Empire

by Michael R. Hicks

  CHAPTER TEN

  Twelve Years Later

  Cold was the wind that howled in Reza’s face, and he struggled to more tightly bind the furs that protected his head. He peered ahead over Goliath’s powerful shoulders as he gripped the reins in his gloved hands, his body moving in time with the beast’s undulating gait as he plodded through the deep snow. Through the tiny slit in the fur wrappings protecting his face, Reza could see little more than glaring whiteness and the occasional gray shadow of a withered tree. Although the dim light from the sun penetrated the white shroud that clung to the earth, the line where land and sky met was all but obscured.

  Beside him, Esah-Zhurah rode her magthep, an unnamed cow much smaller than Goliath’s aging bulk. Despite their hardiness, even the Kreelans eschewed the cold of deep winter, when the kazha conducted its training in the few indoor facilities dedicated to the purpose.

  But there were times when the tresh were sent forth on missions, and this was one of them. The priestess had dispatched the two of them to the city to retrieve her correspondence, a similar errand that had brought him under Tesh-Dar’s influence some dozen human years earlier. Their errand was certainly not the first of its type for Reza, but it was certainly the first time he had become genuinely concerned for their safety, and with every passing moment his sense of worry deepened.

  They had reached the city and conducted their business there without incident, leaving the black tube that contained the priestess’s outgoing correspondence and picking up its counterpart to return to her. After a quick meal in a public hall, where the two of them had perched comfortably next to a huge pit of glowing coals, they had begun their journey back.

  The first part of their return trek had been entirely uneventful, with nothing more than a light snowfall and playful breezes. But soon the winds had become threatening, and even the magtheps – as well-protected against winter’s perils as they were – had begun complaining. They shook their heads to throw off the heavy coating of ice from their eyes and ears, all the while muttering to each other in their own way. The horizon had closed in around them, finally disappearing in a total whiteout of heavy snow.

  Above all else, Reza knew it was taking them much too long to return from the city. He had spent enough time on this world without any chronometer save the sun, Empress Moon, and stars to know that they had been traveling half again as long as they had that morning to reach the city.

  “Esah-Zhurah,” he shouted through the furs and the wind, “I think we are lost.”

  “Nonsense, Reza,” she told him. “We are on course,” she said, holding up a circular device about the size of her palm with a pointer in the center: a compass. “We are only delayed by the winds and snow.”

  “Then why have we not seen any markers for the last few leagues?” he asked, referring to the tall stone cairns that lined the roads that spread outward from the city like spokes on a wheel, serving to guide travelers in conditions just such as this. “There is nothing out here but us, and I do not recognize any of this.”

  Esah-Zhurah ignored him. It annoyed her that he, the tresh who had in some ways become the envy of many of her peers, appeared to be losing his courage and his faith in her. But her pride would not allow her to admit that the seeds of doubt had sprouted in her own mind, as well. The lack of familiar landmarks – the peninsular forest, the three rock outcroppings that lined the road to the kazha like lonely sentinels, the stone pyramid markers – was troubling.

  But I have followed the compass unerringly, she told herself. Again she checked that the needle was precisely in the position it was supposed to be. It showed three points left of north, pointing directly toward the kazha from the city’s center. “We are going the right way,” she said again with finality, spurring her magthep into a faster gait in a demonstration of her resolve. “If you do not accept it,” she told him, “you may choose your own direction.”

  Reza sighed, saying nothing. He did not want to antagonize her needlessly, especially since he was not quite sure of their situation. The compass had been pointing in the right direction. But the conditions they were in were unusual, even for this time of year. Prodding Goliath to move on after his tresh, he tried to silence the alarms in his mind.

  Time passed, hours measured by Goliath’s bounding stride, and with each step Reza’s concern grew. The winds were blowing furiously, and the snow had become a curtain of shrieking whiteness that cut visibility to less than two full strides of Goliath’s powerful legs. At last, he could hold himself back no longer.

