Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) (15 page)

Slashing open the bindings of one of the skins with her talons, Keel-Tath handed around the slabs of dried meat, her mouth salivating at the smell. She set some aside for herself only after the others had been given theirs. Then she passed around the skins with the ale, but did not drink until the others had first.

They ate in companionable silence. From where they knelt and sat, they could see the lowlands to the west, dotted by the lights of the few cities and villages between this mountain range and the dark red weals on the horizon, the volcanoes marking the edge of the Great Wastelands. 

“Thank you,” Keel-Tath said. “All of you.”

“Our lives are yours, mistress,” one of the other warriors, a shadow in the darkness, said.

Keel-Tath shook her head. “How can your lives be mine if I do not even know your names?” 

They laughed. It was a welcome sound.

“I am Drakh-Nur,” the huge warrior said. 

“You were born of Ka’i-Nur?” Keel-Tath tried to keep the fear and suspicion from her voice, and feared she only partially succeeded. Nur was a rarely used name, and only when the child’s lineage could be traced directly back to the ancient order that had its stronghold in the Great Wastelands.

Drakh-Nur did not seem to take notice of her fear, or did not let on if he did. “My father was a warrior of the Ka’i-Nur, or so said the honorless ones who raised me from a whelp. I was abandoned in the forest by the villagers who killed my father.” He shrugged. “What happened to my mother, I do not know. But I grew to become the leader of those who saved me, and after hearing the words about your coming…” He gestured at Dara-Kol. “…I led them here.”

“Were they…were they among those who died in the caverns?” Keel-Tath dreaded the question, but had to ask.

He nodded. “If any did not die underground, they would have come out to fight the queen’s warriors who survived. They would have dragged themselves out with one arm if need be.”

“I grieve with you.”

Drakh-Nur laughed, a deep, rich sound in the quiet of the mountain top. “I do not grieve, mistress. I rejoice!” He leaned forward. “Every day of living was an agony for those who had fallen from their path along the Way, be it by their own hand or simple fate. Those few of us who never spent a day in a
kazha
could feel it in our blood. Perhaps we could not appreciate what they were going through, but we knew their suffering was real enough. The burden of life was unimaginably heavy on so many of them, mistress, yet they clung to life. Some were afraid of the long dark, others hoped each day for a miracle, a chance at redemption that they knew would not come, for it is forbidden by the Way. There is no forgiveness, yet you gave them the salvation they needed. They had no reason at all to live, but you gave them a worthy reason to die. Never, in all the long years I hope you live, should you forget that.”

“I will remember,” Keel-Tath said quietly. “Thank you, Drakh-Nur.”

Smiling, he bowed his head.

Keel-Tath turned at the sound of one of the others, snoring. Drakh-Nur huffed and flicked a pebble at the young female warrior who sat across from him. Obviously feigning sleep, she easily deflected what could have been a painful sting with her armored hand. “Forgive my insolence, mistress, but he does tend to prattle on.” Drakh-Nur laughed again, as did the others around the circle. “I am Ri’al-Char’rah, most fearsome of our band with the shrekka.” She flashed her fangs in a wide grin as the others made sounds of agreement.

“It was you at the rear when we were crossing the river,” Keel-Tath said, and Ri’al-Char’rah nodded. “Were you not wounded?”

The young warrior, who was perhaps just old enough to have completed her seventh Challenge, held up her left arm. “Indeed, my mistress, but it was a trifle. Our beloved healer,” she bowed her head to Han-Ukha’i, “cared for the wound on our way out of those accursed caves.” She flexed her arm. “It is now as good as new. I cannot say the same, alas, for four of the queen’s warriors who were following us.”

“Her skills with such weapons are unmatched,” Dara-Kol added. 

“As is my wit, mistress.” She bowed her head as the others made derisive snorts. In a more serious tone she added, “That and my life are forever yours.”

“Char’rah,” Keel-Tath mused, remembering back to her studies of the Books of Time. “You hail from the border of the Eastern Sea, then?”

Ri’al-Char’rah nodded. “The line of my parents has its roots there, mistress. I myself was born in Kel-Ulan, a small village far to the south.” Her voice darkened. “It was razed to the ground by the Dark Queen when the mistress of the village refused to send more warriors to serve her, when the village needed them for protection against a large band of honorless ones. I was a small child then, away from the village when the queen’s warriors came, and those same honorless ones took me in. I was the only survivor.”

