Empire (41 page)

Reza saluted and left, hoping that at least the final hours before their punishment could be spent quietly together.

Tesh-Dar watched him go. She was saddened that she would never know the words to the feelings she had felt flowing from him.

* * *

Esah-Zhurah was distraught, but not because of her own punishment.

“Priestess,” she asked in a determined voice, “is it not possible for one of us to accept the punishment for both?”

“Do not be foolish, child,” Tesh-Dar admonished, summarily dismissing the idea. Or trying to. “The punishment of one is suffered by the other. That is the code of the tresh. You have known this. You must withstand six times of the grakh’ta, and so must he, for I can give no fewer, and have not the heart to give more.” She stopped her pacing to face Esah-Zhurah, whose own eyes were downcast. “Child, he is to die in the Challenge on the morrow. Is it not better that he be allowed to share in your pain?”

Daring to look Tesh-Dar in the eye, Esah-Zhurah shook her head. “I would rather have him stand a fair chance in combat and die at my hand or yours with the honor he has earned among us, rather than let him be speared like a meat animal, crippled and helpless with injury.” Their punishment would be received without the usual support from the healers. If Reza was whipped with the grakh’ta, he would be so badly injured that he would die in the first round of the Challenge, if he lived even that long. “If I were to receive twelve lashes,” she pressed, “must he also be punished? Must he, priestess?”

“There is precedent, Esah-Zhurah,” Tesh-Dar reluctantly conceded. “It is terribly rare, and has never happened in my lifetime. But…”

“Then it can be done,” Esah-Zhurah finished for her. “It is within your power to grant.”

“Esah-Zhurah…” Tesh-Dar’s voice died, for she did not know what to say. She turned away to look toward the mountains in the distance, hiding the feeling of impending loss that she could no longer conceal, for the mourning marks had already begun their march down her cheeks. Inwardly, she cursed the unforeseen turn the Way had taken. She had held such high hopes for these two, believing that Reza would survive to become something that had never been in all the history of the Empire: one not born of their race, but who might wear the collar in the name of their Empress, with Esah-Zhurah at his side. To see him perish now was a tragedy she mourned with a strength she would never have admitted. “If you must,” she said in a despondent voice. “I will let it be so.”

Tesh-Dar turned to her, the elder’s face unreadable but for the mourning marks that now flowed openly down her face like ebony streams against a twilight sky. “Go now and prepare, child,” the priestess told her, “for when the light of the Empress Moon shows in the referent of the Kal’ai-Il, it will be time.”

* * *

Reza waited impatiently for Esah-Zhurah to return. Already the Empress Moon was rising above the twilight horizon, and their Way together grew shorter by the minute. He had no illusions about his future: his life would end tonight, save for the stilling of his heart by the sword or shrekka of one of the peers come morning. But he had accepted it as his Way and Her will, and knew that the Bloodsong would carry him from this place to yet another.

He held the knife he had won as a prize in his first combat the day Esah-Zhurah had taken him to the city so many cycles ago, the day that the priestess had taken the two of them under her wing. Carefully, he laid it aside. It was his gift to Esah-Zhurah. It was his most prized possession, and he wanted her to keep it in remembrance of him.

Suddenly he sensed that she was coming, and turned to greet her.

She was not alone. A healer accompanied her through the perimeter of trees that were the only walls to their home-in-exile, the clawless one’s robe flowing like water in the light breeze.

“Are you prepared?” Esah-Zhurah asked quietly, kneeling next to him.

Reza nodded, wanting to reach for her and take her into his arms one last time. But the healer hovering nearby gave him pause. “Why is she here?” he asked.

“I asked her to come, my love,” Esah-Zhurah said softly, wrapping her arms around Reza’s neck. “She is here to take care of you,” she whispered in his ear.

He felt a light sting on the side of his neck as Esah-Zhurah pressed a tiny patch against his skin, injecting a tranquilizer the healer had prepared into Reza’s carotid artery. His eyes flew wide in surprise and he made to grab for Esah-Zhurah’s hands. But it was too late, the drug already rushing through his system, robbing him of control over his voluntary muscles. He fell limply into Esah-Zhurah’s waiting arms, asleep, before he could say a word.

