In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born (6 page)

To do that, she would have to destroy them.

“My mistress.”
 

Syr-Nagath turned to find her First kneeling at the entryway, sensing the excitement in her First’s blood. The Dark Queen flicked a velvety tongue over her lips, tasting the blood of her last victim. “Bring him.”

With a quick salute, the First stood and disappeared.
 

A few moments later, Syr-Nagath heard the clank of chains and watched as a prisoner was led in, escorted by six warriors and the First. Bound by the hands and feet, badly beaten, the captured male was forced to his knees before her, cursing with anger at his captors through swollen, bloodied lips.

“Leave us.”
 

The guards and her First saluted before marching from the room.
 

Stepping forward, Syr-Nagath took hold of the prisoner’s hair and forced his head back. One of his eyes was swollen shut, while the other was blood-red, staring up at her with undisguised hate.
 

Ignoring his baleful gaze, she looked at the Collar of Honor around his neck. There was no sigil, but she saw the outline of the Desh-Ka rune on his breastplate. An acolyte.

“What is your name?”

He only glared at her.

“There is no point in denying me that much, acolyte of the Desh-Ka.” Kneeling before him, she reached out and drew the tip of one of her talons along his face, from his ear to the tip of his mouth.
 

He made no reaction beyond the glare with which he favored her as blood welled up from the wound.

She sat back, licking his blood from her talon. It had taken all this time, over ten full cycles, for her to capture one of them, an acolyte, alive. She could not confront the Desh-Ka directly, but she had bound an army of honorless ones to her. Setting them to cause the mayhem expected of their kind had merely been cover for their true purpose, which now knelt in chains before her.

The young acolyte spat on her, the blood from his mouth mixing with the stains on her armored breast.

She entwined the talons of one hand in his hair. As with all who followed the Way, it was carefully braided into seven braids, each representing a different covenant. The two most important were the first, the Covenant of the Afterlife, and the third, which was the Blood Bond. His third braid had been severed, the roots of it bound in a black ring. He had been cut off from the empathic link to his bloodline, and could not sense those who shared the blood of his forefathers. Nor could they sense him. To all who had known him, he had simply disappeared.

With a snarl, she took hold of his hair, her talons tearing into his scalp, and hauled him up by his braids. Her grip was far more powerful than seemed possible for her lithe frame.
 

As the acolyte opened his mouth in a gasp of pain, she brought her lips to his. He clamped his mouth firmly shut until she sank the talons of her free hand deep into his side.
 

His mouth flew open, screaming at the pain, and her tongue darted in to tease and violate him, retreating as he tried to bite it off.

He shoved himself against her, trying to throw her off balance with the mass of his body in an attack born of pure desperation.

With a snort of contempt, she deftly stepped aside, allowing his momentum to carry him into a thick wooden table. His face struck the smooth, polished surface, and he slid to the floor, dazed.

“A priest, you clearly are not.” She stripped out of her armor, letting it fall to the floor beside her in a bloody heap before kneeling, nude, to straddle him. As he groaned, she began to unfasten his armor. “Not yet. But you shall be.”
 

“No!” He struggled against her as she stripped him of his armor, then his clothing, just as she had already stripped him of his dignity.
 

She kept him pinned, her knees on his shoulders, as she undid the third braid of her own hair. While she despised the Way and all it represented, the hair of the Kreela was more than a mere adornment or vestige of evolution. The bonds were real, even among the honorless ones. With her talons, she severed a lock of hair from the braid, close to her scalp, grimacing at the unpleasant sensation that ran through her core.
 

What she was attempting was something that none had dared do since early in the Second Age. It was dark knowledge that had been buried deep in some of the most ancient Books of Time, kept in the mountain fortress of Ka’i-Nur in the heart of the great wastelands to the west. It was guarded by the seventh of the ancient orders. Unlike the other six, it had fallen from grace long ages ago. Few, even among the other orders, even remembered it. Only a handful of the curious or unlucky were foolhardy enough to try and cross the wastelands to find it. Fewer still ever returned.
 

