Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) (14 page)

“There is nothing in the water here that will harm you,” Dara-Kol reassured her and the others who had gathered around. “But there are places where it will be more than waist deep. Move with great care, for if you lose your footing, you will surely drown.”

“How do you know nothing will attack us?” The great warrior who carried Han-Ukha’i did not sound at all convinced. 

“Because I have made this crossing before and lived to tell the tale.” 

They all turned to look back down the tunnel as an angry roar arose. The queen’s warriors were nearly upon them.

Keel-Tath swallowed her terror, knowing that it was time for her to take the lead. She stepped down the slick pile of rubble that was all that remained of the tunnel here and entered the water. As before, it was cool, but not terribly cold. It ran with enough force to burble and push against her calves, but was not a raging torrent. “Dara-Kol,” she said, “take the lead.” She looked at the warrior, carrying Han-Ukha’i, cursing herself that she had not had time to learn his name or that of the others. Gesturing at him, she said, “You will follow her.”

“I will not allow you to be last, mistress,” Dara-Kol told her. 

Keel-Tath nodded. “I will follow him,” she nodded to the warrior carrying Han-Ukha’i, “with the others behind me.” She glanced back, and could see the torches held by the approaching warriors growing closer with startling speed. “Go!”

Dara-Kol led them out into the water, her torch held aloft. The big warrior with the healer followed close behind her.

Sucking in her breath, Keel-Tath followed him, and the others fell into line behind her. The river bed was uneven and filled with rocks and chunks of stone, and the water steadily climbed up her legs until it reached just past her waist. The press of the current, which did not seem all that much when she had first entered the water, had become a frighteningly powerful force that threatened to topple her with every step.

The big warrior ahead of her stumbled, and Keel-Tath reached out and took hold of his sword belt. With a desperate heave, she helped him regain his feet.

“Thank you, my mistress!” He gasped, more in fear than in pain, she suspected.

“Keep moving!” Dara-Kol shouted.

Behind Keel-Tath, the others were in the water. One of them shouted something that Keel-Tath could not make out just before she heard the whistle of a shrekka pass close by.

Turning her head, she saw that the enemy warriors had reached the end of the tunnel, and now stood at the river’s edge. They were hurling their shrekkas at their prey, hoping for some easy kills.

One of the warriors behind her let out a cry of pain, followed by some splashes, and the torch at the tail end of their group went out. The whistling of the deadly weapons filled the cavern as the queen’s warriors hurled a barrage into the river after them. A few clearly found their targets, for she heard the wet hiss of metal cleaving flesh not far behind her.

Emboldened by the success of Keel-Tath’s party, or fearing the Dark Queen’s wrath, the enemy warriors stepped into the water and continued their pursuit.

At last, Keel-Tath and the others reached the far side of the river. Dara-Kol helped the big warrior and Han-Ukha’i from the water, then Keel-Tath. The two of them then helped the others. The last warrior, a young female, barely made it. She had been wounded by a shrekka, and was bleeding badly from a wound in her arm, just below her shoulder armor.

The river was aglow with the light of at least a hundred torches, the dark shapes of enemy warriors silhouetted beneath them. As Keel-Tath watched, two of them slipped and were carried away, but the others kept coming. She did not need the wise counsel of Dara-Kol to know that there was no possible way they could lose their pursuers. She had hoped that the other warriors defending the crypt would have been able to hold off their attackers longer, but they clearly had been overwhelmed by sheer numbers, or perhaps the queen’s warriors had brought some hellish weapon to bear upon them. 

Dara-Kol watched them, too. “Mistress, we must go. Perhaps…”

“No.” Keel-Tath shook her head. “They will catch us.” She knew that had they not been slowed by Han-Ukha’i, there was at least the slim chance they could outrun their pursuers. But she would not even think of leaving the healer to the tender mercies of the queen’s warriors. Staring at the dark water at her feet, she said, “There is only one way.”

Taking a deep breath, pushing aside her fears of unseen terrors lurking beneath the surface of the river, Keel-Tath threw herself into the water.

