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

by G. L. Breedon

  Her friendship with Ranna seemed different, though. She had never had a woman friend of any consequence, not even before she fled her home. The way Ranna looked at her sometimes made her uneasy. Not because of the affection she saw in Ranna’s eyes, not for the way she took Palla’s hand when they were alone, not for her blush at Palla’s compliments — no, her unease originated within herself, as she noted her desire to be near Ranna more and more often, as she sought the touch of her hand in private, as she, too, blushed under kind words and gentle glances. She had no reference for these feelings in her life. They sounded all too like the stories of courtly love in the bedside tales of her childhood, of the tsentey who comes to rescue the tsentet from the evil Tey. But how could that be?

  She opened her eyes to look at Ranna, seeing the woman rocking gently with the words of the prayer, her hair falling across the soft lines of her face. Why did that sentiment of friendship seem so different from others? Could it be because they had beheld a miracle that bound them closer together?

  Thoughts of rescue and falling in love, the sound of the prayers, the castle keep and the temple rising up beyond the courtyard, the walls and towers — all brought back memories of a time when she had effected her own escape from a wicked tey.

  ONE YEAR AGO

  “NO MORE. No more arguments. I have heard your arguments for months now, and they mean no more to me this day than the first. You will wed Tsentey Jwaran because it is my will and because it is your duty and because it is necessary to this family and because the priest stands outside that door. Now dry your tears. You look a fool. I will not have my daughter presented to her future husband looking like a weeping beggar.”

  Palla dabbed her kerchief at her eyes, her father blurred by the tears. She had hoped to sway him, had hoped once more to reach that part of him she had lost access to when she stepped from child to woman years ago.

  “I know you are willful. You have always been thus.” Her father took the kerchief from her hand and wiped the tears streaking her cheeks, his touch not tender, but not as rough as his words. “We must all bend our wills to the needs of the family and the estate and the dominion. I have forgone my desires for the needs of the family and the estate many times over the years. You think you are the first to enter a marriage you do not wish? Your mother did not wish to marry me, nor I her, but our families required it, so we did. I did not desire to lead the men of my estate into battle against the Korphan estate, but honor demanded it, so I did. I did not wish to burn the Oneara village for theft and insurrection, but the law demanded it, so I did. I bent my will in these ways, and you will bend yours to wed Jwaran.”

  Palla considered what else she could say, what new rationales she might assemble to influence her father’s resolve. She had pleaded that she did not love Jwaran. She had insisted that the tsentey’s family would not accept her. That the marriage would breed more dissent between the two estates rather than bring them closer together. She had feigned illness. She had exclaimed devotion to Nag Mot Gioth, Mother Creator, and the wish to enter the nunning house to serve the great parental gods. She had said all the words she could think of to turn the course of her life, to reset the sails, to curb the wind, to tack toward some other shore. She had no more novel words, only the ones she had learned by rote over so many years of compliance and acquiescence.

  “Yes, Father.”

  Her father said no more, nodding and leaving her alone in her chambers. She looked from the window of her room over the garden and courtyards of the walled estate, the vineyard hills rolling on toward the northern sea a day’s journey away. She stared at the place she had called home for the past twenty-three years and wondered what her new home and new life would be like on Tsentey Jwaran’s estate to the east. She knew little of the man, having met him only once the day prior at the wedding feast. He did not resemble the description of him presented by her mother and father. She found a man a few years older than her, slovenly, ill-tempered, poorly read, reed thin, with his face sparsely bearded to hide the pockmarks left from a childhood bout of the red fever. She had left the dinner stricken with fear — how could she marry such a man? How could she let him…

  Run.

  The word echoed among the many thoughts of her mind, growing louder with each repetition rather than more distant.

  Run, run, run.

  Yes, she wanted to run, but how and where? She could not fly from the window. Could not soar across the courtyards and fields to alight on the branches of a new life of her own devising. And if she knew how to run and where to run, what would she do upon arrival? She could not show up at some farmer’s home and pretend to be a lost cousin as in the Tale of Lhana Sowe and the Magic Horse that her mother read to her as a child.

  “It is time.”

  Palla turned to see her mother standing in the doorway of her chamber, as though summoned from the childhood of her past, not to read her a bedtime tale, but to lead her to a kind of sacrifice — a giving of herself for the betterment of the family and the estate.

  She forced herself to push her feet toward her mother, lifting the hem of her layered crimson silk dress — the deep red of the fabric said to represent the blood of her chastity to be given to her husband on the wedding night. She shuffled to her mother and stopped, clenching her jaw, refusing to allow more tears to form in her eyes.

  “It will be over, and then it will begin.” Her mother sighed and took her hand. “He is not a fine tsentey of the stories, but he is a decent man by all accounts. Honorable. The first night will be the worst. It will get easier. All of it. You are strong. And bright. You will find a way to shine at his estate. A way to make your presence needed. Do this, give the family value, even if only by bearing plentiful children, and your path will ease. And when you feel alone, when you feel that you cannot proceed, pray to the Mother Creator for sustenance. She has been my comfort many nights over the years, and she will sustain you as readily as she does me.”

