Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (37 page)

Taking her finger from her mouth, she ordered, “Continue on to Ka’i-Nur at best speed.”

***

Keel-Tath awoke to the smell of molten metal and burning flesh. What was left of the bridge, which was located deep in the heart of the great warship, was a smoldering shambles. The entire compartment was askew, the armor and framing that surrounded it crushed inward by the great blow the ship had taken.The walls still glowed, but provided only faint illumination through the smoke that swirled through the air. The part of her mind that was not still in shock was amazed that the command deck had not been opened to vacuum, but the ship’s hull, which was made of living metal, must have managed to seal off this section in time to save their lives.
 

But not all had been saved. She was lying on her back, and as she rolled over, grimacing from the pain of half a dozen shrapnel wounds in her chest and arms and a searing burn that had singed the back of her left leg, she came face to face with Alena-Khan. Or, rather, what was left of her. Her body had been sheared off below the rib cage as if cut through by a great sword, and her sightless eyes stared into Keel-Tath’s. Beside her lay the priest who had just come from his watch over Ka’i-Nur, a metal shaft as thick as his arm driven through his heart.

“Oh, no,” Keel-Tath whispered as she reached out and tenderly closed Alena-Khan’s eyes. “No.”

The priestess was not the only one for whom death had come. In the dim hazy light, most of the bridge crew had shared the same fate, their bodies torn or crushed.
 

“Keel-Tath!”

She looked up to see Ka’i-Lohr crawling toward her out of the smoke. The two embraced for a long moment. “You are ever here to protect me,” Keel-Tath whispered, hugging him fiercely.

“Even death could not keep me from you,” he told her softly as his eyes locked with hers.

In that moment, amidst the tragedy and uncertainty whirling around her, Keel-Tath leaned forward and kissed him. It was not merely a brush of her lips against his, but a full kiss, bearing the passion and longing that had been building up within her. She felt a momentary pang of guilt, for in her heart of hearts she imagined that she was kissing Tara-Khan, but he was gone. Her heart had to move beyond the past and look toward the future.

Quickly overcoming his initial shock, Ka’i-Lohr returned the kiss with equal passion. It was a moment Keel-Tath wanted to last forever, but that, of course, was not to be.

“Mistress.”

Reluctantly parting from Ka’i-Lohr, she turned to find Dara-Kol, who was eyeing Ka’i-Lohr with a stony gaze. Whether her expression was because of the intimacy they had just shared or something else, Keel-Tath did not know.

“Are you wounded?” Dara-Kol asked, shifting her attention back to Keel-Tath.

“Yes,” Keel-Tath told her, “but I shall live. You?”

“Aside from my head ringing, I appear to be unscathed.”

“What of the others?” Keel-Tath peered through the smoke. “Sian-Al’ai! Drakh-Nur!”

“Mistress!”

“Drakh-Nur!” Keel-Tath called back, her heart relieved to hear the deep voice of her longtime friend. “Are you all right? Is Sian-Al’ai with you?”

“Yes…” He paused. “And yes. But we must help the priestess. Quickly.”

Ignoring the pain of her own wounds, Keel-Tath led the others to where Drakh-Nur knelt beside Sian-Al’ai. She had received a terrible blow to the head, which was bad enough. Worse, she was pinned to the deck by a support frame that had come crashing through the ceiling. Had she been conscious, she might have been able to simply whisk herself to safety. But as it was, she was helpless and bleeding badly from where a piece of the framework had pierced her abdomen.
 

Drakh-Nur made to lift the enormous metal brace, but Keel-Tath said, “No. Step aside and allow me. You pull her out from under it.”
 

Keel-Tath looked upon the metal that pinned the priestess to the deck. Extending her hand, she turned her palm up and slowly raised her arm. The metal shuddered, then began to rise. Ka’i-Lohr knelt next to Sian-Al’ai and helped guide the metal from her body, then pressed his hand over the wound to staunch the flow of blood, then moved along beside her as Drakh-Nur pulled her to safety.

Lowering her hand, Keel-Tath carefully set the metal back down on the deck. Kneeling beside the wounded priestess, she placed her hand on Sian-Al’ai’s cheek. The priestess moaned as, right before the eyes of those who were witness, her wounds closed and her body was healed. In but a few moments, her eyes blinked open.

