In Her Name: The Last War (75 page)

If nothing else, he thought grimly, he no longer had to worry about making a decision about extending their stay in Kronstadt.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“You do well, child,” Tesh-Dar told Li’ara-Zhurah after they completed their latest sparring match in the ship’s arena. Even the smallest ships of the Imperial Fleet had one aboard, for the arena was not just an affectation of their civilization, it was a fundamental institution of their civilization since before the founding of the Empire. As the fleet made its way toward the human world of Saint Petersburg, Tesh-Dar worked each day with Li’ara-Zhurah, trying to ease the pain from her soul and guide her along the path that the priestess so hoped she would choose to take. 

Tesh-Dar not only remembered Pan’ne-Sharakh’s words of caution about the young warrior, but had used them as a guide to further build her relationship with Li’ara-Zhurah. She had come to believe that there was indeed something the young warrior was shielding in her heart, and had sought to gently sway her into revealing it of her own accord. Tesh-Dar could have simply ordered her to do it, and while that would have revealed the truth of the matter, it would also likely have destroyed the bond between them. That was the one thing Tesh-Dar was loathe to do, for if Li’ara-Zhurah was to follow in her footsteps and become a priestess of the Desh-Ka, her faith and trust had to be complete, without reservation.

“I am honored by your words, my priestess,” Li’ara-Zhurah said as she quickly stilled her breathing after their latest round of fierce swordplay. She knew that she would never be a tenth as good as was Tesh-Dar with any weapon, but she found herself proud of her own abilities: she was no warrior priestess, but knew she could defeat any of her peers. Tesh-Dar pushed her beyond the limits she had set for herself, and Li’ara-Zhurah was openly surprised at how much her combat skills had improved, even in the short time since returning from the nursery world. And much as part of her wished to deny it, the gentle spiritual ministrations of the great priestess had allayed the worst of the melancholy that had so distracted her since the battle of Keran. It had not changed her loathing about bearing a male child, or her fears for any fertile female children, but she had set aside the thoughts of sacrificing herself in battle simply to avoid future matings. Early in the voyage, she had gathered her courage enough to speak to one of the other young warriors who had recently suffered through her first mating. Li’ara-Zhurah was surprised to learn that the warrior had felt much the same as she herself had: the warrior had been greatly distraught by the experience and had suffered similar thoughts of casting her life away before another mating could be consummated. Yet, after a time, the warrior told her, these feelings had passed; mating would never be a pleasant experience, but like with all things in the Empire, it was a duty to the Empress that could not be set aside. Honor would not allow it. 

“Come, then, child,” Tesh-Dar said as she sheathed her sword. “Walk with me.”

Li’ara-Zhurah bowed and saluted before following the great priestess from the arena. Walking behind Tesh-Dar as they passed the next group of challengers set on honing their skills before fighting the humans, Li’ara-Zhurah was again amazed, as she had been every time she had witnessed it, that Tesh-Dar left no footprints in the sand behind her. While the priestess possessed a soul in a vessel of flesh and blood as did all of Her Children, there was so much more to her. The powers she possessed, glimpsed here in the grains of sand that were left untouched by her passing, were both frightening and reassuring. Frightening, because Li’ara-Zhurah could not imagine any enemy, no matter how terrible, standing against her, and reassuring for the same reason: as long as Tesh-Dar lived, the Empire and the Empress would endure, would be safe. The other warrior priestesses were great in their own right, yet they could not compare to the high priestess of the Desh-Ka. If the Empress was the body and soul of Her Children, Tesh-Dar was the physical manifestation of their sword and shield. Li’ara-Zhurah had once heard Pan’ne-Sharakh refer to Tesh-Dar as
Legend of the Sword
, and she had come to understand the truth of that name in the time she had spent with the priestess.

Walking in Tesh-Dar’s path was truly a humbling experience.

“You could be more than simply a witness to the powers of the Desh-Ka,” Tesh-Dar said quietly as Li’ara-Zhurah moved up to walk beside her, once they were clear of the arena. “I would show you the temple where our order has passed on our knowledge from generation to generation, from priestess to priestess.”

