Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) (21 page)

“Han-Ukha’i,” she gasped. “Can you reach the opening?”

“No, mistress. I have no more strength! I fear that if I let go of you…I will fall.”

“You must try, or we will both perish. I cannot hold for long!”

“No, my mistress. I will not let you die for me.”

Keel-Tath screamed as she felt Han-Ukha’i’s arms go slack and her body slid down and away into the dark maelstrom around them.

“No…” Keel-Tath dropped her face against the water-slick rock. It had all been for nothing. Everything since her birth, all that had been suffered by so many had been for nothing. Anuir-Ruhal’te’s prophecy had been a cruel hoax for them all.

Lost to despair, wishing that she could have said goodbye to Ayan-Dar, she relaxed her hands and let go.

The Dark Queen had won.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Revelation

Just as her feet touched the roiling waters below, something seized Keel-Tath’s hand and pulled so hard her shoulder joint cracked in protest. With a cry of surprise, she looked up into the swirling darkness above her to see Drakh-Nur’s pain-stricken face illuminated in the glare of a nearby lightning strike.

Reaching up with her other hand, she grabbed his forearm as he pulled her up, rolling away from the edge of the hive and pulling her with him. She wound up on top of him. He was gasping in pain, unable to speak. 

Beside him was Han-Ukha’i. He had pulled her up, too. 

“Drakh-Nur, thank you.” Keel-Tath did something she had never done before to anyone. She pulled herself up his massive chest and kissed him lightly on the lips. 

His eyes blinked open in surprise. “For that, mistress,” he rasped, barely audible against the howling wind and rain, “I will take a sword to the belly any day.”

Turning to Han-Ukha’i, Keel-Tath said, “Can you help him? And is Dara-Kol still alive?”

“Yes, mistress.” The healer was still panting, and in the flickering light Keel-Tath could see that she was in little better shape than their two wounded companions. The healer’s hands were bleeding badly, and she was shivering with cold from being in the water.

Keel-Tath moved next to her and wrapped her arms around the healer’s shivering body, trying to give her what little warmth she could. She very badly wanted to know the details of what had taken place this terrible night, but the survival of her companions came first.

“I can stop their bleeding,” Han-Ukha’i said through chattering teeth, “but I cannot heal them completely. I am too weak…”

“Keep them and yourself alive.”

“Help me to Dara-Kol. Drakh-Nur is weak, but he is in no immediate danger.”

Keel-Tath wrapped one of the healer’s arms over her shoulder and helped her to where Dara-Kol lay still.

“Is she still alive?” Keel-Tath took one of her protector’s hands in her own, holding it tight. She thought she could still hear the warrior’s song in her blood, but was not sure. 

“Barely.” Han-Ukha’i took the healing gel and forced it into the wound in Dara-Kol’s stomach. Han-Ukha’i put one hand on Dara-Kol’s forehead and the other over her heart and stayed that way, silent, for some time. 

Dara-Kol moaned, and her eyes flickered open. “Mistress?”

“I am here.” Keel-Tath squeezed her hand, and was delighted that she squeezed back. 

“Lihan-Hagir?”

“Dead. Drakh-Nur killed him. Drakh-Nur is wounded, but will live.”

She nodded. “Ba’dur-Khan?”

Keel-Tath closed her eyes at the mention of his name. “I saw his dagger in your belly and thought…and thought it was he who had betrayed us. He was fighting Lihan-Hagir, had him on his knees, when I ran him through with my father’s sword.” 

She let go Dara-Kol’s hand and put both her hands to her face, wanting to claw her eyes out at the memory of the feeling of the sword piercing Ba’dur-Khan’s armor, tearing through his heart. The only thing for which she was thankful was that he had been turned away from her, that she had not had to see the look on his face as he beheld his killer.

“I thought it was him, too,” Dara-Kol said, pulling Keel-Tath’s hands away. “Lihan-Hagir found the perfect time to strike and fooled us all. I awoke to blinding pain in my belly. The two of them were already fighting, and Drakh-Nur and Han-Ukha’i were gone.”

“He dragged me to the edge of the hive and threw me off.” Han-Ukha’i’s voice shook as her hands worked the healing gel into Dara-Kol’s wound. “Drakh-Nur heard my screams and came to my aid.”

