“I serve Her in my own way, little one,” she answered softly, patting his shoulder gently before turning back to her work.
He turned to leave, and found Esah-Zhurah standing in the doorway. He realized with a shock that she must have been standing there for hours.
She brushed past him to greet the old woman, bowing with reverence, and spoke quietly with her for a moment. Then Pan’ne-Sharakh slowly shuffled from the room, her back bowed with age.
“She seems to feel you have a talent for such work,” Esah-Zhurah told him, obviously surprised. “You shall develop that skill in addition to your others, but not in their stead. Should you have the time,” she added dubiously. She gestured impatiently toward the exit. “Let us go.”
He followed her back to their little camp, looking at the stars in the sky.
And there they were, as the old woman had said they would be: the five bright points of light that would frame the Empress Moon when it hung directly overhead, the key to the names of Her Children.
Eight
The sword flashed down in a savage arc, the sun’s glow blazing from the metal as if the weapon itself was made of light.
Reza pitched himself to the right, dodging the blade, then kicked out with his left foot, his thigh like a massive piston that drove the air from Nyana-M’kher’s lungs and flung her to the ground. The few seconds of surprise his parry had given him was all he needed. Smoothly drawing the black shrekka from its holder on his left shoulder, he hurled the hand-held buzz saw and watched with satisfaction as it buried itself in the ground five centimeters from Nyana-M’kher’s head, showering her with sand from the arena’s floor.
“Enough!” called the arena’s umpire, a stocky warrior by the name of Syr-Kesh. A gesture of her hand made Reza’s victory official.
Reza collapsed on his knees into the sand next to Nyana-M’kher, who was also trying to get her breath back. She struggled to her knees, and the two of them bowed their heads to Syr-Kesh, Nyana-M’kher saluting as she did so. Then they both knelt there for the brief time that was allowed for meditation after one combat and before the next, a mental cool-down that the Kreelans considered an essential part of their routine.
Reza closed his eyes as his mind made the rounds of his body, sounding it out for damage and weakness, evaluating and relaxing each muscle in turn. Their combat had taken an unusually long time – nearly ten minutes, so evenly matched had they been – and his shoulders and legs ached fiercely from the duel. It had been the third one today for both of them, and this one had been Reza’s only win. He had lost the first match to a senior tresh in a spectacularly one-sided – and decidedly brief – engagement, and the other to a very young tresh who felled him with a lightning-swift cut to the legs that would have crippled him for life had the sword carried any edge.
In these moments, when he turned inward like this, he was amazed at how much control he was gaining over his body and his mind. With a handful of exceptions, notably in his mid-back and feet, he could flex each muscle individually, leaving those around it totally relaxed. His breathing and heart rate, too, were gradually coming under better control, and he found that he could hold his breath for nearly three minutes before he felt compelled to take a breath. Even then, he could force himself to breathe normally and keep his heart rate at a steady cadence, rather than take huge gulps of air as his heart raced to get oxygen back into his system and to his brain.
His fighting skills, while hardly impressive by Kreelan standards, had improved to the point where he was no longer the punching bag he had been when he had arrived. While he returned with Esah-Zhurah to their tiny camp each night bruised and often beaten, those who faced him in the arena treated him with respect for his cunning and tenacity, if not for his neophyte fighting skills. The days of underestimating the human, the human many of them had been convinced would simply wither away and die in those early days, were over. Reza had quickly come to understand the soul-deep importance of combat to the Kreelans, and had devoted himself to its study. He observed and mimicked the others, especially Esah-Zhurah, and invented his own tactics. He went over moves in his mind, awake and asleep, before putting them to the test in his waking hours.
