In Her Name

by Hicks, Michael R.

  Turning to the Empress, he kneeled. “May this one forever dwell in Thy light, my Empress,” he said, energy still surging in his body, his mind so aware of his surroundings now that he could distinguish a dozen different heartbeats among the crowd behind him, “for in Thy name did she follow the Way.”

  “And so may it always be,” thousands of voices echoed around him, completing the ages-old litany.

  The first combat had ended.

  ***

  The day alternately flashed and crept by. The periods of waiting as others battled their way through the arenas were precariously balanced against the blinding spells of combat that stretched for an eternity, then were gone in the blink of an eye. Each of the tresh fought and rested, fought and rested while others fell to the sand in defeat, or were killed by Reza’s hand. As the day went on, the weaker and inexperienced ones were quickly weeded out from among the serious challengers. The pitched battles fought in the five arenas became ever fiercer as those with cunning and endurance slashed and clawed their way toward the final battle.

  Despite his acknowledged skill, Reza did not go from combat to combat unscathed. Hour by hour, his body became host to a multitude of injuries. Individually, they were nothing for him to notice, but over time they began to take their toll. Blood seeped from a dozen wounds hacked through the tough leatherite covering his arms and legs. His beautiful chest armor was horribly dented and scarred, the breastplate a moonscape of bare, pitted metal. A poorly executed fall while avoiding a hissing shrekka had cost him the use of his left hand, the wrist broken. His face, cut and bruised in a snarling hand-to-hand struggle with Lu’ala-Gol, was barely recognizable for the blood and sand smeared across it. One of his eyes remained its natural, nearly violent green, while the other glared at the world as a crimson orb, the blood vessels ruptured during a hard blow to his head.

  But the expression he wore was serene. This, he knew, was what he had been born to, no matter that the womb from which he had been born had not been of their race. To tread the Way, to know that She watched over one’s soul, to fight for Her glory: this was all that mattered. This was what Esah-Zhurah had suffered so to give him, and he was determined to win, to honor her, as well as the Empress. He could hear the song of Esah-Zhurah’s heart, faint though it remained, and it heartened him and gave him strength, for it meant that she was still alive.

  But he knew that on this day he would draw his last breath, as would she. His only prayer was that Esah-Zhurah would be waiting for him on the other side of this life, on the bridge that led to the everlasting Way, and that they could spend eternity together.

  And then it was again time. He strode into the arena, waiting for the call to begin. Size up the other combatant. Move in close – shrekka! – drop, roll, attack. Parry. Attack once more. Thrust, block, slash. Close in… closer… strike! Move away, regroup.

  He fought with the Bloodsong roaring fury and might in his heart, and in his mind were visions of Esah-Zhurah chained to the Kal’ai-Il, suffering for him, dying.

  On and on it went, the sound of crashing metal and cries of fury and of pain shattering the air, until the sun began to wane. At last, as twilight crept upon the kazha and hundreds of torches around the center arena were lit, there were only two challengers remaining. Alone now, save for the hushed stares of the thousands watching and waiting for this moment, the two faced each other from opposite sides of the arena.

  Blinking the blood out of his right eye, Reza took stock of his final opponent, Rigah-Lu’orh. He had watched her fight during his periods of rest, and had guessed since her second combat that she would be among the final challengers, and so she was. She stood taller by half a head, and was broader in the shoulders. But despite her greater size, she was incredibly nimble. She had performed a number of violent ballets throughout the day that had left two of her opponents dead and the others seriously injured. Her determination was visible even now, her distant eyes burning like tiny coals with the reflected light of the torches. She wanted his head, and wanted it very badly.

  Reza wondered as to his opponent’s energy reserves, but knew that he would not be able to gauge her strength until they crossed swords. His own body was nearing the end of what even the power pulsing within him could force from it. Even standing still he trembled, and the pain of moving his body with the speed required to survive was becoming intolerable, a constant screeching in his nerves and muscles. The great sword, its razor edge now dented and nicked from hammering and piercing so many breastplates, was like an enormous stone in his hand, his other hand hanging useless at his side, broken now in three places.

