At last the magtheps struggled to the top, their chests laboring in grunting heaves as they sought to leach more oxygen from the thin atmosphere.
Reza, too, suddenly felt his breath stolen away, but not from the thin air. As they topped the last rise to the overhanging plateau, the temple – barely visible from the trail up the mountain – suddenly came into full view.
It was an enormous complex of structures, the largest greater in size than even the great amphitheater in the city far behind them. The buildings had been hewn of a hard green stone that had once boasted beautiful ornate carvings of warriors engaged in battle, but now were worn with age, the green faded by countless millennia of sun and storm, the carvings dulled to illegibility. The arenas had not been the simple rings lined with stone pillars that he had come to know so well; they had been elliptical domed structures of various sizes, each apparently tailored to suit a particular function, although he could not imagine what. In its day it must have been a place of indescribable magnificence. But the temple had fallen into ruin with the inexorable march of time and all it entails, and there was no longer a host to maintain it.
“Long has it been since the stone was cut from the mountains,” the priestess told them in wonder and awe, “and harsh has Time been upon its ancient skin. But the temple still stands, as I pray it shall for all time. For this is where my ancestors learned the Way, and this is where it is reborn in the spirits of Her children.”
With mounting anticipation, Reza and Esah-Zhurah stripped the magtheps of their harnesses and provisions for the return trip to the city, stashing them in a stone cellar that Tesh-Dar somehow opened. Once the priestess closed the enormous doors with little more than a wave of her hand, no animal would ever be able to gain entrance to sample the food they had brought to sustain them.
The priestess led them inside the only building that had been left standing intact, an enormous dome that resembled an enclosed coliseum. They entered through an ancient wooden door, thicker than Reza was tall. Yet it yielded easily to Tesh-Dar’s touch, moving aside as if pulled from within.
They entered into a chamber of utter darkness.
“Wait,” the priestess ordered. Reza felt more than heard her move off into the blackness. He exchanged a glance with Esah-Zhurah, who only gave the Kreelan equivalent of a shrug, her head tilting just so to one side. They waited silently.
Suddenly, a warm glow arose from ahead of them, and soon they stood bathed in a gentle light that seemed to be coming from the walls themselves.
“Come,” commanded the priestess’s voice from beyond the end of the corridor in which they stood. They moved forward quietly, their footsteps echoing softly. Their eyes roved the walls and ceiling, taking in the ornate beauty that lay in the carvings there, untouched by the ravages of time. This part of the temple, at least, still lived on.
They found Tesh-Dar standing atop the central dais, although this one was as much a thing of beauty as it was utilitarian, the decay that was so evident outside utterly absent within. The dome crested far above her, seemingly much higher than the building should have allowed, disappearing into darkness as deep as the night sky. Around the great arena lay thin windows that curved gracefully from near the ground toward the apex. Seven doorways, each appearing to have aged not a year since they were made, stood at equal intervals around the arena.
The priestess gestured to one of the semicircular stone pads that encircled the dais and bade them to kneel.
“This place has been the home of the Desh-Ka since before the days of Keel-Tath, before the changes that altered the destiny of our people,” the priestess said in a distant voice. Her eyes were on her two acolytes, but her mind lay very far away. “This is one of the five birthplaces of what we know as the Way, built by our hands untold centuries ago, and where the first ritual bonding was performed. The temple lies in ruins, but its spirit lives still.
“I have brought you here to teach you the Old Ways, the ways which were passed on to me by my priestess, many cycles ago. Many have been my disciples since my coming to teach the Way, but I have not found any worthy of this place, save you who now kneel before me.” She paused. “In accordance with tradition, I may pass on my knowledge to only one who follows me, but because you are as one in your hearts, both shall learn. So has She willed.
