Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9)

by Michael R. Hicks

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ulan-Samir looked up at his visitor. “Why did you come?”

  Tara-Khan stood at the threshold to the quarters where Ulan-Samir was staying as Keel-Tath’s guest. Four warriors were posted outside as an honor guard. Tara-Khan shook his head. “How can you ask that of me? How could I not come to see you?”

  “You always were a fool, Tara-Khan. Skilled with a blade, yes, but a fool nonetheless. And just as hard headed.” He sighed. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in. Ale?”

  “Please.” Tara-Khan came in and took the proffered mug. Looking around, he saw that the chambers here were far more spacious than Ulan-Samir had enjoyed at the temple, even as high priest. A thick pile of soft skins made up the bed to accompany the other simple furniture that was typical of a warrior. The suite boasted an unexpected luxury: a pool that swept along the curve of the outer wall of transparent crystal. The water ran in one direction as if it were a slow moving stream, and wisps of steam wafted up from one end where the water was deliciously hot. A small waterfall emerged from a rocky outcropping at the far end to bring in fresh water. Ulan-Samir was among a very small minority of Kreelans who actually enjoyed water, and Tara-Khan had to wonder if this was something the builders had created, or the palace itself, somehow knowing his preferences. How that might be, he could not fathom, for Ulan-Samir’s love of water was not widely known.

  As if reading his mind, Ulan-Samir looked over his shoulder toward the topaz pool and waved a hand in dismissal. “Such things bear no interest for me. The space could have been better used. Your mistress has fallen victim to vanity and the lure of opulence, which has run rampant in her so-called palace.” He bit off the last word as if it were a chunk of rotten fruit.

  “She did not design this place!”

  Ulan-Samir snickered and shook his head. “Then who did?”

  “Anuir-Ruhal’te. At least, that is what Keel-Tath told me. All this, everything, was designed long ago by the oracle, somehow keyed to Keel-Tath. All this time, it has been awaiting her.”

  “Indeed.” He shrugged. “I don’t suppose she told you if she plans to return my powers? I still cannot fathom how she did that.”

  “But you understand why.”

  “As revenge for doing what I believed was my duty and honor under the Way? Or simply because I fell victim to Syr-Nagath?” He snorted. “She would accuse me of wrongdoing, and then dares lay a hand upon a Messenger. A Messenger!”

  Tara-Khan had no answer to that. What Keel-Tath had done had been totally unprecedented. A Messenger was completely inviolate, and while she had not exactly harmed him, she had taken something precious. Tara-Khan had been shocked, and since then had been plagued with an acute discomfort that bordered on doubt. “For that, I am sorry,” he said. “I had no idea she could…or would…do such a thing. I will speak with her on your behalf, if you would permit it.”

  “No, my son. Leave it entirely on her head.” He managed a smile. “Although I appreciate your offer. Perhaps you are not quite such a fool after all.” He took a drink from his own mug, then said, “You should never have left the temple. Or maybe I should say that I never should have let you leave. Even as young as you were, you were one of the best swordsmen I have ever known. That, combined with the powers you would have inherited as a priest…you could have done anything.”

  “I was as much a danger to the other tresh as to any enemy I might face,” Tara-Khan said quietly. “My heart was always filled with rage, made worse by battle lust. You know I could not control it. If I had not left, you would have had to exile me. If I had become a priest, the results could have been much worse.” He shrugged. “I have no regrets about the path my life has taken. Or perhaps I should say lives. I have already died once, and been reborn at the hands of Keel-Tath.”

  Eyeing him carefully, Ulan-Samir ventured, “You are mates?”

  “In heart, if not yet in body. I did not think she would want me, but she does.” He looked down. “I dare not question her wisdom or her choices in that particular matter.”

  “Then I will say nothing more against her.” He raised his mug in a mock salute. “I would not think to steal away your joy.”

  “And what of Syr-Nagath?” Tara-Khan asked. “How did you fall afoul of her?”