Syr-Nagath had been born there. While she had been raised as a warrior, she had spent many an hour poring over the ancient tomes and pulling secrets from the tongues of the keepers. Vast riches of powerful knowledge were to be found. Much of it was dark, forbidden to the world beyond Ka’i-Nur’s walls. In past times, many had sought to destroy those Books of Time, which is why the surviving texts and keepers had been cloistered away in the ancient fortress.
 

Her mother had been the high priestess, although the title rang hollow. Unlike the other six orders, the Crystal of Souls that had once belonged to Ka’i-Nur had disappeared. None knew the fate that had befallen it. Without it, none who followed the order’s ancient ways could ever inherit the crystal’s special powers, as did the priesthoods of the other orders.
 

Syr-Nagath had been born of a Ka’i-Nur mother, but her father had been an Outsider, a pilgrim from the far southern lands of Ural-Murir on a quest for knowledge. He had met the fate of all but a few unfortunate enough to reach Ka’i-Nur: he had never been allowed to leave. The high priestess, on a whim, had taken him as a lover, and Syr-Nagath had been the product of the forced union. He had died in an attempt to escape soon thereafter.
 

When Syr-Nagath had been born, she had created something of a stir, for in appearance she was like the outsiders. This had given her mother the opportunity to attempt something that she and her forebears for generations had sought, the destruction of the outsiders.

Born of Ka’i-Nur, trained in combat and steeped in their ancient form of the Way, Syr-Nagath was sent out into the world of outsiders to wreak havoc.

And so she had.

With dawning horror, the acolyte began to snap his torso back and forth, desperately trying to throw her off.

She bared her fangs, an expression of humor, at his pathetic attempts to escape.
 

Using his own twisting motion against him, she easily flipped him over on his stomach before slamming a fist against the back of his head, stunning him. Then she removed the ring binding the stump of his third braid and carefully began weaving in her own hair.
 

When she was done, she drew a talon across her right palm, dripping the blood across the hair she had just weaved into his. Then she wrapped her hand around the splice, gripping it tight as the acolyte moaned beneath her. The binding grew warm, hot under her palm, just as her own body warmed, aroused by the young warrior pinned beneath her. Her breathing quickened as she anticipated the next part of the ritual, which demanded a more energetic consummation of their union.

The heat under her palm peaked, then began to cool. Removing her hand, she saw that her hair had been fused to his. She brushed away the blood, which was now dried. It flaked away. The hair she had spliced in had multiplied, and it continued to do so, growing longer, as well, before her eyes.

In but a few moments, his hair appeared normal under even the closest inspection.
 

And now she could sense him, as clearly as if she were looking in a mirror of her own feelings. She sat up, straddling his back, and shivered at the sensations of pain and despair that welled up from his heart. She could not sense the others of the Desh-Ka bloodline, for that had not been her intention. In fact, she did not desire such a union. Not yet. This ritual bound him to her alone, made him a slave to her will.

But the true test was not in what she could sense from him. Releasing him from his bindings, she rolled him over on his back before she straddled his waist, her heart beating quickly with anticipation.

His good eye flickered open, and he looked up at her, an expression of unutterable misery on his face.

“Tell me your name,” she asked again.

“Ria-Ka’luhr.” He closed his eye in shame.
 

“Love me,” she commanded, knowing that it was the most loathsome thing she could demand of him.

He tried to resist, but could not.
 

Reaching up with trembling hands, he took hold of her shoulders and pulled her down to lay on top of him, his lips parting to kiss her.

Syr-Nagath sighed with pleasure as their bodies became one, knowing that she now had the key that would help her destroy the Desh-Ka and upset the balance of power forever.

* * *

“You are bound to me now.”
 

Syr-Nagath’s whispered words burned Ria-Ka’luhr’s soul like acid, and he flinched as he felt her graceful talons drag gently down the skin of his chest in the aftermath of their union, the final consummation of the ritual she had performed. He could feel the hair of his third braid like a parasite on his skull, its teeth biting into his flesh, into his soul. His will was no longer his own.

