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

by G. L. Breedon

  High Priest Tontee-Lee, a heavyset man in his sixties with a long beard that cascaded down the front of his red robes, intoned the first ancient ritual words of the coronation. Rhog-Kan let his gaze fall where it had been longing to settle. With all eyes on the high priest and the high tahn, his could safely rest upon Dju-Tesha.

  “Our forefathers of the dark ages tore themselves out of ignorance and barbarism to fashion the first dominion, and from its seed, nurtured it into the First Great Dominion.” The high priest’s powerful voice improbably filled the expanse of the Grand Hall. “Today, we accept the gift of this unbroken lineage and pass it on to future generations, embodied by this man as he accepts the mantle of zhan.”

  The high priest’s words became a wall of sounds held at a distance as Rhog-Kan let the sight of Dju-Tesha fill his mind and thoughts. How had such a thing come to be? It seemed impossible. The series of utterances and actions that led to the state between them, the conditions that had arisen in his heart, all appeared so improbable, unimaginable even, before they suddenly existed. He had intended only to search the library books for a scrap of history that might illuminate the dominion’s current condition of war. Surely other zhans and tigans had faced situations that might reveal potential corollaries of action or wisdom he could benefit from. He knew the past of the Great Dominions as well as any soldier, but more than three thousand years of history meant much knowledge remained uncovered in the traditional training of a military leader.

  He had found Dju-Tesha in a corner of the library, seated on a cushioned bench near the tall windows, a pile of books stacked around her as she read one in her hands. From the comfort and ease of her posture, she clearly spent a great deal of time there. The way the golden light of sunset struck her face and hair surprised him as it illuminated her beauty. He had always considered her a plain girl with the simple features of the common folk, like the fisherman’s daughter her great-grandmother had been. Her natural reticence and shyness heightened that opinion.

  Maybe the light drew him to her in that moment. Maybe the visage of her sitting there pulled the words from his mouth. For whatever reason, he asked her if she knew of any books detailing long wars in the old dominions. She had looked up from her book, startled to find someone standing there. She appeared surprised that anyone might speak to her. Her reply began tentatively at first, as though she were unaccustomed to the sound of her own voice, but as she proceeded to answer his further questions, they sparked a flame within her. He could see it in her eyes. She spoke at length of various volumes littering the library shelves, of wars and tigans, of defeats and triumphs. Rhog-Kan stood stunned before her erudition and breadth of learning. He had never known her to speak more than two words aloud in the presence of others. Although she gave no outward evidence of such a condition, he had often considered her addle-minded. This torrent of reasoned verbosity revealed a sharpness of intellect he had rarely encountered.

  In retrospect, Rhog-Kan realized, he might have fallen in love with her in that very first moment. Certainly, she stirred an interest in him he thought dead if not long dormant. The passing of his wife to the Pure Lands so many years ago left him with a wariness of heart. Love, once gifted, could be ripped away by fate and the often cruel hand of Ni-Kam-Djen. Such sorrow led men to act in error, and while the mistakes of a common man in grief might cause no harm, a leader of men in battle could not afford to endanger their lives with an unbalanced heart. He had not appreciated, or had forgotten in the long years of emotional solitude, that love could also lead one to actions far more irrational and unbalancing than mournfulness.

  “As this man before us completes the transformation from mere tahn to zhan, from one of many to one alone, we recite the names of those self-same singular men who preceded him since the dawn of the first dominion.” The high priest opened a large, black, leather-clad book and began to read a seemingly endless list of names.

  The coronation of a zhan took even longer than a royal wedding. Rhog-Kan shifted where he stood, ignoring the ache in his aging knees. The reading of the names, if he remembered correctly from the coronation of Tin-Tsu’s brother, would take nearly half an hour. There were not so many zhans with long names or titles, but the great dominions, and especially the Third Great Dominion, had often been racked with regicide and battles between the tahns for power. Some zhans fulfilled their duty for only a few months, and in one case, for less than a day. Rhog-Kan considered it a perverted blessing that the dissolution of the Third Great Dominion of the Iron Realm had left at least one stable dominion to rise from its corpse. The Daeshen Dominion never suffered the internecine fights that plagued the Tanshen Dominion, or the series of rebellions that befell the Atheton Dominion.

