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

by G. L. Breedon

  Kellatra’s mind cleared, and she watched in dazed astonishment as Rankarus dashed through the door, brandishing a wooden baking roller, swinging it to strike the side of the third councilman’s head. She blinked as the councilman fell to the ground, movement returning to her limbs. She saw her husband turn and swing the large wooden dowel at the head of the remaining councilwoman. The woman yelped and made to duck, but the motion of Rankarus’s arm halted, his body abruptly taking flight and slamming against the wall beside the door.

  Undistracted, the deep mist clouding her mind evaporating, Kellatra sought the embrace of The Sight, willing reality to conform to her desires, manifesting her rage and resentment in physical form — the form she always found easiest to master.

  The councilmembers each burst into fire, flames rising up to consume them. The councilwoman shrieked, releasing the invisible hold she used to grip Rankarus as she stumbled back toward the door. The others, two still clutching at their gushing knife wounds, rolled across the floor in fiery agony. Kellatra heard screams of pain from behind her and turned to her father, his limbs flailing in panic as he sought to extinguish the blaze engulfing him.

  After a time, Kellatra willed the flames attacking the councilmembers and her father to wither and fade. The councilmembers became still, smoke rising from their charred flesh and clothes.

  “You step too far,” her father wheezed, falling into his chair.

  “And you trample your only child beneath your piety.” Kellatra clenched her fists, fighting back the urge to stop her father’s heart once more and forever. It had required considerable restraint to spare him the intensity of the flames that devoured the other councilmembers. “The oath is not justice.”

  Her father glared at her, then darted his eyes to the side.

  “Who is he?”

  “Her husband.” Rankarus’s voice shook in anger and fear as he stepped cautiously past the body of the councilwoman to stand beside Kellatra.

  “The father of my daughter and son.” Kellatra noted the shift in her father’s expression with the mention of her children.

  “You said nothing of children.” Her father looked at Rankarus, squinting in judgment.

  “With good reason.” Kellatra opened her hand and willed the codex box to slide across the desk away from her father. She plucked it up and handed it to Rankarus.

  “If you are fortunate…” Kellatra held her father’s eyes, her heart filled with an inexpressible remorse. “…you will never see me again.”

  Kellatra flicked her hand and the largest of the books on the table leapt to strike her father in the forehead. He fell backward to the floor and did not move.

  “We should go.” Rankarus looked around the room, whorls of smoke still rising from the bodies of the councilmembers. He turned to Kellatra, his expression a mixture of fear and awe and love.

  “Yes.” Kellatra swallowed as the recent events took hold of her mind. What she had done. The dead lying at her feet. What Rankarus had done. What he had seen her do. The fires. How could they speak of such things? How could they continue? How could they be what they had always been while knowing each other as they did now?

  “Yes, we should go.”

  To continue reading the Seer story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Kellatra’s storyline follow this link.

  THE TEMPLE

  RAEDALUS

  “BANISHMENT.”

  A murmur arose from many mouths, carried on the breeze, and to the ears of all assembled beneath the light of the twin moons. Raedalus stood beside the Mother Shepherd, a fire burning at their backs as they looked out on the crowd of pilgrims come to hear her judgment.

  A pilgrim court had been called by a woman asking for justice, accusing two men of raping her in the fields by the campsite earlier that night. Pilgrim courts had been Raedalus’s idea, a way of trying to establish order among the ever-growing, constantly moving sea of believers — a jumble of people from different nations, ethnic stocks, and original faiths. Conflicts in such a diverse band were inevitable, long held prejudices impossible to subsume beneath the bond of communal dreams and shared footsteps along the road.

  Moreover, simply because a man or woman had the dream and came to the road did not mean their hearts were pure or their intentions noble. There were also the men, and some women, who feigned faithfulness to fleece the flock, stealing from a few and conning others of their belongings, or in certain instances, assaulting them in the most heinous manner. There had been no deaths as yet, but rape and beatings were not entirely uncommon. They could not pass such cases over to the local magistrates to be tried before the resident tahn as the pilgrims were likely to be killed for heresy upon sight, even along the Old Border Road.

