“I…” The wave of truth that had overwhelmed Tin-Tsu during his conversation with his mother resurged to engulf him. “I do not know what to say. Or what I feel.”
“You do not need to say or feel anything.” Sadness filled the man’s eyes as his smile faded completely. “An old friend comes to help you with your vestments on the day of your coronation.”
The man stepped forward, lifting the ancient silk sash and placing it over Tin-Tsu’s head, adjusting it on his shoulders. Tin-Tsu’s breath quickened at the touch. He looked into the man’s eyes and felt himself standing not in the palace dressing room at midday before his coronation, but beneath the night-shaded branches of the poda tree in the gardens, a boy of sixteen, facing another youth whose eyes glimmered in the moonlight. The same eyes seventeen years apart. The same face but older. The same name. And against all hope, all prayers and petitions across the intervening years — the same feelings.
“Tiang-Rhu.”
“I am called Bontin-Ning now.” Tiang-Rhu said, brushing imaginary dust from the sash. “In my sect, we are given new names for our new lives serving Ni-Kam-Djen.”
Tin-Tsu wondered at the name and the meaning. Bright Star. Could his appearance alongside that other bright star be mere coincidence? And if not, what meaning might such twinned events hold?
“How long are you here?” Tin-Tsu wanted to ask other questions, but this one seemed safest.
“I depart after the ceremony.” Tiang-Rhu’s smile returned, a tinge of sadness remaining. “My sect does not believe in the indulgence that accompanies celebrations.”
“I will not see you again?” The answer to this question concerned Tin-Tsu the most, for more reasons than he wished to consider.
“I think not.” Tiang-Rhu’s lips twitched with effort to maintain his smile as he stepped back a respectful distance. “A friendship that is improper for a young tahn of sixteen is unthinkable for a zhan.”
“Yes.” Tin-Tsu took a deep breath, fortifying himself for his words to come. “It was good of you to bring the vestments. And good to see you again.”
“It was good to see you as well, my tahn.” Tiang-Rhu bowed slightly.
Tin-Tsu opened his mouth to say something, words forever lost to the knock at the door and the sound of Tonken-Wu’s voice as he entered the room.
“The coronation is about to begin, my tahn.” Tonken-Wu noted Tiang-Rhu’s face but said nothing.
“Great blessings on this wondrous day, my tahn.” Tiang-Rhu bowed and walked swiftly past Tonken-Wu, out the door and beyond sight.
Tin-Tsu stood staring after Tiang-Rhu, wondering what his arrival meant in conjunction with so many other occurrences the past day. The dream, the star, the attackers in the night, the arrival of Tonken-Wu, and now the return of Tiang-Rhu. The ancient Kam-Djen philosophers had inveighed against the practice of reading portents from the signs and symbols of life, declaring that only Ni-Kam-Djen could truly know the meaning of any series of events. Not for the first time, and not for the same reason, Tin-Tsu wished he were not as devout in his beliefs.
“My tahn?” Tonken-Wu bowed his head. “Should I return in a few minutes?”
“No.” Tin-Tsu took a deep breath as he strode past Tonken-Wu for the door. “Let us see this through and have done with it.”
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THE CARNIVAL
TARAK
LILACS SCENTED the wind that carried the sound of approaching hoof beats. Tarak sniffed the air. He liked the smell. They did not have this flower in the Stone Realm. He wanted to pick the blossom up to inhale its fragrance more deeply, but he suspected the wyrin would mock him for it. For such a tiny creature, Shifhuul produced an exceptional quantity of annoyance. Like the junt beetle of the Brkknt Mountains that could shit four times its weight in a single day. Tarak had no one to blame but himself. If he hadn’t spent so much time teaching Shifhuul to speak properly, the little wyrin might have been more silent.
“Time for to run still.” Shifhuul’s voice sounded oddly unconcerned with the approaching militia. His tail swished idly behind him.
“You wish to run toward the enemy?” Tarak looked down at Shifhuul in mock surprise.
“Not direction mean I.” Shifhuul gave no evidence of intending to run.
