Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (87 page)

December, 3,390 BC

Zulu Sector: Prince of Tyre

Ninsianna

Ninsianna dipped the cloth into the pan of warm water and pressed it to the broken man's forehead. His breath was shallow, his skin now blue. She had tried, but she did not know how to heal a wound which was not merely physical. Whatever the Evil One had done to him, it lay beyond the auspices of healing.

She swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, feeling helpless, feeling guilty. A green, clawed hand settled gently upon her shoulder.

"Are you certain there is nothing you can do for him?"

Apausha's long, forked tongue flitted out to taste the air, but for some reason, Ninsianna no longer found the gesture repulsive.

She touched the unknown man's cheek; handsome, cool, pale. If the goddess hadn't abandoned her, she could have asked her what to do, but despite her prayers, She-who-is refused to speak to her.
Un-Chosen.
The goddess had abandoned her to face the Evil One alone.

"The Evil One has fed upon his spirit," Ninsianna said. "His spirit has been shattered, too broken to force his body to exist. My father…"

"The shaman?"

"Yes," Ninsianna said. "My father knew how to heal such injuries of the spirit. But I…"

"He did not teach you because you are a woman?"

Ninsianna thought back to all the times her father had stood with her at the threshold to the dark path and tried to coax her to journey with him into that realm where even She-who-is purportedly could not see. Why, oh why, hadn't she listened to her father's admonitions that she needed to overcome her fear of the dark?

Oh! Terrible darkness! Why did it intimidate her thus?

She had seen the point of light in Jamin, ready to help her, ready to turn against the Evil One if only she'd reached into the darkness to turn him back into the light. He'd wanted it. Oh, how he had wanted it, and she had turned away, she had turned her back on him even though she knew the consequence. She had seen that point of light in Shahla, even when her mind had been in the grip of her delusion, and been so repulsed that she'd given up the chance to heal her mind? Mikhail had reached across that void to find her and she had cut him off, not recognizing his spirit. Why? Why had she condemned her husband to die alone, she who loved the light, but had always been terrified of the dark?

"I was arrogant," Ninsianna said. "I was the
Chosen
of the She-who-is. I assumed the goddess would always protect me instead of learning how to protect myself."

Apausha's gold-green eyes were filled with sympathy. How ironic was it that it was a lizard-demon who had helped her to see the darkness could sometimes be a gift?

"Can you journey there now?" Apausha asked. "Perhaps you might help him live?"

"The only life energy I possess is my own," Ninsianna said. "If these women were not so mind-broken, perhaps we might perform a group ceremony of healing."

"But you cannot do it now?" Apausha asked. His expression was not one of condemnation, merely curiosity.

"No," Ninsianna sighed. She spread her hand protectively across the swell of her abdomen. "It would take too much life energy to heal one so close to death. And these women," she gestured at them, "do not have any left over to spare."

She shut her eyes and tried to
feel
her way into that dark realm that her eyes could no longer
see
. No intuitive voice whispered secrets about how to get across, but that other voice,
her
voice, told her that even if she
did
journey there, she'd be every bit as blind as she was right now.

"Our people always believed," Ninsianna said, "that if a person willingly sacrificed their life on the longest night of the year, that they would carry a message straight to the gods, and the gods would intervene to bring back hope for the entire village."

"Shay'tan says such beliefs are an abomination," Apausha said. "No man dies willingly. He says evil will always warp those who demand such sacrifice until
all
murders become a sacrifice to seek the favor of the gods."

"So does my father," Ninsianna sighed. "No one ever wanted to sacrifice themselves, so they would find a scapegoat and execute him for some petty crime. The Chief put a stop to it when he inherited the village from his father."

She touched the cheek of the poor, dying man. Would she make such a journey for a stranger? Would she make such a journey to save her husband? Would she make such a sacrifice for anyone? Ever? Had she ever believed in anything fervently enough that she would cast her spirit into the void?

No. She would not. Not even for Mikhail.

Tears streamed down her cheeks and fell upon the victim whose chest moved almost imperceptibly, his flesh turning bluer by the heartbeat. She didn't even know his name. How could she perform the death ceremonies for a man who had never woken up? Whoever he was, this man would pass alone. Where would he go with the entrance to the dreamtime blocked? Would he become a disembodied spirit? Or would his spirit simply cease to exist?

She thought of her poor, dead husband, and how he'd cried out as he'd reached across the void to find her. He, a man who had never had any natural abilities or training, had reached across the void to find
her
instead of she, the
Chosen
one, to find him;
and then she had cut him loose, guaranteeing that even if he
had
lived, he could never again use their bond of marriage to find her.

"I never understood that all he needed was for me to love him," Ninsianna said. "And that if I loved him enough, it would give him the strength to do everything else."

"But you
did
love him," Apausha said, then blinked as he realized he'd spoken in the past tense. "I mean, I know you do. It's all you ever talk about, how very much you miss him."

