“Are we not overlooking the obvious?”
Everyone turned to Drakh-Nur, who was looking at Keel-Tath with a decidedly unhappy expression.
***
The Ka’i-Nur warriors paused in their preparations and looked up as the unfamiliar voice of a young female speaking with a strange accent echoed through the ship.
“Warriors of Ka’i-Nur,” the voice said. “I am Keel-Tath, born of the Desh-Ka but bound to all Kreela.” A slight pause. “Even to you, or at least those of you who would surrender to me their honor.”
The voice paused, as if knowing the crew, gathered for a massive assault to take back the engineering spaces, was now howling with indignation that anyone would even suggest they would surrender their honor to any not born of the Ka’i-Nur.
“Since I realize you will not simply surrender,” the voice went on after the warriors had calmed themselves, “I challenge a champion of your choice to meet me in single combat in your ship’s arena. If I am victorious, you will surrender to me your honor or commit ritual suicide. If your champion defeats me, the ship and the lives of my companions are yours. I await your champion at the main engineering hatch.”
The warrior nearest the main hatch, a huge brute who was missing his left ear and two fingers of his right hand, grunted. His name was Kurlo-Urukh, and he was commander of not only this ship, but the entire squadron that had landed Syr-Nagath’s legions on T’lan-Il. “I am here, Desh-Ka whelp,” he bellowed through the glossy green metal of the door before rapping on it with the head of his double-bladed axe.
The door slid open to reveal a tiny female warrior. Just as he had heard, her hair was snowy white and her talons were crimson. She wore ceremonial armor and a strange golden band around her neck. A sword too big for her hung at her hip, along with a dagger and several shrekkas, miniature versions of those carried by the Ka’i-Nur.
Kurlo-Urukh stared at the warrior who stood to one side and slightly behind her, in the position of her First. There was no mistaking that he was of Ka’i-Nur blood. He bowed his head and saluted Kurlo-Urukh, as was proper. After a moment, more by reflex than respect, Kurlo-Urukh returned the gesture. But he would not salute the whelp, nor did she salute him, for neither recognized the authority of the other. It was an awkward situation that made him almost as uncomfortable as seeing one of his own blood in company with the child.
None of her other companions were visible.
“So,” he told her slowly, tearing his attention away from her First and brandishing his axe before her face, “you wish to die?”
“I could ask the same of you, warrior,” she said, boldly stepping forward, forcing him to cut short his axe play, lest he draw blood. To do so outside of the arena, as set forth in her challenge, would have been a grievous dishonor upon him. Even though she was not Ka’i-Nur, such shame would have been at the cost of his own life. He could not help but admire her courage. “I can see why our high priestess wants your head.”
“She is not a priestess,” the whelp told him with an unflinching gaze. “She pretends to the title, for she has never faced the fire of any of the Crystals of Souls.”
“And you have?" he scoffed.
“I have touched with my own burning flesh six of the seven,” she told him in a quiet voice, “and survived to stand before you now.”
Even though he could not feel her in the song of his blood, for he was pure Ka’i-Nur and she had none of their blood in hers, in her eyes he could see the truth. “So,” he said, his arrogance morphing into curiosity, “the rumors of the child foretold are true.” Turning about, he gestured for his warriors to stand aside. As one, they stepped back, lining the walls of the corridor like an honor guard. Keel-Tath walked beside him, her First following behind, as Kurlo-Urukh escorted the girl to the arena. “I almost regret having to kill you,” he rumbled.
She reached out and laid a hand upon his arm. Her palm was so tiny, the fingers so slender, like that of a Ka’i-Nur babe barely free of the creche. He was disappointed, for she would hardly prove a challenge for him in the arena. And yet…and yet he could sense a palpable source of power in her touch, something the likes of which he had never before felt. Perhaps this challenge will be more interesting than I had first feared, he thought.
“Should you fall to my sword,” she said, “I would not have your crew die by their own hand.”
