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

by G. L. Breedon

  Now, years later, upon learning of his death, Tin-Tsu pictured not a man fallen on the battlefield from an enemy’s arrow, but a boy of seventeen, the age of his brother when they last spoke. Fan-Mutig had wished him well, embracing him before his journey to the temple. They talked of his brother coming to visit — a mutual dream never realized. At first, letters from his family arrived, his brother in particular. This continued for years, but when Tin-Tsu failed to return for his father’s funeral five years prior, all communication from his family ceased. He still wrote but no replies made their way to him through the mountain passes. The march of seasons and the parade of years did not lessen his love for them, nor their power over his heart. He did not see how his brother’s death might be a blessing.

  “Your brother’s passing changes the balance within the dominion in ways we have never known.” High Priest Toyan-Wen slid his hands beneath the folds of his robe. “As the sole male heir, you will assume the throne, a throne that has never held a priest of Ni-Kam-Djen. Not in all the history of the Daeshen Dominion. Not in all the years of the First, Second, or Third Great Dominions. You will be the first.”

  “And the last,” Tin-Tsu said, “as I cannot marry and provide an heir.”

  “There is nothing preventing you from taking a wife and having children beyond your vows.” High Priest Toyan-Wen’s voice sounded cautious. “I cannot tell you what choices to make in your new life, but many will attempt to do so. And they will commend you to the idea of wedding a woman. Most likely, the tahneff engaged to your brother this last year. You need to accept that you can no longer be a priest once you are the zhan. You may feel the need to break some of your vows. While you may forever remain a priest in your heart, you must choose wisely which vows you cannot maintain as zhan.”

  “It is too much to consider so soon after the news of my brother’s death.” Tin-Tsu’s head churned with conflicting emotions. Anguish at his brother’s passing into the Pure Lands of Ni-Kam-Djen. Anger at being summoned away from his calling as a priest to assume a throne he did not want. Fear at leaving the familiarity of the temple walls for the ill-remembered halls of the palace. Like the time he tried to balance too many teacups on the wooden tray while serving the elder priests, he feared the emotions would spill from his grasp — fine porcelain shattering against hard stone.

  “Unfortunately, I must weigh down your burden even further.” High Priest Toyan-Wen slipped a wrinkled brown hand from his robe to place it on Tin-Tsu’s shoulder. “You will leave for the palace once we step from this tower and you will never return. However, you will carry with you what you have learned here. You have gained great knowledge and more than a sliver of wisdom in these mountain halls. You will need all of it in your new role as leader of this nation. But you can be more than merely a zhan ruling a dominion. You can be a leader of hearts, a binder of faith. You can be the bridge that reunites the severed halves of our religion. You can bring the Daeshen and Tanshen Dominions together under one roof, beneath the dome of one temple. You can restore the faith to its origins and rekindle the glory of the Great Dominions, bringing the Iron Realm once more into accord with the ways and wishes of Ni-Kam-Djen.”

  “How?” Tin-Tsu could not formulate clear thoughts in the wake of the words the high priest spoke.

  “By claiming the opportunity Ni-Kam-Djen has blessed you with.” High Priest Toyan-Wen smiled.

  Tin-Tsu wanted to smile, but did not. No one knew the true desires of The True God, and he sensed his path would not be clearly cut from stone like the steps leading up through the mountain to the temple gates. Shuna Toyan-Wen’s vision of the future stirred Tin-Tsu’s heart, but chilled it as well. How could he be two things at once — both priest and zhan? How could he do what others had not managed to accomplish for hundreds of years?

  He would need to have faith.

  THE PRESENT

  TIN-TSU HAD faith. Faith that would not be shaken by dreams or a mysterious star or attempts to take his life. He had faith, and he knew by clinging to his faith, he would fulfill the desires of Ni-Kam-Djen.