And after the combat was finished for the day and they had eaten, Esah-Zhurah would lecture him for hours on the ways of her people, on the Way itself. Gradually, he came to understand that the Way was not just an ideology, a set of abstract concepts meant to structure their lives such as the laws of humankind sought to do, but it was also a physical thing. While he did not yet understand just how it worked, the Way was intertwined with their racial bloodline: when Esah-Zhurah described her people as the Children of the Empress, it was – literally – true. There was some physiological thread that bound them together in much the same way that ants or bees of a particular colony identified themselves and their functions as part of a much larger whole. But how this worked, he did not yet understand. Nor, surprisingly, did Esah-Zhurah.
“It simply is,” she had told him once. “Her will is as fundamental to us and as evident as is the air we breathe. I do not hear Her voice in my mind; I am not a telepath. But I sense in my blood that which She seeks for us, and I know my place in Her design.”
Reza had pondered those words many times since, with a vague sense of loneliness, and perhaps even jealousy, clouding his heart. For he did not know Her will, and he feared his own destiny within the strands of the web the Empress wove for Her people.
“Time,” Syr-Kesh called, and Reza’s reflection disappeared like sea mist blown clear by the morning wind. He bowed his head once more to Syr-Kesh before getting to his feet, walking to where Esah-Zhurah stood waiting for him near the entry to the arena. Behind him, several tresh frantically raked the sand smooth for the next contest.
“You did well, my tresh,” Esah-Zhurah said as he approached, and he bowed his head to her in respect. “Much better than I expected, especially without the sword on which you have so heavily depended to this time.” Reza ignored the barb, a ritual habit of hers that never failed to annoy him, but about which he could do nothing. A part of him hated her deeply, but another part, what he often hoped was the most human part, wanted her respect, wanted her to be proud of him. “But these practice sessions are as nothing compared to the Challenge you will face in four days. Your opponents here do not show all of their skill or their strength, they do not waste their energies here, as do you, but save them for the time when they will need them most.”
“What does it matter?” he asked angrily. “I can only do my best. If I am beaten in the first match of the first Challenge, then so be it.” He shrugged out of his armor, letting Esah-Zhurah open his black shirt to apply one of the writhing living bandages to the creased welt on his shoulder. Nyana-M’kher had brought her sword down on the joint between his shoulder armor and the metal backplate, pinching a hand’s breadth of Reza’s flesh into a puckering tear that had proved incredibly painful for the rest of the extended combat. “But one day,” he said, more to himself than to her, “I will stand in the final arena with the winning sword in my hands.”
“That,” Esah-Zhurah said as she massaged the oozing mottled mass of the bandage into the wound on Reza’s shoulder, her voice tinged with sarcasm that sounded all too human, “is a day I wish not to miss.”
Reza flinched as she pressed at the wound. A shudder of revulsion swept through him as he felt the amoebic mass of tissue begin to merge with his flesh, mysteriously healing it. It would leave a sculpted scar in its wake, a trophy of his tiny victory. He knew that whatever the thing was, however it and the things like it were made – or bred – it was infinitely beyond any comparable human technique he could imagine. The scope of wounds and injuries, even diseases that it could treat was apparently limitless. But having another living thing pressed into his flesh, and knowing that it would become a part of him, a perfect symbiosis, left him yearning for the cold touch and electric hum of the instruments and analyzers, the smells of ozone and alcohol
, of the little clinic of House 48.
The pain made him think of the last, and worst, time Esah-Zhurah had punished him for anything. The only thing among the countless subjects they discussed that she adamantly refused to reveal to him was if there were any males in their society, and if so, where they were. On this one subject he could get nothing out of her other than, “You shall know when the time comes, if it comes,” and the subject would be considered closed.
