Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (46 page)

At long last, her daughter emerged in a final rush that left Keel-Tath gasping for breath. The healer carefully cleaned the child in the water and cut the cord with a quick movement of one of his talons. A second healer, a female, spread out a thin layer of healing gel upon the surface of the water, and it coated the child as the elder healer lifted her free. He flicked the bottom of one of the child’s feet, eliciting her first cry. A few moments later, the child coughed, delivering up the healing gel from her body after it had done its work.

Satisfied that the child was healthy, the elder healer carefully put the child in Keel-Tath’s arms. “With what name shall you bless this child?" he asked.

With a look at Tara-Khan, who nodded, she said, “I would name her Ulana-Khan, after my mother and my consort, her father.”

“May her Way be long and glorious,” the healers and the eldest keeper of the Books of Time, who was witness to the birth, replied.

“She is beautiful,” Tara-Khan whispered as he looked upon his daughter, the child of the First Empress. “Of all the powers with which you have been endowed, this is without question the greatest.”
 

“They both must rest now, Tara-Khan,” the elder healer, who was also the greatest of his caste, told him. “Empress or no, the rigors of birth demand their due.” He favored the Empress with a sympathetic look. “Her labor was far more difficult than we would have wished.”

“With that, I would not argue.” Leaning down, Tara-Khan gave Keel-Tath a quick kiss. “I shall look in upon you when the healers allow.”

She managed a smile as he got to his feet. “That may not be until the next great eclipse, my love.”

Smiling in return, he looked one last time upon his daughter, this new life that they had created together, before turning to leave.

In another chamber of the Empress’s suite waited a host of the most high of their people, including the high priests and priestesses of the six surviving orders and the most high among all the robed castes. The gathering fell silent as he entered, all eyes turning to him.
 

“I ask that you welcome our daughter, Ulana-Khan, into the world,” he told them, knowing that they had already sensed her arrival in the Bloodsong.

“
Ulana-Khan! May her Way be long and glorious!
” The crowd rendered a solemn solute before sending up a cheer.

It was then that Tara-Khan noticed that Ka’i-Lohr was absent. As he began to grow concerned, the great doors opened and Ka’i-Lohr looked in. He made an urgent gesture for Tara-Khan to join him.

“What is it, my tresh?” Tara-Khan said quietly after they retired to a private anteroom off the main corridor, which was also filled with well-wishers.
 

“Syr-Nagath lives.”

Tara-Khan was stunned to his core, his mouth dropping open in shock and disbelief. “Impossible,” he breathed.
 

“It is true. There can be no doubt, and she is here in the palace, with plans to kill the Empress.”

“We must summon the Imperial Guard,” Tara-Khan growled, turning to the door.

“No!” Ka’i-Lohr grabbed his tresh’s arm. “Many among the guards and even the priesthoods have been suborned by some dark magic she has cast upon them, I know not how or when. No one can be trusted. We cannot risk alerting any who are in the presence of the Empress that we know what is happening. We must trust that those of the priesthoods — any who have not been turned — will defend her while we deal with the Dark Queen.”

Tara-Khan put his hands on his tresh’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes, into his soul. “How do you come to know these things?”

Ka’i-Lohr lowered his head in shame. “Long ago, I was taken by the Dark Queen and tortured. She worked the same magic upon me, blending some of her hair with mine, to control me. I escaped her after I managed to cut out the offending strands of hair.” He looked up, his eyes pleading. “I never told you because…” He choked up. “Because of the things she did to me, which none should ever have to suffer. You cannot imagine my shame.”
 

“I wish you had told me before, my brother,” Tara-Khan told him, recalling Ria-Ka’luhr’s horrible tale of his time under the Dark Queen’s spell. Tara-Khan knew from the song of Ka’i-Lohr’s heart that what he said was true. Ka’i-Lohr had long lived and fought beside Keel-Tath, and had he ever wished to cause her harm, he could have on countless occasions when she had been far more vulnerable. “No one should have to bear such a burden alone.”

