Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9)

by Michael R. Hicks

***

  The Ka’i-Nur warrior’s body flashed to steam inside the superheated metal armor an instant before the remaining flesh and bone burst into flame, blasting his exposed head into the air as the body collapsed to the ground in a heap of red hot molten slag.

  Alena-Khan did not pause to savor her victory before she stepped through space to appear above and behind another silver clad warrior. The tactic she and the others of the Desh-Ka were using was not one they ever would have employed on a normal field of battle, but with only seven priests and priestesses in her hunting party against an entire cohort of Ka’i-Nur warriors with advanced weapons and armor, she hardly needed to worry about dishonoring herself. The enemy still held an overwhelming advantage.

  A bare instant after she appeared in the air, gently falling toward the ground, she blasted the warrior, who had just squeezed off a shot at one of her priests, but missed. Her bolt of lightning, however, did not. The warrior exploded like a bomb as the internal pressure of the body’s expanding gasses ruptured the superheated armor. Nodding in satisfaction, Alena-Khan winked out of sight again just as a pair of energy beams ripped the air where she had just been.

  It was then that she saw the ship squatting to one side of the field of battle. It was not one of the great starships Keel-Tath and the other boarding teams would be attacking, but was a smaller vessel, no doubt launched from one of the greater ships. But it was still a valuable target. “El-Shula’an! Zhur-Marekh!" she called to the nearest of her fellow swords. “The ship!”

  The priest and priestess shouted acknowledgement before they vanished. A score of sun bright beams speared through the air where they had just been. Alena-Khan vaporized another Ka’i-Nur warrior before she herself shifted through space.

  A few moments later, the ship, its huge loading ramp still open, began to lift from the ground with a deep rumble from its engines. Ka’i-Nur warriors leapt from the cargo bay to the ground. Rolling on the ground with unexpected grace, they regained their feet and began to run.

  None had made it very far before the ship exploded, and Alena-Khan’s heart was filled with the pain of loss as the spiritual voices of El-Shula’an and Zhur-Marekh were silenced. The fleeing Ka’i-Nur were consumed by the fireball, and flaming debris arced in all directions to rain down on the enemy warriors below.

  Forcing her sorrow and rage into a dark corner of her soul until she had time to grieve properly, Alena-Khan did exactly what she had ordered of the rest of the Desh-Ka: with methodical precision, she killed. With swords sheathed, they only used their higher powers to blast an enemy, then disappear and reappear at a new vantage point to blast another. If an enemy warrior was close by, the priestess snatched him and whisked him into low orbit. That became a frequent tactic, for it was far less taxing. The unfortunate Ka’i-Nur warriors spent their final moments as shooting stars sweeping across the darkening skies. Unlike in the earlier battles, both among themselves and against the Ka’i-Nur, the priests and priestesses carefully paced themselves. As they began to tire and their powers waned, they retired to a vantage point atop a mountain with a view of the battlefield, where they were tended to by robed ones and rested until ready to rejoin the battle.

  In not a single case did they attack a warrior not of the Ka’i-Nur. The warriors of T’lan-Il who had surrendered their honor to the silver-clad invaders did their best to bring the Desh-Ka to battle, but all they could do was hurl shrekkas ineffectually at the priests and priestesses who floated above them, well out of range.

  The battle — the slaughter, thought Alena-Khan later — went on well into the night. The priests and priestesses, using their second sight, had no need of light by which to see. The helmets worn by the Ka’i-Nur gifted them with night vision akin to full daylight, although it failed to help them anticipate where the elusive Desh-Ka might next appear. The darkness was riven at rhythmic intervals, the lightning and thunder of the Desh-Ka countered by the sun bright beams of the Ka’i-Nur. The T’lan-Il warriors, frustrated by the Desh-Ka refusal to give battle and ignored by their new masters as they fought for their lives, had gathered around bonfires arranged in concentric rings around the center of the battlefield. Meat was cooked and ale was served as the warriors played the unaccustomed role of spectator to the carnage exploding around them. None had ever witnessed such a battle, nor heard tales of such from the keepers of the Books of Time. Their hearts and the song of their blood were filled with a tangled harmony of fear and anticipation, but for now they could only wait in silence until the battle came to an end.

