Tin-Tsu stared in wonder and growing amazement as more dragonflies arrived — called by some unheard sound, some unseen beacon, creating a gently undulating swarm around Rin-Lahee’s head. The cloud of dragonflies began to churn in a single direction, gradually aligning themselves in a pattern that Tin-Tsu recognized, a symbol that chilled his skin and quickened his breath. The dragonflies held their positions, spacing themselves out in a curving line from the one atop her finger in three spiraled arcs. Tin-Tsu had seen that spiral image before in another form in a different place — in the heretic dream that came to him each night.
“It’s beautiful.” Rin-Lahee marveled at the dragonfly spiral looming above her.
“Yes.” Tin-Tsu reached his hand slowly toward the insects.
As Tin-Tsu held his hand near Rin-Lahee’s, a cloud of black wings descended from the sky, shattering the spiral in a frenzy of motion. A small flock of hummingbirds attacked the dragonflies, jabbing at them with tiny beaks. The dragonflies darted off for the safety of the trees, the hummingbirds in urgent pursuit.
“What can it mean?” Rin-Lahee held her hand to her mouth in shock.
Tin-Tsu looked behind to see that only Tonken-Wu had noticed the aerial battle above their heads. The look on his face spoke of even greater concern than usual. Dragonflies did not fly in spirals of their own accord. Hummingbirds did not flock to attack. Invisible forces exerted their will around him. Again. A portent of something. But what?
“It is a sign,” he said finally. “Of what, I cannot fathom.”
To continue reading the Throne story arena follow this link.
To continue reading Tin-Tsu’s storyline follow this link.
THE SEER
RANKARUS
THE STINGING scent of crushed limestone clung to the air and permeated the roughhewn walls of the small shop. Rankarus bent to sniff the layers of parchment paper stacked on the table. They smelled clean, more like dried wood than processed animal skin. The aroma of lime wafted through again, carried on the breeze from the back room where a young boy of twelve or so stood stirring animal hides in a large iron vat, the lime water gradually dissolving the hair from the pelts.
“I also have some fine paper here.” A gap-toothed man with a gnarled, fleshy nose pointed to a stack of rag-pressed sheaves on a counter.
“Parchment.” Rankarus ran his fingers along the firm sheets, judging their smoothness, holding them each between thumb and forefinger to test thickness and gauge durability.
“If you have the coin.” The shopkeeper licked his lips.
“I do.” Rankarus smiled at the shopkeeper, turning from the stack of parchment to a shelf of inks and writing implements. “I’ll need a few other things as well.” Rankarus held forth a small pouch, jiggling it in his fingers to bring forth the sound of coins.
Rankarus still smiled as he left the print shop a short time later, a burlap sack slung over his shoulder. His smile faded with every footstep. The sullen face he had borne in private the past weeks, ever since the fire that had destroyed the inn and his former life, returned, worn like a mask at a mourning ceremony. His shoulders slumped as he considered again the shift in his and his family’s fortunes.
He did not blame Kellatra for the dangers facing them. He could have done. It would have been easy to question her actions and condemn them. But to do so meant ignoring his own decisions over the years. Choices that now put his family in as great a danger as presented by that infernal book.
What was the codex? Why would people kill for it? What secrets did it contain? Rankarus knew this last question motivated Kellatra more than any other. She always found puzzles and mysteries irresistible. How did the mechanical clock in the temple tower work? How had the rabbit gone missing from the hutch near the barn? Could sense be made from the alignment and appearance of certain numbers? The book presented the greatest puzzle possible — especially for a seer.
His wife, a seer. How had he not suspected it in all those years? Had his love inured him to the obvious? It appeared plain enough in hindsight — a reading lens revealing with clarity a script once fuzzy and familiar, but illegible. Kellatra possessed The Sight. That fact brought many questions to mind. Had she started the fire by setting that man aflame? Had she killed the soul catcher, or had Abananthus snapped the creature’s neck? Rankarus had asked them both, only to be rebuffed with claims of dim memory due to the weight and terror of the events. Why had she been banished? She had fled to meet with her father before telling him. Her father. A man dead but not dead. A riddle representative of his wife’s life before meeting him. She had returned late and said nothing before falling asleep. Not wanting to broach the subject, for fear of an argument or further deceptions necessary by both parties, he had slipped out before she awoke to attend to errands in the city.
