Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2)

by Hicks, Michael R.

  In Keel-Tath’s mind the flashes of light and the crash of explosions never stopped. Nor did the anguish and fear in her blood, the screaming…

  “Keel-Tath! Wake up!”

  Her eyes snapped open. In the darkness, it took her a moment to remember where she was.

  A blinding flash exploded outside the hive, followed by a deafening boom that echoed through the rocky arroyos. Then another, and another. Water cascaded through the top of the hive, where the long-dead churr-kamekh had created channels to take it to the hive’s cistern. And through it all could be heard a deep-throated roar like a thing alive, the sound of water raging somewhere outside.

  But the storm itself could not explain the sense of fear she felt in her blood. It took her another glimpse through a strobe of lightning, squinting against the glare, to understand. In that instant she saw Dara-Kol on the floor of the hive, the handle of a dagger protruding from her stomach, just below the breast plate. Alive or dead, Keel-Tath was not sure.

  Reacting on instinct, defending against something half-seen in the corner of her eye, Keel-Tath drew the long dagger at her side and brought it up in a blocking motion as she stepped back. The move saved her life as a sword crashed against her smaller blade, but the force was sufficient to break her grip on the dagger. It flew off into the darkness, and sent her stumbling back to land beside Dara-Kol.

  Another series of flashes lit the hive, and she saw Ba’dur-Khan grappling in stop-motion with Lihan-Hagir. She had no idea who was friend and who was foe, for she had not seen her attacker clearly.

  There was also no sign of Drakh-Nur or Han-Ukha’i.

  Drawing her father’s sword, willing herself to be strong enough to wield it, she was stricken with fear as Ba’dur-Khan and Lihan-Hagir continued their battle in the lightning-lit darkness. Which one was the enemy?

  The next flash of lightning brought an unpleasant revelation. The dagger sticking from Dara-Kol’s belly belonged to Ba’dur-Khan.

  Dashing forward three paces, guided by the flashes of lightning that showed Ba’dur-Khan hammering Lihan-Hagir to his knees, she thrust her father’s blade through Ba’dur-Khan’s back plate, right through his heart.

  With his sword poised above Lihan-Hagir, who had lost his own weapon, Ba’dur-Khan crumpled to the floor, dead. His weapon clattered to the floor as she stomped on his back and yanked her father’s sword — her sword, now — from his body.

  Another flash of lightning showed Lihan-Hagir looking up at her with wide eyes, a look of utter disbelief on his face.

  “Help me with Dara-Kol!” Keel-Tath had to shout to be heard above the howling, booming storm.

  Making her way back to her fallen protector, Keel-Tath knelt down. In another flash of light she could see that Dara-Kol’s eyes had opened, and her lips were open, as if she was speaking, but no words could be heard. Keel-Tath leaned down, putting her ear to her lips.

  “Lihan-Hagir…”

  That was all she could make out. It was more than enough for Keel-Tath to know that she had made a dreadful, horrible mistake. In that moment, she froze in horror.

  Something slammed into her back, driving her down on top of Dara-Kol just as something else crushed her sword hand. She screamed in pain and rage, but a brutal blow to the back of her skull silenced her.

  Stunned, she was flipped onto her back, and the next cyan explosion of lightning illuminated Lihan-Hagir’s face above hers. She watched, unable to move, as he reached over and pulled Ba’dur-Khan’s dagger from Dara-Kol with a cruel twisting motion. Dara-Kol gasped and weakly grappled for the bloody blade, but Lihan-Hagir, expressionless, batted her hands away.

  With one last pause, waiting for another flash of lightning to make sure of his aim, Lihan-Hagir raised the dagger.

  In the same pulse of light, Keel-Tath saw something behind him, something that he could not see. In the next flash of light, she saw Drakh-Nur’s sword, frozen in the instant that it sliced through Lihan-Hagir’s neck.

  Keel-Tath’s face was sprayed with hot, coppery blood, and the weight of her would-be killer’s body fell on top of her as his head rolled to one side.

  With a cry of anguish and despair, she rolled his body away and sat up, just as Drakh-Nur dropped to his knees in front of her. Another flicker of light showed that he was bleeding badly from a stab wound in his side.

