balcony's columns, red as blood. Kalafi lay in her salted pool, wincing in pain. She had spent all night in the water—the first time she had done so in years—and the water was cold now, too damn cold, yellowish with her wound's discharge. She needed more heated water, more salt, she needed her slaves here, yet her beast of a son had slain half the slaves in the palace in his overnight rampage. And so she lingered here, shivering now, afraid.
Kalafi had not been afraid in years.
I should have killed her, Kalafi thought. I should have killed my daughter a thousand times.
What madness had driven her to birth an impure creature, a half-breed, tainting the blood of seraphim with the reptilian curse? Kalafi could have mated with another—with her own son, if she were so concerned with purity of blood. Yet she had fallen to her temptation, had allowed that reptile to place his seed inside her. Jaren had been young only days ago, it seemed, yet now he was old, withered, a priest who had called upon ancient gods, who had summoned down the wrath of starlight.
And I should have killed you too, Ishtafel, she thought. Once she had been so proud of her son—a mighty warrior who had conquered this world, had built them a new paradise in a land of old pain. A beautiful being, untainted with memories of Edinnu, with old wounds that would never heal. How she had loved him! Yet the warrior had become a beast, an animal unable to curb his instinct, a mindless god who raped, tortured, butchered for sport, no end to his cravings, no boundary to his appetites.
"I birthed two monsters," Kalafi whispered.
"No, Mother. One monster. One son stronger than you've ever been."
Kalafi spun in the water and saw Ishtafel enter the room. She hissed.
"Leave this place!" She covered her nakedness with her arms. "I told you to never enter this chamber."
Yet he stepped closer across the mosaic of fish that sprawled across the floor. His armor was cracked, and blood and gore dripped off his hands and face. Bits of flesh dangled between his teeth, as if he were a wolf raising his head from a carcass.
"I've flown across the world, Mother." He licked his lips and sucked up a hanging strand of meat. "I killed the ice beasts in the northern pole, and I slew the griffins of the east, and I defeated so many enemies, Mother. Demons that would haunt your nightmares if you only saw a vision of them—and I fought them in their underground pits. Gods upon mountains, carved of ice, with pulsing hearts in their frozen breasts, creatures whose gazes would freeze and shatter your bones—I shone my light upon them, and I shattered them." He stepped closer, leaving a trail of blood. "And I slew dragons, Mother. I faced an a
rmy of a million dragons, the greatest army in this world, and I watched thousands of seraphim die around me, but I slew them. I defeated the enemy. And yet . . . and yet those dragons still live. Beyond the river. Here in our palace. And . . . in my sister."
Kalafi rose from the pool, wincing in pain. Her wound dripped pus. She grabbed a robe and covered herself, stood on the edge of the pool, and stared at her son. "You sicken me, Ishtafel. Your wars are over. You won them! Yet you prowl through this palace as if it were a battlefield—this palace that your father built—slaying my own slaves. Shedding blood upon priceless jewels. Acting like a beast among civilized souls and—"
"My father?" Ishtafel frowned and nodded. He looked around him. "Yes. My father built this palace. The king. A noble man, far nobler than me or you, Mother. A man who cared for the purity of our race, of our dynasty, of our legacy." Ishtafel contemplated the blood on his fingers, rubbing them together. "And yet you betrayed that purity. You took a slave into your bed."
Kalafi snorted. "Do you think I don't know—that anyone doesn't know—how many slaves you've bedded?"
"Bedded, yes." Ishtafel nodded. "But I was always careful. Whenever their bellies swelled with my children, I took care of the problem. Do you see, Mother? My . . . what did you call it? Beastliness? That quality preserved our blood. That quality had our greatest enemies fleeing before my hosts. That quality built us an empire. You and father fell from paradise." Ishtafel clenched his fist, letting the blood drip between the fingers. "I built us a new paradise."
Kalafi snickered. "I don't recall blood staining the floor in Edinnu."
Ishtafel continued as if he hadn't heard her. "Do you know, Mother, that you almost ruined us?" He emitted a short burst of laughter, a sound like a snapping bone. "I almost married Meliora. I almost placed an heir in her belly. In the belly of a half-breed." He stepped closer, and suddenly his face changed, becoming a demonic mask, and his voice rose to a howl. "I almost fathered a monster!"
Kalafi nodded, stepping toward him until she stood only inches away from her son. "You did," she whispered. She placed a finger against his lips, covering it with blood, then brought her finger to her own mouth and sucked up the coppery liquid. "You almost fathered a monster, Ishtafel . . . a child like you. A child vicious. A child with no respect for the gods. For Edinnu's memory. For the light of Saraph." She spat out the blood. "All you are is a warrior. You will never be a king."
He stared at her in silence, face frozen, a mask of stone. His eyes were dead.
There is no humanity to his eyes, Kalafi thought. There is no soul.
Slowly that face changed, twisting into something resembling a hideous smile.
"But you're wrong, Mother." When his grin widened, she saw broken teeth in his mouth—not his own. "I will be king. Dawn rises upon a new ruler of Saraph. Farewell, Mother."
She hissed and tried to leap toward her side table, toward the blade that lay there.
She was too slow.
His hands pressed against her chest, shoving her, and she fell.
Time was too slow.
She fell for hours, she thought. She fell for years. Perhaps she had been falling since that day, since that war she and her husband had never stood a chance to win. She had fallen from the sky that day, hurt, bleeding, cast out from Edinnu, and still she fell . . . through blue skies. Through golden rain. Through ending and rising eras, through betrayal, through grief, through a lost daughter.
I'm sorry, Meliora. I love you.