“Arise, my priestess,” Keel-Tath said, and Sian-Al’ai got to her knees.

Ka’i-Lohr took Keel-Tath’s arm. “Your wounds…”

She looked down to find her own injuries healing. Her body forced out the shrapnel, which fell to the floor, as her flesh knit itself back together and the skin drew shut. In but a few breaths, not even scars remained. The same was true of her leg: the seared skin sloughed away, to be replaced by new. The only evidence that she had been injured was the damage done to her armor and leatherite.

“And such is thy power for us to behold,” Dara-Kol whispered, bowing her head. Keel-Tath could sense a fierce joy radiating from her before she added, “I wish your honored father and mother could see you now.”

Putting a hand on her friend and protector’s shoulder, Keel-Tath said, “They can. I…I feel them sometimes. Ayan-Dar comes to me in my dreams. I used to think that I must simply have been imagining him, but I now believe he is real, that his spirit lives on. He said there is a veil between life and death, and that he still exists on this side, while the others who have moved on from this life are on the other. But I sometimes can sense them in my blood. And I have felt the touch of Kunan-Lohr and Ulana-Tath.”

“I believe you,” Dara-Kol told her, even as the others looked away, expressions of skepticism on their faces.

The gravity field fluctuated, and Keel-Tath felt for a moment as if she had stepped into thin air before the gravity stabilized.

“We must leave this ship,” Dara-Kol said. “It is lost. What are your orders, mistress?”

Keel-Tath held up her hand to forestall further questions as she closed her eyes. Reaching outward with her mind’s eye, she looked upon the battle. Her fleet still fought valiantly, but in the end she knew it would lose. Even though her ships were superior, Syr-Nagath’s numbers were simply too overwhelming.
 

Just as overwhelming was the cloud of enemy warriors sailing through the ether like seeds upon the wind, their bodies encased in sparkling energy bubbles. Ships of both sides ceased fire, lest they hit the attacking warriors. They would be welcomed with sword and claw, and melee combat would give her fleet that much more time. Many of the enemy were headed for her own ship, and would somehow have to be dealt with. While she wanted to take them into her fold, she knew now that they simply would not have the time.

For her primary goal must be to stop Syr-Nagath, who was fleeing in her flagship for the Homeworld that glowed bright below them. She was no doubt heading down to put a stop to the mysterious attack that had been launched against Ka’i-Nur. She had to face Syr-Nagath on the field of battle and satisfy honor as demanded by the Way, and now that Ka’i-Nur itself had become a battleground, the door of opportunity had finally been opened.

“Mistress,” Dara-Kol whispered, “we must leave this hulk and get you to safety.”

Taking a deep breath and opening her eyes, Keel-Tath calmly met her gaze and smiled. “No, my First. We are precisely where we must be. Pass this message along to the warriors aboard: our swords are about to fall upon Ka’i-Nur!”

CHAPTER THIRTY

For all the warriors that must have been sent forth from Ka’i-Nur during the war, there yet seemed to be an inexhaustible supply in the underground city. They streamed upward along the enormous spiral stairway in a torrent, and would have quickly overwhelmed Tara-Khan and his warriors were it not for the robed ones. When the first wave of Ka’i-Nur warriors crashed against the honorless ones, the builders thought to transform the staircase below where Tara-Khan and the first rank stood. Instead of stone steps, the defending Ka’i-Nur warriors suddenly found themselves on a slick surface that followed the steep angle of the spiral stairs. Flailing and howling with impotent rage, they began to slide back down the way they had just come. Some took hold of the railings and began to haul themselves back up until an enterprising builder transformed the stone of the railing into water. Those warriors fell to their doom far below, and the porters of water then bent the liquid to their will and used it to hammer the defenders back like a great watery fist. After witnessing this, Tara-Khan ordered a handful of builders with a warrior escort to circle the atrium that opened onto the stairway at each level, transforming every door into solid stone and closing off any hallways to make it more difficult for the enemy to attack the group from behind.
 

And so they fought their way down, warriors and robed ones together, deeper and deeper into the great underground city. It was slow, arduous, exhausting work, especially for the robed ones, for their powers were not without limit. Every time they bent the world around them to their will, their bodies were robbed of precious energy, and most were already exhausted from the trek up the side of the volcano. Little more than a third of the way down they began to falter. Some collapsed unconscious, others fell dead, the strength of their bodies completely spent. As the robed ones fell, the advance began to grind to a halt.

