Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (7 page)

CHAPTER SIX

Syr-Nagath shivered in orgasmic ecstasy as she saw and felt the deaths of the Desh-Ka priests and priestesses through Ka’i-Lohr’s eyes and the song of his blood that was tied to hers through dark and ancient magic. Sitting in the chair that had once been the throne of the kingdom of Ku’ar-Amir, she threw her head back and moaned, gripping the arms of the throne so tight that her talons left deep scars in the wood. Heat exploded in her core and flooded her loins, and she shivered and trembled as her body succumbed to the exquisite pleasure as the Desh-Ka died.
 

Ulan-Samir stared at the Dark Queen as she moaned. He had never in his long years seen such a display, and he felt a stab of shame that he had allied himself with such a horrid creature. “It is for the sake of the Way,” he whispered to himself.

“My priest?”

Ulan-Samir shook his head at the question asked by the queen’s First. “It is not your concern,” Ulan-Samir told him. “I take my leave.” He had seen with his second sight the impending destruction of the Desh-Ka. Syr-Nagath would have been content to exterminate all who had called the temple home, but to Ulan-Samir that was an unacceptable waste. The destruction of the priesthood was, of course, a necessity, but the robed ones, particularly the keepers of the Desh-Ka Books of Time, were invaluable. Any acolytes who were still alive could pledge their honor to him without shame, and their swords and skills would be warmly welcomed into the Nyur-A’il. He simply had to get there before the other priesthoods decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

With one last look at Syr-Nagath, suppressing a tingling sensation of his own desire, he departed from the great hall.

***

Keel-Tath lay on the collar-strewn ground, curled into a ball as the black wind swept across her, flaying her alive. She had thought at first that the black motes that rode the wind were nothing more than tiny flecks of the obsidian glass that was all that remained of the moon’s surface, but she had been dreadfully mistaken. Every tiny particle, smaller than the finest grain of sand, seemed to be alive. Like ravenous parasites, they bit and dug deeper, eating away her skin before tearing into the muscle that lay beneath. More of the death-filled wind had filled her nose and her mouth, crowded into her ears, and swept across the tender skin of her eyelids, intent on consuming her from the inside out.

The pain was horrific, but not nearly so much as knowing that she had failed, that she would perish here. All who had suffered in her name had done so in vain, all who had died at the Dark Queen’s hands, would never be avenged. She cried out for Ayan-Dar to save her, but only the black wind answered, pouring more of the black particles into her already ravaged mouth and throat.

As she spiraled toward the blissful relief of unconsciousness that would soon be followed by death, she was flooded with a wave of agony that transcended any physical pain. She felt as if a giant had reached his hand into the tree of her soul to tear it out, root and branch. The song in her blood roiled as seventeen of its greatest voices were suddenly silenced. More voices were lost, and then she felt a flare of white hot agony from the spiritual voices of the Desh-Ka who still survived.

Staggering to her feet in the wailing gale, the blood that poured from her body swept away in a fine mist that was consumed by the motes, she raised her arms to the sky that she no longer had eyes to see. She opened her mouth, breathed in deep, inviting more of the motes into her body, and screamed. At first it was a scream of anguish, of loss. Then it became a rage-filled wail that exploded from her bleeding lungs.

A torrent of lightning burst from her hands. Had any of the priests or priestesses of the Desh-Ka been witness to the spectacle, they would have fallen to their knees, struck dumb with awe. The power that Keel-Tath sent into the angry black cloud around her was more than the entire priesthood at its height, all working in unison, could have conjured forth.
 

More and more energy poured from her tattered body as she channeled the power of the Desh-Ka Crystal of Souls. Had the energy been focused at a single point, it could have driven a sun-hot spear right to the moon’s cold heart, shattering it like a glass marble struck with a mighty hammer. Instead, it swirled around her in a mimicry of the black wind, which now howled at incredible speed across the moon’s surface from every point of the compass, drawn to her like iron dust to an irresistibly powerful magnet.

