Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (28 page)

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 with 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.
 

Tara-Khan only nodded, for his mind was already leaping ahead. “We must get to Keel-Tath. There is no time to waste.” The irony of his last words struck him, for only then did he realize that he had no idea how much time might have passed in Keel-Tath’s rendition of the universe.

“Not yet,” Ria-Ka’luhr said as he gestured for Tara-Khan to follow him up the stairs. “There is something you must yet do.”

Tara-Khan took the stairs quickly, reveling in the feel of his young body as his mind settled into its former domain. He flexed and stretched his muscles, smiling with unadulterated joy at being young again, with a clear mind that was a storehouse of knowledge that would have been the envy of any keeper of the Books of Time.

At the top of the stairs, in the chamber that led to where Tara-Khan had first awakened, Ria-Ka’luhr led him to a door that had not been there before.
 

“Open it,” the priest told him, gesturing toward the door.

Tara-Khan did not hesitate. He stepped forward and twisted the wrought iron handle and pulled open the door. Beyond lay only icy darkness.

“Step through.”

With a brief look at his mentor, Tara-Khan did as he was told. Once across the threshold, all light fled from him, even behind him where Ria-Ka’luhr had been standing. Calming his heart, for he knew he had nothing here to fear, Tara-Khan began to stride forward. After seven steps, he emerged onto the sands of an arena under a huge domed structure with ornate carvings on the walls and slender windows that rose from floor to ceiling at even intervals around the circumference.

At the central dais knelt Ria-Ka’luhr.
 

Tara-Khan blinked. Despite all that he had experienced himself and all that he had read, it was hard for him to accept the sight of Ria-Ka’luhr, again as a young priest as Tara-Khan had first known him. Every day for nearly two hundred cycles, Ria-Ka’luhr had appeared before him as an aged, grizzled and tattered warrior, an honorless one.
 

“Come, Tara-Khan,” he said.
 

Hurrying across the sand, carried by a growing sense of urgency, Tara-Khan came and knelt before him.
 

“Already are you a cunning warrior, one of the best I have seen,” Ria-Ka’luhr told him, “and there is little knowledge of the sword that I might teach you. You have also read of the powers of the Desh-Ka and the other orders, and that knowledge must serve you well after what must come next, for I will not be here to teach you.”

“I do not understand,” Tara-Khan said, shaking his head slowly.

“To stand by Keel-Tath’s side, to do what must be done as foreseen by Anuir-Ruhal’te, you must be endowed with the powers of a priest.”

“And you would lose your powers if you gave them to me,” Tara-Khan said, remembering what he had read in one of the scrolls, and Ria-Ka’luhr nodded. “Then do not give them up! Come with me, for we can do together what neither of us might accomplish alone.”

“I can never leave this place.”
 

“But why?”

“Only here am I myself. Out there, I am Syr-Nagath’s puppet, bound to her through some ancient evil that can never be broken,” Ria-Ka’luhr told him, his voice bitter and filled with barely suppressed rage. He put his hand to his neck where he had once worn the collar and sigil of the Desh-Ka. He had never explained what had happened to them. “I have brought unspeakable shame and dishonor upon myself, Tara-Khan. You asked me long ago why I no longer wear the collar. It is because of that shame that the living metal died and fell away from me.” For a moment, he looked as though he were about to be crushed by an unseen weight upon his shoulders. “But helping you to become what you are now was an act of redemption, the last task given me by Ayan-Dar.” He leaned forward. “All that I am, all the powers that I possess, will be yours, and my soul will finally be free to cross over to the Afterlife to join my honored ancestors.” He looked at Tara-Khan with pleading eyes. “You must not deny me this.”

“How could I?” Tara-Khan told him softly. “It shall be as you say.”

With a look of relief, Ria-Ka’luhr nodded. “Remove your gauntlets and hold out your hands.”

Tara-Khan did so as Ria-Ka’luhr drew his dagger with his own bared hands.
 

“In blood shall we be bound,” Ria-Ka’luhr intoned, “as it has been since the beginning, and as it shall be until the end.” He drew the blade across Tara-Khan’s palms, then his own. Blood streamed from the wounds as they clasped hands. “The powers I was given shall now be yours.” He looked into Tara-Khan’s eyes and gripped his hands painfully hard. “Do not let our bond be broken.”

Around them, the light had faded to darkness, save for a circle right around the dais. Above them, a circular window at the apex of the dome blazed bright with the light of the sun.
 

Tara-Khan’s hands were stricken with a strange sensation, like jolts of electricity, that quickly crept up his forearms to his shoulders, then began to invade his chest. Beneath him, the ancient stone of the dais shook as a circular opening appeared in the space between him and Ria-Ka’luhr. At first the opening was black, a dark eye of vast emptiness of infinite depth. Then it began to fill with a cyan glare.

The Desh-Ka Crystal of Souls
, Tara-Khan thought. He knew more about what it was now than any priest who had lived since the end of the First Age, but the knowledge did not do it justice. He could feel its power, like heat radiating from a tremendous bonfire as the crystal rocketed up from the depths of time and space.
 

In the next instant, there it was, the great crystal’s teardrop shape gleaming cyan where it sat upon its stone column between him and Ria-Ka’luhr.
 

