Dreams of the Compass Rose (11 page)

Quickly, silently, he approached her, reached out for her, and then knew nothing for the duration of that embrace. Apathetic, her head lolled sideways, fell against his chest. He grabbed her by the hair then, to raise her head, and stared at her in the first light of dawn. . . .

In a hollowed face, deathly listless eyes. Lips dry and cracked, parched.

An imprint of thirty lashes somewhere on her back.

Slowly, she focused her gaze, as if only now realizing his presence. Something gurgled in her throat, maybe because death’s stranglehold around her windpipe was tightening, as death straddled her wounded back with its silver bone-thighs. “Talaq . . .” she whispered, “You killed . . . him . . . them.”

His whisper came urgent in retort. “It is the past, oh Ailsan, the past, now over . . . You are with me, I am your Lord, you hear, you can bear another child, strong, yes,
my
child. . . .”

With a surge of strength she drew away. Then she said in a loud cracking voice, “You slobbering pig. Unbelievable. After all you have done to us, you expect this from me?”

In animal reflex, he grabbed her by the throat, hissing, “Be silent!”

She laughed weakly, so much like the skeletal hag that was behind her. “Ah, yes. Now you are afraid your own men would know of this one small weakness of yours, is that so? Should I scream loudly and make them come running, and shame you before them? No, I don’t think it’s worth it.”

In answer, her arm was twisted painfully behind her torn savaged back. She did not blink, but continued smiling. Indeed, an odd fire had now come to her eyes.

“
Go on, break my limbs. It would take more than that to
break
me . . .” she whispered eagerly, with sudden raving energy. “Nothing now . . . Nothing left that can touch me. You’ve used up your last and greatest bargaining treasure, fool—my son. . . .”

“
I will tear you apart, bitch! I—”

“
Oh, is that so, brave goat? Then let me tell you—by gods, are you just blind, or a madman? Don’t you know, don’t you understand, I’m the one with power over
you,
can’t you
see
?” she went on fiercely.

“
A rabid bitch—”

Her teeth bared. “No, a jackal! Wild, yes, the last of my kind—you made me so—can you for a moment conceive it? Can you conceive being the last, the
only
—”

She broke off, just as suddenly becoming again like stone. “I am wasting words. Leave me,” her voice said tonelessly, oddly commanding, and she went permanently silent.

He slapped her again. And again. He tore the remainder of her clothes and his own, and with a grunt of fury he impaled her upon himself. He thrust his loins repeatedly in madness, while his teeth closed upon her throat, then crushed her lips, then his mouth kissed them, then again, wounded.

Only—it was like wounding mist. Or some other such insubstantiality.

She knew searing fire, a universe of pain, but she was a dead weight, already retreating inward, deep, to a place where even the death embracing her with sepulchral silver could not reach.

I am not here. I am.
 . . .

D
zieru, Archpriest of Gheir, was told to perform the Sacrifice before the sun set. Early that morning the
taqavor
had stalked madly into his presence, unusually disrespectful, and commanded the Full Ceremony before all the great armies of Gheir. The Risei bitch-queen, he cried, was to be deprived of her heart, the organ was to be cut into seven pieces, fed to camp dogs, and her body burned to a crisp, dedicated to the god of Conquest, Margh-Qa, the Apex One.

Dzieru took all this in calmly, noting the odd disheveled state, Cireive’s feverish eyes. It was true then, Ailsan, the fabled queen, had more power than he had expected. Already Cireive was thrown off balance, irreversibly changed.

He, Dzieru, must now go about it very firmly and dispose of her for good. It was not healthy, this effect on the
taqavor.

W
hy do I bother?
thought Ailsan. She was an empty husk left to wither, tied to the torture instrument.

The sun rose higher.
He
had abandoned her quickly after the rape, fearing to be seen, fearing to display weakness.

Here was peace. Long moments of it.

Why do I continue being? What does anything matter? Who am I? I no longer know.

Why? Why?

L
irheas, silent Prince of Gheir, touched a dull cold hand against the leather-wrapped handle of a tiny dagger in the secret lining of his trouser leg.

In his tent, alone, he brooded upon the justice of mercy killings. He had seen mares in pain, had himself put them out of their misery. It had not been easy for a youth, but it had been infinitely easier than watching them convulse. . . .

Now there was another in need of this. He looked out, moving the flap of the tent, at the slumped, no longer human form in the slithering daylight under the sun.

High noon over a great cool expanse.

No, I cannot. Not her.

T
he
taqavor
rode arrow-straight, magnificent in his armor, in review of his legions.

The sun rode high. Pennants and banners of deep crimson, white and gold shone in aerial glory among the ranks of glittering steel. . . .

The wind blowing in his face, caressing the pale strands of silk, his hair, caused his eyes to tear suddenly. His leathered glove tensed, gripping the war stallion’s reins, and he blinked only once.

Show no weakness. Show no.
 . . .

W
hen the sun came lower to the horizon, and the farthest reaches of the sky ripened to the color of persimmon and burned, Ailsan, once a queen of Risei, now queen of the dead, was escorted by guards to the small rocky hillock. The Gheir army stood tense all around, covering the plain as far as the horizon flowed unto fiery eternity.

As she walked, staggering, they opened ranks to make way for her in awed silence. A million staring eyes. Whisperings of “she.”

At the top of the rising stood the Archpriest. A few steps away, Cireive himself. All in black silhouette.

Drums rolled, and a low eerie wailing began. The entire army then seemed to sink, a field of black grass cut down, as the soldiers of Gheir went on their knees before the Sacrifice of Margh-Qa.