He cursed the misfortune that had landed him here. He had been on his way from the lands of the far north, of eternal snow and ice, after fulfilling the last quest Ayan-Dar had set before him. He had been tasked with reaching a temple to the ancient gods that stood upon the tallest mountain at the top of the world. It was the greatest physical and mental challenge Ria-Ka’luhr had ever faced, and Ayan-Dar had warned him that few of the acolytes sent upon this particular challenge survived.

Undeterred, Ria-Ka’luhr set out on his mission, traveling north from the Desh-Ka temple. It took him over four months to reach the mountain on which the temple stood. There, he was forced to turn his
magtheps
free and continue alone, on foot.

After braving the frigid winds and climbing the seven thousand steps to the top of the great mountain, Ria-Ka’luhr finally reached the temple. Every moment of the four days it took him to climb to the top, the wind howled, spearing him with tiny daggers of ice as the cold sapped the life from this body. The air was so thin that he wheezed and gasped for every breath as he dug his feet and the talons of his hands into the frozen snow, forcing himself onward.

Freezing and near death, he reached the summit. There stood the temple, shrouded in blowing snow. Staggering to the white-crusted doorway, he had to use the handle of his sword to hammer the ice from the hinges and latch of the door. Just as he was about to give up, he was finally able to pry it open and crawl inside. With the last of his strength, he managed to close the door behind him, locking out the shrieking wind.

His skin blackened and frozen, he lay on the frost-rimed stone floor, shivering uncontrollably. The temple was little more than a circular room topped by a domed crystal ceiling that let in the milky light of the fading day. Ancient runes that he could not decipher were carved into the stone of the walls in orderly rows. Between them were faded frescoes depicting what he thought must be the gods of old.

But those were all things he noted subconsciously as he stared at what was in the center of the room. On a raised stone dais lay a sword that was the object of his quest.

“In the temple,” Ayan-Dar had told him, “you shall find a sword. Take it, and leave your own in its stead. Do this, and you will survive.”

With a groan, Ria-Ka’luhr had pulled himself along the floor, digging his scratched and frayed talons into the stone for purchase. The temple was small, perhaps four or five warriors heel to toe, but crossing the distance to reach the dais seemed as difficult as the climb up the mountain.

His sword was already in his hand from hammering the ice from the door. But it took some effort to free it, as it had frozen to his gauntlet.
 

Levering himself up on one elbow, he shoved his sword upon the dais before taking the other one.

Then he collapsed.

When he awoke, the temple was no longer freezing. It was warmed by glowing coals in a hearth that ran all the way around the base of the wall.

On the dais, the sword was gone, replaced by fresh meat, water, and a large flask of ale.
 

Peeling off his gauntlets, he looked at his hands. The flesh was no longer blackened by frostbite. Running his fingers over his face, his skin felt normal. On further reflection, after taking inventory of his body, he realized that his injuries had been healed.

At his side was the sword he had taken from the dais, the true object of his quest. There was nothing sacred about it, save that it had been left here by Ayan-Dar as a token of success, and as a reward. It was a fine sword, one crafted by the master armorer of the temple, a prize worthy of the hardships endured to take it.

He meditated on these things as he ate and drank, wondering how long he had been in the temple before he had awakened.
 

After one more night’s sleep, he began the perilous descent. While it was terribly difficult, he knew that he was stronger now, that he would make it home.

He had just emerged from the mountains, leaving behind the bitter cold, when he came upon a group of unfortunates, victims of a raid by honorless ones. He stopped to render what aid he could, not realizing until it was too late that he had been deceived.

The young female warrior he had knelt down to tend to reached out to hold his hand and thank him. One of her talons grazed his skin, and he instantly felt a numbness that quickly began to spread.

She had smeared some venom from a small predator on her talon. In sufficient quantity, the venom quickly killed. Used in just the right amount, it would merely paralyze.