Read Online In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born by Michael R. Hicks - Free Book Online

 
    Perhaps, he thought, the best lie would be one founded on the truth. He would tell Ayan-Dar that he had been captured by honorless ones and taken to the east, for what purpose he could not discern, and that he had escaped. It was a rare thing, but had been recorded in the Books of Time. Ayan-Dar would no doubt welcome him with open arms and praise him for escaping an unworthy fate. The newly cleaned armor and his fresh mounts could be easily explained away, for even the smallest village of T’lar-Gol would provide whatever was needed to an acolyte of the Desh-Ka.
    He clenched his hands so tightly that his talons pierced his palms, drawing blood. While his body had been healed and cleansed, and his armor and clothing made new, he felt unutterably soiled and wretched. He was worse than a traitor to his honor. He was a parasite the Dark Queen was injecting into the temple, the carrier of her plague of hatred. His only hope was that the priesthood would be able to recognize him for what he was and kill him quickly, before he could carry out her will.  
    Before he could become a priest.
    He leaned over, spewing vomit to the ground as he thought of the evil that Syr-Nagath could do through him. His becoming a priest was only a question of when, not if. He knew that Ayan-Dar would almost certainly consider his final quest successful, even if based only on Ria-Ka’luhr’s word. Beyond that, only the formalities had to be observed. As the temple’s senior acolyte, he would soon face the cyan fire of the ancient crystal that was the heart of their order. If he survived that final trial, he would be a member of the priesthood.
    Then, all would be lost. And he was utterly powerless to save himself or those he held most dear.
    He brought his magthep to a halt and turned around to look back the way he had come. Night had fallen and the stars now reigned supreme in the sky, the great moon not yet having risen. He could see the flickering torches of the pavilion and the glow of fires in the valley beyond from the Dark Queen’s army, a pox rapidly spreading across the lands of T’lar-Gol. He imagined the world opening up, a great maw that would swallow whole the Dark Queen and her dreadful ambitions.  
    For the thousandth time since he had lain with her, he brought his claws to his throat, desperately seeking Death’s embrace and release from whatever the evil harlot might have in store for him and his temple.  
    And for the thousandth time, he could not. He could sense her will like a serpent coiled in his mind, an undeniable force that was devouring him. He could not even speak of the horror he carried within him, even to himself. He could give no warning of what he had become. It was as if his soul had been torn in two, with his true self locked into a rapidly shrinking cage, while the other part, the Dark Queen’s puppet, roamed free and grew ever stronger.
    He threw his head back and screamed, a soul-wrenching cry of anguish that tore the stillness of the night.
    * * *
    Ayan-Dar’s eyes snapped open. He had been in a state of deep meditation, his mind’s eye cast far away, when a tremor of such pain and dread echoed through his blood that it broke even his tremendous concentration.
    It had been three weeks since he had encountered the group of honorless ones and had heard the young warrior’s troubling words about the Dark Queen. The thought worried him, but it did not occupy his full attention.
    That was reserved for his search for the child. Each night had brought him closer to her, and he knew that he was close now, very close. He would have found the child long before, were it not for the epic tides of pain and fear, of agony and ecstasy roiling the waters of the bloodline from the Dark Queen’s campaign to the east.  
    Each night he swept the world around him, looking for the child. Each day he rode in the direction from which the tiny voice was strongest, when he could hear it during the ebbs in the great tide of