Kahless - Michael Jan Friedman [51]
Vathraq was sitting on his high wooden throne, just as Kahless remembered him. Except now he was slumped to one side, a blackened hole in his chest where an arrow had pinned him to the chair, and his eyes were sunken and staring.
His people lay scattered about, draped over serving tables or crumpled on the stone floor, cut down at the brink of the firepit or tossed inside to char and burn. No one had escaped, young or old, male or female.
No one except Kellein. Try as he might, Kahless couldn’t find her body. It gave rise to a single, reckless hope.
Perhaps she had eluded Molor’s hand. Perhaps she had been away at the time. Or she had seen the tyrant’s forces in time to hide herself.
Perhaps, against all odds, she still lived.
Kahless felt a hand on his shoulder. Whirling, he saw that it was only Morath. But his friend had a grim expression on his face, even grimmer than was called for.
Suddenly, the outlaw knew why, and his heart plummeted. “Kellein … ?” he rasped, his throat dry with grief.
Morath nodded. “Upstairs,” he said.
Rushing past him, staggering under his load of anguish, Kahless left the feast hall and found the steps that led to the higher floors. His men, who had been searching the place while he lingered downstairs, stood aside for him as he barreled his way up.
At the head of the stair, he found her. She was sprawled in a pool of dried blood, a sword still clasped tight in her hand.
Kellein’s eyes were closed, as if she were only sleeping.
But her skin was pale and translucent as pherza wax, and there was a track of blackened gore from the corner of her mouth to the line of her jaw.
The outlaw didn’t have the heart to inspect her wounds. Slowly, carefully, he touched his fingertips to her lips. They were cold and stiff as stone. Sorrow rose up in him like a flood.
Only then did he notice the thong around her neck and reach inside her tunic to take out her jinaq amulet.
Cradled in his hand, it sparkled gaily in the light from a nearby window, affirming her vow.
Clumsily, with fingers that barely seemed alive, Kahless took out his own amulet and held it beside hers. As intended, they were identical. He and Kellein had planned to wear them at their mating ceremony.
Without meaning to, he began whispering the words he would have spoken. “I pledge my heart and my hand to you, Kellein, daughter of Vathraq, and no other. I am your mate for the rest of my days.”
They were more than words to him, though his beloved had passed through the gates of Death. Kahless knew then and there he would never take another mate as long as he lived.
Indeed, why live at all? Why bother? With Kellein gone, what was there to live for?
Nothing, the outlaw screamed in the darkness of his despair. “Nothing!” he bellowed, making the hallway ring with his anger and his pain.
Blind with bitterness, Kahless drew his sword from his belt and raised it high above his head. Then, with all his strength, he hacked at the floor beside Kellein. One, twice, and again, raising white-hot sparks, until the gray metal of the blade finally relented and shattered on the stones.
The pieces skipped this way and that, then were still. As still as Kellein, Kahless raged. As still as the heart inside him.
Delirious, writhing inside with agony, he fled. Down the stairs, out of the antechamber and across the blindingly bright courtyard. He staggered past the corpses of Vathraq’s defenders, through the gates to the walled town, and out to the river road.
His s ‘tarahk stood there with nervous though it didn’t know when it saw him coming.
With a growl, he threw himself into the saddle and dug his heels into the animal’s sides. Startled, it bolted forward, taking him down the road as fast as it could carry him.
He didn’t know where he was going or why. He just knew he wanted to die before he got there.
all the others, taut and why. It raised its head The Modern Age Kurn’s estate on Ogat wasn’t far from the academy. As dusk fell,