In this case, she had chosen the nearest of the airships approaching the temple. The others of her hunting party had each chosen a different ship. She knew the craft were frail and the gas that lifted them into the sky, from the tales she had heard, was prone to burn at the least provocation. She could have chosen to simply materialize above the vessel and ignite the volatile gas with a bolt of cyan energy, but that was not the Way. The crew had come to give battle, and she would indulge them with sword and claw.
Whirling through the darkness in a space that was beyond time, beyond reckoning, eternity was reduced to an instant as she appeared on the bridge of the enemy airship.
“Welcome, priestess of the Desh-Ka.”
A warrior stood before her as if he had been awaiting her, his sword in his hand. A handful of others were clustered behind him. The gondola could have held over a hundred warriors, but only these few were here.
Then she noticed something else. His armor was battered and decrepit, as if it had not been tended by an armorer for many cycles. Looking more closely, she could see from the long braids coiled around his upper arm that one was missing. “You are an honorless one,” she said quietly, confused. The others, she saw, were the same. Why would Syr-Nagath crew her precious airships with warriors such as these?
He bowed his head and saluted, as did the others with them. “No longer shall we be after this day,” he told her. “Syr-Nagath offered to restore our honor and our names in the Books of Time.”
“She would not do such a thing lightly.” No one would. It was exceptionally rare that honorless ones ever redeemed themselves.
He shook his head. “No, she would not.” Drawing himself up to his full height, displaying a measure of pride that Uhr-Nagan suspected he had not felt in a long time, he told her, “To die by the hand of a priestess of the Desh-Ka is a great honor, more than I or my companions could ever have hoped for. But an even greater honor would be to take your life. Behold, our names shall be restored in the name of the Ka’i-Nur.”
Only then did Uhr-Nagan notice the warrior at the far end of the compartment, who held a small torch in one hand. He met her gaze with great solemnity before dropping the torch into a small round opening in the deck.
The airship exploded.
***
Tara-Khan was knocked to the ground by the shockwave. The nearest of the airships, which by now was quite close, disappeared in an enormous fireball that scorched those on the trail with a surge of heat, followed by a rain of burning and smoking debris.
In the span of a single breath, sixteen other airships blew up, artificial suns that tore away the dark gloom of the clouds for a brief, terrifying time.
The three Desh-Ka who had been hacking away at the attackers fell to their knees, their cries of anguish carrying above the artificial thunder that rolled over the plateau.
Recovering from their own moment of shock, many of them transfixed by the horrific spectacle above, the horde of attackers swarmed toward the stunned priests and priestess.
“What…what…” Drakh-Nur, who like Tara-Khan had been knocked to the ground, could not get out any more than that as he stared at the unfolding disaster.
Tara-Khan got to his feet. Helping up Ka’i-Lohr, who was still shaking his head and blinking his eyes clear, Tara-Khan shoved them back down the trail. Running as fast as his exhausted legs would carry him, the battle lust in his blood rekindled into a roaring flame, Tara-Khan dashed past his two companions. Grabbing up a second sword from those that lay on the ground, left behind by the dead, he leaped over the writhing Desh-Ka and slammed into the first rank of the attacking warriors. With both blades whirling and slashing, he managed to hold them at bay for a few moments.
“Get them back to the temple!" he cried as the enemy warriors relentlessly drove him back.
Drakh-Nur stooped and picked up a priest in each arm, while Ka’i-Lohr leaned down and draped the priestess over his shoulder. The two of them turned and struggled back up the trail as Tara-Khan bought them time.
***
Dara-Kol felt as if she had been hit with a titanic war hammer, then hurled into a flaming pyre. The explosions had been bad enough, but she and the others of the Desh-Ka bloodline, including all who remained at the temple, had been cast into shock by the force of the sudden silencing in the Bloodsong of those of the priesthood who had attacked the airships. Those whose blood ran more true to the ancient lineage were affected far worse than those whose ancestors had chosen to forge a union with one of the other bloodlines. Few of Dara-Kol’s ancestors had strayed far from their ancestral home, and the deaths of the priests and priestesses paralyzed her. Lying on the dais, she stared into the flaming sky, watching the wreckage of the destroyed airships collapsing to the ground. The airships had been a cunning ruse to lure the Desh-Ka into a trap. The priests and priestesses had gone to meet the enemy and do battle with honor, all of them forgetting that Syr-Nagath had none.
