beaten.
But he had never allowed himself to suffer such a humiliation again. During the next cycles, he improved tremendously, so much so that Tesh-Dar felt compelled to let him act as a weapons master, a teacher for the neophyte warriors coming into the kazha. His last performance in the arena had been little short of astounding, winning all of his matches to the fifth level, two short of the final match that determined the overall winner of the single-round elimination combats that made up the Challenge. Esah-Zhurah, too, had improved more than Tesh-Dar ever would have been able to believe for one whose collar had been earned as a child on the space-going kazha for those called to serve the Imperial Fleet.
She thought again of Reza. Were his skin different, had he claws and fangs and raven hair, had he been female – one would have believed he was Kreelan. And perhaps, Tesh-Dar thought, he was. In spirit, if not in body. Yet his blood did not sing, and it pained her greatly.
“It is my belief,” she said, “that – barring accident – he will survive the rigors of the kazha, my Empress. Well does he fight, and well does he seem to understand the Way, as Thy daughter has taught him.”
“Yet,” the Empress asked, “his blood does not sing?” Tesh-Dar heard it as a statement, not a question.
“It is so, my Empress,” she replied woodenly, for she knew that her words sealed Reza’s fate as surely as if she had thrust a knife into his heart.
The Empress looked thoughtfully upon her sister. Tesh-Dar had served Her well, as she had the Empress who had reigned before. And among all the countless warriors who now lived and breathed, Tesh-Dar stood highest among the peers, upon the second step from the throne. Many scars did she carry from innumerable Challenges, and then – after the humans had come – from the battles she had waged against those who were not of the Way, contests fought to the thrill of the Bloodsong that was the will and spirit of their people. To live in Her light, with Her blessing, and to die honorably in Her eyes: these were the things to which all aspired, and no better example existed than the woman who now stood beside Her.
Yet, there was a melancholy about her that the Empress did not understand. About this one thing, this human child whom Tesh-Dar might once have killed simply to sharpen her talons, was the warrior priestess distraught. To the Empress, it was a simple matter: the animal’s blood did not sing, therefore it had no more soul than a steppe-beast or winged
“Tesh-Dar,” she said, lifting her hand to the great warrior’s chin, tilting it gently so that their gaze met, “what is it that troubles you so? Surely, if the humans are the soulless creatures we believe them to be, their hearts and blood silent to the ears of the spirit, the life of this one individual, this child, could not mean so much? What trouble is there, to such a warrior as yourself, to taking its life?”
“My Empress,” Tesh-Dar said, averting her gaze in deference and embarrassment at what she felt compelled to ask, “I beseech Thee to let him live until the seventh great cycle of his learning is complete. Five cycles has he lived among us, two more remain. I…” she paused, grasping for the words to explain the strange things that ached in her heart. “I have heard whispers from the Ancient Ones,” she said at last, “that at once seem clear in my mind, but which have no meaning for me.” She looked into the eyes of the one who commanded the lives and aspirations of countless souls, wondering what worth a single human life might hold for Her. “They know of him, Empress,” she said slowly. “They do not speak his human given name, as do we at the kazha, but they watch him through our eyes. They watch the human and Esah-Zhurah as if they were one, and they wait. They helped her to save him from death in the Lo’ar River.”
The Empress looked away into the garden for a long moment, Her eyes focused on places and times that were remembered now only through crumbling stone tablets and withered parchments. For Her memory was that of all those who had gone before Her, who had worn the simple gold band that now adorned Her neck. Accepting the ornaments of the Empress was to accept the spirit and knowledge of the thousands who had once walked in the Garden, and to know the thoughts and feelings of countless billions. All bowed to Her will. “I, too, have heard these whispers,” She said slowly, “and many times have I beseeched them for their meaning. But I cannot believe the answer that I hear.”
“Then it is true,” Tesh-Dar said softly. “He may be the fulfillment of The Prophecy.”
“The thought is a most absurd one,” the Empress replied, but Her voice betrayed Her own growing suspicion that She could not rule out the possibility, however faint.
The priestess kneeled, humbled by the Empress’s remark, but nonetheless determined in her conviction that it could be true. “Yes, my Empress, but it is a thought I am unable to banish from my mind.”
The Empress recalled the words that made up The Prophecy. It had been passed down from generation to generation since the death of Keel-Tath, millennia long past. It gave hope that someday their atonement might be made, but nothing more. None knew if the First Empress had spoken it, for She had gone away into the Darkness, and Her people had to live on as their Way demanded. So long had it been, that even the Ancient Ones had long ago given up any hope of redemption, believing Her Children to be cursed for all Eternity. Until now, perhaps.
And as the Empress thought of where the Way had taken Her people over these many generations, the nearly forgotten words of a passage from The Prophecy came to Her:
