Assuming they made it to the temple, Anin-Khan had decided that he would seek out the old priest, Ayan-Dar, and inform him of his suspicions of Ria-Ka’luhr. Even if it was perceived as an insult and Anin-Khan died in a ritual challenge, the seed of doubt would have been planted. Someone at the temple had to know, and by doing the deed himself, he would protect Ulana-Tath and her daughter from any possible dishonor.
He snorted to himself as he thought of the old priest, Ayan-Dar. Anin-Khan had not the slightest doubt the priest could defeat him as easily as he could crush a dry leaf, but he also doubted that his warning about Ria-Ka’luhr would give rise to mortal offense. Or so he hoped.
“What are your thoughts, captain of the guard?”
Again looking over at Ulana-Tath, he said, “I was considering the odds of one of the Desh-Ka priests returning me home with their magic, rather than having to ride these beasts.” His scowl broke into a momentary grin and he raised his voice slightly for the benefit of the warriors around them. “Defending the city, rather than riding into battle each day, my hindquarters have grown soft and unused to such abuse.”
The other warriors grinned at his humor. Few of them had ridden any long distance in some time, and all were feeling the pounding that was characteristic of the magthep’s trot.
Ria-Ka’luhr glanced around, a grin on his face, too, but he said nothing.
Anin-Khan stared at him, meeting his gaze with a stony expression, until the acolyte finally turned away.
* * *
The tiny, tortured soul that had once been Ria-Ka’luhr did not understand how the others could not sense the evil that now controlled him. Whatever dark magic Syr-Nagath had worked upon him had masked his true emotions completely. He no longer had a sense of the feelings he was projecting to those of his bloodline, but he could still sense theirs. The nurse gave no clue that she knew anything of his true nature. She was in awe of him, even though he was only an acolyte. Ulana-Tath still looked upon him with deep respect, indeed reverence. Her feelings were tinged with a sense of disbelief, no doubt from the words of warning he suspected Anin-Khan must have spoken to her.
Only Anin-Khan and through his word, no doubt, the escorting warriors, were suspicious. Their fear peaked when they watched Ria-Ka’luhr, and there were at least two sets of eyes on him constantly. During their infrequent stops, half of the warriors kept a wary eye upon him, although they did it without being obvious.
He wished he could gain control of his body for just a few seconds. He would not waste them on shouting a warning, but would have simply slashed his own throat in ritual suicide. They would not have known exactly why, but it would have allowed him to die with honor.
Instead, he would have the blood of a child on his hands, as well as her mother and the others around him. He knew in his heart that he could, and would, kill them, even without the full powers of a priest. Even if he could not, the child would be killed easily enough with a shrekka, and had to die first, for that was the queen’s priority.
Yet the queen clearly had other plans for him, because he had a very clear sense that, while she would sacrifice him if need be in order to kill the child, she wanted him to survive. That is why the part of his mind that she controlled had decided to take the chance of waiting to strike until they were at the base of the plateau on which the temple stood. Here, along the main road, Anin-Khan and the others had enough room to maneuver, and might be able to overwhelm him. Once they started up the side of the plateau, the road would narrow to allow only two riders abreast. That would greatly limit Anin-Khan’s options for battle.
The only major risk was that someone else along the road might witness the deed. If it were a priest or priestess, Ria-Ka’luhr would die. If not, he would kill them, and concoct a story that might or might not be accepted by the high priestess.
He simply had to wait for the best opportunity to take action, and let events unfold as they would. The only thing of which he was certain was that he would kill Keel-Tath .
As his soul writhed in agony at the thought, his body, playing the role of puppet under control of the Dark Queen’s desires, turned to grin at Anin-Khan’s jest.
* * *
Far to the east, Syr-Nagath rode at the head of one of the legions that was marching toward the city of Keel-A’ar. Somewhere ahead, the mounted cohorts drawn from all five legions, totalling nearly a thousand swords, were racing to cut off Kunan-Lohr before he could reach the pass at Dur-Anai. Her First had informed her that she suspected he had somehow forded the river in the mountains, for there had been a great wave of anger and a surge of fear from the warriors of the legion that had been sent in pursuit.
