Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) (9 page)

It was then that she noticed that T’ier-Kunai had not yet spoken. The opening ceremony for the Challenge was brief before the drawing of the lottery for the first round of combatants. The silence had stretched on far too long.

Raising her head just enough to glance around her, Keel-Tath saw that the high priestess was staring right at her, her expression a dark, angry cloud. Ayan-Dar was staring at her, as well, a look of shock on his face. Several places to his right, among the junior priests, stood Ria-Ka’luhr, who also was looking at her, although his expression betrayed nothing. 

In fact, all the priests and priestesses were staring at her, as were the acolytes and robed ones. Even the disciples, whose heads were still bowed as they kneeled toward the dais, shot nervous glances in her direction.

“One of the greatest strengths — and weaknesses — of our kind is the song of our blood,” T’ier-Kunai said, “for it reveals the truth in all things. Your blood sings to us, Keel-Tath, but it is a song that I cannot credit or understand.”

For just a moment, Keel-Tath wavered. She knew that she could have told the priestess something that would salve her displeasure. T’ier-Kunai had always shown great compassion and understanding for Keel-Tath. While she had never succumbed to any shows of favoritism, the high priestess had certainly pushed the boundaries of tradition to Keel-Tath’s benefit. A few words rolling off Keel-Tath’s tongue right now could make things better. But they could not make them right. Nothing could.

Gathering her resolve, trembling at the enormity of what she was about to do, Keel-Tath stood. “Is it so hard to understand, my priestess? You and Ayan-Dar stood and watched Keel-A’ar burn, watched the Dark Queen torture my father before casting him into the flames, yet did nothing. Syr-Nagath marches across the world, destroying all in her path, and all of you know that she is different from the other conquerors who have come before. She does this conquest not for honor or glory, but to destroy! She is everything that we are taught not to be, and yet you and the other orders do nothing.” Her voice rose with the tide of her anger. “What is the point of donning the collar, of having powers such as you, if they are not used to help bring justice to the world? Just one of you, just one, could have stopped her! I understand that we are called by our blood and the Way to fight, but what happened at Keel-A’ar was not a battle conducted with honor and for the sake of honor. It was a vengeful slaughter of innocents! And you all know that there will be more.” She slowly drew her sword. “When I stood at the gates of my dead father’s city, I made a vow.” Ayan-Dar, mourning marks already flowing down his cheeks, shook his head, and she imagined him begging her in his mind to stop, but she could not. Would not. “I vowed that I would have my vengeance on the Dark Queen for what she has done, that I would rip out her heart.” She drew the blade of her sword across the palm of her free hand, the same one that was still healing from where she had bonded with Ayan-Dar in the ritual of Drakash, and drops of crimson fell to stain the sand at her feet. “This I swear upon the blood of my father and mother, and all those who have suffered under the Dark Queen.”

The entire temple was deathly silent. 

“None among us may take vengeance or interfere with affairs beyond our walls,” T’ier-Kunai said in a low voice, devoid of emotion. “If that is your will, so be it. You shall leave us as you came to us. Let all among the Desh-Ka know that you are forsaken.” Then she rapped her staff on the dais, the report echoing from the buildings surrounding the arenas and the
Kal’ai-Il
.

Trembling, Keel-Tath plunged the tip of the sword, its blade slick with her blood, into the sand. Then she began to undress. First the waist belt with her dagger and the sword’s scabbard, then the shrekkas attached to her shoulder, then her armor. She dropped each piece in the sand, a tiny part of her dying inside each time. She undid the bindings of the leatherite armor under the plate and pulled it off, dropping it at her feet. Then she undid her sandals. At last, she took off the black undergarment and stood nude before the host of the Desh-Ka. 

The mistress of the creche, the black streaks of mourning marks running down her cheeks, approached and offered Keel-Tath a blanket, for she was wrapped in one when she came to the temple. 

