Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (49 page)

“But why should I not prove my love to you?”

“You shall, but your path shall be far more difficult. Arise.” As Dara-Kol stood, Keel-Tath took one of Dara-Kol’s hands and clenched it tight, the dagger between their palms. Giving the blade a slight twist as she pulled it free, she drew blood from both palms. “In your blood shall flow my blood.”

“
Oh
…” Dara-Kol staggered and nearly fell, overwhelmed by the power of the Empress as their blood mingled. Dara-Kol’s senses exploded, as if the entire Universe had suddenly snapped into sharp focus, from the tiniest particles of which atoms were made, to great clusters of galaxies on the far side of the universe. Lightning burst from their joined hands, and the Empress Moon trembled beneath their feet as the entire palace glowed cyan from the released energy.
 

The others in the Empress’s chambers, already on their knees, cast themselves prostrate upon the floor, wailing with pain and fear as the world rumbled and shook.

Dara-Kol had no idea how long the fire and fury of their blood bond lasted. It seemed to span an eternity, and yet when her senses finally returned to her, all was just as it had been a moment before.
 

“Upon this day,” Keel-Tath told her quietly, “you shall become Empress, the First of the Last. Your heart is and has always been true, your love worthy of that of our people.”
 

“But you cannot leave us,” Dara-Kol pleaded, sensing that the transformation of her body and soul was not yet complete. She felt as hot and bright as a star. Yet if she were now a star, shining bright in the sky, Keel-Tath was an entire galaxy, brighter and more powerful by countless orders of magnitude. Dara-Kol gasped, as if she could truly see Keel-Tath, the Empress, for the very first time. She never could have comprehended her before. “Please my Empress, if you ever held dear my love, please do not forsake us.”

Putting a hand to Dara-Kol’s cheek, Keel-Tath shook her head. “My heart is broken, dearest one, and my grief will forever consume me and all those bound to me. I seek the Darkness now, where my sorrow shall be my own until the day when light and love again might touch my heart. Through you and those who come after you, our people may live on. Once each great cycle will a child be born with white hair and crimson talons, for only one so endowed may ever ascend to the throne. I vow that this succession shall not be broken before the Last Empress takes the throne. On that day, if your love proves worthy, shall I return. This shall be my promise to you, to my children.”

“But how, my Empress, are we to find you?” Dara-Kol whispered.

Keel-Tath answered softly, as if from afar, “That, daughter, shall be thy quest.”

Dara-Kol blinked her eyes, as if she had been in a trance. Keel-Tath was at the center of a globe of blinding cyan light, and the others present held up their arms to protect their eyes. Keel-Tath held a shard that Dara-Kol recognized as belonging to the shattered crystal heart of Anuir-Ruhal’te, discovered in the ancient oracle’s tomb so many cycles ago. As Dara-Kol watched, the shard grew in the Empress’s hands until the heart was again whole.

“This is the vessel of my spirit,” Keel-Tath said, “and shall be the key to my awakening. For the one who has the courage to brave the host of guardians and lay a living hand upon my heart shall awaken my spirit and my call to you. But the Curse shall not be broken,” Keel-Tath warned, “until my heart again feels the warmth of love. If I rise in spirit without love, damned shall we all be to everlasting Darkness.” She looked upon Sar-Ula’an and the others of the Imperial Guard who knelt upon the floor. “Those of the Guard shall come with me, to protect me as I sleep.” To Dara-Kol, she said, “You shall have no need of them, My daughter, for all who now live among our people are the protectors of She Who Reigns.” Drawing Dara-Kol close, the Empress said in a soft voice barely above a whisper, “Now, before I sleep, these words would I say to you. Heed them well…”

Dara-Kol, now wearing the white robe and golden collar of the Empress, her raven hair already turning white and her talons red, listened to the last words of the First Empress.
 

Then Keel-Tath brought the tip of the dagger to her breast. Closing her eyes, she paused for a moment before plunging the blade into her heart. As she did so, the cyan light englobing her flared, then went out.
 

Keel-Tath, along with Sar-Ula’an and the others of the Imperial Guard was gone. All that remained was the crystal heart, suspended in the air, slowly pulsing with a fading cyan glow.

***

Tara-Khan gasped, desperately sucking air into his lungs as he regained consciousness. The pain of doing so nearly plunged him back into unconsciousness, and he groaned at the silence of the Bloodsong from his severed Braid of the Covenant, but he forced himself to stay awake. To stay alive. “Ka’i-Lohr,” he rasped as the memory of his tresh’s betrayal came back with horrifying clarity.

“He is gone. They are all gone.”

Lying on his back, he looked up into the wild, terrified eyes of a healer so young she must have only just begun her apprenticeship. Mourning marks cascaded down her cheeks and down her neck to disappear beneath her robes, such was her distress.