  The Empress and the priestess stood upon the dais as they had all day, without pause or rest, watching him kill the best of the kazha. Now only this one, Rigah-Lu’orh, remained.

  “Are you prepared, human?” the Empress asked, her voice easily carrying the distance across the arena.

  Reza kneeled and bowed his head. “Yes, my Empress.”

  “And you, disciple of the Desh-Ka?” She asked of Rigah-Lu’orh. Of course, she was, kneeling as Reza had, saluting. “Then let it begin.”

  Reza had not even looked up when the first attack came. He brought his sword up just in time to deflect the whirring shrekka from hitting his face. With sparks trailing after it, the weapon slammed into the stone pillar behind him.

  He had one shrekka left, but dared not use it until the right moment. With only one good hand, he would have to leave go his sword to reach the flying weapon, and in that moment he would be terribly vulnerable.

  Moving quickly now, the two spiraled in toward one another in a half-walk, half-crouch, weapons held at the ready. Rigah-Lu’orh’s cunning was surpassed only by the wiliest genoth, and Reza would not allow himself to underestimate her. Among all those at the kazha, the Challenge had selected her as the best to face him.

  Closer they came, until they reached that finite point in time and space where planning gives way to action. In a flash of silver, Rigah-Lu’orh’s two short swords slashed at Reza, attacking his upper and lower body at once.

  Reza was unable to fend off both weapons, and she scored a flesh wound on his upper thigh. With a roar of anger, he lashed out with the broadsword, cutting a vicious arc through the air where his opponent had just been. Moving in again, she struck quickly at his lower body, slashing his left leg to the bone before darting away again, just ahead of Reza’s hissing blade.

  The fire in Reza’s veins burned so hot that it blinded him. Time and again Rigah-Lu’orh’s blades found their mark, his own weapon only occasionally diverting them. Her strategy was one of attrition, not of full commitment. She knew that Reza’s sword could cut her in half, armor and all, and so she was careful to stay just out of reach. But she also knew that she was stronger and faster. She had conserved her strength, and knew well how to channel the power of the Bloodsong. Reza possessed the power, but not the knowledge to control it. Now, pouring through his exhausted body and unprepared mind with the fury of lightning, it was quickly – and effectively – killing him.

  Reza was staggering backward now, reeling under her assault, his life pouring from his body through a dozen new wounds. Holding the sword up like a shield as she stalked him, he suddenly found himself backed against a stone pillar. There was nowhere left to run.

  Dropping the sword from his hand, he reached for the shrekka attached to his shoulder armor. It was his last defense against defeat.

  But Rigah-Lu’orh had been waiting. With a fluid motion, she hurled the short sword in her left hand like a dagger.

  Reza screamed as the weapon pinned him to the stone like a butterfly on a pin. The blade pierced his right side up to the hilt, the tip burying itself in the ancient stone behind him. His concentration shattered, he dropped the shrekka.

  On the dais, the talons of Tesh-Dar’s hands cut the stone banister upon which she had been leaning, and her heart leapt to her throat. “No,” she whispered to herself.

  She did not notice as the Empre
ss glanced her way.

  Rigah-Lu’orh regarded Reza as he writhed in pain, twisting around the blade as he reached in vain for the sword on the ground at his feet. Around her, the air was silent except for the thunder of the heartbeats of those gathered to watch. She turned around and saluted the Empress. Receiving a nod in return, the young warrior detached her own remaining shrekka and turned to Reza. He was watching her now, but the look on his face was not one of defeat, but of defiance. With a wail of fury, she cast the shrekka at his heart.

  Reza was in a kind of agony he had never experienced before. It was not the agony of physical pain – he could no longer feel the metal burning in his side – but of emotional and psychic overload. The Bloodsong was so strong now, stronger than it had ever been, that he felt about to explode. His eyes were fixed on Rigah-Lu’orh. Even before she reached for the shrekka, he knew what she was about to do.