  Unfortunately for the woman who stood publicly against her accusers with no witnesses, no obvious physical signs of assault, and only her word against that of the men, the Mother Shepherd’s judgment had limits. She could not whip them on the woman’s testimony alone, although from the look on Junari’s face, she preferred to rip their flesh from somewhere other than their backs. Raedalus knew the woman, a farmer’s wife widowed in a militia attack a month prior, and he knew the men, town boys more acquainted with nightly cups of wine than evening prayers. He knew who he believed and who the majority of the pilgrims believed as well. A pronouncement of banishment did not give the woman the justice she sought, but it would protect her from ever encountering the men again.

  “You profess your innocence, but you do so from behind smirking faces and shifting eyes.” The Mother Shepherd’s voice rose to carry throughout the crowd as she glared at the two men. “You will be banished from the pilgrim community now and forever. If you attempt to join another pilgrim band, I will know of it, and the full wrath of the Mother Goddess will come down upon you.” The men looked at each other, suddenly concerned. “Moreover, if you ever dare to touch a woman improperly, her wrath will fall upon you tenfold. Go now and never be seen by our people again. May your dreams be barren of the Mother Goddess until your hearts repent.”

  The Mother Shepherd pointed toward the road while staring at the two men until they shuffled off into the darkness, muttering between themselves in low voices. After the men left, she stepped from before the fire to embrace the woman, wiping the tears from her face, blessing her by touching her forehead to the woman’s own, assuring her the Mother Shepherd would do better to safeguard them all in the future. As she left the woman and headed toward her tent, Raedalus traced the spiral across his chest.

  “The Mother Shepherd has spoken,” Raedalus shouted to the gathered pilgrims. “May the Goddess protect her as she protects us.”

  Raedalus followed the Mother Shepherd back to her tent, nodding to the two protectors stationed as guards, asking politely for entrance. He pulled the tent flap aside and stepped into the warm lamplight at her beckoning.

  “How can I claim to defend them when men are free to violate them with impunity?” The Mother Shepherd sat on one of many cushions spread across the large wool rug covering the grass of the camp field.

  “Mother Shepherd, you…” Raedalus paused in his speech as he noted the eyebrow arched in annoyance at him. “Junari, you cannot protect all of the Goddess’s followers all of the time.”

  “I should be able to protect the ones under my direct care.” Junari glared at the lamp on the nearby table.

  “You cannot stop the wicked from being wicked.” Raedalus crossed his hands behind his back. “All you can do is punish them.”

  “With no rules to guide them, what else can we expect?” Junari waved her hand at a pillow. “Sit. You make me nervous looming over me like that.”

  “My apologies.” Raedalus took the nearest cushion. “There are laws in all the lands we pass through and the pilgrims can be held to them, even if we cannot bring them before a local court.”

  “And what becomes of those laws when we leave this realm?” Junari turned from the lamp, her eyes probing Raedalus for
an answer. “What will guide them when we are crossing the Zha Ocean? What laws will they follow when they set foot in the Forbidden Realm? How do we keep chaos from tearing our community apart from within?”

  “You must create new laws.” Raedalus had said this before in other ways.

  “I am a prophet, not a law giver.” Junari echoed her responses from the past.

  “You are the vessel for Moaratana upon Onaia.” Raedalus frowned at the Mother Shepherd’s reluctance.

  “I would not know where to begin.” Junari shook her head in frustration. “When we were Pashist priests, we had thousands of years of sacred texts and tradition to guide us, to shape our choices and those of the faithful. Now we have Moaratana, but nothing else. We have lightning from the sky to smite our enemies, but no holy words to comfort us in our pain or inspire us in the seeking of our lives. We have a star in the sky, but no scriptures to fashion our world around. We have dreams, but no rites bind us together as a people over time and distance.”

