“Thank you, my Empress,” he whispered.
The Empress regarded him with great sadness in Her eyes, mourning marks touching Her face, casting a shadow upon Her soul. She wished with all the spirits that dwelled within Her that She would not have to banish him from the Empire, but there was no alternative, and it could not wait. With his decision to return from whence he came, so did he lose everything She ever could have offered him. She closed Her eyes, and after a moment visualized a place where he might find his Way among those who were beyond Her light, Her love. Because so now, was he.
“When must I go?” he asked.
“This moment, My son,” the Empress replied. “I cannot tolerate division among the spirit of My people, Reza.” She held out Her hand to him. In it were two black rings. “These shall you place around the first of your braids, that which is woven as the Covenant of the Afterlife. One ring shall remain with you for as long as you live, to bind your spirit to you. The other shall bind the covenant after your knife does its work. When you are gone, this will be all that shall remain of your body and spirit among us, and shall be Esah-Zhurah’s until the day she dies.” She looked at Reza with eyes that would have wept had they been able. “If you cannot do My will, My son, I cannot shed My light upon your soul. When the knife makes its cut, no longer will you feel the Bloodsong of the peers. No longer will you feel My love. Your memory shall live on forever in the Books of Time, for you have done no dishonor. But you will be alone from this day forward, and when you die, your spirit will fall into Darkness for all Eternity.”
She stood before him for a moment, feeling the pain that welled from his heart like lava flung from a volcano. She loved him so much, but there was nothing She could do. If he could not be obedient to the Way of the Empire, the Empire could not give him its love in return. It was a relationship as simple as it was – in this case – tragic, and She offered him the only comfort She could.
She put Her hands on his shoulders. “I beg that you remember this,” She whispered. “You are of My blood, the blood of an Empress. And although you have chosen a Way that will take you to be among our enemies, you do so with honor. And thus shall you forever be remembered in the Books of Time. From this day onward you shall never again feel My love, but know that I do love you, and I pray that glory shall forever follow in your footsteps. Farewell, my son, and may thy Way be long and glorious.”
At last turning away, the Empress made her way into the garden, her white hair and robes trailing behind her like wisps of cloud.
The three of them stood as the Empress departed, but remained silent for what seemed an eternity.
“I must go.” Reza said finally, looking at Esah-Zhurah, then at Tesh-Dar. Their faces were black in mourning, and he could feel the hot sting of tears on his own face. They seemed to be ghosts from a swiftly fading dream. He felt so empty, so alone.
The priestess stepped forward and grasped him by the forearms, the traditional way of parting among warriors. After a long moment, she let go, then handed him the short sword she had worn at her side since long before he was born. The blade bore the names of all who had carried the weapon, written in the Old Tongue that only now, after The Change, could he understand. There were very few spaces left. His, he saw with a painful surge of pride, was the last inscription.
“I am old and my Way grows short,” she told him, her voice sounding fragile, ancient to his ears. “This I would leave to you. It has been among the Desh-Ka for over a thousand generations. Now, it is yours. You wear the rune of our order, now also do you bear a weapon in its name.” Her eyes were soft and vulnerable. He had never seen her this way, and he suspected that few others ever had. “Good-bye, my beloved son,” she whispered. “Go in Her name. May thy Way be long and glorious.”
“Farewell, Mother,” he said softly. “I love you.” He saluted her, bowing his head to his priestess. She bowed her head in response, as befitted her rank, resisting the impulse to take him in her arms, to hold him as if he were but a young child. Then she stood back, her head bowed, waiting for what must come. She looked and felt old, defeated, and it broke Reza’s heart to see her so.
Then he turned his attention to Esah-Zhurah, who stood quietly by his side, as fragile as a mirage. He reached out to touch her, suddenly afraid that she would simply vanish and that he would wake up, his entire life having been spent in a dream. But her flesh was firm under his hand. He dropped his gauntlets onto the ground at his feet, wanting nothing so much as to touch her one last time. She did the same, and he saw her hands: they were black with the mourning marks, so great was her pain.
He could stand it no longer. He began to cry as he pulled her to him, crushing her against his chest. She kissed his neck, her fangs streaking the skin. Her talons dug furrows into the metal of his armor as she clung to him.
“Please stay,” she whispered, and he felt the echo of the pain in her heart in his own.
“Do not ask me again,” he pleaded. “I beg of you. For we both know that I cannot. I must not.”
“How shall I live without you?” she whispered, her arms tight around his neck. “My heart shall die when you are gone.”
He pulled her away just far enough to see her face. Her green eyes were so bright they seemed to glow. “You must live,” he told her, the desperation plain in his voice. “Live for me. All that sustains me even now is the hope that someday, somehow, I shall see your face again. You must believe that it will be so, that someday our Way shall be one again.” She nodded her head, but her eyes and the keening in her blood betrayed the hopelessness that dwelled in her soul. He held her to him again, and kissed her softly, running his hands through her hair one last time.
“I have one last gift for you,” he whispered into her ear. Reaching into the satchel at his feet, the leather bag that contained all his worldly possessions, he withdrew the box in which lay the bejeweled tiara. Extracting it carefully with his shaking hands, he held it up for her to see. “This was Pan’ne-Sharakh’s last gift to us,” he told her, “a token of my faith in courtship of a warrior priestess. I was going to give it to you when we met with the Empress, but…” He could not finish. Instead, he carefully placed it on her head, fitting the crown to the woman he would love unto death.
Even old and blind, Pan’ne-Sharakh had divined in metal and minerals a kind of beauty that was the stuff of dreams, beyond the reach of mortals such as himself. The tiara seemed to become a part of her, and he wanted to weep at how beautiful she looked with it on, but his tears were finished. Only pain and the uncertainty of what the future would bring remained. “Priestess of the Desh-Ka,” he whispered, “forever shall my heart be yours.”
They embraced a final time. Then she pushed herself away. Her eyes had clouded over, becoming hard as she fought to be strong. But he could see that her resolve was brittle, frail. They gripped each other by the arms as warriors. Then it was time for her to play out the last act of his departure from the Empire. Trembling, she separated out the first braid of his hair. Sliding the two black rings down the braid toward his scalp, she tightened them like a tourniquet only a finger’s length from the roots. She took the knife that had once belonged to the reigning Empress and put the blade’s edge between the rings. With her own hand trembling, she guided Reza’s palm to the knife’s bejeweled handle. “This,” she said, her voice trembling, “is my gift to you, my love.”