“By what?”
The keeper shook his head. “I do not know. Not in this place.”
Tara-Khan looked at Ka’i-Lohr, who shrugged. Drakh-Nur looked unsettled, his hands holding his war hammer in a tight grip.
“Swords,” Tara-Khan ordered quietly, drawing his blade before he stepped across the threshold, Ka’i-Lohr and Drakh-Nur right behind him.
***
Reclining in her pavilion while her healers regrew Ulan-Samir’s devastated eyes, Syr-Nagath watched as her warriors boarded the first squadron of starships. Even the ancient oracle Anuir-Ruhal’te could not have foreseen the self-destruction of the priesthoods, which were now fighting among themselves like carrion eating wo’olahr. All but the Nyur-A’il, of course, which through Ulan-Samir were now hers to command. Each of the departing ships would carry a priest or priestess from the order. While she had faith that her warriors and their First Age weaponry could vanquish any foe they might encounter among the Settlements, she had no delusions that her adversaries would likely be far more willing to surrender their honor to one of the Nyur-A’il than to a warrior of Ka’i-Nur, should any of her warriors even be in the mood to accept surrender.
That, perhaps, was the only minor ripple in her plans. She did not want to destroy the Settlements; she wanted them to submit to her will, to surrender their honor so she could make use of them. But the warriors of Ka’i-Nur, confined for millennia to the city beneath the black fortress that stood in the Great Wastelands, had for too long been denied the glory of battle to the death, beyond the challenges fought in the arena. Their blood lust ran high, and it was only with the mightiest force of will that she could restrain them from wanton destruction. When, of course, restraining them in such a fashion suited her.
Lying nude upon the chaise that overlooked the birthplace of her star fleet, she shivered in delicious anticipation as she shifted her mind back to the second sight that was linked to her son. Through him and others like him did she watch her enemies. And sometimes she did more than watch. Ka’i-Lohr, the unseen weapon that she kept close to Keel-Tath’s heart, was her pride and joy. She had been following along with him as Keel-Tath took him and the others to the Great Moon, and had watched with rapt attention as he and his stalwart, if ignorant, companions began their exploration of the enormous palace that, she knew, would someday be her own. She again fastened her consciousness to his, coupling with it like a passionate lover just as she had coupled with him in a series of secret trysts since he was young, after she had taken control of his soul. He was the only child born from her womb, despite every attempt to bear more. Her only begotten son was the most precious thing to her.
“Ka’i-Lohr,” she whispered as she lay back, opening herself to his senses, seeing the world through his eyes. While she let him retain his own will for the moment, she inserted her mind into his like slipping her hand into an armored gauntlet.
***
The darkness was absolute, and the only sounds were the soft footsteps of the leatherite sandals and tightly controlled breathing of the three warriors as they made their way forward. Even a few paces in, the light glowing from the lift shaft had all but disappeared. The air, pleasantly cool, betrayed no scent and was utterly still.
“Ka’i-Lohr,” Tara-Khan whispered. “Put your hand on my shoulder. Drakh-Nur, you do the same with Ka’i-Lohr.” He felt a hand groping for his shoulder, and was reassured when Ka’i-Lohr’s hand took a firm grip on his armor.
Ka’i-Lohr’s voice floated through the darkness behind him. “Drakh-Nur is with me. Lead on.”
The trio shuffled along for an agonizingly long time, as Tara-Khan tapped the tip of his sword on the floor and waved it to and fro to warn him of anything in their path. Or in case the floor gave way to an unseen abyss.
“This is ludicrous,” Ka’i-Lohr finally whispered. “We must have gone at least two leagues now without touching anything but the floor. No walls, no ceiling, no nothing. How are we to find anything, especially the way back, without a trace of light?”
As if the darkness had heard him, a pinpoint of light, like a single star, flickered into existence above and ahead of them. But it only served as a point of reference, for the light that it provided failed to illuminate their surroundings, and it was impossible to tell how far away it was.
A shiver ran down Tara-Khan’s spine. The sight reminded him of a tale told by fishermen of Ku’ar-Amir about a dreadful fish that lay in wait in the black depths. The tip of a long spine that projected from the beast’s head and hung in front of its great jaws glowed like a tiny lamp. Unwary fish, drawn to the light that shone in the inky darkness, were lured to their doom.
