Protector
of
Thristas
A Lisen of Solsta Novel
D. Hart St. Martin
Cover art and design by
Aidana WillowRaven/WillowRaven Illustration and Design Plus
http://WillowRaven.weebly.com
Copyright © 2016 D. Hart St. Martin
Published by D. Hart St. Martin
All rights reserved.
For Nancy
.
CONTENTS
The Prophecy
Chapter One – Power Alights
Chapter Two – Siblings and Cousins
Chapter Three – The Problem with Rinli
Chapter Four – Never Harmed, Never Harming
Chapter Five – Heir of Thristas
Chapter Six – Delicate Handling
Chapter Seven – Double-Edged Shindah
Chapter Eight – Knife in One Hand, Sword in the Other
Chapter Nine – The Complicated Day
Chapter Ten – What the Prophecy Says
Chapter Eleven – Permanent as Death and Inescapable
Chapter Twelve – Praise the Maker
Chapter Thirteen – It Might as Well Be Forever
Chapter Fourteen – Never Forever
Chapter Fifteen – Reunion
Chapter Sixteen – The Girl with No Name
Chapter Seventeen – Like Going Home
Chapter Eighteen – The Burden Settles
Chapter Nineteen – Groping in the Dark
Chapter Twenty – A Trumped-Up Truce?
Chapter Twenty-One – Don’t
Chapter Twenty-Two – Fierce Child of a Fierce Deity
Chapter Twenty-Three – Nalin Plays It Well
Chapter Twenty-Four – Mantar’s Child
Chapter Twenty-Five – The Gift of Forgiveness
Chapter Twenty-Six –Here Lies the Sooth
Chapter Twenty-Seven – Madness
Chapter Twenty-Eight – “Safe Journey”
Chapter Twenty-Nine – So Little Time
Chapter Thirty – The Grey One
Chapter Thirty-One – “I Forgive You”
Chapter Thirty-Two – The Lot of The People is Grief
Chapter Thirty-Three – Descend into the Pit
Chapter Thirty-Four – Leave Her to the Desert
Chapter Thirty-Five – The Empty Shroud
Cast of Characters
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Map of Garla
THE PROPHECY
As revealed to Jakor
seventy-four years into exile
A child shall be conceived of two lands in the rite of the Farii. And The People shall celebrate this child and call it the child of Mantar.
The Grey One shall guide the child, allowing it to grow and mature while teaching it the ways of power. Only then shall it be called to save The People from the oppressors.
But I say unto you, believe not the declarations of the first, the second or the hundredth claiming to be the child, for I tell you now, many shall offer but only one can fulfill, and here is how you shall know the One.
A time shall come when the child will lie as though dead and be returned to the desert. Some will grieve and some will not. Some will believe but some will not. But only the true child of Mantar will heed its Maker’s call and return to The People to fulfill the mission.
For hard will be the way of Mantar’s Child, but the burden of The People shall be lightened.
CHAPTER ONE
POWER ALIGHTS
“What happens after, when I have to stay here all the time and you’re no longer welcome?”
At Korin’s question, Lisen looked over to her desert-born spouse and watched as he pulled the girth on their daughter’s sorrel tight and tied it with his usual expert skill. The stable here in Mesa Terses was quiet, the hand on duty having slipped out unobtrusively at Korin’s request. Momentarily, they were alone, and she watched as Korin, his long, dark, ribboned braid trailing down his back, scratched that one spot under his eye-patch strap that always irritated him when he sweat. His twice-a-year trips to Thristas with Rinli, their fifteen-year-out daughter, had grown harder on him as he’d grown older. But neither he nor Lisen trusted anyone other than him to chaperone their child on her journeys to and from the desert nor during her month-long visits here, which the Treaty of the One-Day War required.
Lisen stepped over to him, touched a palm over his heart and attempted to answer his question. “We don’t know if she’s going to need you all the time. Or even at all, eventually.” What they did know was once Rinli and Thristas made the full separation from Garla, Lisen—Empir Ariannas Ilazer—would never dare come here again.
“And speaking of Rin,” Lisen continued, “where is she?”
“No doubt on top of the mesa, watching the sunset with Madlen, saying good-bye.”
Madlen had still been a child when Lisen had last come to Mesa Terses. Now she was a young woman and more than Rinli’s friend, though how far the relationship had progressed or would progress in the end, Lisen couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“I did enjoy sharing the Farii with you again,” Korin offered.
She smiled at him. “It was certainly a very different experience from the first time. It was nice to just watch.” They’d conceived Rinli during the spring fertility ritual sixteen years ago, the mating and its outcome neither of them able to anticipate at the time. “You know,” she commented absently, “Rin and I had a nice time as well.”
“Indeed.” Korin nodded, and then they lapsed into awkward silence as they stood waiting for their tardy daughter.
“Korin?”
They both turned, Lisen with relief at the intrusion, to see Elder Raakon stride into the stable. Lisen had disagreed with this woman, a member of the Elders’ Council, over several issues regarding Rinli’s investiture as Protector of Thristas due to take place on the girl’s sixteenth outcoming day in the fall. She and Korin looked to each other, and Lisen knew he wondered the same thing she did—what did Raakon want now?
