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

by G. L. Breedon

  To continue reading the Seer story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Rankarus’s storyline follow this link.

  THE PHILOSOPHER

  SKETKEE

  THE JARRING clash of steel against steel resounded through the air, mixing with the screams of women, the moans of wounded men, and the sound of flesh being torn beneath the force of powerful, taloned hands. Sketkee fought four bandits, each larger than an average human male, each more skilled than one might suspect from those who typically fought unarmed travelers. She blocked a sword with her own blade and smashed her fist into the sword bearer’s face, bones cracking loudly under the strength of her arm. She spun to the side, deflecting another blade, leaping back to dodge an ax.

  She and Kadmallin had quickly dispatched the three impostor pilgrims as the bandit cohort first attacked the pilgrim campsite. They had pressed their attack against the first men to reach the camp, but the bandits proved more organized than expected. The invaders rapidly divided into four teams, two assaulting the pilgrims and the other two engaging Sketkee and Kadmallin, pushing them apart to pick them off alone.

  The bandits forced her and Kadmallin into retreat farther from each other with each backward step. Kadmallin’s skill with a sword was matched by few, but his age worked against him when facing so many opponents. He could not hope to survive long against three trained men. Sketkee found it difficult to accurately assess her own odds of survival. A new man joined the fight to replace one she felled by relieving him of a leg. Even the best warrior would be brought down by superior numbers, and it had been many octads since the peak of her ambassadorial combat training in her youth. She needed to gain the advantage against her adversaries.

  She attacked the nearest bandit with a flurry of sword strikes, seeking his limbs and the soft spots around his thin leather armor. She staggered back as a blade bit into the shoulder of her free arm. While tougher than human flesh, rakthor skin provided little protection against sharpened metal. Blood oozed down her bicep as she swung her blade to block another blow.

  This could not continue. She would die, and Kadmallin would be killed. The mystery of the artifact would perish with her passing. An unacceptable situation. With limited options, one path presented itself, even if it caused the pilgrims to shun her completely. However, they were not likely to live if she died.

  Sketkee took a deep breath, filling her chest, clenching the glands of her neck, holding her stomach tight. She released the breath with all the force her lungs could produce, clicking her jaw wide as the glands at the back of her throat and underneath her tongue expelled their special venom, combining on contact in the air and igniting in a burst of flame that belched forth to consume the man nearest her.

  Flames clung to the man’s arms and face as he screamed in agony and terror. Sketkee turned and breathed fire again, spraying the bandits with a blue-orange liquid light, creating a conflagration among the men who encircled her. Howling in pain and surprise, the men turned to run, stumbling as they flailed against the unstoppable fire eating at the flesh of their hands and chests and cheeks. Sketkee swung her sword with deft precision, slaughtering the four men as they attempted to flee, their bodies tumbling to the ground, fire still consuming their clothes and exposed skin. She crossed the short distance to where Kadmallin battled the three bandits. One of the men had seen her kill his companions and the method of doing so. He turned and bolted, throwing away his weapon to make greater haste in his escape.

  Unencumbered by the reduction in the number of assailants surrounding him, Kadmallin dispatched one of the remaining bandits as Sketkee plunged her sword through the back of the last man, both falling to the ground together, the pleas of their final moments before death spoken to the cold, deaf earth.

  “You’re wounded.” Kadmallin stared at the bleeding cut along Sketkee’s arm.

  “I will be fine. I can bleed like this for another twenty minutes before it kills me.” Sketkee looked past Kadmallin’s shoulder to see that the bandits had lost their enthusiasm for the fight in the face of their friends’ fiery deaths. They ran in groups of two and three back into the woods.

  “We should get you stitched.” Kadmallin came closer to examine her wound.

  “There are others who will need stitching.” Sketkee saw several pilgrims sprawled on the dirt and grass, holding wounded limbs as they called for help. A few held their chests or stomachs. These would die soon. No field dressing could save wounds to the gut or lungs. The rational thing to do would be to end their suffering peacefully, but she knew from long experience with humans, particularly those of great religious persuasion, that to do so would create unnecessary unease. They would rather watch their companions die slowly in pain from injuries than kill them with their own hands. She had explained the rakthor position on such circumstances to Kadmallin, and he had assured her he would not hesitate if such a thing proved necessary. He in fact insisted she commit the same assurances in the event he could not take his own life if needed.

  “I’ll fetch some thread. Help the others as best you can.” Kadmallin turned and sprinted back toward their tent at the border of the camp.

  Sketkee looked across the campsite, assessing how to contribute to the restoration of normalcy among the pilgrims. Humans, she had found, did not do well with the sudden loss of companions. They fared better when the circumstances in their lives did not greatly alter. She used the edge of her sword blade to cut a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt and tied the length around her upper arm to staunch the flow of blood. She then placed the sword in the hand of her wounded arm and used her free hand to lift an overturned wagon back to its wheels and free from the legs of the man trapped beneath it.

  The man stared up at her in terror. Without her deep cloak to hide her features, the clouded daylight exposed her face and form more clearly than any of the pilgrims had previously seen.

