by Evan Winter
Tau's legs gave out. Kana couldn't hold him and he crumpled to the battlement floor, his whole body shaking. And, without knowing he did it, he wailed, doing what little he could to release the suffering from a body and soul that had been handed too much too soon.
"Nyah, we must bind the Youngling," a voice Tau should recognize, but couldn't, said.
"My Queen, you must not. Your shroud... we have no Hex."
"The coterie, in the courtyard. Bring them to us. We will hold the Dragon until they come. Nyah, we are for Isihogo."
"Tsiora! No!"
And Tau wailed.
"My father, the Warlord, he comes and the traitor flees with all his men."
"We have the Dragon. It is in our control."
"My Queen, you will not be able to hold it."
"We will, for long enough. Hurry, Nyah, the coterie."
And Tau wailed.
"Warlord! We, Queen of the Chosen, must speak!"
And from a distance, shouting. "Demon-whore! I will burn this city and all your cities to slag. I will cut the hearts from every living soul that shares your evil blood."
"Hold your warriors outside our walls, Warlord. We still pray for peace and do not wish our Dragon to end that prayer with fire. We wish to tell of our betrayal."
"Father! The Omehi Queen speaks truth. She was betrayed."
And Tau wailed, his mouth covered by a heavy and filthy hand that tasted of dirt and ash. Hot breath, close to his ear, shushing him.
"Kana, my son, have they told you what they did? A Fire-demon was set on the Conclave? It killed a hundred thousand, Kana! Women, children, our people. They died every one, burning to death in a pyre three times the size of this city."
Tau saw Zuri vanish in flame again, burned away to nothing.
"The Shul is dead," that distant and shouting voice continued, "and I will be our people's vengeance. I will scour Xidda clean!"
"Kellan Okar, we demand that you take Kana into custody."
There was a scuffle.
More words, accented, difficult to understand. "Tsiora? More treachery? You think this will stop my father?"
"Warlord, we have your son and we offer a trade. His life and release for a season of peace."
"Witch! I'll slit your throat myself."
"Not before our soldier cuts your son's. A moon's cycle, then. Retreat from our valley. Give us a moon's cycle for your son's life. Enough blood has been spilled these few nights. We have a Dragon in this Keep and the Rage are on their way. A moon's cycle, Warlord of the Xiddeen."
Tau sobbed, wracking cries as the big man, hand still covering his mouth, shushed and held him close.
"Swear it, Warlord. One moon's cycle of peace and Kana is yours."
"Demon-Queen! I will cut the tongue from your lying mouth."
"Swear it. We cannot restrain our Dragon much longer. Swear it or the first to burn will be Kana!"
"I swear it, witch! One cycle of the moon. I swear it. Give me my son! I swear it and I swear I will be back. I will come with every warrior of the Xiddeen and we will erase the blight of your people from the world."
Tau opened his eyes. He was crouched and his tears blurred the stone beneath his knees and hands, making the ground seem an artist's impression. He tried to stem the cries, halt the tears. He failed at both.
"Before your warriors and ours, we have made a binding oath. Kellan Okar, Inkokeli of Scale Osa, send the Warlord's son to him."
Footsteps, then a voice, accented, retreating. "Tsiora! I will speak with my father. I will try to make the Warlord see sense. Tsiora, do not give up on peace!"
"Warlord, the Conclave was not our doing. The man responsible is a traitor who sought our death. He has run from us but you will have his head. This we swear, by the Goddess."
"A traitor's head? Demon-whore, in a moon's cycle I will take all the heads I need."
Tau scrubbed his eyes clear of tears. Uduak's hand lifted away from his mouth.
"Tau?" Uduak whispered.
Tau saw the Queen standing tall. She had her hands behind her back, her shoulders squared as she looked out and down at the Warlord and his army beyond her Keep. She appeared imperious and it was a grand illusion, for Tau could see the panicked tremors in her hands.
"They're leaving," breathed Nyah. "My Queen, the Goddess is great, they are leaving."
But not without a final word.
