Empire

by Michael R. Hicks

  But joy was not the only emotion to be found in the falling rain.

  With Esah-Zhurah’s supporting arm around his waist, Reza made his way to the formless heap of flesh that was all that was left of his beloved friend.

  “Goliath,” he breathed as he knelt next to the stricken animal. Taking off his gauntlets, he ran his hands over the fur of the old beast.

  “I am sorry, Reza,” Esah-Zhurah said softly. “He was a noble creature. I grieve with you for his loss.”

  Goliath had been much more than a simple beast of burden or a pet. He had been his friend. Reza had often spent long hours talking to him when he was lonely, in the days when even Esah-Zhurah treated him as an animal, in the days when he had no one. No one except Goliath, who had always been there, who would listen to his troubles without complaint, contentedly munching on the plants Reza gave him as a treat. The quiet tears Reza shed for his fallen friend mingled with the rain, watering the earth with his sorrow.

  “We must go soon, Reza,” Esah-Zhurah said gently.

  Reza nodded. “Good-bye, old friend,” he whispered.

  “There is something we must do first,” she told him. Getting to his feet, instinctively replacing his gauntlets, he followed her to where the genoth’s head lay stretched upon the rain- and blood-soaked ground. “I hope we are not too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Reza asked.

  Esah-Zhurah did not answer him directly. Instead, she took out the knife that had brought them together, the blade once held by the Empress, and pried at a strange-looking scale above the genoth’s blown-out eye. After digging it out of the dead animal’s flesh, she held it out to the rain, letting the falling drops cleanse it before handing it to Reza.

  “It is an eyestone,” she explained. “You cannot see it now, but it should be brightly colored when held up to the light, like a mineral stone. Only this species is known to have them, one over each eye. They are terribly rare, for the beast must be only freshly killed for the colors to remain visible. It does not show while alive, nor after the animal has been dead more than a few moments.” She was already moving to the other side to remove the remaining stone. “Long ago, they used to be valued greatly among our people as signs of courage. They are still terribly valuable in such a sense, but the Empress forbade the ritual killing of these beasts long ago, that they may continue to live in honor of the old ways.”

  “You mean,” Reza said, “that the wastelands are filled with them?”

  “Yes, according to Her laws. The wastelands are given to the creatures that dwell there. For us, it is a place forbidden. But this one,” she gestured at the dead genoth, “trespassed upon our domain, and so is rightly ours to claim.” She put the stones in a pouch and then held her face up to the rain for a moment, luxuriating in the cool water. It would quickly become a nuisance on the long trek home on foot.

  “Come,” she said. “It is time to return home.”

  Yes, Reza thought. Destiny awaits.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  E’ira-Kurana was the first to spot them. “There!” she cried, pointing toward the two ragged figures trudging toward the kazha.

  Tesh-Dar stepped forward, her eyes narrowed into tight slits against the glare of the sun. The human’s Bloodsong had grown in strength as the night had worn on, clearly audible to the senses of her spirit. Only with the greatest of difficulty did she restrain herself from signaling for the two to come to her on the run.

  Tesh-Dar’s fists were clenched tight in anticipation, the muscles standing out on her arms like bands of steel as the two young warriors passed through the ancient stone gateway. As they made their way through the throng that had gathered to meet them, Tesh-Dar felt at once proud and afraid. Proud that she had taken a weak human who had had nothing to give but his life, and made him into a warrior respectable in all ways save his blood. And afraid that the origin of the song in his heart was not entirely of human origin, and what must happen if this was so.

  As the two came near, dropping to their knees to salute her, she knew the truth. All of it. She could smell the human’s scent on Esah-Zhurah, and she knew instantly that she had disobeyed Tesh-Dar’s orders and touched the human in a way that she found entirely repugnant. And her mind did not have to probe far into the young warrior’s soul to discover the rest of it; she did not have to ask Esah-Zhurah to know that there were matching wounds on their hands from the ceremony Esah-Zhurah had performed. For a moment, the priestess was overcome with the temptation to kill them both outright, but she reluctantly stayed her hand. Other things were already afoot, and to kill the two now would not make the situation any brighter.