  “You breathed fire.” The man moaned the words, grasping at his broken leg. “Fire like a demon.”

  “I breathed a glandular combination that ignites when mixed and explodes in the air.” Sketkee bent to examine the man’s leg, ignoring his panicked twitches as she probed the break. “Demons are a figment of febrile imaginations. You should restrain yourself to facts. Your leg will need a splint, but if set properly, it will heal.” Sketkee had a deep familiarity with human anatomy from her studies, and a more practical knowledge gained from years of patching up Kadmallin’s numerous injuries.

  “Fire-breathing snake demon.” The man sputtered his words between gasps of pain.

  “This will be painful.” She pulled the man’s leg, setting the bone into place. The man’s eyes rolled back into his head as he passed out. “A preferable condition for both of us.”

  As she scavenged for a short, broken board from the wagon and a length of twine to make a rudimentary splint, she noticed the attention of the pilgrims upon her. Even those who tended to the wounded spared an eye toward her actions. If they had not directly seen her pyrotechnic display, the murmurs among them spread the tale quickly enough. It seemed improbable they would allow her to continue to follow their group to the coast. Had they merely viewed her in the full flesh, they might have been willing to forget the matter, marveling at the curiosity of such a foreign creature. Seeing her breathe fire likely proved an insurmountable difference. Even though they were human, she could not judge them entirely unique in that distinction.

  Few rakthors breathed fire as Sketkee did. She had only met one other non-familial rakthor in all her sixty-three years who could accomplish the task. No rakthor produced fiery breath by natural inclination. The trait did not exist anywhere in her people’s collective ancestry. However, a highly skilled seer could manipulate an organism’s body to alter its function. An exceptional seer could make such transformations in a way that allowed them to be passed on to the modified individual’s progeny. History told that the roagg people had been fashioned in such a manner by human dark seers long before the r
ise of the first Great Dominion. A people created to be warriors in perpetual service of their masters. Stories also told how the urris intervened and removed the roaggs to the continent of the Stone Realm to pursue their own destiny unencumbered by their past, far from the human seers who had birthed their kind.

  Seers rarely arose among rakthors. The act required a way of apprehending reality that appeared infrequently in her people. A rakthor with The Sight might arrive once in a generation. Her great-great-grandsire, a warrior turned ambassador, had paid considerable sums for a human seer to gift him with the power of fire, an advantage in a fight that few opponents could defend against, as Sketkee had shown once again. The trait extended down the family line, each of her seven siblings possessing the same incendiary ability. She suspected the modification could be accomplished with any of the peoples of the different realms, but doubted they would easily survive the use of the alteration without further change to their physique. The toughness of rakthor flesh, especially the lips and inner mouth, made the pain from the glandularly created flames bearable rather than life threatening.

  Kadmallin returned with needle and thread in hand as Sketkee finished binding the splint to the unconscious man’s wounded leg.

  “We have a problem.” Kadmallin knelt and pulled the bloodstained knots of the cloth strip away from her arm, ripping the shirt apart where it had been cut by the bandit’s blade.

  “Yes, the pilgrims will ask us to leave after what they have seen.” Sketkee noted that Kadmallin’s face looked grimmer than the circumstances demanded.

  “A much bigger problem.” Kadmallin stared up at her with hard eyes. “They ransacked the tent. The artifact is gone.”

  Sketkee blinked at Kadmallin, noting the change in her heart rate as her mind accessed his words. She had taken the artifact from the satchel and hidden it beneath the edge of the canvas tent. A safe hiding place if potential thieves calmly searched the tent and found the diversionary coins she’d left in the satchel, an unfortunate place if they pulled it up by the stakes to reveal the contents within. She could imagine the artifact rolling through the low grass in such a circumstance, its crystalline structure reflecting light, calling attention to its movement. She had planned poorly, assuming she need only worry about the curiosity of the pilgrims rather than the covetous encroachment of bandits.

  She winced slightly as Kadmallin plunged the threaded needle into the flesh of her upper arm. Only one rational course of action presented itself.

  “When you finish, we leave to hunt the bandits and retrieve the artifact.”

  To continue reading the Philosopher story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Sketkee’s storyline follow this link.

  THE SEER

  KELLATRA

  THE PACKAGE hit the polished wooden table with a loud thud, the leather wrapping dampening the sound of the impact.

  “The codex?” Kellatra’s father touched the dried cowhide that enclosed the box with a long, bony finger.

  “My demands have altered.” Kellatra stood before her father’s desk, twin oil lamps eating away the darkness of his study. The fireplace sat ash-cold and empty. She kept her hands behind her back to keep her fidgeting fingers from her father’s perceptive gaze. She had not given the previous arrangement great odds at success and had no idea how her new needs might alter the chance of failure.

  “My surprise is unbounded.” Her father pulled at one of the leather straps securing the bundle and slowly unwrapped it.

  “Circumstances are not what they were.” Kellatra watched her father pull the binding from the wooden box with a feeling of jealousy and despair. She would never have the opportunity to unlock the secrets of The Unseen Codex. The injustice of that knowledge, coupled with the firm sense of entitlement accompanying the manner in which the book came into her life, left her more despondent than angry.