  Rhog-Kan looked again to Dju-Tesha and found the thoughts of politics and war and succession fading from his mind. She turned to look at him, caught his eye, smiled ever so slightly, then turned back to watch her brother as she listened to the list of names droning from the high priest’s lips.

  “Yaol Hindo-Shan, Glorious Upholder, Keeper of the Seventh Flame of the Long Night. Kinish Jilado, Magnificent Maintainer, Hunter Beyond the High Mountains and Bringer of the White Heavens. Hu-Wan-Zi…”

  A part of Rhog-Kan’s mind noted the Juparti name among the list of zhans and pondered how many years had passed since a heathen filled the great seat of governance. The rest of his attention rested with Dju-Tesha. How had she come to hold such sway over his heart and thoughts? How had she come to draw his desires so powerfully? Even now, two dozen paces separating them, he felt the physical connection to her body, how his flesh longed to touch hers, how his arms ached to embrace her.

  He had chastised himself for the indiscretion and blasphemousness of their first pairing that late night among the red-and-black patterned cushions of the private reading room in the palace library. To bed the sister of the zhan, to claim her long-held virginity beyond the boundaries of marriage — these sacrileges demanded holy justice. He had sworn himself never to allow such an occurrence to repeat and had condemned himself for his weakness. He had declaimed his devotion to his god and made countless prayers in penitence.

  Against all reason, he returned to the library the next night. He told himself, as his feet carried him there in a fog of conflicted feeling, that he approached her to apologize. To beg forgiveness. To declare his intention to abandon the affair. To reestablish propriety in their relations. To restore balance.

  Dju-Tesha had laughed at him in that odd, singsong voice of hers. Then she had kissed him and demanded he break every vow he had woven around himself as protection from disobedience to the law and his faith. He fought her advances for a time, with futility and ever-lessening fortitude. His defenses collapsed against the onslaught of her kisses and her hands beneath his shirt.

  His recriminations for his actions returned, as they did each night they met, growing weaker with every reiteration of his failings until, improbably, he came to see their stolen unions not as an affront to his god and the ascendancy, but as part of a divine plan previously hidden from his sight, but now revealed, like a spy’s lemon-ink held up to the candlelight, a map of a future he had never dreamed possible, a continent of possibilities concealed from him until he felt the kiss of his beloved.

  This conviction of divine purpose blossomed in his heart and mind as Dju-Tesha’s elder brother fell in battle and the younger brother, the priest in self-imposed exile, returned to assume the ascendancy. Rhog-Kan watched Tin-Tsu listening to the names of his predecessors being read to him and remembered their first meeting upon his return to the palace. Even then, Rhog-Kan suspected the man would destroy the dominion. He talked like a priest and thought like a priest. Clearly, he would rule as a priest. With each passing day, the concern Rhog-Kan harbored grew and metastasized, taking shape first as an indecent notion, then a discomforting thought.

  He loved Dju-Tesha. If they announced their devotion and married, Rhog-Kan could potentially assume the ascendancy if something untoward
befell her brother. Rhog-Kan would never become zhan, but his future wife would rule as guardian zhan until their first male progeny came of age and ascended to the throne. With Dju-Tesha’s brilliance and his experience, they could together rule in such a fashion as to finally end the long war with the Tanshen Dominion. It might be years before such a happy happenstance befell Tin-Tsu, but men fell in battle every day, even leaders of nations, as his father and his elder brother had so unfortunately discovered. Both men had possessed every important quality Tin-Tsu lacked — knowledge of state and court, skill in commanding the battlefield, prowess in combat. How could a priest accustomed to prayers in mountain passes hope to lead a great nation, even with excellent counsel?