He thought of her still sleeping in the bed, sheet curled around her slender frame, hair spilled across the pillow, breath shallow, face twisted in concern, even in slumber, the dreams likely taunting her. Dreams that made no sense of the life they now found themselves living. He had lied to her about having the dreams, pretending they did not afflict him. He pretended as much to himself as well. He could not understand them, would not follow their call, and so decided to ignore the dreams as best he could. He did not believe in gods and spirits, and the dreams implied things he would rather never need contemplate.
He sighed as he thought of his conversation with Kellatra the previous day. So much about her still remained unseen even with the revelations of her true past. Were it not for his own secrets, he might have been tempted to rage at her deceptions, especially with their children’s welfare at stake. He could not honestly condemn his wife’s reticence to expose her hidden truths when he concealed his own. There would be time for answers to his questions later, once they were free of the book and well shed of the city. There might be time to explain his own history in the hopes of setting their old stories aside to concentrate on the new one they told together.
For the moment, he concerned himself with issues more important than why his wife feared introducing him to her father, or why the man might try to have her arrested. Instead, he pondered the source of their troubles — the book. How soon could they return it? Might they fetch a reward for its safe retrieval? How quickly could they leave the city? Could he avoid being recognized by any of his old acquaintances?
As though manifesting out of his daydreams, like a seer manipulating the fabric of reality to fashion an inopportune and ill-fitted suit, a man with an all-too-familiar face passed him in the street. Rankarus kept his eyes ahead, his pace steady, not daring to glance back and give acknowledgment of his presence and identity. He reached up to run his hand through the weeks-old beard cloaking his chin. It might alter the look of his face enough to render him unrecognizable. He patted his stomach, regretting the loss of the ale fat that had melted away over the long pilgrim march to the city. His trimmer features made him resemble his past appearance too greatly.
He turned a corner, quickened his pace, and turned another, stopping to look back around the edge of a building, waiting to see if the man he recognized followed him. He stood and watched the street, leaning against the wall of the shop. He did not see the man round the corner. Maybe the man had not seen him, had not recognized him. Possibly, Rankarus had been mistaken in identifying the man. Perhaps his nerves and fears and daydreams warped his judgment.
He hitched the burlap bag over his shoulder and continued back to the Black Elk Inn, taking a circuitous route through side streets and small parks and narrow alleys. As he walked, he remembered the last time he had seen the man he hoped to evade with his meandering path through the city.
TEN YEARS AGO
METAL STRUCK metal — bent slightly, twisted gently.
“Yer dead as ya stand.”
The slender shaft of the metal pick probed the keyhole of the hand-sized lock.
“Ya hear. Dead.”
The click of metal gears falling into place ac
companied the relieved pop of the lock arm from the housing block.
“Skin flayed and heart eaten while ya watch dead.”
Rankarus cast the third and final lock aside and opened the lid of the steel-clad wooden chest. He smiled as the contents reflected glittering light from the lantern onto his face. Gold coins and sapphire brooches, diamond necklaces and ruby earrings, an emerald-encrusted dagger, and a silver chalice. He pulled a small leather bag from beneath his shirt and filled it with what he needed. What belonged to him.
“I’ll roast ya alive and gut ya like a stag at a holy festival.”
Rankarus finished filling the bag and closed the lid of the chest, replacing the locks and snapping them shut. He stood up, grabbed the lantern, and walked from the small storeroom into the main chamber of the subterranean grotto. The low ceiling and stone walls created long shadows from the lantern light. A table sat in the middle of the room, dice and cards next to cups of wine. Three men lay sprawled on the floor near their empty chairs, their heads rolling, their eyes unfocused. The man in the center of the room, the one with the scar across his forehead, the one drooling as he struggled to form words, cursed and pawed uselessly at the floor. Kinorus.