  “Conditions change so swiftly in a day?” Her father opened the box, hands shaking slightly as he lifted the lid. “A manic existence you lead.”

  “I do not want you to talk with the council.” Kellatra took a step forward. “I need to leave the city. Tonight.”

  Her father looked up from the book, his large eyes squinting in the darkness — an owl curious of its prey’s motions in the forest night.

  “Why?”

  “The reason holds no relevance for you.” Kellatra nodded to indicate the book. “I have abided by my side of the agreement, and I suspect you will prefer my new request considerably. I need money. As much as you can assemble from the house. Anything of value will suffice. Coin if you have it. Jewels if possible. Enough to carry me far away and out of your life forever.”

  Kellatra had reassessed her situation and her needs on the walk through moonlit streets to her father’s estate house. She could not stay in the city. Turning the codex over to the Academy would likely end the pursuit of those who hunted her, but Rankarus had been frighteningly adamant that the man who wished him dead would continue until successful. She had not pressed him on the reasons he had stolen from the mysterious man. While she could imagine him pilfering a hot roll from the local baker as she caught him doing now and again, she could not reconcile the man she knew as stealing anything of real value. Possibly charming someone into making a gift but not outright theft. The details, however, weighed less on her mind than the import of his words. For the children’s sake, they needed to leave the city with all haste.

  “Why the shift of demands? What has changed your thinking that you would abandon a prize puzzle as intriguing as this?” Her father opened the cover of the book, holding his breath briefly and nodding to himself as he flipped the first of the pages.

  “Unimportant.” Kellatra raised her voice as she again stepped closer to her father. “I need to leave tonight, and I need money to travel. I assumed you would be pleased to be rid of me.”

  “Nothing about you has pleased me in quite some time.” Her father did not look up from the codex as he continued to leaf through its thick parchment pages.

  Kellatra bit her lip to stifle the words that ached to rush from her tongue — a pain that helped distract from the feeling that an invisible fist clenched unmercifully at her heart. She waited. Her father would either agree, or not, and she would respond as needed.

  “This is indeed the codex.” Her father closed the cover of the book and raised his eyes to his daughter. “I had feared some manner of diversion.”

  Kellatra remained silent.

  “Your mother had such great hopes for you.” Her father glanced away as though seeing an apparition of his dead wife made visible only to him. “She thought of you as a precious stone, only needing to be properly cut and polished. She never realized that she beheld a lump of fractured quartz rather than a rough-split diamond.”

  “Father…” Kellatra did not know if she could restrain the sentiments that yearned for expression in response to her father’s statements.

  “You shall have your reward for the return of the codex.” Her father reached out to a small hand bell on the desk and rang it loudly three times, the traditional signal to the house servants that the master required attendance.

  Kellatra glanced over her shoulder as the door to the study opened, and three men and one woman rushed through the open portal. She had not seen them in many years, but she recognized them easily. The four councilmembers who had sat in judgment against her. The seers who had banished her.

  “It will be the reward of justice, not extortion.” Her father’s voice sounded soft and sad from behind her.

  Her body became immobile as a haze of insensibility shrouded her thoughts. Her father had betrayed her. Again. He had called the Academy High Council seers to arrest her.

  “You should have stayed away.” The councilwoman shook her head.

  The name Sherata came after some effort to Kellatra’s mind.

  “You and your past must remain forgotten,” the councilman nearest her spoke.

  Nerantis. His name. The
names of the others receded into the fog imposed on her mind by their use of The Sight.

  “The return of the codex speaks in your favor,” one of the unnamable councilmen said.

  “But you may have just as likely stolen it to affect your public return,” Councilman Nerantis said.

  “You have proven yourself unworthy of trust and willing to break even our most sacred oaths to satisfy your desires.” Councilwoman Sherata stepped closer, tilting her head back as she examined Kellatra — a collector studying a rare insect.

  “You will be judged, here and now, the sentence carried out immediately,” the fourth councilman said. A name floated up through the haze. Gerantus. The head of the council. “All those in favor?”

  The three men and the woman all raised their hands. Gerantus looked past Kellatra’s shoulder to her father. Seeing what he desired, he nodded and returned his attention to his captive.

  “The council has spoken,” Gerantus said. “Kellatra Rajani, the punishment for breaking the terms of your banishment is death, to be administered directly.” He pulled a dagger from his belt, holding the blade to her heart. Even in execution, the oath constrained the council. The Sight could not be used to kill.

  She could not make her mind function. Could not seek the clarity of The Sight. She could only conjure a few potent thoughts as her heart thundered in her chest. She would never see her children again. Never again hold Lantili and Luntadus in her arms as they squealed with joy. Never again kiss her husband, Rankarus, and lie in his arms in the exhaustion of passionate embrace. She would never learn the meaning of the dreams and the star and…

  Councilman Gerantus gasped in gurgling pain, the hilt of a dagger suddenly protruding from his neck. He staggered back, clutching at the handle of the blade. A second knife struck the councilman nearest him, the bloodstained metal tip protruding from the front of the man’s throat. His eyes bulged in pain as he sank to his knees.