“No. I take nothing with me from this place but memories and thoughts of what could have been, of what should be.” With one last look at Ayan-Dar and Ria-Ka’luhr, whose company she would sorely miss for the short time she would survive in the outside world, she turned and made her way to the entrance to the temple. She stood at the threshold for a moment, trying to imagine her mother’s last moments as she fled from the pursuing honorless ones who killed her, spending the last breath of life to place Keel-Tath into Ayan-Dar’s outstretched hand.

With a shuddering breath, she stepped past the threshold’s ancient stone and began the long walk down to the foot of the plateau where the Dark Queen’s minions no doubt awaited her.

***

“T’ier-Kunai,” Ayan-Dar said, barely able to force her name through his lips as he watched Keel-Tath walk away through the ranks of still-kneeling disciples.

“Hold your tongue, Ayan-Dar, or I will cut your braids and cast your soul into darkness.” 

The quiet words of the high priestess cut through him like the blade of a frozen sword.

“We gave her everything we had to give,” T’ier-Kunai went on. “If she wants to avenge her kin or tear out the Dark Queen’s heart, then she must do so on her own. She has made her choice, and if you interfere, I will cast you out, as well. Do not doubt my words.”

“I do not, high priestess of the Desh-Ka,” he rasped as Keel-Tath disappeared from his sight. He was clenching his hand so tight that his talons pierced the leatherite palm of his gauntlet and drew blood. “I honor and obey.”

“For what little it may be worth, I am sorry, Ayan-Dar.” She paused, then whispered, “I have loved her, too.”

Those last words only made worse the pain of Ayan-Dar’s broken heart.

Nearby, Ria-Ka’luhr, too, watched Keel-Tath’s departure in dumbfounded silence. But his feelings, if not his thoughts, were shared by one far away, whose blood was not of the Desh-Ka.

***

The switchback trail down from the plateau was empty of passersby; no one came to or departed from the temple on the day of the Challenge. 

Keel-Tath walked in a daze, her bare feet slapping on the packed earth of the ancient trail. The mourning marks, cascades of black that began under her eyes, now flowed down her neck and her chest. Even her breasts were black with the pain she had wrought upon herself.

There was no choice
, she told herself. Had she stayed at the temple, her life would have been a lie, a dishonor to her mother and father, to Ayan-Dar and all the others. She did not want to die, especially in whatever horrible way the Dark Queen would no doubt have in mind. But she would rather die than disgrace all that she had ever loved or held dear.

She briefly gave thought to trying to escape what she knew must await her at the foot of the trail, but the idea was so ludicrous that she laughed out loud. Where could she go that she, of white hair and crimson talons, would not be recognized? And there was no way to reach the lowlands from the plateau other than by the trail she was on: everywhere else was nothing but sheer rock. She had to take this route, and had to take it to its inevitable conclusion. 

Behind her, she could hear the tone of the
Kal’ai-Il
signaling the start of the first round of the Challenge. She found herself imagining that she was in the arena, and her muscles twitched in sympathy to her thoughts, as if she was lunging and feinting with her sword. She heard the disciples cheer and howl. It was a sound that she had grown up with, that she had always thought would be a part of her life. Now it made her sense of loneliness even more acute.

She wondered if, when she died, she would see her mother and father. She would have liked to know them, to sense them in her blood. She had told Ayan-Dar once that she sometimes had dreams about them, but they were not dreams of the past, memories of her empathic bond with them before they died. It was as if they were whispering in her ear as she slept, but she could never remember what they told her. 

He had not chided her for such thoughts as she had expected him to. “Those who came before the fall of the ancient gods believed in an afterlife, that our souls live on, but things now are less clear,” he had told her. “The Way insists that if our hair is shaved and the braids destroyed, that we will be cast into everlasting darkness. That implies that if we die with our braids intact, we will go somewhere else. But where? Many believe that that there is indeed life after death, but aside from whispers such as you yourself have heard — and I do not doubt such things — we do not know. Many, of course, do not believe in anything beyond this life.” He shrugged. “They make their obeisance to their fate should they fall from grace and have their hair shaved, but in their hearts it is an empty threat. But without the old gods, without something higher than ourselves to bridge the gap between the living and the dead, none of us can know for certain. It is like a great door that the Books of Time say was open in the ancient times, but that was slammed shut in the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age.”