“I could see nothing,” the voice of the giant echoed in the darkness. He had dragged himself closer, and lay beside Han-Ukha’i. “I thought she had fallen, or perhaps an animal had taken her. Then I saw Ba’dur-Khan’s dagger in a flash of lightning, just before it was rammed home in my side.”

“At least you were on your feet,” Dara-Kol told him. “He stabbed me while I was still asleep.”

“Now we know the truth of Ri’al-Char’rah’s disappearance,” Drakh-Nur rumbled. “He must have killed her, too.”

“But how could this happen?” Keel-Tath demanded. “He swore his honor and his sword to me. How could he betray me, betray us?”

“It is the Dark Queen, child,” Han-Ukha’i told her as she pressed around Dara-Kol’s abdomen. Satisfied, she summoned the symbiont from the warrior’s body and leaned over Drakh-Nur to tend his wound. “She somehow holds power over certain warriors in a way no one understands. It is the same as Shil-Wular.”

“Do you think she did something to Lihan-Hagir when she took him prisoner, something more than simply cutting out his tongue?”

“That, mistress, I do not know.”

“I would have you look at his body once you are done.”

“As you command, mistress.” 

Keel-Tath felt another wave of guilt at asking such a thing of a healer, especially one so utterly spent as was Han-Ukha’i. Very rarely were they ever asked to touch the dead, and it was never a thing taken lightly. The symbionts told them everything about a body, and she could not imagine the story that a dead body, even fresh, might tell. 

But in Lihan-Hagir’s case, there must be something. There had to be. While Lihan-Hagir had been an honorless one, he had not in fact been without honor. None of them were, in Keel-Tath’s estimation. They were forsaken, forgotten, but they were not animals. And he had lived and fought with Dara-Kol for years. She had trusted him, and in all that time he had never given her reason to doubt his loyalty until now.

“There,” Han-Ukha’i pronounced as she finished with Drakh-Nur. “Neither of you,” she spoke to him and Dara-Kol, “are fully healed, but you will not bleed if you are careful. When I am rested, I will tend to your wounds in more detail.” She paused. “I am ready, mistress.”

Keel-Tath took Han-Ukha’i’s hands, which had themselves been healed as she handled the symbiont, and led her by the light of the flashes from outside to where Lihan-Hagir’s body lay. The head was off to one side, staring sightless at the ceiling of the hive. 

With a shudder, Han-Ukha’i knelt down beside the remains. Kneading the symbiont for a few moments until it was thin to the point of being translucent and broad enough to cover Lihan-Hagir’s body, she draped it over him. The oozing mass found all the gaps in his armor and soaked into his flesh, and Han-Ukha’i moaned as she communed with it.

A few minutes later, it began to ooze out the severed neck through the windpipe, and Han-Ukha’i gathered it up in her hands. 

“There is nothing, mistress. All is as I would expect it to be.”

Keel-Tath swallowed the bile that rose in the back of her throat. “The head, Han-Ukha’i.”

On her knees, her tattered robes dragging on the bottom of the hive, the healer turned to face Lihan-Hagir’s severed head. In the strobe of lightning, the braids of his hair spread out across the floor made his head look like some abominable creature. In a way, it was.

Han-Ukha’i gathered up the braids and coiled them around the head. The hair of their race was far more than filaments of protein. The braids bound those born of each bloodline together, the embodiment of the empathic link they shared through their blood. 

She again kneaded the symbiont into a thin mass that was large enough to cover the head and the coiled braids, then lay it down on top of the unsightly mass. She knelt there in silence for a moment, then cried out in fear and revulsion.

“What is it?” Keel-Tath held her as Han-Ukha’i shuddered, then turned to one side and vomited on the floor.

The symbiont flooded out of Lihan-Hagir’s mouth, far faster than Keel-Tath had ever seen healing gel move. It was as if the thing was as repelled by the act as was Han-Ukha’i.

“What…” Keel-Tath began to ask again, but Han-Ukha’i shook her head and held up her hand for silence.

Taking Lihan-Hagir’s head in her hands, she turned it over to show where the braids met the scalp. One of them, the third, was odd. A finger’s length from the scalp, the braid was parting. The hair looked as if it was melted. Han-Ukha’i took hold of it and the braid came away in her hand. 

“This is not his hair,” she rasped. “It was bound to him by some dark art, the likes of which I have never seen.”

“Give it to me.” 

Han-Ukha’i handed it to her, and as soon as Keel-Tath touched it, a wave of nausea crashed over her. In her blood she could sense the one who hated her, who had hunted her since the day she had been born.

