Empire (42 page)

“Strike the first tone,” Tesh-Dar ordered, her mind turning to the task at hand, no matter how reluctantly. The tresh saluted, then made her way to the far side of the dais where a huge metal disk hung suspended, its upper edge at the same height as Esah-Zhurah’s eyes from where she now hung. The center was well worn, for it sounded once per day as a reminder to the tresh of what lay here. The runes that decorated its surface were in the Old Tongue, a language that had died out in common usage before the First Empress Herself had been succeeded.

Esah-Zhurah watched as the warrior hefted the huge hammer, then cringed as she slammed it into the disk’s center. The sound washed over her like a blast of chill air, setting her body vibrating like an insect caught in a spider’s web. All around her, the eyes of the tresh lifted to watch the punishment, for it was a lesson for them, as well.

As the sound of the gong began to fade from Esah-Zhurah’s ears, she heard a sound behind her like the rustling of leaves in the wind. It grew into a shrieking roar as the priestess flailed the grakh’ta with all her incredible strength.

Esah-Zhurah closed her eyes, waiting for the first strike to fall.

* * *

Reza’s eyes flew open. He had been awakened by something, but he could not remember what it was. Looking around to make sure he was not dreaming, he saw the healers clustered about the window that looked out over most of the kazha, their backs stiff under their robes, their hands gripped tightly. Uncharacteristically for healers, who tended to be a garrulous group, they were completely silent.

“What is happening?” he asked, startling them. They had thought he would remain asleep for some time yet. “Why are you…” He suddenly remembered what had happened, what must be happening now.

Crack!
A sound like a gunshot echoed across the kazha.

“Esah-Zhurah!” he shouted, struggling against the anesthetic, his body an immobile leaden weight. “Esah-Zhurah, no!”

“No, child,” the senior healer, a woman nearly as old as Tesh-Dar, said as she and the other healers gathered to restrain him, “there is nothing to be done. The priestess ordered that you must wait here.”

Reza, ignoring her and growling like a trapped animal, continued to struggle against the numbness, trying furiously to regain some control over his deadened body.

“This was a command, child!” the healer hissed, and Reza, shocked by the iron tone of the woman’s voice, came back to his senses. There was nothing he could do.

Crack!

“How… many?” Reza choked. “How many must she take?”

They looked at one another, as if taking a silent vote as to whether they should tell him.

“Twelve lashes,” the elder replied quietly, her voice brittle. For she knew well the terrible damage that the weapon could wreak on a body, particularly when wielded by the priestess, and she had her own doubts as to the chances of even the most seasoned warrior surviving so many strikes.

“How many remain?” he asked in a small, tortured voice, hoping that he had not come awake with the first lash.

Crack!

“Eight, now,” came the reply.

Reza lay back and closed his eyes, tears cascading down his face as he fought to keep from screaming out of helplessness.

* * *

Crack!

Esah-Zhurah’s eyes bulged as if they were about to explode from their sockets, so horrific had the pressure within her body become to resist the urge to shriek in agony. Her teeth had ground halfway through the hard leather in her mouth; she would have long since bitten off her tongue had it not been for that small kindness the young tresh had shown her.

Crack!

She groaned finally, but still did not cry out. There was no feeling in her body now, no sensation but stark, blinding pain as she felt the flesh being flayed from her back. Her head hung limply, a stray strand of the whip having stung her on the neck just below where the spine met the skull. Her lungs labored fitfully as the muscles along the front of her rib cage sought to take up the slack of those along her back that had been battered down to the bone. She hung still now, even when the lash struck, for the muscles facing the weapon had lost their strength for so much as a nervous twitch. She heard the whistling behind her and desperately sucked in her breath, clamping down on the leather in her mouth as she anticipated the next blow.

* * *

Crack!

Reza moaned in empathic suffering as he listened to the steady barrage of lashes onto the body of his tresh, his soul mate, and felt her keening Bloodsong. He could only cry silently as the gunshots of the grakh’ta echoed across the kazha.

Crack!

He flinched, then went on with his prayer to the Empress. It was the most emphatic he had ever made in his life, praying to give Esah-Zhurah the strength and courage she needed to survive. He waited for another strike, but it did not come. He was relieved to find that he had miscounted somehow, that the last he had heard had indeed been the twelfth. After a moment, the mournful tone of the gong sounded, informing all who could hear that the ordeal was over.

Almost.

Waiting silently with the healers, now clustered around his bed save one with sharp eyes who watched the dais, Reza counted the beats of his heart as he lay waiting for the next tone. It rang when he had reached fifty.

“Can you see her?” he asked urgently of the healer peering through the window. “Has she moved?”

The healer, a young woman who was also the senior by skill here at the kazha, signed negative. Her eyes were like those of a bird of prey, and she could see the dais clearly except for the floor, which was concealed behind the wall that ran waist high around it. But Esah-Zhurah clearly had not emerged. “She has not.”

“Esah-Zhurah,” Reza said under his breath with all the force of his soul, “get up. Get up and live.”

The third tone sounded.

* * *

Her eyes flickered open at what her body reported as a spurious vibration, but which meant nothing to a mind that bordered on madness. Something told her that it was important, but she could not seem to remember why.

She looked around, swiveling her bloodshot eyes, and found that she was looking at someone’s foot, very close up. Her hands lay in front of her, inert, bloody rings where the manacles had been. She was laying in something sticky, but did not know what it was, nor did she really care. She was tired; she wanted to sleep.

She closed her eyes again.

Suddenly, as if from very far away, she got the peculiar sensation that someone was calling her name, wanting her to do something, but she could not hear it clearly through the ringing in her head, the numbness.

The sound, the vibration, came again, and all at once she felt Reza with her. She could hear the song of his blood crying out for her, trying to give her strength.