***

The river’s current immediately caught her and began to drag her downstream, but she clung to the bottom with her talons, the weight of her armor helping to hold her down. 

Squeezing her eyes shut against the stinging water, she fought to focus on the water itself. Back in the city of Ku’ar-Amir, which seemed so long ago now, she had sat alone in her quarters after she had learned she had the power to shape metal and bond with the symbionts of the healers, thinking. It was only a small stretch to think that she could bend water to her will as did the porters of water, and perhaps she even had within her the power of the builders. While she had not tried to build anything, for that was a long study of mental discipline beyond the mere power to transform matter, she had tried to control water. She had sat at the small table in her room, staring at a cup of water. Minutes, then hours, had passed, with no result. Bored, frustrated, and not a little bit frightened by what she was becoming, she had stuck her finger in the water, stirring it around. The water had swirled in the passage of her finger, as one would expect. 

Then the tiny swirl deepened, until it looked like a funnel in the water, down to the very bottom of the cup. It had happened so suddenly that Keel-Tath flinched in shock, knocking over the cup and spilling the water, which — heedless of her frantic attempts to control it with her thoughts — ran everywhere. 

The water must be touched in some fashion
, she thought. She had the power, but she had no idea how to bend it to her will. Porters of water honed their natural talents over a lifetime. Keel-Tath had no skill with their arts or the time to learn them. All she had was desperation.

She concentrated on the water even as Dara-Kol and the others cast about in the dark water, searching for her. Her lungs began to burn as they ran out of air. But she would not come up to breathe until she forced the water to do her bidding. If it did not, she would drown and die. 

Nothing happened. Her lungs were burning now, and spots were flashing before her eyes, even though they were closed. 

At that moment, on the edge of unconsciousness, a doorway seemed to open in her mind, and she felt something warm brush against her soul, the breath of a whisper that had once belonged to Anuir-Ruhal’te. 

She knew now, in the twilight between the conscious and subconscious, even though she did not understand. 

As if the water were clay, she shaped it with her hands in her mind. She heard the muffled cries of surprise as the river drew away from the shore near where she clung to the bottom, where her companions were searching for her. Massive columns of it rose from the river, higher and higher, like the fingers of a titanic hand, on whose palm the warriors of the Dark Queen found themselves. There were hundreds of them, most of a cohort choking the tunnel and wading into the river. Crying out in terror, they tried to flee, but there was no time.

With an earsplitting roar, the columns of water smashed down on the warriors caught in Keel-Tath’s imagined grip, crushing them to bloody paste and twisted metal. Then a solid piston of water rammed into the mouth of the tunnel crushing all who sheltered there. As if it were being pumped through a hose at enormous pressure, the water roared through the tunnel, blowing out the ancient stone walls as it went, before exploding into the central chamber. Those who were not swept away or drowned were crushed as the domed ceiling of the chamber gave way.

That was when she felt hands on her, picking her up. She gasped and choked, spewing water that she had inhaled at the last second. 

“Quickly!” It was Dara-Kol, shouting. “Get her up!”

Dara-Kol and one of the other warriors wrapped their arms around Keel-Tath’s waist and draped hers over their shoulders, and together they made their way through a wide, steep natural pipe that led up, away from the river, just as the water began to flood back.

“If any of us doubted the prophecy,” one of the other warriors said, his voice filled with awe, “we doubt it no longer.”

***

Over the next hours, Dara-Kol led them through a treacherous labyrinth of caves and tunnels, fissures and bottomless pits. Some of the caverns were at least as large as that where Keel-Tath had killed the queen’s warriors, while stretches were holes only large enough to crawl through on hands and knees. 

Keel-Tath and Han-Ukha’i were again able to make their own way, although there were times when Keel-Tath would have preferred to have been unconscious or stricken with delirium. Using only a single torch at a time to prolong the light they might have, she followed her protector through the nightmare underground world, hoping with every step that Dara-Kol’s memory of the path was clear. 

Water dripped and glistened from some of the walls, but Keel-Tath shied away from touching it as if it were potent acid. In other places were pools of water where tiny creatures lived. Some of them glowed, and in one cavern filled with ankle deep water, there were so many that they did not need the torch to see.