He laughed as he led her to the very center of the ship where the arenas and the Kal’ai-Il were located, as they were in every ship that was large enough to ply the stars. “I appreciate your concern on their behalf, mistress. And should I accidentally fall upon my sword after taking your head, I am sure that most will not take their own lives in mourning my loss.”
“Vow to me that you will at least give them the choice,” she persisted.
“They always have that choice,” he told her sharply. “The Way of the Ka’i-Nur is not so different from yours as you seem to believe. But they will not choose to live with their honor bound to you. In that, we are not the same. A Ka’i-Nur will not be bound to one not of Ka’i-Nur.”
“Would they bind themselves to my First?" she asked, looking at her hulking companion. “He is of your blood.”
Kurlo-Urukh stopped and stared at her. “That would be acceptable, perhaps,” he told her, his lips curving up into a cruel smile that revealed his massive fangs. The whelp was cunning. She had found an honorable way of choosing a more suitable warrior as a champion without dishonoring herself. Eyeing her First, a much younger warrior than himself, powerful and bearing the scars of numerous battles, he added, “I accept your First as your champion.”
“I did not offer him as such,” Keel-Tath said. “He shall act as my proxy to those beholden to you should I best you in combat. As you know, this has been done since ancient times.”
“Indeed, so it has, although not in a situation such as this that I can recall,” Kurlo-Urukh said slowly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her more closely. Surrendering one’s honor to a master or mistress on a battlefield was actually unusual, for most warriors never saw the most high of the opposing side. Instead, they surrendered their honor to the highest in rank of the opponents they faced, who accepted their honor by proxy on behalf of their master or mistress. This was not typically the way it was done in ritual combat, of course, since the honor of those bound to the fallen typically was then bound directly to the victor. But what she was asking was not unknown and not against the Way of the Ka’i-Nur, and so he would accept it. Whether those bound to him would surrender to her through her Ka’i-Nur First, however, was entirely up to them. His concern over the matter, should she defeat him, would have come to an end, along with his life. “And so you still plan to face me in the arena?”
“Yes, unless you agree to surrender yourself and your ship to me now. As much as I would enjoy crossing swords with you, I would much prefer having a great warrior such as yourself by my side in battle.”
His anger flared for an instant, for he thought she was mocking him. But her eyes told him that her words were spoken true, without guile. “You truly believe you will defeat me, don’t you?”
“I believe that I must try.” In a softer voice, she added, “More depends upon it than you can possibly imagine.”
A thoughtful grunt was his only reply as a quartet of his warriors threw open the enormous double doors that led to the chamber at the heart of the ship where stood the familiar shape of the Kal’ai-Il. The great stone structure was surrounded by five arenas, each filled with white sand, fine as powder.
Keel-Tath, followed by her First, whose bulk loomed over her tiny frame, went to the center of the main arena and knelt down. Scooping up a handful of sand, she watched as it slowly trickled through her armored fingers, her red talons glittering in the light of the artificial sun that shone overhead, a flawless imitation of the sky over the Homeworld.
“Is it to your liking, mistress?” Kurlo-Urukh had intended to poke fun at the white-haired child, but found the words h
ad passed his lips with unexpected sincerity.
“It is,” she told him as she got to her feet and turned to face him. Her First removed the extra shrekkas at her belt, leaving only the three at her shoulder, as was traditional, and made sure her armor was in proper order. “Thank you, Drakh-Nur,” she told him. He saluted, then stepped through the portal in the wall surrounding the arena where he would await the outcome of the battle.
Kurlo-Urukh’s own First performed the same ritual before stepping from the arena. Normally the Firsts or other warriors standing in their stead would not take part in a challenge, but a formal challenge offered and accepted had additional protocols that had to be observed.
At last, only Kurlo-Urukh and Keel-Tath stood in the arena, facing one another. Hundreds of warriors and robed ones, most of the ship’s crew, had gathered around the arena to watch.
