The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1)

by G. L. Breedon

  “While you have always been an inconvenience, and often an embarrassment, you have never been a problem,” his mother said.

  Shifhuul still refused to look back, but he could imagine his mother stroking the gray fur of her chin and twitching her short whiskers the way she always did when annoyed.

  “However, you will become a problem, to yourself most of all, if you continue to dishonor the memory of your mate and daughter.” His mother’s words stung — wasp needles digging past fur to pierce flesh, venom sinking into his blood, pumped to his heart.

  “I will not be cast off on some foolish errand. I am a kellot, not a forest scout.” Shifhuul’s voice trembled with anger at his mother and the remembrance of a deeper rage. “What does it matter that a few wyrins dream of a human god?”

  “New things always require investigation,” his mother said. “Wyrins have never seen this.”

  Wyrins did not believe in gods the way humans and other peoples did. They worshiped their fallen ancestors who protected them from wicked spirits and interceded to gain benefit from powerful, helpful spirits. Dreams of a human god spoke of an illness spreading among his people. Might traveling among them leave him bearing this sickness as well?

  “What happens in the other realms is of little consequence to us,” Shifhuul said, trying to reassure himself of this common, long-held belief. “The urris assure that.”

  “The urris have been silent for many years,” his mother said. “One cannot know their ways or their intentions. We must prepare ourselves in the event The Pact does not hold.”

  “And you hope to prepare our people by sending me to live among the hairless savages.” Shifhuul grunted in disgust.

  “There are other arrangements being made.” His mother’s voice sounded typically cryptic. As clan chief, her responsibilities were wide and varied, a fact she constantly impressed upon Shifhuul through a persistent silence about most of her obligations. “Your role is important but not essential.”

  “You mean it will not worry you if I do not return.”

  Shifhuul stared at the wyrin males and females walking along the paths between trees and homes and shops and store houses built atop the roots of the widest trunks. These people all seemed to possess a purpose. They moved as though animated by clear desires and explicit goals. His life had always seemed absent of such animation. Until Shahana. Until Whinara. They had unveiled something in him that he had believed nonexistent. A mythical temple hidden in an inaccessible jungle. Their deaths, and the manner of their passing, destroyed the thing they had revealed. A shattered ruin crumbling in vine-covered undergrowth.

  “Whether you return is not what is of importance.” His mother’s voice sounded sad, something he rarely heard in her tone. “What is meaningful is what you attain in your absence. I should hope you will become someone Shahana and Whinara would have been proud of.”

  Shifhuul did not answer. He heard his mother leave a moment later, abandoning him to the view of the town, the thoughts battling in his mind, and the pain in his heart. He did not look back to see his mother go. Did not call after her. Did not plead. Did not complain. Did not argue. Did not see his mother’s face again.

  THE PRESENT

  “WATCH OUT.”

  Shifhuul looked up, jerking to a stop as he nearly walked into the back of the suddenly halted wagon.

  “Why have we stopped?” The old man in the back of the wagon looked over Shifhuul’s shoulder. The old man spoke the Easad language of the Atheton dominion they traveled in, but Shifhuul understood enough to grasp the man’s query.

  “No I know.” Shifhuul replied in Shen as he turned to follow the old man’s eyes.

  “They will be on us any minute.” Yeth’s voice sounded nearly uninterested.

  “Bad time for break.” Shifhuul looked around the edge of the wagon to see the front of the caravan stopped before a fork in the road. Leotin and Palla were openly arguing about which path to take.

  “An opportunity.” Tarak walked around the side of the wagon, heading toward the front.

  “He mean say tragedy, no?” Shifhuul looked up to Yeth as she watched Tarak through squinted eyes.

  “I do not think so,” Yeth said. “I believe he has a plan.”

  “No like roagg plans.” Shifhuul looked back again at the approaching militiamen. He saw them now. All on horses. More than twenty and all armed with swords. A few with bows.