“The Empress?”

She shook her head in rapid, jerky movements. “I…I do not know. A battle was fought in the palace, but I do not know who won. I fled from the fighting and found you here just before you…just before you were about to die.”

He looked down, grimacing at the ruin of his chest and stomach. The wounds had been roughly closed, but he did not have to be a healer to know that much had been left undone. Death would yet find him, and soon.
 

As if reading his mind, her expression collapsed into one of helpless despair. “I am only in my first cycle of training, and did the best I could. I beg your forgiveness.”
 

“You did well, child,” he rasped. “Now take my hand. We must reach the Empress.” Stepping through space and time would likely sap what strength his body had left, but that was the only way he might reach her in time.

But he could not help but wonder, in time for what?

***

“Tara-Khan!” Dara-Kol cried, unable to believe her eyes as the great warrior appeared before her, the arm of a young healer wrapped around his waist, supporting him.
 

He looked at her, dressed in the garb of the Empress, with an expression of incomprehension. Then his eyes widened as he realized that she was not the one he sought. “Dara-Kol? What happened to…”

Catching sight of the bloody remains of his daughter, he pushed himself away from the healer and fell to his knees beside the lifeless child with a wail of anguish. “Ulana-Khan,” he cried as he reached for her.

“Tara-Khan, the crystal!”

Glancing up at Dara-Kol’s warning, he saw the rapidly fading light from the crystal heart that hung suspended in the air.

“No,” he rasped. With one last, long look at his dead child, he struggled to his feet and staggered toward the pulsing crystal. “I will not let you go.” Reaching out his hand, he whispered, “Forever shall I guard your love.” His heart stopped just as his outstretched fingers touched the crystal, and it flared one final time in a blinding flash of cyan.

When the glare faded away, both Tara-Khan and the vessel of Keel-Tath’s spirit were gone.

***

The Empress stood for a long time, gathering her courage and doing all she could to rein in her grief. Such was her surprise when she sensed a tiny voice in the Bloodsong, one that had been given up for dead.

Turning away from her contemplation of the sky and stars that hung over the Empress Moon, her heart warmed with joy as the elder wardress of the palace creche approached, a tiny squirming bundle in her arms. The other wardresses knelt behind her.

Falling to her knees, the elder wardress said, “My Empress…it is she. It is Ulana-Khan.” Looking up, her cheeks were black with mourning marks, which on this day marked all who lived across the Empire, even the now mindless males. “She was in an anteroom to the creche, asleep, with this fused to her hair with blood.” She held up a tiny braid, made with hair that was clearly from an adult.
 

More of Syr-Nagath’s sorcery
, the Empress thought bitterly.

“When I took the braid from her,” the wardress went on, “I could hear her song in my blood again.”

The Empress took the braid in her hand, and it burst into flame, then fell to ashes. Looking at the child who lay dead, she wondered, “Then whose child is this?”

“Her blood is of the Desh-Ka,” the eldest among the healers pronounced after examining the body, “but whose child it is, I cannot say. She was probably the child of an honorless one.”

The Empress placed a hand gently on the nameless child’s body, which was now cradled in the healer’s arms, wondering at this last deceit by Syr-Nagath that had traded one innocent life for another. “Let us honor her with the last rites upon a funeral pyre.”

The healer bowed. “As you command, Empress.”

“And what of Ulana-Khan?” asked the elder wardress.

Reaching out to the child, who grasped her finger with tiny, eager hands, the Empress said, “Raise her as the Way demands, that her life may honor her mother and father.” Leaning close to the child, she kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “You shall know my undying love all of your days.”

With a deep bow and salute, the wardresses and healers departed.

To the most high who still knelt before her with their bloodied hands, the Empress said, “Tend to your wounds and see to the dead. I would be alone now.”

Saluting, they got to their feet and left, closing the doors behind them.

Turning back to the window, Dara-Kol, now She Who Reigns, looked out upon the stars, seeing far beyond what her eyes could discern as she pondered the last words spoken by the First Empress. It was a prophecy from which she drew hope that her people might, in the end, be saved.

Of muted spirit, soulless born, in suffering prideful made;

Mantled in the Way of Light, trusting but the blade.

Should this one come in hate or love, it matters not in time;

For he shall find another, and these two hearts they shall entwine.

The Way of sorrows countless told, shall in love give life anew;

The Curse once born of faith betray’d, shall forever be removed.

Shall return Her love and grace, long lost in dark despair;

Mercy shall She show the host, born of heathen hair.

Glory shall it be to Her, in hist’ry’s endless pages;
 

Mother to your hearts and souls, Mistress of the Ages.

***

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