  “One cannot take a breath without falling afoul of that creature from the depths of the endless Dark. More than that, I dare not say, except that what is done is done.” He looked out the window for a moment. “The die is cast now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tara-Khan’s words had barely escaped his lips when Ulan-Samir flung his ale into Tara-Khan’s face as a distraction before lunging forward, lighting fast. Stomping on one of Tara-Khan’s feet, Ulan-Samir slammed an elbow into the young warrior’s jaw, knocking him to the floor. Lying there in a daze, Tara-Khan heard the song of Ulan-Samir’s sword being drawn, then that of the blade cutting through flesh and armor. Having intimate experience with Ulan-Samir’s swordcraft, Tara-Khan knew that no one in the palace would be able to stand against him. The priests and priestesses had been sent to help those of the other priesthoods, and while they would not be long away, they were not here now.

  Of course, Ulan-Samir was not now simply a high priest: he was a Messenger, against whom no one would draw a weapon. To do so would be the height of dishonor, and to die by a Messenger’s hand in battle was perhaps the most glorious death to which a warrior could aspire. But for a Messenger to kill while under the roof of his host was simply unheard of.

  A scream from the corridor helped the fog in his mind to lift. With a rumbling growl he rolled over and unsteadily regained to his feet, stars still twinkling behind his eyes from Ulan-Samir’s blow. As Tara-Khan knew they would be, the four guards lay dead upon the floor, their swords still in their scabbards.

  He staggered past them to find Ka’i-Lohr in the corridor, sprawled on the floor. Blood was flowing freely from his shoulder where Ulan-Samir’s sword had found a weak spot in his armor, and more blood poured from a long gash in his forehead.

  “Ka’i-Lohr!” Tara-Khan knelt beside his tresh, looking up and down the empty corridor. “Healer!" he shouted. “Healer!”

  “No, help me up!” Ka’i-Lohr gasped, holding a hand over his shoulder after wiping the blood from his eyes. “I think he’s planning to kill Keel-Tath!”

  Tara-Khan’s blood ran cold. Surely Ulan-Samir would not try to harm her? She had tremendous powers, but against a priest who wielded the element of surprise, even bereft of his powers he could pose a deadly threat. Pulling Ka’i-Lohr to his feet, Tara-Khan asked, “Where did he go?”

  “That way!” Ka’i-Lohr led him down the corridor to the northernmost of the spires in the upper part of the palace.

  Toward Keel-Tath’s quarters.

  ***

  Syr-Nagath lay in her chambers aboard her flagship, which was still in transit to Ima’il-Kush, where she would accept the honor and swords of the leaders who had capitulated to her warriors and fleet. Her eyes were closed, but her eyelids danced as her eyes moved rapidly, as if she were in a deep sleep.

  But asleep she was not. Reclining on a thick pile of soft skins, thighs parted and hands between them, she sighed with pleasure as she witnessed through her mind’s eye the drama unfolding on the Homeworld’s Great Moon. She would have never expected Keel-Tath to touch Ulan-Samir, let alone to do what she had done to him. It was another clue to the depth of the girl’s powers, powers that Syr-Nagath would eventually claim for her own.

  At first, she had been overwhelmed with rage and hatred as she had felt Ulan-Samir’s powers siphoned away, for he would now not be able to accomplish the task Syr-Nagath had set before him: to bring back to her the most high of Keel-Tath’s keepers of the Books of Time or, failing that, to kill as many of the keepers as possible before escaping himself. The delicious irony of the plan had been that, even had they caught him in the act, they could not have touched him, for he was a Messenger.

 
The loss of Ulan-Samir’s powers had changed that, and thrown Syr-Nagath into a rage that had left half a dozen warriors from the other bloodlines dead in her chambers. The bodies still lay there, growing cool, while Syr-Nagath continued to watch through both Ulan-Samir’s eyes and those of Ka’i-Lohr.

  During the priest’s discussion with Tara-Khan, Syr-Nagath had detected a new opportunity to introduce chaos among her enemies. What would happen if a Messenger tried to kill his host? Would Keel-Tath dishonor herself by raising a sword against him? Or would someone commit the ultimate dishonor and strike him down in her defense? Bereft of his powers, the loss of Ulan-Samir would be of little consequence, especially with Ka’i-Lohr still a sword’s length from Keel-Tath’s heart.

  She moaned with delight as the possibilities blossomed in her mind while she continued to watch through the distant eyes of those bound to her will.

