Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) (34 page)

“Where can we go?” Keel-Tath cringed as a bolt came perilously close, but was blocked at the last instant by Ria-Ka’luhr. 

“To the coliseum!” It was Ayan-Dar, who appeared beside them. His left side was badly burned, and a chunk of his breast plate had been blasted away, the edges still red hot. “Quickly!”

With Anakh-Lehr in the lead, they fought their way through the temple complex. Ka’i-Lohr and Tara-Khan helped her along, for her body was still weak and wracked with pain from the torture inflicted by the conclave. Drakh-Nur and Dara-Kol had picked up weapons from fallen acolytes, and added their toll to the butcher’s bill, while Ayan-Dar and the other rebels of the priesthood blasted away at the loyalists who stood in their way. 

Keel-Tath and her companions followed Ayan-Dar toward the great dome that now rose above her. She gasped for air, not from the pain that still had hold of her body, or even the fear and exertion of fleeing across the temple compound, but the empathic shock of the deaths of those around her. On both sides were priests who had taught and nurtured her, acolytes and disciples who had been her companions since the days of the creche, and every one of them who died tore at her heart. They were her family, her beloved, and all of them were dying over her. Some died to protect her, others to kill her.

As they approached the door to the coliseum, T’ier-Kunai appeared before them, her fangs bared in rage, her bloodied sword held out to one side. She opened her mouth and bellowed a challenge. “Ayan-Dar!”

Without hesitation, the old warrior swept forward, sword held high. They fought in a whirlwind of slashing steel and cyan lightning. Tara-Khan drove Keel-Tath down to the ground, covering her with his body as a huge release of energy swept over them, knocking the others, save those of the priesthood, off their feet. She was deafened by a cascade of explosions, and had to keep her eyes squeezed shut to avoid going blind. The air over the center of the battle between the two most powerful members of the priesthood grew so hot that dark, ugly clouds began to form and swirl overhead. 

At one point the lightning stopped and they both vanished together, then reappeared moments later, covered in snow as they grappled with claw and sword. T’ier-Kunai finally gained the upper hand, driving Ayan-Dar back against the door of the coliseum with blazing fast overhand strikes from her sword. With one final slash, she knocked Ayan-Dar’s sword away, leaving a clear path to his chest. She lunged forward, plunging her blade through his breastplate, just below his empty left shoulder. Keel-Tath saw the tip of the blade emerge out her mentor’s back, red with blood.

But the killing blow was the dagger that Ayan-Dar had drawn from his belt. Shoving himself forward, driving T’ier-Kunai’s blade even deeper, he rammed the dagger up beneath her breastplate, the tip piercing her heart.

She stared at him in shock, her mouth open wide. As her body went limp and the two of them collapsed to the ground, he cradled her in his arms, the marks of mourning streaming down his cheeks. “I am so sorry,” he rasped. He turned to Ria-Ka’luhr. “Pull out her sword.”

The younger priest took hold of the sword’s handle and yanked it free, Ayan-Dar grunting with pain.

“Keel-Tath and Ria-Ka’luhr, with me,” the old priest gasped as he reluctantly let go T’ier-Kunai’s body and struggled to his feet with Ria-Ka’luhr’s help. “The rest of you, find what refuge you can and await our return.”

“We would guard the door!” Tara-Khan said.

“This door needs no guard,” Ayan-Dar explained. “Where we go, none may follow.”

With a touch of his hand, the massive door opened, and the three of them rushed inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Crystal Of Souls

Keel-Tath stumbled blindly into inky darkness as the massive door closed behind them. As it slammed home, the terrible sounds of battle outside ceased. Other than her breathing and the sound of her feet shuffling through what must have been sand as she groped blindly forward, the inside of the coliseum was quiet as a tomb.

“Ayan-Dar?” She waved her arms around, trying to find him, but her hands found only empty air. In a rising voice, fear taking hold of her, she called out. “Ria-Ka’luhr?”

Just before she was about to shout out to them, the darkness was displaced by a soft glow that swiftly grew brighter, fully illuminating the chamber. She could not see the source of the light, for there were no torches or fires. It simply was.