“You must not avert your eyes,” Ria-Ka’luhr told him urgently as the sun rose to its zenith above them. On the sands of the arena, an intense circle of light moved inexorably toward the dais and the waiting crystal. “Embrace the fire that takes you, revel in the pain.”
 

The light drew closer, moving faster across the sands, and Tara-Khan’s heart began to race.
 

“Tara-Khan?”

“Yes?” The circle of light was upon the dais now, swinging toward the crystal.
 

“Tell Keel-Tath…tell her that I am sorry. I am sorry I could not help her.”

“I will.” Tara-Khan gritted his teeth as the sunlight finally reached the Crystal of Souls, which flared blinding cyan. Its light reached for them, and in the moments that followed, Tara-Khan’s universe was filled with searing agony.

***

The world was dark gray and gleaming, as if a stormy sky were reflected from the glass of a mirror. It took Tara-Khan a long moment to realize that he was awake, and that the scene before his eyes was nothing but the polished stone of the dais. He took a deep breath, marveling that he was still alive, but a shiver ran down his spine at the unwelcome recollection of the unspeakable pain he had endured. Gently probing his tongue with a finger, he was surprised that it was still intact. One of the last sensations he had before the cyan flame had taken him was the taste of blood, for he had bitten clean through his tongue.

He was lying on his stomach, and with a supreme effort of will managed to turn himself onto his side. His armor fell away from him, the metal plate seared, the leatherite and black undergarment reduced to crumbling ash.
 

The crystal, of course, was gone, and Ria-Ka’luhr was sprawled, unmoving, on the cold gray stone.

Crawling to the priest’s side, Tara-Khan reached out and felt for a pulse. There was none. Getting to his knees, he gently closed the young priest’s still open eyes. While the last sensation he had known was incredible pain, a peaceful smile graced Ria-Ka’luhr’s face.
 

“May you find your place among the Ancient Ones,” Tara-Khan whispered. Then he put a hand to his own neck, only to be surprised: he wore no collar as did a priest. At first he was stricken by the thought that the Crystal of Souls had not bestowed a collar because of Ria-Ka’luhr’s shame, but after a time he came to realize that it was because he could not be bound to any order, to any bloodline. Keel-Tath did not wear the sigil of the Desh-Ka, but had been bound to all her people with a golden collar that bore no other ornament. Now, for what he knew he had to do, he could be bound to no one, not even her. “It is as it must be,” he whispered to himself.
 

He got to his feet, over the protestations of his stiff and aching muscles. The discomfort was welcome, for it reassured him that he was alive. Crouching down, he took Ria-Ka’luhr’s body over his shoulder and headed toward one of the doors that would take him from this place. First he would give Ria-Ka’luhr to the flames of a funeral pyre fit for a priest of the Desh-Ka.

Then he would undertake the quest set before him by the ancient scrolls and help Keel-Tath fulfill her destiny.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Keel-Tath’s blood was liquid fire pumping through her veins as the giant warrior rushed toward her. Her father’s sword felt light as a feather in her hands, the long, gracefully curved blade shimmering in the light as if the living metal itself was yearning for battle. The shouts and bellows of the Ka’i-Nur spectators, urging on their champion, filled the arena, but Keel-Tath heard nothing but the sighing of the wind that swept across the plateau where stood the Desh-Ka temple. She closed her eyes, yet still she saw with her second sight the huge warrior coming toward her. She could smell the aroma of cooked meat and ale mixed with the unfamiliar, yet not unpleasant, musky scent of the Ka’i-Nur around her. For a moment, she saw everything and everyone in the entire ship, all laid out before her as if it were a detailed miniature created by builders to teach children in the creche.
 

“
Keel-Tath!
”

Drakh-Nur’s shout brought her back to bedlam-filled reality just as Kurlo-Urukh swept his axe forward in a blindingly swift and brutally powerful side cut that would have sliced her in half had she been in its way.

But she was not. Even before she heard Drakh-Nur’s warning, her body was already in motion, as if her flesh and the living metal of her sword were bound to one another, acting of their own accord. She dove and rolled across the sand as the huge axe blade whistled through empty air above her. Her momentum carried her to her feet as Kurlo-Urukh whirled about, his feet kicking up a wave of sand.
 

Before he could recover his balance, she lunged forward, stabbing the tip of her blade toward his midsection in a series of feints that he deftly countered with the metal handle of his axe. The ring of metal on metal drew a louder wave of bellows and calls from the crowd.

Kurlo-Urukh sagged back, trying to draw Keel-Tath forward into reach of his massive arms, but instead she retreated a few steps.
 

The giant grinned at her. “You fight well for a child not of the Ka’i-Nur.”
 

“I would not disgrace your name by defeating you too quickly,” she told him with all modesty.
 

He laughed, but his laughter died when his gaze fell to the sand around her feet. The boisterous crowd fell silent as they, too, saw what he was looking at. “What trickery is this?”
 

Glancing down at the sand around her, she saw that her feet, even her body, had left no impression. She remembered the first time Ayan-Dar had sparred with her, when she was very young, a wooden sword in her hand. As big a warrior as he had been, a giant as huge as Kurlo-Urukh was to her now, his feet had not disturbed the sand, as if his appearance was only an illusion.