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

by G. L. Breedon

  The hamlet had once been Pashist entirely, but the loss of a border war left it with a population half Kam-Djen for the duration of the Third Great Dominion. After the dissolution of that Great Dominion, Punderra took control of the land, and the villagers lived in uneasy peace for many years until the town fell back under the rule of the Tanshen zhans. It seemed the local Kam-Djen priests had decided to end their years of coexistence with a bonfire.

  Ondromead took the black book from his satchel and held it in his hands. He would write down what he saw afterward. Sometimes, he recorded things as they transpired, but he did not have the strength, just waking from sleep, to face transposing these particular horrors as they unfolded.

  The men with swords and axes pushed the Pashist priests to the stakes and tied them in place. Two women and three men. One of the men reached out for the hand of the woman tied beside him. They clasped hands and looked into each other’s eyes before turning to stare away from the crowd and the village, gazing off into the distance as though staring into the faces of their gods, welcoming them to their deaths.

  The flames came more quickly than he expected. The Kam-Djen priest presiding over the execution appeared agitated that he had not been given the opportunity to sermonize the occasion. He tried to say a few words before the roar of the fire and the cheers of the crowd drowned out his voice. He addressed his remarks to the villagers corralled together in a bunch by their armed and furious-faced neighbors.

  “Ni-Kam-Djen is The True God. There is no other god and all worshipers of false deities shall suffer the same fate — to be burned in the flame that they might be purified in the wrath of Ni-Kam-Djen. Take the deaths of these vile Pashist demons to heart. There is still time for you to find the love of Ni-Kam-Djen. Admit now the errors of your ways, come before the house of Ni-Kam-Djen in supplication, and feel the glory of his presence in your lives. Ni-Kam-Djen is righteous but forgiving. Abandon your false Pashist Gods and Ni-Kam-Djen will forgive you. Persist and you will join these priests in the flames.”

  Ondromead wondered how many of the Pashist villagers would accept the terms of conversion — and how many would flee in the dark of night for their brethren across the nearby border with Punderra. The shouts of the Kam-Djen faithful grew louder, as if trying to conceal the wails of pity and sorrow rising up from the Pashist villagers. The five priests made no noise and gave no sign of the torment they endured. Flames coursed over their flesh, but they did not exclaim in agony. Three of them closed their eyes and appeared to enter a private inner reverie far from the fire and smoke assailing their bodies. The other two, the man and the woman, still clasped hands even as fire engulfed their fingers. Husband and wife, no doubt, as the Pashist priesthood encouraged rather than prohibited marriage. They did not close their eyes, but continued to look away from the town, staring off into the distant woods, the trees seeming to glow with flames of their own as the morning light touched their leaves.

  Eventually, the smoke and flames obscured the Pashist priests entirely, cloaking their final moments of life from the crowd that had brayed so loudly for their fiery passing. Ondromead waited until the flames burned down and the smoke blew away, revealing blackened mummies of charred flesh slumped against the stake posts, the ropes binding them scorched through. He turned and walked along the path leading out of the village. He could always tell when he had observed what needed to be recorded. Often, he stayed to chronicle the reactions of those affected by the death or the birth or the natural disaster, but these were mere addendums to the necessary record of specific instances he bore witness to with the words he wrote in the book.

  As he walked, he looked back, noting that the bodies of the husband and wife still held hands, still looked into the infinite distance, away from the village. He wondered what their last thoughts had been. Had they thought of their love for one another? Had they, as their Pashist scriptures suggested, forgiven those who took their lives? Had they found peace in the belief that their souls would be born once more into new bodies in new lives where they might once more meet and fall in love? He wished he could record the answers to these questions in his book, but he knew that even a book with endless pages did hold room for all the hopes and sorrows of those he had watched passing from this plane of existence and into the unknown. He could only transcribe what he saw and heard. Only walk and wait to wake somewhere new the next day and begin again his everlasting act of bearing witness.

  THE PRESENT

  “WHAT’S HE sayin’?”

  “Somethin’ ’bout the fires burnin’ their souls forever.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “Wouldn’t wanna burn like that.”

  “Then don’t go dreamin’ ’bout no dark goddess bitch and her star.”

  “But the star is there in the sky.”

  “Dark Sight tricks, I hear. Like a mirror held up far away.”

  Ondromead listened to the two men from the inn argue theology in the way of men who had never heard the word, watching as the Kam-Djen priest shouted words passed back through the crowd in various versions. He didn’t bother listening to the speech. These words did not matter. When they mattered, he knew it instinctively. Had they mattered, he would have written them down as they were spoken. He listened to the priest working to a crescendo of anger and religious righteousness. The lighting of the pyre would follow soon. He looked down, intending to ensure that Hashel did not watch. The boy did not stand beside him. He looked around. The boy did not stand in the wagon at all.

  The boy had gone.

  To continue reading the Witness story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Ondromead’s storyline follow this link.