At last, Dara-Kol called a halt. In a ragged breath, she said, “Torch.”

Keel-Tath was right behind her, and handed up the flickering torch. It was the last one, and its flame was quickly dying. 

The narrow tunnel, so low that they were all stooped over, was blocked with stones. Keel-Tath felt panic welling up in her chest.

“Hold this, mistress.” Dara-Kol handed back the torch, then she began to clear away the rocks. In a few moments, a splinter of light shone through, and everyone gasped in relief.

Handing the torch to the warrior behind her, Keel-Tath crept forward and helped Dara-Kol clear away the stones. “You put these here?”

“Yes, my mistress.” With a grunt, she pushed one of the larger stones out, and it rolled away from the opening. “After we put a watch on the trail from the temple, so I knew we would not miss you should you ever come down, I spent much time in these caverns, looking for another way out, one unknown to the others. Those who dwelt here long did not understand that things are no longer as they were, that the Dark Queen, should the notion take her, would not hesitate to come here and root out this haven. All she needed was someone to show her the way and a cause to bother.”

“It seems she found both.” Keel-Tath helped her shove the last and largest stone away, and she breathed deep, the outside air filling her lungs even as the fading sunlight made her eyes water.

With great care, Dara-Kol poked her head out and took a look around. “We are clear,” she said quietly. “Come.”

She and Keel-Tath helped the others from the cave. All of them, Han-Ukha’i most of all, were exhausted. They were wet and covered in mud, the healer’s pristine white robes now brown and tattered.

On the horizon, the sun was just about to set. Above, the Great Moon had risen, framed by the five great stars, the brightest in the heavens.

“Look!” The big warrior who had carried Han-Ukha’i pointed. 

It was the main entrance to the crypt. Nothing more than an ugly slash in the base of the mountain, it looked like a mound of
y’an-k’ier
, tiny but industrious creatures, that had been flooded out of their nest. The water that Keel-Tath had sent raging through the tunnel into the crypt had killed not only the warriors underground, but many of those who had been close to the entrance. Many not killed outright by the water had been crushed by the rockslide that was triggered when the crypt collapsed. 

“We cannot know how many of the queen’s warriors were at the other entrance,” Dara-Kol said, “but there cannot be more than half a cohort left alive down there.” 

“Let us leave this place.” Keel-Tath had been trained from birth to be a warrior, to wield a sword and face the enemy in battle. But nothing she had ever known had prepared her for mass slaughter by her own hand. She also knew that among the black specks left in the wake of the angry water that were the bodies of her enemies were also the bodies of those who had sworn to serve her. The knowledge made her sick to her stomach.

Dara-Kol nodded. “Come. There is a place not far from here where we can rest and be safe from any prying eyes.”

By the time the sun was gone and only the light of the Great Moon and stars lit the way, they reached the edge of a sheer cliff that faced to the west. Dara-Kol led them along the edge, which was terribly exposed and which any pursuers would find daunting even in full daylight. But once the path had been traversed, they found themselves in a rocky aerie that had an excellent view to the lowlands both east and west, with an escape route along the ridge to the south. They would not be surprised here, and anyone trying to attack them would be at a severe disadvantage.

Those things flashed briefly through Keel-Tath’s mind before she collapsed to her knees, utterly spent from their escape from the crypt and the steep climb to reach this place. Han-Ukha’i and the others gratefully followed suit, settling to the ground in a circle with heavy grunts and relieved sighs. 

All but Dara-Kol, who staggered to an unremarkable pile of rocks and began to dig. She returned bearing several skins and leather bags. “Dried meat and some ale,” she said as she set them before Keel-Tath. 

“You put this here?” Keel-Tath asked.

“Yes,” she said as she knelt down beside her mistress. “Every month I brought fresh supplies. There are other caches like this.”

“Even I did not know of this.” The big warrior spoke in the darkness, a touch of hurt in his voice.

“We could have helped,” said another.

“You had other duties. This was my burden to bear.”