Empire

by Michael R. Hicks

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The storm clouds that were gathering around the mountain like anxious horsemen intent upon some unimaginable apocalypse were a vision into Reza’s soul as he and Esah-Zhurah worked the magtheps down the steep slopes toward the darkening valley below, leaving their beloved grotto behind forever. Since the night they touched, they had scarcely risen from their bed, making love or simply holding one another as the sun rose and then set once more. They had spoken precious little, for there was little to say between them that could or need be expressed by mere words. And there was no time for idle banter, for this time together would be all they would ever have. A caress or a kiss said so much more, and time was valuable to them beyond measure. “Forever” had taken on a very literal meaning for the lovers, for it was now weighed in the trifle of sunsets remaining before Reza was to die.

  But the Way was not known for its magnanimity, and their tiny allotment had been cut short by the hand of Nature. The sudden storm that had charged into the mountains would bring heavy rains, rains that would make the tiny mountain streams impassable torrents that would keep the two young warriors from their appointed destiny in the arena. While the thought had come to both of them that it could be used as an excuse to delay, an opportunity to stretch the inevitable just a bit further away, the notion had never been voiced. They were no longer children, and both of them knew their responsibilities as followers of the Way. Reza wore only the collar of a slave, but his soul was no less devoted to the ways of his adopted people. If the Empress willed his death, then it would be so.

  He smelled the rain, the peculiar musty smell that bathed the land long before it was touched by water, and knew that they would have to hurry. The almost supernatural senses that his years of training had given him told how long it would be before the first drops would fall; it was a measure of time that could not be expressed in terms of hours or minutes, or angle of the sun, but was nonetheless precise. Esah-Zhurah sensed it, too, and together they picked up the pace, old Goliath lumbering with the gracelessness of age next to Esah-Zhurah’s younger and more nimble beast.

  Around them the land and sky had grown dark, the bright colors muted to a cold, glaring gray, broken occasionally by the angry brilliance of lightning bolts that struck at the land with the heat of a dozen suns. The echoes of the thunder that shattered the air drowned out the howl of the wind that rose and fell as it chose its fickle path among the canyons and arroyos through which the travelers made their way.

  Had the day been clear, perhaps they would have seen or smelled the bloody mass of gnarled steel armor and shredded leatherite that had once been known as Ust-Kekh, now carefully hidden behind one of the lichen-covered rocks jutting from the canyon wall. Or perhaps they would not have simply passed by Ami-Char’rah’s severed head, sitting near the side of the trail like a macabre sentinel. Her skull had been an unappetizing tidbit to the otherwise remorseless mind that had been the instrument of her demise.

  But the lightning blinded the riders to these dark shapes that now stood silent vigil, and the shifting winds robbed them of the coppery scent of blood that even now dripped from the torn veins of the hapless victims. In the swirling night, they did not see the demonic face in whose eyes their reflections danced in time with the lightning hurled from the angry sky above.

  Pan’ne-Sharakh had once told Reza that the day of his birth, as measured in the way of the Kreela, had fallen on the day of the Great Eclipse, when the Empress Moon had shielded the Homeworld from the light of the sun. It was an event that occurred only once every fifteen thousand and fifty-three Earth years, and was considered a day of wondrous promise for those born under its shadow. It was an omen of great battles to be fought, a sign of special love from the Empress. It was the closest thing the Way allowed for what humans might consider being lucky.

  But Reza did not feel lucky when a shadow suddenly detached itself from the canyon floor. With startling speed, it grew in size until it blotted out the sky above, towering before them like a dark, angry mountain.

  As Reza opened his mouth to shout a warning, his hand grabbing desperately for the battle ax strapped to his saddle, he felt the impact of the mammoth claw against his chest, a horrendous blow that hurled him from Goliath’s back. Only his armor – now bent and torn like tissue paper – had saved his life. Reza’s ears filled with the sound of crunching bones before his eardrums rang with the monstrous scream of hungry rage that muffled Goliath’s squeals of agony. Reza hit the ground hard, but quickly rolled to his feet. And in a flash of lighting he saw it, standing over Goliath’s struggling form, a nightmare of fangs, horns, and talons.

