Tara-Khan only nodded, for his mind was already leaping ahead. “We must get to Keel-Tath. There is no time to waste.” The irony of his last words struck him, for only then did he realize that he had no idea how much time might have passed in Keel-Tath’s rendition of the universe.
“Not yet,” Ria-Ka’luhr said as he gestured for Tara-Khan to follow him up the stairs. “There is something you must yet do.”
Tara-Khan took the stairs quickly, reveling in the feel of his young body as his mind settled into its former domain. He flexed and stretched his muscles, smiling with unadulterated joy at being young again, with a clear mind that was a storehouse of knowledge that would have been the envy of any keeper of the Books of Time.
At the top of the stairs, in the chamber that led to where Tara-Khan had first awakened, Ria-Ka’luhr led him to a door that had not been there before.
“Open it,” the priest told him, gesturing toward the door.
Tara-Khan did not hesitate. He stepped forward and twisted the wrought iron handle and pulled open the door. Beyond lay only icy darkness.
“Step through.”
With a brief look at his mentor, Tara-Khan did as he was told. Once across the threshold, all light fled from him, even behind him where Ria-Ka’luhr had been standing. Calming his heart, for he knew he had nothing here to fear, Tara-Khan began to stride forward. After seven steps, he emerged onto the sands of an arena under a huge domed structure with ornate carvings on the walls and slender windows that rose from floor to ceiling at even intervals around the circumference.
At the central dais knelt Ria-Ka’luhr.
Tara-Khan blinked. Despite all that he had experienced himself and all that he had read, it was hard for him to accept the sight of Ria-Ka’luhr, again as a young priest as Tara-Khan had first known him. Every day for nearly two hundred cycles, Ria-Ka’luhr had appeared before him as an aged, grizzled and tattered warrior, an honorless one.
“Come, Tara-Khan,” he said.
Hurrying across the sand, carried by a growing sense of urgency, Tara-Khan came and knelt before him.
“Already are you a cunning warrior, one of the best I have seen,” Ria-Ka’luhr told him, “and there is little knowledge of the sword that I might teach you. You have also read of the powers of the Desh-Ka and the other orders, and that knowledge must serve you well after what must come next, for I will not be here to teach you.”
“I do not understand,” Tara-Khan said, shaking his head slowly.
“To stand by Keel-Tath’s side, to do what must be done as foreseen by Anuir-Ruhal’te, you must be endowed with the powers of a priest.”
“And you would lose your powers if you gave them to me,” Tara-Khan said, remembering what he had read in one of the scrolls, and Ria-Ka’luhr nodded. “Then do not give them up! Come with me, for we can do together what neither of us might accomplish alone.”
“I can never leave this place.”
“But why?”
“Only here am I myself. Out there, I am Syr-Nagath’s puppet, bound to her through some ancient evil that can never be broken,” Ria-Ka’luhr told him, his voice bitter and filled with barely suppressed rage. He put his hand to his neck where he had once worn the collar and sigil of the Desh-Ka. He had never explained what had happened to them. “I have brought unspeakable shame and dishonor upon myself, Tara-Khan. You asked me long ago why I no longer wear the collar. It is because of that shame that the living metal died and fell away from me.” For a moment, he looked as though he were about to be crushed by an unseen weight upon his shoulders. “But helping you to become what you are now was an act of redemption, the last task given me by Ayan-Dar.” He leaned forward. “All that I am, all the powers that I possess, will be yours, and my soul will finally be free to cross over to the Afterlife to join my honored ancestors.” He looked at Tara-Khan with pleading eyes. “You must not deny me this.”
“How could I?” Tara-Khan told him softly. “It shall be as you say.”
With a look of relief, Ria-Ka’luhr nodded. “Remove your gauntlets and hold out your hands.”
Tara-Khan did so as Ria-Ka’luhr drew his dagger with his own bared hands.
“In blood shall we be bound,” Ria-Ka’luhr intoned, “as it has been since the beginning, and as it shall be until the end.” He drew the blade across Tara-Khan’s palms, then his own. Blood streamed from the wounds as they clasped hands. “The powers I was given shall now be yours.” He looked into Tara-Khan’s eyes and gripped his hands painfully hard. “Do not let our bond be broken.”
