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

by G. L. Breedon

  To continue reading the Witness story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Hashel’s storyline follow this link.

  THE THRONE

  KAO-RHEE

  “AS WE agreed?”

  “Yes, my zhan. After the wedding.”

  “Good.”

  Kao-Rhee pulled the door to the study closed as Zhan Tin-Tsu crossed the room and opened the glass doors to the balcony. The man always kept the doors open when in the room. Possibly he missed the mountain air of his former temple. Kao-Rhee did not mind. He preferred the warm breeze from the gardens to the slightly musty smell of the books lining the back wall.

  “There is something else we must discuss, however briefly.” Kao-Rhee crossed the carpet with the repeated circular pattern, a subtle reminder of the true reasons they fought a war with the Tanshen Dominion.

  “Can it not wait until tomorrow?” Zhan Tin-Tsu placed his hands behind his back as he stared out the window. “I dress in my wedding robes soon.”

  “It will not take long, Your Ascendancy.” Kao-Rhee clasped his hands behind his back as well and stood beside the desk. “It is about the plague in Atheton. I have received word that there have been further outbreaks. More villages burned and people fleeing north for safety.”

  “We should close the border roads then.” Zhan Tin-Tsu turned from the balcony with a frown. “We cannot afford for the Living Death to strike us as we build up to fight the Tanshen.”

  “Normally, I would agree with you, my zhan.” Kao-Rhee stepped closer and lowered his voice, adopting a physical posture of subservience. He found that rulers were often more open to notions other than their own when presented by someone they did not consider a threat. “However, just as we cannot risk an illness spreading to kill our people, we cannot risk angering the Teyett of Atheton and our greatest trade partner. We will need those trade routes more than ever as the war with the Tanshen once again boils to a froth.”

  “And if sickness fells our men in the north, who we must now call to fight in the south, what then of the war?” Zhan Tin-Tsu walked around his desk and took a seat.

  Kao-Rhee noted how tired the new zhan looked. He did not appear a man excited for the prospect of the day’s wedding nor the marriage to follow. Kao-Rhee hoped the years of priestly endeavor had not blunted his enthusiasm for the conjugal bed. The dominion needed an heir as soon as possible to secure the stability of the ascendancy.

  “It is a risk that can be mitigated by doubling the length of the quarantine for the wagons and caravans passing over the border between our nations.” Kao-Rhee had already sent word to the border towns that such rules should be enacted in all haste. He could not wait on every decision from the zhan before taking action, especially when stakes were so great.

  “A compromise that will hopefully prove sufficient.” Zhan Tin-Tsu leaned forward and placed his fingers beneath his chin. “What does Tigan Rhog-Kan think?”

  Kao-Rhee realized how often the man assumed that posture when thinking through proposals. He wondered if it were some aspect of temple debate ritual intended to make the individual look more thoughtful. Whatever the source, it did seem to have that effect with the new zhan.

  “I have spoken with Tigan Rhog-Kan, and he concurs with my suggestion,” Kao-Rhee said.

  He worried about Rhog-Kan and his engagement to Tahneff Dju-Tesha. Such a marriage would not be unprecedented — a commoner tigan marrying into a royal family — but it would unsettle the balance of power in court and possibly the dominion. And if, as Kao-Rhee suspected, Rhog-Kan were responsible for the attack on Zhan Tin-Tsu prior to his coronation, then that implied other, far darker possibilities. It seemed likely that Zhan Tin-Tsu would ride to war with Rhog-Kan before long. Accidents easily happened on a battlefield. Were the zhan to meet an untimely end while fighting in the south before he and Rin-Lahee produced an heir, then Dju-Tesha would assume the ascendancy with Rhog-Kan as her consort, and ruler in all but name. While Rhog-Kan’s bloodline would keep him from ever sitting upon the throne, his offspring with Dju-Tesha would face no such difficulty.