  Palla did not know what to say, finding best the words she had recently used.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Good. Now let us go. Your new husband is not a man possessed of a temper for waiting.”

  Palla followed her mother, servants trailing them through the halls of the castle keep, a haze settling over her mind that insulated her from the events transpiring around her. She watched from beyond her own mind and body as her corporeal self walked across the garden to the castle temple, down the aisle of congregants and honored guests, to stand beside the man who would become her husband, the heir to the Rwanwan Estate, the man who would now rule her life and determine her destiny.

  She observed from above her own head as the priest spoke the ancient prayers and performed the Tot Gioth rites and rituals of binding between a man and a woman. She listened from far away to a voice like her own repeat the priest’s chanted phrases as a woman who looked like her took the hands of the man before her, face blank as he, too, repeated words spoken by the priest. They ate a piece of bitterroot to symbolize the past. They swallowed sips of sweet wine to represent the future. They held hands as the priest wrapped their wrists with a gold chain and talked of eternal unity. She saw this other, far-off self walk hand in hand with the man down the aisle between the guests who threw acorns, bidding the couple the blessing of many children.

  She came back to her body for a time during the wedding feast, inhabiting her mind once more as she spoke with relatives, danced with her new husband, and watched her younger brothers eat and drink and flirt with the daughters of family friends. She ignored the sorrow that arose for them, knowing that they, too, would have mates chosen for them like livestock in the barns.

  “You will like the Rwanwan estate, I think.” Jwaran, her new husband, sat beside Palla at the feast table, gulping lustily at a cup of wine between expounding thoughts. “The gardens are finer. Taller trees. And a pond. With fish, no less. And the temple has a much higher spire. The living chambers are similar. More rugs, I think. More tapestrie
s. The vineyard is smaller, I’ll say that. I’ve been trying to convince father to expand the vineyards, but he refuses to expel the tenants from the land that would be needed. I try to tell him that wine can gain in value, but grain always brings the same price at market. He does not understand. He is better at hunting deer than hunting coin. I like to hunt, myself. Does good to run a beast down. Tells you you’re alive. You’ll see the antlers in my study. Heads from twelve stags. Some with as many as twenty points. And a bear. Not easy to bring a bear down. We were on a three-day hunt when…”

  Palla found herself drifting away again as her husband droned on. She nodded at the right spots in his stories, smiled when it seemed appropriate, but promptly forgot everything he said. Sometime later, the guests escorted them to her bedchamber, cheering and chanting, singing the traditional wedding song of consummation, and drinking more wine.

  As the door to the chamber closed, Palla drifted even further away, barely sensing the tug at her dress, the lips against her neck, the tongue in her mouth. She sat beside the twin sister moons in the sky as the man pulled the skirts from the woman, grasping at her nakedness with a rough hunger. She looked down from the stars as the man grunted and groaned above the body of the woman, seeing her eyes wince in pain, her teeth bite into her lips to stifle a cry. As the man rolled off the woman to lie on his back and snore, she slowly drifted closer, curious at the woman’s demeanor, at the look on her face, at the fire in her eyes.

  Palla stared at the ceiling, as she had throughout the mating with Jwaran, her new husband, the man she would sleep beside after his rutting and moaning ceased each night, night after night, year after year, child after child, until her hair turned gray like her mother’s, until her skin sagged with age, until frailty broke her bones and Nag Pat Gioth, Father Destroyer, turned her to ash to fertilize the earth.

  She did not know how to bear the life she saw unfolding before her — a table linen eaten by moths, gaping holes in the fabric, the edges frayed and stained with age. She could burn the linen. Give Father Destroyer the ashes he desired long before he expected them. She looked to the open window, shutters spread wide to let the light of the twin half-moons illuminate the room. She could go to the window. She could lean too far out into the cool night air. The fall to the garden four stories below would no doubt end her story with a snapping of her neck or a cracking of her skull. Or she could do as her mother and so many women of her family and the land had done for ages and succumb to the near inexorable force of community expectations to be a dutiful wife, a childbearing wife, a home-tending wife, a husband’s wife. Or she could…

  Run.

  The word came back as a whisper from within and set her eyes wide. Her breath stilled in her lungs as she saw not a future determined by Jwaran or her father but one woven as she chose, with patterns bright and intricate. She held that inhalation as a vague notion slowly unraveled itself to disclose an idea shaped of dreams and hopes and desires never spoken aloud, yet harbored in her heart for years. She lay there, her breathing gradually returning, letting the plan unfold in her mind. With her alternate future revealed, she slipped silently from the bed.

  She wiggled her toes into her slippers and stood as she pulled her sleeping shift down over her naked body. She took a red silken scarf from her dressing stand, and looked back at the man sleeping in her bed, the man who had made her a woman, the man she would never see again. She opened her clothes cabinet and removed a plain blue dress, the one she wore when accompanying her mother on errands of the estate grounds. She tied the laces of a pair of old boots and slung them over her shoulder. Then she slid from the room, closing the door gently behind her. The halls lay empty in the small hours of the morning, a lantern glowing near the stairs. She walked down the hall to her youngest brother’s room. She listened, heard no sound, and opened the door. Inside, she saw her brother sleeping, his face buried in a pillow.

