Another ceremony had been completed that morning, but outside, beyond the walls of the palace. They had put Ulan-Samir’s spirit to rest as his body was consumed by a great pyre assembled by those of the Nyur-A’il from wood found in the subterranean forests deep below the palace. Keel-Tath herself had lit the flame, and she had watched until the last of the smoke had drifted away and the coals had died.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Keel-Tath spoke in a quiet voice that carried throughout the throne room. “Let it be done.”
Dara-Kol slowly drew her sword and held it high, then gracefully lowered the tip of the blade until it nearly touched the floor. In a very precise movement, the assembled ranks on each side of the room turned toward each other while simultaneously stepping back to open a passage down the center.
Somewhere a drum began to beat a slow bass beat that echoed like distant thunder, and Keel-Tath tightened her grip on the arms of her throne, her talons digging deep scratches into the ends.
After only a few beats, Tara-Khan emerged from the great corridor that opened into the throne room, facing the steps of the pyramid. He strode slowly, his cadence in time with the drum beat, and his face was chiseled from brittle stone. Black marks of mourning covered his cheeks and ran down his neck as if they were an extension of his gleaming breast plate. While he still wore his armor, he had been stripped of his weapons. All he had now were the fangs and claws with which nature had endowed him.
As he made his way toward the steps of the great pyramid, the spectators of each row he passed pivoted sharply to face the throne.
Keel-Tath forced herself to be still, forced herself not to scream, as the drum slowly marked time. Tara-Khan’s ascent to the top of the pyramid took a lifetime.
But at last he was there, mounting the final step that brought him before the dais. He stopped, as did the drum. His eyes met hers for only an instant before he fell to his knees, head bowed.
Keel-Tath looked at him, then at those gathered below. It took her a moment to gather the courage to speak. “Not so very long ago,” she began, “we were all of one race, yet stood apart. To one of seven ancient bloodlines we were born, lived, and died in a cycle that few thought would ever be broken. While the Books of Time have recorded all the deeds and exploits of ourselves and those who have gone before us, nothing has truly changed in the last hundred thousand cycles since the end of the Second Age. Most of us, myself included, would have been content for things to continue as they always had, for our dreams to be the same honorable, simple dreams as those of our ancestors.” She paused for a moment, looking through the crystal walls at the Homeworld, which hung heavy in the sky just above the horizon. “But that was not to be. The prophecy of Anuir-Ruhal’te and the rise of Syr-Nagath changed all that. Now we stand together, as one, six of the bloodlines united under common cause against an enemy the likes of which we have not known since the Final Annihilation of the Second Age. The Dark Queen seeks to destroy the Way by which we have lived since the ancient orders were founded, to plunge our people into eternal chaos and darkness.” She stood up and walked to the edge of the dais, her hands clenched into fists. “I vow to you that I will not let this happen. The Way will continue, although not as it has in the past. No longer will it be a means to constrain our lives, to maintain our civilization in an endless stasis. Instead we will use it as a foundation on which we can build, a way for us to reach higher, to attain anything we might imagine, even beyond the greatest achievements of the First and Second Ages.”
She slowly took the steps down from the dais and came to stand before Tara-Khan. “But the one thing we must preserve, above all others, is our honor, which is at the heart of the Way. From that, every other tenet flows. Without honor, the Way is meaningless, as are our lives.” Drawing her dagger, she said, “Atonement for many offenses may be found upon the Kal’ai-Il. Those too serious to be mended by lashes of the grakh’ta may be redeemed through death.” She took a step closer to Tara-Khan, and wanted nothing more than to scream in hopeless rage. “But some few offenses are so terrible,” she said, her voice a rasping whisper now, “that even death is not sufficient. For those most terrible acts, such as the killing of a Messenger, only one punishment can suffice.” Bending low, she took one of Tara-Khan’s braids, the Braid of the Covenant, in her free hand. Two rings of living metal had already been put in place near the scalp. She whispered softly, so low that only Tara-Khan could hear, “Forgive me.”
