Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) Read online

  FORGED IN DRAGONFIRE

  FLAME OF REQUIEM, BOOK ONE

  by

  Daniel Arenson

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE: ELORY

  CHAPTER TWO: VALE

  CHAPTER THREE: ISHTAFEL

  CHAPTER FOUR: MELIORA

  CHAPTER FIVE: VALE

  CHAPTER SIX: ELORY

  CHAPTER SEVEN: MELIORA

  CHAPTER EIGHT: ELORY

  CHAPTER NINE: ISHTAFEL

  CHAPTER TEN: ELORY

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: JAREN

  CHAPTER TWELVE: KALAFI

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ELORY

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JAREN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ELORY

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MELIORA

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: VALE

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: MELIORA

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: VALE

  CHAPTER TWENTY: ELORY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: MELIORA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: ELORY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: ISHTAFEL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: MELIORA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: JAREN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: MELIORA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: ISHTAFEL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: MELIORA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: LUCEM

  CHAPTER THIRTY: MELIORA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: VALE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: MELIORA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: KALAFI

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: MELIORA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: ISHTAFEL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: ELORY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: MELIORA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: ELORY

  AFTERWORD

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  ELORY

  Blood.

  Searing sunlight.

  The cracks of whips on flesh.

  With cries of agony, with sand and tar, with twisted shoulders and breaking backs, the children of Requiem toiled.

  "Faster!"

  The flaming whips flew, ripping through skin.

  "Up!"

  The chains rattled. Slaves fell. Masters roared.

  "Toil!"

  The sunlight beat down, as merciless as the whips. Across the pit, a nation broke. A people shattered. Thousands spread across the crater, hobbling forward, feet chained. The whips cut them. The sun burned them. The yokes hung across their stooped shoulders, secured with chains, bearing baskets of bitumen. The tar bubbled up from the wells, filling the pit, burning bare feet, churning the air, invading lungs with noxious fumes.

  "Faster!"

  Blood.

  "Up!"

  Whips ripping skin.

  "Toil!"

  Golden masters of light. Shattered, dying slaves.

  Requiem—a nation broken. A nation in chains.

  Elory trudged across the tar pit, chains rattling around her ankles. The seeping tar burned her feet. The yoke shoved against her narrow shoulders, cracking the skin, threatening to crack the bone. Sticky clumps of bitumen filled the baskets hanging off her yoke, the fumes filling her nostrils and lungs, spinning her head, leaving her always dizzy, always numb. The sunlight beat down, baking her shaved head, burning her arms and neck, nearly blinding her. Her collar squeezed her neck, leaving her wheezing, struggling for every breath.

  "Faster, worm!"

  She could not see the overseer, but she felt his whip. The lash slammed against her back, and Elory yowled. Even over the stench of bitumen, she smelled her own blood. She wobbled. She fell to her knees, nearly spilling her baskets, burning her knees in the seeping, sticky blackness.

  "Up! Toil!"

  The whip slammed down again. Elory screamed. She wept. She pushed herself up. She hobbled onward.

  Faster. Up. Toil. The words rattled through her mind, an endless chant. The prayer of her people. The only words that would perhaps allow her to cling to this flickering life. A life of blood. Of pain. Of tar.

  Of hope, Elory thought, eyes stinging with tears.

  "Move, maggot!"

  Her master's whip lashed again. Again her back tore. Elory shuffled onward, chains rattling, blood seeping, the ancient word on her lips.

  "Requiem," she whispered as she struggled across the pit, carrying the bitumen. "Requiem. Requiem."

  "Faster! Up! Toil!"

  Requiem.

  Tears stung her eyes. Elory looked around her. Through the fumes of tar, the blinding sunlight, and the sweat in her eyes, she couldn't see far. All around her, her nation broke. Men. Women. Children. Chains around their ankles. Collars, cursed with dark magic, keeping their old magic at bay. Slaves. Wretches. No more than maggots by the blinding light of the beautiful masters.

  But once we were proud, Elory thought. Once we were dragons.