“Elder?” he said as she stepped up to him.
“I see you’re still waiting on the girl,” Raakon commented with a nod towards the three horses packed and ready for departure. She didn’t even acknowledge Lisen. Lisen, for her part, studied the woman’s long, dark braid, not so very different from Korin’s save for the abundance of multicolored ribbons and baubles weaved throughout its length, far more than any Lisen had seen on others in the mesa.
“Yes?” Korin replied. “Is there something I can do for you, Elder?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. Well, I’m here on behalf of the Council.” She finally looked at Lisen, who twiddled in silence with a loose lock of her copper-colored hair, but then dismissed her to return her attention to Korin. “They want to be sure you and the Child are returning no later than July.”
“We already agreed to that, Elder,” Lisen said, inserting herself into the discussion where she rightfully belonged. It was clear to Lisen—and she knew it would be the same for Korin—that the Elder spoke very deliberately when she used the word “child.” She may be your daughter, but she’s our Child and don’t you forget it. Lisen wished the Elders’ Council had sent Hozia instead of this pompous Raakon person.
“You will bring your suggestions for revisions for the ceremony, I trust,” she added, resolutely focused on Korin.
Korin sighed, and Lisen shared his impatience. She rested her left hand on his right arm lightly, and his muscles relaxed. Then she drew herself up and reassumed the aura of Emperi authority which she had set aside upon her arrival he
re a month ago. “My spouse and our daughter,” she pronounced, “will have our carefully considered recommendations for your Council’s ratification with them upon their return.”
But the Elder would not release her grip on the conversation. “I don’t know why we have to concede our Hanii to this ‘investiture,’ as you call it.”
“It’s Rinli’s outcoming day,” Korin reminded her.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure.” She whirled on one sandaled foot and exited without further ceremony.
“Their ‘Hanii’?” Lisen managed as soon as Raakon was well up the tunnel. “We Garlans may not have pretty words for it, but we still celebrate Evenday at the end of the summer.”
“I’m betting the Council didn’t send her,” Korin muttered. “They never would have chosen her to talk to us.”
Lisen nodded, but she worried. No Thristan ever spoke freely with or in front of her, of course, but from all she had heard, the Thristans were not happy with the way the Treaty of the One-Day War appeared to be playing out. As the representative of Garla, she adhered to every clause of the treaty, but only a small number of Thristans had participated in the discussions which had resulted in each of its stipulations. Very few Thristans could read; they relied on an oral tradition. So, as they neared the fulfillment of the treaty, the people of the desert only now began to realize that their freedom from Garla didn’t look quite like what they’d anticipated.
On Rinli’s sixteenth outcoming day, Lisen would invest her as Protector of Thristas, still subject to the whims of Garlan rule. This would be the first in a series of events defined in minute detail in the treaty which would end when Rinli turned eighteen and could institute the changes she and her Thristan advisors would decide upon by then—all in order to accomplish the complete separation of the two states into their own distinct entities.
They hadn’t yet determined Korin’s place in all of this, and Lisen knew this wore on Korin. Until now, his duties in life had consisted of working with Guard trainees, sitting on her privy council when he was in Avaret and serving as Rinli’s guardian on these two trips a year to Thristas. But once Rinli was sixteen, both worlds—Garlan and Thristan—would consider her an adult. Would she need, or even want, her father here with her? He was a man who dealt in probabilities and certainties; unknowns worried him.
Lisen looked up at the sounds of scuffling and laughter, announcing Rinli and Madlen’s arrival in the stable. They barreled in and pulled to an abrupt halt in front of her and Korin, trying to stifle what remained of unexpressed giggles.
“You’re late,” Korin chided.
“The sun just set,” Rinli protested.
Lisen watched Madlen wrap an arm around Rinli’s waist, but Rinli elbowed her in the side to push her away.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Rinli managed, all the while urging Madlen to let go. “It won’t happen again.”
Lisen kept her silence during Korin’s disciplinary moments. Rinli never listened to her anyway.
“You’ve made that promise before,” Korin replied while Madlen continued her clinging.
“Fa,” Rinli appealed, head down and imploring him with her sea-green eyes so like Lisen’s own. “Madlen, please, stop.” She tried once more to get Madlen to ease up, but Madlen wouldn’t release her.
“So, are you ready to go?” Korin asked.
Rinli looked at her horse. “Mother’s here. You got my pack. Looks like I am.” She tried to wiggle away from Madlen’s teasing touches. “Madlen, stop!”
Lisen’s breath caught, a chill traveling up her spine, and she looked first to Madlen to study her reaction. The young woman stood, completely stilled, no longer clinging to Rinli, her expression one of confusion Then Lisen turned to Rinli. She, too, looked bewildered, and seeing that, Lisen acknowledged the significance of what she’d just witnessed. She wondered if Korin had caught it. He should have. Through the years he’d experienced the proximity of Lisen’s push on at least two occasions, considering it an immoral appropriation of the will of another to the advantage of the one doing the pushing.
“We should get going,” he said abruptly, and after shifting on their feet, the two young women found their way back to the moment.
