Azkhantian Tales

by Ross, Deborah J.

  Only In Just Cause . . .

  Dimly she sensed people and animals moving past her, but with no more substance than ghosts. Shouted commands, the whimpers of the ladies, and the shuffling of onager hooves drifted wafted on the air.

  A long time later, Linned realized she was alone. She got to her feet. Her muscles responded stiffly, as if frozen.

  An old woman’s body, she thought. A dead woman’s body.

  She tucked the shards into the front of her jacket and leaned on the blackwood staff like a crutch. One labored step after another, she made her way toward the broad meadows of green-wheat and azimed. She had no idea what she would do there, she only followed where her feet led. She felt neither hunger nor thirst nor fatigue. When it was dark, she lay down where she was and passed the night empty-eyed. Where she found water, she drank. If berries grew beside the road, she ate. Sometimes a farmer or a miller would offer her food and a pile of straw in a stable. She did not understand why; she did not recognize the haggard woman reflected in their eyes as herself.

  Finally, it came to her that she had no right to hide the shards of the inata blade. She worked for three days at a smithy, sweeping the floors, gathering kindling, and mending leather straps for harness and scabbard. In exchange, the smith drilled two holes in the shards and linked them with a chain so she could wear them around her neck. She felt curiously lighter, or perhaps it was the days of rest and the rich stew his wife had forced on her.

  Summer wore on and the fields gave off the honeyed scents of thyme, straw-daisies, and ripening azimed. Each day, the sky turned a deeper blue and the songs of the birds more limpid. One dusk, as she was traveling through a field shoulder-high and near harvest, she heard a cry that could not have come from a bird, only a human child. The inata shards gave off a tingle of heat. Guided by the sounds, she searched all along the rutted path and into the tangled stalks. Finally she came upon a boy, no more than five or six, curled into a ball, sobbing and holding one bare leg. He wore knee-length breeches and vest, little more than rags, so bleached by sun and age that no tint of their original dye remained. His skin was dark with layers of dirt and sunburn. A faint tell-tale darkening surrounded doubled puncture marks. The flesh around the bite was already beginning to swell.

  Harvest asp.

  Xun had told her about these serpents that lurked in rich fields of Pithia. His people both revered and feared them. Shy and temperamental, they kept the hordes of grain-eating rats at bay.

  Xun’s tale of how he himself had been spared a painful death from an asp bite rushed to Linned’s thoughts. She needed a knife to scrape away the poison, but she had no weapon of any kind, not even a buckle —

  Only the inata shards around her neck.

  There was no greater sacrilege she could commit than the one she had already done, she thought as she unlooped the chain. The edge retained its razor sharpness. The boy screamed once as the blade dug into his flesh, then fainted. Sticky brown fluid spurted from the swelling lump. The venom stung when it touched her skin, but she kept on, gritting her teeth at the stench of already-rotting flesh. The smell of the blood turned from acrid to coppery. Beneath the putrescence lay normal muscle and the ivory gleam of bone. When she was satisfied that no taint remained, she bound the wound with soft inner leaves of azimed, held in place with a strip torn from the ragged hem of her shirt. She wiped the blade shards with more leaves. The bloodstains rubbed off, but not the discoloration of the poison.

  Between her half-starved condition and the venom that had seeped through her skin, she could hardly stand up. The child felt almost unbearably heavy. Somehow she managed one step and then another, not even sure which way she was going. The blackwood staff lay where she had dropped it in the field.

  Time became a dream. Some moments, she heard the pounding hooves of Azkhantian ponies or men shouting the Veddris war-cry, Only In Just Cause. Once she heard a woman sobbing and wondered if it were her dead mother or herself. She saw a flickering form on the horizon, like a flame in the shape of a noble bird. Her heart twisted with longing.

  A woman rushed toward her, wearing a farmer’s field pants and smock, carrying a short hooked reaping knife. Her sun-leathered face twisted as she raised the knife.

  “My son! What have you done to him?”

  Linned opened her mouth, but no words came. She had no right to defend herself, even with the truth. As she lowered herself to her knees, the boy slipped from her grasp.

