Empire (38 page)

As he regained his senses, he realized that her pumping had not ceased with his own climax, but had grown even more frenzied, her body twitching to the music that boomed inside her. Her eyes were closed now, and her head slumped to his shoulder.

Without warning, she cried out, her voice reverberating off the grotto’s dark, invisible walls. He fought her hands to keep her talons from slashing his sides as she thrashed about in the ecstasy that had taken her. Her mouth was open wide, her fangs gleaming white in the fire’s glow, and for a moment he was afraid that she would simply plunge them blindly into his throat.

But she did not. The storm left as suddenly as it had come, and her climax left a quiet denouement in its wake. Her mouth closed after a moment more of straining in concert with her body, and then she seemed to relax and laid herself back down on top of him, her whole body shuddering as if she were freezing. Her hands twitched, and he held them in his own, holding them against his sides. Her breathing slowed, and he knew from the rhythm that she must have passed out, gone to sleep. He held her tightly to him, running his hands through her dark braids and across her back. Tears sprang from his eyes as his love for her filled his heart. And for one of the few times in his life, they were tears of joy, not of pain.

After a few moments, he gently rolled her over on her side and lay next to her, lost in her warmth, their union finally broken by his body’s flagging bridge. The fire kept him company, and he watched it with the fascination that had captivated his kind for millennia. He lost himself to the flame, until he felt a stirring beside him.

She was looking at him with eyes hooded by the inexorable hold of sleep, but troubled by a terrible sadness. “I grieve for my race, Reza,” she whispered. “Most of my people mate. They must to survive. But they do not love. They have never felt this,” she stroked his face with her hand, “since the death of Keel-Tath.” She pulled him to her and kissed him. “I will carry this with me always, my love, forever as I walk the Way.”

“So shall I,” he whispered softly. “In Her name, so shall I.”

* * *

The Empress dreamed.

It was a dream She had never had before. This might have been less of a curiosity had it been anyone else, but there was something uniquely peculiar about Her dreams. They were not the dreams of the woman who had accepted the simple white robe and band about her neck that were the only adornments allowed the leader of the Empire. At least, not entirely. That woman’s dreams were a part of what was now cascading through the sleeping monarch’s mind, but only that. A part.

For the rest of Her mind was devoted to the thoughts and dreams of those who had gone before Her, those who had inherited Her body as She had inherited their spirit and wisdom. The woman who lay quietly in her chambers within the Imperial Palace was not simply the flesh that wore the crown of Empire. She was the Empress; She was all who had ever lived since the Unification, save one. Keel-Tath’s voice had never come to the Empress of the Flesh, the vessel of the Way, nor to any Empress who had come before Her. The spirit of the First Empress, the most powerful of all, lay forever in darkness. Waiting for Her people to redeem themselves, to prove themselves again worthy of Her love.

And that is why this dream seemed so strange. The knowledge of twenty-seven thousand generations was at Her beck and call, asleep or awake. The visions, the sensations of all those who had worn the very collar that hung loosely from her aging neck were as vivid as the day they were experienced by the Empress of the Flesh in some earlier time, from whence the memory came.

But not this one. All that She was, all the thousands of spirits clustered in Her soul, bound together as one, watched like fascinated spectators in the arena as the vision unfolded in Her mind.

She saw herself kneeling before a young human, a human that She had never seen before but felt She knew as well as Her own blood. And then She saw their clasped hands, Herself and the human, joined together as tightly as the enormous polished stones that made up the wall of the Great City far below the Empress Moon. The words that were spoken She did not hear or understand in the dream, but there was no need. The ceremony was well known to Her, even though Her own hand did not bear such a scar.

There was a silence between them, and then She undressed, at last standing nude before him.

Then came the first touch. The Empress shivered in Her sleep, a moan of surprise and unexpected pleasure escaping Her lips at sensations She had never before felt. Higher and higher She flew, riding the crest of a wave that seemed as vast and powerful as the Empire itself. And when the warm spear She felt within Her erupted in its fury of passion, She cried out in surprised ecstasy.