“Here, child.” Ayan-Dar beckoned to her from the central dais of what she instantly recognized as a massive arena that took up the entire area under the dome. Her eyes flicked upward, taking in the detail of the carvings on the curved walls and ceiling. She would have liked to study them, for they were among the most beautiful she had ever seen, but there was no time, not now. 

Forcing aside her own lingering pain from the conclave’s inquisition, she rushed to his side. The old warrior priest knelt on the stone dais, his face a sickly cyan. Blood dripped in a steady flow from the wound above his heart where T’ier-Kunai’s blade had found its mark, and a crimson pool had formed on the stone beneath him.

Kneeling by his side, she held him as he blinked and began to fall over. “Where is Ria-Ka’luhr?”

“He…” He paused, then gasped, “There is…no time.” 

The dais began to tremble, the very earth beneath them shaking before the stone at the center, not a hands breadth from where she knelt, fell away into utter blackness. She tried to drag Ayan-Dar clear of the terrifying abyss, but he held her tight.

“No,” he said, blood running from his lips. “Here.”

Not understanding what was happening, she was frightened, but did what he asked. 

The ground continued to shake, but above the low rumble she heard something grinding, stone against stone. 

A pillar emerged from the abyss, rising as if forced upward by the earth itself, driven by the pressures deep in the planet. It kept rising, slowly rising, until the top of it, which was barren except for the concave surface of the stone itself, was nearly as high as she stood tall.

As the rumbling below her feet stopped, a brilliant light shone from above. She looked up, but had to raise a hand to protect her eyes as something, a tiny point of cyan fire, fell toward them from high above the dome. 

She cried out in fear, but Ayan-Dar held her tight. 

“Courage, daughter,” he whispered as the thing fell, impossibly fast, toward them. With it came heat so intense she felt as if her face was burning, and a deafening roar that made the battle outside seem like it had been nothing more than the sound of gentle ocean waves. She closed her eyes and held onto Ayan-Dar, awaiting the death that she knew must be upon them.

But it never came. She blinked, and the heat, the sound, was gone. Upon the stone pillar sat an enormous crystal in the shape of a tear drop. It shimmered and blazed with cyan, as if it contained the lightning from a thousand storms, and she could feel her skin prickling from its ethereal energy. 

It was one of the seven Crystals of Souls, she realized. Each of the six ancient orders had such a crystal, which was the source of the powers wielded by the priesthoods. The Ka’i-Nur had once had such a crystal, but it had been lost long ago, near the end of the Second Age. 

Above her, the sun shone through the circular opening through which the crystal had come. She wondered how that could be, because the sun had nearly set when she and the others had been whisked here to the temple. But there was no mistaking it for what it was, and it made her wonder even more about the mysteries of this place. The sun’s rays formed a bright circle upon the sand that steadily moved, even as she watched, toward the pillar and the crystal.

“You remember…the prophecy?” 

She turned to look at Ayan-Dar. “Of course,” she said softly. “How could I not?”

“Say it.”

The words came to her as naturally as breathing, so many times had she repeated them in her mind. For a long time she had hated them, had hated Anuir-Ruhal’te for ever uttering them. They had condemned her to a fate she had never wanted, and had led to the ruin of her world. But in the end, here as she huddled inside this strange place with the man who had raised her to become a warrior and more, she knew that Anuir-Ruhal’te was her distant mother, and the words she had spoken so long ago may as well have been Keel-Tath’s name. 

Long dormant seed shall great fruit bear,

Crimson talons, snow-white hair.

In sun’s light, yet dark of heaven,

Not of one blood, but of seven.

Souls of crystal, shall she wield,

From Chaos born, our future’s shield.

The rays of the sun touched the crystal and it sparked, flared cyan. She could feel heat again, but this time it was even stronger, and grew more intense as the sun moved to shine full upon the crystal.

“You have my blood,” Ayan-Dar wheezed. “The crystal will…know you. When it shines on you…you will burn.” He took in a ragged breath. “Be not afraid…as the pain takes you. You must…lay your hands upon it.”

She did not know all the details of the ceremony by which an acolyte became a priest, but she knew that what he asked could not be done. “It is forbidden to touch the Crystal of Souls!”

“Not for you, child of Anuir-Ruhal’te.” With those words, his life began to slip away. His body went limp, and she lowered him to the dais. “You must…touch it, or all is lost.”

