He thought for a while about what death would be like. Death, a force that had pursued him relentlessly for most of his young life, would finally get its due. Like an old relative who had dropped by many times to visit, only to miss Reza by a shard of time, it would at last embrace him and welcome him into whatever lay within its dark domain. Reza had never been terrified of death, but had evaded it because he had loved life enough to suffer for it. But now he found death a welcome thing, for then his greatest quest would be over, the search for the answer that was the very reason for his coming here: to discover if he had a soul. Long having forgotten the Christian teachings of his childhood, he now wondered only what the Bloodsong must sound like, the thing that united the Children of the Empress to Her will. But he had never heard it, neither from himself nor the tresh around him. He did not even know what to listen for, or if it was really a “sound” at all. All he had was question upon question, all without answer as long as he lived and breathed. Did he have a soul, or was he merely an animal, as the peers believed? Was he nothing more than animated clay fashioned into human form by Her hands? Would he pass through the portal of Death to something beyond? Or would he simply cease to exist, turning to dust and ash as Esah-Zhurah set his body ablaze in a funeral pyre that was the tradition of Her Children? It seemed that only in death would he discover the truth of what Her Children knew from birth.
As the sky above turned from the pastel magenta of day to the inky darkness of night, he welcomed the stars as they emerged from their celestial slumber, and made a silent wish upon the five stars of Her name.
He wished for a soul, and that all would not end when his body suffered the final blow.
* * *
When Reza returned to the grotto, he found Esah-Zhurah kneeling, her pensive face turned to the fire that burned beside her, the flames licking quietly at the air as if afraid to disturb her thoughts. Slowly, as if breaking herself away from a hypnotist’s swaying talisman, she looked up at him, and his heart skipped a beat at the black marks that swept down from her eyes, a window to the pain in her soul.
“Kneel,” she said, gesturing to the skins that formed the floor of their makeshift abode.
Reza took his place before her, his knees just touching hers, his hands spread, palms down, on his thighs.
“There is an ancient tradition,” she began, “that predates even the First Empire, that was part of our Way before Keel-Tath ascended to the throne, before we became what we are now. It was not a tradition of all our people, but of the Desh-Ka. It was begun from the first day their rune was engraved in the stone of their temple, and which all Desh-Ka have followed throughout the ages. It is the rite of Drakhash, the blood bond.
“In those days, as now, the blood of the tribe was considered most sacred, and to share it with another was both a great honor and a great responsibility, often with terrible consequences during the Reign of Chaos. So legend tells us.” She paused, reaching beside her for a knife that lay unsheathed near the fire, a blade that Reza had never seen before, but whose exquisite workmanship was unprecedented to his eyes. “You, Reza, of human birth and blood, have shown the skill and fire that are the marks of our warriors. You, whose blood does not sing, who cannot hear the Bloodsong of Her Children, are as a stranger to our tribe, our people, yet worthy of our respect and trust.” Holding the knife between them, the dagger blade pointed at the sky, she said, “Although I am not Desh-Ka by birth, I am a True Daughter of the Empress, born of Her womb, blessed with Her very blood. And thus I may speak without falsehood, for my will is Her will, and it shall be done.”
Taking off his gauntlets, as she had her own, she took his hand in hers, clasping it tightly as her other hand kept the dagger aloft, still pointing skyward. “I ask you only this: do you accept Her in your heart of hearts, that you shall follow Her will unto death, that the Way of our people shall be the Way of your heart, of your mind?”
Reza’s mind was spinning at the enormity of what his tresh was doing. He knew that the priestess would have categorically forbidden such a thing, yet Esah-Zhurah could not go against the Empress’s will. In whatever incomprehensible way these people were bound together, he knew that to be impossible as surely as he could not spread his wings and fly from this mountain to the plains below. But his thoughts were preempted by the words spoken by his heart. “With all my heart, Her will is mine, the Way of Her Children is the Way of my soul. To die for Her honor is to die for Her grace and Her love. So has it been, so shall it forever be.”