Syr-Nagath. It was her hair, somehow bonded to Lihan-Hagir like a parasite.

***

Syr-Nagath jammed her fists to her temples and screamed in pain. Those gathered around her for the council of war sat back, stunned and afraid as their queen shot to her feet and staggered about the chamber. 

“Get out,” she finally rasped. “All of you, out!”

Without a word, her vassals fled, sending fearful glances in her direction. Only her First remained, kneeling by the door. 

“Ale,” the Dark Queen croaked. “Then leave me.”

The First quickly poured her a mug of ale, then departed, closing the doors quietly behind her.

Now the white-haired whelp knows
, Syr-Nagath thought, her blood boiling in barely controlled rage as she took a long swig of the bitter brew.
She may not know the extent of the power I hold on the taken ones, but she knows they exist
. She knew that if Keel-Tath revealed that secret to the priesthoods, they would no doubt seek Syr-Nagath’s own head. Assuming, of course, that they believed her. 

“No,” she assured herself. “They would not believe her unless they forced it from her.” Had a priest discovered the secret, it would have been different. 

But the priesthoods feared the child, and they had been pathetically easy to manipulate. She grinned, her face twisting into a feral expression that would have had her First shivering with terror. For all their proclaimed wisdom and power, the high priests and priestesses were like children who fell prey to nightmares after whispering fearful stories to them in the dark, when they should be truly afraid of the predator that silently stalked them. Keel-Tath was such an obvious threat to their ages-old Way, trumpeted by the prophecy of Anuir-Ruhal’te and that fool of a one-armed Desh-Ka priest, that they were completely blind to her own machinations. 

Yes
, she thought. The whelp would know that Syr-Nagath had hidden eyes, ears, and claws. And while the child was beyond reach for now, the knowledge, in the end, would not save her from doom.

***

Keel-Tath could sense the Dark Queen’s surprise, and in that instant of vulnerability Keel-Tath focused her rage and anguish through that momentary bridge between them, just as she had sent the underground river smashing through the ancient crypt of Anuir-Ruhal’te. She was rewarded with a sensation of shock and pain from her nemesis.

Then, before Syr-Nagath had recovered, Keel-Tath balled up the hair and threw it out into the roaring water. 

“I am sorry, Han-Ukha’i, to ask that of you. But it was necessary. Now we know more about the enemy we face. Go now and rest.”

“Yes, mistress.” 

Keel-Tath helped the healer to her feet and led her back to where Dara-Kol and Drakh-Nur lay. 

“The Dark Queen somehow bound some of her hair to his third braid,” Keel-Tath told them. “That was how she controlled him, and I suspect that is how she controls those like Shil-Wular.”

“Then there is a way to tell if someone has fallen under her spell?” Dara-Kol asked.

“No,” Han-Ukha’i rasped. “I considered that when I discovered what she had done. But I examined Lihan-Hagir closely when I treated the wound to his head inflicted by Ri’al-Char’rah. All seven braids were as they should have been. Only in death would this deception be revealed.”

“You are certain?”

“Yes, mistress. There is no doubt.”

The four of them were silent for a moment, before Keel-Tath stood and made her way to Ba’dur-Khan’s body. Kneeling beside him, putting her head on his chest, she said softly, “I am sorry, Ba’dur-Khan, so sorry. You saved our lives, and I cannot even give you a warrior’s funeral. But I will not leave your body here as a feast for the animals. I hope that your spirit may forgive me for what I have done, and what I must now do.”

Taking hold of his hand, she dragged him to the hole in the side of the hive. Praying that there was truly an afterlife and that his soul would find its way, she rolled his body into the water and watched as it quickly disappeared, bobbing among the debris that was being carried downstream by the torrent.

She stared after him for a long time, an idea slowly forming in her mind.

***

The rain hammered down until well after dawn, when the light filtering through the dense clouds was just enough to see by. 

The arroyo was flush with water, which was running just below the entrance to the hive. It was moving more slowly now, or so it appeared as Keel-Tath watched. More debris had drifted by: a variety of animals, most of which she had never seen; some plants, also which she had never seen before; and even a few large tree branches with enormous leaves. Where they had come from in the wastelands, she could not hazard a guess.

The others were still resting, and she dreaded having to rouse them. She had been unable to sleep, and her mind had been churning the entire time, an infernal calculating machine working on an insoluble problem.