The storm of lightning and dark matter became a colossal funnel cloud whirling above her, its power holding what was left of her body upright while she, in turn, somehow kept it rooted to the ground. She had stopped screaming, for her lungs had been sundered and she no longer had breath to give. Her heart, attacked by the vicious particles, gave a last shuddering beat before it hung still in her chest. Her mind floated in the center of the growing maelstrom, for in that one place could she find peace.

It was then that the tiny black motes began to bind themselves to the lightning that yet crackled from her hands, still growing in intensity. Flaring in brief white sparks, the transformed motes began to fall from the cloud like a galaxy of tiny stars shining against the glossy black obsidian of the moon’s surface.
 

More and more of the white stars flared into life, many of them traveling down the funnel toward her as if seeking out the source of the energy that had given them life. As they englobed her in blinding luminescence, the pain in her body eased, then disappeared, replaced by a comforting warmth. Where the black motes had torn her apart bit by tiny bit, so the white motes rebuilt her. Her heart began to beat again, and her lungs drew breath. Her flesh and skin were again made whole, as were her eyes and mouth.
 

An intense sensation of heat, not enough to cause pain, around her neck drew her attention. Reaching with unsure hands, she felt something that had not been there before. It was a smooth round band, a collar. As she ran her fingertips along its smooth surface, the heat quickly faded.

Opening her eyes, she saw the walls of the funnel cloud swirling around her at an impossible speed, about as far away as the edge of the crater had been when she had come to this spot. But the crater was no longer there. She stood, instead, on a field of stars that looked exactly the same as they might had she been suspended deep in space. But this was so clear, the stars — every one unique — so bright, she felt she could reach out and touch them with her fingers.

“What we accomplished in ages past,” a familiar voice said, “you will multiply a thousand fold, perhaps more.”

Keel-Tath turned to see Anuir-Ruhal’te standing beside her. “Are you here?" she asked. “Are you real?”

With a sad smile, the ancient oracle said, “I am only an echo of what I once was, my only purpose to await your coming.”

Reaching out a hand, Keel-Tath tried to touch her ancient progenitor, but her hand passed through Anuir-Ruhal’te as if she were nothing but mist. “What is this place?” Keel-Tath whispered. “All thought it destroyed at the end of the Final Annihilation.”

“That was as it had to be,” the ghost said. “It was a terrible sacrifice that those who remained here chose to make, even after my own death on the Homeworld. You see, I had sown the seeds of your coming into the bloodlines of our people, but I knew you would need a sanctuary from those who would deny you. But to do what I had planned required vast energies that could only be unleashed by the most terrible weapons of our time. There was no other way.”

“The moon’s destruction,” Keel-Tath said, a chill running through her bones. “You planned it?”

“No, child, we did not plan it. None of those here, my compatriots, wished to die. But by that time in the war, our defeat was an inevitability that we chose to use to our advantage. The full destructive might of the Settlements, more power than you can yet imagine, was focused here. When our defenses collapsed, as we had foreseen, the moon’s surface was destroyed and all who remained here perished. But the energy that swept the surface was only a fraction of what the enemy expended. The rest was harnessed to transform this moon into a great engine that would answer only to you, and to defend itself from all others.”

“An engine? For what purpose?”

“For whatever purpose you desire,” Anuir-Ruhal’te said. Her body was fading now, becoming translucent, and the blanket of stars were going out, as if the universe itself was dying.

Even knowing that her ancient mother was not real, Keel-Tath still reached for her. “No, do not leave me!”

“It is all up to you now, precious daughter.”

Keel-Tath shook her head. “But what must I do?”
 

There was no answer. Anuir-Ruhal’te was gone.

As she stood there, feeling utterly helpless, the funnel cloud slowed, then stopped. The towering storm of black particles lost their momentum and hung in the sky as if vexed by indecision.

Then the cloud collapsed to the ground around her. But the motes did not simply float back to the ground as if they were dust. They rocketed into the moon’s glassine surface, throwing up geysers of shattered obsidian.

Keel-Tath was thrown to the ground as the moon shook, and she put her hands over her ears as thunder roared through the atmosphere. She was bruised and cut, her body tossed about as the ground shuddered.