“Stop,” he whispered.
“Why?” Ka’i-Lohr breathed. “Keep going toward the light. That is obviously where we must go.”
“Something is amiss. Remain here.”
“We should stay together,” Drakh-Nur rumbled from somewhere behind him.
“I can find you by the sound of your voices,” Tara-Khan said. “Stay here.” He took a step forward toward the light, using his sword tip to guide him. Then another.
The sound of the sword tapping against the floor changed. It was ever so subtle, but there was no mistaking it.
Tara-Khan stopped. Kneeling down, he put his hand to the floor. With a hiss, he drew it back. It was hot as an open flame to his touch, even through the leatherite palm of his gauntlet, yet radiated no heat.
In the darkness a ghostly image of his palm where he had touched the floor began to glow crimson. A red line appeared, only a hair’s breadth across, that ran right through the palm print. Looking to either side, he saw that the line arced off into the distance as far as he could see to his left and right.
“What is that?” Ka’i-Lohr’s voice floated from the darkness behind him.
“I do not…”
The line began to widen, the crimson pulsating in time with a deep throb that filled the chamber, like the beating of a gigantic heart.
Recoiling, Tara-Khan cried out as the skin of his face was seared from the blast of heat.
“We must return to the others!” Ka’i-Lohr shouted.
“No!” Tara-Khan grabbed him and Drakh-Nur. “Help me across!”
“Don’t be a fool!” Drakh-Nur roared as the crimson barrier expanded toward them, pulsing with the deep beat, then pausing for the briefest of moments.
“Do as I say!” Dashing back a few paces the way they had come, Tara-Khan turned back toward them.
His two companions, black silhouettes against the crimson of the barrier just beyond them, locked their hands together and crouched down. Tara-Khan sprinted the short distance toward them, hoping against hope that they would be able to vault him over the river of fire.
***
Syr-Nagath watched through her son’s eyes as Tara-Khan dashed toward him, his eyes gleaming in the glow of whatever menace they had triggered in this mysterious chamber. It would be such a small thing, a trivially easy thing, for her son’s grip to weaken, or for him to not apply his full strength to the foolhardy feat Tara-Khan was attempting to perform. No one could possibly blame Ka’i-Lohr for the unfortunate twist of fate that claimed Tara-Khan’s life. To kill him would be a minor thrill in itself, but to separate him forever from Keel-Tath, leaving the way open for her son to woo the white-haired aberration was a far more worthy reward.
***
Ka’i-Lohr held his attention on Tara-Khan, trying to ignore the blast furnace heat that would soon cook them all in their armor as the red chasm in the shape of an enormous and expanding circle raced toward them. A part of him realized that it must not be moving as fast as his senses told him or they would already be dead. But death would come in less than a breath or two if he and Drakh-Nur did not flee back toward the entrance.
He blinked as his attention momentarily wandered, and he felt the tension ease out of his muscles. It was the oddest of sensations, as if he was on the verge of falling asleep. A kaleidoscope of images tumble
d through his mind, of a woman touching him, bringing both pleasure and pain, in more ways than he could imagine. He shivered as his body was overtaken by a wave of lust. The visions, he knew, must be fantasy, but they felt more like deeply buried memories.
He watched Tara-Khan coming toward him. His tresh’s mouth was moving and words were coming out, but Ka’i-Lohr could not seem to hear him, and his hands, clinging tight to Drakh-Nur’s huge forearms, began to relax…
***
In her mind’s eye, time was Syr-Nagath’s to command, and she watched Tara-Khan bound closer. She savored the thought of what deviltry the chamber had in store for him, how agonizing might be his end. She gasped as a sensation of delicious heat flowed into her loins.
The young warrior leaped. She watched with detached fascination as his body flew through the air, his body already coiling like a spring to take advantage of the leverage provided by his two companions. The heat from the expanding barrier was nearly unbearable now, and both Ka’i-Lohr and the wretched spawn of her own people, Drakh-Nur, were gritting their teeth in agony.
