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

by G. L. Breedon

  “It sounds as though they will be important words.” The bride turned to the window, but did not join the elder woman.

  “They are,” the mother zhan said. “And they are simple words. Words each woman needed to hear and needed to learn to live by. Words I did not fully appreciate the truth of for many years.”

  The older woman looked out the window for a time, seeming lost in some inner landscape strewn with the debris of years now abandoned to time.

  As Ondromead spied on the older woman through the slit in the screen, he, too, found himself wandering along a pathway into the past.

  TWENTY YEARS AGO

  EARLY MORNING fog melted away to late morning dew in the ever-growing heat of the rising sun. Two parties stood in the low grass of a wide field, white tents not far behind them. Ondromead watched the assembly from a nearby tree beside a tent. He had recently seen everyone in attendance.

  Two men in armor departed from their respective groups, a page with a banner following each, one deep forest green, the other blood crimson, both with a single gold ring embroidered in the center. The zhan of the northern Daeshen Dominion stood before the red banner while the zhan of the Tanshen Dominion stood before the green. They bowed, drew their swords, and, at the signal of a tall man in a hooded cloak, began to fight.

  The wind carried the clang of metal and the grunts of the men, as well as the voices of those gathered near the tents, to Ondromead’s ears. The woman he knew to be the Daeshen zhan’s wife clasped her hands to her chest. Beside her, he saw men he recognized as a councilman and a tigan. Her two sons, both in their teens, and a younger daughter, waited to the side. The boys watched intently. The girl looked away at the sky and the tents and the forest beyond the field — anywhere but the place the two men met in battle.

  “This is madness,” the mother zhan said.

  “A madness mandated by custom and one we could not avoid,” the councilor said.

  “The only path to justice,” the tigan added.

  “Surely neither party can be responsible for this crime,” the mother zhan said.

  “The evidence suggests otherwise,” the councilor said.

  “For one more to die only compounds the crime,” the mother zhan said.

  “It may do more than that,” the councilor said.

  “What more can befall us?” the mother zhan asked.

  “War,” the tigan said.

  “Indeed,” the councilor said. “While a duel may satisfy the lost honor of both nations, a zhan’s death is cause for war, no matter the circumstances.”

  The northern zhan’s wife said no more as she watched her husband fight the man who might have planned the death of his brother — a man who had lost a daughter to a poisoned chalice of wine. Ondromead brought his eyes to the battle between the two rulers of the neighboring nations. Both men fought well, displaying great skill and expressing their fury in the power of their blows. They appeared equally matched, but Ondromead could guess the likely outcome of the duel. With two men of equal expertise and experience, the one with greater stamina nearly always prevailed. A slower body presented significantly more targets of opportunity. Failing a stumble or some odd quirk of fate, the older southern man would be dead before long.

  Ondromead sat down at the base of the tree and removed the black book, ink bottle, and quill from his satchel. As he recorded the events and words he had witnessed, he glanced up occasionally to check the progress of the fight. As expected, the Tanshen zhan began to weary. The women of the Tanshen contingent gasped as the killing blow struck — the Daeshen zhan’s sword tip piercing his opponent’s neck beneath the helmet. As the Tanshen zhan fell to the ground dying, his wife, family, and councilors rushed to his side. The northern zhan bowed once to his felled counterpart, then returned to his retinue near the tents and the red banners.

  As Ondromead scrawled the last words to describe the scene along the pages of the endless book, he wondered how the events he suspected would follow might have been altered if the superior warrior on the field had chosen to wound rather than kill the other man? His long experience witnessing similar scenes throughout countless years told him that the councilor’s judgment would prove correct. This death, more so than the recently poisoned newlyweds, would be the act of violence that led to war between two nations endlessly flirting with open conflict.

  The wife of the northern zhan embraced her husband as he handed his sword to an attendant. Ondromead pondered how many years this new war would last and whether the man who started it, or his wife, would live to see it concluded.

  THE PRESENT

  ONDROMEAD WATCHED the older woman at the window. It had been twenty years since her husband began the still raging war with a single sword stroke. He had not survived, nor had his eldest son, and nor, likely, would his only other son. However, his wife and daughter had endured. If the death that day in the field and the murder that preceded it led to a war lasting twenty years, what would the death of this woman’s son, the new zhan, result in?

  More importantly, with this new murder, his need to be present would pass. The wedding ceremony could not be far off. He needed to find Hashel with all haste.

  The mother zhan looked away from the window to the bride, speaking as she turned, her eyes clasping hold of the younger woman.