"We know your witches are dying," shouted the Warlord. "We know it as we know that, in the coming cycles, you will have too few witches to call the Fire-demons. We know this and we offered you peace. You saw that as weakness, paying it back with the blood of our innocent. For this, I will swear to something too, Queen of Demons. I swear to return your kind to the evil you so desperately tried to flee."
"The coterie is coming up." It was Hadith.
"We cannot hold the Youngling much longer," Queen Tsiora said. "Quickly, she must be rebound before it is too late."
Tau let his broken swords fall from his fingers. They were as useless on the battlement floor as they had been in his hands. The people he loved died either way.
EPILOGUE
TSIORA OMEHIA
"He's broken, my Queen," Nyah said to her. "Demon-haunted, in the assessment of the Sah priests. He's been in that room since we held the burning for those we lost."
Tsiora turned away from Nyah and towards the closed door in front of her. "Have the warriors, his sword-brothers, seen to him?"
Nyah, the woman Tsiora trusted above all others, the one who had risked her life to train Tsiora to use her Gifts in secret, told her they had. "The men, his sword-brothers come. He won't speak to them, or anyone else. And, he has not gone to see the Petty-Noble who survived the Youngling's fire."
"How is the Petty-Noble?"
"He suffers, My Queen, he suffers." Nyah closed her eyes, as if trying to block out some horrible sight. "My Queen, you risk too much. You saw what he did to Odili's Ingonyama. You saw the way he fights. He's an animal, and he was that way before losing the woman to the Youngling. There is nothing left in him to which you can appeal."
"We disagree. You did not see him fight the demons in Isihogo to save the Gifted initiate. He took power into himself to draw them away from her. He fought demons while holding power... he is...." She didn't know what he was. "Nyah, he has lost loved ones. Their loss made him lose hope. We must return hope, if he is to be of use."
"Queen Tsiora, as your Vizier, I ask you to reconsider?"
Tsiora would not. Her mind was made.
"Then allow me to send guards with you," Nyah said. "We do not know how this man will react. He is unstable, dangerous."
Tsiora didn't want to admit it but she was scared to be in a room with him, the Common of Kerem. She couldn't afford to behave that way though. If her plan was to have any chance of success they would need to trust each other. "You have seen him fight, Nyah. Do you know any guards he could not kill?"
Nyah looked helpless, flustered. When she was younger, Tsiora used to love doing that to Nyah, but since becoming Queen, a flustered Nyah often meant Tsiora was about to do something of rare and impressive stupidity.
Unwilling to wait and lose her nerve, Tsiora reached out for the leather wrapped package in her Vizier's arms. "Wait for us," she told Nyah, taking the package and opening the door to Tau Solarin's room in the Guardian Keep.
He was standing beside his bed. His head had stubble. His face as well. He wore a loose tunic that could not hide the whipcord muscle beneath. He had on ash-gray breeches and was barefoot. He was staring out the window at the work below, watching the repairs. The gates were up, but the damage to the courtyard would take longer, a lot longer.
Tsiora laid her package, lighter than she'd expected, on the bed, thinking it strange to see the man without his swords. The night Odili had tried to assassinate her, the Common's blades had seemed part of him.
"Tau Solarin, we need your help," she said to his back. He did not respond, this strange Lesser. Tsiora c
ame closer. She could see out the window. She knew what he was looking at. Down in the courtyard was the place where the Dragon had killed the Gifted he cared for.
"Tau Solarin," Tsiora said, hovering her hand above his arm and then, daring herself, letting it fall on his shoulder. He did not react. "Abasi Odili is in Palm City. He controls it now and has most of the Royal-Nobles swearing fealty to our younger sister. It is claimed that, of her own free will, our dear sister has seen the righteous nature of Odili's cause. She has declared him her Champion and herself the true Queen of the Chosen. Queen Esi. It sounds innocent enough, don't you think?"
He still hadn't spoken.
"We have come with an offer."
"How did you do it?"
She jumped at his voice, at the metal in it.
"How did you push me out of Isihogo?"
Tsiora considered the question, wondering what to tell him. She settled on the truth. "We are of royal blood. Royal blood runs closest to the Goddess. We have greater Gifts than all others. When we saw the danger to you, we used a type of Enervation. Queen Taifa, though not the first to use this particular Gift, named it Expulsion. With it, we can forcibly remove anyone, including those holding energy, from Isihogo."
