The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom

by Dickson, H. Leighton

  That, he had learned quite quickly, was not pleasant at all.

  The Seer had been stumbling as much as he, if not more so, but he couldn’t see him well in the darkness. His own right eye was swollen shut and he longed to flop into some well-stuffed bed and wake up to this having been some wild, sakeh-induced nightmare. But as the wooden walls of a battle fort came into sight, he realized that this night would not be getting shorter anytime soon, and that well-stuffed bed was as likely as a good cup of tea.

  Finally, closed inside the gated walls, the horses came to a stop and he dropped to his knees. It was all he could do to keep from falling over, and he risked a glance at the Seer. He had done likewise, and from the utterly passive look on his face, he had gone somewhere safe, somewhere deep inside where no soldier could intrude. It made Kerris certain that this experience had not been his first.

  Quiz squealed from behind. They had roped the pony and dragged him as well, using many ropes and lashes and whips to keep him in check. It was one of the few things that warmed him, knowing his pony could easily have broken free of his tethers and made a break for it, but it was only a wild affection for his rider that kept him anywhere near. He could hear the sounds of the soldiers cursing, the sound of whips cracking, and without really knowing what he was doing, he found himself on his feet, yanking the rope free from the leopard’s hands. He threw himself toward the pony, a battered intercessor in Quiz’s defense.

  They beat him to the ground with ease.

  Suddenly, there were hands at his face, and the tigress was tenderly lifting him from the dust. She hugged him and he could have sworn that she kissed him, although his head was spinning and he couldn’t be quite sure. He could taste her tears and he also realized with some curiosity that this child of a woman had the same determined spirit as Quiz and possessed the same wild affection for him.

  It also warmed him more than the tea.

  The soldiers pulled him to his feet and he swayed a bit, not quite sure his legs would hold. Fallon was with the Seer now, hugging and weeping and he felt a pang of jealousy, until he heard the Seer whisper the name “Khalilah”, and suddenly everything was all right on that front. He found that odd.

  A dark shape loomed in front of him.

  “Your name?”

  Kerris tried at first, paused to spit out some blood he’d just found on his tongue, then tried again.

  “Kerris Wynegarde-Grey.”

  He just said it. Didn’t make it sound like Kirin. Didn’t make it sound impressive or commanding or strong. Just a name. His name. And awaited the blow that would surely come.

  It did, a back-hander that caused him to stagger a step or two, straight into the arms of the leopards.

  “Liar. I will ask you again, mongrel. What is your name?”

  “Ah, Kerris Balthashane Wynegar—“

  Another blow. “That is a lion’s name. An old name in the Imperial Tongue. One last time. What is your name?”

  He swallowed. He didn’t want to be hit again. What in the Kingdom could the man possibly want? He would surely give it to him if only he knew.

  “Kerris…” he repeated tentatively. “Balthashane…” he swallowed again. “Wyn-“

  And the last, from which he could not recover and a heavy blackness swallowed him up.

  ***

  He could hear the young tigress sobbing as the grey coat went down.

  The dark-maned lion turned to him.

  “And you, mongrel. What, is your name?”

  The mongrel smiled.

  ***

  My dear Tiberius,

  It is quite likely that I will not be returning from wherever it is we are going, so it is with great sadness that I ask one last thing of you. I know what has happened to Sha’Hadin, I have seen it as though I were there with you. My heart breaks for you and for all we have lived and worked and now ultimately died for, but this is the way of things. I ask you to take care of the falcons. The new clutch is soon to hatch, and Alchemists will do no good to such young impressionable souls. Free them or destroy them. It is your call.

  It was an honor to serve with you.

  Most sincerely,

  Sireth benAramis

  ***

  When Kerris awoke, he was in a pit.

  He could tell, because he’d been in a pit once before, and for a very long time. Weeks. Or had it been months? Months engulfed by smug, angry earth. He didn’t like it in the least, not then, not now. He wished he’d stayed asleep.

  It was very tight, room to turn around and that was it. Room to sit, but knees at awkward angles bent in, or bent under. After an hour or so, both positions were blisteringly uncomfortable. You could struggle to stand, but there was no rest in that, and after a while your legs would shake and force you back to sitting, with your knees at awkward angles bent in or bent under.

  It reeked down here. From ages-old urine and rotting excrement and cold vomit and he gagged back the rush of panic. Too deep. He concentrated on the smell of the earth, its richness, its clay tang, tried to imagine himself snuggled in the Mother’s Arms and that she would never let him go but then he remembered that he was in a pit and that image only served to increase the terror that was swelling within. While the sky and the water, the rain and the lightning loved him, the earth did never had.

  Too deep. Too dark. Too much earth.

  He tried to slow his breathing, remembering what he had learned in Chai’Yogath – in through the nose, out through the nose. Not the mouth. The mouth led to panting, then gasping, then screaming. No, through the nose kept everything steady.

  The earth was going to kill him.

  He was breathing too quickly. The air down here was hot, stale, thin. He couldn’t breathe and his chest felt like bursting. No, he told himself, that was the beating. He was simply sore, would feel worse tomorrow most likely, then better the next day.