"I do," Ninsianna said. She stared into the darkness she could no longer
see,
but she could feel it more intensely than she ever had now that she'd been denied all passage into the light
.
Truth stared out at her from that void. The terrible truth she had always known. "I loved him. Oh, Apausha! I loved him dearly. But I never loved him the way that he loved
me.
"

The unknown man's chest shuddered, and then exhaled one last time. It was the last breath he took; he did not breathe again. Emotion crushed her chest, the reality of his passing. There were two deaths she mourned tonight, the loss of this unknown man, and the very real loss of the husband who had never been hers to keep.

Apausha held her as she wept. She wept, all the tears she had withheld, trying to convince herself that Mikhail would come and rescue her. They were trapped here. They were trapped, and if she wanted to get out of this place, then she would have to do it all herself.

Her baby kicked. Her son. The child She-who-is had been desperately eager for her to conceive. It was for her child, now, this stolen child, that she must carry on.
His
child. Mikhail's.

"He has crossed over," Ninsianna said, not just of this unfortunate, nameless man, but also her poor, dead husband, who she had lost the day she had let him go. " Perhaps he will find his way through the darkness and tell the goddess where we are?"

~ * ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.12 AE

Tokoloshe Kingdom: Prince of Tyre

Special Agent Eligor

Eligor

Eligor eyed the two lurking Tokoloshe who'd been assigned to babysit him, along with Lucifer's escape shuttle, as he met with King Barabas to negotiate a treaty. This wasn't the first time Eligor had piloted a shuttle into Tokoloshe territory for a meeting, but
fuck!
All those other times they'd met them on the borderlands!

"What you looking at, Angelic?" one of the two hulking guards snarled.

Eligor schooled an
'I don't give a fuck'
expression and pretended to pick at his fingernails.

"Nothing," Eligor said.

"Why…"

Tokoloshe were bear-like creatures, three meters tall, with a foul disposition and even nastier habit of eating those they'd conquered in battle. They were the most feared creatures in the galaxy, second, perhaps to even Shay'tan himself.

"Ignore him," the second Tokoloshe said. "He's just trying to rile us."

The first Tokoloshe stepped closer to him, his hulking shoulders so broad it gave the creature the appearance of having no neck whatsoever.

"Maybe the lackey would like to be invited for dinner?"

Eligor fingered the hilt of his pulse rifle which sat in its holster with the strap undone and the safety feature flipped off. Maybe Shay'tan wasn't so scary after all. The old dragon was a ferocious creature, but the Sata'anic emperor lived by an eccentric moral code which made him predictable in a sort of inflexible, galactic-dominating kind of way. Tokoloshe, on the other hand, made no sense whatsoever.

The first Tokoloshe's nostrils quivered as it gave Eligor a sniff. Saliva dripped from its fangs.

"You smell … tasty."

Its beady eyes narrowed as it waited for Eligor to show the appropriate amount of fear. Eligor had dealt with the creatures enough times to know that doing so would be a mistake.

"
Your
breath stinks like shit," Eligor said. "Maybe you should go find some breath sanitizer?"

"Why!" The first Tokoloshe stepped towards him.

The second Tokoloshe yanked it back.

"Get your hand off of me!"

As Eligor had predicted, the two moved off to duke it out amongst themselves. Orders or not, no Tokoloshe could overcome their instinct to toy with a prey animal, in this case the prey being
him.
He hoped Lucifer was okay. Whatever had possessed the man to think he'd be safe accompanying King Barabas into his dining hall? Yeah, Furcas and Pruflas were with him, but three Angelics against a planet full of cannibals was more than even the goon squad could overcome.

A third Tokoloshe, far smaller than the other two, stepped out of the shadows and gave him a wary sniff. This creature Eligor thought he could take, especially with the added security of his pulse rifle. It was a wiry runt of a creature, old, with mangy fur and a scar across its muzzle that looked like it had been on the losing end of a knife fight. The creature eyed him as it swept up the asphalt, moving methodically until it began to approach the shuttle.

"Stay away from my ship," Eligor said.

The creature shrugged and continued to sweep the sidewalk anyways.

"You hear what I just said?" Eligor said. "I said scram."

The creature paused and leaned on its broom. "You know what they're doing in there, don't you?"

"No."

The creature bared its fangs, but it was more an expression of an old coot chuckling at the cluelessness of a youngster than the threatening gesture of a predator stalking a prey animal.

"It is our highest honor," the old Tokoloshe said. "To feed upon the flesh of our enemies so you can absorb their essence into your own."

"It's barbaric," Eligor said.

I-don't-give-a-fuckedness
was for him a way of life, one which had kept him out of many scrapes. But cannibalism? He was a lot of things, but that? No. Just … no.

The old Tokoloshe swept up another shovelful of litter, and then leaned on his shovel once more.

"You ever kill a man in battle?"

Eligor schooled his expression to remain neutral. "Yeah."

"How'd it make you feel?"

What the kind of question was that?

"It's none of your fucking business."

The old Tokoloshe grinned at him. "It felt good, didn't it, the first time you killed a man when you thought you were in the right?"