  He could probably kill two of the humans, taking advantage of his speed and dexterity, before one of them would wound or kill him. The roagg could kill at least five before the arrows would take him down. The yutan would be good for three. Possibly four. She had a knack for wielding her spear that surprised many a swordsman. If she were to use The Sight, she might be able to kill more, but the yutans rarely used The Sight in combat. As they fought no wars among themselves, they had little need to train for its use in battle. She could use The Sight to communicate with their respective leaders in the other realms, make a fire, or heal a wound, but seemingly little else of use. That would still leave ten or more militiamen to follow and attack the caravan. Plenty. Ten armed men would effortlessly slaughter forty carnival folk with nothing but meat knives and prop swords to defend themselves. The odds did not favor Shifhuul and his fellow scouts or the carnival and pilgrims.

  He did not need to be told the roagg’s plan to see that it could as easily become a misfortune rather than an opportunity.

  To continue reading the Carnival story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Shifhuul’s storyline follow this link.

  THE THRONE

  DJU-TESHA

  SLENDER FINGERS entwined the digits of a meaty palm. After a moment, the larger hand reluctantly disengaged with a gentle shake.

  “What is the matter, my love?”

  “I have told you — we cannot be seen to exhibit affection where we might be noticed or overheard.”

  “No one uses this place. Particularly not on the day of my brother’s coronation.”

  High Tahneff Dju-Tesha, sister to High Tahn Tin-Tsu, stood beside Tigan Rhog-Kan on an enclosed balcony behind the palace library, slender columns supporting wide arches overlooking the verdant western gardens.

  “Even today, especially today, we must be cautious.” Rhog-Kan smiled and whispered his following words: “My love.”

  Dju-Tesha beamed back at him, a wave of warmth rising from her belly in a rush that left her cheeks hot. She always experienced a swell within at his declarations of affection. She looked up into his gentle eyes, her own eyes growing damp in response. What did he see that no other man had taken the time to find? At nearly twice her twenty-eight years, their difference in age did not concern her as much as it did him, for he somehow noticed her when all others thought her invisible. She had been a ghost, continually at the edge of things, haunting the library and the gardens, rarely perceived by those passing. He made her corporeal. His attention. His passion. His love.

  “What troubles you?” Dju-Tesha asked again. She now read his face as easily as the books constantly in her hands. She had been reading a book when he spoke to her in the library that day, not so many months ago.

  “What has troubled me all week.” Rhog-Kan shook his head. “Your brother.”

  “What has he done now?” Dju-Tesha asked. Her mind tumbled in strange ways when she thought of her brother. Her only living brother. He had doted on her as a child, and it stunned her heart when he went away. She wrote to him regularly throughout the years, and he to her, but his failure to return upon their father’s death strained her feelings for him. She had been relieved when their mother forbid her from sending him any more communications.

  “It is not what he has done but what he intends to do.” Rhog-Kan frowned and looked out to the flowers of the gardens. “And what I fear he will do in the future.”

  “He is new to the palace and unschooled in the ways of state.” Dju-Tesha raised her hand to reach out to him, then lowered it with a glanc
e down the hall. She so desired to touch him. Even if only her fingers upon his. She could not fathom how she had lived so long without touching another she cared for, without being touched in return. She did not think of herself as homely, but she understood that she did not attract men the way other women in the palace did. Her hair hung too thin on her head, her jaw sat too wide, her clothes fell too loosely on her frame. Her looks and her love of the library’s dusty shelves had likely been the reason neither her father nor her eldest brother ever tried to marry her off to a lesser tahn from the provinces to shore up political support for the palace. However, Tigan Rhog-Kan did not notice her defects, or did not consider them as such. He seemed to see something else in her.

  “With your wise counsel, I believe he can be an excellent zhan,” Dju-Tesha said.

  “He does not appear much interested in what I or the council advise.” Rhog-Kan turned away from the gardens to match Dju-Tesha’s gaze. “Perhaps he will respond better to the advice of a family member.”