  “Greetings, priestess,” Esah-Zhurah ventured.

  Tesh-Dar’s eyes were hard and her mouth was set in a grim line that reminded Esah-Zhurah of the faces carved in the entryways to many of the buildings in the City. The great priestess was not at all pleased.

  “What am I to do, child?” she asked, her voice barely audible above the light breeze. But it was not a solicitation for advice. “Have you cast aside your commitment to the Way, to the Empress?” Her eyes were stony, accusatory. One of her duties was to dispatch justice in the name of the Empress, and it was not one she accepted lightly. Esah-Zhurah was to be given every chance to defend herself, but the evidence against her was already overwhelming. Esah-Zhurah opened her mouth to speak, but Tesh-Dar cut her off with a sharp gesture. “Silence,” she hissed, pondering how she would handle the matter. “I would see you in my chambers, now.” Both of them got to their feet and turned to go, but Tesh-Dar put a massive hand roughly on Reza’s chest. “Not you, human.”

  Reza bowed his head. “Yes, priestess,” he whispered, trembling inside. It appeared that his fate would not be so clean-cut after all, and he was terribly afraid that Esah-Zhurah had sacrificed her own future, as well.

  In Tesh-Dar’s quarters, Esah-Zhurah kneeled and told the priestess everything. She would not, could not lie.

  Before her, Tesh-Dar paced in a seething rage. “I do not understand, child,” she was saying, speaking more to herself than the fearful young woman. “You used a sacred ritual of another order – of my order! – to give this human that which we hold most dear, the blood of our race. Then you… you mated with him as is written in the legends from the Books of Time? And then you are set upon by a genoth the likes of which has not been found for nearly twenty generations, and the two of you alone are able to slay it?” She shook her head violently, sending her braids whipping around her torso. “Madness this is!”

  “Reza carries the eyestones in the pouch I gave him,” Esah-Zhurah whispered, any fear she had for incurring Tesh-Dar’s wrath drowned in the shame she felt at the priestess’s sense that she had been betrayed. But there was no shame in Esah-Zhurah for loving Reza, for doing what she had done. It had all felt… right to her, and had she to do it all again, she would change nothing.

  “Have you anything else to add,” Tesh-Dar said stonily, “before I pass judgment upon you?”

  “Yes, my priestess.”

  “Speak, then.”

  Taking a deep breath, Esah-Zhurah told her, “Priestess, his blood not only sings Her glory – be it by my doing or the work of his spirit alone – but he has also invoked the name of the Empress, in his heart. He believes. And…” she heaved a breath, “…never did I deviate from the Way, my priestess, in binding our spirits through the flesh. My blood sang as it mingled with his, and never was there a dissenting note in the chorus that bound us together.”

  Tesh-Dar silently considered the implications of what the girl had said. If it were true, there was far more to these two than she had ever suspected. But how could it be? Sighing silently in frustration, she told Esah-Zhurah to leave. “You will be summoned when I pass judgment upon you.”

  “And what of–”

  “His fate,” Tesh-Dar cut her off angrily, “shall not change for the better with your meddling. Leave me now.”

  Esah-Zhurah withdrew quietly, leaving Tes
h-Dar to fume in a miasma of anger, sadness, and fear. She recalled the sight of Esah-Zhurah’s hand, the diagonal cut across the palm, still crusted with blood, a bridge the child had built between her own race and the alien youth. The song from the human’s heart as he fought the monster in the valley played through her mind, and she frowned in consternation. She could not make the wrong decision now, for all might depend on it later.

  “Oh, child,” she exclaimed softly, “what have you done?”

  * * *

  Reza waited quietly in the priestess’s chambers. Kneeling on the floor, head bowed and eyes closed as he waited for the priestess to return, he thought of the rapidly healing scar that marked where he and Esah-Zhurah had exchanged something more than words. He let the pleasant memories of the night occupy his mind while his exhausted body rested.

  “You are lax, child.”

  The voice snapped him awake, and he found the priestess standing near the enormous window that encompassed most of the far wall, looking out toward the mountains of Kui’mar-Gol. “Slayers of the genoth should not become inattentive, even in sleep. Were I of a mind, I could have killed you all too easily.”

