Chapter 24


    Zaidna


    The Empire of Judath


    The Eastern Planes


    Tashau lowered his hands, fighting to hide his frustration for Sorai’s sake.  Her psyche was hopelessly snarled, and he couldn’t make any progress in untangling it.  In all his cleansings, he had never seen a mind clenched so tightly and for so long.  At first, he thought she might have been raped, which would force her psyche into a protective state, but his probes found no foreign thought matter.  This was a relief, but still left no explanation for why she was doing this to herself.


    No longer held up by Tashau’s pattern, Sorai’s body swayed a little to the side before slumping gently into his arms.  Psyches were not meant to endure this much strain.  One cleansing per season was already more than what the most troubled minds needed, but three in five days?  Her strands would likely tear from the effort before they yielded to his treatments.


    “You did well,” he soothed with false cheeriness.  “Don’t you feel better now?”


    Sorai looked up at him, clearly disoriented.  She was calm now, but it wouldn’t last.  He would likely find her weeping inconsolably in a day or two and be forced to minister to her again.


    “Sleep,” he urged as he laid her down on the bed.  “I know this wagon isn’t very comfortable, but we’ll reach Marin before you know it.  Your parents will be relieved to see you safe, and you’ll have fun with your brother and sister, won’t you?”


    “Yes,” she whispered automatically.


    Tashau still didn’t like the idea of Sorai going to the noble summit, especially since she was the one who warned them that her assailant was planning to infiltrate it.  It was Tashau’s duty to protect his empress, but he had failed miserably to do so when faced with the cultist at the palace.  He could not be compromised as the emperor again.  His birthright, the kada of Chalei, was always supposed to be at his side, the equalizer in any power struggle, but he had been caught without it.  But in all honesty, he wouldn’t have fared any better with it.  He simply didn’t have the skill.  If he hoped to bring the cultist to justice, he would need to find a way to master the kada, and soon.


    “Do you still love me, Tash?” Sorai asked suddenly, her forehead creasing.


    Tashau raised his eyebrows.  “Do I still love you?”  He settled beside her, ignoring the spasms in his back, and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her firmly.  The closeness of her body stirred up a longing for the warmth of her flesh against his, but as much as he wanted to, he would not the take the kiss further.  She was too fragile now, both mentally and physically.  “What do you think?”


    “I guess you do,” Sorai murmured, sounding a little embarrassed.  “I just feel like a burden.  I’m fine one minute, and then the next—”


    “Don’t.”  Tashau shook his head, not wanting her to become agitated again.  “You’ll be fine.  Keep trying, and eventually you won’t need the cleansings anymore.”


    Sorai draped her arms about his neck, and he felt her brow press against his collar.  “I love you more than anything, Tash.  Thank you for being patient.  You’re a good husband.”


    “And you’re a good wife.”  He laid several kisses upon her crown and smoothed her hair against her scalp.  “It’s late.  You go to sleep.”  He released her and rose from the bed.  He moved toward the partition separating their bed from the stack of luggage where the kada was kept, but stopped as her hand lashed out and snatched his.


    “Stay with me,” she begged.


    Tashau sat back down on the bed for a moment.  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, which encouraged him.  She was usually at her most paranoid and frightened when trying to sleep, often asking deliriously for any shreds of information about the Dread God Anoth, to which Tashau could only reassure her that her attacker was nothing but a cruel pretender.


    After a few minutes, Sorai’s fingers loosened about his.  Tashau glanced at her rigid form and knew that her sleep was uncomfortable at best.  Since she was a daughter of the first house she couldn’t dream, so it must have been the glyphs, now thickly scabbed and healing, that plagued her slumber.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Tashau stood up and backed slowly through the screened partition.  He found the kada’s traveling case and laid it on its side.  The rectangular case was long and black, composed of varnished wood that shone like obsidian in the oil lamp’s glow.  He pressed his thumb to one of several glyphs carved on its surface, causing the case to unlock with a small click.


    He lifted the lid and propped it open, staring at the golden scepter beneath it.  He hated the damned thing.  Every opal and glyph lining its handle whispered taunting reminders of his ineptitude.  He hesitated for a moment, then yanked the kada from its case and exited the wagon as quietly as he could.


    He hopped down the wagon’s steps and pressed the kada to his side, hoping nobody would see it glinting in the light of the bonfire.  Luckily, the other members of the caravan were too engrossed in their revelries to notice him, and he managed to sneak away and to a nearby stream without interruption.