  “Do you mean it?” Dju-Tesha laughed with joy. She could not restrain herself, snatching his hand for a moment and squeezing it before releasing it once more.

  “I did not think it proper to announce our intentions before the coronation,” Rhog-Kan said. “Questions of my lesser station and aspersions of my intentions will still plague us, but with your brother’s consent, all obstacles can be overcome.”

  “I have no doubt my brother will approve.” Dju-Tesha placed her hand to her cheek, feeling the warmth of her face. “I am certain my mother will approve as well.”

  “It might be best to speak with your mother first, before bringing the matter to your brother,” Rhog-Kan said.

  “Yes, that would be wise.” Dju-Tesha considered this. “She will be so surprised.”

  “No more surprised than I was to find the woman I would come to love sitting right beside me all along.” Rhog-Kan smiled wide, his voice raspy with emotion.

  No one’s surprise could be deeper than Dju-Tesha’s. The prime tigan of the dominion had known her all her life. When his own wife died of fever twenty years ago, everyone assumed he would soon remarry. He never did, despite the attentions of many unbound women at court. When he had found her in the library, what she thought of as her own private dominion within the palace, the place she spent most of her time, she could not imagine why he stopped to speak with her. He said he wanted to read more about the wars of the Great Dominions and sought her opinion on the best books to assuage his interest. No one ever requested her view on anything, much less advice in reading the history of the realm. He could have spoken with the palace librarian, but he came to her.

  She never asked him why, but a friendship developed in the days and weeks afterward as he frequently returned to borrow books under her guidance and later to discuss them with her. She had never been queried on her views of the many books she’d read. No one seemed to think of her much at all. One night, well beyond sunset, lamplight bathing them as they sat side by side at the long reading table by the main window, Rhog-Kan kissed her. She responded, much to his astonishment as well as her own, not like the shy, wispy phantom of the library that most took her to be, but like the heroes of the stories she had read since childhood. While she devoured books of history and philosophy and religious commentary, she savored tales of adventure and romance. She had not pulled away from the kiss in fear or hesitancy; she had returned it with matched passion, holding his face in her inexperienced hands.

  Her hands gained more familiarity over the ensuing weeks. Rarely visited by the palace inhabitants, and staffed infrequently by the librarian, the library offered a perfect place for their assignations, and unused and unseen reading rooms provided perfect seclusion for their passionate embraces. He complained, feebly, of the improperness of their actions, blaming himself for their blasphemous indiscretion, but he continued to return to her whenever he could find time. Her seduction of him had been accomplished through instinct as she lacked all experience and skill, but the effect had been the same. He became hers and she his on the plush cushions lining the benches of a private reading room.

  She wished she could embrace her lover now, desired so much to kiss him, to feel the strength of his arms, his flesh against hers as they stood in the open air alcove behind the library.

  “After the coronation and the celebration.” The wave of heat rose within Dju-Tesha once more.

  They spoke of a future together often. First, in ambiguous terms that each might deny held any real importance, and then later, with an explicitness that made clear their desire to stand man and wife before the world. He cautioned her against acting too soon after her elder brother’s death. Accusations of tier jumping would follow him as he joined the royal family. She ignored such concerns. Although she believed in some manner of divine action, she did not hold the stories of her faith to be absolute. While Ni-Kam-Djen might or might not exist, and he might or might not have cast all living things, like the clay vessels the ancient scriptures described, in various degrees of purity, tiers of life ranging from plants to animals to humans, she did not ascribe to the belief that certain people were naturally cast in greater or lesser quality than others. She certainly did not believe that women were cast of inferior clay compared their male companions and therefore stood on a lower tier in the world. She had only to look at the foolishness of men’s actions to see the ridiculousness of such a notion.

  “I must go.” Rhog-Kan looked around quickly and then kissed her. She placed her hand on his neck and held him to her a moment longer before releasing him. “Soon.”

