Read In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born for Free Online Page A

achieve greatness on a galactic scale, reaching outward for conquest and dominion, rather than continually gutting itself, spilling its own precious blood. He knew that his quest now was not unlike others he had undertaken in the past, seeking some way to upset the ages-old balance. Others, such as T’ier-Kunai, saw his journeys as flights into fantasy. And it was these journeys of foolish self-indulgence, looking for the answer to a question that no other dared ask, that had eventually brought him to his current questionable status within the order.  
    “There must be more.” His whisper was lost in the darkness beyond the fire as he closed his eyes.  
    Focusing on the tiny voice that had awakened him that morning before he began his quest, he cast out his second sight, searching the world, and the stars, if need be, with the eyes of his spirit.
    * * *
    Ayan-Dar sensed them in his mind and blood long before he could smell or hear them. A group of kurh-a’mekh , honorless ones, had surrounded the hilltop, no doubt drawn by his fire.  
    It had been many cycles since he had ventured beyond the confines of the temple, but he had heard tales from acolytes and his fellow priests and priestesses of a growing number of marauding bands that terrorized the villages and smaller cities of T’lar-Gol. It was a phenomenon that was as easily calculated as the date of the Great Eclipse. When leaders such as Syr-Nagath, the Dark Queen as she was often called (although not in her presence, he surmised), became bent on conquest, they always stripped their vassals of warriors, leaving their homelands nearly defenseless to those not of the Way, or who had strayed from the path.
    Ayan-Dar lamented that it was happening so soon after the last great collapse, just after the war with the Settlements in which he himself had fought over seventy cycles before. Their civilization ebbed and flowed in a pattern that stretched back to the First Age, with continents and even entire worlds rising from prehistoric savagery to a certain plateau. Then, like a great tree, it rotted from within as cities and nation-states began the inevitable conquest of their neighbors. Eventually, the fragile system would collapse back into chaos.
    The rise of kurh-a’mekh , like maggots on carrion, was a flag that the next collapse would occur soon. Food supplies would dwindle as the non-warrior castes were ravaged, the armies that grappled in their pointless struggles would starve, and whatever progress had been made in crawling out of chaos would be wiped away. Some of the cities would survive, as would the orders like the Desh-Ka, who would resow the seeds of civilization for the next rise.  
    Civilization had not had much time to rise again since the last collapse. On the one hand, that usually meant that the next collapse would not be so catastrophic, for they did not have far to fall. On the other, it was highly unusual that the honorless ones had arisen so quickly, and in such numbers.
    But that was a mystery beyond his desire to contemplate.
    “Leave now, and I will spare your lives.” Ayan-Dar’s deep voice boomed across the hilltop, startling the magtheps , who had moved close to the fire after grazing, fearful of the predators that roamed the wilderness. They, too, were another sign of the coming fall, for there were too few warriors to police the edge of the Great Wastelands, and the wicked beasts that lurked there were expanding their territories into the western realms of T’lar-Gol.  
    His warning was met with a round of hisses.
    “And we will spare yours, if you drop your sword and armor, then walk away.”
    Opening his eyes, Ayan-Dar stared at what he took to be the leader of the thirteen brigands who now surrounded him. The female was younger than the others and badly scarred. But they were not the proud scars of battle that warriors had the healers carefully preserve as living trophies. They were simply the legacy of her butchery of