  He gasped in awe at the thing that had transformed itself from mimicking silent rock into moving, living tissue in but an instant. Its head was larger than Goliath’s body, with rows of razor-sharp teeth covered by a scaly lip to conceal them while the creature lay in wait. Horns sprouted from the thing’s triangular head, and its blazing yellow eyes were cold and inscrutable. Its body rippled with strength, from the talons on each of its six legs to the needle-like crystalline tip on the end of its whip of a tail.

  It stood above Reza like a colossus, an enormous gargoyle that had suddenly come to life. Before he could turn and run, it lunged down at him, its maw gaping wide, its fetid breath enveloping him with the stench of death’s promise.

  In that instant, as Reza watched death come, the mortally wounded Goliath snapped his powerful jaws shut on the genoth’s vulnerable underside, close to its tail. The magthep’s teeth were broad and flat, typical of the Homeworld’s herbivores. They could not rip and tear as could those of the genoth, but they were powerful enough to grind the tough leaves of the hearty suranga’a bush into paste. Goliath’s jaws clamped shut like a vise, crushing the unarmored flesh of the genoth’s underbelly.

  The dragon’s teeth snapped together less than an arm’s length from Reza’s face before its mouth opened in a roar of agony and rage at the insolent magthep’s attack. Ignoring Reza, it turned its attention to Goliath, who stubbornly clung like a giant parasite to its underbelly.

  Reza whirled and ran to a nearby rock outcropping. Behind him, the genoth made short work of the wounded magthep. With a final squeal, Goliath was silent. Having disposed of its tormentor, the beast turned to reacquire its prey.

  It found Esah-Zhurah.

  Bearing her fangs in fear and rage, Esah-Zhurah raised her pike toward the creature in what she knew was a hopeless gesture. She had seen Reza get away, but had lost sight of him in the darkness. She desperately maneuvered her terrified magthep around to find him, not thinking of how vulnerable she was while riding her terrified beast. Suddenly, one of the genoth’s forelegs lashed out, flinging her out of the saddle. She landed on the canyon’s dusty floor with a muffled thud before scrambling to her feet, backing away from the apparition slowly, the pike still in her shaking hands. Her magthep, miraculously uninjured, shrieked in terror and fled into the gathering storm.

  The genoth homed in on the young Kreelan woman. The animal had acquired a taste for Kreelan flesh over its many cycles, and it had chosen a most opportune time to come from the great wastelands beyond the mountains, through the ineffective barrier that proved little more than a nuisance to its great armored body. Already had it dined on five of the morsels this season, and now two more had come into its territory. Cautiously, for the tiny creatures were quick and could sometimes inflict pain, the genoth advanced on Esah-Zhurah.

  Reza breathed a sigh of fear. He had to help her. In Her name, he thought, what can I do against such a thing? The ax weighed heavily in his hand as he moved from his cover of rocks, running in a crouch toward the beast’s flank as it closed in on Esah-Zhurah, boxing her into a narrow cut in the canyon that was far too steep to climb.

  Coming abreast of the beast, just out of its range of vision, Reza readied the ax for a throw. He cocked his arm behind his head and tensed his body to send the heavy weapon on its way in what he knew would be a futile attack at this ra
nge against such an opponent. But it was all he had.

  Esah-Zhurah’s attention was fixed on the beast until she saw the shadow of Reza’s form standing to the thing’s side, ax at the ready.

  “Hurry, my love,” she whispered, simultaneously baring her fangs at the thing now towering above her. The creature was maddeningly slow, advancing a step at a time, in no rush to tear her limb from limb, and she was growing impatient. “Throw it,” she hissed at her tresh, though he could not hear her. “Throw it now.”

  Her eyes widened in disbelieving horror as she saw Reza suddenly drop the ax to the ground at his feet. With a startled cry, she looked up to see the beast’s slavering jaws descending toward her.

  * * *

  Tesh-Dar was finishing her letter to the Empress when she sensed it. She was so surprised that she dropped her stylus, ignoring it as it rolled across the parchment, spreading ink over her neat script before clattering noisily to the floor.