  THE PHILOSOPHER

  SKETKEE

  CLOUDS THE color of ash on wet slate clung close to the ground, a monochrome sky hanging just above the treetops, fog rising up from the dew damp grass to mingle in a hazy mist, swirling lazily in a wayward breeze. In the moist earth of the road, bodies lay in pools of congealed blood, staining the dirt black — men with gashes across their necks and chests, women with stab wounds to the heart, dresses and undergarments torn away, children seeming to sleep, arrow shafts protruding from their backs.

  “Not long. A day. Maybe less.”

  Sketkee looked up from examining the welter of boot and hoof prints heading south down the road. Kadmallin knelt beside one of the bodies, the back of his hand pressed to the exposed flesh of a dead man’s neck. He stood up, wiping his hands on his trouser legs.

  “We should go.” Sketkee glanced at the clouds, judging the location of the hidden sun just reaching its apex in the sky. “We can march through the night and catch them by dawn if we are fortunate.”

  “We’ll march through the night, but we’ll bury the bodies first.” Kadmallin pulled a dead woman’s dress down to cover her bare legs.

  Sketkee glanced around the devastated campsite. She counted thirty-three dead pilgrims, not including the three dead dogs and two dead pigs. The bandits they had tracked for the past several days were undiscriminating in their slaughter. She looked from the bodies to Kadmallin, his irrational human instincts evident in his manner.

  “They are dead, Kadmallin.” Sketkee waved her hand to indicate the campsite. “There is nothing that can be done for the dead.”

  “They deserve the respect of a burial.” Kadmallin stared at the body of a boy nearly sliced in half by a sword strike.

  “They cannot experience respect.” Sketkee kept her tone even. She found it best to project a manner of calm when arguing with humans about their emotional responses and desires. “They can perceive nothing now. While this is regrettable, were they alive, I suspect they would prefer we spend our time seeking justice for them rather than wasting time disposing of their corpses. Do you believe they exist in some manner after their corporeal demise?”

  “You don’t need to believe in ghosts or spirits to want to bury their bodies.” Kadmallin frowned in annoyance.

  “An a
fterlife? I thought you did not believe in gods or a world beyond this one.” Sketkee still viewed with great fascination the tendency of humans and the other peoples of Onaia to accept as true things unseen and improvable. How they managed to continually delude themselves eluded her comprehension.

  “I had no cause to believe in anything before that star appeared in the heavens and people started having the same dream.” Kadmallin waved a hand toward the sky and then the bodies of the pilgrims scattered around him. “These people are dead for their belief in all of that.”

  “Coincidence is not causation.” Sketkee kept the exasperation from her voice. “The appearance of the star is one event. The dreams are another. Both explainable without recourse to supernatural intervention.”

  “Fine. There are no gods. The dreams and the star are just things that happened.” Kadmallin pointed to the body of a woman near his feet. “That doesn’t matter. You pay the dead, you pay this woman the respect of burial for her memory.”

  “You did not know these people.” Sketkee shook her head in mild confusion. Disagreements with humans, even one as intelligent as Kadmallin, often included distracting detours that led down blind trails into a fog of unintelligibility. The mist around her and Kadmallin would eventually lift, but she suspected the haze of human unreason would likely never be burnt away by the sun of rationality.

  “I’ve known people just like them and so have you,” Kadmallin said.

  “A likeness is not the thing itself,” Sketkee replied.

  “We’re all the same enough.” Kadmallin gestured to the body of the woman near him again, his hand shaking slightly. “This woman could have been my wife. That boy could have been the son she would have borne.”

  “You attach sentiment to categories of being.” Sketkee found herself surprised by Kadmallin’s mention of the woman who would have been his wife. He never spoke of her. She only knew of her from the accounts of others. She decided to proceed in a manner that relied on arguments not likely to involve emotions from his past. She had noted, over years of observation, that non-rakthor peoples, and humans in particular, did not function properly when in the grip of memories about those in their lives who had died. “It still does not provide a rationale for the expenditure of time it will take to accomplish the task you propose. Burying these people might mean losing the trail of the bandits who killed them.”

  “Rakthors bury their dead, do they not?” Kadmallin raised his chin as he queried her.

  “We dispose of our dead for sanitary, not sentimental, reasons.” Sketkee attempted to keep a pedantic tenor from her voice. Kadmallin never responded well to such a tone. “The bodies of the deceased are collected and cremated. We do not hold ceremonies to collectively celebrate their departure.”

  “You don’t miss your friends and family who have died?” Kadmallin stepped closer, his face pulled tight in curiosity.

  “Certainly we miss them. They have been a part of our lives. How could we not feel displeasure at their absence?” Sketkee thought of her father and mother, dead now for octads. She often wished she might have the pleasure of their company and conversation, but did not experience the emptiness that she had heard humans describe in the loss of mates and parents and children. “It is not in our nature to grieve for the dead we have known. If you die before me on this adventure, I will remember you in private, as a great friend and companion.”

  “Well, I’ll grieve for you if the time comes.” Kadmallin grimaced as he looked from Sketkee to the bodies at their feet. “Just as I grieve for these people I did not even know.”