  She shut her eyes, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She tried to imagine it. She tried to believe. Her father had taught her that five hundred years ago, their people—the Vir Requis, an ancient race—had lived in a distant, northern land. Lived a life of peace and plenty. Lived in palaces of marble and forests of birches.

  Lived free to fly as dragons.

  Elory opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder. It still lay there. She had to believe. Past the tar pits. Past the great wall and the seraphim upon its battlements. Past the desert. Past the sea. Past the wilderness of forests and mountains. A realm lost but not forgotten. A realm where her people had flown. A realm called Requiem.

  For thousands of years, Elory thought, we flew free . . . until they came. The masters.

  She blinked tears and fumes out of her eyes. She saw them there, around her and on the wall. Beautiful beings of light. Towering men and women, their hair long and golden, their eyes shining with inner light, their pupils shaped as sunbursts. They wore gilded armor, carried lances and shields, and swan wings grew from their backs. Haloes shone around their heads, pale gold, barely visible in the searing sunbeams.

  The destroyers of Requiem. The masters. The seraphim.

  "Move, you wretch, or I'll toss you into the tar!"

  Her own seraph, a beautiful deity who shone in the sunlight, swung his whip of fire. Again the lash slammed into Elory, knocking her down. Again she struggled to her feet. Again she shuffled onward. For ten years now—since she had been only eight—she had labored here in this pit. Carrying the bitumen, this black gold, the viscous tar that held the bricks of palaces and temples, that waterproofed ships, that glued mosaics to floors and gemstones to chains of gold, that gave Saraph its power and kept Requiem in chains.

  "Requiem," Elory whispered. "Requiem. Requiem."

  With every utterance of the word, her collar squeezed her neck. The collar that kept her in this form—a scrawny youth, her limbs bony, her head spinning, barely five feet tall, barely heavier than the yoke she carried, her back whipped, her skin burnt. The cursed collar engraved with runes of dark magic. The collar that let them rule her people. The collar that kept a proud nation enslaved.

  The collar that chains the dragon inside me.

  Elory looked behind her again. There, in the center of the pit, she could see them. A group of dragons. Only five. Vir Requis with their collars removed.

  The great reptiles labored in chains. Seraphim stood around them, pointing lances and swords, swinging their whips. The five dragons dug with claws, ripping into the hard earth, seeking the reserves of bitumen within. Elory's own mother, the silver dragon Nala, dug there into the rock, her scales cracked, her wings wrapped with chains. Soon more of the tar would rise into the pit, filling the crater with its hot, sticky, precious gift. Soon the rest of Requiem, myriads of collared souls, would refill their
baskets.

  Day after day.

  Year after year.

  Generation after generation.

  Five hundred years of blood. Of whips. Of prayer.

  Once I too could become a dragon, Elory thought. She took step after step, feet burning, knees buckling. She tried to imagine that she was one of those great reptiles now, that she flew on the wind. Once none of us had collars. Once millions of us flew in the north, proud and strong. Before the seraphim came with their chariots of fire. Before they toppled our temples, brought us to this distant land. Once we too were an empire.

  She stared up at the sky. The fumes stung her eyes. The sun beat down, a white inferno. She could not see the stars of Requiem, the Draco constellation that her father believed still watched over their people. But Elory still prayed to those mythical lights. The ancient prayer of her people. The prayer her people had been singing for thousands of years in the northern forests, for five hundred years in this desert of blood, of whips, of toil.

  "As the leaves fall upon our marble tiles, as the breeze rustles the birches beyond our columns, as the sun gilds the mountains above our halls—know, young child of the woods, you are home, you are home." Elory's voice cracked, barely a whisper, and she tasted blood and tears. "Requiem! May our wings forever find your sky."

  She trembled as she shuffled onward, carrying her burden. She had to believe that those birches still grew somewhere. That leaves still fell upon marble tiles. That blue mountains still rose above marble halls. That Requiem awaited her, that she could see it someday, that she could someday tear off her collar, become a dragon, and find her lost sky.