  As the midnight hour approached, that end was well in sight. Unlike the Desh-Ka, the Ka’i-Nur had no respite. They could not retreat, could not advance, could not rest or regroup, and could not recharge their weapons. As the energy rifles ran out of power from near constant firing, the Ka’i-Nur flung them to the ground and drew their swords, and the Desh-Ka happily obliged them with more traditional single combat. But even now, the Desh-Ka fought to kill, and not just to win an honorable victory. As skilled and fierce as were the Ka’i-Nur, they could never hope to compete with the priests and priestesses in sword craft, especially as exhausted as the huge warriors now found themselves. The living metal blades of the Desh-Ka parted Ka’i-Nur heads from necks or pierced deep into vital organs with surgical thrusts through gaps in their opponents’ armor. With roars of rage and grunts of pain did the Ka’i-Nur fight and die. They died hard, most of them stricken with half a dozen wounds before they finally succumbed, but they died.

  Setting aside their food and drink as the ring of steel and cries of the dying began to ebb away, the T’lan-Il warriors began to form into ranks for battle. They had no idea what to expect once the last of the Ka’i-Nur had been vanquished, but they were determined to acquit themselves well against the Desh-Ka and prove themselves worthy to those who would soon take their lives.

  At last the battlefield was silent save for the crackling of the fires. The T’lan-Il stood proudly in cohorts of six hundred warriors each. Sixty such cohorts, six full legions, were arrayed in a great semicircle facing the center of the battlefield, with the attending robed ones in equally neat ranks to the rear. The most senior warrior, a male who had that morning surrendered the honor of those present to the Ka’i-Nur, stood before the central bonfire, flanked by the greatest warriors of each of the legions.

  Alena-Khan materialized before him, a scant two paces away, flanked by two of her own senior warriors. Like the other Desh-Ka, she was spent from the long battle. While they had emerged victorious, having killed every last one of the Ka’i-Nur, they had done so at the terrible cost of three of their own. In addition to the two lost while trying to take the ship, a third had vanished into the ether while clutching two enemy warriors, and an instant later the song of her spirit had been silenced. By any reckoning the victory had been overwhelming, but the Desh-Ka were now so few that the loss of even one of their number was nothing less than a tragic sacrifice. Alena-Khan was warmed by the knowledge that their glorious deeds this day would forever be recorded in the Books of Time, but she still grieved deeply for their loss. The Desh-Ka had lost far too much precious blood, and she began to fear the order might never recover, assuming it survived to see the end of this war.

  Before her, the warriors, all of them, took a knee and saluted, heads bowed, and Alena-Khan set aside her melancholy.

  “Greetings, high priestess of the Desh-Ka,” the leader intoned. “I am Ru’an-Shakil.” He offered a rueful smile. “I humbly welcome you to T’lan-Il.”

  Returning the salute, Alena-Khan told him, “Rise, warrior.” As he stood, she asked, “What are thy intentions, Ru’an-Shakil?”

  He looked her in the eye. “I challenge you to single combat.”

  While he had spoken few words, what he had left unsaid revealed far more. Looking about her, she could see the disappointment on the faces of many of the warriors in the lead ranks of the legions. To face one of the priesthood in battle was a great and rare honor that Ru’an-Shakil was now depr
iving them. He could easily have declared an open battle that the Desh-Ka would have obliged, but many more warriors would die under their swords. While death in combat was the chosen fate of any warrior worthy of the name, his choice to challenge her to single combat was a tacit acknowledgement that he had no wish for any of his people to die in the name of Syr-Nagath or the Ka’i-Nur. But to say such aloud, even to whisper it, would have shamed him into disgrace. Instead, his blood would pay for the legions who stood before her, and with his death their honor would pass to her, and through her, to Keel-Tath.

  “So it is said, so shall it be done,” Alena-Khan said softly as she drew her sword. Her companions and his stepped back to make room for the one-sided duel.