It would be so easy to kill Tara-Khan. And yet…and yet, if she did so now, she might never discover the secret of this chamber. The entire moon had become a great and fascinating mystery to her, and this sanctum within Keel-Tath’s so-called palace must be important. Perhaps it would be worth letting Tara-Khan face his fate on his own terms in exchange for learning more…
***
The erotic fog that had momentarily wafted through Ka’i-Lohr’s brain cleared. Tara-Khan was flying toward him, and he clamped his hands on Drakh-Nur’s forearms and tensed his body just before Tara-Khan’s feet landed precisely on their linked arms.
With a screaming heave, Ka’i-Lohr and Drakh-Nur vaulted him over the chasm with every ounce of their strength. Then, without a word, they turned and ran as fast as their legs could carry them in the direction of the doorway, hidden somewhere in the darkness, that led to the lift. Ka’i-Lohr, gasping in pain as the heat reached through his armor to scorch his skin, slashed the bindings as he ran, leaving it behind.
The metal plates sizzled and vanished in writhing smoke as the expanding barrier consumed them.
***
Below Tara-Khan, the barrier glowed like the hot coals of an armorer’s forge, continuing to expand with every beat of the infernal mechanism that was at the heart of this place, whatever it was. As he reached the peak of his trajectory and began to arc back down toward the floor, he realized that he wasn’t quite going to make it.
Gritting his teeth, he tucked in his head and upper body. This feat of acrobatics was nothing new, for young warriors practiced such maneuvers, which were often useful in battle, all the time. But that was upon the sands of the arena, not over a floor as hot as molten metal. But better he should absorb the pain with his upper body than his feet or legs. If he suffered injury to them and couldn’t run, he would be dead.
He slammed into the floor just as another pulse reverberated through the chamber, sending the barrier just past where he landed. His left shoulder bore the brunt of the impact and the pain as the heat seared his flesh through the metal. With a scream he rolled to his feet and ran, slicing the bindings to the now red hot shoulder armor with the talons of his right hand and shaking it free. His backplate was scorching his skin, as well, but there was no time. It was only pain, and that much he could endure.
Panting, he ran as fast as he could toward the white light ahead. The pulse in the chamber quickened in his ears and he could feel a wall of heat behind him, but he dared not look back.
As if emerging through a curtain of gauze that obscured its true form, the white light took on the shape of a glowing crystal chalice suspended over a darkened dais.
Tara-Khan howled as one of his feet was burned when the barrier momentarily caught up with him. He stumbled and nearly fell, but he was so close. So close.
With one last all-out effort, ignoring the agony from his burned foot, he took three long leaps before flinging himself headlong to the dais. He was momentarily dazed as his head slammed into the dark stone, the skin of his cheek splitting open from the impact.
But he was safe, or was for now. The floor all around the circular dais for as far as he could see was a swirling mass of reds and yellows, as if the chamber floor was now made of lava, and the pulse still echoed. Above the pulse he could hear faint screams.
Ka’i-Lohr and Drakh-Nur, he thought in a panic. But if they could give voice to their pain and fears, they were still alive.
Forcing himself to his feet, he looked at the chalice, which was suspended on a crystalline sculpture every bit as beautiful as the adornment Shar-El’nai had earlier created in the main passageway. “What do I do?" he whispered. Looking up into the blackness, he shouted, “What do you want from me?”
Leaning closer, he looked down into the chalice, which was a beautifully proportioned but otherwise unadorned mass of glowing crystal. But that was all.
Several drops of blood from the wound in his cheek fell into the chalice, and its glow intensified.
“If it is my blood that you want, then take it!” Flinging off one of his gauntlets, he drew his dagger and sliced open his palm. Clasping the wounded hand into a fist, he held it over the chalice, letting his blood fall in a steady trickle.
The pulse became a deafening basso roar and the heat intensified as the chalice turned red. He understood then that he was not the one the chamber had been expecting.
“I am not Keel-Tath,” he shouted as loud as he could, hoping that whatever haunted this place could understand him, “nor am I of her blood, but her spirit is within me!”