“Mistress! Mistress!”
She blinked and moved her eyes to see the two young warriors, Kula-Me’ir and Ul-Gar, kneeling beside her. Black streaks of mourning crept down their cheeks below their eyes, and Dara-Kol could feel the sad warmth of her own mourning marks. “Help me up,” she rasped, reaching for them with shaking hands.
More pain lanced through her, as if a carrion eater were plucking chunks of flesh from her dead body. More priests and priestesses were taken from this life, killed before they could recover from their shock at the deaths of so many of their brothers and sisters.
Kula-Me’ir tugged at her. “Mistress, what is thy command? Alena-Khan lies dazed, unable to speak. What must we do?”
For the first time in Dara-Kol’s life, all hope fled from her. The ancient order of the Desh-Ka, the most powerful warriors among her kind who had ever lived, and the only power that might have been able to stand against the Dark Queen and the scourge of the Ka’i-Nur, was being destroyed. Everything she saw around her was cause for despair. The enemy warriors who had somehow scaled the face of the plateau were swarming against the dazed acolytes, who fought with desperate ferocity against ever mounting odds. Below, she could see the horde of the Dark Queen’s warriors advancing quickly up the trail, all resistance having been eliminated. And she did not need the second sight of a priestess to know that the warriors crossing the river to the north were now advancing with all haste, the approaches to the temple from that quarter now undefended after the five priests and priestesses there had been overcome. Above, another wave of airships drew closer, drawing about in a circle around the plateau. Even as she watched, weapon ports on the long gondolas snapped open. A cloud of hundreds of fist-sized globes of dazzling cyan shot out from the airships to rain down on the temple.
“Take cover!”
The order came from Alena-Khan, who had managed to struggle to her knees at the place where she had been standing after ordering the attack on the airships. A handful of others of the priesthood were with her, trying to shake off the effects of the emotional trauma they all had suffered.
Dara-Kol drove the two young warriors with her down behind the waist high wall that encircled the dais as the globes fell. But the wreckage of the temple offered no shelter from the deadly rain that came from all points of the compass. As the globes struck, the outer shell of glass shattered to release a cyan bolt of power not unlike that unleashed by the Desh-Ka. Stone was scorched, wood set aflame, and flesh incinerated wherever the globes landed. The temple grounds reverberated with the screams of the wounded and the dying. Many of those struck were among the robed ones, who flung their own bodies over the younglings to protect them. The barrage was indiscriminate: many of Syr-Nagath’s warriors who had scaled the face of the plateau fell victim, as well.
The Kal’ai-Il, at the center of the temple, was a convenient aiming point, and the ancient stone was pelted by dozens of the hellish weapons. Ul-Gar hissed as a bolt singed his leg and left a smoking hole in his metal armor, but he was the only one of the trio cowering there to
suffer.
Braving the rain of projectiles, Alena-Khan stood and called the other surviving Desh-Ka to her. Forming a small circle facing outward, they reached their arms above their heads even as another volley of cyan globes was fired from the circling airships.
A web of cyan burst from their hands into the sky, higher than the great coliseum, but not so high as the airships. As it reached the apex Alena-Khan had chosen, the web arced outward and down, quickly forming a dome over the central part of the temple complex.
But along with the survivors of the Desh-Ka, many enemy warriors were now trapped within the protective dome of cyan fire. They fought toward Alena-Khan and the others at the center, who could not both defend themselves and maintain the temple’s shield.
An enemy warrior who had attacked over the wall drew back his arm to hurl a spear at Alena-Khan. Dara-Kol cried out a warning, but she had already used her own shrekkas and was helpless to interfere.
But a shrekka found him, taking off his spear arm.
As the body fell to the ground, Tara-Khan, Ka’i-Lohr, and Drakh-Nur came into sight at a full run from the direction of the trail’s entrance to the temple, two priests and a priestess in company. Tara-Khan did not bother to pause as he finished off the warrior, lopping his head from his body with his sword.