  “It must not end this way,” he hissed at himself, his voice lost in the maddening cacophony of fire in his skull and the flames that burned in every cell of his body. “It cannot…”

  Rigah-Lu’orh watched in amazement as her shrekka struck the stone pillar on which Reza had been impaled. The weapon shattered uselessly against the rock, a prelude to the roar of surprise that rose from the watching multitude.

  Reza was gone, vanished.

  The Empress leaned forward, eyes wide in amazement and swift acceptance of what She had seen, what She now felt stirring in the fabric of the Way.

  Beside Her, Tesh-Dar gasped in surprise as she saw Reza’s body vanish, leaving behind only the shimmering air of a desert mirage. As her eyes beheld the spectacle, her blood suddenly burned with a surge of power that struck her like a reflected shock wave. In that instant, she knew. If he demonstrated the will and the wisdom required of what was to come, what must come, the Ancient Ones would protect him, as they would Esah-Zhurah. Both had proved themselves worthy of one another and of the Way, and the Ancient Ones could give them powers that Tesh-Dar had studied her entire life to master. And more. What the peers were witnessing now was only the beginning.

  “And so is The Prophecy fulfilled,” the Empress murmured wonderingly. She closed Her eyes and listened to the song of Reza’s soul as it danced through the darkness beyond time, waiting to return to the bloodied sands before Her and claim his final victory.

  Rigah-Lu’orh whirled around in search of her vanished opponent, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Where has he gone?” she cried angrily, feeling cheated of her triumph. “What kind of trick is–”

  A brush of air against her back, like the tiniest of zephyrs, was the only warning she had before Reza’s armored body slammed into hers, carrying them both to the ground.

  As they fell to the sands of the arena, Reza was clamped tightly to her back, trying to reach his arms around her neck for a chokehold. Securing his grip, he applied pressure, but Rigah-Lu’orh made no attempt to resist him.

  Then he saw why. The other short sword she had been holding, waiting for his attack, was now protruding from her back, pointing like a bloody finger at the sky above. Totally surprised by Reza’s attack, she had fallen on her own weapon. Only by a narrow margin had it missed piercing his own armor over his vulnerable heart.

  The arena went silent after a collective gasp of surprise.

  Reza lay atop Rigah-Lu’orh’s lifeless body for what seemed like a long time, fading in and out of consciousness. Finally, realizing that he still had one last duty to perform before joining her in death, he struggled to his knees. Crawling across the sand like a dying crab, he gathered up the sword that bore his name and began the long trek toward the dais where the Empress and Tesh-Dar awaited him.

  He finally brushed against the stone stairs that led up to the dais. With a groan of effort, he got to his knees and peered up with one sparkling green eye, the other now scarlet and blind.

  “May this one forever dwell in Thy light, my Empress,” he rasped for what seemed like the hundredth time this day, blood from his punctured lung trickling from his lips, “for in Thy name… did she follow the Way.”

  “And so may it always be,” Tesh-Dar finished from the step above, having come down from the dais to meet him. The few warriors within earshot of Reza’s weak voice were still muted by shock.

  Reza slid forward, his broken hand hanging useless at his side as his good hand held onto the grip of the great and battered sword for support, the point of the weapon’s blade buried deep in the sand under his weight.

  “My priestess,” he whispered, tilting the weapon toward her in invitation as he slumped toward the ground, “let it be finished.” Letting go of the weapon, he waited for her to complete the experiment begun so long ago; nicked and scarred as it was, in Tesh-Dar’s hands the sword would still make quick work of his neck, and the story would be finished.

  But the expected blow never came. Instead, Reza felt hands gently touching his face, and he found himself staring into the eyes of the Empress. It was a privilege very few had been granted over the ages.

  “In My name have you fought and suffered,” She said, Her words barely audible as his body lapsed into shock, “and in My name shall you live. When you awaken, you shall be as one with My children.”

  As Reza collapsed into the sovereign’s arms, Tesh-Dar heard the eternal whispers of the Ancient Ones stir in her bones. With life granted to Reza and Esah-Zhurah, they had broken the silence of their spiritual vigil.