She suddenly found herself awake, curled on Her side, staring into the wide and terrified eyes of Her First.

“My Empress,” the elder warrior gasped, one hand curled around the handle of her sword. She had never seen the Empress awaken in such a state. It had simply never happened before. Ever. “Are you well?” she asked, clearly frightened. Not that the Empress would die, for that was simply not possible but for the vessel that embodied Her spirit. No, she was afraid that the Empress might have been frightened by something. “Empress?”

The Empress lay there for a moment, catching Her breath and waiting for the spasms in Her loins to stop. Never in Her mating years had She known such feelings as this dream had brought upon Her, nor had Her body been thrilled as it had during those few immeasurable moments. But pleasurable though these sensations were, the unknown nature of their cause disturbed Her greatly.

“Empress?” the First inquired again, with increased alarm. So much so that she laid a hand on her monarch to steady Her shaking body.

“I am well,” the Empress replied at last, thanking the First for her concern with a shaky caress of the younger woman’s hair. “It is past, now.” She thought for a moment, the remnants of the dream that seemed to be more than a dream swirling through Her mind, tantalizing Her body with a few more spasms. “Tell me,” She asked, Her voice carefully controlled to conceal the quivering of Her chest, “did I speak in my sleep?”

The First bowed. “Yes, Empress.”

“What did I say?”

“Only one word, one I did not recognize as being of either of The Tongues,” the First replied. No other language besides the Old Tongue and the Tongue of the First Empire had ever been uttered in the palace before this day. “You cried
reza
.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The storm clouds that were gathering around the mountain like anxious horsemen intent upon some unimaginable apocalypse were a vision into Reza’s soul as he and Esah-Zhurah worked the magtheps down the steep slopes toward the darkening valley below, leaving their beloved grotto behind forever. Since the night they touched, they had scarcely risen from their bed, making love or simply holding one another as the sun rose and then set once more. They had spoken precious little, for there was little to say between them that could or need be expressed by mere words. And there was no time for idle banter, for this time together would be all they would ever have. A caress or a kiss said so much more, and time was valuable to them beyond measure. “Forever” had taken on a very literal meaning for the lovers, for it was now weighed in the trifle of sunsets remaining before Reza was to die.

But the Way was not known for its magnanimity, and their tiny allotment had been cut short by the hand of Nature. The sudden storm that had charged into the mountains would bring heavy rains, rains that would make the tiny mountain streams impassable torrents that would keep the two young warriors from their appointed destiny in the arena. While the thought had come to both of them that it could be used as an excuse to delay, an opportunity to stretch the inevitable just a bit further away, the notion had never been voiced. They were no longer children, and both of them knew their responsibilities as followers of the Way. Reza wore only the collar of a slave, but his soul was no less devoted to the ways of his adopted people. If the Empress willed his death, then it would be so.

He smelled the rain, the peculiar musty smell that bathed the land long before it was touched by water, and knew that they would have to hurry. The almost supernatural senses that his years of training had given him told how long it would be before the first drops would fall; it was a measure of time that could not be expressed in terms of hours or minutes, or angle of the sun, but was nonetheless precise. Esah-Zhurah sensed it, too, and together they picked up the pace, old Goliath lumbering with the gracelessness of age next to Esah-Zhurah’s younger and more nimble beast.

Around them the land and sky had grown dark, the bright colors muted to a cold, glaring gray, broken occasionally by the angry brilliance of lightning bolts that struck at the land with the heat of a dozen suns. The echoes of the thunder that shattered the air drowned out the howl of the wind that rose and fell as it chose its fickle path among the canyons and arroyos through which the travelers made their way.

Had the day been clear, perhaps they would have seen or smelled the bloody mass of gnarled steel armor and shredded leatherite that had once been known as Ust-Kekh, now carefully hidden behind one of the lichen-covered rocks jutting from the canyon wall. Or perhaps they would not have simply passed by Ami-Char’rah’s severed head, sitting near the side of the trail like a macabre sentinel. Her skull had been an unappetizing tidbit to the otherwise remorseless mind that had been the instrument of her demise.