Li’ara-Zhurah stopped and stared at Tesh-Dar, her eyes wide with surprise. “My priestess...” she began, unsure if she had heard correctly what Tesh-Dar had said. “Did you just say...”

“Yes, I did, child,” Tesh-Dar said, turning to face her young disciple. “Your Bloodsong sings to me in a way that very few have over the many cycles of my life,” she explained. “You have suffered in a way that few of our warriors have, and you have shown the strength of will to control, and I hope to conquer, your inner fears. At Keran you brought great glory to the Empress in battle, and showed your courage in the face of a worthy enemy.” She looked deeply into the young warrior’s eyes, into her soul. “One of my greatest honors, one of my greatest responsibilities as high priestess, is to choose a successor, a warrior who shall inherit the powers passed down to me, whom I shall teach all that I know. I have chosen you. You may choose to accept, or not, as it pleases you.”

Li’ara-Zhurah closed her eyes and bowed her head. In a shaking voice she said, “Great priestess, I am unworthy of such an honor.” She was suddenly stricken with a deep sense of guilt for the thoughts that had clouded her mind earlier, thoughts of casting away her honor even as Tesh-Dar was considering granting her the greatest gift that she could give, a gift nearly as great to one of her kind as life itself.

She suddenly felt Tesh-Dar’s hand against her cheek. “Be not ashamed of your earlier thoughts,” she said, as if reading Li’ara-Zhurah’s mind. “You have endured much in Her name, child. Our Way is never easy, from the moment we emerge from the womb until the instant our spirits pass into the Afterlife to join the Ancient Ones. To honor Her, we each seek perfection in our craft, as warriors or clawless ones. Yet what we aspire to is something we can never achieve; perfection is a state of grace that only the Empress knows.”

“I cannot imagine imperfection in you, my priestess,” Li’ara-Zhurah noted humbly.

Tesh-Dar gave an ironic
humph
. “Child, I was punished upon the
Kal'ai-Il
when I was young, before my Seventh Challenge, and wear the scars of my disgrace upon my back, even now.”

Li’ara-Zhurah looked up at her, shocked. “You...were punished upon the
Kal'ai-Il?
” She shook her head. “Then how...” She looked at the great cyan rune on Tesh-Dar’s breastplate that was the twin of the one engraved in the oval disk on her collar. The rune of the Desh-Ka, that only priestesses were allowed to display.

“How did I become a priestess after suffering such dishonor?” Tesh-Dar asked as she turned and began walking down the passageway of the ship toward her quarters, Li’ara-Zhurah falling into step beside her. “Because, like you, daughter, I learned what it truly means to bear the burden of Her honor.”

* * *

While her punishment on the
Kal'ai-Il
was complete absolution of her sin in the eyes of the Empress and the peers, Tesh-Dar was unable to rid herself of a deep sense of guilt. With Sura-Ni’khan’s very reluctant blessing, Tesh-Dar left for what was to be a long and lonely sojourn on the frontier. For nineteen cycles she sought out every challenge that her people faced in the deep unknowns of space and the many worlds they sought to conquer. While there were many perils to be found, there were few that truly tested her. 

She served on survey vessels that extended the Empire’s domain and probed for any threats to Her Children. Along the way, she taught swordcraft in several
kazhas
in the frontier settlements, astounding even the most senior warriors with her mastery of every weapon. She fought in spectacular Challenges, at times taking on five or more highly skilled opponents and never suffering defeat. 

She visited worlds that the Empress had left untouched, planets where mere survival was a challenge. She saw and battled amazing beasts that were far more deadly than the
genoth
of the Homeworld, and even learned to survive vegetation that could kill and maim. These worlds were reserves where the more seasoned warriors of the Empire could embark upon the very kind of spiritual quest on which Tesh-Dar found herself. She visited each of the worlds that were thus preserved, hunting and killing the most vicious creatures in the galaxy, sometimes in company with other warriors, but more often hunting on her own.