Esah-Zhurah nodded. Wordlessly, they raised their clasped hands into the air, and she placed the knife between them, the flat of the blade cool as it rested against their palms.
“With this knife, forged long ago for one who would ascend to the throne, wielded by Her in battle, are we now joined.” With a slight twist of her knife hand, the blade’s razor edge broke the boundary of skin between them, drawing a deep line of blood as she pulled it downward, the weapon slipping from their joined hands like a newborn infant from the womb. Esah-Zhurah set the knife aside, then wrapped her free hand around their joined fist. She felt the warm pulse of her blood, and his, as their wounds sought each other out, mated.
Reza’s hand was tingling as if Esah-Zhurah was sending electric currents through it, and as they knelt there, face to face, the sensation began to spread up his arm, then his shoulder. And looking into her eyes, he could see that she felt it, too.
“I must tell you something,” she said, her cat’s eyes pools of glittering fire, stars in the blackness of mourning that besieged her face. “I feel fear, Reza, such as I have never before felt. I fear losing you, losing your voice… your scent… your touch. In my language, even the Old Tongue that you have not been taught, there are no words to describe these things I feel for you.” Slowly, she placed her free hand over his heart. “The only hope of my soul is that the blood now in your veins may sing to Her, that She may know thy voice.”
“Esah-Zhurah,” he whispered, “I love you.” She leaned close to kiss him lightly on the eyes, her fingers in his hair. “Had I my entire life to do over,” he told her, “I would change nothing, would suffer anything, that I could be with you.”
She kissed him softly on the mouth, and then slowly rose to her feet. He made to rise also, but she gently pushed him back to where he knelt. “Stay,” she whispered huskily. “I have learned the tradition of the Old Ways, before the Curse,” she told him, her breath warm against his face, “when male and female touched in desire, not desperate need. So it was then, so shall it be now.”
The tingling sensation still spreading through his body, she separated her bloodied hand from his. Slowly, she began to undress. She undid the belt that carried her weapons, letting it slide to the ground. Then she began to unfasten her armor, placing it in an orderly stack beside her. Her black undergarment disappeared in the shimmering firelight, then her sandals.
Reza watched, enraptured, as she discarded the last of her clothing. Her blue skin glowed as she stood before him, backlit by the flames. Her muscles were taut in anticipation, and he could see the gleam of wetness between her thighs. He could hear her quickened breathing, the rapid beating of her heart. Her musky scent touched him, teased him, arousing him to the point where he was sure he would explode without her ever touching him.
She knelt down to straddle his body. He reached up to touch her, but she deflected his hands away, neither of them concerned with the blood and pain from their wounded palms, the spiritual consummation of their commitment to one another.
“Do not move,” she whispered, running her nails along the side of his face, just touching the skin. “Lie still.” Her hands ran down his neck and chest, sending shivers through his body. She began to undo his clothing, slowly exposing his skin to her touch. The armor seemed to simply melt away under her strong hands, and suddenly she was pulling the upper garment over his head and tossing it aside, never taking her eyes off of him. Her hands glided over his skin, sending shivers up his spine a
s they worked down lower, lower. She undid his waist belt and the lower part of the undergarment, pulling them away. With the agility and grace of a cat she moved away from him to remove his sandals, then returned to her former position, her face only a few centimeters from his.
He leaned forward to kiss her, but she drew away, her lips trembling in restrained urgency.
“No,” she whispered. “Not yet.” She gripped his shoulders with trembling hands and began to kiss his eyes, his face, carefully avoiding his lips. She continued on to his neck, her fangs lightly scoring the skin.
Reza moaned and closed his eyes, clenching his fists so hard that his knuckles cracked like wet wood on a fire. He had trained so long to heighten his senses, his perception of his surroundings and his own body, that her touch was overwhelming him, burning in his brain as her mouth moved along his body.