He screamed as the heat welled up around him, but he stood his ground, pouring more of his blood into the chalice.
All at once, the roaring ceased and the fiery glow from the floor, along with the heat, vanished, leaving silent darkness broken only by the light from the chalice.
With a gasp of relief, Tara-Khan sank to his knees and sucked in lungfuls of suddenly cool air. With quivering hands, he slashed the bindings to the rest of his metal armor, which was still smoking hot, letting it clatter to the floor. He looked at his burned foot and winced. The thick leatherite sole was little more than ash, and the bottom of his foot was little better. Blood seeped from the cracks in the crisped flesh.
The darkness in the chamber gradually began to fade, like morning twilight giving way to the fullness of dawn. He looked up…and up…and up as the illumination in the chamber grew. He had thought the throne room in the palace had been immense, but it paled in comparison to this. A dozen throne rooms could have easily occupied the floor that stretched off into the distance in every direction, with another layer, or perhaps two, added on top. He had difficulty grasping the scale, especially considering how far down toward the moon’s core the lift must have taken them.
Off in the direction from which they’d come, he saw two tiny figures moving toward him, with more, like tiny insects, much farther behind.
They all stopped as a deep rumble echoed through the chamber, a subtle vibration accompanied by a sound that was so low as to be barely audible.
Sections of the floor, tens of thousands of them, began to rise. But they were not part of the floor, he saw after a moment: they were the tops of pillars. Several of them rose right around the dais upon which he lay, and he could see that they were covered with runes, glyphs, diagrams, and even strange three dimensional representations of things he had never before seen. Every pillar was unique in shape, size, and color. Some were rectangular in cross section, others were circular or trapezoidal, and some were graceful spiral shapes. Some were as big in diameter as the coliseum of the Desh-Ka, while others were no larger than his thigh. Many looked to be made of gray stone, but just as many were not: he saw pillars of gleaming metal, crystal, veined stone, and obsidian.
They rose and rose, becoming impossibly tall. At last, the rumbling ceased and the pillars finally stopped when their tops neared the very distant ceiling
of the chamber.
Part of every warrior’s education in the kazhas, or training schools, let alone the temples such as the Nyur-A’il where Tara-Khan had spent part of his youth, involved some study of the past. Such things had held little interest for him, as his only true love then had been his sword. Yet, as ignorant in some ways as he had been, he could not have failed to recognize what this place was: the Books of Time of Anuir-Ruhal’te. It would have been a treasure of incalculable value at any time in the history of his people, but all the more so now. And it was a treasure that would have to be protected at all costs.
He looked up at a shout, and gave a tired wave as Drakh-Nur and Ka’i-Lohr ran toward him.
***
Syr-Nagath’s breath caught in her throat as she beheld the wonder unfolding before her son’s eyes, and was filled with relief at staying her hand and allowing Tara-Khan to live. All of the knowledge, all of the power held by her race at the pinnacle of the Second Age, and perhaps that of the First, as well, was rising from the floor of the chamber buried deep in the Great Moon’s heart. While the Books of Time maintained by the Ka’i-Nur were, she believed, the oldest and most complete among the ancient orders, they were as tattered scraps of parchment compared to what had lain dormant in the moon for the past hundred thousand cycles. She moaned at the thought of the power such knowledge would bring.
She must have it, and she would have it, no matter the cost.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ima’il-Kush was the most distant of the three Settlements by any conventional measure. But to those of the priesthoods who could will themselves from one location to another, it was only a heartbeat away through the infinite cold and dark that separated here from there. Unlike the Homeworld, whose sky was a vivid magenta, this world’s sky was a deep blue, almost the color of the skin of the people who had inhabited it for millennia. Most of it was covered by deep saltwater oceans, although unlike the seas of the Homeworld, the beasts that called the deep their home, while every bit as prolific, were not nearly as deadly. It was a world of seafarers, who plied the waters in graceful sail driven craft that took the wares of commerce or legions of warriors among the island continents. Great cities marked the coastlines, particularly near the mouths of the many rivers, the graceful spires rising against the backdrop of jagged inland mountains, the broken teeth of long dead calderas that belied the planet’s volcanic heritage.
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