The skies of Edinnu shone above her, the gilded clouds in dawn, the meadows with those flowers whose names she no longer knew, those trees of forbidden fruit, the land she had never forgotten, had never stopped trying to raise again here upon this cruel world, this place of so much hatred, so much endless pain.
She fell.
She fell from paradise.
She fell and she hit the floor, and her head hit the edge of the pool, and as she slid into the water she knew that her head had broken. That her skull had cracked. That she would not rise again, that this wound too would not heal, but that soon the pain, the guilt, the never-ending sadness would end.
I fought the gods. Her eyelids fluttered. I fought in a great war such as my son would never know. I die at that son's hands. Queen of an empire, the woman who stood up to the Eight and resisted them, I die cracking my head on a wet poolside.
She laughed.
She sank into the water, and blood rose from her, coiling, dancing, dancing with her, dancing the eternal dance, and she danced with them, with the spirits of demons and the ghosts of long gone years.
MELIORA
As she had a thousand times, coming home from strolls in the gardens or prayers at the temples, Meliora stood before the ziggurat of Saraph.
A thousand times, she had come here clad in fineries, her hair perfumed and brushed by her slaves, her body shining with jewels. Now she wore rags. Now her head was shaved. Now iron shackles circled her ankles. If not for the tattered, burnt wings that grew from her back, she would have appeared as any other slave.
For now I am a slave, she thought. Now I am a child of starlight. Now I am mightier than I've ever been.
Behind her they stood, flowing down the Boulevard of the Victorious from ziggurat to the city gates, hundreds of thousands of slaves.
No—not slaves, she thought. Comrades. Vir Requis.
Silence cloaked the city. Even with a nation behind her, with countless seraphim watching from the roofs of homes, Shayeen was silent. Not a breeze blew and not a bird sang. The sun beat down upon a still city.
Meliora raised her chin.
"Queen Kalafi!" she called out, staring up at the balcony. "Queen Kalafi, do you hear? Come speak to me!"
Her voice sounded almost too loud, echoing across the silent city. She thought that all her people, spreading across the miles, could hear.
Not a seraph or slave stirred. Not a soul emerged onto the balcony. The ziggurat loomed above her, its stairs stretching up its limestone facades, the massive bricks hauled here by slaves hundreds of years ago. Two colossal statues framed the staircase, carved as women with the heads of cats, ancient protectors of royalty. Its platinum crest shone, and the eye upon it—the Eye of Saraph within the sunburst—gazed down at her from a thousand feet above, reflecting the sunlight, nearly blinding Meliora.
"Queen Kalafi!" Meliora called again. "Come speak to those whom you enslave. Come hear those who demand their freedom. Mother! Come speak to your daughter."
Still—only silence. The world seemed frozen around Meliora.
A few chains rattled around her. She glanced to her side to see slaves shifting their weight, clenching and unclenching their fists. Only her family kept staring ahead at the ziggurat, still, faces blank.
Meliora looked back toward the palace and raised her staff.
"Hear me, Kalafi of the Thirteenth Dynasty, Great of Graces, Queen of Saraph! I am Meliora. I am a daughter of Requiem, and I am a daughter of Saraph. I grant these people freedom from chains! I will lead them north to their stolen homeland as I've led them here to your palace. Grant me the key to their collars! Grant me the key, for we are a free people, and we will no longer serve as slaves, no longer—"
She gasped and bit down on her words.
A chariot of fire emerged from a tunnel on the ziggurat, hundreds of feet above, and rose to shine in the sky like a second sun. Its four firehorses reared, wings casting off sparks.
From this distance, it was hard to see. Meliora made out barely more than fire and light beams. A figure stood within the hovering chariot, wreathed in gold, halo crackling and wings spread wide. And—
Meliora hissed.
The figure threw something down from the chariot.
A ball flew through the sunbeams, leaving a trail of gold, tumbling down and down, and finally slammed by Meliora's feet where it shattered, spilling its innards.
Meliora took a step back and couldn't help it. She screamed.
On the ground b
efore her, shattered into several pieces on impact, was a woman's head. Half the face remained, enough for Meliora to recognize her.
"Mother," she whispered.
Elory screamed too and stepped back, covering her mouth. Vale cursed and Jaren whispered a prayer. Across the crowd of slaves, men and women whispered and mumbled and a child wept.
Meliora could barely hear them, barely see them.
Mother . . .
Perhaps her life had been a lie. Perhaps the old king had never been her father. Perhaps Ishtafel had never been a true friend, only one who craved her flesh. But here—here before her, these remains . . . this was her mother. Her true mother. The woman who had grown Meliora in the womb, birthed her in blood, raised her.
Memories flooded her again, as they had in Tofet, but these were not memories of dragons. She remembered a beautiful, angelic mother, rocking her, singing to her softly songs of old Edinnu. She remembered carefree days in the gardens, chasing her mother between the fountains, catching her, laughing with her, always laughing. She remembered a proud queen, teaching Meliora how to walk with pride, how to be beautiful, how to be royal, how to be proud.
In the past few days, Meliora had learned to hate her mother, learned to see a tyrant, but she could not erase years of love. Not before this horror.
My mother is gone.
Slowly, Meliora balled her hands into fists.
She raised her head from the remains on the ground, and she stared up at the flaming chariot that hovered far above, and she saw him there.
"Ishtafel!" she shouted, voice torn with rage, rolling across the city.
He raised his hand. "It is I!"
The sun rose to its zenith, casting its beams down upon him. Standing in his chariot, he spread his wings wide, a golden god. A killer. A king.
Meliora growled and shifted into a dragon. She soared, the air whistling, rising in a straight line until she hovered before the chariot. Not a hundred yards away, blood stained the ziggurat's platinum facade where Vale had hung.
Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) Page 21