Tara-Khan felt each of their spirits pass from this world. Whether they went into the glow of the Afterlife or the endless dark that was said to await those whose braids had been cut, he could not say, for he could not see what lay beyond the veil between life and death. The sensation of their spirits passing was like breaths of wind across his soul, and he could not now spare the time to honor them. His world had shrunk to the distance he could kill with his sword or the power of lightning from his hands, which he used as sparingly as possible. For while he had the powers of the Desh-Ka, his body was nonetheless mortal. He was weak and growing weaker, but he was determined that he would not fall until he had opened the portal to the Ka’i-Nur Crystal of Souls. His only fear was that Keel-Tath would not know to come.

A terrible roar filled the enormous stairway shaft, and the combatants of both sides froze. Another roar sounded, even louder but clearly from a different bestial throat. Both came from somewhere above them. A moment later a third roar echoed down the well, followed by a skittering
tic-tic-tic
of diamond hard claws on stone.
 

“
Genoth!
” A voice whispered into the sudden silence that had fallen.

Tara-Khan remembered the tale of Ayan-Dar’s battle with a genoth in this very place, and how the great priest had barely survived. And now, somewhere up above, the Ka’i-Nur builders must have remade the doorways to release not one, not two, but three of the terrifying beasts upon Tara-Khan and his companions.

That single word broke the spell. The Ka’i-Nur warriors turned and tried to flee down the stairs, their ranks and discipline disintegrating at the fear of being mauled or eaten. The uppermost ranks were pushing and shoving those below when the rest of the railing encircling the staircase down to the next level turned to dust under the hands of a pair of Tara-Khan’s builders. Dozens of Ka’i-Nur warriors fell, and their screams were answered by hungry bellows from the huge carnivores clambering down the stairs from above.

“Pursue them!” Tara-Khan ordered, pointing toward the fleeing Ka’i-Nur as he nodded his thanks at the pair of builders, who were now slumped against the floor, exhausted. They lay there, catching their breath, while his warriors swept down upon the retreating rabble, hacking and slashing at the retreating enemy.

“What of the genoths?”
 

Tara-Khan turned to find Sar-Ula’an beside him, with a dozen warriors from his clan just behind. Sar-Ula’an was older, at least in terms of the cycles since his birth, yet had an air of youth about him that Tara-Khan found refreshing.
 

The two cringed as a deafening roar filled the shaft. With his second sight, Tara-Khan could see the great beasts, and how close they had come. Looking up, his eyes were guided by his ears as the first beast’s claws clicked on the stone of the section of stairway directly above them.

“We shall hold them off,” Sar-Ula’an said. “It shall be our honor to…”

“No,” a voice said quietly from behind them. “It shall be ours.”

Tara-Khan and Sar-Ula’an turned to find the two builders who had just swept the Ka’i-Nur warriors to their deaths back on their feet. A male and female, they were clearly exhausted, perhaps even near death.
 

“You shall need all the warriors guarding you when you reach the final level,” the male said. “We know what you intend, what you must do. We will be useless in that battle. But we can fight this one.”

“But you have no weapons!” Sar-Ula’an protested. “How can you kill such beasts?”

The female grinned, her fangs glistening in the soft light emanating from the smooth black walls around them. “We may not have swords, but ask the Ka’i-Nur warriors if we are helpless.”

“They are right,” Tara-Khan admitted, his admiration for the robed ones growing ever more. “Lead your warriors down, Sar-Ula’an. We must take every advantage of the fear among the Ka’i-Nur to drive as deep as we can before they think to rally. We must reach the bottom level, and soon, if we are to succeed.”

Sar-Ula’an saluted. “It shall be as you say.” Then he turned and led the others down to where the bulk of their warriors were pressing hard against the fleeing Ka’i-Nur.

“I would know your names,” Tara-Khan said quietly as the first genoth poked its head around the curve of the staircase, staring at them with glowing yellow eyes.

“I am Tesh-Uran,” said the male with a wan smile, “and this is Hul-Rai, my mate.”

“Your names shall be revered in the Books of Time until the day the light of the last star in the sky goes out,” Tara-Khan told them softly.