Ailsan gathered herself with a supreme act of will. No longer staggering, she now walked without weakness, a stone among stones. Cireive, his fine pale hair moving in the wind, was another stone. Impassive, he watched her stop.

The low monotone voice of Dzieru began a hypnotic incantation. Clad in voluminous dark, in a multiplicity of illusory veils cast before the eyes, the Archpriest was terrifying to the Gheir.

Out of nowhere, a sudden force, inevitable like the wind, compelled Ailsan to fall down on her knees, her head lowered before Cireive. She lay at his feet swooning, and death lay on top of her, covering her back, shifting its infinite gray weight.

A rising sigh of satisfaction coupled with terror moved among the army. All things were as they should be.

Dzieru spoke in a ringing voice, and every entity heard. “Behold, my Lord, the vanquished Queen kneels to you.”

Cireive’s heart quickened. He looked at her. “You kneel,” he repeated almost in surprise, his voice also heard by all. “But that is not enough. You know it is not. Tell me you
serve
me! Tell me I am your
Lord
.”

Ailsan’s figure appeared to shake, and her lips moved silently. A whisper came. “My . . . Lord.”

And then, with even greater difficulty, “My soul . . . cannot . . . kneel. It . . . will
not . . .
kneel.”

She was visibly fighting the compulsion. Only Cireive heard her weak words.

Dzieru meanwhile, took out the sword.

Fire was in the mind of Ailsan. She was being torn apart. Here was her Lord before her, to be worshiped. Something around her cried loudly, 'Submit to him.'

And yet some strange other part of her—one that was inside, one that was stubborn and raw like an open wound—refused. And out of all her collective memories, one thing only kept surfacing—eyes of glass.

Eyes of the
dead.

First there was Mideinn, frozen in death, then the thousands of slain on the field, their eyes all bulging, silent, and in their silence strangely childlike, forgiving her. Death had renewed their innocence in that last moment of embrace. There was no accusation, only a soft memory flower unfurling its petals of silver.

And it broke her at last.

Ailsan died in that moment, or maybe not. Maybe she was only thrown with the force of her agony into a bottomless abysmal well outside the universe, fleetingly to know the nature of true death. And then just as violently she was wrenched back into the mortal fabric of the world by the memory of the wild, living,
beloved
eyes of Talaq, that last instant before he had died—

“
Enough!” she cried abruptly. Her voice came piercing the silence, a hush of thousands, as thunder gathered in her mind.

Deliberately, she stood up and looked at the Archpriest, who paused in surprise, the ceremonial sword still in his hand.

“
Damn you to the Skies!” Cireive exclaimed, trembling. He pulled out his own great sword of polished metal. “Enough, yes, I shall kill you myself! No more!” The blade, a senseless thing, rose high in the air.

Sitting upon Ailsan’s back, death became very still. Its skull-mouth was suddenly visible in the hooded darkness, jaws parted to reveal a hungry void. The crimson light of sunset gleamed acutely against the bone-whiteness of death’s teeth, turning it to rose.

And then the sun swooned. Or was it that all of a sudden a great dark cloudmass appeared out of nowhere in the volcanic sky? And with it built a rumble of gathering thunder.

The violent thunderclouds gathered from all directions—from the right and the left hand of the setting sun, from the sun’s bright scarlet face, and from the sun’s obscured rose-tinted back.

A heartbeat. . . .

Then a hair-thin line of white celestial fire split the boiling red heaven into shards, like broken bloodied glass, and fell upon the figure of Ailsan. And in that moment the woman glowed.

Panic started everywhere. The Archpriest began to make violent ritual gestures in the air, and electric currents jumped from his fingers. Cireive paused, sword held over his head, gripping it with both hands, in the stance of an executioner.

And then her voice came. It was no longer even remotely human in essence, but thunder and raging wind.

The Skies heard you, Cireive. I am—Damned.

She stood before him, monumental. A silhouette against the madness of heaven.

She did not need to raise a hand to meet the crashing blade. She parried it, instead, with a look of her eyes.

On one side of her, the Archpriest’s sword went up in flames. On the other side, the sword in the hands of the
taqavor
splintered, never completing its down-arc, while the
taqavor
himself gave a horrible cry, and for one fraction of an instant also glowed.

And then Cireive dropped what was left in his grip, still attached to shards of a broken blade, watching the hilt burn in his fingers. A moment, and the black charred remains of metal turned unbelievably not to liquid but to solid coal, which then crumbled into ash-dust.

Stand back, priest and king, from my wrath,
boomed the voice of no woman but a goddess.

She was a torch. She burned and turned to black parchment, and time swept past her, accelerating, then spinning at last in a circle so that she was at the same time a child and an old woman with a wizened face.

Dzieru, finding no more ritual force in him, cringed, retreating down the hill. Cireive faltered for a moment, and then he also ran—ran like a possessed coward madman, clutching his burning hand and leaving behind his pride.

She stood watching them retreat both from her sight and from her memory—for her memory no longer held a place for such trivial things, swept as she was with time.

I am Ailsan,
she said,
I have been Damned to bear the burden of being the
last
one.

And then, from the sky, another Voice sounded.

She is the last,
it said, louder than thunder, and suddenly the people knew the sound of Margh-Qa.

Through that storm, a vague, giant shape moved, flickered for a moment—a divine shadow the size of heaven. Then, for the second and final time spoke the god, the One who had possibly never been heard to speak before.

A new one comes in our midst.

And more thunder.

I am Ailsan. The soul and spirit of Risei, my people. There was a legend among my people that never should there be an end to Risei, but that if it did come then their soul would not die but be preserved with the gods.