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

by G. L. Breedon

  “The fall will kill you, but it will not change anything.” Palla stood a few paces from the girl, not wanting to spook her into action — a bird startled into taking flight.

  “I will be dead.” The girl gulped back a sob, leaning a little farther over the edge.

  “That will change things for you, but nothing will alter for the rest of us.” Palla clenched her hands, trying to calm her racing heart and heavy breath as she gauged the girl’s tone. How did one convince a girl one did not know to spare her own life when all seemed lost?

  “It is my fault. If I am gone, it might all change.” The girl pressed her palms against her temple as though to force back dark thoughts attempting to escape.

  “This day’s events lie at the feet of many people, but you are not one of them.” Palla edged a little closer to the girl.

  “But I am. It is my fault.” The girl shook as she sobbed.

  “Tell me, then. Tell me how this is all your doing.” Palla reached out a hand and placed it gently on the girl’s shoulder. The girl jumped and spun to face her.

  “You’re one of them.” The girl looked frightened. And relieved.

  “One of the carnival, yes,” Palla said.

  “One of the pilgrims,” the girl stated rather than asked.

  Palla found it odd how slowly she replied to the girl’s words. Her response identified a transformation in her life, a shift from spring to summer, seasons turning so subtly that only the extremes of weather signaled the change.

  “Yes. I am a pilgrim.”

  “Then you will understand.” The girl shuddered slightly as she leaned against the wall.

  “I do not know if I will understand, but I will listen,” Palla said.

  “I am, too.” The girl glanced around as though someone nearby might grab her. “I am a pilgrim, too. Or I would be. I have the dreams. I have them every night. I told my brother, and he said Ni-Kam-Djen would damn me. I wanted to tell my father and mother, to show them that anyone might have the dreams. Then the militia came and burned our people. I wanted to speak, but I didn’t. And now they are dead. If I had told them when the militia came this time, if I had confessed before everyone, they might not have set Pi-Gento to attack the pilgrims and everyone might still be alive. I am a coward, but if I am dead, my brother may see the effects of what his belief drives him to do.”

  Palla struggled to keep her hand on the girl’s shoulder. She noted now the refinement of the dress, the quality of the cotton, the trim, and the line of the stitching. A dress for a tahn’s daughter. The tahn Leotin had killed. The sister of the Kam-Djen priest who urged the burning of the pilgrims for heresy. A girl deprived of mother and father, a brother set against her, her own heart torn between duty to family and the call of the Great Goddess.

  “What is your name?” Palla did not wish to continue thinking of her as “the girl”.

  “Yang-Nega.” The girl bit her lip to keep it from quivering.

  “I am called Palla.” She swallowed, her throat constricting as she said aloud the secrets of her life to a girl she did not know. “My full name is Tanella Palla Vardan. My father is a tsentey, what you call a tahn, in northern Atheton near the White Sea. I was married at my father’s behest to another noble from a wealthy estate. I was raised to be dutiful to my family, but I was not. I left my home and husband and ran away. I came across a carnival, and they took me in. We came across the pilgrims, and we took them in. What I am telling you is that even if you have lost your family, you can find a new one. And I also tell you that I have seen with my own eyes the miracles the Goddess can work in our lives. She will make this right. She will protect us. She will protect you. Even if you dive from this wall, she will shelter you in the world beyond this one. But if you make that leap, you will deprive her of the chance to work miracles in your own life, and you will never have the opportunity to express your love for her in your actions in this world.”

  Yang-Nega shook with the attempt to control her emotions. Palla pulled the girl into her arms, Yang-Nega’s slender frame trembling with her sobs. Tears fell from her own eyes to dampen the girl’s night-black hair. The girl clung to her, resting her head against Palla’s chest until well after both their tears had ceased.

  As she looked from the wall out over the lands beyond, a sliver of sun still visible at the horizon, she noted a line of men moving from the nearby forest, an object hauled across the tops of three wagons. She squinted in the darkness, trying to focus on the men and what they transported. She recognized their garb. The militiamen laying siege to the castle. What did they haul? A tree trunk? Several trees? What would they…

  Palla pushed the girl away and held her by the shoulders.

