Reza was jolted out of his sleep by a sharp rap on the bottom of his foot. Peering from beneath the warmth of his bed of skins, he saw Esah-Zhurah standing beside him, a short black baton inlaid with a complex silver design in her hand. He blinked his eyes a few times, trying to clear his head. She hit his foot again, harder this time, his nerves sending a sharp report of pain to his brain.
“Ow!” he exclaimed, drawing his foot away from her and under the comparative safety of the skins. “What is that?” he asked about the baton, never having seen it before. He spoke only in the Kreelan New Tongue now, only rarely having to resort to Standard.
She looked at him, head cocked to one side. “You tell me,” she said, holding it up for him to see more clearly. About as long as her forearm and the thickness of Reza’s thumb, the baton was a gleaming black shaft crowned by silver castings and a series of runes in silver that must have been incredibly ornate when new. But now only the ghostly impressions of the strange runes (they were obviously Kreelan, but did not match the character set he was learning to read) glimmered in the polished metal, untold years and hands having taken their toll.
“A Sign of Authority?” Reza guessed. It was the only thing he could think it might be. A Sign of Authority, Esah-Zhurah had once explained, was like a public symbol of an elder who had delegated both responsibility and authority to a subordinate. With such a symbol, the populace at large would have to treat the bearer with the same regard as they would the elder. The bearer had great power, but also carried the liability that went with it. Esah-Zhurah had made it abundantly clear to Reza in many lessons that personal responsibility was not taken lightly in the Kreelan culture. It was literally a matter of life and death, and he wondered if he would finally have the opportunity to see it in action.
“Very good, human,” she said. “Get dressed now. We will be going outside this day.”
His excitement matched only by his apprehension, Reza hurried to dress, lacing his skins on over his naked body. Pausing to relieve himself, he felt her hands working at the back of his neck.
“What–?” he exclaimed.
“Be still,” she ordered as she removed his old leather collar and replaced it with a new one. Larger, thicker and made of cold metal, at least he no longer felt that he was being slowly choked to death. “You grow quickly,” she commented, clipping a leash to the collar and giving it a quick yank to make sure it was connected properly.
“Why the leash?” he asked as he finished getting dressed.
“You are my responsibility,” she told him, holding up the leash for him to see. It was made of a tight, dark metal chain, with a studded leather thong at the far end that was looped around her wrist. “You are unfit to walk among Her Children without proper supervision. It will help remind you of your place.”
He was tempted to react to her taunt, but her expression and body stance – he could read her alien nuances now, sometimes – made him give in to caution. He elected to let the comment pass.
She led him to the door and stopped, turning around to face him. “You must listen, and do exactly as I say,” she commanded. “You will not speak. You will not look directly into the eyes of another, especially those with special markings here.” She pointed to the center of the collar that hung just below her throat.
Reza nodded, his stomach knotting in excitement. Whatever lay beyond these walls, he was eager to see it. He had been imprisoned here for far too long.
She opened the door and led him out. Much to his surprise, the door led to a long corridor lit by triangular windows set high in the arch that formed the corridor’s ceiling. The light that filtered through was warm and bright, with the slight magenta hue to which he had become accustomed from the light flowing down into the atrium where the fire was kept. Reza could smell a faint odor that reminded him of an old stone house he had once known on New Constantinople: it was the smell of age and time, the smell of quiet strength. The walls, though, were smooth and seamless, without visible signs of having been hewn or carved.
As Esah-Zhurah led him toward the door at the end of the corridor, Reza could see that there were many other doors like the one they had left behind. But they were not evenly distributed along the hallway as they would have been in most human-designed buildings. Some were very closely spaced, while many meters separated others. And the doors themselves, apparently of some type of dark wood, seemed different from one another, not so much in dimension but in the pattern and tone of the wood, as if the doors themselves were of vastly different ages. All of them appeared unique, as if each had been made by hand.
Reza listened, but could hear no sound other than their footsteps and the occasional clinking noise of the chain that bound him. He watched the girl walking smoothly before him, and noticed that she had put the baton in a sheath that was part of her left arm’s leather armor, the wand’s silver head protruding near her shoulder. He also saw that she wore a weapon today, something he had never seen her do before. It was a long knife, almost a short sword, with an elaborately carved bone handle and, judging from the shape of the leather scabbard hanging from her waist, a blade that was as elegantly shaped as it was deadly.
Reza was amazed that so much of what he had seen appeared to be, by and large, handmade. The quality of the workmanship was incredible, he admitted, but where were the mass-produced items that virtually every human took for granted? Where was the technology? Computers, appliances, everything up to starships and even terraformed planets were trademarks of man’s industrialization. The Kreelans obviously had the technology to reach out to the stars and wage war on a galactic scale, but it was certainly absent from this place. Of the little he had seen so far, they seemed to be living on a level close to that of lost colonies that had lost contact with the Confederation for decades, and survived with only the most rudimentary technology.
