Chapter 29


    Zaidna


    The Empire of Judath


    Bakavoth Palace


    “Please stop bleeding!”  Sorai scrubbed furiously at the black ooze seeping from her ruined hands, even as the water in the porcelain washbasin clouded as though with ink.  Despite what her eyes told her, she knew these wounds were just another hallucination, just like the strings of silver or the white mist down in Naltena’s Chamber.  But the pain was very real.


    As the bleeding seemed to slow, she pulled her trembling hands from the water and stared at the gray gashes crisscrossing her palms.  The way the wounds curved—they almost looked like glyphs.  Were these imprints from the kada she had held?


    Her shoulders hunched reflexively as the doors of the suite unlatched and slid open.  “I thought I told you to get out,” she growled, expecting to see Aila as she looked back, but was instead met by Tashau’s silhouette in the doorway.  She quickly put her hands back into the basin, submerging them.  Hallucination or not, she did not want Tashau to see what she was doing.


    “You need to explain what happened in Naltena’s Chamber.”  Tashau’s expression was stern and frightening.  “I managed to placate the others with an excuse about your exhaustion from our travels, but you know better than to defile one of our most sacred rites!  What were you thinking?”


    Sorai gulped down her tears in an effort to calm herself.  Why did Tashau always have to appear whenever she felt at her worst?  She silently willed him to turn around and walk away—at least long enough for her current hallucination to stop.


    “Now you won’t even speak to me?  I don’t have much time before I must meet with Ravad and Angxa again.  Tell me why you threw down the kada and abandoned the rites!”


    Sorai gritted her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut.  She wanted to look calm, to find some suitable explanation for why she had fled, but her tears would not stop flowing, and no matter how hard she tried not to shake, her muscles refused to obey.  She flexed her fingers in the water, hoping that the cuts had disappeared, but the pain radiated all the way up her arms.  “I need help!” she pleaded.


    “Are you sick?” Tashau asked, approaching quickly.


    Sorai hesitated, then pulled her wet hands out from the basin to show them to Tashau.  “Can you see them too?” she quavered.


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    Tashau issued a startled cry and leapt away from her.  “What is this?”


    Sorai’s heart sank.  Tashau’s reaction confirmed her worst fears; she wasn’t hallucinating.


    “What have you done to your hands?”


    “I didn’t do this, the kada did!” Sorai wheezed, hardly believing the words coming from her mouth.


    “That’s impossible!” Tashau countered.


    “When I touched it, it burned me!”


    “Nonsense!  What did you cut yourself with?” he demanded, looking over her shoulder.


    “Just listen to me!  When you lit the kada, it—”


    Tashau caught one of her wrists in a fierce grip.  “What are these—glyphs?  Why are they so gray?”  He looked to the basin.  “Is that ink?  Are you trying to tattoo yourself?”


    “No, of course not!” Sorai wailed up at him.  “Why would I—”


    “You’ve already tried to throw yourself into the sea!” Tashau roared.  “Why do you insist on harming yourself?”


    “I wouldn’t lie about this!” Sorai cried out.  How could he deny what was right in front of him?


    “Look at me.”  Tashau gripped Sorai’s shoulders hard, looking at her directly in the eyes.  “I have done everything in my power to help you and comfort you.  All I want is for you to be happy again.  Do you understand?  I don’t care what happened to you in the jungle, or how you feel about your scars.  I can’t let you hurt yourself any further!”


    Sorai shuddered.  “This is my blood!  Look at my blood!”


    “That’s enough!  You need to be thankful that you have your life.  Yet all you can see are the glyphs on your body, so you decide to add more?  An empress cannot act this way, no matter what has happened to you.  You know that my duty is to the empire.  I must protect it.  I must protect Faro.  And I must protect you, even if it is from yourself!”


    At the peak of despair, Sorai’s frenzied thoughts finally found a moment of clarity, even though that clarity was chilling.  What if Anoth—the Dread God Anoth—had been telling her the truth?  The hallucinations, the black of her blood, the burning of the glyphs—everything pointed to the one thing she had feared the most.  “I’m a hadir,” she blurted out in a harsh whisper.  “Anoth made me a hadir!”


    Tashau released his grip on Sorai, throwing his hands up in exasperation.  “You cannot talk like that, Sorai!” he shouted.  “If anyone heard you speak of such things, I’d be forced to have you—” He fell silent as someone rapped sharply on the doors of their suite.


    “Please wait!” Sorai begged as Tashau turned to the locked doors.  When he opened them, there stood an eshtan servant, nervously fidgeting with his thumbs.


    “I bring grave news, Star Emperor,” the servant stammered as he bowed deeply.  “We’ve just been informed that the Nassé has, uh—” Noticing the presence of Sorai, the servant whispered the rest to Tashau alone.


    Tashau’s reaction was immediate.  “Go and fetch my wife’s handmaiden and make certain she does not leave her side until I return.”


    “Tashau, what is it?  Come back!  Please don’t leave me!”  Sorai attempted to follow Tashau as he stormed from the room, but he would not stop for her.  She watched him go, and then collapsed into uncontrollable sobs, even as her handmaiden suddenly appeared and attempted to hush her tears.  This was the end of everything.  Everything she knew and loved was dying and rotting all around her, and she had no way to stop it or fix it.  She could not even pray for salvation, not with Anoth the only god left for her to pray to.