But the lightning blinded the riders to these dark shapes that now stood silent vigil, and the shifting winds robbed them of the coppery scent of blood that even now dripped from the torn veins of the hapless victims. In the swirling night, they did not see the demonic face in whose eyes their reflections danced in time with the lightning hurled from the angry sky above.

Pan’ne-Sharakh had once told Reza that the day of his birth, as measured in the way of the Kreela, had fallen on the day of the Great Eclipse, when the Empress Moon had shielded the Homeworld from the light of the sun. It was an event that occurred only once every fifteen thousand and fifty-three Earth years, and was considered a day of wondrous promise for those born under its shadow. It was an omen of great battles to be fought, a sign of special love from the Empress. It was the closest thing the Way allowed for what humans might consider being lucky.

But Reza did not feel lucky when a shadow suddenly detached itself from the canyon floor. With startling speed, it grew in size until it blotted out the sky above, towering before them like a dark, angry mountain.

As Reza opened his mouth to shout a warning, his hand grabbing desperately for the battle ax strapped to his saddle, he felt the impact of the mammoth claw against his chest, a horrendous blow that hurled him from Goliath’s back. Only his armor – now bent and torn like tissue paper – had saved his life. Reza’s ears filled with the sound of crunching bones before his eardrums rang with the monstrous scream of hungry rage that muffled Goliath’s squeals of agony. Reza hit the ground hard, but quickly rolled to his feet. And in a flash of lighting he saw it, standing over Goliath’s struggling form, a nightmare of fangs, horns, and talons.

He gasped in awe at the thing that had transformed itself from mimicking silent rock into moving, living tissue in but an instant. Its head was larger than Goliath’s body, with rows of razor-sharp teeth covered by a scaly lip to conceal them while the creature lay in wait. Horns sprouted from the thing’s triangular head, and its blazing yellow eyes were cold and inscrutable. Its body rippled with strength, from the talons on each of its six legs to the needle-like crystalline tip on the end of its whip of a tail.

It stood above Reza like a colossus, an enormous gargoyle that had suddenly come to life. Before he could turn and run, it lunged down at him, its maw gaping wide, its fetid breath enveloping him with the stench of death’s promise.

In that instant, as Reza watched death come, the mortally wounded Goliath snapped his powerful jaws shut on the genoth’s vulnerable underside, close to its tail. The magthep’s teeth were broad and flat, typical of the Homeworld’s herbivores. They could not rip and tear as could those of the genoth, but they were powerful enough to grind the tough leaves of the hearty
suranga’a
bush into paste. Goliath’s jaws clamped shut like a vise, crushing the unarmored flesh of the genoth’s underbelly.

The dragon’s teeth snapped together less than an arm’s length from Reza’s face before its mouth opened in a roar of agony and rage at the insolent magthep’s attack. Ignoring Reza, it turned its attention to Goliath, who stubbornly clung like a giant parasite to its underbelly.

Reza whirled and ran to a nearby rock outcropping. Behind him, the genoth made short work of the wounded magthep. With a final squeal, Goliath was silent. Having disposed of its tormentor, the beast turned to reacquire its prey.

It found Esah-Zhurah.

Bearing her fangs in fear and rage, Esah-Zhurah raised her pike toward the creature in what she knew was a hopeless gesture. She had seen Reza get away, but had lost sight of him in the darkness. She desperately maneuvered her terrified magthep around to find him, not thinking of how vulnerable she was while riding her terrified beast. Suddenly, one of the genoth’s forelegs lashed out, flinging her out of the saddle. She landed on the canyon’s dusty floor with a muffled thud before scrambling to her feet, backing away from the apparition slowly, the pike still in her shaking hands. Her magthep, miraculously uninjured, shrieked in terror and fled into the gathering storm.