Syr-Nagath was neither surprised nor disappointed. Kunan-Lohr would not be stopped easily, but he would be stopped. And she planned to be there when it happened. She had given her warriors very explicit instructions that her warriors were to slay all under his command, but he was to be taken alive at all costs.
Where the battle had been won against the eastern armies, the warriors who had surrendered were busy gathering up the dead and dumping them into the ever-expanding pool of matrix material. The mirror weapons, too, were cast in. Syr-Nagath had no more use for them now. They had been perfectly suited for that battle, but would be useless in the conquest of Keel-A’ar. For that, the Ka’i-Nur builder mistress had other ideas for war machines. Building them here and moving them along the road would be impractical. Instead, Syr-Nagath had ordered the builder mistress to take as many builders as she required and ride fast with a heavy escort along the southern road to a province to the south of Keel-A’ar. There, they were to build the necessary war machines and move them into place, escorted by more legions Syr-Nagath had ordered to surround the city.
All that would take some time, but Syr-Nagath could afford to wait. Once her legions brushed past Kunan-Lohr, they and the others that would join them from nearer Keel-A’ar would lay siege to the city. No one would be able to escape the example Syr-Nagath intended to set. It went counter to the principles of the Way as those outside the walls of Ka’i-Nur understood it, but that did not trouble Syr-Nagath. The Way, as taught in Ka’i-Nur, had been as it was before the Final Annihilation of the Second Age. Reducing a city to rubble and exterminating its inhabitants, including non-warriors and children, would not violate her own sense of honor.
After the builders had finished making what she needed to reduce Keel-A’ar to ash, they would begin work on what would be required for her armies to conquer Urh-Gol, the continent that lay beyond the Eastern Sea. That would take quite some time, for the scope of what the builders would have to create was far greater in size, number, and complexity, and the warriors would have to be trained in the use of the vessels and weapons.
She planned to use the time wisely by stripping as many more builders as she could from her vassals, while her legions hunted down the honorless ones that roamed the land. While she had used them as a tool to capture one of the Desh-Ka acolytes, they were of no further use to her, and she would not allow their cancer to grow in the heart of her domain. The campaign to exterminate them had already begun, for she had given the order the day she had turned the acolyte, Ria-Ka’luhr. Those warriors pledged to her who had not been engaged in the fighting in the east or manning the garrisons of their cities or villages had been scouring the countryside since then, killing the honorless ones without mercy. Some, she knew, attempted to pledge themselves to her cause, but she would never take them. Even though she despised the Way as taught beyond the walls of Ka’i-Nur, at least those who followed it were noble in their own fashion. Those who had turned away from the path taught by the priesthoods were nothing more to Syr-Nagath than dangerous beasts.
“My queen.” The First, who rode next to her, interrupted Syr-Nagath’s thoughts.
“What is it?”
“I believe our mounted warriors have found Kunan-Lohr.”
* * *
Standing on a rock outcropping that overlooked the great east-west ro
ad, Ayan-Dar watched as Syr-Nagath rode by. The air was filled with the footsteps of the twenty-five thousand warriors of the five legions that accompanied her. Some of the warriors glanced up at the rocks where he stood, perhaps out of idle curiosity during the boredom of a long march, or because they sensed his emotions, he could not tell. None of them saw him, of course, for he had masked himself from their sight.
After witnessing the dark matter created by the builders, T’ier-Kunai had modified the terms of Ayan-Dar’s punishment. Rather than being cloistered, he was free to watch the Dark Queen’s army as he would, reporting his observations to T’ier-Kunai.
“You may observe her actions, Ayan-Dar, but you may not interfere.” Her words echoed in his mind. “And you will restrict yourself, even your second sight, to following the queen’s movements. If you range beyond that, you will be cloistered in your room.”
He had bowed his head and saluted. Disappointed that he could not do as he chose, he was also thankful that she had seen the potential danger Syr-Nagath posed, and was willing to give him some degree of freedom to at least remain apprised of her actions.