  He stood from the cushion, sliding the prayer beads into a pocket of his formal jacket. Looking up from the stone faces of the nine prophets, he saw a man standing on the balcony above him. The same man he had seen in the garden dressed in the same simple black robes. The man stared at Tin-Tsu, then glanced to the side and nodded to him before turning and disappearing into the halls beyond the balcony.

  Appearing seemingly from nowhere, Tonken-Wu ran along the balcony and dashed after the man. Tin-Tsu found he needed to calm his breath and slow his heart. Tonken-Wu reappeared on the balcony, looked at Tin-Tsu, then ran down the nearby stairs to the lower level.

  “My apologies, my tahn,” Tonken-Wu said as he approached. “The temple should have been empty. I do not know who that man is or how he managed to get in.”

  “You need not worry about him,” Tin-Tsu said as he walked from the temple hall. “He is no threat to my life.”

  “As you say, my tahn.” Tonken-Wu strode a respectful two steps behind his tahn.

  Tin-Tsu had faith, but Ni-Kam-Djen often tested those with faith more than those who lacked it. What greater trial could there be than the reappearance of the man who had come twice now to watch him at a distance? He had spoken the truth when he told Tonken-Wu that the man posed no threat to his life. However, that did not mean the man would not prove a peril in other ways.

  To continue reading the Throne story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Tin-Tsu’s storyline follow this link.

  THE WITNESS

  ONDROMEAD

  THE LATE morning songs of birds echoed over the ocean cove, a light mist rising from the still waters, coalescing into eddies of fluid air, dipping and climbing in the growing light of day. Ondromead scratched his beard and opened his eyes to see the boy still curled nearby, resting his head in the crook of his slender arm.

  Ondromead?

  The boy?

  The old man sat up slowly, uncertain which oddity demanded his attention first.

  Ondromead? Where had that name come from? He never thought of himself with a name. Never gave one to others that they might address him by it. Never spoke a name to those he encountered. How had this name come to his mind? Had some long-forgotten memory percolated up in his slumber? Had he dreamed the name? His dreams told of other peoples and lands and creatures he had never witnessed in his waking time. Might the name have come from there?

  And the boy.

  The boy still slept there beside him. What did it mean? He awoke each day to find himself in a different place from where he fell asleep the night before. Some mornings, he woke on the other side of a city. Other days, he woke on the opposite coast of the realm or in another realm altogether. He gave up wondering why after the first few centuries. It never changed, and he could not affect the phenomenon in any fashion. He could only accept it. But always, always he woke alone, no matter who or how many might have fallen to slumber near him. How had Hashel managed to accompany him?

  Hashel?

  Where did that name come from? The boy had not spoken the whole of the prior day. How had he come by that name for the lad? His dreams again?

  Ondromead sighed. He needed a name to think of the boy by, and Hashel fit as well as any other. As he did with most things, he accepted it. He accepted the boy’s presence as well. Why should he not? The lonely nature of his existence wearied him, and any small respite from it sparked a glimmer of happiness within his breast. Thousands of years alone left their mark upon his heart, a scar too deep to be salved by a few hours of company with strangers each day.

  Ondromead stood up and stretched his stiff back, thankful for a slight change in his endless routine. Every morning, he awoke somewhere different, but not entirely new. After so many thousands of years, he awoke in many of the same places repeatedly. He waited and watched. People passed around him and events transpired before his gaze. He selected the important things: the
people, the words they spoke, the deeds they did, and faithfully recorded them in the black book with ink and quill. The black book that always held a clean page at the back. The bottle of ink that never ran dry. The quill that never needed sharpening.

  Then he bedded down for the night, sometimes with others who spoke to him of their lives. Lives he recorded in his book. Then he awoke in a new place and repeated the process all over again. He could not change it. Could not alter the pattern. If he tried to stay awake all night, he inevitably blinked too long and found himself elsewhere. If he refused to write in the book, his hand cramped until the pain drove him to the quill. He could not even kill himself, wounds healing in minutes, falls from high walls and tall trees resulting only in momentary unconsciousness. Even burning did not work, the excruciating pain and inevitable darkness giving way to wakefulness in a new location with a healed, if old and weak, body. A body he did not remember growing old in. He remembered the first day, so many, many years ago, waking with the black book in hand beneath a tree with weeping branches beside a river outside a small town, but he recalled nothing before that moment.