"You could have saved her then," he growled, scaring her, though she didn't want to admit it. "You could have gotten her out, and she could have gotten away. She should not have been there. She should not have tried to—"
"We could not," Tsiora told him. "A Dragon's hold cannot be broken. Expulsion, cast on Gifted Zuri, would have had no effect. We had to wait until the Youngling released her on its own."
"Then, you should have let me save her!"
"You could not have done so, and would have died in the attempt."
He faced her, his dark eyes and scarred face frightening in their intensity. Tsiora felt the need to step back. She locked eyes with him instead. "We need your help, Tau Solarin."
"I can't help you."
It wasn't said because he blamed her for the Gifted's death. The initiate sacrificed herself and neither of them could have stopped that. Instead, she heard self-pity. He wallowed in his loss, set adrift. She would anchor him. "Tau Solarin, the Queendom has been torn in two and, in less than a moon's cycle, the Warlord will return to commit genocide. The Nobles, led by our Royals, have divided the Chosen at the worst possible time. This cannot be allowed. The Goddess made us one people, and our survival rests on the Omehi acting as such.
"To accomplish what must be done, to reunite Noble and Lesser, we need a man like you. We need a man who faced Indlovu, Ingonyama, Xiddeen, demons, and Dragons to be our Champion. We need a hero to help us rebuild what has been broken."
"I am no hero."
"You are to the Lessers. You are to the people who still fight for us."
"I am no hero."
Tsiora made her voice hard. "Then be a weapon."
That surprised him. She could see it in his rough-edged face.
"Our Champion's first task is one of vengeance. Our Champion will lead his closest men, and the armies that remain loyal to us, to the walls of Palm City. Our Champion will quell the rebellion and rescue our sister. Our Champion will right the wrongs the traitor has wrought on our people and the Xiddeen. Our Champion will kill Abasi Odili, in the name of the Queen, in our name."
She gave him a breath to absorb it and, unable to hide from what it would mean for the Queendom and for her, she gave voice to the question she had come to ask. "Tau Solarin, will you be our Champion?"
She shut her reservations away, as best she could, and moved to the bed, picking up and handing Tau the long leather package. Without curiosity he opened it, revealing the Guardian swords she had had made for him. She heard his intake of breath as he saw the weapons and, unable to help himself, he reached out, touching them, running his hands over the Dragon-scale blades.
His hands stopped at the hilts, the hilts from his father and grandfather's swords. With reverence, this strange and vicious Lesser took up the perfectly balanced and impossibly sharp weapons. He twirled them and the thought flashed in Tsiora's mind that he could kill her before she could call out.
Swords still in hand, he stepped close, so close she could feel the heat emanating from his body. They were the same height, she noted, as his eyes bored into hers. She licked her lips. They had gone dry. More, she wanted to know why she couldn't pull her eyes from his, why she felt ensorcelled by the fire in them.
"I will kill Abasi Odili," he told her.
It frightened her, the way he'd said it, but she would not balk. "We consider that a 'yes', Champion Tau Solarin."
And, like that, there was no going back. A Dragon had been called and someone would have to die.
THE RAGE OF DRAGONS
BOOK ONE OF THE BURNING
Dear reader,
Evan Winter here to say a heartfelt thank-you. Life is the spans we're given and the choices we make in how to spend them. Thank you for sharing a few of yours with me.
Now, having reached the end, it's entirely possible that you still have some questions you'd like to ask and it's also possible that I might know a few of the answers. So, I'd like to do my part and I plan to respond to as many of the first 100 reviews as I can. Of course, I can't reveal or discuss Book One or future story spoilers, but if you have any non-spoiler questions for me (even personal ones), I'll answer them.
Go HERE or turn past the last page of this letter. You should be prompted to review the book and I'll respond to your review. Last, though never least, if you'd like to be the first to learn more about Book Two, you can join my Advance Reader Group.
Wishing you and yours happiness, health, love,
Evan Winter
www.evanwinter.com