  Drawing his own blade, Ru’an-Shakil asked, “Has the Child of Prophecy truly come among us?”

  “She has,” Alena-Khan told him, loud enough for the lead ranks to hear. “Just as foretold by Anuir-Ruhal’te, she has.”

  He looked up to the stars, then closed his eyes for a long moment. “I wish I could feel her in my blood before I die,” he whispered.

  “Know that the voice of your spirit and that of all your kin shall sing in hers.”

  He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “Then I go content into the Afterlife.” He saluted her once again. “May thy Way be long and glorious, high priestess of the Desh-Ka.”

  “And may you find a revered place among the warriors of the spirit, Ru’an-Shakil.”

  Then the quiet was torn by the ring of steel upon steel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Oh,” Keel-Tath gasped as she and her boarding party passed back through the veil from not-space to reality, only to find themselves on the frozen peak of a windswept and snow-covered mountain that towered above lesser peaks that extended out to the horizon. Far below were the tops of white clouds that spanned the lower reaches like the surface of a great frozen ocean. She felt as if she was standing atop the entire world, and the sight, far more than the freezing cold, snatched her breath away.

  They stood upon a huge platform as large around as the coliseum at the Desh-Ka temple. Perfectly round, the gleaming surface was flat and smooth as polished glass. A waist-high wall, equally smooth and flawless, ran all the way around the circumference. Unlike the rock of the mountains around them, not a single flake of snow lay upon the platform.

  “Living metal,” the armorer cried in astonishment as she stared at the mirror-like surface. “I have never seen the like.”

  “This arena was built at the height of the First Age,” the priest told them as he stared at the heavens. The sun was well past its zenith, and even though its light still commanded the sky, the stars were already emerging. Some of those stars moved slowly, and it was those which drew his attention. “It is one of the few constructs that remain untouched from those times. Nothing so large as this has been built of living metal since then.”

  “Someday I should like to return here,” the armorer said.

  “Preferably with a set of warm skins,” Ka’i-Lohr added with more than a hint of sarcasm. That earned him a nervous chuckle from the others. Everyone but the priest and Keel-Tath was shivering from the biting cold.

  “I have found a ship,” the priest said a brief moment later, his eyes still on the heavens. “When you are ready, my mistress.”

  “Let us not delay,” she told him. Her heart was pounding now, driven by a heady mix of fear and anticipation.

  “Hold on to one another,” the priest warned.

  Then they were there, aboard the ship. More precisely, they were in the bowels of the ship in a large space filled with massive machinery and flowing energy that the keepers of the Books of Time had told them was called the engineering space. This was the heart of the ship, from which flowed the power for its engines, weapons, life support, and other systems. The brain, which was called the bridge, was in another section and would have to be taken to gain full control of the vessel. But without control of the heart, the brain could do little.

  Voices rose in alarm around them, and the priest vaporized a shrekka that had been flung by a nearby warrior shortly before he did the same to the warrior himself.

  “On your way, my priest,” Keel-Tath ordered, “with my deepest thanks.”

  “May thy Way be long and glorious, my mistress.” With a bow of his head and a quick salute, he disappeared just as pandemonium erupted.

  Keel-Tath and the other warriors drew their swords and turned outward as the robed ones pulled inside the protective circle.

  A pair of Ka’i-Nur warriors leaped down from an upper level, howling with rage. Answering with his own war cry, Drakh-Nur swung his war hammer at one, smashing in the warrior’s chest and sending his body flying across the compartment. Ka’i-Lohr and two other warriors pounced upon the second Ka’i-Nur warrior as he rolled to his feet. The two warriors pinned the enemy’s sword arm while Ka’i-Lohr stabbed him through the throat and severed his spine.

  Quickly looking about her, Keel-Tath saw that they were the only warriors in the compartment. The rest were robed ones. “I am Keel-Tath!" she shouted. “Surrender your honor to me and you will become one with mine own. Defy me and you shall be put to the sword.”

  The builder on Keel-Tath’s boarding party raised his hand and pointed to a robed female standing before a large metal tree made up of limbs that pulsated with bands of light like a living rainbow. The Ka’i-Nur’s hands moved rapidly over a large console. “Stop her!”