Against all his talk of running and fleeing danger, Shifhuul always stood his ground. For reasons Tarak could not discern, the wyrin feigned fear and cravenness as though by rote, as if repeating lines from an ancient poem. But Shifhuul’s words, however annoying, never seemed to match his actions. Tarak suspected the cause. The wyrin wished to die. Tarak could not guess why, but Shifhuul’s actions, his fierceness in their confrontations with bandits, his disregard for his own safety, made it plain the wyrin did not wish to return home to his people. He often spoke of returning to his home realm and complained about the humans, but his deeds did not follow his speech. For this reason, Tarak had known the wyrin would support his plan, even as he grumbled about it.
The yutan, Yeth, had simply nodded when told of his intentions. Unlike Shifhuul, she clearly desired to return to her home, but she never ignored a challenge. She appeared unable to do so. She seemed to take the bandits and militias as a personal affront, as though her honor demanded she act against injustice. Tarak could identify with the yutan in this virtue.
Honor.
A word that haunted him for its loss and his quest to reclaim it.
SEVEN MONTHS AGO
“I MUST GO.”
“There are others lower in the tribe ladder who should beg to go in your stead.”
Tarak shook his head, the matted locks of his mane brushing his shoulders. He stared into Reeshka’s teary eyes and reached out to hold her. His mate turned from him and stalked from the tent. He growled and followed her, more frustrated with his own ineptitude at explaining himself than by her reaction.
He flipped the flap of the leather tent closed and trailed his mate away from the other shelters arranged in a circle on the wide mountain plateau. Ninety pointed keree made of bison hide wrapped around wooden posts surrounded a massive fire pit in three circles. Tarak followed Reeshka through the rings of keree, ignoring the looks of his tribe members, watching his mate’s back.
She left the campground and climbed the side of the mountain rising above the flat, rocky expanse of the plateau. He kept his distance. He knew from experience the danger of coming too close to her when she walked that way, feet planted firmly, as though stamping on something she wished to crush. Likely, she imagined his face as she stomped up the mountainside. He could not blame her.
Eventually, Reeshka halted her march on an outcropping of rock that overlooked the Valley of Jrak, green mountain hills rolling away into oblivion beneath the winter sun. She pulled a leather shawl close around her shoulders in the biting wind atop the mountain. Tarak shivered but ignored the cold. His own dense pelt of thick brown hair provided enough protection from the elements for the time being. He suspected her chill came not from the wind but from the icy pain his words had placed in her heart.
“How can you go to walk among the sheetoo after what they have done to us?” Reeshka did not turn to face him.
“I must.” Tarak stood beside her, keeping a distance intended to show contrition, paws at his sides as custom indicated.
“You choose to accept the elders’ commands. You choose to leave me.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her paw.
“It is a matter of honor.” Tarak looked at his feet, feeling again the shame of his dishonor. “I must regain my standing in the tribe. I must reclaim my honor.”
“You have more honor than any roagg on the mountain.” Reeshka spat the words with anger. “You did the honorable thing.”
“I acted in anger and without thought.” Tarak sighed at the memory. “There is no honor in that.”
“I would have done the same.” Reeshka glanced at Tarak. He saw
a hint of hope in the motion of her eyes.
“Then we would both need to reclaim our honor,” Tarak said.
“There must be another way.” Reeshka turned away again. “To go to the Iron Realm. To live beside the sheetoo. They will betray you. This is all they know.”
“I need not trust them,” Tarak said. “I need only learn the source of their dream and what it will cause them to do.”
“Sheetoo dreams of sheetoo gods.” Reeshka snorted with derision. “What can these things matter to us so far from their lands? The urris protect us. They have always enforced The Pact.”
“They shelter us from the threat of the other realms.” Tarak took a deep breath. “They do not shield us from the threats within our own realms.”
“How can these dreams be a threat?” Reeshka shook her head. “Dreams are but dreams. Guides to the realms of spirits and no more.”
“Roaggs have had this dream of the sheetoo god.” Tarak took another deep breath.
“What of it?” Reeshka said. “Our spirits will defend us from the new sheetoo god and all others, as they always have.”
“Not always,” Tarak said.