“But I beg that you learn well, my children,” she said, her voice a soft, sad command, “for I may not pass this way again.” She nodded at the corridor from which they had come. “Once more will I step through those doors into the sunlight beyond, and then will I be forever barred from returning here.” She gazed upon them each in turn. “Having accepted the legacy I am about to bestow upon you, you will be the keepers of the keys to the knowledge that was born and lives in this place. Should you survive what is to come, you also shall someday have the honor of passing on what you will learn here to another. Do you have any questions of me?”
Reza and Esah-Zhurah signed no, they did not.
“Then let us begin,” Tesh-Dar commanded.
* * *
In his dream – if it indeed was a dream – the three knelt in a tight circle upon the dais. To Reza’s right was Tesh-Dar, her eyes closed in meditation. To his left, he found Esah-Zhurah staring at him, wide eyed. When he ran a hand across his cheek, he found not the smooth skin to which he was long accustomed, but a full beard that flowed in a brown and gray cascade to his waist. Looking more closely at his hands, he saw that they were stronger than in his youth, yet weathered and aged.
Esah-Zhurah, too, had changed. Her face and the skin along her body not covered by her armor bore more scars than he remembered. Each of them had come to know the other’s body with surgical intimacy, their hands and fingers cataloging the other’s skin each night in a ritual of the tresh, coming to know their bodies well since long before they had become lovers. But the most striking thing was her hair. The braids, coiled neatly at her side, were much longer now than they had been when they had first entered the temple.
For if all was as it seemed, they had been here, in the temple, for at least ten great cycles: twenty-five years or more, as measured by the human calendar.
As he turned to the priestess, to ask her what magic this was, his skin prickled with a knowing sensation that had been cultivated in him for many years, but that suddenly seemed so much more powerful than he had ever known. It was a sense of premonition and understanding that existed independent of its subject, as if he were able to grasp the plot of a book without ever actually having read it. The sensation told him that they were not alone. In the darkness that fell like a velvet curtain just beyond the dais, Reza could see shadows of regular outline. Occasional glimmers of gold and platinum and ruby caught his eye, and he instantly recognized the pendants that hung from around the necks of the phantoms arrayed beyond the glowing amber light thrown down upon the dais from high above. As he became more accustomed to them, they became more real, their existence more of substance than imagination. In only a few moments, he saw them – all of them – clearly in his mind, even while his eyes were still blind in the darkness. Thousands, tens of thousands of them were gathered around, kneeling, waiting. Reza instinctively understood what – whom – he was seeing. These were the spirits of the Ancient Ones who had once bound themselves in blood to this place, those who wore the peculiar rune that adorned Tesh-Dar’s collar, and who had died fulfilling Her will on the long journey that was the Way of the Empire.
“It is time, my children,” Tesh-Dar whispered.
As if with a will of their own, Reza’s hands extended outward, palms up, to Tesh-Dar.
Esah-Zhurah did the same, a look of serene anticipation on her face. Like Reza, she was aware that much time had passed in what seemed like the blink of an eye. But she also knew that she was ready, although for what, she did not quite remember, nor did she care to try. It had been a dream time, when great secrets had been revealed, and many Challenges fought, but which the conscious mind was not yet prepared to reca
ll. It would take time to learn, she knew. Time to understand, to become something new…
Tesh-Dar held aloft a knife whose blade bore the markings of the First Empress in the Old Tongue. Reza’s eyes widened at the knowledge that he understood what the symbols meant: during the years they seemed to have lost, he had been taught that arcane but revered language, and could only guess at what other knowledge now lay hidden in his mind.
“In the name of The One Who first blessed us,” Tesh-Dar was saying, “and All Who have come after, do we accept Thee,” Tesh-Dar intoned in the Old Tongue, its lilt and measure pleasing to Reza’s ears. She drew the knife across each of Reza’s palms, then Esah-Zhurah’s. Finally, she forced the blade into her own palms before placing the knife into a waiting hand that had appeared from the darkness, and that vanished as mysteriously as it had come.