“Reza…” she muttered thickly with jaws exhausted from biting the now-crushed piece of leather that she managed to spit from her mouth, “cannot… hurts…”

But his Bloodsong would not be still, would not be silent. It was a tiny force to set against the agony assaulting her senses, but its power grew, would not be denied.

With a tortured groan, she rolled over on her stomach, gasping at the effort. Her mind began to clear slightly now that she had a mission for it, and she was thankful that she was not paralyzed with pain. But that would come soon enough after the shock she was experiencing now wore off. She shook her head to clear her vision. She saw that she was pointing the right way, toward the break in the wall that surrounded the dais and the torches that ran along both sides of the stone walk leading to her destination.

She tried to stand, but without the muscles in her back to help lift her body, it was impossible. She slowly scrabbled forward using what leverage her biceps and quivering chest muscles could afford her, pushing weakly with her legs toward the stairs that led down from the dais, leaving a slick trail behind her like a giant, bloody snail.

Tesh-Dar, having finished with the grakh’ta, had moved to stand astride the ebony bar that marked Esah-Zhurah’s goal, silently urging her on as the battered young woman met the stairs. Finding it too difficult to pull herself downward, the friction of the stone against the length of her bare body far too great, Esah-Zhurah pushed with her legs until she was parallel with the stairway, then rolled herself down. The priestess ground her teeth together in empathic agony as the young warrior flailed like a rag doll as she plummeted toward the bottom.

* * *

“She has left the dais,” the healer reported, “but now lies still.” She did not have to say that she did not feel Esah-Zhurah’s chances of survival were very high. Her voice reflected a distinct lack of optimism that Reza found infuriating, yet he managed to hold his tongue.

The other healers waited silently. They had little to do, for it was forbidden to give aid to one punished in the Kal’ai-Il. They would make her as comfortable as they could, but that was the extent of the care they could render. The girl’s life was entirely in Her hands.

The gong rang yet again, and they looked at each other, hope fading from their eyes. Half of Esah-Zhurah’s time had passed, and she had yet far to go.

* * *

She lay there, panting, blinded by the white flashes that flared in her vision. The roll down the stairs had left her unconscious again, and she had no idea how much time remained to her, nor did she care. Her world was pain, only pain.

But the melody of Reza’s song in her blood was insistent. Once again rolling onto her stomach, she began to crawl toward the portal, following the glare of the flickering torches. Her hands clawed at the unyielding slabs of rock, her talons fighting for purchase on the ancient stone as she desperately pulled herself forward.

The gong rang again.
No good
, she thought weakly,
no good to crawl like a sand-worm. I have to stand, to walk
.

Pulling her legs underneath her as if she were on her knees, bowed over in prayer, she set one foot forward. Then, balancing precariously with her hands on the extended knee, she pushed herself upward with all the strength she could muster. She managed to stand up, and her free foot wavered over the walkway as if blind before it finally found a place that sustained her balance. She made her way forward, swaying to and fro like a drunkard, praying she would not fall. For to fall now was to die.

Fewer and fewer were the torches before her, and she suddenly had a terrible thought: what if she was headed the wrong way?

No matter
, she told herself. It would be too late to go back. At least her suffering would be swiftly ended with a blow from the priestess’s sword. She nearly paused at the thought, the notion of a quick, painless death suddenly tempting. Her mind dared not contemplate the agony she would endure in the coming hours before she would die of shock and loss of blood.

Another step forward toward the darkness that stood at the portal, and another, and finally her foot touched the ebony bar.

Tesh-Dar caught Esah-Zhurah in her arms as she fell forward, her legs and back finally giving out completely. The final sound of the gong pealed behind her, signaling the end of the punishment. She struggled weakly, fighting Tesh-Dar’s grip and moaning unintelligibly.

“You are safe, Esah-Zhurah,” the priestess said as she held the girl gently, doing her best to avoid touching the devastated flesh of her back, her own heart a cold shard of steel in her chest. “It is over.”

The healers in attendance looked at the young woman and exchanged glances that Tesh-Dar had seen many times before, and her hopes sank at their unvoiced thoughts.

“I will carry her,” she told them, and they made no move to interfere.

* * *

Reza could only turn his head when he heard the door to the infirmary burst open; he had feeling through most of his body now, but no control. He watched as Tesh-Dar, followed by a train of healers who Reza knew would not be able to apply their craft, swept through the room carrying Esah-Zhurah’s limp form. The sight sent a blade of ice through Reza’s heart. He had felt her pain in his blood as she hung upon the Kal’ai-Il, but the sight of her lacerated body was far worse. He struggled upward, fighting against the useless muscles and nerves that stolidly refused his call to duty. But at last he was sitting upright, then was crawling on his knees.

“Is she alive?” he gasped in the direction of the group huddled around the raised dais where her body lay. Staggering to his feet, he caught a glimpse of the bloody mass of tissue that had once been her back, framed by a series of zebra stripes where the white gleam of bone shone through the tattered flesh. “Esah-Zhurah!” he cried, hurling himself forward, reaching for her.

Tesh-Dar materialized suddenly before him, embracing him in an iron grip and turning him away from the sight. “No, Reza,” she said. “You can do nothing for her. Let the healers do what they can–”

“Esah-Zhurah!” he cried again, trying to wrench himself free. His anger boiled and madness threatened to take him. All at once he felt it again: the fire in his veins and the melody that hammered inside his skull, a tidal wave of power that he couldn’t control, but welcomed now in his grief and rage. “Let… me… go!” He wrenched to one side so quickly and with such force that he broke free of Tesh-Dar’s Herculean grip. Before his mind could react, his armored gauntlets were streaking toward the priestess’s face, aiming to tear her eyes from their sockets.