“That was before.” Reeshka sounded defensive. Her mother spoke the spirit chants. To criticize the spirits implied censure of the spirit talkers. “Before we won our freedom and earned the right to their protection.”
“Then sing the spirit chants for my protection, because I must go.” Tarak’s shoulders sagged against the weight of his words.
“Why?” Reeshka turned to him. “Why did the elders choose you? They would not choose someone who had dishonored the tribe.”
“They did not choose me.” Tarak breathed deep once more, his chest stinging like he had climbed the mountaintop and attempted to speak in the thin air close to the sky. “I asked to be chosen.”
“Why?” Reeshka looked pained, as though he intended to wound her with his decision.
“It is more than honor.” Tarak waited, hoping she would come to him, barely able to speak the truth that frightened him. “I must go. I have had the dreams. And they call to me.”
THE PRESENT
TARAK TOOK another deep breath of the lilacs still infusing the air and wondered if he would ever see Reeshka again. They had waited three months, following custom, before joining their lives in the binding ceremony. Then he had altered all their plans with a moment’s anger and mindlessness. Would he return to her? Or would she forever wonder if he continued to wander the Iron Realm, year after year, in a quest for the meaning of a dream he should never have dreamed. The dream that felt like eavesdropping on the slumbering spirit visions of another people. A dream that led him to stand in the road and face a pack of vile humans. Sheetoo who would happily kill him simply for being in the way.
“Stand aside … creatures!”
The leader of the militia group sat on his horse, a length ahead of his companions as he reared his steed to a halt. The other militiamen tugged at the reins of their horses and bunched in the road, four rows deep. Nearly all held their straight, double-edged swords drawn. Six men held nocked arrows in their long bows. Tarak had hoped to face ten humans and feared there might be fifteen. More than twenty confronted him and his fellow scouts. Too many.
Although he had known this moment to be inevitable, Tarak had not considered what to say. Shifhuul spared him worrying about it any longer.
“Run, goat raper. Run, maggot eater. Run, naked ape. Run or we kill you.” Shifhuul’s words echoed among the trees surrounding the fork in the road. The wyrin had little subtlety with the human language, but he managed to convey his meaning well enough.
“It speaks.” The leader of the militia looked horrified. “The creatures speak.”
“Dark demons called by the heretic god,” one of the militiamen said.
“False gods can call forth no demons,” the leader corrected the man, his tone pedantic.
“There are too many of them,” Yeth whispered over Shifhuul’s head.
“No enough to alive us take.” Shifhuul’s hand twitched where it rested on the hilt of his sheathed sword. “No pet in cage, I.”
“If you have gods to pray to, do so now.” Tarak made a silent plea to his spirit totems for protection and guidance. He wished he had taken the time to recite the spirit chants while waiting for the humans to arrive. He wanted to call the chants to frighten the hairless monsters away. Instead, he raised his voice to call to the leader of the militia.
“You seek the pilgrims?”
The leader of the militia grimaced, unsettled to hear the rasping growl of Tarak’s voice.
“Have you seen them?” the militia leader asked.
“Yes,” Tarak said. While he had no hope of surviving the inevitable battle that would consume the fork in the road, neither had he any desire for it to begin.
“Which way did they go?” the militia leader said.
“We cannot tell you that.” Tarak stared at the militia leader, hoping the man sensed the danger confronting him. The militias were used to attacking unarmed wayfarers, not experienced fighters.
“What concern are the heretics to three creatures from the other realms?” The militia leader sounded genuinely interested to know why Tarak and his companions might risk their lives for those of the pilgrims.
“We seek the answer to the question they pose.” Tarak saw no need for subterfuge if he might be dead soon.
“They pose no question.” The leader of the militia raised his voice. “They present only a threat. A threat to the people of The True God, Ni-Kam-Djen. Your foreign gods are as false as the heretic dreamers’ visions of a goddess. There is no goddess. There is only The True God. Only Ni-Kam-Djen. Now clear the road, vermin, or we will cut you down.”
“Do you not see that you will lose many men in order to pass us?” Tarak hoped reason might prevail. He heard the call of birds from the forest, likely disturbed by the shouting of the militia leader.