The one time Reza had tried to push her on it, the last time he had asked about it, she had turned on him like a lioness defending her cubs. She had beaten him so severely that he missed nearly three days of training, spending most of that time in the care of the healers as they reset the five ribs and one arm that Esah-Zhurah had broken in the course of his punishment. The healing process had been nearly as bad as the beating itself, especially when they held him down and forced his mouth open, pouring a wet mass of the undulating healing gel down his throat. It slid across his tongue like a wet oyster before pumping itself into his airway and then his lungs. In the moment before it stilled the pain of the jagged edges of the ribs tearing into his lungs and made breathing easier for him, he thought he would go mad at the thing churning within his body. Esah-Zhurah had chastised him afterward for being a coward, shaming her before the healers with his squeals of revulsion. Her words had burned themselves into his heart and mind as he lay in the infirmary for the next three days with her sitting next to him, back turned, silent. If she had heard him call her name, or felt his tentative touch, or sensed the silent tears he shed, she did not show it. Only when the elder healer had cleared him as being well and he had risen from the bed of skins had she addressed him, and then as if nothing had happened.
“There,” she said, closing his shirt. She helped him get his torso armor back on, the bandage throbbing uncomfortably. “Come. You have completed your three obligatory matches for this day, and I have something for you.”
“What?” Reza asked, his mind alert to the mischievous undertone in her voice.
“Patience,” she said, her eyes laughing at him. “You shall see.”
He followed her, and was surprised when she led him to the stable where the magtheps honked and snorted as they stomped about their enclosure. Reza’s nose quickly filled with their musky smell, a smell he had become quite accustomed to in his first few days here, when he had to sleep with the animals, chained to a post.
“What is this about?” he asked her.
“Tomorrow we begin our free time before the Challenge,” she told him. “From sunrise tomorrow to sunset the second day after that, we may do as we please.”
“So?”
She turned to him. “I wish to take you somewhere,” she told him, “and, unless you wish to run to the mountains,” she gestured to the distant peaks on the northern horizon, “you will need to learn to ride.”
Reza’s heart suddenly began to beat faster. “You will teach me this?” he asked, his voice betraying his hopefulness. How long had he been here, he wondered. A Standard year, perhaps? Two? And this would be the first time he would ride one of these fascinating animals, rather than running along behind them like a dog.
Esah-Zhurah smiled, mimicking a human, her lips parting to reveal her ivory incisors. “I will provide you an animal,” she said. “The rest will be up to you.” She paused a moment, watching Reza’s face turn from hopeful excitement to wary reservation. “It should be interesting to see one animal ride another.”
“Where is it?” he asked, forcing himself to be calm, forever wondering why he continued to hope for some kind of real respect from her, or even a little genuine warmth. Without doubt, he told himself cynically, you are the galaxy’s greatest optimist.
“Come,” she said, beckoning him to follow. She led him around the enclosure, stopping in the low-ceilinged tack room at the far side of the stable where she retrieved a riding harness and a light saddle, which she gave to Reza.
When he followed her around to the far side, he found himself standing at the gate to a large, individual enclosure that he had not seen before.
“This is the animal,” she told him, pointing into the enclosure.
A single beast stood there, a young bull that was larger than any magthep Reza had ever seen. The animal stood alone, except for the scrub rats that darted across the enclosure, searching for food. Its eyes were fixed on Esah-Zhurah and himself, and Reza could see that the animal was uneasy at their presence by the way it perked its floppy ears and nervously shifted its weight from foot to foot. The talons, grown too long on this soft ground without a trim, raised small clouds of dust from the parched soil. Its hide was dirty and unkempt, and Reza could easily make out the whitish tracks of scars that crisscrossed the massive animal’s back and withers.
“This animal has been mistreated,” he remarked coldly.
Esah-Zhurah snorted. “That is not so,” she protested. “It simply refuses to be tamed. The scars you see were left by riders when thrown from its back. It has never been beaten as punishment.”
A clear advantage over my social status, Reza told himself sourly. “If no one can ride it,” he asked, “why is it kept in the stables? Why not let it run free or kill it for meat?”
“Because,” she said, “there are those who find such challenges entertaining.”
“And those,” he finished for her, “who are entertained by watching someone as they are thrown and then trampled.”
“Here,” she said, pointedly ignoring his comment as she gave him the bridle, the leather saddle already in his other hand.