Holding the dagger high, she then put the edge of the blade against the braid between the two rings. Gritting her teeth, she sliced through his hair, severing the braid.
Tara-Khan screamed and collapsed to the floor, hands on his head as Keel-Tath staggered back. The melody that had been his song in her blood, the strongest among all those bound to her, was instantly silenced. Her heart thundered in her chest and she felt like vomiting. She would have fallen but for Dara-Kol’s steadying hand.
“Tara-Khan,” Keel-Tath managed, “you are forsaken from all who follow the Way, honorless even among the honorless, your soul doomed to endless darkness after death finally takes you. I banish you to the Kal-Uzmir, where you may join those who have gone before you in dishonor. Take him away!”
With a grim expression, Alena-Khan stepped forward, wrapped her armored hand around the back of Tara-Khan’s neck, and lifted him to his feet. Two of the other most high put shackles of heavy, rough iron on his wrists. The drum again began to beat. Flanked by the priests and priestesses of the six orders, he was marched down the steps. Just before he reached the floor, the assembled multitude turned about, presenting their backs to him, shunning him.
Keel-Tath watched from her throne, every beat of the drum a dagger through her heart. At long last, after she thought for the hundredth time that she must die of grief, Tara-Khan had passed beyond the throne room and the drum stopped beating.
Dara-Kol dismissed the gathering with a terse order, then silently escorted Keel-Tath back to her chambers. Closing the doors, shutting out the world, Keel-Tath collapsed on her bed of soft animal hides. Putting her face to one of the pillows, she wept for all that might have been, but that now would never be.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tara-Khan and his escorts found themselves standing upon the Kal-Uzmir, which was located in the far north of the Homeworld. Like the Kal’ai-Il, it had a ponderous central dais carved from ancient dark gray stone, with ice covered steps that led to the frozen ground beneath an arch supported by massive pillars. Unlike the Kal’ai-Il, the Kal-Uzmir had no surrounding elevated stone rings upon which spectators might observe the proceedings, for none were ever witness to the doom of those exiled here. All that surrounded the ancient construct was an endless landscape of frozen white in every direction. The terrain varied between undulating snow drifts and sheer walls of ice that reached hundreds of spans upward. In other places the ice was broken to reveal dark crevasses that fell away to depths unknown. He shivered as a slight breeze stirred the bitterly cold air, and his breath turned to steam as he exhaled.
One of the most high stepped to the side of the great dais where a huge metal gong was suspended from another set of stone pillars. Taking the striker in hand, she rang the gong once…twice…thrice. The gong was made of living metal, for anything less resilient would have shattered, made brittle by the cold.
After the peals of the gong faded to silence, Tara-Khan heard nothing but the occasional crack of ice expanding under the warmth of the sun. It was mid morning here, and he was not sure if he should count himself lucky. Had he arrived in the dark of night, he would have frozen to death before he had gone a dozen paces. Hundreds of bodies littered the ground around the Kal-Uzmir. Most were close by, and some were even frozen to the lower steps. Those farther out were covered with more snow and ice until they became unrecognizable parts of the landscape. Many of the bodies, especially those farther away, were desiccated, mummified from long cycles of endless cold. Tara-Khan had no idea how long ago the most recent additions
had been made. Dozens of cycles past, perhaps a century or more. He had no way to tell.
Five of his escorts were staring at him as he turned back to face them. As one, they turned their backs, a ritual of shunning him, before they disappeared.
Only Alena-Khan remained. Stepping forward, she removed his shackles and tossed them to the ground. Then, reaching behind her back, beneath the folds of the long black cloak she wore, she produced a short sword and set it beside him on the thick stone railing encircling the dais.
“Thank you,” he breathed, knowing that if anyone had seen what she had done, the best she could have hoped for would have been a dozen lashes on the Kal’ai-Il.