Now, as his eyes followed the Dark Queen, he wondered what thoughts ran through her head. But he could no more discern those than he could her emotions, for he could not sense the song of her blood. So far as he knew, no one could.
He worried about Ulana-Tath and her child. None of the priesthood had been willing to look in on their progress, for they did not see the need. Ayan-Dar suspected they must be on their way to the temple, but he was blind beyond the sense of their emotions. He had asked T’ier-Kunai if he could observe the child periodically, but the high priestess had only glared at him.
While it could be considered a loose interpretation of his orders, Ayan-Dar had also observed Kunan-Lohr on the grounds that he was being pursued by the queen’s forces. Ayan-Dar had watched Kunan-Lohr’s warriors ford the river as they fought off an entire legion of pursuers, and had been touched by his pride in and sorrow for those who had perished. Kunan-Lohr was a warrior of great honor, and it sickened Ayan-Dar that his life would be spent upon the queen’s blade.
“I will see to your child, Kunan-Lohr.” He whispered the promise upon the wind as the queen’s warriors filed past. He pulled off his armored gauntlet with his teeth, then sliced his palm with the edge of one of the blades of a shrekka that clung to his shoulder. Blood dripped from the wound as he slid his hand back into the gauntlet, proof of his blood oath. No one would ever know about it but him, but that was enough. It would have to be. “She must cross the temple’s threshold, yes. But once she does, no harm shall ever come to her, even at the price of my honor and my life. That is my vow to you, master of Keel-A’ar.”
He looked to the west, toward the blue shadow of the escarpment that defined the edge of the great plateau that spanned most of this part of T’lar-Gol. The road would lead the queen there, where even now Kunan-Lohr was making his final stand at the pass of Dur-Anai.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The pass at Dur-Anai was a marvel that was frightening in its majesty. A relic of one of the great civilizations that had risen before the Final Annihilation of the Second Age, the pass had been cut through the great escarpment that divided the continent of T’lar-Gol into east and west.
Not content to build a tunnel, the ancient engineers had cut into the cliff of the escarpment as if with a sword. The great east-west road made only the most gradual of inclines as it entered the face of the escarpment, and it continued straight as a ray of light through to the far side, hundreds of leagues away.
Standing here, at the entrance to the pass, Kunan-Lohr stared up at the sheer rock walls that rose straight above him nearly two leagues to the top of the escarpment. The rock was so smooth that it gleamed like glass, the fused surface revealing the geologic history of the place in breath-stealing beauty and splendor.
The road inside the pass had changed little in the long millennia since its creation. It was as wide as fifty warriors, laid head to toe, over twice the width of most of the rest of the ancient road. For beyond the pass, the endless wars had devastated the entire length of the great highway, and it had never been repaired to its original glory. The original surface, which still remained intact here, was stone, and yet not stone. It was hard and resilient, looking now as new as the day it had been created. While smooth, it gripped well, even when wet.
It will allow us to keep our footing when the blood spills from our enemies, Kunan-Lohr thought. He looked up as the pass began to sing, the wind howling through the cut in the land like the air through a whistling child’s teeth. This day, at least, the wind in the pass favored them, and was at their backs.
They would need every advantage they could get in the battle that would soon begin.
Beside him stood young Dara-Kol. He had chosen her as his new First to replace the fallen Eil’an-Kuhr. It was a purely honorary role, for there would be little for the proud young warrior to do but fight and die with the rest of his warriors. But she had earned the honor with her bravery in crossing the river and her exploits in aiding in the escape of Keel-A’ar’s army.
Glancing at her, he could see that she was exhausted and worn. Her lips were cracked from dehydration, her cheeks sunken. There had been little time to forage for food, and they had found precious little water in the two days since they had left the river. Her face and armor were caked with dirt and mud from the journey, and the braids of her hair were frayed. The other three thousand warriors who had made it this far, the last survivors of the fifteen thousand he had pledged to the Dark Queen a lifetime ago, looked much the same.