He was under no illusion, however, that this race was not capable of every technological trick imaginable, carved bone knife handles or not. They had mastered interstellar flight and the myriad intricacies of related engineering, and had shown equal brilliance and innovation in every other sphere in which they and humanity had come in contact.
Except for communication and diplomacy, he thought grimly.
They reached what he took to be the main entrance, a large two-sided door that conformed to the shape of the arched walls.
Esah-Zhurah stopped, and again turned to him, her eyes narrowed. “Remember what you have learned, human,” she told him gravely, “for failure outside this door will not bring the pain of the lash. It will bring death.”
“I understand,” Reza told her firmly, reciting in his head the commandments she had taught him, cramming them into his consciousness until they came to him automatically, without thinking.
She opened the door and led him outside. The first thing he noticed was the air. It was fresh and clean, with a slight breeze and the mingling smells of alien vegetation and some mysterious fauna. He involuntarily took huge gulps of it through his nose, his system becoming inebriated on the flavors. His head cleared and his senses sharpened after a few breaths, and he felt his energy level soar.
He stood behind Esah-Zhurah on a stone terrace at what he mentally designated the building’s front, and looked down the steps before him into a large area that looked like a garden. It was not of the food-growing kind, but had a variety of stunningly beautiful trees and flowers – none of which he had ever set eyes on before, of course – in a definite, though alien, pattern, the whole of it scrupulously maintained.
Further out, he saw several circular fields bounded by thin, closely spaced pillars of rough black stone with shapes, indistinguishable at this distance, carved into the tops.
Arenas, he thought absently. They look like some kind of arena or training ground. He remembered seeing holos of horses and other animals being trained in similar rings, and he instinctively knew that he would come to know the sand in those arenas very well, if he lived that long.
Beyond the fields lay a forest of emerald green and amber trees that rose many meters into the air. The tremendous golden spires of what could only be a city pierced the sky beyond, and his heart raced at the thought of going there.
A slight tug on his chain reminded him that he had been gawking. The girl was obviously eager to get on with whatever errand she had in mind for them.
As they walked down the steps of what had been Reza’s home on this world, he saw that there were other, smaller buildings clustered near the one from which they had just emerged. A tremble ran through him as he recognized many similarities between the layout of this place and the House 48 complex.
He wanted to ask Esah-Zhurah so many questions, but bit his tongue. He did not want to spoil this, especially if there was any chance of escaping, although he held only slim hopes for that option. Alone, on a world inhabited by the enemy, where could he run? When he was locked up in the apartment, he had fantasized about somehow getting away from Esah-Zhurah and escaping back to humanity. But being outside and seeing the world around him put an end to that. He knew he was on an alien-occupied planet, perhaps even their homeworld. And a lone human boy simply was not going to get away unnoticed in a society of blue-skinned aliens, and females, at that: no human had ever seen a Kreelan male, and no amount of hypothesizing had been able to explain why.
As Esah-Zhurah led him down the smoothed earthen path that cut through the trees toward the city, he thought it odd that there were no other Kreelans about. While he had never heard any sounds from other tenants in the building where he had been held, surely there must have been someone else somewhere. Certainly they would not have dedicated an entire complex such as this solely for his benefit.
Or would they? What did he know of the Kreelan thought process? While he realized that he was now undoubtedly the human expert on Kreelan psychology (since no other human had ever been able to communicate with the Kreelans and live to tell about it), he still knew next to nothing about what lay behind their feline eyes and inscrutable faces.
But the further he walked into the shadows of the forest, the more convinced he became that his curiosity about the existence of other denizens was being rewarded. While he had never been in a real forest, he could tell that something here was not entirely natural, not quite right.
Suddenly he realized why.
They were here. He could not see or even hear them, but he was certain that there were Kreelans nearby. As he walked steadily behind the girl he became aware of at least ten sets of eyes following him from various points in the forest. He was not sure if the others were following them or just happened to be there as they passed, but the eyes watched. He was sure there must have been even more, deeper in the brush, moving like whispers, but he could not be sure. And he did not really want to find out.
A chill running up his spine, he picked up his pace, moving closer behind Esah-Zhurah.
On through the forest they went, and eventually they left the prying eyes behind. Reza occasionally heard an animal grunting off in the woods, or the screech of some unknown beast of tiny proportions lurking high in the trees. He did not notice any creatures flying through the air, but by now the dense forest canopy obscured much of the sky itself, and such creatures would have been beyond his view.
After a while, he caught sight of the city spires again through the tops of the trees. They were very near now, or seemed to be, and he was caught between the excitement of seeing something no other human had seen before and the anxiety of knowing that he probably would never have the opportunity to tell another of his kind what he was witnessing.
“What is the name of this place?” he whispered.