  The blood that would break the curse of their people had at last been found.

  ***

  “I would not have believed it, had I not witnessed it with My Own eyes,” the Empress said. She watched as the healers hovered over Reza and Esah-Zhurah, anointing their bodies with healing gel. They applied it carefully to the wounds in Reza’s chest, and the Empress watched their hands brush the gleaming black metal of the Collar of Honor that now hung around his neck. When he awoke, he would no longer be an Outsider. He was Hers, now. “To vanish before an enemy, and then to reappear as he did is a feat known only to the ancient orders, such as your own. Never has a tresh done such a thing, in all the time since She… Keel-Tath left us. Never.”

  “He has been given a tremendous gift,” Tesh-Dar acknowledged, kneeling beside Her. “Her blood gave voice to the song of his spirit, and the Ancient Ones have given him the power to use it.” She lowered her head. “And I would give him the knowledge, if you would bless it, my Empress.”

  “You would accept him as your successor, and teach him the ways of the Desh-Ka?” The sovereign considered the thought for a moment before she answered. “Many firsts has this day brought upon us, Tesh-Dar,” She said quietly. “I can see no reason to deny yet another. And, should you wish it, I give my blessing to the daughter of My Own blood; she is yours, as well.”

  Tesh-Dar lowered her head to her chest in gratitude. In all the thousands of generations of warriors who had worn the order’s rune upon their necks, never had a priestess been given such an honor as to bring more than a single disciple into the fold of the Desh-Ka as a priestess... or a priest. Had she been capable of tears, she would have wept with love and pride.

  “In Thy name,” she whispered huskily, “it shall be so.”

  Sixteen

  When Reza awoke from the curing sleep induced by the healers, he was immediately aware of something cool and sleek around his neck. His probing hands found not the rough steel band of a slave that he had worn since childhood, but the Collar of Honor, made of living steel attuned to his body, and half a dozen pendants. Five inscribed his name, with the glittering runes poised relative to each other, as were the Five Stars in the night sky. The last pendant proclaimed him the victor in his final Challenge, an honor made all the greater because it had been fought to the death. It was an honor to which precious few warriors could lay claim.

  The week that followed was one of quiet but intense celebration. In pairs and threes, sometimes singly, the tresh made their way to his bedside to pay their respects with a salute on be
nded knee. There was no mockery here, no false pretenses. Their sincerity was as real as the sound of their fists hammering against their breastplates as they knelt beside him. He was a part of them now, and they felt and accepted the new voice that sang in the choir of their souls as one of their own.

  Beside him, Esah-Zhurah recovered quickly, the horrible wounds in her back fading into oblivion under the care of the healers, leaving not even the smallest scar in their wake.

  As they both healed, they lay quietly together, saying little except when the priestess paid them a visit to check on their progress. At night, when the healers had retired for the evening, they held each other close, but they did not make love. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was yet weak.

  They had time now.

  They could wait.

  ***

  “The priestess would see you, Reza, Esah-Zhurah,” the young tresh announced as she knelt and saluted. The two who stood before her – both Kreelan, now – were no longer tresh. The Seventh Challenge was the demarcation line between the learning cycle begun in the Nurseries and the beginning of one’s true service to the Empire. Esah-Zhurah and Reza were now warriors.

  “Thank you, Te’ira-Khan,” Reza replied. “We shall come at once.”

  As the young tresh trotted away, Reza appraised Esah-Zhurah with a raised eyebrow. It was a gesture she had once tried to imitate to humor him, but the ridge of solid horn that served as her own eyebrows was entirely immobile. Instead, she had stuck out her tongue.

  “An assignment?” he asked.

  “Possibly,” she replied, walking beside him as they made their way toward the priestess’s quarters. She knew how much Reza wanted to begin his service. Night after night, as they lay close to one another in the infirmary, he spoke to her about his hopes and dreams. Of venturing into the wastelands in search of the unknown, of traveling to the stars of the frontier, of spending endless days in the halls that held the Books of Time to learn of his adopted culture and of so many other things.