“Chop yer limbs off one by one and feed them to ya till there’s nothin’ left.”
Rankarus frowned. He should have dosed the wine more strongly. He hadn’t planned for them to wake for hours. If they made too much noise, it would alert the men in the upper chambers. He walked to the closest of the three men, an older fellow named Jantipur. Rankarus grabbed a cup from the table, held Jantipur’s nose until his mouth opened, and poured wine down his throat. The third man, Donalthus, larger than the other two, began to struggle to sit upright. Rankarus grabbed the second of two open bottles and repeated the procedure, forcing the man to swallow the wine. Donalthus fell silent, his head drooping forward to his chest.
He did the same with Kinorus, pouring wine into the man’s mouth, holding his weakened arms as he struggled vainly and voiced one last protest.
“Nobody steals from me and lives,” Kinorus gurgled between forced gulps.
Rankarus stared into the drugged but furious eyes of his captive, his former employer, his always adversary, as the man’s mind dimmed under the poison. He needed to leave, but first, he wanted to bid the man farewell, so that he might understand Rankarus’s actions.
“I am not stealing from you, Kinorus. I am claiming what you stole from me. I surveyed the estate. I seduced Kinsett Alandri. I broke into the family vaults. I stole the jewels. You did none of these things. I escaped without raising notice or alarm. You did what you always do. You claimed half merely for not killing me. The same fee you charge to all thieves in the city, but an injustice I can no longer bear to pay. And I believe you. You will kill me if you see me again. But you will not see me again. I will take my bounty and go far away and never return. No one will know I have taken from you what is mine. You will say you sent me away to scout a new prospect. Your enterprise will continue unaffected. And you will remember when you awaken that I did not slit your throat when I held the opportunity in my hand.”
Rankarus watched Kinorus’s eyes slide closed. As he pulled the men up into the empty chairs, leaning their heads against the table, he wondered how much Kinorus actually heard and would remember of his well-rehearsed speech.
Rankarus hid the bag at his side as he slid his cloak over his shoulder and looked again at the room. The men would appear to have fallen asleep after a night of drinking and gambling. A perfect alibi for all involved. A part of him wondered if it might not be best to slit at least Kinorus’s throat, but he had never been comfortable killing men, much less men who could not defend themselves.
He hoped leaving Kinorus alive would keep the man from sending hounds to follow him as he fled the city. Where would he flee? That part of his plan had never been detailed. Someplace distant enough to make pursuit unlikely. Someplace he could create a new life. Punderra? He had a friend there who ran an inn in a town called Nahan Kana. A wealthy trade town with plenty of merchant daughters. Maybe his friend needed a partner. Running an inn might be the perfect masquerade to distract attention from his endeavors to liberate the wealthy locals of their excess abundance. Yes, running an inn might be fun. A change of direction in his life. A cleansing rain causing new seeds to flourish.
Rankarus smiled and slipped from the room, using a secret passage to leave the warehouse unseen, disappearing into the darkened streets, claiming his newly purchased horse from a local stable, and riding out of the City of Leaves for the last time.
THE PRESENT
RANKARUS WALKED sideways into the alley across the street from the inn where he and his family stayed with Abananthus and Jadaloo. He waited, as he had several times along the way home from making his purchases. He stepped farther into the shadowed alley and bent to one knee beside two cracked and discarded wooden barrels, watching the entrance to the alley. He had seen no one following him, but he could not risk a mistake. His family’s life depended on it. He still cursed himself for his flailing attempts to defend himself against the man who had attacked him in the kitchen of the Three Moons Inn the night of the fire. Had he not been so drunk, his blade would have hit its mark and he might have been able to help Kellatra rather than leaving her to face a soul catcher. He had taken to practicing throwing his dagger at trees far from the pilgrim campsites each night, honing a skill he had let fade over the soft years of playing innkeeper. He needed to shed that role — an actor in a traveling troupe walking from the stage to return moments later in a new costume, inhabiting a new character. He needed to become the man he had been. The man he had hoped never to be again.