“This is Keel-A’ar,” she told him. “It is the place of the First Empress’s birth.”
He wanted to ask her more questions, but he could tell from her tone that she was not inclined to explain the history of the place now, although he knew that she would later, if he asked.
The trees suddenly thinned away until he found himself standing on the crest of a hill overlooking the city. The spires were tremendous, rising from stout bases to soar hundreds of meters into the air, thinning to nearly invisible points in the sky. Each was translucent, each a different color than the others, shimmering in the sunlight. Among the great spires were huge domes of gold and crystal, with streets and boulevards running like sinuous rivers between the buildings. The city’s layout held no apparent pattern, yet it seemed in perfect harmony, each structure complimenting the next. On the city’s far side ran a river, whose last bend took it directly through the city, and the Kreelan engineers had made the river an integral part of the overall design, buildings and bridges gracefully spanning the water.
“It’s beautiful,” he breathed, his eyes drinking in the city’s magnificence.
Esah-Zhurah, in what he thought an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture, let him gaze about for another minute before ushering him onward.
Walking for over an hour without seeming to get any closer to the surrounding wall, Reza began to appreciate just how large the city was. He could now see Kreelans moving through a huge gate in the wall. He imagined there must be several such gates around the city, but this was the only one he could see. Most of the Kreelans wore armor, while some wore robes of various colors: white, deep purple, cyan, and others that he did not even have a name for. Some carried satchels of various sizes and types, while others carried nothing that he could see and had their hands folded inside the billowing sleeves of their robes. None but the warriors had ever been seen by humans in a century of warfare.
At last, in what he guessed was three or four Standard hours of fast walking from the tree line, they reached the great gate. It was embedded in the city wall, which stood at least twelve meters high and must have been at least five meters thick. He could not understand how it had been built, as there were no visible seams or cracks, not even the scratches and other slight damage that must come with time. It was smooth as a polished stone, its mottled gray exterior, like the scales of a sleek reptile, stretching off to his right and left until they curved away from sight.
There were many Kreelans here, and Reza felt distinctly uncomfortable under their unabashed stares. He recognized the tla’a-kane, the ritual salute, as the aliens passed one another, crossing their left arm, fist clenched, over their right breast and bowing their head. It was one of the aspects of their etiquette that he found baffling. An older Kreelan would salute a much younger one, even younger than Esah-Zhurah, and nearly every passerby might salute a particular individual of indeterminate age and social standing, regardless of whether they wore armor or the flowing robes. Their nearly instantaneous grasp of all the factors that made up an individual’s standing within the caste system that determined their rank from the Empress on down astounded him the more he watched. It was only with the greatest of effort that he held his eyes downcast, for his curiosity to look at everything was overpowering.
But no matter where he looked, of all the people they passed or could see at any distance, all he saw were females. Reza had read that humans had never encountered any males, and it was a subject of endless speculation among xenobiologists. Kreelan females did not have any particularly exotic sexual traits, and were in fact quite similar to human females, which strongly suggested that there should also be a male of the species. Otherwise, how could they reproduce?
So where are the males? Reza wondered as he surreptitiously glanced around. There certainly aren’t any here.
The palatial structures became ever taller the closer they moved toward the city’s center, as if they were ascending a mountain made by Kreelan hands. All had intricate carvings and runes adorning their superstructures, written in a dialect of their language that he couldn’t read, but that didn’t keep him from trying.
Lost as he was in gawking at the world around him, he nearly ran into Esah-Zhurah when she stopped. She had been watching him and the citizens that passed by, most of whom were exhibiting more than a casual curiosity in the human, and had decided that a reminder was in order.
“Remember,” she whispered, taking him by the neck with her free hand and whispering into his ear. Her mouth was so close that he felt one of her upper fangs brush against his skin, sending a chill down his spine. Her hand gave a firm squeeze around his neck to emphasize the single word. She looked him in the eye for a moment, and then turned to lead him further into her world.
Except for an occasional glance at the spires that towered above them, Reza now kept his field of vision limited to the ground, with only an occasional peek to see where they were going and what was happening around them. He noticed with growing concern that an increasing number of the city’s inhabitants were stopping to stare at him. A few very young ones had even begun to trail along, as if they had never even seen an image of a human, let alone a real one. As he walked he began to feel the feathery pressure of small hands reaching out to touch him as if he were an animal in a petting zoo.
Many of the older ones, the full adults, stopped and stared for a moment, sometimes speaking quietly to one another before moving on. Others simply gawked, continuing to do so until Reza and Esah-Zhurah had disappeared from their sight. But none made a move to interfere or harass him or his young keeper, and they passed their way into the heart of the city unmolested.