She paused as if she were about to say something, but then shook her head slowly. With one last piercing look into his eyes, she turned her back to him, bowed her head, and disappeared.
Tara-Khan took the short sword and strapped it to his waist. For a long moment he thought about ending his life with it. But that would have sealed his dishonor forever, for those whose braids had been severed were not granted the release of ritual suicide. His true punishment was to live in shame for as long as possible.
And live he would, but not to prolong his shame. He would fight to stay alive until his last breath was wrenched away from him, for he clung to the hope of seeing Keel-Tath’s face again, of feeling her touch, of thrilling to her powerful voice in the song of his blood. Of earning her forgiveness.
Staying alive, however, would be a most daunting task. Winter on the Homeworld was harsh, especially inland where the warmth from the seas did not reach, and was lethal to those who were unprepared. The conditions found in the northern wastes surrounding the Kal-Uzmir were far, far worse, and Tara-Khan’s spirits fell as he realized just how futile would be his struggle to stay alive. He would be extraordinarily fortunate just to live through a single night.
“You are wasting time,” he growled to himself as he made his way down the steps, his feet crunching on ice and snow, steam swirling from his nostrils.
Looking about, he was surprised that a number of robed ones lay among the warriors. It was difficult for him to imagine what transgression could have landed them here, but their misfortune was to his benefit. Kneeling beside the nearest one, he reached out, then paused as he momentarily overcome by a sense of guilt. What he was about to do, robbing the dead of what little dignity remained to them, was a grievous sacrilege, but he had no choice. “Forgive me,” he whispered.
Taking the short sword, he used it to hammer and chip the ice from the body so he could liberate the robe. He did the same to four other bodies that were not too badly entombed in ice, begging forgiveness of each of the dead.
After some consideration, he reluctantly removed his metal armor. It likely would do him little good, and the metal was already so cold that it was drawing heat from his body.
Shaking out the robes, sending ice crystals scattering in the lackluster breeze, he draped four of them over the black leatherite he still wore, making sure the black robe of an armorer was on the outside to draw as much warmth as possible from the sun. The fifth robe, also black, he folded a few times before draping around his head and neck, pulling it up to cover his mouth and nose. Thus attired, he was entirely covered in a thick wrapping of black fabric from head to ankle. All that remained exposed was his eyes.
He next tried to take some of the leatherite armor from the body of a warrior, but it broke into pieces, made brittle by the cold. Searching other warriors, he finally found one with leatherite that was still useable. The thick material was stiff, but after a few minutes of being exposed to the sun it began to soften and became pliable. Again using his sword, he cut it into pieces that he used to make crude coverings for his feet over his open toed sandals, binding them to his ankles and lower legs with thin strips of cloth from one of the robes. The resulting snow boots were bulky and uncomfortable, but would provide his feet with some small degree of protection.
With some surprise, he realized that he was no longer freezing cold. In fact, aside from his feet, he was almost comfortable.
“That will not last,” he muttered as he thought of what to do next. He decided not to bother searching the bodies for anything that might be of use, for those brought here had nothing but the clothes upon their backs. A very few might have weapons, granted them as a mercy by their escorts as Alena-Khan had done, but it was unlikely any would be better than the sword Alena-Khan had left him.
He was startled by a deep grunting sound from somewhere to the west beyond a sea of snow dunes. Some infernal creature must have caught his scent, for it was coming from downwind. His initial reaction was to head off on a tangent in hopes of throwing the beast off his trail. An ice canyon perhaps a quarter league distant might afford an opportunity to escape, but it could just as easily be, literally, a dead end.
Then he realized that if he was to survive, he must have food, which in this wasteland was perhaps the most precious commodity short of fire. And any creature that lived here must have a thick fur he could wear and blubber that he could burn for fuel.
The grunting came again, louder this time.