“You have enchanted me, I must admit,” Kurlo-Urukh told her as he hefted his double-bladed battle-ax, which stood a full head taller than Keel-Tath. His voice hardened. “But I will show you no mercy.”
“I would not expect you to,” she told him as she drew her own sword, which he could plainly see was too large for her, “but I shall offer you mine when you have fallen upon the sand and my blade is at your throat.”
Kurlo-Urukh wondered for a fleeting moment if he would accept her mercy, should he find himself in such a ludicrous situation. Not likely, he thought with a fierce grin as he let the blood lust take him, filling his veins with fire. Raising his axe, he roared as he charged his tiny foe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tara-Khan’s hands trembled as he slowly wound closed the last of the scrolls. He held it for a long time as he stared into the coals of the brazier that provided meager warmth to his longtime prison. So this is the great secret, he thought. The information he had just read from the glyphs etched on the scroll he held in his hands, written in the ancient language that had once been spoken by the Ka’i-Nur, would seal the fate of all his kind, one way or another. Assuming he ever had a chance to speak of what he now knew to another living soul.
Out of deeply ingrained habit, he took up his stylus and added another tally mark to an open scroll on the floor beside him. All it contained was such marks, thousands of them, each representing a scroll or tablet that he had finished reading. It was the third such scroll he had filled while imprisoned here, and it would be his last. With the help of teaching scrolls, he had learned to read seven dead languages, the former tongues of each of the seven bloodlines, along with the Old Tongue that had been in common use since the First Age, but that had largely died out and been replaced by the New Tongue after the end of the Second. Among the thousands of scrolls he had read were histories of the greatest and most terrible of the ancient civilizations and their leaders, warriors, and prophets. The greatest wars, and how they had been won and lost. He had learned about art and music, architecture and sword craft, and weapons and ancient technology that he had always thought of as magic. He knew that he must have forgotten much of what he had learned, but he had studied every scroll here, and given an accounting of each to Ria-Ka’luhr in exchange for food. With a mixture of relief and regret, he carefully closed the scroll and set it aside.
His tenure here had not started out in such an auspicious fashion, of course. He had resisted his task for a long time, longer than he dared now remember. Sulking in a corner, he had refused to eat until he had nearly starved to death. Had it not been for a dream, still vivid now after the passage of so much time, he surely would have died. It was a dream of Keel-Tath, of what she could have been, of what she had been destined to become. It was a glorious dream, right up until the moment that she died, consumed by a maelstrom of fire that devoured every Kreelan soul. It was a blaze that reached beyond the veil of life, that not only destroyed the living, but the spirits of the dead, as well. In the end, nothing remained of his kind but gray ash, drifting among the uncaring stars. The dream had so frightened him that he finally took to his studies. He had to crawl to reach the first of the scrolls, so weak had he become. But at last he began to read, Ria-Ka’luhr brought him food, and both Tara-Khan’s mind and body grew stronger day by day.
He had thought of Keel-Tath every day, longing to be by her side and share in her fate. But it shamed him now that he could barely remember what she looked like beyond her white hair and crimson talons. His memory of her face was clouded by time, her features indistinct. The only thing now that he remembered with crystal clarity was the sound of her spiritual voice in his blood, the call of her soul to his.
After struggling to his feet, he shuffled slowly to a particular shelf and with great care replaced the ancient Ka’i-Nur scroll. The secret to which he was now privy sent prickles of excitement, like tiny electric shocks, through his body, but it could not make his creaking joints and withered muscles move any faster. He had kept another set of scrolls in which he had recorded how much time had passed since the day he had accepted his fate. He had kept it as a journal, although over time he had written fewer and fewer notes, until his records of these last cycles had been reduced to yet more tally marks, divided into cycles. The days he counted by the light that shone through a patch of ice in the ceiling of the library that was clear as a looking glass. One hundred and seventy-eight cycles and ninety-three days had passed since the first entry in his journal, and he felt the weight of every single one of them in the aching of his bones. His hair had grown so long that the braids were coiled in closely spaced loops around his arms, with the ends bound close to his wrists. Despite his best efforts, the strength of his body had long since passed from him, although sometimes as he slept he could remember in his dreams how it had felt to be young and strong. While most of his kind did not show outward signs of aging before they died, those who lived an unusually long time — typically only among the robed castes — eventually suffered deterioration of the body. He had long since passed the age of the oldest warrior on record. He was far older now than even Ayan-Dar had been. He often wondered if Keel-Tath was even still alive, or if she would recognize him if she were.