“We are truly a fearsome-looking lot now, are we not, Dara-Kol?” He smiled, an expression of ironic mirth.
She returned his smile, bowing her head. “All the better, my lord. The queen’s warriors will tremble in fear at the sight of us.”
That brought a hearty laugh from Kunan-Lohr and the nearby warriors who heard her words.
“Indeed, they shall, fierce warrior,” he told her, smiling again as she puffed out her chest with pride. “Indeed, they shall.”
Despite their hunger and thirst, the discomfort of armor that chafed against their starving bodies, their lack of sleep and chronic exhaustion, his warriors were in good spirits. Every one of them knew that few armies could have accomplished what they had done, escaping from under the nose of the Dark Queen, covering such a great distance so quickly and without preparation, and with an enemy legion snapping at their heels until Kunan-Lohr’s warriors had crossed the river. The queen’s warriors had not been able to pursue them beyond the river, for Kunan-Lohr had left a small party of warriors to prevent any swimmers from reaching this side of the river. He had drawn no small entertainment from the emotional frenzy of anger and frustration shown by the pursuing legion, now held at bay by a mere handful of young warriors.
He and Dara-Kol stood at the head of the defensive line facing east, the direction from which the queen’s forces must come. Half of his warriors were arrayed in a semicircle, fifteen warriors deep, around the entrance to the pass. The other half, he had split into several groups. Some had been tasked with scouring the neighboring villages for water and food. Some had been sent to hunt in the nearby forests. Others were gathering wood for fires and to use as makeshift pikes and spears.
The largest group had been sent farther into the pass to warn travelers along the road of the coming battle. Or to fight them if they forced a challenge, protecting Kunan-Lohr’s back. While there were still some cities and distant provinces that had not given their honor to Syr-Nagath, she was now the effective ruler of T’lar-Gol. Beyond the walls of Keel-A’ar, any warriors Kunan-Lohr’s forces encountered now would technically be enemies. It was simply a question of whether they were aware of that fact or not.
“My lord!” Dara-Kol pointed to a hill that lay to the east along a bend in the road. “The signal!”
A bright flash shone from among the trees near the top of the hill. Then mo
re. Kunan-Lohr watched as the party of warriors he had sent there to watch for approaching forces told him with signals from a mirror what was heading toward him.
“A thousand mounted warriors,” Dara-Kol murmured as she interpreted the flashes aloud, “riding fast.”
Kunan-Lohr turned to face his warriors. “The Dark Queen sends a thousand mounted warriors to us.” He shook his head theatrically, as if completely appalled. “A thousand!”
“I may spare some for your pleasure, my lord.” It was the young male warrior who had thrown the spear and gotten the rope across to Dara-Kol at the river. “But I fear that I may need a longer spear.”
The battle line erupted in laughter, and Kunan-Lohr could feel their spirits rising, their bloodlust turning from a flicker to a flame. He knew that the riders now approaching were only to fix him in place and prevent him from escaping through the pass. As if he would have even tried.
A cloud of grief washed over him for a moment as he thought of Ulana-Tath and his daughter, Keel-Tath. He had known when he had parted from his consort that he would probably never see her again. They had shared much in this life, and his parting gift to her would be a chance at living, and a chance for their daughter to do the same. He could only hope that she had fled the city to escape the path of the queen’s vengeance, for he knew Syr-Nagath would never rest until their daughter and all who sheltered her were put to the sword. Or worse.
He could sense her song in his blood, her fear, her anticipation. He instinctively knew that she must be on the move, and had taken his words to heart about bearing Keel-Tath to the safety of the Desh-Ka temple. With all of T’lar-Gol now falling to the Dark Queen, their daughter would not find safe harbor anywhere else. And there would come a day, he knew, when she would be a fugitive from the entire Homeworld.
“Run, my love,” he whispered as the mounted cohort of the queen’s army came into view, the feet of the charging magtheps’ talons sparking on the cobbles of the road. “Run as fast as you can.” He took in a deep breath before whispering aloud, “And know that my heart is forever yours.”
In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born Page 20