Regretting the decision to remove his armor and the protection it might have provided, Tara-Khan returned to the Kal-Uzmir and climbed the steps to the dais. Fortunately, the steps were on the side opposite the creature’s direction of approach. Unless it was the size of a genoth or could jump high enough to breach the stone railing, in which case the coming battle would be decidedly brief and not in his favor, he would have a height advantage if it tried to mount the steps.
He saw something crest the nearest dune. Covered in thick white fur, it was compact in form with four stout legs that propelled it at an impressive speed. The head was a flattened triangle with two large eyes positioned in the front of its skull and a thick black snout over a wide mouth filled with sharp teeth and a lolling pink tongue.
It must have seen him, for it made a series of rapid grunts and picked up its pace, heading right for the Kal-Uzmir. As it began to pass through the field of bodies, which gave him some perspective of its size, he saw that it was perhaps as large as a magthep, and the maw roughly matched the enormous bite marks he’d seen on some of the dead. Bite marks that, as often as not among those Tara-Khan had observed, went cleanly through not only flesh and bone, but leatherite and metal armor, as well.
He tightened his grip on the sword, worrying that his hands would soon be too numb to hold onto it properly.
With a final round of grunts, the creature bounded right up to the Kal-Uzmir and leaped toward him, its mouth open wide.
Leaning over the edge of the wall, Tara-Khan had to jerk his head back, surprised by how high the thing was able to reach. The teeth snapped shut a hand’s breadth from his face, and the long black claws of the front feet scrabbled for purchase on the slick ice of the railing. It threw its head to and fro, fighting for balance.
In that brief moment of opportunity, Tara-Khan lunged forward, stabbing the beast through the neck just under the jaw. His blade sank deep into the creature’s flesh, and with a squeal of pain it whipped itself backward, tearing the sword from Tara-Khan’s grip.
“No!” The sword was everything. Without it he had no hope at all of survival. He had no way of knowing how far the beast might run, or even if he had struck a mortal blow. If it fled and he lost its trail, or night fell before he could catch it, he would almost certainly die. He had to get the sword back or all was lost.
Before the thing had even hit the ground, he had vaulted over the railing after it. The beast landed on all fours, its long talons giving it purchase on the sheet of ice. Tara-Khan landed on its back, wrapping his legs about its chest as he drove his talons into the flesh just behind the skull.
The beast threw itself to and fro, growling and squealing as it tried to throw him off, but Tara-Khan held on. Gripping the beast’s flesh hard with one hand, he pulled his other hand free before leaning down, reaching for the handle of the sword. The beast’s
struggles grew more intense, and suddenly the thing flipped over on its back. Tara-Khan let out a grunt of his own, the air driven from his lungs as the beast landed on top of him. It rolled, still trying to get at him, and the motion brought the handle of the sword into reach. Tara-Khan wrenched the sword with a savage tug, made all the more powerful by the beast’s own struggles. The blade sliced through flesh and bone, severing the creature’s spine and the main artery that carried blood to its brain.
With a final wheeze, it shuddered, then lay still.
Tara-Khan lay there for a moment, trying to catch his breath. At last, the cold seeping through from the ground prompted him to act. Wrestling the carcass to one side, he pulled the sword from the beast’s neck and began to remove the hide.
Later, with the beast’s thick fur draped over his shoulders, he felt better prepared. He had made two makeshift satchels, one loaded with strips of meat and the other with thick chunks of fat that he had carved from the rapidly cooling carcass.
Having prepared those meager provisions, he had to decide which way to go. His only options were to the west, where the deep snow drifts formed a white dune sea, and the south, which was a labyrinth of ice. Travel north and east was blocked by sheer ice cliffs and crevasses. He might have been able to forge a path in either of those directions, but there was no point. Salvation, if any was to be had, lay to the south. While it looked to be a more treacherous passage than to the west, he knew already from trudging through the snow near the Kal-Uzmir that making his way through the deep snow drifts would have been difficult, if not impossible.
Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) Page 16