In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born (2 page)

Over the cycles that passed and the many battles that were fought against opposing kings and roving bands of marauders, Ulana-Tath and Kunan-Lohr rose in the ranks of the peers until Kunan-Lohr won the leadership of the city of Keel-A’ar in a Challenge, defeating the mistress of the city. As had long been customary in their city, the Challenge had been to first blood, not to the death. For the Way, as taught by the Desh-Ka priesthood, held that there was great honor in victory, and no shame in defeat. The only shame for those who lived by the sword was not to step into the arena to accept the challenge of combat. Aside from the non-warrior castes, who lived by a code that was less bloody but just as difficult, the only path to leadership was through the clash of swords in the Challenge.
 

After that, Ulana-Tath had challenged him, and he had bested her, drawing a thin bead of blood from her shoulder with his sword. She had bowed and saluted his victory, but the smile in her eyes and the joy that echoed from her spirit in his blood told him that, as he had suspected, she had not entered the arena with the intent of winning the contest. She had already won his heart, and had no interest in becoming the mistress of the city.

But she would be his First, his most trusted lieutenant, the sword hand of her lord and master.

Those had been the good days, he thought now, before the rise of the Dark Queen, Syr-Nagath. An orphan and survivor from the Great Wastelands beyond the Kui’mar-Gol Mountains, she had come to their lands wearing armor she had taken from the dead, with the eyestones of a
genoth
, a great dragon that lived in the wastelands, around her neck. Young, little over the age of mating, she had walked the many leagues to the king’s city and challenged him the day she arrived. The right of challenge belonged to every warrior, and the only thing anyone had questioned had been her wisdom in choosing such an opponent.

No one had expected her to win. For the king, while growing old, was still a formidable and ferocious opponent.
 

But against this demon, as Kunan-Lohr remembered all too well, having presided over the Challenge himself, the venerable warrior had stood no chance at all. Syr-Nagath had toyed with the older and much more powerful-looking warrior just long enough to pick apart his weaknesses. Then she killed him.
 

To fight to the death in a Challenge was an ancient right. But it was relatively rare, and usually occurred only in cases where serious offense had been given. Every group, from the small bands of honorless brigands who haunted the mountains and forests, to the most powerful nations, needed their warriors in order to survive. It was an unwritten code of the Way that mercy was acceptable, even preferable, in the arena.

That changed under Syr-Nagath. As Kunan-Lohr had feared after she had slain the king, warriors had gathered to challenge the young mistress from the wastelands. He would have challenged her himself, had he not known what these new challengers did not: he had seen her fight the king, and knew that she was by far the superior warrior. Those that chose to fight her believed that the old king had lost the Challenge simply because he was old. In that, too, Kunan-Lohr knew they were wrong. Unlike these challengers, he had sparred many times with the king, and knew just how good he had truly been.
 

Ten of the kingdom’s best warriors died at the hands of Syr-Nagath in the day that followed the king’s death. By the time the sun had set, she was covered in blood that was not her own.
 

“
Ka’a mekh!
” Kunan-Lohr had himself given the command for the thousands who had watched the gory spectacle to kneel and render a salute to their new leader.
 

Their new queen.

Since that day, over ten cycles ago, the continent of T’lar-Gol had run red with blood, more than had been spilled in millennia. Syr-Nagath was bloodthirsty, even for a race that lived for war.
 

During most of the time since the Dark Queen had risen to power, Kunan-Lohr and Ulana-Tath had been away on campaign, leading their warriors into battle after battle. He would not have thought it unnatural, save that Syr-Nagath demanded that her vassals strip their cities and lands of most of their warriors, leaving the other castes nearly defenseless against the bands of honorless ones who had become bold enough to strike out of the forests and mountains for the rich plunder of the cities. Keel-A’ar had survived unscathed because its ancient walls could easily be defended by a small garrison against anything short of an army, but many other cities and villages across the land were not so fortunate.
 