“Forgive me,” she begged, holding him tightly for what she knew would be the last time. “It was I who brought punishment upon us, and it is I who must answer for it,” she told him, knowing that he could no longer hear her. “In exchange for my pain, you will have a fair chance in the arena on the morrow, a chance to win. Perhaps even a chance at life, should it be Her will.” She tenderly kissed his sleeping lips. “That is my gift to you, my love. Should I be gone when you awaken, remember that I will always be with you, until the day the voices of our souls shall be one.” She placed the Empress’s blade, the gift from Pan’ne-Sharakh, in his waist belt. “This is now yours,” she said. “Go thy Way in Her name, my love.”

Esah-Zhurah kissed him one last time, then gently lay him down upon their bed. Two more healers came from the trees, and Esah-Zhurah watched as they carried Reza away to their chambers to watch over him.

High above, the Empress Moon rose.

* * *

Esah-Zhurah looked up from her meditation as Mara’eh-Si’er, Tesh-Dar’s First, approached. The time had come.

“I am ready,” Esah-Zhurah told her, standing up and forcing her mind away from Reza to the painful trial ahead. She followed the First toward the Kal’ai-Il, the Empress Moon shining full overhead.

Standing in the center of the kazha, the Kal’ai-Il was an ancient edifice whose worn granite pillars dated back to before the birth of the First Empire, from a time remembered only in legend. Forming a circle, the gray slabs that covered the ground radiated from the central dais to meet two concentric rings of pillars, themselves capped with purple granite blocks weighing hundreds of tons that bridged the tops. Every other pillar of the outer ring, thirty-six in all, supported staircases in the form of flying buttresses; the inner ring, comprising eighteen pillars half the height of those in the outer ring, had simpler stone stairways rising from the circle bounding the massive central dais. It was the largest structure in the kazha, but in all Esah-Zhurah’s time here she had never seen it used. She had only walked through it once, at Reza’s insistence as he asked her about its purpose in their lives. She had never considered that she would be the first one of the ancient kazha to be punished here since long before she was born.

“In all the kazhas throughout the Empire,” she had explained, “there exists one of these. In ancient times, as now, the Kal’ai-Il was where the most severe punishments were carried out. In our early schooling, we are punished lightly, but in a large group. The transgressions of one are suffered for by many, and it is a terrible dishonor to bring shame upon any but yourself. As we grow older, we are placed in smaller and smaller groups, the last being as are you and I, as tresh, before we enter the Way as individuals.

“But,” she went on pointedly, “the punishment becomes ever more severe for a given act. What a small child suffers lightly, an adult may well die for. At last, the warrior may find herself shackled in the Kal’ai-Il for offenses that demand public ceremony and atonement.” She paused for a moment and looked at Reza, trying hard to make him understand the importance of what she was trying to tell him. “The only worse punishment is to have one’s hair shaved and be denied death for a cycle of the Empress Moon, to wander among the peers in shame as one’s name is stricken from the Books of Time, to die without honor, without a legacy among the peers, and to live for all eternity in the darkness beyond Her light.”

Now, walking behind the First, Esah-Zhurah saw that the tops of the two granite rings were crowded with the peers, who stood two rows deep facing the massive, worn dais, their heads bowed and eyes averted.

Her escort stopped as she reached the two massive pillars of the entrance, sheared midway from the ground like two enormous tusks, broken off in an ancient battle and never repaired.

“Remember,” Mara’eh-Si’er said quietly, leaning close to her, “you must pass this portal by the twelfth tone after your punishment has been rendered and you are released from the bindings. It is a test of your spirit above and beyond your atonement. It is a demonstration of your will to live in honor among your peers. If you do not pass this point,” she gestured toward the glittering ebony stone marker that was set in the floor of the entrance like a buffer between two different worlds, “the priestess is obligated to kill you, for that is the Way of the Kal’ai-Il.” She gestured for Esah-Zhurah to step forward to the ancient dais. Then she turned to join the elder warriors gathered on the inner ring.

