The Seven-Petaled Shield
Page 4
Nothing Tsorreh said could dissuade him. Short of carrying him to his bed and chaining him there, she could think of no way to restrain him. In the end, she accompanied him. If his aim was to give the people encouragement, then two could do it better than one.
Zevaron left his cadre of sling-throwers and joined his father on the parapet. General Isarod approached them, saying that he’d received reports of sporadic fighting in the streets, but Tsorreh could see none at this time. Most of the remaining city folk seemed to be hiding. The Gelon held the major marketplaces, open plazas where their disciplined tactics gave them an advantage.
“They have made no further effort to storm the stairs?” Maharrad asked the general.
“None, te-ravot. They cannot easily employ a battering ram from that angle, and we can keep them away from the gates. A shortage of stones is not yet upon us,” Isarod added wryly.
“They seek to consolidate their hold on the lower city,” Maharrad commented.
“Let them think so, and may it give them joy!” Zevaron said.
Tsorreh’s belly clenched, thinking of the people left behind. Would the Gelon use them as hostages and threaten to kill a certain number every day if Maharrad did not surrender?
“Our granaries and cisterns are full,” Zevaron continued. “Shorrenon will have returned long before we want for food or drink!”
“But—” Tsorreh burst out. The others turned to stare at her. “Shorrenon, if he does not realize the lower city has fallen—” Shorrenon would attack the Gelonian encampment, expecting a foray from the city to reinforce his thrust. Between them, the Gelon in the city and those outside would crush him.
“We must find a way to warn him,” Zevaron said.
“We have time to plan,” Maharrad said. “My elder son may not arrive for some days or more.”
If he does at all. Tsorreh did not know whether to pray for her stepson’s return or his failure to do so. As long as Shorrenon remained free, Meklavar might fall and yet be victorious in the end, rallying around its new te-ravot.
Maharrad swayed on his feet. He caught himself on the ledge, knuckles white with strain.
“Come, my husband,” Tsorreh said, her voice low and urgent. “Nothing further requires your presence here. Come away and rest, that you may regain your strength.”
Zevaron lifted his head. “The Gelon are at an impasse. Please, Father. When they move again, we will need you to lead us.”
Maharrad drew himself up. He put one hand on Tsorreh’s shoulder. She felt the weight bearing her down, but yielded nothing. Moving slowly, with heartrending dignity, he proceeded toward the palace. Tsorreh matched his pace so closely that his sleeves brushed the fine hairs on her arm. The people in the courtyard bowed. Hope shone in their eyes, hope and grief.
Only when they were within the walls of his own chambers did Maharrad give way, staggering to the chair just inside the door. His personal servant rushed forward, but Maharrad waved the man away. “I need nothing but my teshurah,” he said, turning “Tsorreh” into the archaic word for gift or treasure.
Tsorreh gestured for the servant to remain. Gently but firmly, she guided her husband through the formal outer chamber to the more intimate bedroom.
The air smelled of beeswax scented with tiny grains of sandalwood, Maharrad’s favorite. A tray bore pitchers of boiled water and wine, and a plate of honey-glazed almonds and dates. Tsorreh’s eyes stung. He had offered her such a meal on their wedding night, and such she had also served him when she told him she was carrying their child. They would share a little comfort, then, in a moment of remembered joy.
Tsorreh and the servant laid Maharrad on the raised bed. His cat, a brown tabby, darted under the bed at their approach. Perhaps it scented the blood. Maharrad went limp, his body sinking into the soft surface. Tsorreh loosened the neck clasps of his robe and arranged the pillows beneath his head and knees. The servant removed his boots and brought water to bathe his hands and feet.
For a short time, Maharrad lay still, eyes closed, features frozen in an expression of gaunt endurance. Then he opened his eyes and bade the servant depart. Tsorreh mixed water and wine in a goblet and offered it to him. He raised his head, sipped a little, and lay back. Color seeped back into his flesh.
