“The Empress would see you now,” a warrior announced to Tesh-Dar, bowing deeply as she did so.
It was time.
The trio followed the warrior to where the Empress waited, standing among the very trees and flowers where she and Tesh-Dar had once discussed Reza’s fate. They knelt in greeting and rendered the salute of respect to their sovereign.
Acknowledging their presence with Her gaze, She first spoke to Reza.
“My son,” She said softly. “My son. So wondrous a feeling is it to speak those words, for they have not passed the lips of an Empress for many, many thousands of generations. Even though you were born of an alien race, My blood flows in your veins as through those of the children of My body, and I hear your song in My heart.
“And you, child,” She said, turning to Esah-Zhurah. “Comely are the changes that have been worked upon you by the first of the Seven Crystals, the most holy relic of the Way. The eyes of your mate are now yours, as are the claws of crimson for which we have waited many, many cycles to see.”
“My Empress,” Esah-Zhurah said, bowing her head to her chest, “I do not understand. The priestess would not speak of it; I can only wonder at your meaning.”
“I believe you are the one to fulfill The Prophecy, My child,” the Empress said gently. “I believe that there shall come a day when the collar that I now wear shall be yours. And with your ascent to the throne, so too shall return the spirit and power of the First Empress, so long lost to us. Its fulfillment would end the curse that has befallen us these many cycles and bring back the spiritual power of the First Empress, bring Her back from the darkness to which Her soul fled in anguish and rage so long ago.”
“But, my Empress,” Esah-Zhurah murmured, “I was not born of the white mane, nor of the ebony claw. How can I ascend to the throne?”
The Empress ran a hand through Esah-Zhurah’s hair. “The Change has deceived you, child,” She said. “Already can be seen the white of the snows of Te’ar-Shelath in the roots of your hair. And the silver of your claws is gone, replaced by the crimson that belonged to Keel-Tath alone, for as long as the Way has been. Someday, your voice shall ring with Her wisdom and power, and the spirits that now dwell in My soul shall serve you.
“But there are many cycles ahead of you before you set aside your name and don this robe and the collar now about My neck. Your generation is graced with a race of worthy opponents, and combat and conquest are our heritage. To them you shall go to seek your fortune and show your honor, and from the priestess shall you learn the ways of the Desh-Ka, that their way of life and knowledge are preserved.”
Reza suddenly had the sensation that the ground beneath his feet had dropped away, leaving him spinning downward into a dark, bottomless chasm.
“My Empress,” he said slowly, already knowing from the chorus that was now clamoring in his heart what Her answer must be, “can we not show our love to You among the unknowns of the frontier?”
The Empress looked at him curiously, and a frown of concern suddenly began to etch its way across Her face. “You wear the trappings of warriors, not the robes of the clawless ones who explore the frontiers. To fight is your calling, and fight you will. I cannot allow it to be otherwise.” She paused for a moment. “This is My will, warrior priest.”
Tesh-Dar and Esah-Zhurah were staring at him, an identical look of confusion on their faces as their own hearts registered this unexpected turn of events.
“Reza,” Esah-Zhurah said softly, “what is wrong? I know you dreamt of going to the frontiers, but…” She fell silent at the agonized expression on his face.
To Reza, the world had suddenly changed. Images from the past, pale alien faces whose names he could no longer remember, whose voices he could no longer understand, loomed large in his mind. And then alien words, spoken by his own tongue, echoed not in that forgotten language, but as a pure thought: I will not fight against my own kind.
The Empress immediately sensed the cause of his hesitancy. “You must choose, My son,” She told him, Her own heart aching at the answer She knew would come from his lips. “To stay with us, with Esah-Zhurah, you must fight. Else you must return to the people from whom you were born. There can be no in-between, no compromise.”
“Reza,” Esah-Zhurah said, her voice filled with desperation as she put her hand upon his shoulder. From him more than any other could she feel and sense the melody of the Bloodsong. His soul was entwined with hers, now, and the mournful dirge in his heart terrified her. “Do not leave me.”