“We do not fear you,” the leader said, raising his sword, readying the signal to charge. “Ni-Kam-Djen protects us!”
“Look!”
One of the militiamen pointed to the sky, his hand shaking, his eyes wide. Above the forest at the fork in the road, a massive flock of birds circled. Black birds, ravens, hawks, robins, night jays, pinner sprites, and more and more. Tarak had never witnessed birds of different wing flocking together.
The cloud of forest fowl swirled in the sky, forming a circular vortex, a gap in the center, rising up far above the trees. The sight unnerved him, leaving him breathing as though dizzy from a long mountain run.
“Birds all wrong,” Shifhuul said beside him.
“Very wrong,” Yeth added.
“We may want to…” Tarak’s own words vanished in the sudden crushing wave of bird cries as the whirlpool of black in the sky became a funnel of darkness, plunging down to the ground, engulfing the militiamen in a windstorm of wings and slashing beaks and ripping claws.
Tarak watched on in stunned horror, the militiamen screaming, batting at the wing-black air with their swords, trying to run, the horses rearing up in fear. The screams of the sheetoo filled the woods, reverberating from the trees, shaking the branches. No matter how loud the cries became, no man escaped the pitch-dark wall of avian hell entrapping them.
Gradually, the death moans of the men faded away, the birds taking flight to the sky above and into the shadowed reaches of the forest. As the last man fell from his horse, sword bouncing away from his dead hand, the final bird, a wide-winged raven, flapped over the road and vanished beyond the treetops.
The men’s horses skittered and jumped in fear, but slowly realized that none of them had been wounded in the strange avian attack. A few poked their hooves at their former riders, but most appeared too dazed and frightened to move.
“Birds all wrong.” Shifhuul’s voice sounded strained. “But birds all good.”
“Did you use The Sight to do this?” Tarak looked to the yutan.
“I do no
t possess that kind of power.” Yeth leaned on her spear, shaking her head. “I do not understand.”
Tarak stared at the dead bodies of the militiamen, blood oozing from their empty eye sockets.
“It seems something answered our prayers.”
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THE THRONE
RHOG-KAN
THE GRAND HALL. Two hundred strides long. Fifty strides wide and walls just as tall. Twenty-four massive columns the width of five men abreast, supported the arched ceiling. A polished marble floor in a simple pattern of black and white. More than enough room for the three thousand attendees of High Tahn Kon Tin-Tsu’s coronation as zhan of the Daeshen Dominion.
Banners of silk in royal blue streamed down the sides of the supporting columns, the emblem of the dominion embroidered on a yellow circle at their heads — an endless knot of four sides with five rows apiece of a golden line folding back upon itself infinitely. A symbol representing the endless history and eternal future of the royal dominion, the true seat of all Great Dominions of the past and the Great Dominion to come. Each family house had its own emblem. The Kon family emblem, seen on a brooch on the high tahn’s sister’s breast, depicted a series of seven circles nested one within the other, representing the depth of the family’s commitment to the dominion. While the family of the zhan might wear their house emblem, the newly raised zhan would henceforth only ever wear the sign of the Daeshen Dominion. An endless knot graced the back of the vestment sash hanging over High Tahn Tin-Tsu’s shoulders as he walked down the aisle between the throngs of people standing respectfully to either side of the Grand Hall. Two palace wardens preceded him and two followed his echoing footsteps.
Tigan Rhog-Kan stood at the front of the room with the members of the High Council and the royal family, a station of privilege and rank. It provided him an excellent view of the proceedings. He could see High Tahn Tin-Tsu in profile as he came to stand before the high priest, the officiant of the ceremony to crown him zhan. He could see the future zhan’s new personal escort, Sub-commander Tonken-Wu, standing a respectful distance behind the high tahn with the three wardens on duty. Rhog-Kan noticed more wardens stationed nearby, far more than usual. Enough to encircle the high tahn should a threat arise from the crowd. He saw even more guardians and sentinels posted along the narrow service balcony beneath the arched windows high above the floor. One man for each window, eyes trained not on the events below, but searching the crowd. It would be nearly impossible for a potential killer to take the high tahn’s life before the crown rested on his head.
The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1) Page 17