  The question facing Kao-Rhee revolved around the choice to commit to Tin-Tsu as zhan, or whether to help Rhog-Kan precipitate his demise. Which posed a greater threat to the long-term stability of the dominion? Could Zhan Tin-Tsu abandon his role as priest to fully undertake the duties of ascendancy, or would the dominion be better served by Tigan Rhog-Kan, who had seen how years of war damaged a nation and intended to end it decisively?

  “As you and Tigan Rhog-Kan are in agreement, I will accede to your experience.” Zahn Tin-Tsu leaned back in his chair. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, my zhan.” Kao-Rhee bowed. “Many happy blessings on this day of union. May it result in a multitude of heirs.”

  “Thank you, Kao-Rhee.” Zhan Tin-Tsu bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment of the blessing.

  Kao-Rhee left the zhan’s study and headed for his personal quarters on the lower level. He found his wife still being dressed by her attendants. He stood inside the room and admired her by the light coming through the tall windows and the open balcony doors. She looked resplendent in her blue silk gown with a thin yellow sash, her long black hair wrapped up in an intricately knotted bun, held in place by several strategically located silver pins. He smiled as he observed her unawares, feeling again the wave of sentiment he had always experienced when seeing her without her noticing. That he loved her more after thirty years than the day they wed did not surprise him. The ever-deepening nature of that love, however, did suspend his breath for a moment.

  Sin-Tiku possessed all the qualities he lacked. Where his mind leaned toward cunning, hers bent toward simplicity in all things. Where he cultivated suspicion, she engendered generosity. Where he clung to the necessity of ruthlessness, she embodied compassion. He realized, as he had throughout the decades, that she balanced his being and provided all the things he truly needed. Everything except children, of course. She had been cursed to remain barren.

  “You should not dally about gawking when you must dress as well.” Sin-Tiku smiled as she noted him watching her.

  “I cannot think of a better use of my time than staring at my lovely wife.” Kao-Rhee crossed the room and kissed her briefly, the attendants stepping aside as he did so.

  “Generally, when you flatter me so, it is to abandon me to attend some grievous social gathering on my own.” Sin-Tiku eyed him with mock suspicion. “You have not found something more important to occupy your time than the zhan’s wedding, I hope.”

  “Certainly not.” Kao-Rhee smiled at his wife. “Merely procrastinating.”

  “Well, procrastinate somewhere else. You distract me.” Sin-Tiku looked down at her clothes. “The folds of this robe are ridiculously complicated. We’ve tried three times, and it continues to slip off.”

  He smiled. How very like her. The attendants held responsibility for dressing her, yet she accepted it as partly her own so as to shield them from possible blame for failure. The servants loved her for such gestures.

  “Did it never occur to you that I might have requested that it be fashioned thus?” Kao-Rhee leaned toward his wife.

  “Had you done so, I would have requested you to tie the folds.” Sin-Tiku smiled at his frown and kissed him. “Now run along.”

  “Yes, my dear.” Kao-Rhee passed into the sleeping chamber, intending to call his attendants to dress him.

  Once in the room, he felt drawn to the balcony. He had plenty of time before the ceremony. He stepped out into the sun and looked out over the palace gardens. He found the sight of the trees and flowers and ponds calming, and he needed a moment of tranquility.

  The wedding set a new course. While he suspected Rhog-Kan of the attempted murder of Zhan Tin-Tsu, he had no solid evidence. And he doubted the tigan managed the collapse of the ceiling in the Grand Hall that had nearly brought about the zhan’s death a second time. A near murder that raised even more questions than the first. Who had planned and
executed it? Tanshen sympathizers? A high tahn looking to vie for the ascendancy in the absence of Zhan Tin-Tsu and his sister Dju-Tesha, who would no doubt have also died in that hail of stone? And how had they all survived? Had Zhan Tin-Tsu’s prayers really saved them? Kao-Rhee believed in Ni-Kam-Djen, but that the god might touch the world in such a way confounded him. But if dreams of a new star might infect thousands across the realm and a new celestial body arrive in the night sky, might not The True God finally elect to interfere in the affairs of mortals?