Reza began to shudder. The sudden rage he felt at fate, the anguish of making the decision he knew had to be, the fear of what lay ahead, all collided within his mind. His fists clenched so hard that the talons of his gauntlets cut through to his palms, and blood began to weep onto the floor. With all his heart did he wish to remain here; he loved and honored the Empress and the people to which he now belonged. But to destroy those with whom he shared a common heritage – all of humanity – would be to break the most sacred oath he had ever made, and would taint his honor in the eyes of all who ever looked upon him. There could only be one answer.
“Then I must leave, my Empress,” he choked. He wanted to scream. He wanted to die.
Esah-Zhurah and Tesh-Dar were silent, stunned. They could only stare at him, the black trails of mourning marks already making their way down their faces like ashen tears.
“Reza…” Esah-Zhurah whispered, her face contorted with pain and disbelief.
“You choose the course of honor, My son,” the Empress said sadly. “Deeply does it grieve Me that this has come to pass. This, I did not foresee. But if you cannot obey My will, it must be so.”
“But,” Tesh-Dar said, fighting through the pain that was tearing at her heart, “what of The Prophecy? What shall become of us?”
“I know not, priestess,” the Empress answered quietly, the ageless spirit that dwelled within Her wracked with confusion and gloom. She looked at Esah-Zhurah. “Perhaps it is only that his role is complete, that he has given us what he had to give. Or perhaps it is not yet time and we were wrong in our judgments of what we have seen. But the Way shall not be denied.”
The Empress took a small ebony box from its place on a nearby pedestal. “I was going to give you this parcel of memories from your past as a gift, that you might cherish them before they found their way into the Books of Time. Now I give it to you in hopes that the things within shall ease the burden of your return to the blood of your birth.” She handed him the box.
Inside, Reza found a folded sheet of paper: the letter of introduction an old man had once written for Reza to get into the Marine Academy. On top of it lay a blackened crucifix on a chain that had once been bright silver, a token of affection from a girl he had once loved, but whose name and face were long lost among his memories. They were the most precious things he had possessed in his lifetime as a human, and their appearance now brought a sob from his throat as hot tears of bitter anguish fell from his eyes. He closed the box with shaking hands.
“Thank you, my Empress,” he whispered.
The Empress regarded him with great sadness in Her eyes, mourning marks touching Her face, casting a shadow upon Her soul. She wished with all the spirits that dwelled within Her that She would not have to banish him from the Empire, but there was no alternative, and it could not wait. With his decision to return from whence he came, so did he lose everything She ever could have offered him. She closed Her eyes, and after a moment visualized a place where he might find his Way among those who were beyond Her light, Her love. Because so now, was he.
“When must I go?” he asked.
“This moment, My son,” the Empress replied. “I cannot tolerate division among the spirit of My people, Reza.” She held out Her hand to him. In it were two black rings. “These shall you place around the first of your braids, that which is woven as the Covenant of the Afterlife. One ring shall remain with you for as long as you live, to bind your spirit to you. The other shall bind
the covenant after your knife does its work. When you are gone, this will be all that shall remain of your body and spirit among us, and shall be Esah-Zhurah’s until the day she dies.” She looked at Reza with eyes that would have wept had they been able. “If you cannot do My will, My son, I cannot shed My light upon your soul. When the knife makes its cut, no longer will you feel the Bloodsong of the peers. No longer will you feel My love. Your memory shall live on forever in the Books of Time, for you have done no dishonor. But you will be alone from this day forward, and when you die, your spirit will fall into Darkness for all Eternity.”
She stood before him for a moment, feeling the pain that welled from his heart like lava flung from a volcano. She loved him so much, but there was nothing She could do. If he could not be obedient to the Way of the Empire, the Empire could not give him its love in return. It was a relationship as simple as it was – in this case – tragic, and She offered him the only comfort She could.
She put Her hands on his shoulders. “I beg that you remember this,” She whispered. “You are of My blood, the blood of an Empress. And although you have chosen a Way that will take you to be among our enemies, you do so with honor. And thus shall you forever be remembered in the Books of Time. From this day onward you shall never again feel My love, but know that I do love you, and I pray that glory shall forever follow in your footsteps. Farewell, my son, and may thy Way be long and glorious.”