Esah-Zhurah walked onward, her pace slow, the odd bit of gravel crunching under her sandals, loud as thunderclaps in her ears over the stillness of the wind and the silence of those around her. She noted with detached curiosity that nothing grew from the cracks in the slabs, some wider than the palm of her hand; the normally fertile ground was lifeless and dull, like mud from a dry lakebed baked into clay by a searing sun. It seemed that even the earth had forsaken those who trod this path.

Before her was the dais, a huge, ponderous structure that reflected the unyielding rigidity of the code under which she and her people were fated to live. The circular platform was overshadowed by a thick stone arch that looked like a natural formation, not something made by Kreelan hands. Two thick chains, their copper sheathing green with age, hung from the arch. Each chain had a metal cuff for the victim’s hands.

She could see the priestess waiting for her, Tesh-Dar’s black armor glistening in the dual light of evening. The fading sun, just falling below the horizon, was grudgingly giving way to the glow of the Empress Moon, huge now in the sky directly overhead. As she mounted the stairs, one of the tresh lit torches that made the top of the dais into a ring of fire, providing light for the peers to see by.

Having reached the top of the dais, three times Esah-Zhurah’s own height, she knelt before Tesh-Dar.

“Remove your clothing,” the priestess ordered quietly. Esah-Zhurah did as she was told, taking off her black cloth garment and her sandals, folding them carefully into the prescribed bundle and placing them at the edge of the stairway. Completely naked now except for the collar she wore about her neck, she moved forward to the center of the dais, extending her arms upward.

As if with a will of their own, the chains descended. One of the tresh locked the bronze shackles, the metal rough and pitted with age, around her wrists and fastened them tightly with bolts as big around as Esah-Zhurah’s thumb. The young warrior did the same for the shackles on the floor, anchored to the dais by a short piece of chain, attaching them to Esah-Zhurah’s ankles; their bent flanges bit into her flesh. The tresh then placed a strip of thick leather in Esah-Zhurah’s mouth. It was something for her to bite down on, to help control the pain that was to come. Esah-Zhurah’s eyes thanked the girl, for it was a mercy she had performed, not required by the code of punishment.

Then the girl stepped away. Unseen warriors in the bowels of the dais pulled the chains taut, lifting Esah-Zhurah clear of the floor. Her arms were stretched out above her and away from her body, her blue flesh now a glowing crucifix in the flickering light of the torches.

Tesh-Dar stood by silently, eyes closed as she listened to the clatter of the chains, the tired squeaking of the bolts as they were driven home, and then the gentle groaning of the ancient wheels as Esah-Zhurah’s body was lifted above the dais. A memory flashed through her mind, a dark and painful one that had rarely surfaced over the years, of her own body being suspended in these very same shackles. It had been many, many cycles before Esah-Zhurah had been born, before the war with the humans had begun. It was strange, she thought, that she could not remember what she had done to earn such a punishment, so deep an effect had it had on her. She vaguely recalled that it was something terribly stupid, something even a magthep would not have concocted. But it would not come to her, and she let it rest.

She ran her eyes along the list of names of those who had taken punishment here, carved into the stone floor of the dais. Some were so old that they were nothing more than shapeless indentations in the stone. But the more recent ones were clearly legible, and she noted that hers was indeed the last before this day. The Kal’ai-Il was generally a silent pillar in their lives, but when it spoke, its words echoed for a long time, indeed.

She gripped the grakh’ta in her right hand as if it were a serpent trying to escape, the seven barbed tendrils that grew from the thick handle, nearly twice as long as she was tall, wrapped around her arm in the customary fashion. It was one of her favorite weapons in battle, but all it brought to her now was a foul and bitter taste at the back of her throat. The lashes she was about to deal out now would be more than she had given in punishment over her entire life, and it sickened her that she had no recourse. Her heart felt wooden, dead.

“All is ready, priestess,” the young warrior reported from behind her.