“You are as beautiful now as the moment I first saw you.” Reaching up, he brushed her cheek with his free hand. “So young, like an unawakened flower, your petals still folded up.”
Tsorreh lowered her eyes. At any other time, she would have accepted his words as a gesture of affection. She had not loved him at first, for she had been little more than a child herself, with no idea of what marriage meant, yet kindness had grown between them over the years. No matter how brusque and formal he might be in his role as te-ravot, he had always treated her tenderly in private. Now his words seemed as much farewell as remembrance.
Maharrad lifted one of her hands to his lips. For a moment, she thought he might heap additional praises upon her.
“I would speak to you of the fall of Meklavar.” His eyes were dark and steady.
“What are you saying? Is there some new and dreadful turn of events that not even your council knows?”
He shook his head. “We are as determined as ever to defend ourselves. But we cannot deny the possibility that we may fail.”
And it is the duty of a te-ravot to plan for such a fate.
“You will need all your courage in the days to come,” he went on. “Our people will look to you. You must keep their hope alive, and protect and preserve them until the day they regain their freedom.”
“I will serve as best I can,” she answered, a little uncertainly. “Surely, there is still hope. Shorrenon will bring help and we will find a way to warn him. We can hold the meklat until he comes. We must not give in to fear. Even if—if we cannot keep them out, our plight may not be so dire. I have studied Gelonian histories and poetry. Anthelon is right. They are not barbarians.”
“My dear, you are learned in many things, but military strategy is not one of them,” he said, a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. “I would not have you unprepared, should the worst come. Ar-Cinath-Gelon must have his victory and it will be brutal, a message to the world.”
“If his purpose is to seize control of the southern passes, then he will need the city and its people,” she said. “They will not destroy Meklavar—or its royal family.”
“If Cinath had dispatched an emissary to negotiate a treaty with us, it would be no defeat if he came back empty-handed. In sending his own son at the head of an invading army, however, he has cast a wager he cannot afford to lose. The Gelon would have every other small kingdom know our fate, should they in turn resist.”
Icy feathers brushed Tsorreh’s spine. “Are we to expect no mercy from them?”
“You may, if you bend to their will.” He paused, leaving unspoken the words, But I will not.
The people love him well, she thought in a burst of understanding, and now he has become a beacon, a rallying point for every fighting man within the larger Meklavaran territory. Gelon cannot afford to let him live.
“You must take sanctuary in the temple,” Tsorreh said, the words tumbling from her mouth. “As chief priest, my grandfather will shelter you. Surely, not even the Gelon would dare to search among the venerable elders.”
“No, no, my dear, the Gelon will not stop until they find me. Can you not see?” They must have my body as a trophy.
Tsorreh hardly dared to breathe. Somewhere in the far reaches of her heart, a voice began keening. There was nothing she could say to silence it. If their positions were reversed, she would not want empty reassurances.
Even as she trembled with foreboding, another part of her mind stirred. Meklavar was far older than Gelon; the temple had stood while the Gelon were half-naked hunters daubed with mud, stabbing one another with stone-tipped spears. Modern Gelon were not savages, true, but they were scavengers. Their cities, she had read, were museums of the cultures they ha
d conquered and then looted.
Cities could be rebuilt, farms replanted, and another generation born. But without knowledge of who they were and the heritage they safeguarded, they would no longer be Meklavaran, but just another nameless race fallen to a stronger empire.
Maharrad’s hand had gone limp in hers. His breathing deepened, softer now. A hush suffused the chamber.
Tsorreh eased herself on to the bed, still holding his hand, and stretched out beside him. She lay with open eyes for a long time, thinking of Zevaron, the child they had created together. Perhaps she slept, for when she roused, no light came from the windows, and her body felt stiff, almost brittle. Maharrad slept on, his face peaceful. His cat had emerged from under the bed and sat at the foot, tail curled around its feet, tufted ears pricked.
