Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (47 page)

“Who would you have me be?” The voice chided.

“I will not ask again,” Drakh-Nur warned. “Who are you?”

“Come and see.”

With a snarl, he snatched up his war hammer and strode forward, his warriors close behind him. The intersection of the main corridors, he saw, was decorated with glittering metal scrollwork, so fine that it looked like a web. It would have been beautiful, save for the menace that he felt from this creature. With every step, he tried to convince himself that it was not who he feared it might be.
 

As he passed through the intersection, warriors burst forth from both sides, emerging from the darkened corridors like vengeful shadows as the robed female fled.
 

With a roar of fury, Drakh-Nur waded into the swarm of attackers, swinging his enormous war hammer from side to side. Enemy warriors screamed in pain as their bones were crushed and their bodies sent flying into the walls where they left a grisly tableaux of blood.
 

Sar-Ula’an fought by his side, desperately fending off the warriors who tried to get past the giant’s war hammer. Sar-Ula’an was shocked that he recognized many of them. None were of the Imperial Guard, but many were warriors who had fought beside him since he had bound himself to Keel-Tath. “Why?" he demanded of them. “
Why?
”

They answered his questions only with battle cries as they surged forward.

As the savage battle wore on, Drakh-Nur and Sar-Ula’an found themselves cut off from the other warriors of the Imperial Guard.

“How many can there be?” Sar-Ula’an deflected another sword strike before drawing his opponent in close by his sword arm and plunging his talons into the warrior’s throat.

“Too many…” With a grunt of pain, Drakh-Nur accidentally slammed into Sar-Ula’an, sending him sprawling forward.
 

Taking advantage of the momentum, Sar-Ula’an pitched to the floor and rolled, slashing at his opponents’ legs before he leaped to his feet. But his heart fell at what he saw. “
Drakh-Nur!
” The broken blade of a sword protruded from the great warrior’s back, perilously close to the spine.
 

“Go!” The giant bellowed. Grabbing Sar-Ula’an by his left arm and leg, Drakh-Nur tossed him high over the intervening mass of enemy warriors and into the ranks of the Guard. “Protect the Empress!”

Sar-Ula’an only stood there, his sword at his side, as the battle raged around him, staring at Drakh-Nur.

Drakh-Nur met his gaze for just an instant. “
Go!
”

That broke the spell. “Fall back!” Sar-Ula’an ordered the rest of the warriors with him, and they began a fighting retreat back the way they had come. He and the others fought as they had never fought before, but in every spare instant, Sar-Ula’an watched Drakh-Nur, who was now completely surrounded. Roaring with vengeful fury, he smashed and killed the enemy. As Drakh-Nur must have hoped, the enemy warriors were drawn to him, allowing Sar-Ula’an and his companions to break free.

Sar-Ula’an’s heart was overcome by anguish as Drakh-Nur went down. Enemy warriors had latched upon his armor or taken hold of his neck and even his braids, stabbing him over and over with their swords and daggers. Even then, Drakh-Nur did not stop fighting. He had lost his grip on his war hammer, but his great fists slammed into warrior after warrior, crushing their skulls and bones, his talons stabbing through their armor, deep into their flesh. He snapped at them with his teeth, and kicked them with his enormous feet. But the end result was inevitable. With a final bellow, he collapsed under the weight of those bent on killing him.
 

“May you find a revered place among the Ancient Ones, Drakh-Nur,” Sar-Ula’an whispered, just before a titanic wave of fury from the Empress exploded through the Bloodsong. His cry of agony was cut short as he and all the others, friend and foe alike, collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“Drink this, my Empress,” the female healer said as she handed Keel-Tath a cup of a sweet smelling elixir. “It will help your body recover from its ordeal.”

Smiling with thanks, Keel-Tath took the cup and, with the healer’s gentle help, managed to drink it all. She lay back on the thick pile of hides where the healers had brought her just after Tara-Khan had departed the birthing room. The child had not shown any great interest yet in nursing and, as if she were as exhausted as her mother, she had already fallen asleep in Keel-Tath’s arms.

“Allow me.” The healer carefully gathered the infant up and wrapped her in a swaddling blanket before rocking her slowly back and forth as the elder healer who had birthed the babe ordered the others in the room to leave and let the Empress rest.