  “We must go back down.” Palla dabbed the girl’s wet cheeks with the sleeve of her dress. “We have grave news for the others.”

  “What news?” Yang-Nega wiped her eyes.

  “There.” Palla pointed out toward the road leading from the forest. “The militia is building a battering ram.”

  To continue reading the Carnival story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Palla’s storyline follow this link.

  THE FUGITIVES

  SAO-TAUNA

  BRIGHT YELLOW raced pale green, the legs beneath the lemon-sun creature rolling in sequence as they matched those of its lime-sky opponent. The caterpillars charged side by side across the cleared span of forest ground. The two girls watched, enraptured by the contest taking place before them as they squatted in the leaf-matted earth between the trees. Neither girl called out. Neither cheered her larval steed toward victory. Both merely observed the insects crawl along the parallel lines dug finger-deep through the dirt.

  Sao-Tauna decided she liked this game. It had been Gao-Pai’s idea, showing Sao-Tauna how to pick the caterpillars from the leaves. She had seen caterpillars in the gardens of the palace at home, but she had not been allowed to play with them. Little tahneffs do not play with bugs, her mother always said.

  That thought made her miss her mother. And her father.

  She focused on the legs climbing across the chips of rotted wood and small stones. Occasionally, the caterpillars got confused and she or Gao-Pai needed to poke them gently with a stick to get back on track. You had to be careful, though. If you poked them too hard, they curled up and stayed that way and you lost the race. Sao-Tauna wondered which caterpillar would win, but didn’t care so much about the race. She liked being with Gao-Pai. The girl did not talk much and did not like to be touched. Sao-Tauna accepted this easily, as she did not like to speak and did not like to be touched either. Even tight clothes bothered her sometimes. She recognized that her dislike of these things differed from Gao-Pai’s. She had been this way for as long as she could remember, but she could tell by the way Gao-Pai sat beneath her mother’s arm at meal times that the girl had once enjoyed the sensation of touch.

  The snap of a twig not far away brought Sao-Tauna’s attention away from the race.

  “There ya is.”

  Sao-Tauna knew that voice. So did Gao-Pai. The girl looked up, startled. She turned to Sao-Tauna, her face pale from fear.

  “Run.” Gao-Pai bounced to her feet and dashed off between the trees, disappearing behind a clump of bushes.

  Sao-Tauna watched her friend go as two legs stepped before her, a booted foot crushing the caterpillars. She frowned. Now she would never know who won the race. She looked up, her lips still turned down, to find the owner of the voice. She did not like that voice, or the man it belonged to. She did not blame Gao-Pai for running away. It must be hard to hear that voice all day long.

  “Why the frown, lil’ apple?” Gao-Pai’s father knelt in front of her.

  Sao-Tauna said nothing. She did not like to speak. Speaking made the insides become outsides, and people never seemed to understand her insides once they were outside. Lee-Nin did. Sometimes. But she was special. And Sha-Kutan. But he was special in different ways.

  “Where’d Gao-Pai get off to?” G
ao-Pai’s father looked around, then back to Sao-Tauna.

  Sao-Tauna shrugged. She did not know where Gao-Pai went, but she began to think that she should have gone with her when she ran away. It would be better to be finding new caterpillars to race than listening to the girl’s father talk. She did not like him, mostly because Gao-Pai did not like him. The girl had not said so, but Sao-Tauna could tell. She noticed things. People did not think she did, but she did.

  “Ya don’t talk much, do ya?” Gao-Pai’s father smiled.

  Sao-Tauna said nothing. He made it sound like he had noticed something no one else ever had. Silly. To notice things that no one else saw, you needed to see them properly. Everyone knew Sao-Tauna didn’t talk. It would be like walking up to Sha-Kutan and saying how big he was. Thinking of Sha-Kutan nearly made her smile, then she remembered Gao-Pai’s father still knelt before her. She sighed instead.