Tsorreh slipped out of Maharrad’s bed to her own chamber. The room was empty, for Otenneh was asleep in her own room and no attendants stirred at this hour. Tsorreh picked up her prayer book and sought the words written so many years ago, wondering if the scribe had set them down for this very moment, to be a voice when other voices failed, a thought when the mind had gone numb, an entreaty when hope was lost.
Written words had been her refuge since the time she’d come to the palace as a shivering, bewildered bride, not much more than a child, clutching her slim pile of books. Maharrad had gravely accepted them, a dowry whose value he recognized but for which he himself had little use, and then returned them to her keeping. When she’d felt their familiar weight once more in her hands, her fears had lifted. Now she had a place, something of her own amidst the confusion of the court. She was the Keeper of the Books. This she understood, and felt her own worth.
She had grown up surrounded by books. As a young child, she had spent many happy hours in the archives of the temple with her paternal grandfather, not yet risen to the office of chief priest but one among many. Her earliest memories were of lying in her bed, listening to the soft murmur of her mother reading verses aloud from a volume of Isarran love poetry. Somehow her father had found it, bought perhaps from a trader, one of the hundreds who passed through the Meklavaran markets, and presented it to his homesick wife as a gift.
Tsorreh had learned the magic of words, the pulse and rhythm of speech preserved through the years. Even now, when she opened a volume or unrolled a scroll, she could almost hear the voice of the man or woman who penned it, sense the reverence of the scribe who copied it, and see the hands of everyone who had opened it and touched the written letters with their fingertips.
If ever you loved your people, she thought, following along with the formal phrases, reach out your hand to them now, spread your sheltering wings over them. Even as you lifted Khored of Blessed Memory above his foes, protect my people.
Save my son.
Tsorreh prayed as well for Maharrad, who for all the difference in their ages had been as kind and gentle as he could; for Shorrenon, that he lead wisely and justly; for the men and boys at mortal risk. And the women, too—the timid maid-attendants, the wives, the girls with their slings. She asked nothing for herself, as if by seeking even the smallest grace, she might diminish that granted to those she loved.
* * *
Deep within the citadel, Tsorreh made her way through the outer chambers of the treasury. She had dismissed her maid-attendants into the care of their families, which they interpreted as a gesture of generosity. Only Otenneh suspected Tsorreh’s relief at her new freedom.
A single guard stood outside the treasury. The warden, keys jangling from his belt of office, preceded her and unlocked the first six locks, then handed her the key to the seventh. Entering, she passed coffers containing precious metals and jewels, pearls and jade from Denariya, age-darkened ivory from the Fever Lands where few men now ventured, amber and silver from Azkhantia. Crowns sat on their ornate stands, but a trick of light dimmed the gold. Here was a sword said to be Khored’s own, and here, set in a swirl of wire, gold and silver and ruddy copper, the Stone of Hosarion. Whether it was the real stone or the real sword, Tsorreh could never be sure, but she felt, as an almost palpable weight, the centuries of veneration laid upon them.
Of all the holy things, nothing stirred her more deeply than the treasure waiting at the very end of the chamber.
Tsorreh stood before it, her heart rising in her throat. She felt presumptuous for daring to take such a hallowed object into her own hands. Yet, she argued with herself, how much more irreverent would it be for the Gelon to carry it off as a mere curiosity? They might present it to the Emperor as booty. They might also—and here her stomach knotted—they might also destroy the manuscript itself, keeping only its ornate outer cover.
This was not any te-Ketav, wrapped in layers of velvet of deepest purple, edged with cords of gold and crimson, and cradled in a holder of intricately carved ebony. It was the King’s Ketav, said to be the first written version of the divine words.
The velvet-wrapped bundle was surprisingly heavy. She had never handled it before, had seen it only a few times. This was the te-Ketav by which she had been married, by which monarchs were crowned. When her grandfather died, the man who succeeded him as chief priest would pray for him from this volume.