  “Were you of a mind, my priestess, there are few you could not kill,” he replied quietly, his eyes on the floor. “Even in my dreams, my strengths could never challenge yours.” He noticed that the pouch that had been bound to his waist was missing.

  Tesh-Dar instantly sensed his feelings. How strange, she thought, to be able to touch the child’s spirit as I can those of my own people. Finally, after all this time. “It is here,” she said, holding the pouch up in one hand without looking at it. She had already surveyed the contents: two eyestones of extraordinary size and color. She held one in her other hand before the window so the light shone directly into it, filling the room with a blaze of cobalt blue that Reza could see reflecting from the floor.

  “While alive,” she said, almost as if he were not there, “the eyestone warns the genoth of the presence of prey by their heat, and is nearly indistinguishable from the other scales that coat the creature’s body.

  “But when the genoth dies, if the blood and fragile tissue are destroyed and drained rapidly from the eyestone, it becomes a thing of great beauty, an ornament much sought after, but rarely won in the contest between sword and claw. If not prepared quickly enough, the eyestone becomes opaque as milk, ugly and useless.”

  She turned to him, slowly twirling the sparkling gem in her fingers. “This one is of the rarest color, human. Only two other sets are known to exist in the Empire. This is the third – and greatest in size.” Most eyestones were little more than a finger’s breadth in diameter; these were as big as Reza’s palm.

  She set the prize down carefully, reluctant to part with it, admitting her own vanity at seeing colors the hue of her own skin sparkle and dance with life. She prayed that the stones were a sign from the Empress, symbols of the two young warriors who had come to mean so much to her, despite her anger at their unfathomable actions. Perhaps, as with the eyestones, it was their time to change, to metamorphose into the most precious of jewels, things of value and beauty. Or to die. Esah-Zhurah had said that Reza believed in the Empress, that he had truly accepted the Way. She had to know.

  Her cloak whispered as she crossed the floor and knelt in front of Reza. Their eyes met. “It seems a lifetime ago,” she said quietly, remembering the day she had first met him as a tiny, terrified boy, “that we once faced each other this way.” She took his face in her powerful hands, the tips of her talons meeting at the back of his skull. “I must ask you this, Reza, and on your answer much depends: do you accept Her in your heart, and the Way of our people as your own?”

  Reza no longer had to consider the answer to such a question. He met her gaze steadily. “I do, priestess,” he said, feeling the pressure from her hands as they pressed gently against his cheeks.

  After a moment, she released him. His heart was true. “It is so,” she replied, standing up once again, returning to the window.

  “This is a difficult day for me, Reza,” she said, “as it will be for you, and for your tresh.” She paused. “You exchanged blood, an acceptable tradition among certain of our people. But such a thing is only to take place after the final Challenge, and is always decided by the Empress Herself, or the head priestess of the Desh-Ka. It was the greatest gift Esah-Zhurah could give you as one who follows the Way, but it may prove her own undoing. She breached many of our codes to give you what you now possess.”

  Reza looked up, concern spreading across his face like cracks wending their way across a lake of ice. “My soul,” he said quietly.

  Tesh-Dar nodded. “Or its voice. Perhaps we will never know. Regardless, by giving you her blood, she imparted unto you her honor, and made you something more than you were before. But the fact of her transgression remains, and it has tainted you in turn,” she went on. “I am left with no alternative but to punish you both.” She saw Reza’s grim expression. “You will both be bound to the Kal’ai-Il for punishment with the grakh’ta, the barbed lash. Six strokes for each of you, this day, upon the rise of the Empress Moon.”

  Reza’s relief was enormous. Esah-Zhurah would be spared a humiliating death or the shaving of her hair. The pain of such punishment would be torturous, but it was endurable. He did not have to consider his own chances, however. Six lashes with but a single evening in which to heal would leave him a cripple in the arena for the final Challenge.