At last turning away, the Empress made her way into the garden, her white hair and robes trailing behind her like wisps of cloud.
The three of them stood as the Empress departed, but remained silent for what seemed an eternity.
“I must go.” Reza said finally, looking at Esah-Zhurah, then at Tesh-Dar. Their faces were black in mourning, and he could feel the hot sting of tears on his own face. They seemed to be ghosts from a swiftly fading dream. He felt so empty, so alone.
The priestess stepped forward and grasped him by the forearms, the traditional way of parting among warriors. After a long moment, she let go, then handed him the short sword she had worn at her side since long before he was born. The blade bore the names of all who had carried the weapon, written in the Old Tongue that only now, after The Change, could he understand. There were very few spaces left. His, he saw with a painful surge of pride, was the last inscription.
“I am old and my Way grows short,” she told him, her voice sounding fragile, ancient to his ears. “This I would leave to you. It has been among the Desh-Ka for over a thousand generations. Now, it is yours. You wear the rune of our order, now also do you bear a weapon in its name.” Her eyes were soft and vulnerable. He had never seen her this way, and he suspected that few others ever had. “Good-bye, my beloved son,” she whispered. “Go in Her name. May thy Way be long and glorious.”
“Farewell, Mother,” he said softly. “I love you.” He saluted her, bowing his head to his priestess. She bowed her head in response, as befitted her rank, resisting the impulse to take him in her arms, to hold him as if he were but a young child. Then she stood back, her head bowed, waiting for what must come. She looked and felt old, defeated, and it broke Reza’s heart to see her so.
Then he turned his attention to Esah-Zhurah, who stood quietly by his side, as fragile as a mirage. He reached out to touch her, suddenly afraid that she would simply vanish and that he would wake up, his entire life having been spent in a dream. But her flesh was firm under his hand. He dropped his gauntlets onto the ground at his feet, wanting nothing so much as to touch her one last time. She did the same, and he saw her hands: they were black with the mourning marks, so great was her pain.
He could stand it no longer. He began to cry as he pulled her to him, crushing her against his chest. She kissed his neck, her fangs streaking the skin. Her talons dug furrows into the metal of his armor as she clung to him.
“Please stay,” she whispered, and he felt the echo of the pain in her heart in his own.
“Do not ask me again,” he pleaded. “I beg of you. For we both know that I cannot. I must not.”
“How shall I live without you?” she whispered, her arms tight around his neck. “My heart shall die when you are gone.”
He pulled her away just far enough to see her face. Her green eyes were so bright they seemed to glow. “You must live,” he told her, the desperation plain in his voice. “Live for me. All that sustains me even now is the hope that someday, somehow, I shall see your face again. You must believe that it will be so, that someday our Way shall be one again.” She nodded her head, but her eyes and the keening in her blood betrayed the hopelessness that dwelled in her soul. He held her to him again, and kissed her softly, running his hands through her hair one last time.
“I have one last gift for you,” he whispered into her ear. Reaching into the satchel at his feet, the leather bag that contained all his worldly possessions, he withdrew the box in which lay the bejeweled tiara. Extracting it carefully with his shaking hands, he held it up for her to see. “This was Pan’ne-Sharakh’s last gift to us,” he told her, “a token of my faith in courtship of a warrior priestess. I was going to give it to you when we met with the Empress, but…” He could not finish. Instead, he carefully placed it on her head, fitting the crown to the woman he would love unto death.
Even old and blind, Pan’ne-Sharakh had divined in metal and minerals a kind of beauty that was the stuff of dreams, beyond the reach of mortals such as himself. The tiara seemed to become a part of her, and he wanted to weep at how beautiful she looked with it on, but his tears were finished. Only pain and the uncertainty of what the future would bring remained. “Priestess of the Desh-Ka,” he whispered, “forever shall my heart be yours.”
They embraced a final time. Then she pushed herself away. Her eyes had clouded over, becoming hard as she fought to be strong. But he could see that her resolve was brittle, frail. They gripped each other by the arms as warriors. Then it was time for her to play out the last act of his departure from the Empire. Trembling, she separated out the first braid of his hair. Sliding the two black rings down the braid toward his scalp, she tightened them like a tourniquet only a finger’s length from the roots. She took the knife that had once belonged to the reigning Empress and put the blade’s edge between the rings. With her own hand trembling, she guided Reza’s palm to the knife’s bejeweled handle. “This,” she said, her voice trembling, “is my gift to you, my love.”
Reza took a deep breath. His eyes were closed, and his heart stopped. He did not know what to expect. “It is Her will.”
Esah-Zhurah closed her eyes.
Reza gritted his teeth, and with a swift cut, the long braid came away, falling to the ground.
“Reza!” Esah-Zhurah screamed as pain ripped into her heart, the voice of Reza’s spirit suddenly having been silenced. “No,” she whispered. “It cannot be. It cannot.” His Bloodsong was gone. The melody that thrilled her in her dreams and when they touched, that gave her strength when she fought, was no more. She wanted more than anything simply to plunge a knife into her breast. But she could not deny Her will. Even her love for Reza could not prevent her from obeying the call of the Empress.
She felt something being pressed into her trembling hands. “This is yours, my child,” Tesh-Dar said shakily, as if from a thousand leagues away.
Esah-Zhurah knew what it was. Tenderly, she took the long braid of Reza’s fine brown hair into her hands and pressed it to her face, taking in the scent and touch that she would never again feel. Then she opened her eyes to look upon him once more before he was taken away.
But there was nothing for her to see but the garden and Tesh-Dar’s grieving form. Except for the bent blades of grass upon which he had been kneeling, there was no sign of him.
Reza was gone.
Book Two
Seventeen
“It’s going to be light soon.”
The statement was more than simple fact. Coming from the young Marine corporal, whose left leg ended halfway down his thigh,
the bloody stump capped with crude bandages that now reeked of gangrene, the words were a prophecy of doom. Like many of the others clustered around him, broken and beaten, he was beyond fear. He had spent most of the previous night taken with fever, whispering or crying for the wife he would never see again, the daughter he had never seen beyond the image of the hologram he held clutched to his lacerated chest. There were dozens more just like him crammed into the stone church, waiting for morning. Waiting to die. “They’ll be coming.”
“Rest easy, my son,” Father Hernandez soothed, kneeling down to give the man a drink of water from the clay pitcher he carried. “Conserve your strength. The Lord shall protect and provide for us. You are safe here.”
“Bullshit.”
Hernandez turned to find Lieutenant Jodi Ellen Mackenzie, Confederation Navy, glaring at him from where she kneeled next to a fallen Marine officer. Her foul mouth concealed a heart of gold and a mountain of determination, both to survive and to keep the people who depended on her – now including these Marines – alive. Momentarily turning her attention from Hernandez, Mackenzie closed Colonel Moreau’s eyes with a gentle brush of her hand.
Another life taken in vain, Hernandez thought sadly. How many horrors had he witnessed these past, what, weeks? Months? And how many were yet to come? But he refused to relent in his undying passion that his way, the way of the Church into which he had been born and raised, and finally had come to lead, was the way of righteousness.
“Please, lieutenant,” he asked as one of the parish’s monks made his way to the side of the dead Marine colonel to mutter the last rites over her cooling body, “do not blaspheme in my church.” He had said the very same thing to her countless times, but each time he convinced himself that it was the first and only transgression, and that she would eventually give in to his gentle reason. He was not, nor had he ever become, angry with her, for he was a man of great if not quite infinite patience and gentleness. He looked upon those two traits and his belief in God as the trinity that defined and guided his life. They had served him and his small rural parish well for many years, through much adversity and hardship. He had no intention of abandoning those tenets now, in the face of this unusual woman or the great Enemy, the demons, that had come from the skies. “Please,” he said again.
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