    With only the bubbling water and whisper of the wind in his ears, he held out the kada in his right hand, planting its base in the grass.  “This time you’ll obey me,” he muttered as he reached forward to touch his left thumb against the glyphs.  He had watched his father do this countless times, performing miraculous feats with the blue crystal ablaze with silver fire.  But as Tashau placed his own thumb upon the glyphs, the kada did not light.  Instead it almost seemed to laugh at him silently, denying his birthright even though he carried the proper blood.  Forget that only four generations separated him from the first emperor of Chalei, and that his blood was far purer than that of the eshtans and engstaxis, whose imperial lines had already been diluted through dozens of generations.  This kada specifically rejected him, and had done so for sixty years.


    And yet, he had rejected the kada first.  His father had spent that last year of his life demanding that Tashau spend the requisite time mastering the kada, but Tashau, finally free of the seminary and romancing a new wife, had had no time to spare for some glittering staff.  Reflecting on it now, he couldn’t completely blame the kada for withholding its power from him as the unworthy heir he was.  But he would not allow this rift between them to further endanger Sorai.


    He screwed his thumb against the glyphs hard enough to feel their grooves indent his flesh, but they still did not respond to his touch.  “Damn you!” he growled.  When linked with the other two kadas during the summit’s initiatory rites, his kada leapt easily into activity, feeding off the synergy of its brothers.  But alone—Tashau didn’t know how to awaken it.


    Tashau thought of a music box Sorai owned, a gift from one of the previous empresses of Xeshun.  It was a curious little device, but it didn’t have a handle or a winding key as he had seen in cruder devices sold in the markets; instead it was covered with finely etched glyphs.  Sorai could never manage to make the little box work, and had handed it to him to see what he could make of it.  Almost instinctively, he had simply touched one of the glyphs and injected a small amount of ormé, and the box immediately lit up in a delight of light and metallic music.  During his time studying in Xeshun, he had seen all manner of glyphed contraptions, although none quite so fine as Sorai’s gift, and ormé was a requirement to operate them all.


    Tashau’s mouth turned in a faint smile.  He shifted focus to see the kada almost entirely devoid of primal matter, save for the glyphs, where the matter was dense.  He placed his thumb on them again, but this time he electrified them with a small spark of ormé, just as he had with Sorai’s music box, and they immediately flared blue, then white, before they slowly faded.


    Encouraged, he sent an even greater surge of power into the glyphs.  The glyphs lighted up rapidly in sequence until they reached the crystal at the kada’s tip.  Primal matter collected in the center of the crystal, forming a dense ball, then blinked as it clarified itself instantly, leaving a whirl of something he couldn’t quite see in its place.  Beyond and through the crystal, however, the primal matter seemed to flourish, casting both light and shadows.  The crystal seemed to become like a magnifying glass, through which he could see all of what was beyond it, far more than what his naked eyes could see.  He reached out, intent on manipulating what he saw, but his focus was shattered by a scream coming from the direction of the caravan.  It sounded like Sorai!


    The kada’s silver glow flashed and died as Tashau dropped it to the grass.  He whirled around and sprinted to his wagon, pushing past the growing crowd of onlookers, and threw the door open to find Sorai rolling about in bed, clutching at her chest.


    “It burns!” Sorai wailed repeatedly.


    Tashau rushed to her and pinned her to the bed.  Her skin was hot with fever.  “Stop!” he commanded, trying to hold her still long enough to get a clear view of her thought matter in the third degree, but she was surprisingly strong and somehow pried his hands from her.  Just as he prepared to restrain her by force, her screams suddenly stopped, and her body began to quake, her face frozen in a snarl.  She was having a seizure!


    Tashau turned to Sorai’s frightened handmaiden, Aila, who huddled in the doorway.  “Get the doctor.  Now!” he ordered.  Aila scrambled away in a flutter.


    Tashau looked back to his spasming wife.  He knew better than to try to restrain her now, but he couldn’t just stand idly by.  He brought up his hands, intent on performing a cleansing despite the immediate danger, but was shoved aside almost immediately by the physician, who bent low over Sorai and pressed his palms to her forehead.  Her body slowly stopped twitching, and eventually she drew just enough breath to let out an agonized sob.


    The doctor whispered something soothingly to Sorai, and Tashau fell back and slumped against the wall, of no use once again.