“I knew you must come,” Reza whispered.
A young but proud voice suddenly asked in the New Tongue, “Who is this animal, Father?”
Reza smiled at his son. “She is my friend of many, many cycles, Shera-Khan,” he told him. “Do you understand what
The boy nodded. The priestess had taught him what she knew of the concept, what she had learned from Reza as he was growing up; among the Kreela, such relationships did not exist, for they were all bound by their very blood and spirit to the Empress. “I am honored to meet you, friend-of-my-father’s,” Shera-Khan told Nicole in Standard.
“Thank… thank you,” Nicole replied, flabbergasted. She turned to Reza. “This is your son?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Reza told her, his own sense of awe undiminished at the miracle that stood in their midst. “His name is Shera-Khan.”
“Is she of the Blood, my son?” Tesh-Dar suddenly asked, speaking in the Old Tongue as she lay in her bed, her eyes closed. Her voice was soft, but still carried the power of command that Reza had known since the first time that he had heard her speak.
“She is, my priestess,” he admitted. He suspected that Tesh-Dar was greatly disappointed that he had shared the fire that flowed in his veins with another who was totally alien to the Way. “She and I have known each other since before I came to the Way. When I returned to them, I needed someone who could… understand who and what I was. I chose her.”
“Bring her to me.”
Reza turned to Nicole, who was utterly confused at the rapid exchange, not a word of which she could understand, except something that sounded like “friendship.”
“What is wrong?” Nicole asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Do not fear, Nicole,” he told her. “There is nothing wrong. The priestess – her name is Tesh-Dar – wishes to… become acquainted with you.” He took her hand and guided her past Shera-Khan to the great warrior who lay on the hard bed that protruded from the cell’s wall.
The two of them knelt down next to Tesh-Dar, who continued to lie still.
“Is she dying?” Nicole asked.
“Yes,” Reza responded sadly. “The warriors – the clawed ones among our race – do not atrophy before death as humans do. Their bodies remain strong until very near the end. But when the time comes to die, everything fails at once, and quickly – usually a matter of days or a week – is it over.”
“I am so sorry, Reza,” Nicole told him. “I–”
Tesh-Dar’s eyes opened, startling Nicole with their intensity, and before she could react both of the warrior’s huge hands were cupped gently around Nicole’s face. The Kreelan’s flesh felt warm, hot, against her skin, and Nicole began to feel faint, as if the blood to her brain had been cut off. She felt herself floating, drifting above a world that she knew she had seen before. Looking down at her arms, she saw that they were sheathed in black armor, and at the ends of her fingertips were silver claws. The flimsy uniform that she was accustomed to wearing was gone.
And in her heart, in her blood, burned the fire of the Bloodsong. She had sensed it before, as a deaf person might sense the vibration of music, but now she felt it as it was meant to be and was overcome by it, became a part of it. Every cell in her body burst into a roaring flame, joining the symphony of infinite harmonies that intoxicated her senses, that overwhelmed her brain.
The tide of the song crested, then slowly began to ebb. At last it began to fade away, and she felt the warmth of the mourning marks spreading down her face, blackening her blue skin like the falling of night over the plains of Wra’akath. She felt around her neck, her fingers touching the collar that she had worn since her youth, an oath of her own honor toward the Empress and Her Children, and of the Empress’s love for her.
“Nicole,” a voice spoke softly from a distance, from somewhere beyond the horizon and the rising Empress Moon. It was a voice she knew. It was the voice of someone she loved.
“Reza?”
“Come away now, Nicole,” he told her in the Old Tongue. He stood beside her now. “Take my hand.”
She reached out for him, taking his hand as he had asked. “Do we have to leave, Reza?” she asked, looking over her shoulder, back at the mystical world that had been like home to her in her dreams for so many years.
“Yes, Nicole,” he told her gently. “This world belongs to others,” he said. “You must return to yours, where you belong.”
Sadly, Nicole turned away from the golden light that reflected from the spires of the Great City, and suddenly found herself falling… falling…
“Nicole.”
Her eyes flew open and she sucked in her breath in a gasp as if she had been thrown into freezing water. The Homeworld – if that is what it had been – was gone, replaced by surroundings and sensations that should have felt more familiar than they did.
“Rest easy,” Reza said, his hand gripping her shoulder gently.
“You have chosen your companions wisely, my son,” Tesh-Dar told him as she released Nicole. Her own eyes blazed with the heat of the fire that had burned in her heart her entire life, save the last few agonizing days since the Empress’s heart had closed itself away from Her Children. The feeling was at once invigorating and monumentally depressing, for she realized that she might never again feel it before she passed into the unknown darkness where once the Ancient Ones had sung Her glory, but now lay silent as a timeless tomb. “As were you, she, too, is worthy of the Way.”
“Captain!” an alien voice suddenly intruded. “Are you all right in there? Do you require assistance?”
“No,” Nicole managed, shaking off the last of the vision, or whatever it was. “No, I am fine.”
“I think it’s time you came out, ma’am,” the voice of the ISS sergeant said. His tone told her that her made- up orders and threats were wearing thin. Behind her, the mantrap began to cycle open.
“We shall speak again,” Reza told her. “Soon.”
Nicole nodded. “
Fifty-Two
Eustus regained consciousness face down, his cheek pressing numbly into what had once been a priceless original Persian rug that was now soaked and stained with blood from the half dozen cuts in his face.
“Camden,” he heard someone saying urgently, “can you hear me?”
He tried to say “Yes,” but it came out through his battered lips and swollen jaw like “Memph.” He tasted blood and spat out the glassy remains of what had once been an upper incisor.
He felt himself being rolled over, and he groaned involuntarily from the pain. Mostly bruises, he thought automatically, his mind long accustomed to categorizing the type of pain his body felt. No spearing pain or grating bones; nothing was broken. But the pain of the bruises and contusions were enough to bring tears to his swollen eyes.
“Jesus, Eustus, you look like hell.” Forcing his swollen eyes just a little wider while trying to blink away the tears, Eustus could barely make out the dark-faced form hovering above him.
“Commander… Mackenzie?” The face nodded. “Where are we?”
“We’re aboard the
