Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (38 page)

“Go now, warrior,” Hul-Rai told him. “And may thy Way be long and glorious.”

***

Tesh-Uran and Hul-Rai knelt in the center of the steps as the genoth approached. The beast glared at them and sniffed the air.

“It is drawn by the blood,” Hul-Rai breathed as she gripped her mate’s hand tightly, the bloody gash in her palm matched to his.

“And yet it is cautious.” Tesh-Uran returned her grip. The palms of their free hands were pressed tightly against the stone at their feet. “An intelligent beast.”

The genoth growled, a deep rumble that shook the ancient stone of the stairway. Suddenly, it whirled as the second genoth approached. Solitary creatures, genoths only came together when it was time to mate, and males engaged in ferocious battles to the death for the privilege. They would also kill one another over prey. Among genoths, there was no sharing of the prize.

The two builders stared in awe as the beasts hurled themselves at one another, enormous jaws snapping as they lashed out with the diamond hard claws on their feet, trying to disembowel one another. The shouts and screams of the Ka’i-Nur and the war cries of the honorless warriors intent on their slaughter somewhere below were barely audible over the battling monsters.

“Prepare yourself, my love!” Hul-Rai cried as the two beasts slammed onto the steps and began to roll down toward them. One genoth had its teeth in the armored throat of the other, which had its claws buried deep in the first one’s belly.
 

“Almost there…” Tesh-Uran said as the genoths came closer, nearly on top of them. “
Now!
”

The shaft reverberated with a series of
cracks
as the section of stairway right above the genoths fractured and split. The beasts, lost in their mutual animosity, were helpless as huge chunks of stone rained down upon them, heavy enough to crush even their massive bones. Gouts of blood were sent squirting from beneath the stones, causing a crimson rain to fall into the shaft below.

“Hold it!” Hul-Rai shouted as she channeled her will into the stone of this section of the stairway to reinforce it. If it collapsed, Tara-Khan and the others below them would be killed.

Tesh-Uran cried out. She could feel his agony as his body was drained of life with the effort, but he did not let go. She tightened her grip on his hand, which trembled in hers.

Just as the stone above had been shattered and set loose, so it was now fused and joined, as was the threatened section of stairway upon which they knelt. It took long moments, for destroying was always easier than creating, even for builders. But the stairs held. Tara-Khan and the others below them were no longer in danger of being crushed.

Hul-Rai felt blood pulsing from her nose and ears, and she was overcome with a wave of vertigo as her vision began to turn gray. Beside her, Tesh-Uran slumped against her, then slid to the floor. His eyes were open, sightlessly staring at her. “Oh, no,” she whispered as the unwelcome warmth of mourning marks slid down her cheeks. She cradled his head in her lap and gently closed his eyes.
 

Then she realized that she was not alone. Looking up, she saw the triangular head of the third genoth, at least half again the size of the first two, peering at her from the break in the staircase above. The thing growled, then began to climb down the central shaft toward her.

“I have lived much of my life without honor,” she whispered to the beast. “But Keel-Tath gave me a chance to redeem myself, and in her name do I willingly die.”

Drawing the talon of her right index finger across her throat, she closed her eyes as her lifeblood poured forth, and death took her before the genoth began to feed.

***

Even amidst the confused melee being fought on the stairway, those fighting on both sides cringed at the sounds of crashing stonework and screaming genoths above them. Dust and flakes of stone pattered down upon them, followed by a fountain of coppery blood from the crushed beasts that made the steps even more treacherous than they already were.
 

Tara-Khan felt the passing of the two builders he had left behind. And so it was with more and more of his companions, especially the robed ones. Their stamina shattered, the drive to reach the bottom began to slow, and if he did not do something now, it would stutter to a halt. If that happened and the Ka’i-Nur were allowed to rally and counterattack, all would have been for naught.

As he had done to surmount the wall of the fortress, he willed himself to become light as a feather. With a gentle push of his legs, he propelled himself into the air above the furious chaos of the battle.
 