  She wanted to rage, wanted to fling herself into a blazing pyre, so wracked with guilt was she over having killed Ba’dur-Khan, who was trying to protect her. But her training, her sense of duty, overrode her guilt. For the moment.

  “Where is Han-Ukha’i?” She held Drakh-Nur by the shoulders, afraid that he, too, would collapse to the floor, unconscious.

  “Lihan-Hagir threw her from the hive.” She did not need to hear the grief in his voice. Touching him seemed to enhance the strength of his song in her blood, and he, too, was torn with guilt. “I tried to find her, but came back when I heard Ba’dur-Khan shouting your name.”

  “I must find her!” She made to stand up, but Drakh-Nur held her arms.

  “She is lost, mistress! The arroyos are awash in a flash flood from the storm. She has been washed away!”

  It might be true, but Keel-Tath knew that Han-Ukha’i was still alive. She could sense her fear. And if they were to have any hope at all of survival, she had to find the healer. Dara-Kol and Drakh-Nur would both die, otherwise, and Keel-Tath had little hope of surviving the rest of the journey to the Western Sea on her own.

  “She is alive! Let me search for her!”

  Reluctantly, the giant warrior let her go.

  Dashing to the opening of the hive, Keel-Tath looked outside. She may as well have been standing on the deck of a ship in the middle of an angry sea. The rain came down so heavily she could barely see past her fingertips, and only a few arm-lengths below the hive the water churned and frothed. An animal of some sort, bloated in death, swept by, and she was astonished at how quickly it disappeared from her sight. She knew that she had power over water, but did not know how to properly control it. In the underground river she had nearly died. Here, she surely would.

  “Han-Ukha’i!” Her shout was lost in the howling wind that drove the rain against her in pounding sheets. “Han-Ukha’i!”

  She leaned farther out of the opening and set one foot on the rock wall where they had climbed up. It was slick as ice, and she slipped from the hive, nearly plunging into the waters below before she caught herself on the edge of the opening.

  But had she not fallen, she would not have seen the hand that still gripped the edge of one of the rocky spires just downstream from where Keel-Tath was hanging.

  With a surge of determination, Keel-Tath edged hand-over-hand along the opening to the hive, then dropped down to the slope below. Driving her talons into the rock, she clung there, gasping in fear of the water that rushed past, just below her feet. She made her way, a hand-breadth at a time, toward the spire where the hand still clung. Keel-Tath prayed for lightning as she moved in the darkness, for without it everything was lost in seething darkness.

  Keel-Tath took a deep breath and slid down into the water, letting it carry her to the spire. Gripping the rock, she cried out as the sharp edge sliced right through the leatherite of her gauntlets. The pain only fueled her determination.

  “Han-Ukha’i!” She could feel the healer’s body next to her own. “Can you move?”

  “I…I do not know, mistress.” The healer’s voice was weak. The water was cold, and there was no telling how long she had been down here, holding on for dear life.

  “Wrap your arms around my neck!”

  “You will drown, mistress!”

  “Do as I command!”

  With a series of desperate, jerky motions, Han-Ukha’i did as she was told. Keel-Tath gasped at the strain, for the healer was larger than she, and the force of the water against them seemed to double.

  With a howl of effort, Keel-Tath pulled them out of the water, using the rocky spire for leverage. The edge lacerate
d her hands, but she ignored the pain, and instead tried to hook the edges of the metal plates of her armor onto the rock, using them to pull herself up.

  Bit by bit, her talons biting just far enough into the face of the rock to hold them, she made her way toward the base of the hive. More than once she slipped and nearly sent both of them plunging to their doom. But each time she held on. She was determined that she would not die with the stain of Ba’dur-Khan’s death on her honor.

  At last she reached the hive. It was so close, just the length of an outstretched arm above them, but she had no strength left. Every muscle in her body was spent, burning and shaking. There was no way she could climb up by herself, let alone with Han-Ukha’i on her back.

  “Han-Ukha’i,” she gasped. “Can you reach the opening?”

  “No, mistress. I have no more strength! I fear that if I let go of you…I will fall.”

  “You must try, or we will both perish. I cannot hold for long!”

  “No, my mistress. I will not let you die for me.”