“I grieve with you,” Keel-Tath told her, the anguish and rage in the young warrior’s heart echoing her own. “I well know the pain you suffer.”

Ri’al-Char’rah bowed her head, but said nothing more.

“I am Ba’dur-Khan.” A tall, lithe male warrior bowed his head and saluted with his left arm, as was proper. His right arm was missing, taken just below the shoulder. “I am the brother of Anin-Khan, who was once the captain of the guard to your father.”

“I am honored,” Keel-Tath said, bowing her head. “Did the queen’s warriors take your arm?”

He shook his head. “No. That I did to myself. After the burning of Keel-A’ar, I could no longer serve with honor under the queen, and so did I stray from the Way.” He shrugged. “Some years later, the band of honorless ones that took me in was being hunted through the stone culverts of Sher-Kal’an, where the ground sometimes shakes and the rocks fall from the red walls like bloody rain. I was knocked to the ground in such a rock fall, a boulder landing on my arm, trapping me.” His fangs glowed in the light of the Great Moon as he offered an ironic smile. “I was not ready to die and face eternal darkness. So I took my dagger and hacked off my own limb.”

“Not that you need two hands to do your bloody work,” Drakh-Nur rumbled. To Keel-Tath, he said, “His sword is the quickest among us. When we fight, make sure he is by your side.”

Ba’dur-Khan’s gaze was fixed on Keel-Tath. “I would be nowhere else. I did what I did that day because I believed my life must be worth something more, have a purpose other than merely avoiding death. Now I know what it is. My sword is forever yours, mistress.”

Again, Keel-Tath bowed her head, humbled.

“And this,” Dara-Kol nodded to a male warrior, perhaps a bit older than was Dara-Kol herself, “is Lihan-Hagir. He would tell you his story, but he is mute, his tongue cut out by the Dark Queen herself before you were born.” 

“Lihan-Hagir.” In the light of the moon and stars, he was unremarkable other than the weapon that occupied the spot on his hip where a sword would normally be found: a
grakh’ta
whip. Keel-Tath had seen it before, of course, for the senior acolytes were trained in its use. But the
grakh’ta
, which had several tips covered in razor sharp barbs, was hellishly difficult to use to good effect in combat. Its more typical use was as an instrument of punishment for those taken to the
Kal’ai-Il
, where it could strip the flesh from the victim’s back, right down to the bone. For Lihan-Hagir to choose it as his primary weapon, he must be very skilled with it, indeed. 

“He told me,” Dara-Kol went on, “in writing on parchment that he was born far to the south of T’lar-Gol, and came afoul of the Dark Queen after his city’s master was killed in a duel with her. Of these warriors, he was the first who joined me, and has been at my side ever since.”

Keel-Tath could not mistake the fondness in Dara-Kol’s voice when she spoke of him. She would not be surprised if they had been, or perhaps remained, lovers.

“I am honored, warrior,” she said, and Lihan-Hagir saluted her, bowing his head. Looking at the faces of those around her, she went on, “I mourn the loss of the other three warriors who gave their lives for us, for me, in our escape. But I take heart that there are seven of us now, for that is surely a good omen. Some of you I can feel in my blood; some I cannot. But know that we are now bound in a single purpose: to bring an end to the Dark Queen and her bloody ambitions, the destruction of the Way. And to that I add a vow to you, and all like you who have fallen from grace: you shall be redeemed, your honor restored. If the words written so long ago are true, if I become what destiny says I must, then so will this also come to pass.”

With that, she stood and left the circle. Standing between a pair of rocks at the edge of the aerie, she stared off into the west where the volcanoes glowed and belched dark clouds of ash into the sky far away.

She felt Dara-Kol come up beside her. “That place,” Keel-Tath said, “the underground hideaway. It was a crypt.”

“Indeed? I had always wondered what purpose it might serve. I have never heard tell of the like. But there were no bodies.”

“There were, once, long ago.” Keel-Tath put her hands on the rocks, and winced as something poked one of her palms. Taking a closer look, she saw that a small shard of the crystal heart had cut its way through the leatherite of her gauntlet, lodging itself inside. Carefully prying it out with one of her talons, she held it up, where it shimmered in the moon’s glow. “This is now all that remains of the vessel of Anuir-Ruhal’te.”

“Mistress? I do not understand.”