The three of them joined hands, and Reza felt an electric surge flow through him, a fierce tingling sensation – much like what he had experienced with Esah-Zhurah when they had shared blood, but so much stronger – pulsing up his arms in fiery waves.
As he watched Tesh-Dar’s face, he felt the dais tremble, and suddenly its center seemed to drop away to infinity, leaving behind a circular abyss that stared at them like a sightless eye. The trembling continued, and suddenly a circular pillar began to rise from the abyss before him, within the triangle formed by their outstretched arms and joined hands. Slowly, as if its weight was an enormous burden for whatever force propelled it, the pillar arose from the pit, stopping as it reached the level of Reza’s eyes. Beneath them, the trembling ceased.
The tingling in Reza’s arms had become almost painful now, as if jolts of energy were striking his nerves like tiny, ferocious needles. Reza looked at Esah-Zhurah, wondering if it was having the same effect upon her.
But Esah-Zhurah’s attention was focused on something far above, and Reza followed her openmouthed stare toward the dome’s dark ceiling. A pinpoint of electric blue fire was hurtling down at them like a comet, and Reza knew that it was coming from much farther away than the ancient dome’s ceiling could have allowed. He suddenly felt heat upon his face, and knew that the shooting star was about to strike. He tried to cover his face with his hands, but they were beyond his control, locked in a clasp of bonding that was unbreakable by any mere physical force. As the heat became unbearable, and his ears were about to burst from the hellish roaring, Reza opened his mouth to scream–
There it sat, cupped by the precisely made hollow in the top of the extended pillar. Reza stared at the glowing gem, the scream caught in his throat. Slightly larger than his own head, it was shaped roughly like a teardrop, and glowed like a blue flame. Gradually, he became aware of Esah-Zhurah and the priestess. The three of them still held hands. The circle had not been broken.
“In Her light are all things purified, are all things made new,” the priestess said, looking first at Reza, then Esah-Zhurah. “And so shall it be this day, my children.” She looked upward, and Reza saw that there was now a circular opening in the dome above them, and that streaks of sunlight pierced the darkness of the great arena to form a circle of light just to one side of the dais. “When the light of Her sun strikes the Crystal of Souls, we shall be changed forever. Much pain shall you bear, for what cleanses best of all is fire, and Her fire shall blaze within every cell of your body. Death may come; there is no guarantee of life. But if life finds you afterward, forever changed shall you be in body and soul, crafted to Her will. The strength of ten and talons of ebony did I inherit many cycles ago, when I endured the pain of the crystal. The wonders of The Change are impossible to predict, but I wish no lesser gifts for you, my children. For when you again awaken, you shall be the standard-bearers of the Desh-Ka, and it shall be my honor to teach and serve you for the remainder of my days.” She looked at the rapidly advancing pool of light, focused by the great dome as if it was a magnifying glass, now just touching the crystal’s sparkling facets. “Soon, now, the Crystal of Souls shall shine. Do not avert your eyes from its fire, do not cry out in pain from the touch of its light, or death will take you swiftly. For in its light lies Her light. In its fire lies Her touch. So has it ever been, so shall it always be. In Her name, let it be so.”
The sunlight rapidly swept over the dais toward the crystal. Reza watched, fascinated, as the light seemed to be drawn into the enormous gem; the pool of light that had existed only a moment ago beside the dais had now become a cone focused precisely on the crystal. The hair on the nape of his neck stood to attention, and he felt as if he were standing on a spot about to be struck by lightning. The electric pulses through his joined palms were suddenly overshadowed by a charge that seemed ready to strike his entire body.
And then the crystal exploded with a light that first consumed the pillar on which it stood, a blazing cyan cone that slowly swept upward and outward toward the three joined warriors surrounding it, filling the air with the smell of scorched stone and ozone.
Reza watched as the blue flame crept toward him, eating up the stone floor that separated the light from his knees. The desire to flee was tremendous, but one look into Esah-Zhurah’s eyes was all he needed to redouble his courage. She needed him, needed his courage in addition to her own. They needed each other. Forcing himself to be strong, he gripped her hand tighter and held his eyes steadily on the advancing fan of light.