  “It’s good ya don’t talk.” Gao-Pai’s father looked around the forest.

  Sao-Tauna wrinkled her nose at his breath. It stank of stale wine. The pilgrims did not drink wine, but she had seen Gao-Pai’s father gulping from a wine skin several times. He didn’t see her. He didn’t seem to see things as clearly as he thought he did. She saw things. She saw who he was. He tried to hide it with his smile, but he couldn’t hide what lurked behind his eyes.

  “Whatcha doin’ out here? Playing some kinda game?” Gao-Pai’s father looked back to her.

  Sao-Tauna looked to where his boot still crushed the caterpillars. She decided that she did not like Gao-Pai’s father almost as much as she did not like the wardens who were chasing her. She frowned again at that thought. She crushed it like the boot crushing the caterpillars.

  “I know a game.” Gao-Pai’s father smiled even wider. “Ya want me ta teach ya ta play?”

  Sao-Tauna shook her head. She did not want to play a game with Gao-Pai’s father. She stood up to go find Gao-Pai.

  “Aw, it’s an easy game. Here, I’ll show ya.” Gao-Pai’s father reached out and grabbed both Sao-Tauna’s thin arms in his big hands, squeezing them, hurting them, pulling her close to him, the stink of his breath making her nose curl in disgust. Gao-Pai’s father grinned and leaned his open stinking mouth toward her face.

  Sao-Tauna frowned in anger as she did the thing she had told herself she would not do again.

  Gao-Pai’s father’s eyes widened and blinked, and his hands released her arms as he stumbled backward into a tree.

  “What the tuss!”

  Sao-Tauna clenched her jaw, thinking about how much she did not like Gao-Pai’s father and how much Gao-Pai did not like him and why she did not like him and how much Sao-Tauna wanted him to be far away from her and someplace else, someplace bad, someplace for bad people because Gao-Pai’s father was a bad man for hurting her arms and for hurting Gao-Pai.

  Gao-Pai’s father tried to scream, the strangled sound of a man’s terror echoing among the trees and rocks and suddenly fading away to silence.

  Sao-Tauna panted, counting her numbers in ancient Shen as Lee-Nin had taught her to do when she got upset. By the time she reached the number twenty-three, she felt better and ran off into the forest in search of Gao-Pai.

  To continue reading the Fugitives story arena follow this link.

  THE TEMPLE

  JUNARI

  SEAGULLS SWOOPED and dove to feed in the ocher-tinted waters as the glowing ember of the sun sank toward the edge of the ocean. Junari stood on the pier of the small fishing town, once abandoned from storms, now housing an ever-growing population of pilgrims passing through Tanjii and up the coast. She watched the last of the day’s laborers leave their toiling work on the pilgrim fleet in the water and dry docks along the shore.

  Events had unfolded quickly over the past several days. Junari’s negotiations with the Tanjii Circle of Elders, as well as the fund offered by her pilgrims, provided for eight vessels. Unfortunately, only three of them were yet seaworthy, the others in various states of disrepair. She had hired teams of skilled boatswains to lead her eager pilgrims in readying the ships for their eventual journey, a voyage whose date looked much farther away now than it did the day she stood before Kuth-Von and the Circle of Elders. The ships needed too much work, and the village the pilgrims lived in required too much effort to rebuild, both of which would take time and cost coin. In the many Pashist texts she read in her training, she never once heard tell of the importance of finance in pursuing one’s faith.

  She knew better than to make promises of when the ships might depart. Her speeches to the flock consisted of more important revelations. How the Goddess wished them to pray. How the Goddess wished them to act. How the Goddess wished them to eat. How the Goddess wished them to wed. The ideas and actions that forged a cohesive community from a disparate band of women and men and children from different lands and original faiths. Speaking only the Mumtiba language of Juparti and Punderra, as well as a little Shen, she relied on translators to repeat her words to those who did not understand them. She wondered whether it might make sense to demand the faithful adopt a single tongue, but decided to worry about that later. Most would eventually learn Mumtiba, as Raedalus wrote his Red Book of Revelations of the Goddess’s transmissions in the script of that language.