Keel-Tath suspected that she would know if there was an afterlife soon enough.

As she descended toward the treetops below, she could see the clearing where the queen’s warriors who watched the trail were encamped. Small dots, warriors, were already moving toward the trailhead, as if they had received word that she was coming. She found that curious, but it did not matter any more than anything else did now. 

Squaring her shoulders as she made the final switchback, she strode with her natural grace to the one whom she took to be the senior warrior, who sat at the head of the cohort, mounted on a badly scarred
magthep
. He was fearsome in size and appearance, looking perhaps as Ayan-Dar must have in much younger days. The thought sent a spear of regret through her, but there was no turning back.

“You are Keel-Tath,” the warrior said in a gruff voice.

“I am.” She stopped and saluted, feeling awkward and vulnerable without her armor. 

The warrior did not bother returning her salute. “My queen, Syr-Nagath, has been awaiting you for some time now, child.” He looked at her bare body and frowned. “I would have expected the priests to at least give you a robe to cover yourself, but no matter.” To the pair of warriors who stood closest to her, he said, “Take her.”

The warriors grabbed her arms to hold her, but she offered no resistance. Other warriors put her hands and feet in irons, bound by chains. To the chains between her wrists was attached a sturdy rope that they handed to the warrior leader, who looked at her with pitiless eyes. “You should have stayed in the temple. The rest of your life, what might be left of it, will not be pleasant.” 

The warriors around her averted their eyes, as if she was already a ghost, long dead.

Then he turned his
magthep
back toward the camp and kicked it into a full run, dragging her bound and naked body along behind.

Unseen by the queen’s warriors, other eyes watched from deeper in the forest.

***

With the final tone struck on the gong atop the
Kal’ai-Il
, the Challenge was over. It was well past sunset, and the arenas were brightly lit with hundreds of torches. The sands were red with blood, but no lives were lost that day, for the Challenge was not normally to the death, but to first blood, with the healers standing by to treat the more serious wounds. Victors had emerged from the single-round elimination matches, the combatants chosen by lottery, and losers vowed to sharpen their skills for the Challenge a year hence. And those for whom this had been the seventh Challenge rejoiced, for they had officially become warriors, and could join the ranks of the acolytes.

Ayan-Dar had stood there, as tradition and his place in the priesthood demanded, and watched the spectacle, but he remembered nothing of the exploits of sword and claw that day. His entire body, his entire soul, was numb, and there was a great bleeding wound in his heart that he suspected would never heal. Were it not for T’ier-Kunai’s restraining hand upon his at one point when he felt he could bear the pain no more, he would have torn out his throat with his talons.

“You will not bear this pain alone,” she had told him.

Part of him wanted to damn her to the cold darkness of eternity for what she had done, but he knew that she had been left with no choice. The only other alternative to what Keel-Tath had done and said that morning would have been to shave her hair. Ayan-Dar was thankful that T’ier-Kunai had not taken that road, for he would have drawn his sword against her without a moment’s hesitation. He knew that Keel-Tath was in the hands of evil, but there remained in him a tiny spark of faith. He still believed in her, believed in what she would become. And if that belief was well-placed, then destiny would see that she lived.

That is what he told himself now as he sat alone in his quarters. It was dark, for he had not bothered to light a torch. While he could see well in the darkness, there was nothing in here worth looking at in any detail. In fact, his eyes were closed. Nothing in this cold stone chamber, or indeed within the temple walls themselves, held meaning for him any longer. He felt as if he had failed, as if his entire life had been an unutterable waste.

“May I enter?”

He looked up as T’ier-Kunai’s voice, unusual in its softness, called from the door, which he had not bothered to close.

“Of course, my priestess.” He nodded and saluted, but it was a rote motion, bereft of enthusiasm or vigor.

She came in and knelt beside him on the bed of hides in the center of his room. “You must not do this to yourself, Ayan-Dar. I need you. The temple needs you.” She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned closer, her nose nearly touching his. “I will not let you give up.”