“No,” she cried, holding tight to his hand. “Ayan-Dar, stay with me! Do not leave me!”

His eye blinked open to look up at her. He had a tortured expression on his face. “Ria-Ka’luhr…he will…” 

And then he was gone.

She stared down at him, feeling as if her world had been destroyed. She gently closed his eye and kissed him on the forehead, her heart a cold, dead stone in her chest.

Above her, the sun rose to its peak, shining down full upon the ancient Crystal of Souls of the Desh-Ka, which flared and sparked. For just a moment, the shimmering orb seemed to absorb the sun’s light, sucking it into an infinite depth, before exploding in blazing rays of cyan.

Struggling to her feet, she looked into the blue fire, wondering if she was already blind. But no, she could see the crystal still, a bright teardrop at the center of the universe. Her skin smoldered, then burned as she moved closer to the light, and she bit down on her tongue to keep from screaming from the agony wrought by the cyan fire. She had been born out of the flame of her father’s dying city, and in flames would she die. Ayan-Dar had promised that it would not be so, but her faith faltered as the lightning glare of the crystal consumed her. She raised her hands, groping forward as her flesh melted away from her fingers, her hands, then her arms, leaving nothing but charred bone. 

Then she was blind as her face and eyes were burned away, and with one final lunge before she died, Keel-Tath did what none had ever done in all the ages past: with the charred remains of her talons she touched the Crystal of Souls.

***

She was standing in the center of Anuir-Ruhal’te’s great burial chamber. But it was not the time-worn ruin she had seen after Dara-Kol had taken her from the clutches of Shil-Wular. It was as it had been when new, near the end of the Second Age. Instead of her armor, she wore a simple white robe. At a distance, it might have been mistaken for the robe of a healer, but it was cut in a different fashion, fitting more closely to her body, and she wore no black undergarment. The fabric was cool and comfortable against her skin, but she could not help but feel naked without leatherite and metal. 

Looking down at her hands, she saw that they were unmarred, save for the scar on her palm where Ayan-Dar had shared blood with her. The thought brought a great sadness upon her, for she remembered then that he had died in her arms. It seemed now so very long ago.

“Grieve that he is parted from you,” a disembodied voice said with great gentleness, “but rejoice that he has joined the ranks of the Ancient Ones, the warriors of the spirit.”

Turning around she saw Anuir-Ruhal’te standing behind her. Looking at her was like gazing into a mirror, seeing herself as she would look when fully mature. Keel-Tath gestured with her hands, looking down at her body. “I…I do not understand. I am…” She forced out the words. “I died.” 

The ancient oracle, her far distant mother, nodded. “All who are touched by the light of any of the seven Crystals of Souls die. Those who survive are changed by it, born again and given the powers passed down through the ages from when the crystals were forged at the height of the First Age.” She smiled and stepped closer, putting a hand to Keel-Tath’s cheek. “A small few have been foolish enough to touch the crystals, and for them it was the touch of Death from which there was no awakening. But for you, it was as it must be. And this is only the beginning.”

Keel-Tath did not care for the sound of that. “What does that mean?”

“Your birth was no accident, child. The seeds of your coming were sown by my own hand, and you would have been born far earlier — in my lifetime — had not those who lived in fear, those who nearly destroyed our kind, tried to put an end to it. They would have succeeded, save that I spread the seed far and wide, carefully concealing it in the bloodlines so that none, not even the healers, would recognize it until it bore fruit. To create that seed was my life’s purpose, and the result greatly pleases me.”

Keel-Tath stared at her. “So the war, the Final Annihilation of the Second Age, was fought because of you?” 

“No,” Anuir-Ruhal’te said, “it was fought because of you. Or, rather, the seed that would someday become you. You see, beloved, you are the only one who can touch the crystals and survive. And by touching them, their essence infuses your body and spirit. The priests and priestesses who are touched by their light are only endowed with gifts such as the crystals see fit to bestow. But you will have all they have to give.” She paused, gazing deep into Keel-Tath’s eyes to make sure she understood. “This frightened the great powers of my time. What began the war was the knowledge that the child I sought to bring into the world would be able to harness the power of all seven Crystals of Souls. They could not bear the thought that a single individual could wield so much power.”