  Kao-Rhee took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. The true shift created by the wedding would come afterward, if and when the union produced an heir. He must decide whether to defend Zhan Tin-Tsu or assist in his removal. The man posed a grave danger, but he did have the right to the ascendancy. The zhan held the responsibility for determining the direction of the nation, not his advisers and tigans. Might not a man whose prayers saved hundreds from a collapsing ceiling also have the wits to save the dominion? Perhaps. But his faith might just as easily delude him from the realities threatening them from all flanks.

  Could it be possible to do nothing? To take no sides?

  As Kao-Rhee pondered this question, he noticed a high tahneff cross the garden path below, followed by three female attendants in a line. As he saw the final young woman, he gasped quietly. He knew those eyes and that face, even though he had not seen her since the death of her mother ten years prior.

  Peda-Leng.

  How could she be there? How had she managed to enter the service of a tahneff? Now she walked beneath him only paces away. He found himself wanting to call out to her. Instead, he placed his hands on the stone railing of the balcony to hold them from shaking.

  TEN YEARS AGO

  THE SMELL of wet horse manure clung to the humid air as the noises of a small town going about its daily routine came muffled into the cabin of the carriage. Rivulets of sweat trickled down Kao-Rhee’s scalp in the hot, stuffy air inside the cab. He looked out the window screen and across the street to a candle and oil shop. A girl of ten stood behind a table of candles, sorting them by size and width. The girl’s grandfather came out from the shop to place another crate of tapers on the ground, patting the girl affectionately on the head before walking back inside the shop. The girl smiled and sang some unheard song to herself while she worked.

  A thin blade of jealousy pierced Kao-Rhee’s heart, and he winced at the pain. To yearn for a child and be denied through fate stood as one of the many incomprehensible cruelties of life. To desire a child and have one that he could not acknowledge sat as the painful result of a single foolish choice playing out year after year.

  He had no recollection of opening the carriage door and crossing the street to stand before the table of candles. He only knew that, in one moment, he stared longingly at the girl he could not openly recognize as his child, and the next, he looked down into her green-gold eyes — eyes so like her mother’s. She held something of him in her face as well. The angle of the cheekbones, the slope of her nose, the dark brown coloring of her skin. Things only he would know to see.

  “Candle, sir?” The girl looked up with a smile as she indicated the array of candles arranged on the table. “Or maybes oil for yer lamps.” She gestured to several barrels with pump handles along the front of the shop.

  Unaware why he stood there before the girl, it took him a moment to fashion an answer from his confusion.

  “Candles. Yes.”

  “How many? Buy ten and ya get twelve. It’s a discount.” The girl’s smile seemed to kindle a fire in his heart that he had not known could be lit.

  “I will buy ten, then,” Kao-Rhee said. “For the discount.”

  “Tall or short? Wide or thin? We gots wax and tallow.” The girl pointed to the different candles on display.

  “Tall and wide and tallow, please.” The girl began to assemble the order, wrapping a bit of twine around the candles to make carrying them easier.

  “How much will that be?” Kao-Rhee asked.

  “One bronze or ten coppers.” The girl beamed as she passed him the bundle.

  He held the candles under an arm as he retrieved his purse and withdrew a single bronze coin. Kao-Rhee found the transaction transpiring all too quickly. He sought for ways to prolong it as he handed the girl the coin.

  “What is your name, little one?” Kao-Rhee tried to sound casual as he asked the question but found it hard to control the emotion behind it.

  He had never seen the girl. Not even as a babe. He only knew where her mother had lived, not what she had called the child. He’d met the girl’s mother eleven years previously on a diplomatic errand for the zhan, visiting a high tahn in the south. Thu-Daa had lived and worked in her father’s candle shop, but occasionally earned extra money serving tables in the local inn. He’d encountered her there while drinking too much in a private dining room. He had taken to imbibing several glasses of wine in the evenings in the wake of the death of Zhan Fan-Tsee’s brother. He should have seen the possibility of such an occurrence. He had failed, and his failure led to war. As Thu-Daa brought food and more glasses of wine, he talked with her, finding her surprisingly well spoken for a girl from a small province in the south. He had no clear recollection of how she ended up in his bed the next morning and only vague, wine-tinted memories of their fevered copulation.