“That means more to me than you know.” He took a shuddering breath before going on. Leaning closer, he explained, “I saw a warrior such as I was, here in the palace. Once so taken by Syr-Nagath, you can see others who have suffered the same, and who have what I can only describe as a dark aura about them. I followed him and saw him meet with a female wearing the robes of a builder, who was hiding in a remote part of the palace. It was she! I am sure of it. I followed them to another chamber where they met with some from among the Imperial Guard.” He paused. “Drakh-Nur was among them. I saw more, but could not make out their faces. And I saw two from the priesthoods, but I did not see their faces or recognize them. When their conclave broke up and they began to return to their duties, I came back here as quickly as I could to find you. I could trust no one else.”

Thinking furiously, Tara-Khan asked, “But how did Syr-Nagath escape Keel-Tath’s notice? Surely the Empress would have heard her spirit in the Bloodsong.”

“Not if Syr-Nagath severed the Braid of the Covenant,” Ka’i-Lohr reminded him. “Her spirit would be all but invisible even to Keel-Tath.”

The mere thought sent a chill down Tara-Khan’s spine. He had lived through that horror, and only regained what he had lost through Keel-Tath’s healing redemption. It had been a nightmarish existence, but if he had survived, so could Syr-Nagath.

“Take me to her,” Tara-Khan said. “We must end whatever she plans before it begins. Keel-Tath is terribly weak after the birth of our daughter, and we must not leave her vulnerable any longer than we must to any conspirators.” He frowned. “I wish I could see this place in your mind so I could take us there directly. That would save precious time.”

“I, too, wish I had such a power,” Ka’i-Lohr told him, “but it was a part of the palace I had never before visited.”

That, Tara-Khan thought grimly, could be nearly anywhere. The huge construct that was the palace had only grown larger in the cycles since Keel-Tath had summoned it forth from the dead moon, with ever more rooms and chambers appearing. Worse, sometimes the palace rearranged parts of itself, and he sometimes wondered if it did not react to Keel-Tath’s unspoken wishes or even subconscious dreams. “Then let us go.”

Through the maze of halls, great and small, they ran. They used the ingenious transport platforms of the builders when they could, but the devices did not reach everywhere.
 

At last, well over a league from the Empress’s chambers, they reached a landing that overlooked a small plaza in the shape of an oval that was home to a garden of vivid red and blue flowers. Archways framed the darkened halls that opened onto the plaza at each point of the compass, and vines covered the walls that led up to the mezzanine that joined the landing upon which they now stood. Benches of stone and wood, shaped in graceful curves, were laid out in the best spots to view the flower beds.
 

Upon one of them, facing away, sat a female in the robes of a builder, her hood pulled over her head.

“You should not have come, young fools,” she called softly, her voice sending a sliver of ice through Tara-Khan’s heart. He involuntarily clenched his hands into iron-hard fists.
 

“It is you who should not have come,” he spat. Knowing he was stepping into some sort of trap, but not seeing any alternative but to spring it, he took Ka’i-Lohr’s shoulder and whisked them through space to the garden below, where they now stood facing the greatest enemy their kind had ever known.

“Tara-Khan,” the Dark Queen whispered from beneath the dark folds of her hood. “You who have the powers of a priest, powers you never earned in the temple. The consort of the so-called
Empress
,” she hissed, “who now has given birth to a squealing whelp.”

His heart consumed with an ice cold rage, Tara-Khan drew his sword, as did Ka’i-Lohr, who stood behind him, guarding his back. “I would cut out your tongue for such words, but it will be easier to cut off your head.”

“But if you do that, child, you will never know the secret.”

“And what secret is that?” As he spoke, shadows emerged from the dark entrances to the garden. Dozens of warriors came forth to form a circle around them. Some, Tara-Khan recognized. Others, he did not. He was horrified that she had created so many disciples, and was even more horrified that Keel-Tath, despite all her powers, had not been able to sense their existence, even though several of them stood in her presence nearly every day. His hand tightened around the handle of his sword and cyan lightning began to dance along the palm of his free hand.

“That your beloved will soon be dead, and your child shall be raised as mine own.”

“You jest, Syr-Nagath.” He looked around at her minions. “These are all you found to stand against me?”

Laughing, she got to her feet and approached him, using her hands to guide the tip of his sword to her mouth, where she licked the blade, drawing blood from her tongue. “I do not need them to defeat you,” she said as she took the blade and pressed it against her cheek, still shrouded in shadow, drawing more blood. She closed her hands around the shimmering metal and stared into his eyes, her glowing irises all he could see beneath the hood. “All I need is
this
.”