Around them, the light had faded to darkness, save for a circle right around the dais. Above them, a circular window at the apex of the dome blazed bright with the light of the sun.
Tara-Khan’s hands were stricken with a strange sensation, like jolts of electricity, that quickly crept up his forearms to his shoulders, then began to invade his chest. Beneath him, the ancient stone of the dais shook as a circular opening appeared in the space between him and Ria-Ka’luhr. At first the opening was black, a dark eye of vast emptiness of infinite depth. Then it began to fill with a cyan glare.
The Desh-Ka Crystal of Souls, Tara-Khan thought. He knew more about what it was now than any priest who had lived since the end of the First Age, but the knowledge did not do it justice. He could feel its power, like heat radiating from a tremendous bonfire as the crystal rocketed up from the depths of time and space.
In the next instant, there it was, the great crystal’s teardrop shape gleaming cyan where it sat upon its stone column between him and Ria-Ka’luhr.
“You must not avert your eyes,” Ria-Ka’luhr told him urgently as the sun rose to its zenith above them. On the sands of the arena, an intense circle of light moved inexorably toward the dais and the waiting crystal. “Embrace the fire that takes you, revel in the pain.”
The light drew closer, moving faster across the sands, and Tara-Khan’s heart began to race.
“Tara-Khan?”
“Yes?” The circle of light was upon the dais now, swinging toward the crystal.
“Tell Keel-Tath…tell her that I am sorry. I am sorry I could not help her.”
“I will.” Tara-Khan gritted his teeth as the sunlight finally reached the Crystal of Souls, which flared blinding cyan. Its light reached for them, and in the moments that followed, Tara-Khan’s universe was filled with searing agony.
***
The world was dark gray and gleaming, as if a stormy sky were reflected from the glass of a mirror. It took Tara-Khan a long moment to realize that he was awake, and that the scene before his eyes was nothing but the polished stone of the dais. He took a deep breath, marveling that he was still alive, but a shiver ran down his spine at the unwelcome recollection of the unspeakable pain he had endured. Gently probing his tongue with a finger, he was surprised that it was still intact. One of the last sensations he had before the cyan flame had taken him was the taste of blood, for he had bitten clean through his tongue.
He was lying on his stomach, and with a supreme effort of will managed to turn himself onto his side. His armor fell away from him, the metal plate seared, the leatherite and black undergarment reduced to crumbling ash.
The crystal, of course, was gone, and Ria-Ka’luhr was sprawled, unmoving, on the cold gray stone.
Crawling to the priest’s side, Tara-Khan reached out and felt for a pulse. There was none. Getting to his knees, he gently closed the young priest’s still open eyes. While the last sensation he had known was incredible pain, a peaceful smile graced Ria-Ka’luhr’s face.
“May you find your place among the Ancient Ones,” Tara-Khan whispered. Then he put a hand to his own neck, only to be surprised: he wore no collar as did a priest. At first he was stricken by the thought that the Crystal of Souls had not bestowed a collar because of Ria-Ka’luhr’s shame, but after a time he came to realize that it was because he could not be bound to any order, to any bloodline. Keel-Tath did not wear the sigil of the Desh-Ka, but had been bound to all her
people with a golden collar that bore no other ornament. Now, for what he knew he had to do, he could be bound to no one, not even her. “It is as it must be,” he whispered to himself.
He got to his feet, over the protestations of his stiff and aching muscles. The discomfort was welcome, for it reassured him that he was alive. Crouching down, he took Ria-Ka’luhr’s body over his shoulder and headed toward one of the doors that would take him from this place. First he would give Ria-Ka’luhr to the flames of a funeral pyre fit for a priest of the Desh-Ka.
