In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born (16 page)

He scraped his talons over the ancient stone in frustration, for he could not interfere in whatever was happening. He dared not even cast out his second sight to try and find the one whose song cried out, for he was already well beyond any reasonable measure of tolerance T’ier-Kunai need show toward him. Indeed, she was in danger of dishonoring herself by not punishing him, and that would have been a shame that he simply could not bear.
 

He sensed T’ier-Kunai approaching. “Should I shackle myself to the
Kal'ai-Il
, high priestess? If you punish me now, then perhaps I will earn myself the privilege of another foolish adventure.”
 

“Do not speak such words to me.” She came to stand beside him, folding an armored hand over his. “You know that would break my heart, you old fool.”

“I do not mean to bring grief upon you, T’ier-Kunai. I trust you realize that.”

“Of course I do. But you put me in a difficult position.” She squeezed his hand. “I am at my limit, Ayan-Dar. I can tolerate no more of this, not before the peers.”

“I know, my priestess. And I thank you for your tolerance.” He glanced at her face. In his eyes, her beauty matched her powers and skills as a warrior. Had he been younger, much younger, he would have sought her as a consort. He pushed the thought aside. He was far too old for such things now. “I take it there will be no conclave.”

“No, there will not. But I did command the keeper to consult with his peers in the other orders, even those among the Settlements, for any more insights into the prophecies of Anuir-Ruhal’te.”

Ayan-Dar grinned, his fangs glittering in the moonlight. “So, you believe me at least that much.”

“If I did not believe you, I never would have allowed you to even go to Keel-A’ar, let alone to the fortress of the Ka’i-Nur.” She turned to face him. “You must understand that it matters not whether I believe you, but that I am high priestess of this order. You are telling the peers that the very foundation upon which our civilization is built may crumble beneath their feet, all because of a child foretold in a prophecy by an oracle who passed from history ages ago.” She shook her head. “You ask them — you ask me — to step out into an abyss, offering nothing but uncertainty and yet another prophecy that tells of ages-long suffering and doom.”
 

“I wish I had more, my priestess. I would give my remaining arm and eye — my very life! — to have more to tell, more proof that I could offer the peers. But I fear that the proof, when it finally comes, will lead to our undoing if we are not prepared to deal with it.”

“What would you have me do?”

Ayan-Dar growled, a sign of frustration and resignation, an evil brew of emotions in a warrior such as he. “I would have you request that Kunan-Lohr and Ulana-Tath let us raise the child in our creche, that we may ensure her safety, and see what comes to pass as she grows. And I would deal with the Dark Queen before the greatest of her designs, whatever foul things they may be, came to fruition.”

“And I would take the eyestones from a
genoth
with nothing more than my teeth.” They both chortled at such an absurdity. After a moment, her voice serious, she went on, “You know that I can grant neither of those things. And I forbid you to leave the temple for the next moon cycle. Neither your body nor your mind. Spend some time sharing your wisdom with the acolytes, as priests are supposed to do.” She huffed with amusement. “Consider that as your punishment.”

Ayan-Dar glanced at the looming shackles that hung from the arch of the
Kal'ai-Il
behind him. “I would rather be whipped and set free to do mischief, but I will do as you command, high priestess of the Desh-Ka.”

CHAPTER TEN

Kunan-Lohr stood at the edge of the trees that ringed the camp where he had decided they would spend the night. He was weary of the long journey, and silently wished he possessed the powers of the Desh-Ka priesthood that allowed them to magically whisk themselves from one place to another. Or some of the technology that had long been known to his kind, but was thought dishonorable to use beyond things such as wheeled carts.
 

All I ask is a simple vehicle to convey me from one place to another without jarring loose my insides.
He snorted in disgust, both at the strictures of the Way and his own mind in wishing for such creature comforts. It was not becoming of a warrior.