  He was going to die down here.

  That’s silly. Just rest, he told himself. Just keep breathing. Hear the earth, listen for scraps of conversation up above to remind yourself that there was indeed life on the surface, and that some nasty leopards had just thrown you into a pit to scare you and then when Kirin came, he would make them take you out and everything would be just fine.

  Unless Kirin was dead, killed by bandits in those dark, dark mountains…

  The earth opened its cavernous mouth.

  ***

  He was in a pit.

  He’d been in one before. Several, in fact, through the long miserable years that had been his youth. It seemed a common enough treatment for mongrels at the hands of soldiers, and he always wondered at its efficacy. What exactly was meant to be accomplished by throwing one in a pit? Repentance? Not likely. A mongrel could no more change the circumstances of his birth than a leopard change his spots. Remorse? Possibly. Most mongrels regretted their lives, agreed with the Pure Races that it would have been better never to have been born.

  No, he had come to understand that throwing a mongrel in a pit had less to do with the ‘throwee’ than the ‘throw-er’, that lions had the power and the will to do whatever it was that pleased them, and all the lower castes were grateful for this simple fact. You were what you were, and while life may never get any better for you, at least you could be relatively certain that, as long as you weren’t a mongrel, it wouldn’t get much worse. It was about fear, control and the abuse of power, no more. Certainly no less.

  So he sat, bruised but unshaken, intact and ever defiant, in the dark, reeking, filthy pit. It was perfect for meditation, so he closed his eyes and filled his chest and emptied his mind until he felt a terrible blackness raise her head somewhere nearby, and he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where the grey coat was and what he was battling.

  He felt quite sorry for the young man, so he closed his eyes and slipped into the earth.

  ***

  The earth was moving in, closing in, falling in, crushing him, sucking the air out of his chest, he was dying, he was dying he wa
s…

  … at the ocean?

  He opened his eyes.

  Ocean. Great blue waters, as far as his eyes could see. White-capped waves rushing against the shores like white-maned horses, tossing their wild heads as they reared and lunged. Gulls danced on the horizon and he could hear them cry. He breathed deeply, smelling the salt, smelling the fish, feeling the welcome coolness of the spray slap his face.

  It was a beach, with sand and high rounded rocks and dark wet slicks of weed, tiny crabs and shells and sticks. He was bootless – however did that happen? — so he walked forward, wiggled his toes in the surf, flexed his toe claws and smiled at the sensation as they dug into wet sand. He walked in deeper and deeper still, and the water soaked his trousers up to his hips. It felt so good, and not for the first time, he wondered why other cats couldn’t savor this as he did. Kirin, he knew, would be running for shore like a kitten.

  Someone was watching him.

  He turned around slowly for the water was very heavy, saw the Seer sitting on the sand, his own split-toed sandals removed, wide hakama pants rolled up to his tiger-striped knees. He waved at him and the man smiled and quietly threw a little wave back. His brown eyes were heavy-lidded and he looked tired.

  “Say, do you want me to collect some of these little crabs? I could build a fire and we could have a tasty snack. Would you like that, sidi?”

  The man nodded, so Kerris promptly sloshed back to shore and got to work, chasing scuttling orange and red creatures across the sand.

  ***

  She sat in the dark barracks alone, weeping. She had heard of such things, she had read of them, but to have witnessed what she had witnessed tonight broke her heart into a thousand pieces. She was sure it would never grow strong again.

  And things had begun to make sense, for she had all the time in the world to stop and think.

  The Seer pulled from his horse, beaten like a criminal, offering no resistance. He had obviously been through this before. He was a mongrel and proud of it, and that flew in the face of all things proper and orderly and respectable, and she loved him for it and knew that he might die because of it, just because his ancestors had loved wrongly. It was wrong, all wrong, and it boiled her pure blood and caused her shame, but that too was wrong, and she cursed the rigidity of the Kingdom and its proud, unyielding ways.

  But more than that, she realized that Kerris too was affected by this singular Imperial affliction for normalcy. It had likely shaped him from the moment of his birth as a grey lion to a family of gold. Their name hinted at pride in the distinction, but because of his words in the tower stable of Pesh’thawar, (which seemed like years ago now) she knew otherwise. How had being so different shaped him? She could relate in some ways, as a clever girl child in a family that did not value cleverness, pressed to think and act and believe in ways that were simply not true for her, pressed at every turn to betray her heart, her mind and her will. And yet, she ended up at the University. It had not gone so badly for her.

  And yet…

  “You…are not a mongrel, sidala. That is obvious.” The words of Major Plantagenet-Khan echoed in her mind. To all appearances, she was an ordinary tigress. She had never feared the prejudices of others, only tolerated them until she could figure out a way to escape them or turn them on their heads. She had never had someone take one look at her face and despise her.

  “No one courts grey lions, sidala.”