  The woman gasped as she unwrapped the boy’s leg. “Why have you done this thing?”

  Linned roused herself. The farmwoman deserved to know why her son would bear scars for the rest of his life. “Harvest asp . . . cut out . . . the poison . . .”

  “You are a great and very saintly lady to have saved my son.”

  “I did only what needed to be done.”

  “You were the chosen one! And you bear — what are those, holy relics?” The farmwoman bent closer to inspect the inata shards, but made no attempt to touch them. “Is that the Bird of Fire worshipped in Far Veddris?”

  Linned placed the shards together to display the phoenix emblem, discolored by her brother’s blood and the asp venom.

  “Yes, I see it now,” the woman said. “See, Jun, see the Holy Bird. It died for our sins, that’s what the Vethrians believe.”

  The boy stopped sobbing and peered intently at the shards. The air within Linned’s throat grew still, expectant.

  “Who broke it?” the boy asked in his clear voice.

  Linned’s heart ached as if it would shatter like the blade. “I did.”

  The boy wiped his cheeks with one hand and sniffed. Then he reached out to trace the outline of the phoenix across the broken blade. “Pretty bird.”

  Brightness flared where his fingers passed. For a moment, Linned thought it was a trick of the sun in her eyes. But no, the stains were disappearing, along with the jagged break. The chain fell away in a rain of powdery dust. Moment by moment, the metal edges knit together and grew clear. The phoenix shimmered as if poised for flight.

  Flame answered within Linned’s breast. She gasped, caught between wonder and joy. The winged shape, more fire than flesh, settled over her own.

  “A miracle,” the farmwoman murmured. Head bent over her child, she was aware only of the precious life she held in her arms.

  Linned lifted the inata. feeling the metal warm and quivering to her touch.

  Home. whispered in her mind, that voice like no other.

  She would go back to Veddris, return the blade to its proper home, ask her brother’s forgiveness. What happened then she could not see. Doubtless he would humiliate her, demand that she surrender the inata blade. It would not matter. The physical blade was a symbol only. The true phoenix lived not in a piece of metal but in her own spirit.

  Whenever she acted out of greed or fear, no magic could restore the inata to life. But when she turned instead to compassion and justice, the Bird of Fire would rise anew in her heart, reborn from its own ashes in fiery splendor.

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  Welcome to The Seven-Petaled Shield . . .

  After “The Phoenix Blade,” I went on to other material for my submissions to Sword & Sorceress. But the world of Azkhantia, Gelon, and Meklavar — and their marvelous cultures — would not go away. I kept returning to the steppe, to the horses and the people who lived by them, to the complexities of a clash between two such different civilizations. Ideas burbled about in my mind, and a second axis of tension started to take shape. A single conflict suffices for a short story, but I have found that novels require the depth and complexity of two or three such divisions. My glimpses of the Gelonian scorpion god Qr convinced me that more must come into play than human squabbles about territory.

  In particular, Meklavar would not go away. Meklavar and its “sorcerers” had ideas of their own, and they informed me in no uncertain terms that not only was the fate of the steppe nomads at stake, but that of the entire world. I needed a deeper my
thology, vaster and more powerful supernatural forces at work, and characters who with all their flaws risk everything they hold dear for a larger cause.

  How could I resist?

  Eons ago, a great king used a magical device — the Seven-Petaled Shield — to defeat the forces of primal chaos, but now few remember that secret knowledge. When an ambitious emperor conquers the city that safeguards the Shield, the newly-widowed young Queen, guardian of the heart-stone of the Shield, flees for her life, along with her adolescent son. As one land after another falls to the empire, they become separated and her son fears the emperor has executed his mother. Consumed with grief and vengeance, he transforms himself into the agent of chaos, a ravening destroyer who threatens all the living world. The only ones standing in the way of annihilation are the mother he thinks is dead, a dispossessed enemy prince, a demented prophet, and the nomadic horsewoman whose love alone can heal the heart of the heir to the magical Shield.