Unlike those who followed the Way as taught in the
kazhas
, the honorless ones had no taboo against the ill-treatment or killing of non-warrior castes. Healers, armorers, builders, and the many other castes that were the foundation of life as defined by the Way were murdered or, worse, taken as slaves. It was unthinkable to warriors such as Ulana-Tath and himself to leave the other castes unprotected; it was tantamount to throwing one’s own children to the
ku’ur-kamekh
, the ravenous steppe-beasts, to be torn apart and eaten.
 

But, as Syr-Nagath herself was fond of pointing out, she was not of their Way. No one knew anything of her past, but it would not have surprised Kunan-Lohr if she was one of the rare rejects from one of the ancient orders such as the Desh-Ka. That was the only explanation for her extraordinary fighting skills.

He knew with the same degree of certainty that she was not descended from the Desh-Ka, for he could not feel her, could not sense her emotions. Their race was descended from seven ancient bloodlines, each of which could be traced back over many thousands of years to one of the seven original warrior sects. The descendants of each of those sects had an empathic sense for the others in their bloodline. Those whose blood was mixed were empathic toward all their relations, but the intensity of the sensation was reduced as the bloodlines became diluted. Ulana-Tath and Kunan-Lohr were both pure descendants of the Desh-Ka, and could sense each other over hundreds, even thousands, of leagues. Others from their city, by contrast, were only distant whispers, fleeting sensations that formed an emotional tide in one’s blood.

And it was that sense that had brought him home. Ulana-Tath had been summoned back to Keel-A’ar eight months earlier from the bloody campaign in the east to face a set of challengers for her place in the city’s hierarchy of peers. To forbid her return was something that was not even in Syr-Nagath’s power, much as the Dark Queen would have liked to try. Even honor-bound to her as they were, warriors such as Ulana-Tath and Kunan-Lohr, who were also masters and mistresses of their cities, would not fight if they could not defend their honor at home.

Kunan-Lohr, who had remained with the queen in the east, knew something momentous had happened with Ulana-Tath. It had been three months since she had departed for home, and he sensed a fountain of joy and wonder from her such as he had never before felt. The intensity of the feeling ebbed over time, but was always there, a constant in his heart. Three more months passed when a messenger arrived, sent by his wife with the news: she was with child.
 

He remembered the moment as if it were yesterday. The courier had arrived in the midst of a major battle, and the young warrior waded through the enemy to Kunan-Lohr’s side to tell him that his wife was expecting a girl-child. Overhearing the news, the warriors who had just been trying to kill him lowered their swords and stepped back, rendering him a salute. Kunan-Lohr had a fierce reputation, and fighting him was a great honor for any enemy warrior. Allowing him the privilege of stepping away from the battle to attend to his child had been an even greater honor.

The Dark Queen, however, did not see things that way. After quickly cleaning the blood of the day’s fighting from his body and armor, he sought an audience with her. Kneeling before her in the great pavilion that served as her palace, he had begged her to grant him leave, but she had refused.

“I must grant your right to return to defend your honor,” Syr-Nagath had told him, her voice as cold as her eyes, “but this trifle is another matter. I command you to stay, and so you shall. Your child shall be given over to the wardresses in the creche, as custom demands. You may see it — her — if you are challenged for your lordship of your city, or when my conquest has concluded and I release you from my service.”

To hold him in such a manner was her right, but few sovereigns in living memory had chosen to enforce it. Warriors who were allowed to return home to visit loved ones returned to war refreshed. Those who did not fought on, but with hearts heavy with yearning.

For five days, he begged her to give him leave to return home, pushing to the very brink of challenging her to fight in the arena.
 

On the sixth day, she had relented, but her promise of his release had come with a price: to mate with her. While Kunan-Lohr had been disgusted at the prospect, at that time he would have done anything in order to return home.

While it was unusual for a king or queen to demand such a thing, it was not unheard of. There was no dishonor or taboo in doing so, for there were few taboos or strictures in Kreelan life regarding mating.
 