  “Stop!” he shouted suddenly to the shadowy form ahead, his voice strangely muted by the whipping snow around them.

  “What is it?” Esah-Zhurah called back, reining in her magthep. Reza heard anticipation in her voice, as if she expected him to be pointing to the kazha, about to tell her he saw something he recognized.

  “Esah-Zhurah,” he said, moving close to overcome the howling wind, “you must face it: we are lost. Night will fall soon, and we must find a place to make camp or we will freeze to death.”

  “For the last time, Reza, I say we are going in the correct direction,” she said, her voice tight. Her own fears had been eating at her like a maggot feasting on rotting flesh, and Reza’s words only served to fuel the parasitic beast. But her pride concealed the extent of the rot, providing her a false shield of self-righteousness. Inside, she wanted to protect him, to do what was right. But the prideful froth that beat against her brain, the fact that he might be right, was too much for her still-xenophobic mind to grapple with. “It is just that the winds and snow–”

  “We are lost!” he suddenly shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders and spinning her around in the saddle to face him, finally losing control over his anger and fear.

  It was a mistake. Using his own leverage against him, she reflexively rammed her right elbow into the side of his head. He was unprepared for an attack, and he toppled from the saddle as if struck with a lance. He landed on his back, the fall cushioned slightly by the layer of snow on the ground, but not enough to prevent the wind from being knocked out of him.

  Esah-Zhurah watched with hooded eyes as he struggled to his knees, gasping for breath. “I am sorry, Reza,” she said, anger ruling her mind, a cheap substitute for reason. “If you do not wish to accompany me, I will not keep you.”

  She prodded her magthep with her feet, sending the cow galloping away into the curtain of white.

  “No, wait!” he croaked, forcing air through his still protesting lungs. He staggered to his feet, only to fall again, his head whirling from her unexpected blow. He crawled to Goliath’s side, the claws of his gauntlets grappling with the saddle as he struggled to his feet. “Esah-Zhurah! Wait!” he cried again, finally clearheaded enough to lunge into his mount’s saddle.

  But it was too late. He watched helplessly as she sped into the wall of snow, swiftly disappearing from sight.

  * * *

  Esah-Zhurah did not how long she had been going at a full gallop. Her anger at Reza, a demon that had struck with the suddenness of lightning, had been so all-consuming that she had completely lost track of time. But from the magthep’s labored breathing, she knew that it was time to let it rest. Forcing herself to relax somewhat, she eased it to a slow trot, then a walk.

  She looked yet again at the compass, but she was not entirely consoled by what it told her. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, Reza had been right about one thing: even as bad as this weather had been, they certainly should have reached the kazha – or at least one of the outer ring roads – by now.

  Stopping her magthep for a moment, ignoring its hungry mewling, she peered intently into the snowy world around her. She looked for landmarks, but there was nothing. Not a single feature stood out. Not a rock, not a tree, nothing. She found that in itself curious and disquieting. There was not a single lump or disturbance in the ground within the confines of her limited visibility; the ground under the snow seemed to be as smooth and flat as a pane of glass
. She looked again at the compass. The needle still pointed insistently three points left of north, exactly as it should. It had not deviated since they started from the city.

  As she fumbled with the flap of the compass pouch, she suddenly stopped as those four words echoed in her head. It had not deviated…

  With a feeling of sickening certainty, she took a close look at the compass, already knowing what she would find. Indeed, the needle still pointed as it always had – no matter which way the device was turned. Holding it close to her face, peering through the driving snow, she saw that the tiny air bubble under the glass face was locked in position, the liquid inside the compass frozen solid.

  Baring her fangs and roaring with anger at her own stupidity, she smashed her fist into the fragile face of the device. She hurled what was left of it into the snow with all her strength, watching it disappear as it sailed into the bleak whiteness that had encircled her.