Keel-Tath watched her tiny daughter, knowing that once she was old enough to stop nursing, she would join the other children in the palace creche as tradition demanded. Even though that day was yet months distant, the thought made her sad. Reaching out, she ever so gently brushed the back of one of her fingers against the child’s cheek, amazed at how beautiful she was, trying to imagine what she would one day become. She would not become Empress, for her hair was not white, nor were her talons crimson, but this brought no sadness to Keel-Tath. Ulana-Khan would find her own destiny in the cycles to come. The voice of her spirit was so strong, drowning out the others in the great rhythmic sea of the Bloodsong. The sensation of the Bloodsong itself began to fade as Keel-Tath watched the healer rock her baby, mesmerized by the slow, rhythmic movement. Keel-Tath closed her eyes as sleep claimed its due, and she tumbled away into the darkness.

Her slumber was deep and dreamless until she heard a cry of alarm from far away. At first, she thought it was merely part of a dream. But the dream quickly intensified, as if many souls had suddenly found themselves in great peril.
 

Keel-Tath’s eyelids fluttered open to find the female healer kneeling beside her. She no longer held Ulana-Khan. Instead, she held a dagger to Keel-Tath’s throat with one hand. Behind her, arrayed in a semicircle around Keel-Tath’s bed, stood a group of robed ones and warriors. All were part of the palace retinue, some quite close to Keel-Tath, if not as close as her longtime companions like Dara-Kol, and all of them were males. Sprawled on the floor behind them in a great pool of blood were the bodies of more robed ones and warriors, two of whom bore sigils of the priesthoods. How anyone could have killed them here, she could not begin to guess.
 

“Be still, child of prophecy,” the healer told her softly as Keel-Tath struggled to sit up. “I would not take your life. Not yet.”

Keel-Tath felt the rise of a wave of anger, but her powers did not rise with it. It was as if she were again in the chamber of the Ka’i-Nur Crystal of Souls, where her powers had somehow been stripped away or suppressed. The Bloodsong, too, was muted, nearly silent, as if the great spiritual river was trapped behind a dam. “Where is my child?" she asked. “What have you done with her?”

The healer brushed the edge of the dagger’s blade against the skin of Keel-Tath’s throat just above her golden collar. “Fear not, your whelp is here.”

The male healer who had delivered the child stepped into the circle, bearing the infant. Cradling the child in one arm, the talons of his other hand rested lightly on the fabric of her swaddling blanket, a hair’s breadth from her tender throat.

“No,” Keel-Tath whispered, horrified, unable to believe that anyone would — or even could — threaten a helpless infant. But the thought brought back dark memories of children, even infants, who had perished at Ka’i-Nur, burned alive by her own hand. Pushing the terrible visions aside, she hoped beyond hope that this was all some horrible nightmare from which she must soon wake. “Give her to me and I will take your head and not your braid.”

The elder healer shook his head. “You hold no power over me, Keel-Tath. Not anymore.”

“But you are bound to me!” She looked at the others, the males who surrounded her, staring at her with cold eyes. “As are all of you! You pledged your honor to me.”
 

The female beside her threw back her head and laughed.
 

Keel-Tath’s blood ran cold, for while the face was not the same, the voice, that heartless laugh, she well remembered. “No,” she whispered. “
Syr-Nagath
. It cannot be. You were dead, killed by the crystal!”

Thrusting her face at Keel-Tath as she pressed the knife to her neck, drawing blood above Keel-Tath’s collar, Syr-Nagath hissed, “It did not kill me, dearest one. Oh, no.” She leaned closer, her lips to Keel-Tath’s ear. “It recognized one of its own.”

Keel-Tath’s eyes widened as the implications of the Dark Queen’s words sank in. If Syr-Nagath had been bathed in the light of the Ka’i-Nur Crystal of Souls and survived, she had inherited its powers. Even now, Keel-Tath was unsure what those powers were, other than opening the gateway between the worlds of the living and the dead. Tara-Khan had been teaching her of what he had learned while studying the ancient scrolls, which contained much about the Ka’i-Nur crystal, but those had been fleeting opportunities while he had been leading her armies in what had come to be known as the War of Unification. They had spent those precious times together doing things other than studying the past or delving into powers that she still had difficulty comprehending.
 

But Syr-Nagath had clearly not had any such distractions. Whatever powers she had inherited had allowed her to nullify Keel-Tath’s own. “And that is how you have evaded my notice all this time,” Keel-Tath concluded. “The crystal’s power shielded you, hid your voice from the Bloodsong.”