The population seemed to rapidly increase in density as they moved inward, and soon they were passing through a very large but orderly throng moving about a gigantic central plaza. The plaza had several levels, and was bounded by four of the largest spires in the city. Despite having four corners, it was hardly a rectangle: the plaza flowed from one spire to the next in elegant curves. Everywhere, it seemed, the Kreelans had forsaken the angularity and symmetry so treasured by humans.
The bottom level was an enormous garden park that stretched several kilometers across, and at its center was a huge obelisk that towered to nearly a third the height of the surrounding spires. It had a crystal at its peak that looked like an enormous sapphire of deep blue that blazed in the sun. Reza could see a number of people strolling about or sitting on the intermittent grassy areas near the base of the obelisk. It was orderly, peaceful.
The edge of each higher level was set further back from the center than the one below, so that all of them were open to the magenta-tinged sky above, and every level was well adorned with trees and bright flowering plants. Reza could not see anything that looked like shops or businesses along the periphery; rather, it seemed like the entire plaza had been constructed simply because it formed an attractive and peaceful core for the populace, a gathering place for their people.
They wound their way down a curving avenue of inlaid stone into what looked like a marketplace. There seemed to be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of vendors selling their wares from stores set into the buildings or from small wheeled carts scattered about the square (which, of course, was in the shape of anything but a square). Many of the items that were being offered were completely unfathomable, but others were readily identifiable. Food, much of which did not appear very appetizing, was in great abundance here, and in a much wider selection than he had experienced in his meager diet. Weapons of various intriguing shapes and functions – knives, swords, and others that he could only guess at – were the subject of discussion and what he assumed to be bargaining.
But again, even here, he saw no real evidence of a high level of technology. There were no vid-screens or their equivalent, no appliances of any type, nothing even so innocuous as a hand-held computer. Even among the weapons, there were no projectile or energy weapons, only weapons that would have been recognizable on Earth during the Middle Ages. Everything he saw here was probably the same as it must have been centuries, or even millennia, before.
And as he looked at the people around him, he saw Kreelans that seemed to come from different places, groups, or maybe professions (if they had any other than slaughtering humans). But no matter the details of their outward appearance, they still broke down into two general groups: those with robes and those with armor. He did not see a single warrior type vending, the Kreelans in robes of several colors fulfilling that task. Nor did he see any robed ones with weapons.
As he passed the shops and stalls on his way to wherever the girl was taking him, he also noticed that there was not really any buying going on. He never saw any kind of money (so far as he could tell) exchanged, even when the would-be buyer walked off with the goods. Nor did he see anything like credit discs that were the standard in the Confederation, and he could not understand the process at work here. A Kreelan would walk up to a vendor, apparently choose whatever they wanted, chat with the vendor a moment and then walk away with the goods, the vendor turning to whomever was next in line.
While the buying process was a mystery, the order in which people were served was not: it was clearly defined by the rank protocols. What he took to be lowly individuals, usually girls about his keeper’s age, but often older, sometimes stood a considerable time while others stepped up in front of them to do business. But he saw no sign of frustration or anxiety on the part of those who had to wait, only seemingly endless patience.
His observations were interrupted when he felt Esah-Zhurah’s hand suddenly clamp down on the back of his neck. She forced his head down so far that his chin practically touched his chest, the cartilage in his neck popping in protest.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a warrior’s black talons. He remembered Esah-Zhurah’s repeated warnings to avert his eyes, but his curiosity nearly overpowered his sense of self-preservation. The warrior’s claws were jet black and shiny, like razor sharp obsidian, and were considerably longer and more lethal looking than Esah-Zhurah’s. The owner’s hand, arm, and lower body – that was all he could see – were all tremendously developed and obviously much more powerful than all the other warriors he had glimpsed. Her leather armor bulged with muscle, giving the impression of a champion bodybuilder and athlete.
But they moved on, the great warrior passing into the throng behind them.
Finally, they arrived at their destination. It was, at least compared to some of the other places they had passed, a nondescript aperture into a building adorned with the usual indecipherable runes.
Before mounting the steps, Esah-Zhurah stopped and hailed a much younger warrior, apparently chosen at random from among a group of similar minors. The young girl, maybe all of six human years old, saluted and bowed her head.
“See that the animal remains here,” Esah-Zhurah commanded, handing the young girl his leash.
“Yes, Esah-Zhurah,” the tiny warrior replied, bowing her head again.
Reza was not sure which was more shocking: that she would leave him under the care of such a young girl, or that they all seemed to know each other’s names.
“Stay here,” she told him, pointing at the ground where he stood. Without another glance, she turned and went up the steps, disappearing into the arched doorway.
As he watched her go, he idly noticed that this was one of the few buildings he had seen that had real windows. Many of the others just had what looked like slits randomly disposed about their exterior, shutters opened to the side.
He looked at the girl holding his leash. She seemed terribly young, but her face radiated a sense of authority and determination that few human children would ever boast, even as adults. She stood at a kind of attention, her cat’s eyes never straying from him, her hand securely locked in the loop of the leather thong at the end of his leash.