  As I said, how could I resist? I opened with the siege of Meklavar, and my heroine, Tsorreh, immediately took charge. While the men were fighting the Gelon, she went off to save the library. She didn’t stay in Meklavar, though. She and her son, my hero Zevaron, traveled through mountain tunnels, across deserts and oceans. He fell in love with a woman warrior of the Azkhantian steppe and encountered a prophetic sea god. She studied the movement of the stars with a Gelonian scientist and watched as the forces of Fire and Ice brought a comet smashing down from the heavens. And that was only the beginning…

  That novel, The Seven-Petaled Shield, turned into a trilogy by the same name. My trusted readers loved it. I hope you will, too.

  The Seven-Petaled Shield

  Deborah J. Ross

  By grace, all things are made,

  By judgment, all things are unmade.

  At the end of time, O Holy One,

  Deliver us into the hands of peace.

  Part I: Tsorreh’s Gift

  Chapter 1

  Soaring above the besieging army, the ancient citadel of Meklavar stood stark against the volcanic cliffside. The sun dipped toward the jagged western peaks, and still the city held fast against the Gelonian invaders.

  Tsorreh san-Khored paused along the top of the wall that surrounded the lower market city. Slender and honey-skinned, she looked more like her own servant than the young second wife of the lord of Meklavar. She’d thrown on her oldest clothes: a knee-length sleeveless vest over drawstring pants of faded cotton. Her hair, blue-black and long enough to reach her hips, was plaited into the usual seven braids, tied back, and covered with an old head cloth.

  Once she had stood here for the sheer joy of feeling the winds through the Var mountain pass, of looking beyond the city gates to the fields and gardens, the livestock pens and villages, imagining the wide world beyond. Now the stench of blood hung in the air. The grassy paddocks and gardens had been trampled beneath the jumble of men and beasts, fire and dust.

  Tsorreh lifted her gaze to the north, where the foothills tumbled down from rocky pastures to the Mher Seshola, the old name for the Sea of Desolation. On the day of her initiation as a woman, from her vantage in the topmost spire of the temple high above the city, she’d glimpsed a line of shimmering brightness along the northern horizon. No sane army, she had been taught, would brave those waters.

  No sane army? she repeated to herself. Then the Gelonian invaders must truly be madmen to have crossed it. They certainly fought with a singleness of purpose that swept through every defense Meklavar could rally. With every passing day, the fighting had become fiercer, more desperate. Although Meklavar overlooked the pass leading to the southern spice kingdoms, it had been built originally as a watchtower, not a fortress.

  Below, shadows deepened. Men darted between piles of fallen bodies and smoldering fires that sent up streamers of greasy smoke. Dark pools stained the earth. Here and there, a fallen animal, a horse or Gelonian onager, thrashed pitifully until one of the men reached it. Other beasts wandered free, shying when approached. Great-winged carrion birds wheeled and circled above the battlefield.

  Horns rang out, echoing against the mountain. Tsorreh recognized them as Meklavaran, that throbbing tone.

  Retreat.

  The call sounded again. A Meklavaran banner caught the dying sun.

  As Tsorreh turned, the light shifted, staining the sky the color of blood. A shiver passed through her. She was not superstitious; she could read and write, both the sacred languages and the modern. The heavens themselves now seemed to mirror her fears.

  Tsorreh hurried down from the wall, a pair of maid-attendants at her heels. The outer gates opened to admit a stream of men and beasts. Soldiers supported their stumbling comrades. Riderless horses snorted, white-eyed, and many others carried limp bodies slung over their backs.

  Maharrad, Tsorreh’s royal husband, clattered by on his white horse, surrounded by his bodyguard. Along with the other women, she stood back to let them pass. The smells of blood and dust rolled over her like an invisible tide. So many hurt, so many she knew.

  Zevaron, where is Zevaron? Where is my son?

  Tsorreh’s heart hammered in her ears, but she knew her duty. She pushed forward, directing the wounded to the areas she had prepared for them. The city’s physicians and healer-women began sorting which soldiers needed immediate care and which could wait. Tsorreh sent her maid-attendants to help. Two of them looked panic-stricken, but the third hastened to her work. Tsorreh remembered that the girl’s father had been outside, on the battlefield. Where he was now, she did not know.