  ***

  Keel-Tath knelt on the thick mound of furs that made up her bed. It had, in the brief time she had occupied the room, become her place of comfort, a place where she could calm the pounding surf of the Bloodsong. Since her return from Ima’il-Kush, she had found it very difficult to focus. It was as if her world had expanded five-fold, with so much emotional sensory input that she constantly felt on the verge of being overwhelmed. But here, kneeling on her bed, eschewing the more elaborate accoutrements provided her by the builders in her lavish suite, she found some degree of solace.

  She slowed her breathing and her heart using a technique that she had learned from Ayan-Dar. But was that from when you were still an acolyte, she asked herself, or during the time that was not time spent with Ayan-Dar’s spirit while on Ima’il-Kush? In truth, she could not remember, and perhaps it did not matter. As her mind focused on calming her body, the roaring of the song in her blood, which had swelled into a great emotional torrent since she had touched the other five crystals, began to subside, and soon was still. It was not gone, for that would be unbearable. It was merely quiet, the soft murmur of gentle waves lapping the sand of a beach, not the roaring of a torrential river.

  As the emotional onslaught subsided, she then sought to clear her mind. That, perhaps, was the most trying task, because so many things weighed on her consciousness. Random thoughts and images, sounds and scents, whirled through her mind in a non-stop parade. She tried to bring them to a stop, but that did not seem to work. It was like damming up a river with nothing but a handful of sticks. After trying a few different approaches, she imagined herself one of the great winged predators of the northern reaches of Uhr-Gol. Instead of trying to divert the thoughts that plagued her, she imagined herself rising above them, flying above the river. It worked! In her mind’s eye, she rose above the river of consciousness, higher and higher, until it disappeared from view.

  All now was quiet and still. The Universe around her was dark, but it was not a cold, bitter darkness. It was warm, comforting, as if she were again safe in her mother’s womb. She reveled in the feel of it for a moment, her heart tinged with sorrow at the thought of her mother, whom she had never known. That triggered a momentary cascade of thoughts, but encased in her mental womb she was able to quickly block them off.

  When all again was still, she tried to open her mind’s eye using the second sight inherited by all who were blessed by any of the Crystals of Souls. She could sense that she had the power, but the how of using it eluded her. Retreating deeper into the darkness, where the Bloodsong was now only a distant murmur, she sought to open a window to another place.

  She let out an involuntary gasp as an image of the ruins of the Desh-Ka temple filled her mind. For a moment, her surging emotions threatened to draw her back, but she quickly fastened onto the image and held it, ignoring everything else. She began to shift her point of view, again as if she were flying. She found she could swoop down to look at something in more detail, or soar higher or farther away. She wondered for a moment if what she was seeing was really the temple now, or if it was just a memory she was manipulating. Taking a closer look, she could see perhaps two dozen warriors of Ka’i-Nur posted as guards, most of them near the entrance to the coliseum. They stood immobile as statues, except for those shifting position, marching with orderly, almost mechanical precision. Had she been able, she would have incinerated them where they stood. But that, alas, was something she could not manage. Not yet.

  After investigating the temple, she moved on, flying high above Ural-Murir until the city of her birth, Keel-A’ar, came into view. It was an exercise for her to control her emotions as she regarded the great pit of ashes that lay within the confines of the broken and battered city walls. The ashes of her father lay there among those he was sworn to protect as lord and master. All who had sworn their honor to him had perished: warriors, robed ones, even helpless younglings. None had survived Syr-Nagath’s wrath. Even those who had not been in the city when her armies had arrived had been hunted down and killed. Dara-Kol was the only one to have survived, braving long cycles as a fugitive among the honorless ones, waiting to return the sword of Kunan-Lohr to his daughter.

  Keel-Tath was about to try to send her second sight to a new destination, somewhere away from the Homeworld, when something in the Bloodsong changed. It was a song of fear, of fury, whose voice she instantly recognized. Unbidden, she saw Tara-Khan in her mind’s eye, running at full speed down a corridor in the palace. Ka’i-Lohr, wounded, ran behind him, his pace faltering.

  Just then, the doors to her chambers were thrown wide. Opening her eyes, startled now out of her meditation, she looked up to see Ulan-Samir standing there, his bloodied sword in hand. He stared at her, a grim expression on his face, before he came for her.