Her hands, now running along the inside of his thighs, convulsed slightly. She straightened up with a deep sigh, a shuddering breath. Her eyes were misty, far away. She kissed him hard on the mouth, her incisors nearly cutting into his lower lip. Then she raised herself further and brought his head to her breasts with one hand, the other now supporting her body above him.
“Soon,” she gasped.
He took each breast in turn to his mouth, savoring the slightly bitter flavor of her smooth skin with his tongue. His hands caressed her body, moving across her taut belly to her thighs to linger in a cautious exploration of what lay between.
Without warning she pushed him down on their bed of hides. She took hold of his wrists and moved them clear of her body.
“It is time,” she whispered. Her breath now came in rapid, shallow heaves. She was at once tormented by need and alight with pleasure. She took his throbbing erection in both hands, drawing an excited gasp of anticipatory pleasure from his lips.
With one last look between them, she slowly impaled herself on him. Both of them cried out at the flame that suddenly surged as their bodies joined. Her nails pierced the flesh of his shoulders, but there was no pain. His mind was in sharp focus, and its point of interest lay nowhere near his shoulders.
Involuntarily he began to move his hips, holding onto hers with his hands, his fingers pressing deeply into the tensed flesh as he drove himself into her.
“No, Reza!” she cried. “Lay still, my love. Lay still.”
He managed to regain control of himself, using every bit of willpower he had gained as a warrior to do his lover’s bidding. He wrapped his arms around her and held her to him, and they lay entwined, their breath coming rapidly in the night. Her eyes had become unfocused, her oblong pupils dilated wide open, far more than the fire-lit darkness demanded.
He was becoming concerned that something was wrong when he felt the first pulse. Some mysterious mechanism in her body began to stimulate his own, and he felt the same sensation as he had on his tentative thrust, but without moving himself. The pulses, the strokes he felt inside her, came slowly at first, but their tempo built quickly, the intense sense of pleasure obliterating reality.
He cried out as he came inside of her, his body arching upward in blind ecstasy that engulfed him for a few brief seconds that seemed to span eternity. He was lost in waves of sensory overload in an act that had once merely been a part of procreation, but that now meant so much more.
As he regained his senses, he realized that her pumping had not ceased with his own climax, but had grown even more frenzied, her body twitching to the music that boomed inside her. Her eyes were closed now, and her head slumped to his shoulder.
Without warning, she cried out, her voice reverberating off the grotto’s dark, invisible walls. He fought her hands to keep her talons from slashing his sides as she thrashed about in the ecstasy that had taken her. Her mouth was open wide, her fangs gleaming white in the fire’s glow, and for a moment he was afraid that she would simply plunge them blindly into his throat.
But she did not. The storm left as suddenly as it had come, and her climax left a quiet denouement in its wake. Her mouth closed after a moment more of straining in concert with her body, and then she seemed to relax and laid herself back down on top of him, her whole body shuddering as if she were freezing. Her hands twitched, and he held them in his own, holding them against his sides. Her breathing slowed, and he knew from the rhythm that she must have passed out, gone to sleep. He held her tightly to him, running his hands through her dark braids and across her back. Tears sprang from his eyes as his love for her filled his heart. And for one of the few times in his life, they were tears of joy, not of pain.
After a few moments, he gently rolled her over on her side and lay next to her, lost in her warmth, their union finally broken by his body’s flagging bridge. The fire kept him company, and he watched it with the fascination that had captivated his kind for millennia. He lost himself to the flame, until he felt a stirring beside him.
She was looking at him with eyes hooded by the inexorable hold of sleep, but troubled by a terrible sadness. “I grieve for my race, Reza,” she whispered. “Most of my people mate. They must to survive. But they do not love. They have never felt this,” she stroked his face with her hand, “since the death of Keel-Tath.” She pulled him to her and kissed him. “I will carry this with me always, my love, forever as I walk the Way.”