  "Silence, slave!"

  No trees grew here in her captivity. The only palaces that rose were not the marble halls of dragons but the vicious fortresses of Saraph. The only wings here were the swan wings of seraphim. No dragons flew here in the south, only the whips of the overseers, and again those whips tore into Elory.

  Again she fell.

  "Bloody wretch." The overseer stepped closer, whip flailing. "Useless. If you can't stand up, I'm going to beat you into the tar."

  As the whip lashed, Elory screamed.

  Her back tore open.

  She cried. She begged.

  "Sir, please!" said another slave, hobbling forward, an old woman with gray stubble on her head. "I'll help her rise. I—"

  The overseer swung his whip toward her, lashing the grandmother across the face. She fell, spilling her baskets of bitumen. The overseer roared with rage. Elory lay in the tar, unable to rise, her blood seeping, wondering if this was the day she would die here, die like slaves died every day in the pits, die without ever seeing Requiem.

  She ground her teeth.

  I must live. Tears burning, she struggled to her feet, limped toward the grandmother, and helped her rise too. Blood dripped from the old woman's cheek.

  "We toil onward," Elory told the overseer. She saw her own blood boiling on her flaming whip. "Always. Always."

  For that hope, Elory thought. For that dream of dragons. For that dream that, after five hundred years of our backs breaking, we will someday fly again.

  "Requiem," she whispered as she made her way out of the pit.

  Ahead of her, across the haze, sprawled the dry land of Saraph. No trees grew here. No rivers flowed. A barren, cruel land of sunlight, of stone, of gold, of tar. Across the rocky field, thousands of her people labored in chains. They mixed clay with straw and bitumen, poured the mixture into molds, formed bricks. In the northern distance grew the wall, eternal, towering, topped with seraphim, forever a cage around her. Far in the south, swaying in the distant heat, Elory could just make out the city of the masters. There these bricks rose into great palaces and temples, cobbled roads and bathhouses, statues that soared hundreds of feet tall. There the labor of Requiem raised wonders for the glory of the seraphim. There was a land forbidden to Elory, a land she built yet would never visit, a wondrous empire made from this bitumen, this clay, from the blood and tears of Requiem.

  We will never enter the city of the seraphim, but someday we will fly into Requiem again, Elory thought. Someday we will remove our collars, rise again as dragons. Someday the stars will guide us home.

  She was carrying the bitumen toward a squat stone refinery when the archangel arrived in his chariot of fire, forever changing Elory's life.

  The chariot streamed across the sky like a falling sun, casting out heat and light. Four firehorses pulled the vessel, beasts woven of flames, their manes flaring, their eyes white stars. Shoulders stooped under the yoke, Elory stared up at the chariot, as lowly as an ant witnessing a swooping phoenix.

  Five hundred years ago, Elory knew, an army of such fiery chariots had streamed into Requiem. Thousands of seraphim had fired their arrows, tossed their javelins, shone their light. The hosts of fire had felled the dragons from the sky, crushed the marble halls, burned the trees, collared the Vir Requis to contain their magic, and taken them south to a burning land. Thousands of such chariots had covered the sky that day, the Day of Burning. Today, here under the blazing sun of southern Saraph, it took only this single chariot to strike terror into the hearts of all who saw it.

  A banner flared out from this chariot, wreathed in flame yet not burning. Upon it shone a sigil embroidered in gold, shaped as an eye inside a sun. Sigil of the Thirteenth Dynasty. Sigil of Requiem's ruin. Sigil of Saraph's royal house.

  Across the tar pit, the refineries, and the rocky fields where brickmakers toiled, the Vir Requis slaves knelt. Even the overseers, seraphim in gilded armor, folded their swan wings against their backs and knelt in the muck. Even these towering beings of light, haloed and immortal, were as lowly as worms by this flaming chariot.

  The light flared out, nearly blinding Elory as the chariot descended. Sweat washed her, stinging the open cuts on her back, dripping into her eyes, soaking her canvas rags. With shrieking fountains, the chariot of fire landed upon a hill ahead, and its rider emerged.