“What is your name?” he asked her quietly, hoping his voice would not carry to the passing adults and arouse their attention any further than did the simple fact of his being there.
She glared at him, and he instantly realized his mistake. There was some key or trick to their names that Esah-Zhurah had not described, some way they immediately recognized one another, and to ask this girl her name must have been an insult.
He sighed in frustration and turned away from the glowering blue-skinned imp.
After a few minutes, Reza saw that more of the children, as well as adults, had taken time out from their alien day to get a closer look at him. None made threatening gestures – at least from what he could tell; they all seemed threatening enough as it was – but the circle about him was rapidly growing in size and diminishing in distance.
His fear of being torn to pieces by an alien mob brought home the importance of his relationship with Esah-Zhurah. While he could hardly consider her an ally, much less a friend, she was the only link he had to life. Without her, he stood no chance at all of survival on this world, among these people, and he frantically wished she would come out of the building and lead him away from the overly inquisitive group forming around him.
At last, she emerged with a black tube about the length of her forearm clutched firmly in one hand. Taking the leash from the young girl, she started off again, Reza in tow. Flowing with the increasingly thick crowd of people, he occasionally bumped against warriors whose shoulders were above his head.
“What is that?” he asked Esah-Zhurah quietly, discretely pointing at the tube she carried.
“It is the priestess’s correspondence,” she answered. “It is a task certain of us undertake for her each day.” She looked askance at him. “Consider yourself honored, human.”
Reza raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had never been on a planet or known anyone who communicated by hard copy means, “the post” always having had an electronic connotation. But letters written by hand were akin to the books he had so treasured, and he began to believe that maybe the Kreelans were not complete savages after all.
“We will go to the bath,” she told him as she led him around a tight knot of warriors arguing heatedly over something that he could not quite make out. “What is your saying?” She thought a moment. “Nature calls? Yes?”
“Yes,” he replied earnestly. Although he had not had anything to drink for hours, he suddenly felt like his bladder was going to explode. Of course, he had been so preoccupied with gawking at the city that he hadn’t noticed until Esah-Zhurah mentioned it.
She led him to a doorway along a street that looked no more or less unusual than the others cutting through the metropolis. Through the doorway was a large softly lit anteroom. Kreelans in dark blue robes, barely contrasting with their skin, were in attendance, and Reza was shocked to see that everyone else – Esah-Zhurah included – was stripping off their clothing.
She turned to him, naked now except for her neckband and the ubiquitous baton, and snagged his skins with one of her claws. “Off,” she commanded tersely, wrinkling her nose in a sign of disgust. She gestured toward the robed attendant who already was holding Esah-Zhurah’s armor.
Reluctantly following Esah-Zhurah’s command, he stripped and gave his motley skins to the attendant, who took them as unwillingly as he parted with them before carrying everything away through another door.
Reza heard a growl behind him. Turning around, he found himself toe to toe with a warrior, her taut breasts – the left one carrying a terrible scar running from the left armpit to her stomach – a hair’s breadth from his nose, so tall was she. Even though they were aliens, they still had more basic things in common with human females than not, and he felt his face flush with embarrassment. He also noted that Esah-Zhurah was observing his predicament with keen interest.
The other Kreelans in the anteroom stopped what they were doing and stared, as well. Most probably had never seen a human other than himself (or had only seen one long enough to kill him or her, he thought), and by their reaction they certainly had never seen a naked human, least of all a very young male. Most of their eyes were focused below his waist.
Determined to show some courage, he raised his gaze from the warrior’s chest to her eyes and held her stare. From somewhere behind him, drops of water splashed, and he began to count them to mark what probably would be the last few moments of his life. He reached a count of eleven before he heard Esah-Zhurah’s voice behind him.
“Enough, animal,” she said, tugging him by his leash away from the still-staring warrior. “Combat is not permitted in the bath.”
Without another word, she led him through another archway and past the staring patrons in the anteroom. They went down a corridor lined with some kind of mosaic scenes of swirling rune-like shapes before entering the next room.
Reza stopped in his tracks, just inside the archway. This is too much, he thought. It was a public bath, all right, as in bathroom. As in bodily functions. He sighed heavily and followed along behind Esah-Zhurah, who had stopped when she noticed the resistance on the end of the leash. His stomach churned.
This is really disgusting, he thought. He had never liked the open bathrooms of House 48. But at least there, even in an open bay bathroom, everyone had to endure the same level of public humiliation, and so it generally was not that big of a deal. And, if nothing else, everyone in the room had been human. And of the same sex.
After a moment’s pause he followed after Esah-Zhurah, who took her place on a strangely shaped throne of dark green. He took the seat next to her and tried to keep his mind on what he was supposed to be doing, rather than what was going on around him.