  She had kissed him tonight. She hadn’t planned to, it just happened, and thankfully, he had probably not noticed, his face had been so swollen. But as she sat in the little dark prison of a barrack, she let her eyes fall upon her book, still bound in brown paper and string. She had not opened it, had kept it hidden from all eyes, even her own. It was madness.

  Yes, it was madness, but she was fighting mad.

  She snatched the book from her saddlebag, tore off the paper and stepped off the shore.

  ***

  A tidy little fire was burning on the beach and crabs were roasting on a makeshift spit. He turned them every few minutes and the smell of seaflesh was making his mouth water in the most delightful of ways.

  The Seer was most quiet. In fact, it seemed difficult for him to be here. He hadn’t spoken, had kept his jaw clenched, his eyes focused on either the fire as though willing it to burn. But Kerris didn’t mind. He liked the silence. The rushing of the waves was music.

  He reached grey fingers for one of the roasting crabs, extended a claw to hook one and slide it gingerly along the spit, when suddenly, without warning, the shore dropped out from underneath him and he found himself falling, tumbling through blackness and cold and emptiness and he hit new hard ground with a thud.

  It was dark here, wherever it was he was now, underground from the looks of things, and as usual, that made him feel a little panicky. It took him several moments to catch his breath, and he blinked in the darkness, trying to focus on these most strange and unusual surroundings.

  “Holy mackerel, you people!” came a voice, very loud in his ears. Actually, it sounded as if it had come from his very own throat. “Night after night, “Not now Solomon”, “We can’t talk tonight, Solomon,” “Tomorrow night, Solomon,” then, BAM, here you are! Damn, how ‘bout giving a guy a bit of a warning?”

  And Kerris realized with a sickening lurch, that he was no longer by the ocean, nor was he even remotely close to Khanisthan.

  He was in Swisserland.

  ***

  After several hours, as the first splashes of pink began to paint the eastern sky, the torches of a battle fort came into view.

  The party jogged straight to it, the horses not having the strength nor their riders the will, to go any faster. They could hear the cries of the sentries, saw what was likely a central hearth spring into life to alert all to the approach of riders and the gates were swung open allowing a troop of mounted soldiers to pour out of the garrison like bees swarming from a hive.

  Kirin straightened his spine, nodded at Wing who hiked the Imperial banner just a little higher, and they did not slow down, simply rode like an arrow toward the garrison and the cavalry headed towards them.

  In the feline world, there are many theories to understand the nature of power, of order and hierarchy, and it might be said that any one of those elements — the flash of Imperial gold on the figure of a lion, the standard of the Kingdom held high, the unrelenting, unyielding directness with which the little party approached — or very possibly a combination of the three, but there was something that caused the garrison troop to split and flow around the party in precision maneuvering. They fell obediently in behind to escort the strangers in a manner entirely different than the one earlier that night.

  This small party rode straight through the gates and into the garrison proper. There was indeed a huge fire in the center of the compound, and alMassay jogged right up to it. Kirin reined in his mount and waited, for he knew that sooner rather than later, the commander of the garrison would show up and things would be set right.

  From the left, he saw a tall lion stride down the steps of what was likely the garrison office. From the right, he saw a slip of a woman in desert menswear race down a set of barracks steps. There was no Kerris. There was no Seer. He could guess well enough what had happened and how.

  He dismounted.

  The tall lion strode up to him, bowed most formally, fist to palm. Kirin did not, merely spread wide his arms to accommodate the Scholar and he held her shaking form as she wept openly on his chest. He stroked her hair for several moments, made hushing sounds, and finally, whilst still holding her, he turned cold blue eyes on the Commander.

  “Where is my brother?”

  No name, no formal address. The threat was in the lack of such.

  “Sir.” The lion bowed again. “I am Major Alexander Plantagenet-Khan, Commander of Sri’Daolath—“

  “I ask again, Major. Where is my brother?”

  The man was caught. It was impossible for him to deny the likeness.
And with the tigress so obviously familiar, it was impossible to claim ignorance. The weight of his failure suddenly settled on his wide shoulders.

  “There was a mistake, sir.”

  “Whose?”

  There was no honor in avoiding it. “Mine, sir.”

  Kirin nodded. “They are alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fetch them, please. Ready your best rooms for our party and prepare the finest meal your kitchens are able. See to it that the horses – all the horses – have organ mash and warm bedding, for we will be staying the night. Then assemble your men in formation in the courtyard. Is all this understood, Commander?”

  The Commander bowed a third time. “Sir.” And turned to an aide at his side to relay the instructions that would likely be his last.

  ***

  “Solomon?” asked Kerris in a baffled tone. He couldn’t hear his own voice, but somehow, he felt it. Inside his head. Like the pounding of a headache.

  “Yes, of course.Who else would it be? Do you talk to lots of people like this?”

  “Ah…”

  “This isn’t Captain, is it?”

  “No, no, it’s Kerris. Are we in…?”

  “Switzerland, yes.” He felt himself pull up to his feet, which were somehow not his feet. He looked around through eyes that were not his eyes, and it all conspired to make him feel sicker than he already did. “And here it is, the thing that’s going to help me catch up with you folks in no time flat…”