  “Then you must give us these things.” Raedalus leaned forward on his cushion, swept up by the passion of Junari’s words. “You may ban me from calling you the Mother Shepherd, Junari, but this is who and what you are. If you do not guide them, guide us, guide me, then who can? You must pray for guidance to give guidance.”

  “But I have, Raedalus. I have prayed for guidance. And there is only silence.” Junari’s eyes brimmed with tears that she wiped away in frustration.

  “Then you must pray for something else.” Raedalus thought back to the words he had spoken several weeks past in that village, surrounded by hostile men and women, fearful of what the dreams and the star could mean in their lives. He thought not about the words themselves, but from where they arose. “You must pray for inspiration. You must pray to be filled with the divine presence from which to make the rules and write the scriptures and fashion the rituals that will bring the Goddess Moaratana to the hearts of all her followers.”

  Junari looked away, blinking her damp eyes as she considered Raedalus’s words. She took a deep breath and adjusted herself on the cushion, looking to him with a thin smile.

  “Pray with me, my old friend.”

  “With pleasure.”

  They faced each other, holding hands as Junari spoke aloud her entreaty.

  “Moaratana, Great Goddess, hear me now in my time of need. Fill me with the wisdom of your timeless understanding. Guide my hand and my voice to embody your will and your desires. Help me shepherd this magnificent flock to the golden shore of the glorious future you have ordained for us. Let me be the manifestation of your intentions. Grant me your divine inspiration.”

  Junari’s hands tightened on Raedalus’s, and he opened his eyes. She sat with her head tilted skyward, eyes rolled back in her skull. She whispered something he could not hear and he leaned closer. She repeated the phrase again and again, louder with each iteration.

  “I am the bright sun of black night and the lone star of full day. I am the fire that cools and the ice that burns. I am the tree growing in the sky and the cloud rising up from the soil. I am the reaper of the past and the future. I am the all within nothing and the emptiness within all. I am Moaratana, the Dragon Star, and I call you now out of the eternal darkness and into my loving embrace.”

  Raedalus released the Mother Shepherd’s fingers, feeling his heart beat in his throat. She began to speak the words again and his hands shook with fear and ecstasy. Paper. He needed paper.

  He scrambled to find a quill and paper and an ink bottle, scratching down as quickly as he could the words tumbling from the Mother Shepherd’s mouth — the words of the Great Goddess Moaratana.

  As he wrote, the words changed, new proclamations pouring forth in line after line of divinely begotten poetry, shaping the nature and the meaning and the direction of the new faith for generations to come. Raedalus wrote as fast as he could, never missing a word, each phrase sacred, each utterance holy.

  When Junari finally collapsed an hour later, falling across the cushions in an exhausted sprawl, Raedalus looked back over the pages he had transcribed. He had been witness to divine grace. He had beheld Moaratana as she filled her chosen vessel to bring her message to her people. He had captured, by his own hand, the first pages of the great sacred scripture of a new faith. He had midwifed the inspirational essence of a newborn religion.

  Tears streamed down his face as he brought the Mother Shepherd a cup of water to drink.

  “Did you get it? Did you get it all?” Junari sucked at the cool liquid.

  “Yes, Mother Shepherd.” Raedalus wiped his eyes. “They will weep in ecstasy when they hear the words of the Goddess that you have revealed to them.”

  To continue reading the Temple story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Raedalus’s storyline follow this link.

  THE SEER

  RANKARUS

  FOOTSTEPS FOLLOWED shadows and dark corners, moving from street to alley to street to tree-filled park and back to street again, always avoiding people and light and open spaces.

  “I see now why you did not wish to introduce me to your father.” Rankarus clutched the box with the codex to his side as he walked through the streets, his other hand firmly entwined with Kellatra’s fingers. He had nearly lost her moments ago and would not countenance the possibility of it happening again, even if she did terrify him in ways he never thought possible.