Then he would undertake the quest set before him by the ancient scrolls and help Keel-Tath fulfill her destiny.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Keel-Tath’s blood was liquid fire pumping through her veins as the giant warrior rushed toward her. Her father’s sword felt light as a feather in her hands, the long, gracefully curved blade shimmering in the light as if the living metal itself was yearning for battle. The shouts and bellows of the Ka’i-Nur spectators, urging on their champion, filled the arena, but Keel-Tath heard nothing but the sighing of the wind that swept across the plateau where stood the Desh-Ka temple. She closed her eyes, yet still she saw with her second sight the huge warrior coming toward her. She could smell the aroma of cooked meat and ale mixed with the unfamiliar, yet not unpleasant, musky scent of the Ka’i-Nur around her. For a moment, she saw everything and everyone in the entire ship, all laid out before her as if it were a detailed miniature created by builders to teach children in the creche.
“Keel-Tath!”
Drakh-Nur’s shout brought her back to bedlam-filled reality just as Kurlo-Urukh swept his axe forward in a blindingly swift and brutally powerful side cut that would have sliced her in half had she been in its way.
But she was not. Even before she heard Drakh-Nur’s warning, her body was already in motion, as if her flesh and the living metal of her sword were bound to one another, acting of their own accord. She dove and rolled across the sand as the huge axe blade whistled through empty air above her. Her momentum carried her to her feet as Kurlo-Urukh whirled about, his feet kicking up a wave of sand.
Before he could recover his balance, she lunged forward, stabbing the tip of her blade toward his midsection in a series of feints that he deftly countered with the metal handle of his axe. The ring of metal on metal drew a louder wave of bellows and calls from the crowd.
Kurlo-Urukh sagged back, trying to draw Keel-Tath forward into reach of his massive arms, but instead she retreated a few steps.
The giant grinned at her. “You fight well for a child not of the Ka’i-Nur.”
“I would not disgrace your name by defeating you too quickly,” she told him with all modesty.
He laughed, but his laughter died when his gaze fell to the sand around her feet. The boisterous crowd fell silent as they, too, saw what he was looking at. “What trickery is this?”
Glancing down at the sand around her, she saw that her feet, even her body, had left no impression. She remembered the first time Ayan-Dar had sparred with her, when she was very young, a wooden sword in her hand. As big a warrior as he had been, a giant as huge as Kurlo-Urukh was to her now, his feet had not disturbed the sand, as if his appearance was only an illusion.
“I am a priestess of the Desh-Ka,” she told him, “and of the five other orders not of the Ka’i-Nur, and have been blessed with their powers, as I already told you. I am but smoke and mist upon the sands.”
“Then I shall be as the storm wind that scatters you into oblivion,” he growled as he stalked forward. He carried his axe in his left hand now, and as he swung his free right arm, he snatched a shrekka from his left shoulder and hurled it at her with a powerful flick of his wrist.
She did not even blink as she used her sword to deflect the deadly flying weapon, which went spinning off into the crowd where it struck down one of the warriors.
Kurlo-Urukh leapt forward, his powerful legs driving his body toward her. His left hand drew back, then thrust the head of his axe at her midsection, using the barbed point at the top of the axe head like the tip of a spear.
Using her sword to deflect the axe to one side, she pirouetted clockwise, keeping Kurlu-Urukh’s arm pinned as his momentum carried him forward. Whirling behind him, she brought her sword down, slashing through the leatherite that protected his right calf and cutting deep into the thick muscle.
With a roar of anger as much as pain, Kurlo-Urukh collapsed to his knees as his wounded leg gave out beneath him. But he turned the blow to his advantage, extending his arm and whipping his axe around in a side cut to the right as he fell, the blade whistling through the air toward Keel-Tath’s sword arm.
As if she had known all along how he would react, she continued her pirouette. Reaching out with her free left hand, she grabbed the handle of his axe and yanked it from his hand with a strength born of the fire in her veins.
Kurlo-Urukh hissed as his right wrist snapped, and the leatherite palm of his gauntlet was left smoking from the friction of the axe handle being stripped from his grasp. He fell to his back on the sand, then looked up at Keel-Tath, his mouth agape with disbelief. A deadly silence had fallen over the onlookers. “What trickery is this?" he rasped as he struggled to his feet. “No warrior your size could possibly be so strong.”
