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.
But at the last instant, Tesh-Dar’s hands rose to break his attack, and with the speed born of the special powers she had inherited from those who had gone before her, she smashed Reza to the ground with a double blow to his shoulders.
“No more, Reza,” she commanded, carefully controlling the forces inside her own spirit that clamored for release, to join in combat.
Reza knelt before her, stunned by the blows, the fire burning hotter than before. But before the fire could take him again, he was once again in Tesh-Dar’s arms. The elder warrior had sensed the new wave of power surging into the human and had elected to put a stop to it before she could lose control of what lay within herself. She held him so tightly that his armor began to give way, popping and denting with the pressure, and she continued to squeeze until Reza was panting desperately for breath, his arms nearly broken at his sides. At last, she felt the Bloodsong within him abate. When it had ebbed toward silence, she released the pressure, her arms around him more for support than restraint.
“I am not your enemy,” she whispered to him, her own senses awash in the emotions pouring from this young alien, from the young warrior she looked upon in her heart as her adopted son. “I did as she wished, Reza. She begged me for this, to give you a fair chance in the Challenge. Do not disgrace her sacrifice this way.”
She released his arms, and Reza wrapped them around her neck. For a long time he clung to her like a child, vainly trying to fight back his tears, as she held him. And on his face and hands, where they had touched Tesh-Dar’s armored breast, was Esah-Zhurah’s blood. So much blood.
“Forgive me, my priestess,” he told her in a trembling voice. “My life, my honor a thousand times over is not worth this.”
Tesh-Dar said nothing, but gently rocked him as she might a small child.
Behind them, the healers had done all they could, all they were allowed. They had arrayed the flesh and skin as well as possible and covered the ghastly wounds with sterile blankets, but that was all. They could give her nothing for the pain, put an end to the persistent bleeding, or disinfect the wounds. The chief healer saw the signs of internal injuries, as well, the force of Tesh-Dar’s blows having driven the whip’s barbs into Esah-Zhurah’s lungs. But there was nothing she could do. Ordering her peers to stand away, she signaled to Tesh-Dar that they were finished now, except for the waiting.
“Go to her now, child,” Tesh-Dar whispered. “I shall be here should you need me.”
Reza nodded against her shoulder, then shakily turned around to look at what had become of his love, to see the price she had paid to give him a few more hours of life. She lay on her stomach, her arms at her sides. Her head was turned to one side on the thick pile of skins that served as both operating table and patient bed. A tiny bead of blood made its way from the corner of her mouth, pooling in the soft fur near her ear. Her beautiful blue skin was horribly pale, almost cyan, except for the brutal bruising that peered from beneath the black velvet bandages the healers had spread across her back, and the ebony streaks of mourning on her face. He knelt next to her and took off his gauntlets, dropping them to the floor. Carefully, afraid that his mere touch would cause her more pain, he ran a hand gently across her face, caressing her cheek.
Her eyes flickered open, and he felt her move.
“Be still,” he whispered hoarsely. “Do not move, my love. I am here.”
“Do not… leave me,” she sighed. Her eyes were glassy with the onset of pain that was burning through the massive shock her body was experiencing.
Reza took her hand in his and squeezed it gently. “Never,” he said with a strength that came from the core of his being. He wanted to shout at her, to ask her why she had done this, when his life was forfeit anyway. But he did not have to, because he knew. She loved him, and would have suffered a thousand-fold what she had today for his sake, and nothing more. “I love you,” he told her softly, and he kissed her on the cheek.
She gave him a weak smile. “Fight well, my tresh, come the dawn. I will be with thee. And… may thy Way… be long… and glorious.” Her grip relaxed as her eyes rolled up into her head, the lids closing over them.
“Esah-Zhurah?” he whispered. Her face was still, and with dread in his eyes he looked at the chief healer. “Is she dead?” he asked woodenly.
She shook her head. “Not… not yet,” she told him, averting her eyes, knowing that it would not be long.
“Will she live to the morning?” he asked, his eyes pleading.
“I do not know, Reza,” she answered truthfully. Life was a strange thing, and was often incredibly adept at cheating Death. For a time. “There is nothing more we may do.”
Tesh-Dar stood close by, shrouded in the storm that tore through her heart. She was well acquainted with the process of death, and already she could sense a change in the melody of Esah-Zhurah’s spirit. Very few were as perceptive of such things as was Tesh-Dar, and there was no mistaking it. The child’s Bloodsong would soon come to a close, be it in the next moment or a few hours from now. But soon.
For all her life she had welcomed the event and celebrated it for others as she hoped they would someday do for her. It was an occasion for joy, when one passed from the field of honor to the spirit world beyond, where the Ancient Ones dwelled forever in Her light. It was the day for which the warriors of the Empire lived and breathed.
But the tortured lump of flesh that lay dying nearby brought her nothing but anguish, for to die this way was a horrible thing, especially for this child. Esah-Zhurah, born of the Empress herself, had sacrificed her formative years to study this human in the course of Her will, while her own peers sought glory against the alien hordes. And in the end, she had disobeyed a high priestess to lay with him, an act for which Tesh-Dar could have sentenced them both to death, but uncertainty had stayed her hand. The two of them, the whole that they formed together, was something unique in Tesh-Dar’s experience, and the strange quiet that had descended over her ancestors in recent times had left her acutely aware of the consequences of the decisions she had to make regarding their welfare.
In the pair of young warriors she had discovered a new force within the Empire, something that before had only existed in legend, when a warrior could feel passion for another, and not all of one’s heart was devoted to Her. She had heard Esah-Zhurah speak of love for Reza, but she understood now its true strength. The power that united these two former enemies was beyond Tesh-Dar’s ken, and she vainly struggled to understand the force that had driven this young warrior, her pride and joy, to sacrifice herself for the one she had once called “animal,” for the one who now lived clothed in the armor and beliefs of Her children, for the one who now knelt, weeping at the child’s side. Esah-Zhurah’s death would not bring glory to Her name; it would simply be a tragedy, and perhaps not for the two of them alone.
She walked to where Reza knelt and stood close to him, her great hand, still covered with Esah-Zhurah’s blood, resting upon his shoulder. “The Challenge comes soon,” she said softly. “You must prepare.” She did not need to remind him that every combat in which he fought – as many as fifteen – would be to the death. No arena judge would preside, for the only rules governing each battle would be those of survival.
“I cannot leave her,” he whispered absently, his hands gently folded around hers.
“Your armor is ruined, your weapons are not ready, nor is your mind,” Tesh-Dar went on. “You must do these things or death will find you quickly. Esah-Zhurah paid a dear price to give you this chance to fight the rarest of