“With me,” Dara-Kol told the young warriors with her, and the three of them joined forces with Tara-Khan and his companions even as the priests and priestess rushed to reinforce Alena-Khan and the others. Dara-Kol gathered the surviving acolytes to form a protective ring around those of the priesthood and the robed ones sheltering the younglings, hammering back the enemy warriors trapped inside the defensive perimeter.
The second volley of cyan projectiles slammed into the protective dome, their discharges flaring white against the web of energy and to burn momentary holes through the dome. Alena-Khan and the others cried out in pain as the branches of lightning spitting from their hands flared. The flesh of their hands was singed and the armor of their gauntlets smoked from the unexpected heat.
As if sensing they were having an effect on the Desh-Ka, the airships closed in to orbit in a circle around the temple. The first wave was joined by a second that took up position at a slightly higher altitude. After a brief pause, the assembled fleet of over forty airships opened fire, launching over a hundred globes from each ship in a massive broadside.
CHAPTER SIX
Syr-Nagath shivered in orgasmic ecstasy as she saw and felt the deaths of the Desh-Ka priests and priestesses through Ka’i-Lohr’s eyes and the song of his blood that was tied to hers through dark and ancient magic. Sitting in the chair that had once been the throne of the kingdom of Ku’ar-Amir, she threw her head back and moaned, gripping the arms of the throne so tight that her talons left deep scars in the wood. Heat exploded in her core and flooded her loins, and she shivered and trembled as her body succumbed to the exquisite pleasure as the Desh-Ka died.
Ulan-Samir stared at the Dark Queen as she moaned. He had never in his long years seen such a display, and he felt a stab of shame that he had allied himself with such a horrid creature. “It is for the sake of the Way,” he whispered to himself.
“My priest?”
Ulan-Samir shook his head at the question asked by the queen’s First. “It is not your concern,” Ulan-Samir told him. “I take my leave.” He had seen with his second sight the impending destruction of the Desh-Ka. Syr-Nagath would have been content to exterminate all who had called the temple home, but to Ulan-Samir that was an unacceptable waste. The destruction of the priesthood was, of course, a necessity, but the robed ones, particularly the keepers of the Desh-Ka Books of Time, were invaluable. Any acolytes who were still alive could pledge their honor to him without shame, and their swords and skills would be warmly welcomed into the Nyur-A’il. He simply had to get there before the other priesthoods decided to take advantage of the opportunity.
With one last look at Syr-Nagath, suppressing a tingling sensation of his own desire, he departed from the great hall.
***
Keel-Tath lay on the collar-strewn ground, curled into a ball as the black wind swept across her, flaying her alive. She had thought at first that the black motes that rode the wind were nothing more than tiny flecks of the obsidian glass that was all that remained of the moon’s surface, but she had been dreadfully mistaken. Every tiny particle, smaller than the finest grain of sand, seemed to be alive. Like ravenous parasites, they bit and dug deeper, eating away her skin before tearing into the muscle that lay beneath. More of the death-filled wind had filled her nose and her mouth, crowded into her ears, and swept across the tender skin of her eyelids, intent on consuming her from the inside out.
The pain was horrific, but not nearly so much as knowing that she had failed, that she would perish here. All who had suffered in her name had done so in vain, all who had died at the Dark Queen’s hands, would never be avenged. She cried out for Ayan-Dar to save her, but only the black wind answered, pouring more of the black particles into her already ravaged mouth and throat.
As she spiraled toward the blissful relief of unconsciousness that would soon be followed by death, she was flooded with a wave of agony that transcended any physical pain. She felt as if a giant had reached his hand into the tree of her soul to tear it out, root and branch. The song in her blood roiled as seventeen of its greatest voices were suddenly silenced. More voices were lost, and then she felt a flare of white hot agony from the spiritual voices of the Desh-Ka who still survived.
Staggering to her feet in the wailing gale, the blood that poured from her body swept away in a fine mist that was consumed by the motes, she raised her arms to the sky that she no longer had eyes to see. She opened her mouth, breathed in deep, inviting more of the motes into her body, and screamed. At first it was a scream of anguish, of loss. Then it became a rage-filled wail that exploded from her bleeding lungs.
A torrent of lightning burst from her hands. Had any of the priests or priestesses of the Desh-Ka been witness to the spectacle, they would have fallen to their knees, struck dumb with awe. The power that Keel-Tath sent into the angry black cloud around her was more than the entire priesthood at its height, all working in unison, could have conjured forth.
More and more energy poured from her tattered body as she channeled the power of the Desh-Ka Crystal of Souls. Had the energy been focused at a single point, it could have driven a sun-hot spear right to the moon’s cold heart, shattering it like a glass marble struck with a mighty hammer. Instead, it swirled around her in a mimicry of the black wind, which now howled at incredible speed across the moon’s surface from every point of the compass, drawn to her like iron dust to an irresistibly powerful magnet.
The storm of lightning and dark matter became a colossal funnel cloud whirling above her, its power holding what was left of her body upright while she, in turn, somehow kept it rooted to the ground. She had stopped screaming, for her lungs had been sundered and she no longer had breath to give. Her heart, attacked by the vicious particles, gave a last shuddering beat before it hung still in her chest. Her mind floated in the center of the growing maelstrom, for in that one place could she find peace.
It was then that the tiny black motes began to bind themselves to the lightning that yet crackled from her hands, still growing in intensity. Flaring in brief white sparks, the transformed motes began to fall from the cloud like a galaxy of tiny stars shining against the glossy black obsidian of the moon’s surface.
More and more of the white stars flared into life, many of them traveling down the funnel toward her as if seeking out the source of the energy that had given them life. As they englobed her in blinding luminescence, the pain in her body eased, then disappeared, replaced by a comforting warmth. Where the black motes had torn her apart bit by tiny bit, so the white motes rebuilt her. Her heart began to beat again, and her lungs drew breath. Her flesh and skin were again made whole, as were her eyes and mouth.
An intense sensation of
heat, not enough to cause pain, around her neck drew her attention. Reaching with unsure hands, she felt something that had not been there before. It was a smooth round band, a collar. As she ran her fingertips along its smooth surface, the heat quickly faded.
Opening her eyes, she saw the walls of the funnel cloud swirling around her at an impossible speed, about as far away as the edge of the crater had been when she had come to this spot. But the crater was no longer there. She stood, instead, on a field of stars that looked exactly the same as they might had she been suspended deep in space. But this was so clear, the stars — every one unique — so bright, she felt she could reach out and touch them with her fingers.
“What we accomplished in ages past,” a familiar voice said, “you will multiply a thousand fold, perhaps more.”
Keel-Tath turned to see Anuir-Ruhal’te standing beside her. “Are you here?" she asked. “Are you real?”
With a sad smile, the ancient oracle said, “I am only an echo of what I once was, my only purpose to await your coming.”
Reaching out a hand, Keel-Tath tried to touch her ancient progenitor, but her hand passed through Anuir-Ruhal’te as if she were nothing but mist. “What is this place?” Keel-Tath whispered. “All thought it destroyed at the end of the Final Annihilation.”
“That was as it had to be,” the ghost said. “It was a terrible sacrifice that those who remained here chose to make, even after my own death on the Homeworld. You see, I had sown the seeds of your coming into the bloodlines of our people, but I knew you would need a sanctuary from those who would deny you. But to do what I had planned required vast energies that could only be unleashed by the most terrible weapons of our time. There was no other way.”
“The moon’s destruction,” Keel-Tath said, a chill running through her bones. “You planned it?”
“No, child, we did not plan it. None of those here, my compatriots, wished to die. But by that time in the war, our defeat was an inevitability that we chose to use to our advantage. The full destructive might of the Settlements, more power than you can yet imagine, was focused here. When our defenses collapsed, as we had foreseen, the moon’s surface was destroyed and all who remained here perished. But the energy that swept the surface was only a fraction of what the enemy expended. The rest was harnessed to transform this moon into a great engine that would answer only to you, and to defend itself from all others.”
Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) Page 5