He looked to the east, and his thoughts turned grim. Against the emotional tumult of the Dark Queen’s conquest, he could feel some nameless fear approaching closer with each passing day. Except for those closest to him in heart or blood, he did not have the clarity to sense a particular individual from the many millions of voices that sang among those born of the same bloodline. But he could not shake the sense that the one who approached did so with purpose, that he or she was seeking him out. It was a dark companion to the dread he had felt since he and Ulana-Tath had left their daughter behind in Keel-A’ar.
 

Then there was the tumult in the spiritual voices some days ago, when a handful of incredibly powerful spirits surged above even the emotional tides from the eastern war. Kunan-Lohr and the others of his party had never before sensed such raw power, and he instinctively knew that priests of the Desh-Ka must have been involved. He was thankful he had not been any closer, for the intensity of rage and bloodlust had nearly incapacitated him and the others for a time.
 

It was an ill omen, as Ulana-Tath had whispered when they had all regained their wits.

“What beauty do you see in the night that takes you from your consort, great master of Keel-A’ar?”

Ulana-Tath had come to stand beside him, taking his arm in hers. Beyond the thoughts which troubled him, it was a beautiful night, with the stars shining bright and the great moon just rising above the horizon. Behind them, the fire of their camp blazed, and the rest of his party of fifteen warriors sat around it, eating and drinking ale. All save the four sentries, who stood watch at a distance where the fire, noise, and smoke would not hinder their ability to sense anyone approaching the camp.
 

“There is no beauty in the night or day that could long part me from you.” He pulled her close, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. They had both removed their armor earlier, and now wore only their warm black undergarments. The warmth of her body against his felt good, helping to ward off the slight chill of the night. But even her presence beside him failed to dispel the sense of impending doom that gripped his heart.

“I feel it, too,” Ulana-Tath whispered. “Something dark approaches. It is close now, very close.”
 

Kunan-Lohr nodded. Ulana-Tath had a better perception of the emotional songs in her heart than did he.
 

She rested her head against his shoulder. “And I fear for Keel-Tath, my love. ”

“Anin-Khan will protect her.” It was not an empty reassurance. Kunan-Lohr, too, was worried, but not for the immediate physical safety of his daughter. His concern reached ahead in the cycles to come, when Keel-Tath would have to make her way in the world, clearly standing out as unique among a race that was based on similarity and continuity. “Every warrior in the city and the non-warrior castes would stand to defend her, and the city is safe from anything but an assault by an army of legions.” He paused. “I suspect the Desh-Ka priest may be keeping watch, as well.”

“Even if he is, you know he cannot interfere. They have such powers, like the gods of old.” She shook her head with sadness. “But they keep to themselves in their temple, immune and uncaring toward the fate of the world except when the Settlements come to call, or we carry war to the stars.”

“Perhaps it is for the best.” Kunan-Lohr held her closer and lowered his voice. “I do not wish to imagine the powers of the ancient orders in the hands of one such as the Dark Queen.”

Before Ulana-Tath could respond, they heard a signal from the sentry posted to watch over the main road.
 

Someone was approaching.

* * *

Nil’a-Litan had lost count of how long she had traveled since leaving the queen’s encampment on her mission to warn her master of the plot to kill his daughter. She had ridden day and night, stopping only long enough to acquire fresh animals and force herself to eat, using her master’s Sign of Authority to get whatever she needed before moving on. The only sleep she had allowed herself had been in the saddle, binding her thighs to one of the cinch straps that ran under her mount’s belly before she slumped over the
magthep’s
shoulders. The beast always slowed to a leisurely walk when she passed out, but kept moving westward on the road. Toward Nil’a-Litan’s master.

While healers had treated her injured shoulder, the healing gel they applied could not perform miracles while she was in motion, flexing the wound. The pain was agonizing, the ends of the severed bones grinding, and the slashed muscles were unable to mend. But she would accept nothing that would kill the pain, for that would dull her senses or force her to sleep. The last healer had simply looked at the wound and shaken her head, unwilling to apply more of the precious gel. That, more than any mere words, told Nil’a-Litan all she needed to know.

She was dying.