Esah-Zhurah finally stood up (he had already finished, such was his eagerness to get out of this place) and took him through the next archway, where a cleansing waterfall cascaded over them from the ceiling. The water itself smelled different, as if something – a detergent or antibiotic agent, perhaps – had been added, but he noticed nothing different about the taste as it poured over his head. The water ran down through sculpted drains in the sides of the chamber to disappear below.
After passing through a short tunnel past the waterfall, they found themselves in a large chamber that was, in fact, a soaking bath. Esah-Zhurah led him into the water, its scalding heat making him hiss with pleasure as it crept up his body. She propped her back against the side of the large pool, and he stayed close to her; even her despotic company was welcome over the hostile faces that peered from the water like sea monsters wreathed in a steamy mist. He kept inching closer to her, until their shoulders and arms touched under the water.
After he was sure she was not going to push him away, Reza closed his eyes, shutting out the alien faces around him. He forced himself to relax, letting the water’s heat penetrate his body. After a few minutes, and hoping he wasn’t going to breach any codes of etiquette, he took himself all the way under the water, rinsing out his rapidly lengthening hair and washing the accumulated sweat from his face. He felt his pores opening up from the water’s heat, and he sighed with the unexpected pleasure of actually having a real bath, a hot bath, for a change. Up to this point he had only the freezing water from the spigot in his room and a crude metal basin with which to wash. Blowing like a broaching whale as he returned to the surface, he met Esah-Zhurah’s eyes with a smile. He figured she would not understand its significance, but it felt good to have something, anything, to smile about.
Esah-Zhurah gave him a perplexed look, but nothing more severe.
When they were finished, she led him out the other side of the pool to a large area open to the sky. There they settled onto comfortable mats among the many other bath-goers who were drying off in the warm sun.
* * *
Reza did not realize he had drifted off to sleep until Esah-Zhurah poked him with a claw.
“We go now,” she said. They stood up, completely dry, and headed off down yet another corridor to the anteroom to retrieve their clothes. Reza noticed that his had been cleaned and smelled almost pleasant now.
As they headed through the main entryway, an incoming group of Kreelans made to enter, neither party seeing the other until it was too late. The ensuing confusion resulted in some unexpected jostling. But no one took offense, and Reza and Esah-Zhurah rejoined the throng of Kreelans moving through the boulevard.
Near the edge of the plaza, they happened to pass a group of older warriors in the undulating crowd. Reza, now used to the drill, lowered his head and averted his eyes, while Esah-Zhurah performed the ritual greeting.
But something went wrong. One of the warriors barked a question at Esah-Zhurah in a dialect Reza didn’t understand. Surprised, Esah-Zhurah started to respond, eyes still lowered. But she stopped in mid-phrase, looking at her left arm.
The baton, the Sign of Authority, was missing.
Esah-Zhurah’s hands flew across her armor in search of it, as if she might have accidentally misplaced it when dressing at the bath. Then she shot a questioning look at Reza, as if he might have had it. Her eyes were frantic.
“Reza,” she gasped. It was one of the only times she had ever called him by name. “Reza, where is the Sign of Authority? What has happened to it?” Reza could see she was petrified.
It must have been at the bath, he thought. It must have fallen out when we ran into that group of warriors when we were leaving.
He was just opening his mouth to tell her this when the questioning warrior, quite formidable in appearance, spoke to Esah-Zhurah in a harsh tone using the same dialect she had before.
Esah-Zhurah was silent, her head hanging low in what Reza understood with a chill to be total, utter defeat. Without the baton, she had no authority and therefore had no right to claim him as her own. In this society, rank and authority were everything, and she had little of the first and none of the second in the eyes of the accusing warrior. The end result would be that the challenger could kill them both, or – even worse in Reza’s mind – take him as her own, for purposes he did not care to contemplate.
His fears grew deeper as the warrior momentarily turned her attention from Esah-Zhurah to himself. From her belt hung what could only be ears. Human ears. There were least twenty pairs strung on a cord. He felt a hot flame of rage flare in his heart, a worthy companion to the chill of fear that ran down his spine.
The warrior turned from Reza and spoke briefly to her comrades, and they murmured a response. He couldn’t understand the words, but he didn’t need to: he and Esah-Zhurah were in deep trouble.
The warrior took one step closer to Esah-Zhurah and – without any warning at all – flattened her to the ground with a brutal open-handed blow to the side of her head, the rapier claws gashing the girl’s scalp to the bone above her right ear.
Reza watched, wide eyed, as Esah-Zhurah yelped once and then crumpled into a dazed heap on the ground, dark blood pulsing from her wounded head. The warrior viciously kicked her over onto her stomach and then reached for a knife. Leaning down, the warrior grabbed Esah-Zhurah’s hair and used it to lift up her head, exposing her throat to the knife the warrior held in her other hand.