  He did not make a habit of indulging in affairs and trysts while traveling away from the palace, but he found that he turned to them when his moods brought him low. He loved his wife and would never have contemplated abridging their marriage vows while in proximity to her. However, he occasionally discovered himself drawn to other women for one reason or another as he traveled, and he acted upon that impulse when his desires moved him to do so. That night marked the last time he allowed his passions to mislead him.

  Several months after he returned to the palace, he received a letter from the woman. It reminded him in very hazy language of their acquaintance and mentioned an unexpected result from their business transaction. He could not help but admire the way she phrased things, leaving him in no doubt of her pregnancy, but making the matter uninterpretable in the event the correspondence was intercepted. He admired it and appreciated it. Knowledge of a bastard child with a commoner would not only damage or, quite possibly, destroy his marriage, it would compromise his standing in court.

  He spent several days considering what to do. How to proceed. A more cautious and caustic-blooded man would have paid to make the problem vanish into the shadows. The woman could easily meet a sudden death. Stabbed in the inn. Her father’s shop burned down while the family slept. A poisonous fever from something bad she ate. A wise and ruthless man would protect his standing, because doing so safeguarded the zhan, the ascendancy, and the dominion.

  In the end, no matter how much he tried to convince himself of the coldly calculated course of action, he could not be so merciless. How could he kill the one child he might ever sire? How could he look into his wife’s loving eyes, knowing he had taken from the world the very thing she strove, and failed, to bring into being? How could he end the life of a woman who had shown him compassion and tenderness when he held none for himself?

  He replied to the letter, indicating his surprise at the new development in their business arrangement, but agreeing that it should be explored to the fullest extent possible. He phrased the words to imply that the woman would supply him with information regarding matters in the south. In exchange, he ensured that the palace requested a shipment of the finest candles from her father’s shop on an annual basis, for which they would be paid a premium price.

  That arrangement continued even after he heard of the woman’s death. Now that he stood before the daughter, his daughter, he recognized that agreement needed to continue indefinitely. He wondered if she knew about her father and what her mother might have told her about the man, about him. Likely that he had died. From what he understood, the mother had married a man headed off to war. A man who never returned.
The girl would never know either father, fictional or real.

  “Peda-Leng, sir.” The girl rubbed her waxy hands on her dress. “Me mother named me fer the story of the wind that comes but once yet changes everything.”

  “A very lovely name.” Kao-Rhee smiled at the girl, trying to conceive of a reason and a means of continuing to talk with her.

  Seeing motion from within the shadows of the shop and suspecting her grandfather might emerge at any moment, he thanked the girl, Peda-Leng, his only child, and returned to the carriage. As he rode down the street, holding the bundle of tallow candles on his lap, he looked at them and smiled. He’d spent so much time watching her that he hadn’t counted the candles as she tied them up. Either the girl could not count properly, a notion he doubted, or she had grinned brightly while shorting him one candle. He could not imagine her grandfather condoned such dishonesty and wondered what she would do with the candle she’d saved. Sell it to someone else and hide the money? What a fascinating notion. What a fascinating girl.

  THE PRESENT

  KAO-RHEE WATCHED Peda-Leng follow her mistress across the garden and out of sight. What did it mean that his daughter appeared before him on such a day? What chain of events had fallen together link by link to deliver her into the palace so close to him? And what should he do about it? A notion occurred to him that made his hands shiver and his head swoon. Could it be possible to contrive a means of getting the girl into the service of his wife? Could he not maneuver circumstance such that he might have his daughter in his life, even if she might never know of her parentage? Was it possible she did know? Did her mother reveal her true sire to her at some point before dying? Or might her grandfather have known and exposed the truth? Did she desire something from him? Money? Station? Might she simply wish to know her father in some small way, even if only to see him across the halls of the palace?