  “Soon.” Dju-Tesha echoed as Rhog-Kan left her side and disappeared through a nearby doorway.

  Soon they would announce their love to her family and the palace and the dominion. And then, when she could find time for them alone, she would make a more private announcement, one that she hoped would please him. One that altered the course of her life more than she had imagined possible only months ago. Uncertain at first, and unable to confide in anyone, she had consulted her closest friends, the books of the library. Tomes of medical philosophy. Their knowledge confirmed her intuition.

  Dju-Tesha smiled as she watched a swallow perch on the branch of a nearby tree. Finally, she had determined a direction in her life. She had become more than a specter stalking the forest of the library bookshelves. She had become a woman. A woman in love. A woman making choices that defined her life. Choices with consequences. Consequences like carrying the prime tigan’s child.

  To continue reading the Throne story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Dju-Tesha’s storyline follow this link.

  THE THRONE

  TIN-TSU

  CRISP WHITE satin swished against a polished marble floor. Thin brown hands clasped before a slender waist.

  “My condolences for your great sorrow, my tahn.”

  Tin-Tsu nodded to the young woman bowing before him.

  “We both share the same sorrow, Tahneff Rin-Lahee,” Tin-Tsu said. “I have lost a brother, and you a future husband. May we each find peace knowing he basks in the glorious love of Ni-Kam-Djen in the Pure Lands.”

  “Yes, my tahn.” Rin-Lahee glanced to where Tin-Tsu’s mother stood to the far side of the tahn’s dressing room. The elder woman nodded nearly imperceptibly to the young woman. “You are very busy and I do not wish to abuse your precious time. I shall leave. May your ascendance be long and glorious.” She paused and turned to Tin-Tsu’s mother. “Thank you, Tahneff Pai-Nakee.”

  Rin-Lahee bowed again to Tin-Tsu and his mother and departed the room. She had come to extend her grief at his brother’s passing. At the death of her intended husband. Or, just as probably, his mother wanted her to do so. He suspected the two desires to be inseparable on that point. Tin-Tsu watched her go, feeling sorry for the woman. Only twenty years old, she had been engaged to marry his brother for the past half year. The wedding had been postponed the prior month so Fan-Mutig could attend to the battle in the so
uth. An engagement he did not return from, ending with finality his engagement to Rin-Lahee. Her father had intended to marry her off to the zhan to gain status within the palace hierarchy and to firm up support among the northern peoples for an endless war that so rarely affected them directly. Now she would likely be married off to the new zhan. Tin-Tsu assumed that to be his mother’s intention in bringing Rin-Lahee to see him minutes before his coronation. She had always possessed intentions for him as a child, even if he could not discern what they might be. He did not doubt she now had intentions for him as an adult and future ruler. He assumed his former mentor, High Priest Toyan-Wen, to have been correct in predicting her desires in this particular matter.

  “A beautiful girl,” his mother said. She crossed the room and stood before him, adjusting the embroidered collar of his jacket.

  “Yes, she will make some man a lovely wife.” Tin-Tsu could not resist letting his mother know he saw through her plans.

  “No need to be obvious in your disdain,” his mother said.

  “That is why you invited her here.” Tin-Tsu grimaced as his mother adjusted his hair.

  “Stop fidgeting,” his mother said.

  “I’m not a child.” Tin-Tsu pulled away as his mother lowered her hands.

  “Not in appearance, only in action.” His mother crossed her arms, a gesture he recognized from childhood as being reserved for her displeasure.

  “I am a priest, Mother.” Tin-Tsu did not feel prepared, emotionally or logically, to defend himself against his mother’s plans.

  “You are a priest now. In a few hours, you will be the zhan of the Daeshen Dominion,” his mother said. “The first may not wed. The second must.”

  “The swearing of new vows does not negate the old.” Tin-Tsu sensed heat rising in his cheeks and chided himself.