“Oh, nothing so mysterious as that.” She smiled. “By your own hand were you undone, Keel-Tath. You severed my Braid of the Covenant in the vessel of the Ka’i-Nur Crystal of Souls, remember? You blinded yourself to my soul.” Reaching back with her free hand, she tore one of her braids loose, tossing it in Keel-Tath’s lap. “This is from one of my former lovers, to keep up appearances.” She gestured to the males surrounding them. “But I must confess that I have been very busy while you have been fighting your great War of Unification, creating my own army, a task made much easier with the powers of the crystal of my people. You never sensed the change in the song of their souls when I took them, did you?”

Keel-Tath knocked the braid away in anger and disgust. “Your army is doomed. The Imperial Guard shall make swift work of them, and then…”

Again, Syr-Nagath laughed, cutting her off. “Your guard is nothing. Even those of the priesthoods are nothing. Observe.”

With a motion of her hand, a pair of warriors emerged from an adjoining room, dragging a familiar figure with them.
 

“Dara-Kol,” whispered Keel-Tath in shock. Her old friend and protector, now high priestess of the Desh-Ka and her First, had been bound and beaten. Her hands were bound in heavy steel manacles, and a metal band had been used as a gag, pulled so tight that the corners of her mouth bled. Her powers, too, had been somehow nullified by Syr-Nagath, and she must have been taken completely by surprise, or every conspirator in this room would have died by Dara-Kol’s hand. She looked at Keel-Tath with eyes filled with impotent rage, but Keel-Tath could barely hear her song in her own blood.
 

Syr-Nagath looked at the priestess in silent speculation. “I have never forgotten how she stole you away from my warriors. I only kept her alive because I owe her a special death.” With a nod, the warriors shoved Dara-Kol to the floor. She struggled until one of her keepers struck her on the head with a metal rod. Then she lay still.

“And let us not forget another of your favorite pets.” Another warrior brought forth a severed head, blood still dripping from the neck. Holding it high, Keel-Tath saw the face of Sian-Al’ai.
 

“
No
.” Keel-Tath briefly closed her eyes, quivering with helpless rage, the image of the great priestess’s severed head burned into her consciousness. “Once this is over,” she promised, “I will find you, and there shall be no words to describe your suffering.”

“Then I shall make it easy for you to recognize me.” Syr-Nagath reached up with her free hand to her left ear, and with a wet sucking sound peeled away the skin to reveal her true face beneath. The flesh was charred and blackened, the white of the cheekbones and nose showing through. The lips had largely been burned away, and the eyelids were gone, as were the ears. Her right cheek was burned through to expose the molars on that side, the tongue glistening behind them.

Keel-Tath turned her head away in revulsion. She had not seen Syr-Nagath after the crystal had shed its light, but her appearance matched what Tara-Khan had described. “Your face exposes the truth of your soul.”

“No matter what the healers tried, it never healed,” Syr-Nagath explained, her words slurred and bearing a heavy lisp without her mask of living tissue. “The crystal gave me the power to control others — males, at least — to bend them to my will without using the magic I once wrought upon them, and to nullify the powers of the other crystals, but it also robbed me of my ability to heal. This,” she held up the faux face, “is the best the healers could do. Once they are all bound to me, I think I shall tear the heart from every one of them.” With a practiced motion, she put the mask of living tissue back on.

Keel-Tath shook her head. “They will never be bound to you.”

Syr-Nagath took one of Keel-Tath’s braids in her hand, her touch sending a chill down Keel-Tath’s spine. “When I take your Braid of the Covenant and fuse it to the stump of my own, they will. Every last soul of our kind, living and dead, will belong to me, and they will bend to my will. After that, I will take my time with you. A very long time.” Releasing the braid, she added with a smile, and Keel-Tath imagined the burned flesh beneath oozing blood and fluid, “But there is something we must do first.”

“What?”

“You shall see.”

The door to her chamber opened, and her heart was flooded with relief as Ka’i-Lohr entered the room, pushing past the suborned warriors who stood guard at the door. But her hopes tasted like ash in her mouth as he stepped forward, not raising a sword against those who held her. “Ka’i-Lohr,” she whispered, aghast. “Please, not you.” Now she understood how Syr-Nagath had survived. Ka’i-Lohr had rescued a robed one from the collapse of the vessel of the Ka’i-Nur Crystal of Souls, but the body in the robes must have been that of Syr-Nagath. “How could this be? We have shared so much and saved one another’s lives countless times! How could you fall under her spell?”