When it touched him, it was all he could do to keep from screaming. Never had he felt such searing agony as when the light crept upon his knees. He felt as if every cell in the flesh touched by it was exploding into flame. Tears flooded from his eyes, but his mouth remained clamped shut, his voice still. Beside him, Esah-Zhurah and Tesh-Dar also fought against writhing in the pain that was enveloping them, and all three of them used all the control they had ever mastered to keep their eyes upon the blazing crystal.
Faster and faster did the light sweep upward over their bodies, consuming them with the agony of burning flesh. Reza felt himself toppling over the edge of sanity, the light having consumed his body below his neck like a ravenous predator. As his bulging eyes fixed one last time upon the crystal, his last conscious effort to follow Tesh-Dar’s command, the flame swept over them, and the world disappeared in an explosion of cyan.
* * *
Somewhere, deep in the infinite labyrinth of neurons, an electrochemical impulse burst across the chasm that was the synapse. The command instruction that it evoked followed a journey that would take it far from its birthplace. Slowly, very slowly, more synapses began to fire, discharging their energy in the infinite darkness of the surrounding tissue, carrying their messages into the unknown wilderness.
Far away, after traveling a lifetime, the first impulse was received by a receptor that decoded the messenger’s instruction and issued a command of its own. Nearby, a muscle fiber twitched feverishly, contracting as hard as it could, the only way it understood to respond to the nerve’s command.
More nerves in the area received the frenzied, sporadic impulses from the Command Center, immediately issuing their own instructions to their subordinate muscle fibers. Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of the tiny fibers were called to action by the desperate rain of impulses from the Command Center, ordering the muscles around them to contract… contract…
A finger twitched. The effort had been Herculean, temporarily exhausting many fibers, damaging a few. But the Command Center was not content with such sacrifices; it demanded more. The darkest recesses of the entity that controlled all within its Universe were slowly alighting. A cascade of impulses exploded along the neural pathways that led away to its lieutenants, associates in life whom it controlled and brought to its will, but who in turn kept it alive in a miraculous symbiosis. Millions upon millions of messages were encoded and dispatched, received and decoded. Slowly did the Command Center come to grips with the status of its domain, and as new information was received, more messengers were sent forth: more commands, more demands for information. The Command Center was no
t the least bit hesitant to use the authority granted it by nature, and it had an insatiable appetite for information.
Over and over was the cycle repeated, and gradually, within the lifetimes of only a few million of the cells under its unquestioned authority, the Command Center was satisfied that all was prepared for the next step on its programmatic cycle. Under a barrage of impulses, the great gathering of special muscle fibers that was the heart contracted, then released. Another barrage of impulses was rewarded with a second beat, then a third. As the heart warmed to its work, the Command Center allocated the supervision of this most vital of tasks to a subaltern within itself. Thus, it freed the remainder of its resources to concentrate on reviving the many other organs of The Body.
It would be some time yet before the Command Center would begin to apportion effort to analyze the unaccustomed condition from which it had recently emerged. In its haste to make The Body serviceable again, it did not notice, nor pause to contemplate, the changes that had taken place within the living quilt of its domain.
In the meantime, Reza began to breathe.
* * *
“Reza.”
He blinked, then opened his eyes fully. Tesh-Dar’s face was close to his, her hands on his shoulders.
“Yes, priestess,” he murmured. His face tingled, the muscles tight as if he had been forced to hold a smile for several hours on end. The rest of his body was the same, tingling and burning at the same time, his nerves feeling as if someone had tried to electrocute him. And had very nearly succeeded.
Looking up at Tesh-Dar, he saw the traces of a similar level of discomfort. Her eyes, normally clear and sharp as silver-flecked diamonds, wore a glassy cast that made them look almost hazy, slightly opaque.
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