  Three shrekkas whirred through the air, cutting down the Ka’i-Nur, whose torn body collapsed in a bloody heap.

  Heedless of any danger, Keel-Tath’s builder rushed to the console. As his hands flew over the controls, trying to reverse whatever the Ka’i-Nur had tried to do, Keel-Tath shouted out to the rest of the enemy, who stood staring at her, “Surrender now or die!”

  The Ka’i-Nur responded by bolting for the doorways leading out of the compartment. Keel-Tath guessed they might have numbered twenty, perhaps thirty. Half managed to escape, while the rest were cut down. Keel-Tath had to give them credit: even though they were robed ones and not warriors, they fought with their claws and fangs and did not go to their deaths without a struggle.

  “We are safe,” the builder reported once the last of the Ka’i-Nur had been put to death. Looking down at the enemy builder whose body lay at his feet, he said, “She was trying to set the ship to destroy itself with the energies of its own engines.” Looking back up at Keel-Tath, he went on, “I have isolated the control mechanisms here from the other sections of the ship. So long as we control this compartment, they cannot maneuver or use the ship’s weapons.”

  “That means we can expect them to counterattack soon,” Ka’i-Lohr said, and Drakh-Nur nodded.

  “I have also locked the doors,” the builder said, “although the crew can still cut or blow them open from the other side.”

  “Then let us guard the doors that we might know if they are preparing to try that, shall we?” Keel-Tath said, and the other warriors split up and took positions to cover the four entrances.

  “They cannot have many warriors aboard,” said the keeper of the Books of Time, who was standing before another console, her hands flying over the controls. Words, glyphs, and images, information encoded in a dozen ancient languages along with the common tongue, floated through a projection space above the console. “They…” Her face fell as she paused the flow of information before her. “I stand corrected.” She turned to face the others. “We had thought the ship would be manned mostly by robed ones, builders and keepers…”

  “But they have no need to put so many in harm’s way,” Keel-Tath said slowly, “because their warriors know how to sail these ships.”

  The keeper slowly nodded.

  “But how could they?” Drakh-Nur asked, incredulous. “These ships are newly built!”

  “The Ka’i-Nur must have been planning for this war for a long time,” Keel-Tath told him, “probably since well before Syr-Nagath herself was born. Th
at is the only explanation for how they were able to unleash such a huge army from what we had all thought was little more than a small fortress in the wastelands. They could have been training the warriors to pilot and fight these ships since before the ships themselves were built, could they not?”

  Both the keeper and builder nodded.

  Keel-Tath asked, “How many crew does such a ship as this carry?”

  With a slight nod in the direction of the glyphs that still shone in the display beside her, the keeper said, “This particular ship has a crew of just over three hundred.”

  “And how many are robed ones?”

  The keeper’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Just those we found here in engineering, and perhaps two or three on the bridge.”

  “And we had sized our boarding parties under the assumption that we would be facing only a handful of warriors,” Ka’i-Lohr sighed.

  “It would not have mattered,” Keel-Tath said, shooting him an angry look. “It was a terrible strain for the priest who brought us to convey even this many, he could not have brought many more without risking losing all of us and himself in the ether. We must face what has been placed before us. The die is already cast.”

  “Even with your powers, mistress,” Dara-Kol said in a grim voice, “I fear our swords cannot prevail against so many.”

  “There may perhaps be a way,” the keeper said slowly, exchanging a look with the builder, who nodded, “but it would not be in the greatest of warrior traditions. You will not like it.”

  Keel-Tath’s eyes blazed. While she would not abandon the tenets of the Way, she still needed to take this ship. “Tell me.”

  “We could pump out the air from the rest of the ship. Any caught without protective suits would suffocate and die.”

  Fighting to keep the revulsion from her expression and her voice, Keel-Tath slowly shook her head. Despite her vows to destroy the Ka’i-Nur, she would do so according to the Way. They would die in combat, and not be exterminated like a herd of diseased meat animals. “That would be…effective, but surely there is some other way.”