Some of the Ka’i-Nur looked up, their attention captured by this inexplicable movement, and reacted by hurling a barrage of shrekkas at him.

None hit, of course. With a wave of his hand he deflected them away, even as both of his hands began to glow cyan.
 

The Ka’i-Nur, who no doubt well remembered Ayan-Dar’s visit here, obviously knew what was coming. Like a tide receding, they surged away from his warriors, many fleeing onto the nearest level, while others fled downward.
 

Many, however, simply could not escape.

Chain lightning exploded from Tara-Khan’s hands to dance over the Ka’i-Nur. Flesh burned and smoked, metal flashed white hot and melted. The shaft was filled with cries of agony and the smell of cooked flesh and burning steel.
 

His warriors surged into the mass of wounded and dying enemies, their swords glittering in the light of the cyan fire that still poured from Tara-Khan’s hands. The honorless warriors stabbed and slashed, or simply shoved their wounded opponents over the railing.
 

With a last desperate charge, his warriors shattered the enemy line like water through a breached dam. They poured past the level where the last defenders had sought refuge to find the stairway below completely empty.
 

Bringing up the rear, Tara-Khan sent a few more bolts of lightning into the remaining Ka’i-Nur to give them an incentive not to follow.
 

His people came to a shuddering halt and turned as one to stare back up the stairway as a deafening roar filled the stairway. The third genoth was still alive.

“What should we do?” Asked Sar-Ula’an.

“Move downward!” Tara-Khan ordered. “Quickly!”
 

As the others did as they were bid, Sar-Ula’an said, “As I said before, I would stand and fight by your side.”

“You honor your ancestors,” Tara-Khan told him, putting his hand on Sar-Ula’an’s shoulder, “but let me deal with this. You are the best among our war party, and I am entrusting you to lead the others to the bottom level where the Books of Time are kept. No matter what the Ka’i-Nur pit against you, you
must
hold it. I will join you there. Soon.”

They both looked up as the genoth moved with liquid grace down the staircase toward them. It was huge, larger than any Tara-Khan had ever seen with his own eyes, or even heard tell of. A warrior could stand upright, arms extended above his head, and still have room to spare in its open maw. Some of its teeth were as long as his forearm and, he knew, would be as sharp as his sword.

“Go,” he whispered, giving Sar-Ula’an a gentle shove down the steps.

Alone now, Tara-Khan stood facing the great beast. An iron chain, forged of huge links but far too small for so large a beast, constricted its neck as if it had been put on the beast when it was much younger and had never been changed. The scales of its flanks were crisscrossed with slashes and gouges, further testimony to its torment. Genoths were long-lived, and this one must have seen at least a century of cycles, most or all of them trapped in this horrible place. He wondered at the madness of the Ka’i-Nur at harnessing such a creature, and shied away from wondering about their purpose for doing so.

The beast paused near the landing onto which the bulk of the Ka’i-Nur had fled, retreating through the doorways that surrounded the stairway shaft. It sniffed the air and rumbled. Putting its snout to the floor, its tongue darted out, sampling the blood that had pooled on the steps.

Then it turned its full attention on him.

“Leave now,” Tara-Khan said, “and you shall live. I have no quarrel with you this day.”

The beast, of course, paid no heed. Fixing him with its eyes, it began to stalk slowly forward. It took its time, clearly wary of being lured into a trap.
 

“You are a fool, Desh-Ka.”

Looking up, he saw an ancient withered face peering down at him from the level above. Clad in maroon robes, the keeper was flanked by a pair of huge Ka’i-Nur warriors, larger than the others he had thus far encountered.

“Such words from one whose life I could take with but a thought,” he told her, daring to take his attention for just a moment from the advancing genoth.
 

“You will not.” She leaned further over the railing. “You wear your status as an honorless one like a shield, but I know what lies beneath. I know who you are…Tara-Khan.”

“And what of it?" he shot back, edging down the steps as the beast continued to approach. If anything, it was even more wary now.
 