Death was something she would embrace with joy when the time came, but not before she warned her master. She could feel a spreading numbness in her legs, and beyond the fiery pain in her shoulder, the arm on that side was nothing more then a rod of useless and dying flesh. The skin had changed from its normal brilliant cobalt blue to black, the color of the mourning marks that now flowed down her cheeks from her eyes.
 

As fast as she was moving, it was barely fast enough. Three times had she caught sight of the riders the queen had sent, a rapidly moving column weaving through the ever-present traffic on the great road that was the main link between the eastern and western parts of T’lar-Gol. There were other roads, but this was the most direct path leading home to Keel-A’ar, and would be the road her master would be on, heading toward her. She could not let the queen’s riders catch her, she could not let them pass. Otherwise her suffering would have been for nothing, and her master would be caught unaware.

She had focused on the melodies that ran through her blood, trying to filter out the millions of voices that held no interest for her, trying to find the only one that now mattered. It was not an act born of special training or gifts, but an act of desperate will. Her entire life, every moment that she had lived, everything she had learned, was now focused on finding Kunan-Lohr.

And she had. It was a thin filament to which she now clung, but it grew stronger with every passing hour as the
magthep
she rode ran westward. The more she focused on her master, on the song of his blood, the easier it became to hear. Its strength reassured her. Kunan-Lohr had been a noble master, and dying in his service would be a great honor.
 

But not before she spoke the words he so needed to hear.

It was night now, and she guided the
magthep
along the edge of the road. Her side was wet where blood seeped from the wound that the healing gel could not bind. All color had been sapped from her vision, and at night, as now, she was nearly blind. She knew she had little time left. She hoped it would be enough, for she knew that her master was very close.
 

Guided by the song of Kunan-Lohr’s soul, she steered her mount away from the road in the direction of a small rise that she could just make out against the background of stars.

* * *

Kunan-Lohr did not have to summon his warriors to arms. In three breaths after the sentry’s signal, all of them, weapons at the ready, had disappeared into the trees on the side of the encampment that faced the road. He and Ulana-Tath drew their swords as they watched several shapes approach in the darkness, quickly moving up the slope from the road.

“Riders from the east,” Ulana-Tath said softly.

“No, only one. The others are spare mounts.” Kunan-Lohr stepped forward as realization began to dawn that this was the bearer of the gnawing fear he had been feeling.

The other warriors gathered around him as the
magthep
bearing the mysterious rider came to a wheezing halt before him.

“My…lord.” The warrior spoke only those words before she began to fall from the saddle.

Kunan-Lohr caught her in his arms, wincing at the sight of the ghastly wound in her shoulder, and the equally ghastly smell. He recognized her now as Nil’a-Litan, a very young warrior who had been serving under Eil’an-Kuhr in the east.

“To the fire, quickly!” Ulana-Tath led him to the center of the camp, and her consort carefully set the young warrior on his bed of hides near the fire.

While warriors were not healers, they were well acquainted with what could happen if wounds were not treated in time.
 

“We must get her to a healer,” Kunan-Lohr said as he and Ulana-Tath carefully removed her armor. He winced at the sight of the infected and necrotic flesh of her shoulder, arm, and upper chest.

“She has already been.” Ulana-Tath pointed to the unmistakable swirling mass of color that was a patch of healing gel, deep inside the wound. She took a bag of water and carefully drizzled some between the warrior’s parched lips.

“My lord,” Nil’a-Litan spoke again, pushing the water away as she reached for Kunan-Lohr with her good hand.
 

He took it, squeezing it gently. “I am here, Nil’a-Litan. Do not speak. Save your strength. We will find a healer from the road…”

Her grip, which was very weak, clamped down on his hand. In halting words, she told him, “No…time. The Dark Queen has sent riders, thirty of them, to Keel-A’ar. They are to kill your child and the others in the creche.”

Kunan-Lohr and Ulana-Tath looked at one another, nearly identical expressions of disbelief on their faces.

“Child, you are very ill,” Kunan-Lohr told her. “The Dark Queen is not without fault, perhaps, but she would never do such a thing.”