  It did not matter, he told himself. Whether he died in the first combat or the last was immaterial; at least it would not be Esah-Zhurah who would have to suffer the pain of killing him. She would still have a chance at life, a chance to cleanse her honor. “My thanks for your leniency, priestess,” Reza offered humbly.

  “I wish… things could be otherwise, Reza,” she said softly. Her anger had burned itself away at the thought of him dying in the arena, now to die with the bloody welts of his shame fresh beneath his armor. She knew that the punishment was unforgivably lenient, but there was no force behind the thought that they had done something wrong, as if the wrongness were merely a symbol upon a parchment being consumed by fire. The Ancient Ones were still and quiet. They did not call for blood, as they were wont to do in the rare cases when one of Her children strayed from the Way. Tesh-Dar only knew that they watched still, and their sightless stares into her soul made her wary of her footsteps in this matter. And then, she thought, there was the Empress.

  “I thank you priestess,” he said, “for everything.” He paused, wanting to say something more, even reaching out his hand toward her, a tentative bridge over the rift that had always existed between them. They probably would never speak again, for the punishment would be rendered soon, and the Challenge would begin with the rising of the sun tomorrow, and Reza would be dead soon thereafter. He wanted to tell her that the malice he had felt toward her for what had happened to his parents was gone, that he had forgiven her. She had, he finally admitted to himself, become a surrogate mother to him, and perhaps something more, something beyond his ability to understand.

  A quick rapping on the door startled Reza, and he turned to see a tresh enter and kneel. “They have found the genoth’s body,” she reported, looking askance at Reza. “The tale is true.” She paused. “They also found the mutilated bodies of Ust-Kekh and Ami-Char’rah.”

  The priestess looked at Reza, noting the sad surprise on his face. “We never saw them,” he said.

  Tesh-Dar thanked her, and the warrior left. She and Reza looked at each other, the moment Reza had been searching for now lost.

  “Go now,” she told him, “and fetch me Esah-Zhurah, that I may inform her of my judgment.”

  Reza saluted and left, hoping that at least the final hours before their punishment could be spent quietly together.

  Tesh-Dar watched him go. She was saddened that she would never know the words to the feelings she had felt flowing from him.

  * * *

  Esah-Zhurah was distrau
ght, but not because of her own punishment.

  “Priestess,” she asked in a determined voice, “is it not possible for one of us to accept the punishment for both?”

  “Do not be foolish, child,” Tesh-Dar admonished, summarily dismissing the idea. Or trying to. “The punishment of one is suffered by the other. That is the code of the tresh. You have known this. You must withstand six times of the grakh’ta, and so must he, for I can give no fewer, and have not the heart to give more.” She stopped her pacing to face Esah-Zhurah, whose own eyes were downcast. “Child, he is to die in the Challenge on the morrow. Is it not better that he be allowed to share in your pain?”

  Daring to look Tesh-Dar in the eye, Esah-Zhurah shook her head. “I would rather have him stand a fair chance in combat and die at my hand or yours with the honor he has earned among us, rather than let him be speared like a meat animal, crippled and helpless with injury.” Their punishment would be received without the usual support from the healers. If Reza was whipped with the grakh’ta, he would be so badly injured that he would die in the first round of the Challenge, if he lived even that long. “If I were to receive twelve lashes,” she pressed, “must he also be punished? Must he, priestess?”

  “There is precedent, Esah-Zhurah,” Tesh-Dar reluctantly conceded. “It is terribly rare, and has never happened in my lifetime. But…”

  “Then it can be done,” Esah-Zhurah finished for her. “It is within your power to grant.”

  “Esah-Zhurah…” Tesh-Dar’s voice died, for she did not know what to say. She turned away to look toward the mountains in the distance, hiding the feeling of impending loss that she could no longer conceal, for the mourning marks had already begun their march down her cheeks. Inwardly, she cursed the unforeseen turn the Way had taken. She had held such high hopes for these two, believing that Reza would survive to become something that had never been in all the history of the Empire: one not born of their race, but who might wear the collar in the name of their Empress, with Esah-Zhurah at his side. To see him perish now was a tragedy she mourned with a strength she would never have admitted. “If you must,” she said in a despondent voice. “I will let it be so.”