  The gates were barred again, for everyone who was able to get to safety had already done so. The way was cleared to transport the wounded to shelters and temporary hospitals.

  Although fear threatened to swallow her up, Tsorreh forced herself to attend to her work. Before her lay a rider whose horse had been cut down beneath him. He was Zevaron’s age, barely a man. The splinters of his thigh bone pierced his blood-soaked breeches. He was almost fainting from pain. His lower lip had been bitten through. Not daring to touch the wound, she called for a physician. When the healer arrived, she saw in his face that there was little hope for the young rider.

  After the first wave of men, Tsorreh’s ears went deaf with the piteous cries of the wounded. She reeled with the stench of slashed intestines and the coppery reek of blood. Once she thought she heard her husband’s voice, shouting commands.

  Zevaron, where is Zevaron?

  He was a man now, for all his fourteen years. Like his fathers before him, he had stood in the seven-fold light of the temple and chanted the words of the te-Ketav, the most revered of all Meklavaran scriptures. Since the time he could lift a wooden practice sword, he had trained for this day, trained to be the strong and faithful second to his older brother. In ordinary times, he would have had years more to harden into his full strength. These were not ordinary times.

  Zevaron must be alive. She could not bear it otherwise. He would come to her when his duties permitted. The Most Holy would not let him die.

  The next man in the row was an officer, an older man. He sat upright in the dust, insisting he was all right. His skin was gray in the failing light. When he tried to stand, his legs buckled beneath him. Tsorreh coaxed him to lie down on a pallet. She took one of his hands in hers, holding it as if she could hold him to life. Pain flickered like lightning across his face.

  Her fortitude crumbled. “Zevaron,” she said to him, hearing the urgency in her own voice. “Have you seen ravot Zevaron?”

  He smiled and died. His palm between her fingers was still warm, but she felt the change, the sudden stillness. She pressed his eyelids, but they wouldn’t stay shut.

  Tsorreh stood up just as a commotion erupted at the gates. Through the mass of soldiers and townsfolk, she glimpsed a plumed Gelonian helmet. The soldier rode in a chariot pulled by a large, cream-colored onager. The beast’s mane had been shorn and its lower legs and tail wrapped in striped cloth.

  Muttering, people stepped
away to let the chariot pass. By the pennons streaming from the standard — one of Gelonian blue and purple, the other green for truce — this must be an emissary from Thessar, the commander and son of the Gelonian king. He most likely carried a demand for the city’s surrender.

  A short time later, the emissary headed back to the gates. This time, Tsorreh got a better look at him, his cloak thrown back to reveal pale arms, his muscles flexing as he handled rein and whip. She saw nothing of his features, only the discipline of his upright posture.

  “Te-ravah.” A boy, one of Maharrad’s aides, bowed to Tsorreh. He could not have been more than nine or ten, but his face, smeared with greasy smoke, looked haggard. His eyes were glassy. “The te-ravot has requested your presence in council.”

  “I thank you for bringing this message to me,” she replied formally. Then, “Child, what is your name?” There were so many names she would never know. She wanted to be able to thank this one boy.

  “Benerod.”

  Named for one of the brothers of Khored of Blessed Memory.

  “Yours is an ancient and honorable name.” When she smiled, her face felt stiff with dried tears. “You bear it well.”

  The boy’s cheeks turned dusky. He ducked his head. “I almost forgot. I am to tell you that ravot Zevaron is unhurt.”

  Thank you, she prayed in relief. Oh, thank you.

  “Come,” she said to the boy, “walk with me now, and tell me of your part in the great battle, that it may be written down and remembered.”

  Together they made their way through the sloping streets of the market city. People filled the broad central avenue, hurrying to make use of the last light of the day. Scattered lanterns marked inns or shops, although many of the smaller streets lay dark.

  They reached the King’s Stairs, which led to the terraced upper city, called the meklat in the old parlance, and the citadel. At the bottom, the steps were wide enough for ten men to walk abreast, but they narrowed as they rose.