He was about to mention the fact that she had not bothered to show him how to attach the saddle and bridle, but decided against it. Both of them were relatively simple devices that he had already seen on other animals, and he was sure he could figure them out. The major problem, he thought, was going to be getting close enough to the snorting magthep to put them on. And, until that was accomplished, he did not have to consider the prospect of being thrown. He only had to worry about being trampled and then shredded to pieces by the hooked talons on the animal’s feet.
As he pondered his first move, a glint of green near his sandal caught his attention, and he saw with surprise that he was standing in a patch of yezhe’e plants, which he knew magtheps liked. Looking at the beast’s enclosure, he saw that he was standing on the edge of a green border that marked the magthep’s reach beyond the wooden bars, everything closer to the fence having already been plucked from the ground and eaten.
Gathering the saddle and bridle in one hand, he leaned down and pulled as many shoots as he could hold. Reza noted with satisfaction that the prospective food had not eluded the magthep’s wary eye. With cautious steps and flared nostrils, it moved slowly toward him.
Reza motioned for Esah-Zhurah to open the gate. Once inside, she closed it behind him, the squeak of the wood jangling his nerves. He let out his breath quietly, forcing himself to relax as the beast came closer, its large almond-shaped eyes and their yellow irises fixed on him. He decided to leave the riding gear behind for the moment, setting the bridle and saddle down slowly so as not to startle the animal. If he could not gain its trust, he would not need them. Then he took off his gauntlets with their gleaming talons and hooked them onto his belt, hoping the touch of his bare hands might be more reassuring than the lethal weapons his fingers became when encased in the armored gloves.
Now armed only with the tempting plants, he began to slowly walk toward the magthep, calling to it quietly. “Easy, boy,” he said in Standard low enough that he knew Esah-Zhurah would not hear, and thus take offense. “Take it easy.”
Esah-Zhurah watched as Reza began to play out whatever strategy he had decided upon, and was not surprised when other tresh began to take an interest in the proceedings. They came to cling to the fence like iron filings to a magnet, eager to see the outcome of the human’s fourth combat of the day. For a moment, a streak of an unfamiliar emotion passed over her heart like a wisp of cloud before the s
un: guilt. She had not told him that the scars on the animal’s back had been left not by simple riders thrown by an unruly beast, but by the best trainers in the kazha who had all tried – and failed miserably – to train the magthep, to make it a riding animal. One of them had even been killed after the animal had become enraged, tearing the helpless fallen rider to pieces. But even after that, no one had suggested that the animal be killed. It was a challenge to be conquered, a mountain to be climbed, and those were the things on which her species thrived. But the others who sought to try their hand knew the animal’s history. Reza did not.
It did not matter, she told herself firmly. The animal – Reza – would not, could not long survive in her world, among her people. His death would come soon. If not today under the magthep’s feet, then a few days hence during the Challenge, when there were few rules and death was an unfortunate, if infrequent, consequence. And if not then, her mind went on as she watched him come under the animal’s nervous shadow, there was always the Challenge of the next cycle, and the cycle after that…
Reza and the magthep had come as close as either dared for the moment, each eyeing the other warily, alert for any sudden or suspicious movement. Reza could see that the bull was a very young adult, its tiger-striped fur thick and lush under the coating of dust and grime, the hair around its wet muzzle still dark, with no sign of gray. But its size was nothing short of extraordinary, its powerful shoulders well over his head. The beast’s nostrils flared at his scent, but he saw the animal’s attention inexorably drawn toward the plants he held in his hand, their scent a powerful distraction. Carefully, slowly, Reza took one of the shoots in his free hand and extended it toward the magthep, palm up and open to avoid losing his fingers should the beast try to snatch it away.
But the animal would have none of it. Snorting furiously, it backpedaled several paces, then whirled in a circle, prancing on its taloned feet as the smaller arms on its shoulders made random clutching motions, as if instinctively grasping for the plants he held.
In Her Name Page 17