  And only then did the magnitude of her predicament become apparent. Having abandoned Reza, she may well have forfeited her own life. Her people ventured into the Homeworld’s winter harshness in pairs at least, for one terribly vital reason: one body alone, even in the emergency shelters they always carried, could not produce enough heat to overcome the freezing temperatures of the night. The magtheps were insulated well enough that they could burrow into the snow to shield themselves from the wind, and thus survive. But without Reza’s body heat to combine with her own, she would almost certainly die of exposure.

  Worse than the thought of death, however, was how she had tainted her honor before Reza with her pride and arrogant self-confidence. She had breached the trust he had vested in her that day in the grotto, now a lifetime ago, yet only yesterday. So much had they shared in the cycles that had passed, and only now did she understand the depth to which their relationship had grown. She accepted that he was not an animal, but a being worthy of her trust and the mercy of the Empress. Of all the things in her life of which she could be proud, he was the first and foremost. Death she could accept. But dying without a chance to redeem herself to Reza – that she could not.

  She saw that the snow was beginning to fill her magthep’s tracks, slowly obliterating them and marking the time before she might have to lay down to sleep one last time and await Death’s cold embrace.

  “Reza,” she cried, reining the magthep around to head back in the direction from which they had come, “what a fool I have been!”

  There was no answer, save the mocking howl of the wind.

  * * *

  Awkwardly, sometimes stumbling where the snow deepened unexpectedly, Goliath loped along the trail of giant bird-like footprints left by Esah-Zhurah’s mount. He was guided as much by his own instincts as by the half-blinded human on his back. Reza knew that normally Goliath could keep up this pace for hours without becoming overly tired, but the deepening snow was slowing him down. Slowly but surely, the great beast was tiring.

  But even with Goliath, it would be impossible to catch Esah-Zhurah unless she had at some point slowed to an easy walk. Following her magthep’s spoor was becoming more difficult by the minute. The blowing whiteness around him had turned a dull, lifeless gray as the invisible sun began to set, and it would soon give way to the icy depths of night, beset by temperatures that would freeze exposed flesh in a matter of seconds. The wind that drove the snow over the tracks he desperately sought to follow also was attacking his body, impaling him with tiny needles of cold that lanced at his nerves before they disappeared from his sense of touch altogether. Already, he had lost most of the feeling in his toes; a residual tingling was all that remained. If he could not find Esah-Zhurah soon he would suffer from frostbite, his flesh perhaps permanently damaged if he could not reach a healer in time. If he did not find her at all, they both would die.

  He was running out of time. Each newfound footprint was shallower than the one before it, covered by the massive snowfall that had reduced Reza’s world to a few paces of his own legs. Goliath’s stride was almost that long when he was moving quickly, and if Esah-Zhurah made a sharp turn somewhere up ahead as she followed her faulty compass, Reza could easily miss it and lose the trail even before the snow covered it completely.

  Cursing under his breath to any god that might be listening, even the Empress, Reza urged Goliath on, driving him as fast as he dared.

  * * *

  Esah-Zhurah had slowed her mount to a dull plod as she squinted in the dying light to see the spoor her magthep had left coming the other way. She had not realized before how far she had come since leaving Reza behind, but backtracking was leaving her with little hope of finding him. The tracks were all but gone, mere dents in the featureless gray landscape, and the blinding whiteness of the snowy cloak around her was quickly giving way to the deadly darkness of night. If she did not find him soon…

  She carefully guided the magthep along the fading trail, but her skill could not forestall the inevitable. The last visible track behind her now, she saw only falling snow, a dark gray curtain ahead of her in the rapidly fading light. The trail was gone.

  “Reza,” she murmured, “what am I to do?”