  “That is your right, and I would not argue with it.” Sketkee saw an opportunity to appeal to the more rational side of Kadmallin’s mind. Their arguments usually took the pattern of her deflecting his entreaties to the emotions she did not possess until she could make an approach to the reasoning mind he did. “You must concede that it will take hours, if not most of the day and well into night, in order to gather these corpses and dig a burial pit for them. And while I might be able to continue the hunt for this bandit band after such exertion, I suspect you will need several hours rest, at least. You are no longer a young man.”

  “You need not remind me.” Kadmallin placed a hand on the railing of a battered wagon, a dead man hanging over the side.

  “Apparently, I must.” Sketkee glanced down the fog-enshrouded road to the south, feeling a momentarily irrational impulse to dash into the mist in pursuit of those who stole the artifact. She desperately desired its return, almost to the point of questioning her own judgment.

  “What if there is another way? A way that did not take as much time, but showed respect for the dead.” Kadmallin’s voice sounded determined yet optimistic.

  “If it is not exhaustive of our time, I will consider it.” Sketkee brought her gaze from the road back to Kadmallin. “What is your compromise?”

  “You mentioned cremation, did you not?” Kadmallin patted the side of the wagon as his eyes swept over the corpse-littered campsite.

  Sketkee found Kadmallin’s proposal efficacious and surprisingly well reasoned. They pushed the two wagons side by side near the road but not too close to the trees. She helped Kadmallin carry the dead bodies of the pilgrims from around their final campsite and loaded them gently on the beds of the wagons. They then collected a sizable stack of fallen branches to lay under the wagons and stepped back to examine their work.

  “Do you wish to say something?” Sketkee looked at the mound of bodies with the inherent detachment she observed all events, noting that those most likely to miss them, to grieve in the human way for their loss, in all probability lay dead beside them. It occurred to her, oddly, that this could be considered an added injustice to the taking of their lives.

  “May you be remembered.” Kadmallin shrugged. He apparently had no more words for the occasion.

  Unable to get a spark from Kadmallin’s flint fire kit in the dampness of the fog, Sketkee worked the muscles of her throat, urging her fire glands to action. She opened her mouth wide, spraying blue-orange flame across the branches beneath the wagons and the bodies of the dead. They stayed and watched the fire grow and rise into the sky. Sketkee argued to herself that they remained to ensure the blaze did not spread to the surrounding forest, but knew that, in truth, they lingered so that Kadmallin could witness the completion of the cremation he had orchestrated.

  “Good enough.” Kadmallin stepped away from the fire and hitched the strap of his pack over his shoulder.

  Sketkee grabbed her own pack from the ground, heading along the southern road with Kadmallin, fog whorling around them in their passage.

  “Let’s go find the bastards who did this and kill them.” Kadmallin rested his hand on the hilt of his sword as he walked.

  Finally, Sketkee thought, something we agree upon.

  To continue reading the Philosopher story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Sketkee’s storyline follow this link.

  THE TEMPLE

  JUNARI

  SINUOUS SNAKES of black air and ash twisted and wriggled between buildings as they rose above rooftops to curl around each other in the sky. Junari leaned against the inner railing of the city’s great wall and watched the neighborhood of clay-capped houses beneath her consumed by flames, men and women running through the streets, arms clutching their meager possessions or wrapped around their wailing children.

  “You must cease what you have begun.” Commander Bon-Tao gripped her bare arm. He looked away from the scarred flesh.

  “I have tried.” Junari continued to stare at the wave of fire fast approaching the wall of stone she stood atop. Commander Bon-Tao had pulled her through the city alleys and streets and up the stairs of the outer wall to safety. Only once above the rooftops could they truly see the effect of the blaze pouring over the southern corner of the city, consuming centuries-old buildings as the impoverished owners and renters fled for protection.

  “Try more.” Bon-Tao pointed to t
he flames. “The city burns under your god’s touch.”

  “Mother Shepherd, we will pray with you.” Raedalus stood beside her, looking over the railing of the wall.

  “Yes. Yes. That may help.” Junari bowed her head, gesturing for Jupterus and Kantula to join her. She raised her eyes to the smoke-stained sky as her two guards knelt at her side. Bon-Tao and his fellow soldiers stepped back, faces blended between disgust and fear.

  She had prayed as she ran through the streets and again upon reaching the top of the wall, but the flames only spread quicker, her horror growing with each passing moment and every new building set alight. She did not know why the Goddess did not respond to her prayers for intercession.

  “Great Goddess Moaratana, our hearts overflow with gratitude for the shelter of your wings from the storm of unbelievers assailed against us. Hear now our pleas for mercy for those who would have slain us. Grant compassion to they who would cast us out. Spare the city and the innocent from the flames of your wrath.”

  Junari lowered her eyes, her heart searing with the pain of those she witnessed below, fleeing from the fires she had called down upon them. She looked on, not knowing what else she might do, or how she might unmake the tragedy she had fashioned from her fear and anger. Tears streamed across her soot-smudged cheeks, falling to splash along the distended surface of the scars wrapping her arms. She stared at the mutilated flesh, remembering the fire that had scorched her, hearing the wails of those in the city facing flames, fearing she had tread the same path twice without realizing it.