  As the sun sank into the waters at the edge of the world, turning fire-orange waves slate-black, a voice spoke up beside her.

  “Lovely sunset.”

  Junari turned to the now familiar voice speaking Mumtiba rather than his customary Shen. Bon-Tao stood beside her, his leather armor freshly polished, the scent of sweat and oil clinging to him. He had surprised her by offering to make himself her personal liaison to the city and the Circle of Elders and Kuth-Von. He confided having the dreams and feeling compelled to join the pilgrims after seeing the effect of her prayers in defending the Goddess’s believers. Her guards, Jupterus and Kantula, stood not far away. They did not trust him, but they tolerated his daily presence. Raedalus welcomed Bon-Tao as useful, but his eyes betrayed the jealousy and suspicion behind his open acceptance. Only Taksati seemed genuinely happy for the former commander’s help.

  “I did not know you to be a lover of sunsets.” Junari smiled at the man who had risked himself to save her.

  “Sunset lovers?” Bon-Tao squinted his eyes in question, seeming confused and suddenly uneasy.

  “What?” The heat of a blush rose in Junari’s cheeks. “No. I mean … I did not know you enjoyed watching sunsets.” She pointed to her eyes and then the horizon.

  “Ah.” Bon-Tao nodded in understanding, looking simultaneously relieved and saddened. He continued in Shen. “Perhaps we should speak a language we both understand.”

  “Yes.” Although it limited Junari’s potential responses, speaking Shen also narrowed the possible misinterpretations.

  “Your ships will be ready soon.” Bon-Tao looked at the men climbing down from a vessel dry docked nearby.

  “Not my ships. The Goddess’s ships.” Junari wondered how many weeks would be required to finish the work. The foreman’s estimates changed daily.

  “You are her voice in this world, so it means the same thing to most.” Bon-Tao turned back to her. “But I see why you do not claim the ships as your own.”

  “Do you?” Junari marveled at the man’s statement. She often felt that no one understood her position in relation to the Goddess. She barely seemed to understand it herself.

  “I see you and the way you are with the pilgrims.” Bon-Tao looked to the small village of people getting ready for a late meal. “You never claim to act of your own will. In the priests I know, this is to cover the actions of their own desires. But you never voice your desires. Or your own needs. You devote yourself to the requirements of your flock. You are the Mother Shepherd. You act as though you have nothing of your own, that all belongs to the Goddess, but I see you sometimes when you look at sunsets, and I know you have desires that are wholly your own.”

  Junari blushed again. How did this man see somethi
ng she rarely admitted to herself? She did have desires. Lately, the most recurring of those desires entailed spending more time with her personal liaison to Tanjii.

  “I…” Junari did not know what she intended to say in reply to Bon-Tao’s observation of her nature and never found out.

  An explosion buffeted the air, a blaze drawing both their eyes to the ship dry-docked farthest from the pier. More explosions and flames followed. Bon-Tao ran toward the fires and she reached out for him, to hold him back, but the strong hands of Jupterus and Kantula clasped her shoulders and pulled her away. She heard men shout and saw them run past, armed with swords and hammers and axes.

  The Kamite fanatics must have circumvented the guards set around the town. There had been incursions before, but none had been successful. Another ship caught flame, but pilgrims raced to throw sand and water on the fires. Her people chased the Kamite fanatics back along the shoreline, throwing rocks at them as the flames spread and consumed the ship. The second largest of the fleet, the ship would have carried several hundred pilgrims to their destiny. Now it would burn through the night and collapse in a wrecked hulk of ash and char.

  She forced herself not to take that image as an omen. She would not allow it to be a prophetic event shaping the course of the Goddess’s plans. She would shape it to her will in the service of the Goddess Moaratana’s needs, regardless of the costs. Her needs were the Goddess’s needs, even if her desires were her own.

  To continue reading the Temple story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Junari’s storyline follow this link.

  THE CARNIVAL

  TARAK