“Yes,” Rinli replied, reached out to take her horse’s reins, and started to place her foot in the stirrup to mount.
“Wait,” Madlen said, stepped to Rinli’s side, and kissed her on the cheek. “Till summer.”
Rinli looked into Madlen’s eyes, then kissed her on the forehead. “Till summer,” she repeated softly, took a last fond look at her friend, then swiftly mounted her horse. “Let’s go.”
Korin nodded and threw himself up onto his own horse, and Lisen followed up onto hers. Rinli led the way out of the stable and onto the desert floor, leaving Lisen and her desert man to themselves. A hint of light remained at the edge of the western sky, but the desert remained warm, the sands holding on to the heat like a lost lover newly rediscovered. Lisen watched Rinli’s dark braid swing back and forth as the girl rode in front of her, and she smiled. How often had she followed the similar dark braid of Rinli’s father while traveling from one place to another in her youth?
They had created her—she and Korin—and he had nurtured her in his pouch, to Lisen’s eternal gratitude, as the world around them set itself afire. Rinli’s arrival had meant water to quench the blaze, but embers remained. And the combustibility of those were what worried her now. What in the name of the Destroyer had happened back there between her and Madlen? Lisen didn’t have to ask; she knew. But who else in the stable did?
“Did you see what I saw?” She leaned in close and whispered to Korin.
“In the stable?” Korin whispered back. Lisen nodded, and Korin continued. “I thought she was safe.”
“I don’t think anyone of Ilazer descent is safe,” Lisen replied. “Do you think she knows? And what about Madlen?”
Korin shrugged but said nothing.
“This could be the death of her if she isn’t trained,” Lisen pronounced, the truth of that simple statement chilling her soul.
Korin pulled his horse up, Lisen halting beside him, while Rinli continued on, oblivious.
Korin trained his single brown eye on Lisen’s green ones. “Then you’ll have to train her.” He kicked his horse forward again, but Lisen couldn’t move. Her stomach turned, and her eyes blurred, then refocused. She wished she and Korin could talk candidly. She believed that whatever action they took would require private discussion, but there’d be no chance of that until they were home.
She sighed and urged her horse to move again. It’s going to be a long ride back to Avaret.
On their fifth day on the road, Rinli and her parents left the Pass behind and turned more east than north, away from the Rukat River, leaving Rinli wondering where her father was leading them. She’d overheard her parents whispering last night when they thought she was asleep. Her mother had questioned her father if he truly believed they’d made the right decision, and he’d assured her that he knew they had. “It’s important she see where it happened,” he’d said.
Where what had happened? She was fifteen and old enough to be included in decisions, and she despised manipulation. So this morning, when she’d asked where they were headed as they quickly downed their simple breakfast before heading out and her father refused to say, all she could do was hope it wasn’t the Khared. Her father had taken her there when she was eleven, and she could actually taste, smell, sense the horror as her mother had killed each of the seven Thristans who’d held her captive. He’d told her the story of how her mother had believed she couldn’t survive any other way, but the tale had terrorized Rinli at the time, and she’d never wanted to go there again. She shivered. Please, let it not be the Khared, she thought.
“This way!” her father shouted. As a former captain with guards under his command, he tended to order the world about when outside the confines of the Keep in Avaret or the mesa.
She and her mother dutifully fol
lowed him through the overgrown forest, and Rinli wondered how he had any idea where he was leading them. She could discern no path whatsoever. Rinli had no doubt that he knew where he was going. He always knew where he was going, unlike herself who still had no idea.
They emerged from the dark forest unexpectedly, and Rinli shielded her eyes against the bright intrusion of the sun. As her vision adjusted, an expanse of green grass grown tall from winter rain spread out before her. And beyond it—far, far beyond it—more forest. They all pulled to a halt, and Rinli waited. Given time, one or the other of her parents would announce with great ceremony…
“Bellin Plain.” Her father.
Rinli breathed deeply once, twice, allowing the truth to settle. The home of the One-Day War. The source of my “legacy.” Thousands of cavalry and foot soldiers had gathered here almost exactly fifteen years ago and had trampled the spring from the grass. She stood up in her stirrups and, after bringing her right leg over her horse’s rump, dismounted.
Her parents said nothing as she stepped into what was more a large meadow than a plain, and in their silence, she could hear birds calling and insects singing. She couldn’t imagine the devastation even one day of violence might have perpetrated on this green-on-green gift of nature.
She moved slowly, noting every flower and bush as she passed, squeezing the leaves of a roseprim bush between her fingers, then bringing those fingers up to her nose and inhaling the sweet pungency of the herb. She would miss the greens of Garla once Thristas was hers. Perhaps she could declare this a place of personal pilgrimage—Bellin Plain where the dream of Thristan freedom had been realized.
But had it? Been realized, that is? Not for The People, not yet. They knew the dates of expectation, but not precisely what they should expect. Damn, she didn’t even know what to expect. Investiture as the Protector of Thristas? What did that mean? It was the splitting off of one of her mother’s titles and handing it to Rinli, but her mother would remain supreme. No independence, merely a ruler in training.
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