Tossing the axe aside, Keel-Tath strode toward her opponent, coming to a stop just beyond his reach. “Yield to me, Kurlo-Urukh. Surrender your honor to my First. I will give you an honorable death should you wish it, but I would much rather have you by my side. I have need of such a fearsome warrior.”
“You flatter me, little one.” He grimaced, then sagged to one knee, his right leg completely unable to support his weight. “But for as long as I draw breath, I will fight!” In a blinding motion, he drew his dagger, which was long enough to be a short sword in the hands of an ordinary warrior, and whipped it toward her.
She easily knocked it aside with her sword, then did the same as he threw his remaining two shrekkas.
“You leave me no choice but to grant your wish,” she said sadly as he tried to launch himself at her with only the power of his left leg. Stepping to one side, she brought her sword down in a blazing arc that intersected with Kurlo-Urukh’s neck. The headless body, spurting crimson, slammed into the ground, the head bouncing twice on the sand before it came to rest, the face staring at her now with a surprised expression, frozen in death.
Flicking the blood from her blade, she sheathed her sword and turned to face the glowering crowd. “Your master died with great honor,” she said in a quiet voice as she met the hostile gazes around her. “But with his defeat in battle, your honor belongs now to me. My First, who is of Ka’i-Nur blood,” she nodded to Drakh-Nur, “would accept it in my stead.”
A female warrior stepped forward, shouldering her way past Drakh-Nur. Her face was a patchwork of cross-hatched scars. She looked at the body sprawled in the sand before turning her stony gaze to Keel-Tath. “I served as First to Kurlo-Urukh. I speak for all sworn to him: we choose blood before dishonor.” And with that she threw back her head and raked her talons across her neck.
Keel-Tath had, of course, seen ritual suicide before, but she had never seen it on this scale. As one, the entire crew followed their First’s lead, turning the arena into an abattoir of fountaining blood as the warriors and robed ones of the crew took their own lives.
“Come, Drakh-Nur,” she said after the last had died. “There is nothing more for us here. We shall give them the last rites after we return home.”
***
Syr-Nagath’s First lay twitching on the deck with a huge puncture through his breast plate where she had driven her sword through his ribs. She screamed again, venting her rage, as she slammed her sword into its sheath and stalked back to her chair on the ship’s bridge. The warriors and robed ones, far larger than she, quailed in fear. The news her former First had brought was most unwelcome, not that she had truly needed to hear it from his lips. In her blood, she could feel the deaths of the arm
ored warriors attacking the Settlement worlds like pricks from a sharp dagger. She had expected some casualties, of course. That was a given. But suddenly a flood of them began to die, as if an entire legion were being ground into dust, and she knew that Keel-Tath and those who stood with her must somehow have been responsible.
Her First confirmed her suspicions when he returned from the keepers of The Books of Time who were in contact with their counterparts on the Settlements. The priesthoods had mounted a synchronized attack on individual cohorts, systematically destroying them in exchange for pitifully few losses. Syr-Nagath had been sure the priesthoods would have still been at one another’s throats, but somehow the damnable white haired child had bent them all to her will.
She settled into her command chair, but not before landing a vicious kick to the dead First’s head. She was doubly angry with him because he had, among all those who had thus far served in the capacity, been passably competent, and had been an excellent lover, as well. As she took her seat, a pair of warriors stepped forward and quickly removed the body, while another pair wiped up the blood from the deck.
“Send a message to the Homeworld to deploy the reserve warriors to the Settlements immediately,” she ordered to a keeper who stood near the command chair, head bowed and body trembling. She saw no purpose in holding any of her Ka’i-Nur legions back from the war, for the entire Homeworld, save for a few bands of honorless ones that were even now being exterminated, was bound to her. As the most populous world, it was far more secure against Keel-Tath and whatever remained of the shattered priesthoods. No, it was far more important not to allow her offensive among the Settlements to lose momentum, for they were perilously close to a tipping point that the white haired child might be able to upset. Keel-Tath could not hope to win the war, but she could delay Syr-Nagath from winning it, and that was a frustration Syr-Nagath had no intention of suffering. “And have our ships in orbit open fire on any groups of the priesthoods that are attacking our warriors.”
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