Reza moved without thinking. He rushed the warrior from behind, kicking out at her with both legs in a flying leap. She grunted in surprise and went tumbling over Esah-Zhurah’s prone form, nearly impaling herself with her own knife. But she recovered quickly, rolling deftly to her feet.
The other warriors and passersby gasped in astonishment, and a crowd instantly began to gather around the mismatched combatants. Their guttural comments merged into a buzz of curiosity as they formed a ring that marked the onset of what in their culture was an everyday occurrence: ritual combat. The only difference was that this would be to the death.
The warrior bared her fangs and roared a challenge at Reza. He backed up, trying to draw her away from Esah-Zhurah, who lay terrifyingly still. Reza thought frantically about his biggest problem: he had no weapon. Even if the advancing warrior had nothing but her talons, he stood no chance against her. Unless…
Acting quickly, Reza tore at the thin ragged animal skin that served as his shirt, coming away with a strip of thin leather that was almost twice the length of his arm. Then he quickly searched the ground for the other vital ingredient he needed: a simple rock. On the well-swept boulevards they had been on, he didn’t hold out much hope, but for once Fate favored him: a small piece of chipped cobblestone lay only a few paces away.
Praying that the warrior’s arrogance would give him a few more seconds, he dashed over and picked it up. Placing it carefully in the makeshift sling, he began his windup, wondering if the brittle leather would hold the sharp-edged projectile long enough before the sling came apart. The air filled with the whirring sound as he whipped it around his head, faster and faster.
The warrior stopped, regarding him with what he took to be bemused curiosity. Then she let out a harrowing bellow that was echoed by the other warriors surrounding them.
Ignoring the noise, Reza whirled the sling even faster, waiting for the right moment.
Now! he thought, releasing the stone just as the warrior stepped into the sling’s line of fire. The cobblestone shard flew straight and true, its jagged edges mincing the Kreelan’s right eye. Her scream filled the void left by the suddenly silent onlookers. Dropping the knife, she fell to the ground, clutching her injured face and wailing in agony.
Reza wasted no time. His lips pulled back in a snarl of rage, he dropped the tattered leather strip and grabbed up the fallen knife. Leaping onto the warrior’s back, he entwined his left arm in her hair and levered her head back, exposing her throat to the blade clenched in his other hand, just as she had done to Esah-Zhurah.
The Kreelan went very still, as if she were expecting this and wasn’t going to struggle.
Reza hesitated, his resolve suddenly cracking. What was he supposed to do? he wondered. He knew the woman’s life was his for the taking, and he had no doubt that, were their positions reversed, she would have no compunction about killing him. Esah-Zhurah had not spoken of how such things were handled, perhaps in the firm belief that if Reza ever found himself in such a situation, either she would be able to get him out of it or he would simply be killed.
And yet, here he was.
This, he thought ironically, is what in a more lucid moment Wiley had once called a “command decision.” There was no one from whom he could ask advice or consent. The burden of success or failure was on his shoulders and his alone.
The Kreelan, trembling beneath him from a kind of pain Reza hoped never to have to endure himself, waited with a patience grown through a lifetime of conditioning. Around them, the crowd of observers was deathly quiet, waiting for the contest to be resolved.
Remembering the sets of human ears hanging from the warrior’s waist, he suddenly knew the course for his vengeance. Taking a handful of the woman’s braided hair, he cut it off with the knife.
She screamed in agony, from a torrent of incomprehensible pain that Reza someday would come to understand himself. Esah-Zhurah had told him that a Kreelan’s hair was her strength, her bond to the Empress, and he knew that it was as precious to them as it had been to Samson in the Old Testament of Earth. He didn’t understand all of what Esah-Zhurah had told him, but it was enough that the Kreelans believed in the importance of their hair. And he had just deprived this warrior of a goodly portion of hers.
He left her, stepping away to where Esah-Zhurah lay bleeding. He carefully turned her over to look at her wounds. The four ugly gashes across her skull were deep, and there was a tremendous amount of blood in her hair and on the street.
“Oh, God,” he whispered in Standard, wondering if she could be bleeding to death, or if her skull had been fractured. He had no idea what to do.
Her eyes fluttered open. She tried to focus on him and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out before she passed out again.
The stricken warrior had stopped screaming. Now she glared at him, the blood and fluid from her devastated eye seeping down her face like a smashed egg. He watched her carefully, waiting for the next attack, the one he would not be able to stop.
Her face finally locking into a frigid mask of utter hatred, the warrior got to her feet faster than Reza would have thought possible. Her claws flexed like the talons of a predatory bird as she began to move toward him.
He moved between her and Esah-Zhurah, clutching the warrior’s own knife in his hand as he made ready for a last desperate stand, his hopes of survival all but extinct.