  A life lived in questions. Had he been cursed to walk the world by some cruel god he had offended in a life he could not recollect? What purpose did recording the events he witnessed serve? How could he awaken so far from where he fell asleep? How could the book always have a clean page after so many years? How could his coin purse always be full? What did it mean that the boy had traveled with him during the night?

  As though responding to his thoughts, the boy opened his eyes, rubbing the sleep from them with his knuckles.

  “Time to wake, Hashel,” Ondromead said.

  Hashel looked at him quizzically and then nodded, sluggishly climbing to his feet.

  “There will be a town nearby, or a village, or people of some sort, and we will find something to eat, and we will wait and watch and see what happens.”

  Hashel nodded again.

  Ondromead — he rather liked having a name — took the boy’s nod as agreement and led the way through the thick forest surrounding the ocean cove, toward whatever fate might await them for the day. He smiled as he looked down at the boy. It felt good to have a companion.

  To continue reading the Witness story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Ondromeads’s storyline follow this link.

  THE FUGITIVES

  SHA-KUTAN

  FEATHERS VIBRATED in the passing air, the hawk soaring above the field, wings spread wide, riding the currents and eddies of wind high above the ground. The hawk’s eyes scanned the landscape and the roads crossing it. A man stood near the intersection of two dirt paths stretching among rippling grain. Beside him, a woman and girl sat in the narrow strip of grass between road and furrow.

  The hawk tilted against the warm summer air, banking to scan along the road toward the midday sun. Dust tinged the horizon, packs of humans walking the lane, heading toward the crossing.

  Sha-Kutan stood where the two trails met. He looked along the trail to the east, twin furrows dug deep by years of wagon wheels wobbling along the path. The woman, Lee-Nin, sat next to the girl, Sao-Tauna, sharing an apple they had plucked from a tree before passing from forest to field.

  We should keep moving. Open spaces are danger.

  The woman and girl are weak.

  Should we leave them?

  She will not expect us to be with others.

  No.

  “There are others approaching.” Sha-Kutan pointed down the eastern path.

  Lee-Nin stood and stared along the road.

  “How many?” Lee-Nin squinted. She had not ceased questioning his ability to see and hear better than she could, but she had come to accept it.

  “Twenty or more,” Sha-Kutan said.

  “Soldiers?” Lee-Nin’s voice sounded anxious. Sha-Kutan noticed the shift in her scent as well.

  “No,” Sha-Kutan said.

  “Star dreamers.” Sao-Tauna stood up to look down the road, raising her small hand to shield her eyes.

  “Pilgrims,” Lee-Nin said with a nod.

  Odd that she does not question how the child would know this.

  Yes. Odd.

  “We go with them.” Sao-Tauna stood on her tiptoes, trying to see the approaching band of pilgrims.

  “No,” Lee-Nin said. “They travel west. We should head east. To Juparti or Punderra maybe.”

  She comes from the east.

  We cannot go that way.

  “Follow the star dreamers.” Sao-Tauna stated this as a simple fact, obvious and inarguable.

  The girl may be right.

  More people will provide protection and cover.

  “She is correct.” Sha-Kutan nodded toward Sao-Tauna. “We are safer with others. There is less chance of discovery.”

  “That’s possible, I suppose.” Lee-Nin raised her fingers to her lips in thought. “We could pretend to be a family joining the pilgrimage.”

  A family?

  It might work.

  A family?

  “One family among many will be less likely to draw attention.” Lee-Nin turned to Sha-Kutan. “We draw too much attention by ourselves. You draw enough as it is. Can you stoop a bit? Hunch your shoulders? Try not to appear so … massive?”

  Stoop?

  Hunch?

  “No.” Sha-Kutan frowned, standing to his full height.