  Rhog-Kan listened to the last of the names being read and remembered the council meeting earlier that day. A politically practiced priest who listened to his councilors might be able to lead a nation in war, but one who ignored all experience and advice to follow an inner apprehension of divine guidance would more likely lead the dominion to ruin.

  “Kon Fan-Mutig, Fierce Protector, Slayer of the Eight Shadows of Night.” The high priest closed the massive book and raised his eyes to Tin-Tsu and the assembly of faces filling the Grand Hall. “Now we name our new zhan.”

  The high priest turned to an acolyte holding a satin pillow of crimson red. Upon the pillow rested the crown of the Daeshen Dominion — a single, simple band of gold, two finger-widths in thickness. A heavy ornament of state, weighted to impress upon the wearer the burden of their station.

  The high priest lifted the crown from the pillow, his hands sinking slightly at the sudden heaviness they held. He raised both hands high above his head.

  “Kon Tin-Tsu, brother of Fan-Mutig, son of Fan-Tsee, I name you Zhan of the Dominion, Holy…”

  A thunderous rumble ate the high priest’s words, filling the air and drawing all eyes upward. An explosion of sound wracked the room as the colossal granite columns of the Grand Hall shook and the marble of the floor rippled beneath thousands of feet. Above, the ceiling cracked and quaked, shattering stone to shards the size of men. The congregation of the coronation screamed and crouched and made to run.

  Only three stood with mindful purpose.

  Rhog-Kan saw from the upper edge of his vision a massive chunk of ceiling plummet to the ground. His feet, already in motion, carried him swiftly across the intervening paces, one thought possessing him — to protect the woman he loved. He threw his arms around Dju-Tesha and shielded her with his body from the falling stones even as Tin-Tsu raised his own arms and shouted to the sky, his voice fighting against the avalanche of stone roaring from above him. Beside the high tahn stood Tonken-Wu, eyes scanning the ceiling, his arms outstretched to push the tahn out of harm’s way.

  “Protect us now, merciful Ni-Kam-Djen, in our time of need! Protect us now, merciful…”

  Rhog-Kan held Dju-Tesha close, her eyes alight with terror, her hands clutching at him. He turned to Tin-Tsu, hearing the priest-zhan’s prayer for salvation, staring in horror and awe as an immense slab of stone crashed to the ground beside him. Hunks of ceiling smashed to the floor around the Grand Hall, the noise drowning out the cries of the people trapped beneath the hail of debris, billows of dust rising up to hide their panicked faces.

  Finally, after moments, or an unmeasurable eternity of horror, the falling stones ceased and Tin-Tsu’s prayer ended.

  Rhog-Kan listened as the screams and wails died down and slowly transformed to confused mumbles and then cries of joy. Rhog-Kan eased his grip on his beloved and blinked away the dust as the air gradually cleared to disclose a sight his mind could not fashion into sensible thought.

  People stood around the Grand Hall, staring at one another, giant pieces of stone from the collapsed ceiling embedded in the marble floor between them. Although many were marked with small cuts and a few serious gashes, not a single piece of debris had struck even one of the people in the Grand Hall.

  Slowly, inevitably, the thousands of eyes in the room fixed upon Tin-Tsu. Rhog-Kan held Dju-Tesha’s hand as he watched her brother stoop to pick up the fallen crown, handing it to the high priest. The high priest, his hands shaking, raised the crown once more above his head as he faced Tin-Tsu, voice quavering as he spoke.

  “Kon Tin-Tsu, brother of Fan-Mutig, son of Fan-Tsee, I name you Zhan of the Dominion, Holy Protector, Vessel of The One God, Shield of Heaven.”

  As the high priest lowered the crown to Tin-Tsu’s brow, the Grand Hall erupted in joyous shouts of praise and thanksgiving.

  Zhan Tin-Tsu descended the steps before the dais, Tonken-Wu at his side, walking purposefully into the crowd, blessing men and women by placing the two primary fingers of his right hand to their foreheads, accepting their gratitude, giving all credit to his god, leaving those in his wake in stunned silence.