But mating with Syr-Nagath was a cold, loathsome union that left him feeling soiled, and he carried away long gashes in his back from where her talons raked him in her ecstasy. Unlike the cuts and stab wounds he had received in the fighting on the way home, he would have the healers remove any trace of Syr-Nagath’s marks upon his flesh. Not to hide them from Ulana-Tath, but to cleanse himself of the Dark Queen’s stain.

Rounding a bend in the road through a stretch of forest, his heart lifted as Keel-A’ar finally came into sight.
 

“At last,” he breathed. His tired
magthep
, as if sensing the end of their journey was near and that food and rest would soon be at hand, quickened its pace.

Keel-A’ar stood at the center of a great plain that was bounded by forests to the south and east, and the mountains of Kui’mar-Gol to the north and west. It was among the oldest and greatest cities of the world. A great wall surrounded it, the seamless surface a tribute to the builders who had created it many generations ago. The walls reflected the sun rising at his back, the light rippling along the serpent-hide texture of the ancient fused stone. The height of six warriors and as thick as three laid heel to toe, the walls had withstood many assaults over the ages. Like everything in the city, it was carefully tended and maintained by the builder caste, so much so that it looked new.

A branch of the Lo’ar River ran beneath the walls through the center of the city, but it was not for the sake of beauty or idle pleasure: in times of siege, it provided fresh water and fish to sustain the defenders. While there was need for vigilance, lest a foe mount an attack from under water, the fish that provided much of the city’s food were also part of its defense. The vicious
lackan-kamekh
were bountiful and lethal, with rows of needle-sharp teeth. The wall was surrounded by a moat that could be flooded with water and a host of the terrible fish if the city were attacked. Only in winter, after the river had frozen over and shut away the light of the sun, did the
lackan-kamekh
sleep, hibernating on the river bottom.
 

Above the wall, he could see the golden domes and spires of the taller buildings rising above the walls to catch the sun’s rays. They were a beacon of welcome to his weary eyes.

As he and his two companions drew closer, he looked again at the sun, which rose steadily in the magenta sky behind him toward the great moon. On this day there would be an eclipse of the sun by the moon, an event that only took place every fifteen thousand and seven cycles. It was a momentous omen, and even in his weariness, the thought lifted his spirits. He knew in his heart that today was the day his daughter would be born.

“Faster!” He whipped the
magthep
to a sprint toward the waiting gate, leaving his two companions fighting to keep up.

* * *

Like the
lackan-kamekh
, the killer fish, the city’s defenders never slept, particularly in these times. With most of the city’s warriors away on campaign in the service of the queen, the small garrison Kunan-Lohr had been allowed to retain never relaxed its guard.
 

They had been attacked several times by bands of honorless warriors, and had easily defeated the disorganized mobs. But their master and his master before him had taught them well: overconfidence was as much an enemy as those who would destroy the city. They were charged with protecting that which was most precious to those who followed the Way: the children in the creche and the non-warrior castes.
 

Anin-Khan was the captain of the guard. Aside from Ulana-Tath and Kunan-Lohr, he was the most senior and skilled warrior, having challenged them both to contests in the arena. After they had drawn first blood in the contests he had fought against them, he had accepted with great honor the responsibility of the city’s defense. It was a measure of Kunan-Lohr’s trust in him and his abilities, for while the city’s master was away, it was the most important role a warrior could fulfill.

He spent most of his time on watch, which was nearly every moment that he was not asleep, in the barbican, the defensive structure that jutted out over the city’s main gate, or the watchtowers that rose at key points along the wall. From those vantage points, he had a view over the open plain between the city and the surrounding forests.
 

He happened to be standing watch on the barbican when he caught sight of a trail of dust from the main road leading from the east. His bloodline was not pure Desh-Ka, and so his empathic sense was not terribly strong, but he could always tell the approach of his lord and master.

“Alert the mistress,” Anin-Khan told one of the guards. “Our master returns.”