Over the cycles that passed, the Legend of the Sword indeed became a legend on the frontier, yet this only served to heighten Tesh-Dar’s sense of loneliness. As more pendants were added to her collar in recognition of her feats of skill and courage, as she ascended the figurative steps toward the throne that defined her social standing, so did the peers became more reverent, more distant. It gave her some painful insights into how Sura-Ni’khan, who was only five steps from the throne, and the other warrior priestesses and senior mistresses among the clawless ones must feel. It was a great achievement to reach such a lofty height among the peers, yet it brought a kind of social isolation that Tesh-Dar had never suspected as a young
tresh
. 

She corresponded regularly with Sura-Ni’khan, as well as Pan’ne-Sharakh, and their words of hope and praise helped to gradually ease the pain Tesh-Dar felt in her heart. The shame and guilt of killing Nayan-Tiral never left her, but eventually she came to terms with it in the great emptiness of the frontier where she planned to spend the rest of her life if the Empress so allowed.

Tesh-Dar’s travels eventually took her to Klameth-Gol, a primordial world that had been left by the Empress as a massive game preserve, where some of the most vicious forms of life in all the Empire could be found, from invisible microbes that challenged the skills of the healers to massive sea creatures half a league in length, and predators on land that made a mockery of the most dangerous creatures that had ever walked upon the Homeworld. These great predators were what Tesh-Dar had come for. Yet, as she and her fellow warriors were to discover, on this planet the largest and most fearsome beasts were merely prey themselves.

Tesh-Dar was returning from a solo hunt in the jungle, where she had been tracking a particularly large predator for the last several days, when she heard an eruption of screams from the hunting encampment. Screams of terror. Screams of pain.

Dashing forward along the trail she had earlier hacked through the dense undergrowth, she burst into the encampment’s clearing. With a shock, she saw the dismembered bodies of several warriors strewn about the bare, soggy ground, with seven survivors standing back-to-back in the center, swords drawn. They were terrified, which drove a spike of fear into Tesh-Dar’s heart. For these were not young
tresh
, inexperienced and untrained. They were seasoned warriors and hunters who had long cycles of experience on worlds much like this. She could not imagine what would frighten them so.

“Tesh-Dar!” one of them warned. “Beware! There is—”

Suddenly, Tesh-Dar sensed something to her left, very close. Her eyes saw nothing, yet she knew with certainty that there was something there: a disturbance in the air that caressed her skin, a strange scent, very faint, wafting toward her. She did not have Sura-Ni’khan’s special powers or second sight as a warrior priestess of the Desh-Ka, but her own senses were naturally keen, and had been refined by many years of training and experience.

With a lightning-quick draw, her sword sang from its sheath. Using a powerful two-handed cut, she slashed the air where her senses told her something was approaching, even though her eyes still saw nothing other than the bodies of some of her companions on the blood-soaked ground.

She cringed as her sword found its mark and a demonic shriek pierced the air. Watching in fascination, she saw a wound open in her sword’s path, as if the skin and flesh of the air itself had parted and was left exposed and bleeding. 

Bringing her sword overhead in a fluid motion, she slashed downward in a move that could cut through stone. The creature shrieked again, but that was its last act as Tesh-Dar’s sword cleaved it in two. The thing collapsed to the ground in a heap of bloody meat and bone. 

It was not alone. She whirled just in time as she sensed something behind her, and her slashing sword must have caught this beast at the neck. A cross-section of its body, roughly as big around as her thigh and spouting a torrent of blood, was suddenly revealed at her own shoulder’s height. She was knocked to the ground as the thing’s body continued forward before it collapsed, making a deep indentation in the ground.

Two of the other warriors suddenly screamed, and Tesh-Dar watched in horror as their bodies were plucked from the defensive ring they had formed and were carried into the forest, caught in the jaws of the invisible creatures. The warriors slashed at their attackers with sword and claw, but it was for naught: a maw suddenly opened out of thin air to bite off the head of one of the warriors. The other warrior was simply carried onward into the jungle, still screaming.

Tesh-Dar stood there for several minutes, reaching out with her senses to see if she could detect any more of the creatures in their midst. While she knew she could not be sure, she did not think there were any more. Yet, she had no doubt they would return.

Cautiously, she joined the five remaining warriors. They were even more terrified now, and Tesh-Dar did not blame them: she was only barely able to suppress her own fear. Kreelan warriors were accustomed to being the hunters, not the hunted.