  Keel-Tath screamed as she felt Han-Ukha’i’s arms go slack and her body slid down and away into the dark maelstrom around them.

  “No…” Keel-Tath dropped her face against the water-slick rock. It had all been for nothing. Everything since her birth, all that had been suffered by so many had been for nothing. Anuir-Ruhal’te’s prophecy had been a cruel hoax for them all.

  Lost to despair, wishing that she could have said goodbye to Ayan-Dar, she relaxed her hands and let go.

  The Dark Queen had won.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Revelation

  Just as her feet touched the roiling waters below, something seized Keel-Tath’s hand and pulled so hard her shoulder joint cracked in protest. With a cry of surprise, she looked up into the swirling darkness above her to see Drakh-Nur’s pain-stricken face illuminated in the glare of a nearby lightning strike.

  Reaching up with her other hand, she grabbed his forearm as he pulled her up, rolling away from the edge of the hive and pulling her with him. She wound up on top of him. He was gasping in pain, unable to speak.

  Beside him was Han-Ukha’i. He had pulled her up, too.

  “Drakh-Nur, thank you.” Keel-Tath did something she had never done before to anyone. She pulled herself up his massive chest and kissed him lightly on the lips.

  His eyes blinked open in surprise. “For that, mistress,” he rasped, barely audible against the howling wind and rain, “I will take a sword to the belly any day.”

  Turning to Han-Ukha’i, Keel-Tath said, “Can you help him? And is Dara-Kol still alive?”

  “Yes, mistress.” The healer was still panting, and in the flickering light Keel-Tath could see that she was in little better shape than their two wounded companions. The healer’s hands were bleeding badly, and she was shivering with cold from being in the water.

  Keel-Tath moved next to her and wrapped her arms around the healer’s shivering body, trying to give her what little warmth she could. She very badly wanted to know the details of what had taken place this terrible night, but the survival of her companions came first.

  “I can stop their bleeding,” Han-Ukha’i said through chattering teeth, “but I cannot heal them completely. I am too weak…”

  “Keep them and yourself alive.”

  “Help me to Dara-Kol. Drakh-Nur is weak, but he is in no immediate danger.”

  Keel-Tath wrapped one of the healer’s arms over her shoulder and helped her to where Dara-Kol lay still.

  “Is she still alive?” Keel-Tath took one of her protector’s hands in her own, holding it tight. She thought she could still hear the warrior’s song in her blood, but was not sure.

  “Barely.” Han-Ukha’i took the healing gel and forced it into the wound in Dara-Kol’s stomach. Han-Ukha’i put one hand on Dara-Kol’s forehead and the other over her heart and stayed that way, silent, for some time.

  Dara-Kol moaned, and her eyes flickered open. “Mistress?”

  “I am here.” Keel-Tath squeezed her hand, and was delighted that she squeezed back.

  “Lihan-Hagir?”

  “Dead. Drakh-Nur killed him. Drakh-Nur is wounded, but will live.”

  She nodded. “Ba’dur-Khan?”

  Keel-Tath closed her eyes at the mention of his name. “I saw his dagger in your belly and thought…and thought it was he who had betrayed us. He was fighting Lihan-Hagir, had him on his knees, when I ran him through with my father’s sword.”

  She let go Dara-Kol’s hand and put both her hands to her face, wanting to claw her eyes out at the memory of the feeling of the sword piercing Ba’dur-Khan’s armor, tearing through his heart. The only thing for which she was thankful was that he had been turned away from her, that she had not had to see the look on his face as he beheld his killer.

  “I thought it was him, too,” Dara-Kol said, pulling Keel-Tath’s hands away. “Lihan-Hagir found the perfect time to strike and fooled us all. I awoke to blinding pain in my belly. The two of them were already fighting, and Drakh-Nur and Han-Ukha’i were gone.”

  “He dragged me to the edge of the hive and threw me off.” Han-Ukha’i’s voice shook as her hands worked the healing gel into Dara-Kol’s wound. “Drakh-Nur heard my screams and came to my aid.”

