saluting. “Then let it begin.”
Reza had not even looked up when the first attack came. He brought his sword up just in time to deflect the whirring shrekka from hitting his face. With sparks trailing after it, the weapon slammed into the stone pillar behind him.
He had one shrekka left, but dared not use it until the right moment. With only one good hand, he would have to leave go his sword to reach the flying weapon, and in that moment he would be terribly vulnerable.
Moving quickly now, the two spiraled in toward one another in a half-walk, half-crouch, weapons held at the ready. Rigah-Lu’orh’s cunning was surpassed only by the wiliest genoth, and Reza would not allow himself to underestimate her. Among all those at the kazha, the Challenge had selected her as the best to face him.
Closer they came, until they reached that finite point in time and space where planning gives way to action. In a flash of silver, Rigah-Lu’orh’s two short swords slashed at Reza, attacking his upper and lower body at once.
Reza was unable to fend off both weapons, and she scored a flesh wound on his upper thigh. With a roar of anger, he lashed out with the broadsword, cutting a vicious arc through the air where his opponent had just been. Moving in again, she struck quickly at his lower body, slashing his left leg to the bone before darting away again, just ahead of Reza’s hissing blade.
The fire in Reza’s veins burned so hot that it blinded him. Time and again Rigah-Lu’orh’s blades found their mark, his own weapon only occasionally diverting them. Her strategy was one of attrition, not of full commitment. She knew that Reza’s sword could cut her in half, armor and all, and so she was careful to stay just out of reach. But she also knew that she was stronger and faster. She had conserved her strength, and knew well how to channel the power of the Bloodsong. Reza possessed the power, but not the knowledge to control it. Now, pouring through his exhausted body and unprepared mind with the fury of lightning, it was quickly – and effectively – killing him.
Reza was staggering backward now, reeling under her assault, his life pouring from his body through a dozen new wounds. Holding the sword up like a shield as she stalked him, he suddenly found himself backed against a stone pillar. There was nowhere left to run.
Dropping the sword from his hand, he reached for the shrekka attached to his shoulder armor. It was his last defense against defeat.
But Rigah-Lu’orh had been waiting. With a fluid motion, she hurled the short sword in her left hand like a dagger.
Reza screamed as the weapon pinned him to the stone like a butterfly on a pin. The blade pierced his right side up to the hilt, the tip burying itself in the ancient stone behind him. His concentration shattered, he dropped the shrekka.
On the dais, the talons of Tesh-Dar’s hands cut the stone banister upon which she had been leaning, and her heart leapt to her throat. “No,” she whispered to herself.
She did not notice as the Empress glanced her way.
Rigah-Lu’orh regarded Reza as he writhed in pain, twisting around the blade as he reached in vain for the sword on the ground at his feet. Around her, the air was silent except for the thunder of the heartbeats of those gathered to watch. She turned around and saluted the Empress. Receiving a nod in return, the young warrior detached her own remaining shrekka and turned to Reza. He was watching her now, but the look on his face was not one of defeat, but of defiance. With a wail of fury, she cast the shrekka at his heart.
Reza was in a kind of agony he had never experienced before. It was not the agony of physical pain – he could no longer feel the metal burning in his side – but of emotional and psychic overload. The Bloodsong was so strong now, stronger than it had ever been, that he felt about to explode. His eyes were fixed on Rigah-Lu’orh. Even before she reached for the shrekka, he knew what she was about to do.
“It must not end this way,” he hissed at himself, his voice lost in the maddening cacophony of fire in his skull and the flames that burned in every cell of his body. “
Rigah-Lu’orh watched in amazement as her shrekka struck the stone pillar on which Reza had been impaled. The weapon shattered uselessly against the rock, a prelude to the roar of surprise that rose from the watching multitude.
Reza was gone, vanished.
The Empress leaned forward, eyes wide in amazement and swift acceptance of what She had seen, what She now felt stirring in the fabric of the Way.
Beside Her, Tesh-Dar gasped in surprise as she saw Reza’s body vanish, leaving behind only the shimmering air of a desert mirage. As her eyes beheld the spectacle, her blood suddenly burned with a surge of power that struck her like a reflected shock wave. In that instant, she knew. If he demonstrated the will and the wisdom required of what was to come, what must come, the Ancient Ones would protect him, as they would Esah-Zhurah. Both had proved themselves worthy of one another and of the Way, and the Ancient Ones could give them powers that Tesh-Dar had studied her entire life to master. And more. What the peers were witnessing now was only the beginning.
“And so is The Prophecy fulfilled,” the Empress murmured wonderingly. She closed Her eyes and listened to the song of Reza’s soul as it danced through the darkness beyond time, waiting to return to the bloodied sands before Her and claim his final victory.
Rigah-Lu’orh whirled around in search of her vanished opponent, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Where has he gone?” she cried angrily, feeling cheated of her triumph. “What kind of trick is–”
A brush of air against her back, like the tiniest of zephyrs, was the only warning she had before Reza’s armored body slammed into hers, carrying them both to the ground.
As they fell to the sands of the arena, Reza was clamped tightly to her back, trying to reach his arms around her neck for a chokehold. Securing his grip, he applied pressure, but Rigah-Lu’orh made no attempt to resist him.
Then he saw why. The other short sword she had been holding, waiting for his attack, was now protruding from her back, pointing like a bloody finger at the sky above. Totally surprised by Reza’s attack, she had fallen on her own weapon. Only by a narrow margin had it missed piercing his own armor over his vulnerable heart.
The arena went silent after a collective gasp of surprise.
Reza lay atop Rigah-Lu’orh’s lifeless body for what seemed like a long time, fading in and out of consciousness. Finally, realizing that he still had one last duty to perform before joining her in death, he struggled to his knees. Crawling across the sand like a dying crab, he gathered up the sword that bore his name and began the long trek toward the dais where the Empress and Tesh-Dar awaited him.
He finally brushed against the stone stairs that led up to the dais. With a groan of effort, he got to his knees and peered up with one sparkling green eye, the other now scarlet and blind.
“May this one forever dwell in Thy light, my Empress,” he rasped for what seemed like the hundredth time this day, blood from his punctured lung trickling from his lips, “for in Thy name… did she follow the Way.”
“And so may it always be,” Tesh-Dar finished from the step above, having come down from the dais to meet him. The few warriors within earshot of Reza’s weak voice were still muted by shock.
Reza slid forward, his broken hand hanging useless at his side as his good hand held onto the grip of the great and battered sword for support, the point of the weapon’s blade buried deep in the sand under his weight.
“My priestess,” he whispered, tilting the weapon toward her in invitation as he slumped toward the ground, “let it be finished.” Letting go of the weapon, he waited for her to complete the experiment begun so long ago; nicked and scarred as it was, in Tesh-Dar’s hands the sword would still make quick work of his neck, and the story would be finished.
But the expected blow never came. Instead, Reza felt hands gently touching his face, and he found himself staring into the eyes of the Empress. It was a privilege very few had been granted over the ages.
“In My name have you fought and suffered,” She said, Her words barely audible as his body lapsed into shock, “and in My name shall you live. When you awaken, you shall be as one with My children.”
As Reza collapsed into the sovereign’s arms, Tesh-Dar heard the eternal whispers of the Ancient Ones stir in her bones. With life granted to Reza and Esah-Zhurah, they had broken the silence of their spiritual vigil.
The blood that would break the curse of their people had at last been found.