  “Priestess,” Syr-Kesh, who had been awaiting an audience with her, asked, “is something the matter?”

  Tesh-Dar merely stared into space, her eyes unfocused, her hands flat upon the writing tablet, utterly still.

  Syr-Kesh was about to ask again, concerned that something was seriously wrong with the kazha’s most senior warrior, when she felt it, too. It was a tiny warp in the fabric of the Way, a small voice crying out for the first time like a newborn babe. “It is not possible,” she whispered, her eyes bulging with disbelief.

  The priestess’s head slowly traversed so that her eyes fixed the swordmistress like an insect upon a pin. “So have we always believed,” she said slowly. “But so it obviously is possible.” She paused a moment, listening to the spiritual transformation that was taking place, and to which she and all her kind would be witness. She only hoped that it was not too late. The Empress had never before reversed a decision such as She had cast for the human, for there had never been reason to. Reza was still scheduled to die in two days, his blood to be spilled upon the sands of the arena, and Tesh-Dar could not allow that to happen if there was any other way.

  She turned to Syr-Kesh. “Fetch my shuttle here,” she commanded. “I must seek an audience with the Empress immediately.”

  As Syr-Kesh fled to carry out her task, Tesh-Dar closed her eyes and searched with the eyes of her soul for the one whose blood had begun to sing.

  * * *

  Reza stood perfectly still, momentarily entranced by the prickling, burning sensation that was sweeping his body. Quickly, as if it were water spilled from a breached dam, he felt the fire in his blood crescendo into a roaring cascade of power that washed over his mind and flesh in a surge of raw, primal might.

  Suddenly, in a flash of insight as illuminating as the lightning that sought to blind him, he knew what to do. Dropping the more cumbersome ax, he reached for the leather sling that was carefully, lovingly attached to his waistband. He quickly undid it and probed his fingers into the small pouch in which he carried the carefully prepared stones that armed the weapon. He found only two, but decided they would be enough. Placing a stone in the wide cup of the sling, he began to whirl it around and around, moving closer to the genoth.

  “Here!” he shouted at the thing. “Come to me!”

  The genoth whirled around at the sound of his voice, seeing another culinary treat with its glowing, multifaceted eyes. It paused for a moment, calculating the better of the two morsels to devour first. It was just what Reza had been praying for.

  The sling circled faster and faster, the stone within gaining more and more energy. Reza’s heart pumped in time with the weapon’s rhythm as the enemy glared at him with its baleful eyes, perfect targets even in the darkest pitch of night. And suddenly, as if ordered by the Empress Herself, the wind was stilled for just one precious moment, and the tiny missile took flight, propelled with greater force than Reza had ever before mustered behind it.

  As with the ancient tale of David and Goliath, the stone hit home. The round projectile blasted the genoth’s left eye into pulp, exploding it like an overripe fruit that cascaded down the beast’s face. But unlike David’s foe, the genoth was not to die under such an attack.

  The beast reared up, a shattering shriek of pain echoing down the canyon, humbling even the thunder above. It clawed at its face, at its obliterated eye, roaring in agony and rage.

  Esah-Zhurah rushed forward with her pike, her own blood burning with the Bloodsong that was sustenance to her people as surely as the meat they ate each day. She buried it in the genoth’s side, the weapon’s point piercing the flesh just behind the middle right leg where thinner scales covered the creature’s belly. Pausing only to ram it home with all her strength, she retreated, leaving it jammed into the dragon, with half of the pike’s shaft buried deep in its flesh.

  “Run!” Reza shouted, “Get back!” She needed no prompting from him. She ran as fast as she could, but it was not fast enough. The genoth’s good eye caught sight of her, and the beast turned with astonishing speed to trail after its tormentor. Its slow, confident pace had all but vanished.

  Its talons lashed out, and Esah-Zhurah was pitched into the air, flying head over heels. She hit the ground with a sickening thud, her metal breast armor screeching along the rocks that studded the canyon floor. Then she lay still.

  “No!” Reza cried, running after the monster, now clutching his ax in his right hand. He realized with a sinking certainty that he could not reach her in time. The creature, grunting in its own pain and anger, was nearly on top of her, its jaws widening to crush her body into pulp.

  Not realizing the strength that now lay within him, he was still trying to think and react as he always had, quickly, but not fast enough to avert the fate of his lover as the beast’s open jaws descended on her.

  But he discovered that the Bloodsong was more than a mere voice. It was a portal to things that would have taken Reza many more years – years that he did not have – to understand. His eyes narrowing in concentration, he focused his mind on the ax and projected an image of it buried in the left side of the creature’s head. For a split second he felt his body and mind merge in a perfect union, as he were being guided by an unseen hand, and the ax flew with precision and power that he never would have thought possible.

  The genoth’s scales channeled the razor sharp edge of the heavy weapon as it struck the monster where its head and sinewy neck came together. Blood erupted in a spray as the weapon sliced its way deep into the genoth’s flesh, the blade now buried up to the handle.

  The creature stumbled forward, stunned, cracking its front teeth on the stone inches from Esah-Zhurah’s head.

  Reza’s fierce battle cry was lost in the genoth’s trumpeting of pain. He dashed forward, drawing his sword as the beast whirled about, thrashing with its forelegs in a futile attempt to dislodge the ax whose cutting edge was creeping ever closer to the animal’s spinal cord. All thoughts of the prey on which it had been about to feast were forgotten as it fought against a new source of misery.

  The genoth’s tail whipped to and fro, beating the sand and dirt from the canyon floor in its blind search for a target. Reza paid it no heed, heading straight for the beast’s exposed belly as it stood on its hindmost legs, the other four clawing uselessly at the air.

  The Kreelan armorers would have been proud of the quality of their workmanship had they seen Reza’s sword cleanly cut the left middle claw from its parent leg as he ducked under the genoth’s belly. The beast mewled in pain and brought its head down to snap at him, but he whirled away, carried on the rising tide of power that flowed through him, slicing the genoth’s belly open in a wide arc. He danced clear of the creature’s remaining claws as its bowels spilled out onto the ground in a steaming deluge of viscera and blood.

  The genoth whirled, its insides trailing after it like meaty chum from an ancient fishing vessel, and fixed Reza with its remaining eye. Its legs tensed to leap upon the tiny thing that had done it so much injury, and Reza knew that he could not esc
ape. But he felt no fear, and readied his sword in a last act of defiance.

  But it was not to be. In a starburst of flesh, the creature’s remaining eye exploded as Esah-Zhurah’s shrekka struck, sawing its way through the thinnest portion of the beast’s skull to embed itself in the genoth’s brain.

  Relieved of its guidance mechanism, the body fell to the ground with a great thud, shuddering for a moment before its lungs exhaled a final, mortal sigh.

  The genoth was dead.

  Reza was not sure how much time passed between that moment and when he realized Esah-Zhurah was standing next to him, holding him by the shoulders and repeating his name.

  “Reza,” she said again, “answer me.”

  His eyes struggled to focus on her, and it dawned on him that he had been lost to the strange melody that flowed through him, something terribly alien, yet wondrous in its undiluted strength.

  “Esah-Zhurah,” he rasped, finally lowering the sword. “Are… are you all right?”

  Her armor was dented and scored from where she had been tossed by the genoth, and there was a thin trickle of blood down the right side of her face where one of its talons had nicked her. It had been that close.

  “Yes,” she answered, steadying him now as he began to tremble violently. She took his sword before it dropped from his hand. “My tresh,” she said, her eyes full of wonder, “it is within you. Your blood sings.”

  Numbly, Reza nodded his head. The thundering in his body had abated to a basso thrum. He fell down to his knees, his system reeling. “I have a soul,” he whispered, his eyes lost in hers. “I have a soul.”

  Esah-Zhurah kissed him long and hard, then held him tightly as her own soul rejoiced at what they now knew, at the melody that had suddenly burst forth from her lover. Every soul ever born of Her blood that had not fallen from Her grace had its own voice, but Reza’s was different from all of the others in a way that she could not define, but that she accepted as Her blessing in their final hour.