  * * *

  “Well,” Reza said to himself, batting his arms against his torso to keep his blood flowing into his numbing fingers, “the hunt is over.” After passing an indentation he took to be a footprint, he had found himself surrounded by snow, snow, and more snow, without any further sign of the other magthep’s trail. Even Goliath had lost the scent of the other beast, and stood snorting into the freezing air. With a morbid curiosity befitting a cynical embalmer, Reza wondered how it would feel to freeze to death. The accounts he remembered from his fading memory of things human described it as feeling terribly cold, then warm, and at last falling asleep, never to reawaken. “That is not so bad,” he sighed. There were plenty of worse ways to die, he knew. But this was fundamentally wrong to him in a way that he was at a loss to explain.

  He stared into the snow, where the horizon should have been, but he was not looking at what his eyes were seeing. He was listening to a voice that spoke deep within him. It did not use words, or even images, like in a dream. It was more a feeling that pulsed from his core, a flame that had been kindled in his soul as he slept one night, perhaps. He did not know exactly when it had first come to him, or what it might have been, but he accepted it now as an ally. It was not simply the voice of his will to survive. It was like a living thing within him, an alter ego that played the role of guardian angel by giving him the strength he needed to live. Alien or human, it did not matter. It was with him.

  Esah-Zhurah was somewhere close by, the voice seemed to say. And Reza believed. He knew it was true. It must be.

  As he drew on that source of inner strength, a rush of adrenaline suddenly surged into his system. Taking the furs from his face, he cupped his hands to his mouth.

  “Esah-Zhurah!” he shouted as loud as he could, his diaphragm ramming air into his throat like a turbine, stretching the last syllable until his lungs had no more to give.

  Without the tiniest trace of an echo, the wall of snow around him consumed her name.

  Closing his eyes, he listened.

  * * *

  Esah-Zhurah was just about to dismount and set up the shelter when she heard something above the howling of the falling snow. It sounded like a faintly audible note that might have been a voice coming from her left. It grew for a moment into a steady tone that suddenly ended.

  “Reza?” she whispered. “Reza!” she shouted, “Where are you?”

  Nothing.

  “I did not imagine it,” she said aloud, sitting ramrod straight in her saddle, as if her body could act as an antenna to gain some additional clarity should the note be repeated.

  Beneath her, the magthep threw its head from side to side, growing restless for no reason Esah-Zhurah could fathom. It mewled quietly, stomping its feet, waiting for Esah-Zhurah to make up her mind.

  There! The sound came again, and she was sure it was
her name being called, and was not simply a wishful hallucination.

  “Reza!” she shouted with all her strength. “Over here!”

  Her heart thundering with relief, she wheeled her magthep around and began to gallop in the direction of his voice, thanking the Empress that Reza somehow had found her, and that perhaps all would yet be well.

  * * *

  He was about to call out to her again when he heard a thunderous boom. Goliath suddenly sprawled forward, catapulting Reza over the beast’s twisting neck. Reza’s arms and legs flailed like a doll’s as he spun through the air, his mouth gaping open in horrified surprise.

  In the moment he was airborne, surprise gave way to terror as he saw a jagged black chasm yawning beneath him where only snow had been before. Freezing water lapped hungrily at the serrated edges of the broken ice, and welcomed Reza with a frigid embrace that stole the scream from his lips as he plunged into the river.

  * * *

  The sound hit her like a shot from a rifle, echoing through the air and reverberating through the ground at her feet.

  “What is that?” she whispered, peering in the direction from which she had heard Reza’s voice.

  She could see nothing. Her ears, however, had no difficulty in picking out sounds she recognized instantly: a magthep’s terrified squeals mixed with the sound of splashing water.

  The river! she realized. We have been traveling along the river. And Reza and Goliath must have fallen through…

  “No!” she cried, kicking her magthep in the ribs and sending the beast racing as fast as she could toward the frenzied thrashings. “Reza, hang on!” she shouted into the wind. “Hang on!”

  Suddenly, as if someone had whipped a curtain aside, Esah-Zhurah found herself plunging toward the gaping black fissure in the ice where Goliath had broken through. The great magthep was now pawing and kicking desperately at the edge, his tiny forearms grappling pitifully at the icy wall that rose nearly a meter above him.