  “I am a shame to him, and he is a sorrow to me.” Kellatra stared straight ahead as they walked, her face tight with the effort to restrain her emotions.

  “Are you certain we should not have left the book?” Rankarus glanced at the box beneath his arm, the source of so much trouble in their lives.

  “We risked our lives to return it.” Kellatra tightened her grip on his hand. “I will not leave such a prize with my father after his betrayal.”

  “Surely they will hunt us now. The council. Your father.” Rankarus considered that others might pursue them as well. If Jantipur did not take his coins in silence. If he sought to double his bounty with a second reward for revealing what he knew.

  “They will not find us.” Kellatra’s voice did not sound to him as certain as her words implied.

  “Where will we go?” Rankarus pondered this question as he spoke it aloud. They must flee Juparti. Punderra seemed a bad choice now. To hide in the Tanshen or Daeshen Dominion while their mindless war still raged would be foolish. They could try Atheton. The strict religious codes would be a burden, but ones beneath which they could camouflage themselves.

  “The pilgrims.” Kellatra walked a little straighter as she spoke.

  “Again?” Rankarus considered the idea. “To what end? They head for the free city of Tanjii and mean to cross the ocean to the Forbidden Realm. Would we hide in Tanjii? Make it our home? I suppose that makes sense. They are neutral in the wars, and a little more open to non-Shen peoples. We might build a life there again.”

  “No.” Kellatra turned to him as her steps continued to snap across the cobbles of the street. “We need to go to the Forbidden Realm with the pilgrims.”

  “That…” Rankarus blinked, momentarily unable to form a reply. “I don’t understand.”

  “The codex and the dreams and the star and the pilgrims are all connected somehow.” Kellatra shook her head. “I don’t know how, but they are. I feel it. I see the book in my dreams of the star and the temple and the rest. They must mean something.”

  “Many have the dreams, Kell. Even me.” Rankarus ignored her sudden frown. “Maybe they are merely dreams. Perhaps the star is only a coincidence. It is possible it is all some form of delusion.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Kellatra said. “Not if you have the dreams.”

  “I don’t know what I believe,” Rankarus said.

  They walked in silence, crossing a street and following a thin cobblestone lane through a small park, the wide, full branches of the trees draping the ground in shadow. As they came into a pool of
moonlight spilling across the grass of an open glade, Kellatra stopped and turned to face him.

  “I know that I have deceived you, that I have broken your trust.” Kellatra looked up to him, her eyes welling with tears. “But you must have faith in me in this. I beg you. It is important. I sense it. Not simply to me. Not for the solving of the riddle of an old book. It is important to understanding the dreams and all that has happened since. It is imperative to our future and the future for our children.”

  Rankarus released Kellatra’s hand, seeing her wince as his fingers slid free of her own. He raised his hand to cup her chin in his palm as he so often did.

  “We have both kept secrets.” Rankarus stared into her eyes, his stomach suddenly tight with fear as he forced his mouth to form words he had avoided for years. “I used to steal things. Frequently. I stole back what the man who wants me dead had taken from me. Something I stole from someone else. I was not an innkeeper’s son. I grew up here in the City of Leaves. My parents were poor merchants who died before I turned ten. I found a living cutting purses and stealing from drunken gamblers. As I aged, I got better at theft and wooing young maidens, relieving them of their virtue and their jewels. I was a thief. That is what I have kept from you.”

  Kellatra nodded, looking at the ground for a moment before lifting her gaze once more.

  “I don’t understand something.” Kellatra bit her lip. “You killed the two councilmen in my father’s chambers. You killed that man in the kitchen at the inn. I passed his body that night. Why did you not kill that man in the alley today? Or the man who wishes you dead?”

  Rankarus frowned. They had not spoken of the body in the kitchen. Kellatra had never mentioned it, and Rankarus had hoped she had passed it unseen in the chaos of that evening.

  “I could have killed him. The man who would kill me if he finds me. But to kill a man in defense is not the same as murder.”