  Palla padded across the stone of the floor to her brother’s dressing rack where she removed a worn pair of breeches, a stained shirt, a leather vest, and an old jacket. Clothes her brother no longer wore and would never miss. She glanced at her brother, then slid her sleeping shift from over her head and changed into her brother’s clothes and her old boots. She found a leather hunting pack near a chest by the wall and stuffed the blue dress and her slippers into it. Lastly, she grabbed her brother’s hat, tucking her long hair into a bun beneath it. She kissed her brother gently on the forehead and left the room.

  She needed more than clothes to secure a future — she required coin. Fortunately, she knew where her father kept a reserve of gold coins hidden behind a book on the shelves in his study one floor below. It took her only minutes to find the small leather pouch of metal currency and continue her departure.

  She encountered no one in the halls as she made her way down from the heights of the keep. The guests she saw in the gardens slept off the drink of the dinner feast, unaware of her passing. If anyone did see her, they would take her for a young man out strolling in the night. As she wound her way up the twisting staircase of the west corner tower, she came across a younger couple engaged in an activity similar to the one she had just completed. As she slid soundlessly past the moaning pair on the landing, she noted how enthusiastic they both seemed — possessed of some need to claw at each other, their mouths locked in continual battle, their soft cries alternately signaling advance and surrender, a language of conquest and capitulation they spoke without words.

  A pang of indefinable ache pressed into her chest as she fled farther up the stairs, away from the sounds of the lovers on the landing. How could they find something so seemingly filled with passion and joy in the dank shadows of the tower stairs when she could not secure such pleasure after hours of ceremony on freshly woven sheets of silk?

  She reached the top of the tower where the stairs gave way to the castle wall. She saw one guard, his head bent forward in sleep, a bottle dangling from his hand. She ignored him and stepped to the outer wall, looking down to the dark, serpentine waters of the Foal River that comprised the rear defensive feature of the castle. She set her brother’s hunting sack down and pulled from it the red silken scarf and her slippers. She set the slippers side-by-side near the wall and laid the scarf across the stone between the crenellations.

  She took a deep breath as she looked out over the moon-shadowed land, wondering how much of it she would see. Then she sneaked back down the stairs, past the still amorous lovers, out into the main courtyard, and hid beneath the canvas tarp of a wagon loaded with empty wine barrels. There she waited for morning, dozing until she heard the voices of the wagon master as he hitched the horses to the yoke. She held her breath until the cart pulled into motion, rolling across the cobbles of the inner yard through the gate, and along the main estate road. She risked a peek through the gap between wagon rail and tarp, looking back at the castle estate as the sun rose over the last view she would ever have of her family home.

  Her husband would wake soon and find her absent from the bed. He would be unconcerned, because little concerned him beyond his own self. Eventually, she would be found missing, and a search would find her slippers and scarf on the castle wall above the river. Her sentiments against her marriage and her well-known stubborn nature would commend the notion of her death, taken at her own behest, to every heart and mind. Her father would rage, her mother would weep, her brothers would mourn, and her husband would fume at his misfortune.

  Palla, in contrast, cried no tears as the wagon finally stopped later that day in a small town. She experienced no anger, only joy as she slid from the wagon bed and disappeared into the town, into the countryside, into a new life.

  THE PRESENT

  PALLA WIPED her knuckles at her eyes, silently cursing the dusty ground of the castle courtyard. She thought about all that had transpired in the past year. She had left her home and husband in order to see the world and fashion a new life. She had found both in the carnival. A home and a life. However, only sitting
there, holding Ranna’s hand, praying with a spiral of pilgrims, did she realize she had been seeking not so much a new life as a destiny to be lived within that life. While Leotin gave her a home on the road and on the stage, she felt now, having witnessed the power of the new goddess with her own eyes, having experienced a miracle meant to save her, that she had discovered that destiny.

  She looked up, rubbing at her eyes again to see a young girl atop the wall near the west tower. She thought for a moment that her memories still clouded her vision, that she viewed some reflection of her former self atop a different rampart in a far-off castle long ago. Then she saw the yellow of the girl’s dress against the golden sky of sunset, the darkness of her hair, and knew she observed something in the present.

  What could the girl be doing there? Palla did not need to be told to know the answer of that question. She released Ranna’s hand. The woman, so enraptured in her prayers, barely seemed to notice. Palla stood and walked calmly to the west tower. While she attracted a few looks, she held no one’s attention for any length of time. She walked up the tower stairs to find the guard posted by Leotin, a carnival hand, dozing in a chair. She shook her head and walked past him, out to the wall, out to where a young girl of fifteen leaned far out from the edge.

  Palla stepped up beside the girl, making certain to create enough noise to warn of her presence, but not so much as to alarm. She saw the tears falling from the girl’s face to stain the stones of the parapet. The silky tassels of corn in the field beyond glowed like fire in the light of the setting sun. Two militiaman watched the wall from the field below, one at each corner. They were wholly uninterested in the women atop the battlements.