“So shall I,” he whispered softly. “In Her name, so shall I.”
* * *
The Empress dreamed.
It was a dream She had never had before. This might have been less of a curiosity had it been anyone else, but there was something uniquely peculiar about Her dreams. They were not the dreams of the woman who had accepted the simple white robe and band about her neck that were the only adornments allowed the leader of the Empire. At least, not entirely. That woman’s dreams were a part of what was now cascading through the sleeping monarch’s mind, but only that. A part.
For the rest of Her mind was devoted to the thoughts and dreams of those who had gone before Her, those who had inherited Her body as She had inherited their spirit and wisdom. The woman who lay quietly in her chambers within the Imperial Palace was not simply the flesh that wore the crown of Empire. She was the Empress; She was all who had ever lived since the Unification, save one. Keel-Tath’s voice had never come to the Empress of the Flesh, the vessel of the Way, nor to any Empress who had come before Her. The spirit of the First Empress, the most powerful of all, lay forever in darkness. Waiting for Her people to redeem themselves, to prove themselves again worthy of Her love.
And that is why this dream seemed so strange. The knowledge of twenty-seven thousand generations was at Her beck and call, asleep or awake. The visions, the sensations of all those who had worn the very collar that hung loosely from her aging neck were as vivid as the day they were experienced by the Empress of the Flesh in some earlier time, from whence the memory came.
But not this one. All that She was, all the thousands of spirits clustered in Her soul, bound together as one, watched like fascinated spectators in the arena as the vision unfolded in Her mind.
She saw herself kneeling before a young human, a human that She had never seen before but felt She knew as well as Her own blood. And then She saw their clasped hands, Herself and the human, joined together as tightly as the enormous polished stones that made up the wall of the Great City far below the Empress Moon. The words that were spoken She did not hear or understand in the dream, but there was no need. The ceremony was well known to Her, even though Her own hand did not bear such a scar.
There was a silence between them, and then She undressed, at last standing nude before him.
Then came the first touch. The Empress shivered in Her sleep, a moan of surprise and unexpected pleasure escaping Her lips at sensations She had never before felt. Higher and higher She flew, riding the crest of a wave that seemed as vast and powerful as the Empire itself. And when the warm spear She felt within Her erupted in its fury of passion, She cried out in surprised ecstasy.
She suddenly found
herself awake, curled on Her side, staring into the wide and terrified eyes of Her First.
“My Empress,” the elder warrior gasped, one hand curled around the handle of her sword. She had never seen the Empress awaken in such a state. It had simply never happened before. Ever. “Are you well?” she asked, clearly frightened. Not that the Empress would die, for that was simply not possible but for the vessel that embodied Her spirit. No, she was afraid that the Empress might have been frightened by something. “Empress?”
The Empress lay there for a moment, catching Her breath and waiting for the spasms in Her loins to stop. Never in Her mating years had She known such feelings as this dream had brought upon Her, nor had Her body been thrilled as it had during those few immeasurable moments. But pleasurable though these sensations were, the unknown nature of their cause disturbed Her greatly.
“Empress?” the First inquired again, with increased alarm. So much so that she laid a hand on her monarch to steady Her shaking body.
“I am well,” the Empress replied at last, thanking the First for her concern with a shaky caress of the younger woman’s hair. “It is past, now.” She thought for a moment, the remnants of the dream that seemed to be more than a dream swirling through Her mind, tantalizing Her body with a few more spasms. “Tell me,” She asked, Her voice carefully controlled to conceal the quivering of Her chest, “did I speak in my sleep?”
The First bowed. “Yes, Empress.”
“What did I say?”
“Only one word, one I did not recognize as being of either of The Tongues,” the First replied. No other language besides the Old Tongue and the Tongue of the First Empire had ever been uttered in the palace before this day. “You cried reza.”
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