  Now new sweat washed Elory—cold, sticky, trailing down her back like the fingers of a ghost. She stared, unable to look away, terror squeezing her heart.

  A towering man alighted from the chariot and stood on the hill, staring down at the pit of despair. No, not a man. A seraph. An angelic being, closer to a god than a mere mortal like her. Elory had been laboring in the pits all her life, whipped, beaten, surviving on gruel and whatever brackish water the masters allowed her. At eighteen years of age, she was barely larger than the yoke she carried. Yet the seraph ahead stood seven feet tall, his shoulders as wide as Elory's burden of wood and chains. His hair flowed in the wind, and his eyes shone, just as golden and bright, the pupils shaped as sunbursts. He wore a gilded breastplate molded to mimic a bare, muscular torso, and he held a lance and shield emblazoned with the Eye of the Sun. His feathered wings spread out, purest white, reflecting the true sun. Upon his head, gleaming in the light of his halo, perched a steel crown.

  Elory knew this seraph. All in this barren land knew him, the son of the queen, the god of the desert. Three years ago, when he had traveled south to fight the giants of the mountains, the slaves had sung and prayed in joy, finally free—if only for a while—from his terror. A month ago, when this seraph had returned from his conquests with fire and a vow to raise great palaces in his honor, the slaves had wept.

  Here was the cruelest of the masters, the fairest, tallest, brightest, the golden son of Saraph. He was known by many names. The Sunlit Conqueror. The Son of Sunlight. The Blade of the Desert. Kneeling before him, her lips bloody, Elory whispered his true name.

  "Ishtafel."

  The Prince of Saraph stood on the hill, staring down upon the Land of Tofet, these pits of slavery. As lowly as the slaves were—broken, chained, collared, beaten—this idol of gold was lofty, a being of beauty, light, and eternal dominion.

  Once we too were beautiful, Elory thought. Once we flew free, beings of dragonfire and scales, gliding above marble halls. Now we toil. Now we serve. Now we pray to
fly again.

  Her eyes narrowed. She clenched her fists, and she squared her shoulders even as the yoke threatened to crack them. She glared up at this beautiful being, and a new feeling rose in Elory. Not fear. Not pain.

  Rage.

  She raged against the brightness of his armor and the stripes across her back. She raged against his palaces and her pit of broken bones and sweat and blood. She raged against his beauty and her wretchedness. She raged for a nation stolen away, chained, enslaved, their homeland in ruins. Raged against a rising empire of light and sandstone built upon shattered spines.

  One day we will fly again, Ishtafel, she vowed, staring up at his light. One day Requiem will rise. One day we—

  Her heart clenched. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Ishtafel lifted something from his chariot. At first Elory thought it a scrap of red cloth, then when she saw the draping limbs, she thought it the carcass of an animal. The corpse seemed so small in the seraph's arms, like a child in a mother's embrace.

  Then red stubble caught the sun, growing from a caved-in head, and Elory knew it was her.

  Tears filled her eyes.

  "Mayana," she whispered.

  The young woman had toiled in the bitumen pits with Elory until only a month ago. Ishtafel had landed his chariot here that day too, freshly returned from the war, seeking a house servant for his palace. He had chosen Mayana—young, fair Mayana with the red stubble on her head, green eyes, a rare beauty in these pits of ugliness.

  "You will serve in a palace now," Elory had whispered to her friend last month, holding her close. "You will no longer have to haul bitumen, only jugs of wine. You will no longer wear a yoke, only soft livery of cotton. You're blessed, child."

  Mayana had trembled against her that day, so afraid, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  And now you return to us, Elory thought, shedding her own tears. Now you're back among your people.

  Ishtafel raised the corpse above his head. His voice rang across the pit, deep, sonorous, a voice of dark beauty tinged with menace like a panther lurking in a shadowy forest.

  "I took a slave from among you!" the seraph cried. "She is used up."