The velvet folds opened beneath her fingers, and she touched the hard surface beneath. The richness of the cover took her breath away. The front and spine looked like silver, only without any hint of tarnish. Moonstones for night and clear yellow amber for day framed a central panel. An inlay of gold wires set with leaf-shaped emeralds, topazes, and jade represented the Great Tree. Set at its roots was a stylized emblem, six oval gems surrounding a single luminous heart. This was no blossom, she knew, but a representation of the te-Khored-Magan, the Shield of Khored. The Seven-Petaled Shield.
Like all Meklavaran children, Tsorreh had once asked why it was called seven-petaled, when clearly there were but six. Her grandfather had answered that only with the inner eye could one see the seventh petal, the heart of the Shield, so mysterious was its power.
For all its superb artistry and costly materials, the cover was only a shell. Turning it over in her hands, Tsorreh discovered a clasp on one side. When she pressed it, the lid slid open to reveal an inner compartment. Hardly daring to breathe, she lifted out the silk-wrapped contents. The sheaf of age-darkened parchment had originally been bound in leather and silk. Tiny holes along one side marked where it had once been sewn together, although the thread had long since fallen away. The ink had lightened as it aged until, in places, the words resembled shadows. There was no title page, no illumination or decoration, yet she never doubted what she held. In tiny yet flowing calligraphy, she read the opening phrases, the first prayer that every Meklavaran child learned.
By grace, all things are made,
By judgment, all things are unmade.
Tsorreh re-wrapped the empty cover in its velvet and put it back on its stand exactly as she found it, leaving no trace it had ever been disturbed. The Gelon would discover the jeweled housing, never guessing that the real treasure had been removed. She tucked the packet of silk-wrapped pages into the front of her tunic, its contours hidden behind the embroidery, and locked the treasury door behind her. Not even the warden would suspect she had taken anything. And if Shorrenon arrived in time to save the city, she could return the manuscript as secretly as she had removed it.
She emerged in the open courtyard between the palace and the citadel. Below, she heard a distant, muted clamor. A few servants ran past, slowing their steps only enough to bow to her.
At first, she had intended to take the te-Ketav up through the mountain tunnel to the temple. Now she realized she must first decide what else must be made safe, should the city fall. She might have time to remove only a tiny portion of the archives.
Passing halls where children’s voices once rose and fell in unison, Tsorreh made her way to the library. There was no clerk at his station, and for a moment, the place seemed deserted except for the tortoiseshell cat who kept the mice at bay.
“You must go with the others to the temple,” she said.
He bowed his head. A shudder passed through his thin shoulders. She saw how his scholar’s robe hung even more loosely on him.
Tsorreh picked up the book he had been reading: Shirah Kohav, Poetry of the Stars. Some of the verses had been sung at her own wedding. She handed back it to him.
“Take this with you. It will be safer in your keeping.” And may it comfort you.
Bony fingers closed around the slender volume. Even in these disordered times, he would never have taken it for himself.
“May the Shield of Khored ever protect you, te-ravah,” he murmured, bowing as deeply as his aged joints would allow.
“May you return the book to its proper place in the fullness of time,” she replied, managing a smile.
After Eavonen departed, a stillness settled in the air. The library lay before her, a realm of years and thought as well as landscape. Sometimes she felt as if each scroll and handsewn book contained the soul of a person. They were the only way those dead could speak. Each page sang of their wisdom, their pain, their joy.
How could she judge what to save and what to leave behind? However flawed her decisions, she must choose, and quickly.
The most ancient scrolls must go to the temple, the te-Ketav she carried next to her heart, as well as other holy texts, painstakingly copied by hand and illuminated with mystical symbols. She must also select from among more ordinary prayer books, genealogies, histories, commentaries on scripture, and the hidden names of things. All these defined her people, who they had been, what they had thought and dreamed.
An idea came to her, as she pictured not only what she would take but also what she would leave behind. Just as she had taken the most precious item of the treasury and left the rest undisturbed, visually intact, so she would disguise the changes in the library. No Meklavaran scholar would be fooled, but a Gelonian general might well be. He would look no further and would take back to Gelon those things that, while costly, had no deeper significance.