But in this one thing, Ria-Ka’luhr had reassured him. “You are bound to your own reality,” he had said. “If you succeed in the endeavor that has been set before you, you shall rejoin her. For that is the reason you are here.”
Groaning as he got to his feet, Tara-Khan decided that it was time to again become a warrior, even if an ancient, decrepit one. He had set aside his metal armor, which Ria-Ka’luhr had retrieved from the ice, many cycles before, for it no longer fit properly over his shrunken frame. The leatherite had followed not long after that, for it, too, was ill-fitting and had become so old that it had begun to crack. His sandals had long since worn out, and he made his way through the warren of tables and shelves in his bare feet on the frigid stone floor. All he wore now was his black undergarment, which expanded and contracted with the changes in his body, and was made of amazingly resilient material that had also helped to keep him warm in his frozen cell. Reaching down, he took up the old leatherite and struggled into it, then strapped on the armor with clumsy hands. He was thankful his prison was without a mirror, for he must have appeared ridiculous, a shriveled stick figure encased in dilapidated armor. But being encased in steel, ill-fitting though it was, felt good, and he had kept the black metal polished to a high gloss.
The secret, he reminded himself. Cursing his aged brain and a mind that easily wandered, he went to the door and put his face to the small cutout window. He did not bother calling out.
Steps were echoing from the stairwell. Ria-Ka’luhr always seemed to know when Tara-Khan had something to tell him. As the priest emerged into the vestibule beyond the cell door, Tara-Khan reflected for the thousandth time that Ria-Ka’luhr had not aged a day since he had rescued him from the ice.
“My task is complete,” Tara-Khan told him. His voice was deeper than it had been, although with a raspy sound born of shriveled lungs, and for the first time in many long cycles was filled w
ith excitement. “I know now what must be done.”
Ria-Ka’luhr stared for a long time into Tara-Khan’s eyes before he slowly nodded. Withdrawing the key to the door from a pouch on his belt, he inserted it into the lock and turned. With a loud clunk, the bolt was thrown back. “Come forth, warrior,” Ria-Ka’luhr told him as he stepped back from the door.
With trembling hands, Tara-Khan swung open the door. He stood there for a moment, his breath coming quickly, not quite able to believe that the day of his freedom had finally come. On unsteady legs, he put one foot forward, then the other, crossing between realms.
In the blink of an eye, as he stepped across the threshold from his cell into the vestibule, he was no longer a doddering ancient. He gasped as his brain was overwhelmed. He felt as if his mind had been instantly transplanted from his ancient body to a new, fresh one. His armor fit again, the leatherite was supple and smooth, and his sandals were strapped to his feet, even though he had not put them on before stepping through the door.
Upon reflection, the transformation was not a complete surprise. Having read the ancient scrolls, he understood much of the “magic” that his people had long taken for granted. He had come to understand that this place was an extension of the coliseum of the Desh-Ka that protected their Crystal of Souls. Built at the height of the wonders of the First Age, it was an inter-dimensional construct where time and space were largely irrelevant. Tara-Khan still did not understand many of the higher level concepts, for his mind simply could not stretch so far, no matter how many times he might have read the relevant texts. But he understood that they functioned according to the design of ancient builders, and were not inexplicable forces of nature.
“Nothing can prepare you for the transition,” Ria-Ka’luhr said with a sympathetic grin as he reached out and clasped Tara-Khan’s forearms in the greeting of warriors.
Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) Page 21