  “It is a miracle.” Dju-Tesha’s voice roused Rhog-Kan to his senses.

  “Yes. A miracle,” he replied.

  A miracle that brought questions storming into Rhog-Kan’s mind.

  How had a ceiling held aloft for millennia fallen at such an inopportune moment? Was this another attack on Tin-Tsu’s life, intended to end it before he rose to the ascendancy? Was The Sight involved? Had a seer been present in the room, working his or her dark will upon the stone of the ceiling to make it crumble?

  How had everyone been spared? How could such a miracle take place? Had Ni-Kam-Djen protected the people at the behest of Tin-Tsu? Was he possessed of Sight by Divine Grace? Or could he instead be a seer in secret?

  Might that not explain how he had escaped death the night before at the hands of four armed men? Could the young Sub-commander Tonken-Wu really have killed all of them? Or had there been another divine intervention? Why had Tin-Tsu not cried out on that balcony? Had prayers been on his lips that night as he stepped into the room to face the night-slayers? Did he have the favor and protection of Ni-Kam-Djen?

  Another question burned in his mind, turning all others to ash and shining brightly in his inner consciousness — who else besides Rhog-Kan had attempted to kill the now crowned Zhan Tin-Tsu — and to what end?

  To continue reading the Throne story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Tigan Rhog-Kan’s storyline follow this link.

  THE SEER

  KELLATRA

  VIBRANT WALLS of color lined the aisles of the market. Crates of blue-black plums sat next to baskets of sun-orange peppers, beside tables with shiny red apples, stacked alongside crisp-looking string beans of yellow and green. Kellatra’s nose twitched as the wind shifted and brought the smell of freshly cut meat from the stall across the thoroughfare. She picked a handful of still-firm reddish potatoes left from last autumn’s harvest, noting where their sprouts had recently been shaved free. She paid a young woman of no more than twenty, yet who looked twice her age, for the potatoes and tossed them in one of the baskets hanging from the crook of her arm.

  She continued through the small market at the center of town, choosing the items that would later become the day’s offerings for dinner at the inn. The largest town in the southern region of Punderra, Nahan Kana held a thriving market, but it could not compare to the bazaars of her childhood in Tajana, the capital city of the Juparti Dominion, or the arcades of her later youth in Kahara Nattaa, the City of Leaves. She had loved to spend hours walking among the walls of color. Full, ripe melons the color of night beside sun-yellow lemons. Tangerine-tinted scarves and emerald-tinged sashes next to statues of various gods and goddesses carved in cobalt-colored lapis. Steaming hot pies of spiced meat and tiny hard sweets that melted slowly in the mouth.

  Thinking of the City of Leaves brought her mind to the reasons for her departure, which turned her thoughts to the unexpected arrival of Menanthus the night before. How did he find her? Why give her the package to keep for him? When would he return for it? Would she need to flee again? What could she tell Rankarus and the children if they needed to leave?

  “I see you’ve ma
naged to find the best of the market once again.”

  Kellatra smiled and turned to follow the voice that addressed her, seeing the wide nose and wider grin of the large, shaggy-haired man with the bush-beard standing behind her.

  “Abananthus. How good to see you. You are just in time to be useful.” Kellatra handed him one of the two baskets she carried.

  “Always helpful, always happy,” Abananthus said. He collected aphorisms the way other men collected coins, and the Juparti saying described him exactly. He grinned and took the basket from Kellatra. Like her, he hailed originally from Juparti, starting as a merchant caravan guard before setting up a small shop in Nahan Kana selling trinkets. His shop failed, but he somehow opened another, selling teas and spices. He did not seem to be a very good merchant, but he had always been a trusted friend. Eight years ago, he had come to the defense of Jadaloo, one the serving girls at the inn, when a drunken man accosted her. Since then, he took most of his evening meals at a table by the fireplace in the common room.

  “What news today?” Kellatra asked as they walked together through the market. Abananthus always knew the latest gossip from around the town and the most current state of the long war in the neighboring dominions.