  “I could see nothing,” the voice of the giant echoed in the darkness. He had dragged himself closer, and lay beside Han-Ukha’i. “I thought she had fallen, or perhaps an animal had taken her. Then I saw Ba’dur-Khan’s dagger in a flash of lightning, just before it was rammed home in my side.”

  “At least you were on your feet,” Dara-Kol told him. “He stabbed me while I was still asleep.”

  “Now we know the truth of Ri’al-Char’rah’s disappearance,” Drakh-Nur rumbled. “He must have killed her, too.”

  “But how could this happen?” Keel-Tath demanded. “He swore his honor and his sword to me. How could he betray me, betray us?”

  “It is the Dark Queen, child,” Han-Ukha’i told her as she pressed around Dara-Kol’s abdomen. Satisfied, she summoned the symbiont from the warrior’s body and leaned over Drakh-Nur to tend his wound. “She somehow holds power over certain warriors in a way no one understands. It is the same as Shil-Wular.”

  “Do you think she did something to Lihan-Hagir when she took him prisoner, something more than simply cutting out his tongue?”

  “That, mistress, I do not know.”

  “I would have you look at his body once you are done.”

  “As you command, mistress.”

  Keel-Tath felt another wave of guilt at asking such a thing of a healer, especially one so utterly spent as was Han-Ukha’i. Very rarely were they ever asked to touch the dead, and it was never a thing taken lightly. The symbionts told them everything about a body, and she could not imagine the story that a dead body, even fresh, might tell.

  But in Lihan-Hagir’s case, there must be something. There had to be. While Lihan-Hagir had been an honorless one, he had not in fact been without honor. None of them were, in Keel-Tath’s estimation. They were forsaken, forgotten, but they were not animals. And he had lived and fought with Dara-Kol for years. She had trusted him, and in all that time he had never given her reason to doubt his loyalty until now.

  “There,” Han-Ukha’i pronounced as she finished with Drakh-Nur. “Neither of you,” she spoke to him and Dara-Kol, “are fully healed, but you will not bleed if you are careful. When I am rested, I will tend to your wounds in more detail.” She paused. “I am ready, mistress.”

  Keel-Tath took Han-Ukha’i’s hands, which had themselves been healed as she handled the symbiont, and led her by the light of the flashes from outside to where Lihan-Hagir’s body lay. The head was off to one side, staring sightless at the ceiling of the hive.

  With a shudder, Han-Ukha’i knelt down beside the remains. Kneading the symbiont for a few moments until it was thin to the point of being translucent and broad enough to cover Lihan-Hagir’s body, she draped it over him. The oozing mass found a
ll the gaps in his armor and soaked into his flesh, and Han-Ukha’i moaned as she communed with it.

  A few minutes later, it began to ooze out the severed neck through the windpipe, and Han-Ukha’i gathered it up in her hands.

  “There is nothing, mistress. All is as I would expect it to be.”

  Keel-Tath swallowed the bile that rose in the back of her throat. “The head, Han-Ukha’i.”

  On her knees, her tattered robes dragging on the bottom of the hive, the healer turned to face Lihan-Hagir’s severed head. In the strobe of lightning, the braids of his hair spread out across the floor made his head look like some abominable creature. In a way, it was.

  Han-Ukha’i gathered up the braids and coiled them around the head. The hair of their race was far more than filaments of protein. The braids bound those born of each bloodline together, the embodiment of the empathic link they shared through their blood.

  She again kneaded the symbiont into a thin mass that was large enough to cover the head and the coiled braids, then lay it down on top of the unsightly mass. She knelt there in silence for a moment, then cried out in fear and revulsion.

  “What is it?” Keel-Tath held her as Han-Ukha’i shuddered, then turned to one side and vomited on the floor.

  The symbiont flooded out of Lihan-Hagir’s mouth, far faster than Keel-Tath had ever seen healing gel move. It was as if the thing was as repelled by the act as was Han-Ukha’i.

  “What…” Keel-Tath began to ask again, but Han-Ukha’i shook her head and held up her hand for silence.

  Taking Lihan-Hagir’s head in her hands, she turned it over to show where the braids met the scalp. One of them, the third, was odd. A finger’s length from the scalp, the braid was parting. The hair looked as if it was melted. Han-Ukha’i took hold of it and the braid came away in her hand.