A shadow suddenly fell over him and a huge hand with obsidian claws clutched his shoulder from behind, pushing him back down beside Esah-Zhurah with the irresistible strength of a mountain. He went perfectly still as a voice behind him, oddly familiar, spoke to the advancing warrior in the same dialect that Reza could not understand, but in a tone of unquestionable authority.
The warrior stopped. She listened intently to whomever was standing behind Reza. His opponent said nothing. She glared at him one final time and then, much to his surprise, she bowed to him, her arm across her chest. She reached around to her back and tossed him the scabbard for the knife he still held.
And then she slit her throat with her own claws.
Reza watched in horrified fascination as blood gushed from the ghastly wound and air whistled from her severed windpipe like someone blowing over the top of a bottle. The warrior stood at rigid attention until, as the flow of blood slowed to a trickle, her good eye rolled up into her head and she fell to the street, dead.
Reza vomited, but nothing came up. He simply knelt in the street, wracked with dry heaves. When he was finished, he felt the great hand on his shoulder again. Turning his face up, he looked at the woman standing over him, and his heart froze at what he saw.
Silhouetted against the slowly setting sun, standing at least a head taller than the tallest of the other warriors and with a frame whose strength could have matched any two or three of their kind, was the most powerful Kreelan he had ever seen. A great gnarled staff that Reza doubted he could have even carried was held easily in one hand. Her breast armor, a glistening black that seemed to have an infinite depth, boasted an intricate series of crystal blue runes inlaid into the metal that sparkled like diamonds in the sun. From her neckband hung several rows of silver, gold, and crystalline pendants, and the neckband itself had a cobalt blue rune at its center, a feature whose importance was evident by its uniqueness.
She was a priestess, he knew. This much, Esah-Zhurah had taught him.
Her eyes blazed at him from beneath the ridge of bone or horn that made up her eyebrows. The ridge over her left eye and the skin of her cheek had been cut, leaving an ugly scar…
…that was the mirror image of his own.
“No,” he whispered hoarsely in the New Tongue, as the nightmare image from his childhood became the warrior priestess now standing over him. “It cannot be.”
“And yet, so it is, little one,” Tesh-Dar replied, speaking in the New Tongue so he could understand. Her eyes darted to his hand, the knife shaking in his quivering grip. “Do not raise your hand against me,” she warned, “for I will not be so charitable as the time we first met.”
Her words sank into Reza’s skull, and he realized the ridiculous futility of even attempting to attack her. The scar that marred her proud face was the result of a fluke that she had taken with good humor. To try and repeat the feat would be nothing less than suicide.
Reluctantly, he held the knife out to her, handle first.
“No,” she told him, her voice echoing her satisfaction that the young animal was not going to act foolishly. “It is yours, a prize of your first contest. Your resourcefulness and spirit have saved you yet again, child.”
Turning her attention to Esah-Zhurah, she knelt down to examine the girl’s injuries, delicately probing the gashes with her talons. Esah-Zhurah twitched, but she did not regain consciousness.
Tesh-Dar stood up, satisfied. After a moment of reflection, she leaned over and took hold of the thong on Reza’s leash, and Reza wondered how he had not tripped over it during the fight. She put it around her wrist and spoke to Reza, gesturing toward Esah-Zhurah with the staff in her other hand. “Carry her,” she ordered.
Reza knelt down and picked Esah-Zhurah up in a fireman’s carry, the blood from the wound on her head occasionally dripping down his back. Staggering under the load, he followed after the priestess as she strode down the street, occasionally tugging on his leash. The crowd respectfully parted in front of them, leaving eddies of conversation behind as they made their way out of the plaza and toward a different gate in the city wall.
They stopped just outside the gate at a corral that housed strange dinosaur-like creatures that Reza hadn’t seen before. An attendant wearing a rough leather robe brought one of the animals, already saddled and bridled, to the priestess, who smoothly mounted the snorting beast. Then she turned it about, neatly plucking Esah-Zhurah from Reza’s shoulders and laying her down across the animal’s back, just in front of the saddle. Esah-Zhurah’s head and feet dangled limply toward the ground on either side.
Tesh-Dar regarded Reza for a moment, wondering if she should let him ride with her. It was a long way to their destination.
“I will run,” he told her without being prompted, his spirits buoyed by a sense of determination, even if he were to regret it later: he had no idea how far they had to go. He had already walked for hours that morning, but he was not about to ride with the creature that had killed his parents. His day for vengeance would come, he vowed to himself. Perhaps not this day, nor the next, but it would come. Until then, he would not give her the pleasure of seeing weakness in him.
“As you wish, little one,” she said, wondering with some interest if he was up to the trek. If he were not, his carcass would feed the animals that roamed the forest. She had saved his life twice now. She would not do so a third time.
Or so she believed as she prompted her mount to a fast walk, Reza trailing along behind her like a hound following its master.