  ***

  Gasping for breath now, Tara-Khan pushed himself faster. Ka’i-Lohr could normally best him in a foot race, but not with blood seeping from his shoulder and his strength waning. Tara-Khan passed him and did not look back. More warriors were following in their wake, drawn as much by the turmoil in Tara-Khan’s spiritual song as by his pursuit of Ulan-Samir. Tara-Khan’s only surprise at this point was that the priest had killed no one else, and he feared that perhaps Ulan-Samir had taken a turn somewhere and shaken his pursuers.

  Rounding the last curve before the door that led to Keel-Tath’s apartments, he saw that he was still on the right track. Two warriors lay dead, one on either side of the door, and half a dozen robed ones were kneeling in the antechamber.

  And there, silhouetted in the doorway by the warm light flowing through the crystalline windows of Keel-Tath’s apartments, was Ulan-Samir. He held his sword in his hand, and as he stepped into the room, he began to lift the tip of the blade.

  “Ulan-Samir!” Tara-Khan shouted. “Stop!” He felt the familiar weight of a shrekka in his hand, having drawn it from the harness on his shoulder without realizing it. With a timing that came naturally to him, he measured his steps and the arc of his arm, hurling the weapon at Ulan-Samir’s back with unerring accuracy. It was a dishonorable form of attack against an unsuspecting opponent, but Tara-Khan did not care. Ulan-Samir would know it was coming and easily deflect it. It was merely a momentary distraction while Tara-Khan closed the distance.

  ***

  “Ulan-Samir,” Keel-Tath said in a steady voice. She looked at the blood dripping from his blade. “You dare to kill under the roof of your host?”

  “I did what I had to do in order to reach you,” he said as he lifted his sword toward her. “And they died with great honor, did they not?”

  She ignored the question as he stepped closer. “Why have you come?”

  “To offer you…” He paused as a familiar whirring sound filled the air, and Keel-Tath’s heart turned to ice with horror. Ulan-Samir closed his eyes, and in the terrible moment before the weapon struck an expression of relief transformed his face, as if a tremendous burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

  The shrekka struck him square in the back. He grunted and staggered forward as the whirring ended in a wet thunk and one of the blades
pierced through his breast armor, emerging just below his heart. “…my sword.” His final word was accompanied by a trickle of blood from his mouth. He opened his eyes, looked at Keel-Tath, and smiled before sinking to his knees and falling forward onto the floor, dead.

  Tara-Khan pounded to a stop above the priest’s body, staring at his old mentor with disbelief. He slowly sank to his knees before looking up at Keel-Tath, his face revealing the wretched misery that had taken his soul. “I only threw it to catch his attention. I never thought…” He gestured helplessly at the body. Throwing his head back, he screamed in anguish.

  Behind him, Ka’i-Lohr could only stand and stare, his mouth hanging open in shock. Others, both robed ones and warriors, came at a run and stopped in their tracks as they saw what had happened, as they beheld the warrior who had killed a Messenger.

  Her body numb except for the all too familiar warmth of mourning marks streaming down her cheeks, Keel-Tath stared at Tara-Khan and whispered, “What have you done?”

  ***

  Once again the denizens of the Great Moon were assembled in the throne room, but for a far more somber affair. Their number had grown considerably with the addition of the survivors of the other priesthoods. In an added stroke of good fortune, by working together the priests and priestesses had managed to save all but a handful of the robed ones and children, even those of the Ima’il-Kush who had been taken by Ulan-Samir, from the marauding Ka’i-Nur in their First Age armor. More priests and priestesses had been lost in the series of savage battles that had been fought at the temples, but they had managed to deny Syr-Nagath the rich reward the robed ones would have provided had they been taken. It had been a painful victory, but a victory nonetheless.

  Keel-Tath, however, could not bring herself to care. She looked out upon the assembled multitude, which even now only covered a tiny fraction of the throne room’s floor. Her people were arrayed much as they had been to welcome the most high of the other orders, but no sentinels lined the steps, and the most high of the six ancient orders flanked the throne, three on each side. Dara-Kol, as First, stood at the foot of the steps to the dais on which the throne stood. Looking down, Keel-Tath met the gaze of Ka’i-Lohr and Drakh-Nur, who stood in the front rank of the warriors. Both looked stricken.