In the blink of an eye, the blade turned an inky, light-drinking black, as if it were now made of obsidian. Before Tara-Khan could react, even swift as he was, the sword handle fused to his gauntlets, and a spiderweb of living metal exploded over his armor, fusing it solid. Not only did the glittering web completely immobilize him, but some force within it blocked his powers, preventing him from stepping through space to escape. He tried to blast his way out with the lightning that dwelled within him, but cried out in pain as the energy instead burned his hands.

“What dark magic is this?" he cried.

“It is the power of Ka’i-Nur,” she said, letting go his sword and pulling back her hood.

“What?" he gasped in shock. “But you are not…”

His words were cut off by the blade that burst from his chest. Stunned with surprise as much as agony, he screamed as the sword was twisted, then brutally sawed back and forth, the serrated upper edge ripping through organs and bone. A foot slammed into his back, driving him face first to the ground as the sword was ripped out.
 

Someone used a foot to flip him over, and he found himself staring up into the face of Ka’i-Lohr, who looked down upon him with an expression of utter hatred.
 

“My…tresh…” Tara-Khan managed, blood running from his mouth. “Why?”

“Because Keel-Tath is
mine!
” With a bellow of long suppressed rage, Ka’i-Lohr drove his sword through Tara-Khan’s belly, burying the tip in the soft soil of the garden beneath. Then he leaned down and severed Tara-Khan’s Braid of the Covenant.

Tara-Khan’s last thought before darkness took him was an image of Keel-Tath and his newborn daughter, floating in a pool of blood.
 

***

Drakh-Nur knew something was wrong. He could feel it, although he could not have explained how. Beneath the revelry over the birth of the daughter of the Empress, he could sense something dark and sinister.
 

The departure of Tara-Khan and Ka’i-Lohr, without a word to anyone else, also gave him cause for concern. He tried to tell himself that, had anything been amiss, he, Drakh-Nur, would have been the first to be involved, for he was captain of the Imperial Guard. It was largely a ceremonial assignment, an honor from the Empress bestowed upon the seven hundred warriors who served in it, for the Empress no longer had any enemies, and was certainly more than capable of protecting herself.

Now…now, he was not so sure. The Empress and her child were resting peacefully in care of the healers, and a host of warriors and robed ones remained in her chambers, including Dara-Kol, Sian-Al’ai, and two others of the priesthood. All was as it should be. And yet it was not. He stood there, a victim of the unaccustomed sensation of indecision.

“Enough of this.” Angry with himself for not simply acting, he knelt before his sleeping Empress and saluted before turning for the door.
 

Sar-Ula’an, his First, who was posted outside with a quartet of warriors from the Guard, saluted and fell into a double step beside him to keep up with the giant warrior’s stride.
 

“Summon the warriors of the first century,” Drakh-Nur ordered, “and have them meet us in the main junction at the base of the throne. The remaining centuries are to reinforce the guards for the Empress’s quarters and the palace creche.”

With a salute, a pair of warriors broke off at a run, acting now as couriers for their commander’s orders.

“What is wrong?” Sar-Ula’an asked, his face creased with worry. He had not seen Drakh-Nur like this since the last major battle they had fought together.

“Everything. And nothing.” He shook his head, wanting answers but having none. He sought out the voices of Tara-Khan and Ka’i-Lohr in the Bloodsong. While he could sense them, they were muffled, indistinct. “I do not know.”

The hundred warriors of the Imperial Guard’s first century were already waiting for them, assembled into perfect ranks, when they arrived.
 

“Come,” Drakh-Nur boomed as he passed the head of the formation at a run, and the warriors quickly fell in behind them.

“Where are we going?” Sar-Ula’an asked.

Drakh-Nur scowled. “I do not yet know.”
 

***

All Drakh-Nur had was intuition, so that was what he followed. He led the others deep into the palace, the strange sensation of dread growing with every step. He saw now, just ahead, a solitary female in builder’s robes who stood on the far side of an intersection. Raising his fist, he brought the warriors with him to a stop. “Who are you?”