  Lee-Nin looked up at him, her lips curled in annoyance. “Hmmm.”

  “Here they come.” Sao-Tauna tapped her wrist against her thigh rhythmically as the heads of the first pilgrims crested the rise in the road.

  “We pretend to be a family then.” Lee-Nin turned back to watch the approaching pilgrims.

  Sao-Tauna raised her arms up to Sha-Kutan, staring at him placidly.

  There is something strange about this child.

  Quite strange.

  “Up.” Sao-Tauna rocked on her heels as Lee-Nin looked on in cautious curiosity.

  Up?

  She will not likely follow stories of a large man who loves his daughter and wife.

  Sha-Kutan bent down and scooped Sao-Tauna up in his arms. She gasped as he raised her to his shoulders.

  “So high,” Sao-Tauna marveled as she looked down at Lee-Nin.

  “If anything happens to her…” Lee-Nin left the remainder of her threat unspoken.

  Sha-Kutan nodded to acknowledge her words and looked past Lee-Nin toward the east and the approaching humans.

  Perhaps we should have stayed hidden in the woods.

  Perhaps.

  The pilgrim in the lead of the procession along the field trail raised his arm, waving in greeting.

  Seated on Sha-Kutan’s shoulders, her one arm wrapped around his neck, Sao-Tauna raised her free hand to wave back at the pilgrims. He marveled at the sensation of her small, warm hand against his skin, the heft of her on his shoulders, the smell of her dirty hair, the scent of joy radiating from her.

  Perhaps we should have stopped hiding long ago.

  Perhaps.

  To continue reading the Fugitives story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Sha-Kutan’s storyline follow this link.

  THE THRONE

  KAO-RHEE

  “UNWISE.”

  The word rang and reverberated in the wood-paneled walls of the council chamber. Kao-Rhee watched from the far end of the long, well-polished poda wood table as High Tahn Tin-Tsu let the sound die before making his reply.

  “How is patience unwise?”

  Ten men sat around the table, the future zhan and his nine councilors. Nine to match the number of holy prophets. Kao-Rhee now wished he had limited the number to himself and Tigan Rhog-Kan. His thought had been to introduce the high tahn to the men charged with advising him when he assumed the ascendancy a few hours hence. He had intended the morning meeting to proceed into a discussion on state policy. He preferred, when possible, to limit such decisions to himself alone. Or at the least, present his desire
d course of action in private to the zhan. Tin-Tsu’s brother had been largely interested in the prosecution of the war with the Tanshen Dominion, the purview of Tigan Rhog-Kan, and so left the majority of domestic matters in Kao-Rhee’s hands, hands that had been carving the statue of state from the stone of adversity since before either brother’s birth.

  Tigan Rhog-Kan clenched his jaw, seeming to swallow his initial, preferred response before making one tinged with even more guttural tones than his previous utterance.

  “What may seem like patience to you, my tahn, will be taken as weakness by our enemies and perceived as an opportunity for further action.”

  “We are not discussing our enemies meeting us on the battlefield; we are speaking of the people of our own dominion, my soon-to-be subjects, who have lost their way in darkness and need guidance to return to the path of light.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu folded his hands on the table.

  “If I may, my tahn.” Kao-Rhee nodded toward the tigan. “I believe the tigan’s concerns are valid. While they may be your subjects by sunset, these so-called pilgrims have abandoned the faith that governs our land and turned to some heretic vision that infects their dreams. Without the militias to curtail them, they will upset, and quite possibly overturn, the balance of the dominion.”

  “How weak is our argument for the path of Ni-Kam-Djen if we must enforce it with blades and the threat of death?” High Tahn Tin-Tsu stared across his fingertips at Kao-Rhee.

  “I do not doubt, my tahn, that were you able to speak with them, you would convince them of their error and return them to the temples.” Kao-Rhee always found a bit of flattery helped in persuading those reluctant to see things properly. “However, you cannot address them all, and they renounce their allegiance to the faith and the dominion with their actions.”