“It was her final resting place. The crypt was hers. And this,” she turned the shard of crystal in her fingers, “was part of the vessel that contained her spirit.”

“How is that possible?

Keel-Tath shrugged. “How can we know? The powers of the ancients were far beyond our own. All I know is that it was real. She was real. I saw her when I touched the crystal, visions playing in my mind. Her spirit yet lived, and seemed to awaken at my touch. But she was weak after so long, and the vessel, the crystal heart, had been shattered. So weak.” She carefully put the shard into a small pouch fixed to her belt. “There is so much I would have liked to ask her. So much I need to know.”

“We will find those answers, mistress. It may take time, but we will.”

“Perhaps. But first we must survive.”

“Yes,” Dara-Kol said. “And to do that, we must brave to go where only the most foolish or desperate would follow.”

An icy coil of fear lanced through Keel-Tath’s stomach as she realized what Dara-Kol had in mind. 

Sensing her emotions, Dara-Kol nodded. “Yes, mistress. We must venture into the Great Wastelands, and from there to the Western Sea.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Price To Be Paid

After resting for a few hours, the group had spent the remainder of the night and the early morning hours climbing, sliding, and crawling down the mountain. Once they had reached the foothills, they marched west, ever watchful for any sign of the queen’s warriors. 

By nightfall, the day’s uneventful trek brought them to a small village nestled near a freshwater lake that was, thankfully, bereft of any creatures larger than their fingers. Thirsty from the long march, they drank deep and filled their skins with water. They had food enough for some time from the cache in the mountain aerie, but they needed mounts to ride. Dara-Kol and the other five warriors had set about stealing them from the stables, which were only guarded by a young male stable hand, when Keel-Tath stopped them.

“We will not take what is not ours.” Keel-Tath glared at them.

“My mistress,” Dara-Kol said, “I know this is different from all you have ever known, but this is the way of the honorless ones. We must do what we must to survive.”

Keel-Tath shook her head. “If you follow me, truly in your heart, you are no longer without honor.” She looked each of the warriors in the eyes. “We will indeed do what we must to survive, but not as heartless barbarians. If I am to one day rule our people, I will do it according to the Way from the start. I will not build the future upon a foundation of thievery.”

Dara-Kol bowed her head. “Then what would you have us do? We have nothing to offer in exchange but what we have on our backs and our weapons. And we cannot let them know who we are, for that will bring the queen’s warriors.”

“I am sure they will come soon enough, no matter what we do.” Keel-Tath’s eyes lit upon Han-Ukha’i. “From the looks of this place, it must be very poor, and probably stripped bare of the robed castes by the Dark Queen. They may have injured, and we have a healer. That is a great deal to offer in exchange for some mounts, and perhaps a meal.” From the sound and the smell coming from the
magthep
pens, there should be animals aplenty.

“And if there are more warriors than we can fight?”

“I hope to not fight at all.” Keel-Tath tried to hide her fear. What she was about to do could easily turn into a disaster for them all, but she forced herself to have faith. “Loan me your cloak. Han-Ukha’i, come with me.”

***

The two approached the village gate. The walls were of thin tree trunks, showing the scars of past battles and poorly maintained. They had cleaned Han-Ukha’i’s robes in the lake as best they could. Keel-Tath hoped the tatters and stains they could not remove would go unnoticed in the dark, at least until they were inside the gate. Keel-Tath wore Dara-Kol’s cloak, the hood pulled over her head to conceal her hair and her father’s sword strapped to her back. It was a poor disguise that would not survive more than cursory scrutiny, but, as with Han-Ukha’i’s soiled robes, she hoped it would do. It would have to.

“Who approaches?”

The two stopped. Those who guarded the gate were more alert than Keel-Tath would have given credit. 

“I am a disciple of the Desh-Ka,” Keel-Tath called out. It was both truth and a lie. “Our party was set upon by honorless ones, and I call upon you to offer shelter. I am protector of a healer who would offer you her service.”

One of the two guards disappeared, but the gates remained closed. Keel-Tath’s hand tightened around the long-bladed dagger at her side. A gift from Drakh-Nur, it was nearly as long as her old sword. She fought to keep herself from turning around to look for the others, who were hiding somewhere in the darkness beyond the torches at the village gate, ready to come to her aid should things go wrong. Of course, once she and Han-Ukha’i were inside and the gates closed, there would be no one to save her.