He heard footsteps and tensed against the wall, out of sight from the entrance to the shadowed alleyway. He had been followed. He slid the dagger silently from the sheath at his waist, holding his breath until the feet of the man who pursued him stepped past his vision.
He stood, moving in a single motion, slamming the man against the far wall and thrusting the blade to his exposed neck. Fearful brown eyes looked back at him through wild-cast locks of oily gray hair. The man’s breath stank of sour ale as he spoke, his voice trembling.
“It is ya then.”
“You did not see me, Jantipur.” Rankarus leaned his weight against the dagger, the blade pressing into the sagging flesh of the man’s throat.
“No. No, I didn’t see ya, Rankarus, old friend.” Jantipur relaxed and laughed slightly, his grin revealing yellowed and broken teeth. “I did not see ya for a price.”
“This is all I have.” Rankarus pulled the coin pouch from beneath his shirt with his free hand and pressed it into Jantipur’s grasping fingers. “Now go. If I see you again, the metal you get will be between your ribs.”
“Yer no murderer, Rankarus, or I’d not be alive.” Jantipur clutched at the pouch, holding it with both hands. “But Kinorus is alive. And he’ll kill ya if he hears yer in the city again.”
“Then you keep your mouth locked tight.” Rankarus gripped Jantipur’s throat for emphasis. “I may not be a murderer, but that doesn’t mean I won’t kill you.”
Rankarus drew back his arm and brought the heel of the dagger against Jantipur’s temple. The man groaned and collapsed to the dirt of the alley. Rankarus tucked the coin pouch beneath the man’s soiled shirt and pulled his limbs behind the broken barrels, out of sight. He had no way of knowing if Jantipur would take his money and betray him, but the man would surely run to Kinorus if he awoke robbed penniless by passersby. He looked enough like a drunkard sleeping off a bad night to turn away all but the most curious eyes. He could not leave the man conscious. Not so close to the inn. Rankarus cursed, annoyed at having led his past back to his family’s doorstep. He needed to be more careful in the future. Hopefully, that future did not require too many more hours in the City of Leaves.
As he stood to leave the alley, he saw someone at the entrance to the street and swallowed as recognition caused his heart to
beat faster.
“Who is that man, and why did you knock him unconscious?”
Kellatra stared at Rankarus, frowning in worried curiosity.
Rankarus stepped forward, doing as he had always done when his mind would not form words or thoughts, moving into action until his mouth might work of its own accord.
“We need to find another place to stay.” Rankarus looked deep into his wife’s concerned eyes. “It is not safe here.”
To continue reading the Seer story arena follow this link.
To continue reading Rankarus’s storyline follow this link.
THE CARNIVAL
PALLA
SUNLIGHT FILTERED through the leaves of oak and lanish trees, warm against naked skin, a delicious contrast to the cool water, heated by the noonday sun but cooling in the later hours of day. Palla floated, arms outstretched, feet paddling slowly beneath her, adding buoyancy, keeping her suspended in the middle of the pond. She filled her lungs with air scented by forest plants and soil. She held her breath a moment and then slowly exhaled, releasing all her concerns about the pilgrims and the carnival as she bobbed gently in the water.
The carnival quit the road early that day, and after helping set up camp, Palla had wandered into the woods in search of much needed privacy. Life with the carnival did not provide many opportunities for solitude, and she often sought them out by walking the woods and fields near the nightly camps. Her wanderings took her farther than expected, but she forgave herself all concerns of safety with the first sight of the small pond.
With water so clear it revealed the bottom three body-lengths below, and no doubt fed by a subterranean stream, the pond represented too great a temptation to resist. It had been more than a year since she had the opportunity to soak alone in a small body of water. The pools of water she had once frequented tended to be far smaller and lined with iron, but a secluded pond made for easy adaptation.
The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1) Page 28