The moon’s surface suddenly fell away. Taking her hands from her ears, she dug her talons into the fractured glass of the mound on which she lay that had been at the center of the crater. But the crater itself was gone, as was the rest of the moon. She felt unusually heavy, as if the gravity of the glassine mound had inexplicably increased.

Crawling nearer the edge of the mound, or what was left of it, her eyes widened as she realized the truth: the moon had not fallen away. She was being propelled upward, higher and higher, on a titanic pillar that was being thrust upward by some unimaginable force below the moon’s surface. Looking down and outward, she gasped at what she saw happening below.

The moon was being transformed. A black cloud was again rising, one that obscured the surface to every distant horizon. As the cloud rose higher, the black motes at the very top vanished. Even as they disappeared, the color of the atmosphere deepened and Keel-Tath gradually found it easier to breathe.
 

The rumbling and shaking stopped as the pillar slowed to a halt. Now it began to shake, leaning to and fro as the ground around it began to break up, shattering into massive chunks that were momentarily buoyed up by a growing sea of dark matter, blacker than the obsidian itself, that welled up from the depths. It took Keel-Tath a moment to realize that the smooth black sea that swelled around the gray chunks of obsidian was made up of more motes.
 

As she watched, the rocks began to disintegrate. For a league or more around her vantage point, the mote sea consumed everything, until the surface was smooth and glossy as the breastplate of a warrior’s ceremonial armor.

All was still for a brief time, as if the motes were gathering their energy. She could feel it, like the moon itself now had a voice in the Bloodsong. The idea was preposterous, for only those with souls had blood that sang, but it was every bit as real as the blood that flowed from the cuts on her exposed skin. It thrummed with power, with purpose. That power grew and grew, and she realized it was waiting for something.
 

It was waiting for her.
For whatever purpose you desire
, Anuir-Ruhal’te had said.
 

Closing her eyes, she fastened on an image she had seen as a child, sitting on Ayan-Dar’s knee while he pored through some of the ancient Books of Time with the temple’s keepers.
 

The dark sea around her rippled and shimmered. Then the motes, the black matrix that Anuir-Ruhal’te had created and that had awaited Keel-Tath across all these millennia, began to build.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When Ulan-Samir, high priest of the Nyur-A’il, and his accompanying priests and priestesses arrived, they were shocked at how effective had been Syr-Nagath’s attack. He had not believed her when she had told him that the Desh-Ka had been defeated in ages past, but he could not now deny that it could be done. Of course, it had been done in a fashion bereft of the smallest shred of honor, but that stain was not on his hands.
 

As if the dying Desh-Ka under their dome of lightning were a magnet to all who wore a sigil upon their collar, the most high of the other priesthoods arrived in short order, along with a contingent of their orders, all prepared to do battle.
 

In unspoken agreement, the five of the most high converged to confer as thousands of globes of energy continued to batter at the Desh-Ka defenses. The air was filled with the reek of ozone, scorched stone, and burning flesh.

Determined to make his claim upon the robed ones first, Ulan-Samir said, “I care not for those who wear the sigil, but I would offer the robed ones the chance to surrender their honor to me, and any acolytes who would give me their swords.”

“You presume a great deal,” said the most high of the Ana’il-Rukh. “The Desh-Ka must be eliminated, root and branch. This plateau and everything on it should be reduced to molten stone. As long as one survives, especially the keepers of the Books of Time, so then survives the Desh-Ka. Their time has ended, and so must they.”

“That is as we agreed,” said another. “We must not…”

Ulan-Samir rounded on them. “I agreed to nothing! Now you come here, squabbling like ill-disciplined younglings.” He gestured with a hand at the dome of lightning, which was visibly growing thinner, covered with white hot burn-throughs where the globes struck. The holes were quickly covered over by more lightning, but it was growing ever thinner, ever weaker. The defenders were visible only as shadows behind the crackling cyan veil. As long as that barrier remained, the priesthoods could not touch those on the other side, for the energy somehow blocked their powers of teleportation. But it was clear that the Desh-Ka could not hold out much longer. “They are doomed,” Ulan-Samir went on, “but the robed ones are precious. It is against the Way to take their lives. That which you so ardently defend on the one hand, you would now defile with the other.”