“The ships of your white haired mistress die in the heavens above, even as our own mistress approaches with half a legion of our best warriors. I know what you seek here, young fool, but you shall not have it. You shall not! You and your honorless companions shall die in a fountain of blood.”

The warriors flanking her brought up long, heavy spears tipped with blades of living steel and hurled them not at him, but at the genoth. They penetrated its armored hide just behind the shoulders, driving deep into the muscle. The beast reared up, roaring in rage and pain.

Tara-Khan knew that he could easily avoid the beast, but his people still making their way down the steps would be unable to stand against it. He could also kill it, but after witnessing the cruelty writ upon its very body, he realized he had a third alternative.

As the beast swiped at him with one of its immense claws, he winked out of existence. Reappearing upon the beast’s back, he took hold of the edges of a pair of its scales, some of which were as large as his breast plate. With a final glare at the ancient keeper, and before the genoth could try and throw him off, he willed himself to the great courtyard of the fortress on the surface, just in front of the still open gate…taking the genoth with him.

The beast froze, confused by the sudden change of surroundings. Its eyes irised shut and it turned away from the sun that was rising over the fortress walls, the sandstorm having died away.
 

Throwing all his might into a single slash of his sword, the edge of the living metal blade cut through the pitted and corroded chain around the beast’s neck. It gasped for breath, as if able to truly fill its lungs for the first time. Sheathing his sword, he took hold of the two spears, one in each hand, and using the strength of his powers wrenched them from the genoth’s flesh before leaping upward, well clear of the beast.

The thing screamed in pain and lashed out blindly. Finding no opponent, it found itself staring out the gate at the endless desert that lay at the foot of the volcano upon which the fortress stood.
 

Tara-Khan drifted upward to the top of the inner wall, where he watched the beast in silence. He wondered if it still remembered from whence it came.
 

As if in answer, the beast took a final look around the empty courtyard. Its gaze found him and it stared at him for a long moment before it dashed through the gate, free at last.

Before he returned to join his companions as they continued deeper into the heart of Ka’i-Nur, he looked up to the sky, where five great crimson streaks of fire arced over the horizon toward the fortress. They were ships entering the atmosphere, drawn from the tremendous space battle that still raged above. The words of the keeper echoed in his mind:
our own mistress approaches with half a legion of our best warriors
.
 

Syr-Nagath was coming. He could only pray that Keel-Tath was, too.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“I shall lead the first wave,” Syr-Nagath told her First, who stood beside her in the warship’s ventral compartment, which was designed to allow the warriors to leave the ship en masse.

The First bowed and saluted, then assisted Syr-Nagath with the flying apparatus that would allow her to sail through the air and land without injury.

She grimaced as the device was attached to her armor, chafing that she could not whisk herself through space as did those of the priesthoods, that she did not have the abilities she deserved as the high priestess of the Ka’i-Nur. For a moment, she even wished that Ulan-Samir, the high priest of the Nyur-Ai’l who had been her unwilling pawn until Tara-Khan killed him, were here to take her where she wished to go.
 

But no, she decided. Better to lead her warriors in this fashion than to be carried about like a crippled animal.

The outside air shrieked against the hull as the great ship slid into the atmosphere, but she felt not even the slightest vibration through her feet. Her flagship and each of the other four ships trailing behind carried a full cohort of nearly five hundred warriors, all of them Ka’i-Nur, but only a token portion of them wore the silver armor and had advanced weapons. While they were devastating on the ground, the weapons had proven too powerful to be used aboard ships, and the armor was too cumbersome in the often narrow confines of passageways and compartments. She had also discovered that, given the choice, her warriors preferred traditional armor and weapons, which let them showcase their martial skills against their opponents, rather than simply blasting them to atoms. In short, it made combat far more enjoyable.

It was a sentiment that Syr-Nagath understood, for she lived for drawing blood with sword and claw, dagger and shrekka. As her First finished attaching the flying harness, she pierced her palms with her talons and brought her hands to her face just so she could smell the scent of her own blood. Flicking out her tongue for a taste, a shiver of ecstasy ran down her spine at the thought of the mayhem that awaited her.