  “You are wedding yourself not simply to my son, but to the family, and to the ascendancy,” the mother zhan said. “The woman you are today dies when you sip the ceremonial wine and become bound to this dominion in a way you have not been hitherto. You will no longer be a tahneff from the provinces. You will be consort to the zhan. As such, your concerns will encompass the whole nation. You can represent the people of your small province, as I once did, but you must act for the benefit of the entire dominion. Often, that will simply mean taking your husband’s side in public matters, but it will also entail being the more humane face of the harsher choices he will be forced to make. The people, especially the lesser tahns, may hate the zhan, but if they love the zhan consort, they will be more forgiving of taxes and calls for men to send to battle in this unending war.”

  “I understand, Mother.” The bride bowed slightly once more, her face hard and serious.

  “Yes, strangely, I believe you do.” The older woman smiled. “Your true mother raised you well.”

  “She was a wise woman.” A shadow of sadness passed momentarily across the bride’s face, departing almost as quickly as it arrived.

  “And she looks down on you now in pride from the Pure Lands.” The elder woman inclined her head slightly to the younger.

  “That is kind of you to say, Mother.”

  Ondromead pulled his eyes from the crack between the screens. He had heard and seen enough. More than enough. The tingling sense that accompanied important events had barely hummed in his mind. He needed to be gone and back to searching for Hashel. He’d feared he might have to wait a considerable time for the women to leave, but when the attendants returned, the entire group departed the room. As he waited to make sure no one reentered and wondered at his presence in the bride’s dressing chamber, he decided to try the closet again. After entering and exiting its doorframe several times, he concluded that it remained merely a closet and not a conduit to another part of the palace. Frustrating, as he needed to start his search afresh.

  Convinced he had stayed in the room far longer than necessary, he left his hiding place behind the dressing screen, crossed the thick wool rug in the center of the room, and opened the door. While the doorway led to a wide, stone-lined hall when he opened it, as he stepped through, he found himself in a narrow and dimly lit curved corridor, the walls and ceiling bending as though one large stone bowl had been placed inside another. He looked to see that he had apparently passed through the archway of a tiny room, barely large enough for the hole with a ladder rising through it. He turned, hearing voices ahead where the light of a lamp emanated.

  He walked cautiously along the bend of the thin passageway, wondering whe
re in the palace he could be. He ignored the notion that he might have departed the palace completely. He reached a hand out to the large stone bricks of the wall to steady himself in the shadowed light. He could hear the voices more clearly. Two men. One sounded unhappy.

  “Seems a waste of time.”

  “He wants everything checked.”

  Ondromead did not recognize the voices, but he knew well the trilling at the back of his head. Something would happen soon that he needed to witness. He slowed as he crept quietly along the passage. He stopped as he saw the two men standing near another ladder rising up through a square, wood-framed portal in the stone ceiling.

  “Do we gotta climb up there?” the first man asked as he peered up into the dark shaft above.

  “I’ll climb up. You’ll wait here.” The second man stepped behind the first, lowering the lantern to the floor as he slipped a dagger from the sheath at his side.

  “That’s good. I don’t much like tight spaces,” the first man said.

  “Ya won’t need to worry about that anymore.” The second man swung the hilt of his dagger at the back of the first man’s head.

  The first man stumbled forward, dazed, but still conscious. The second man hit him again, and the man fell to the ground, moaning as he held his skull. The second man bent down beside him and dropped the dagger on the stone floor as he grasped the first man’s head, placing one hand under the chin and the other on the opposite side at the back.

  “What’s happenin’?” The first man groaned and blinked.

  “I’m killin’ ya.” The second man twisted the first man’s neck until it cracked. The body of the first man shuddered, his pants staining dark with urine, the smell of feces filling the air.

  Ondromead did not look away. He had seen death too many times not to know what would happen and how.

  The second man grabbed his dagger and stood up, bending down to tug the corpse of the first man to the base of the ladder. He posed it, one arm beneath the chest, a leg twisted back, the head turned unnaturally far. Seemingly satisfied, the man bent down and began to work at several stones along the floor with the blade of his dagger. After a moment, he pulled two of the stones free, removing a bow and a small package of three arrows tied with a string. After replacing the stones, he stood up and strung the bow. He paused a moment to look down at the dead man, then slung the bow over his shoulder, clamped the arrows between his teeth, and climbed the ladder up into the darkness.

  Ondromead turned and walked back along the passageway to the first ladder down to the lower levels, the light from the lantern fading with each step. He’d seen what he needed to witness. The murderer planting a body to be blamed for the murder. He had seen that many times as well. Too many times. Enough to know that it would likely have the intended effect, leading those who investigated the zhan’s death down a false and pointless trail.

  As he stepped through the angled stone arch of the chamber, he sensed a shift in his surroundings and sighed. He stood in the shadows of a high-ceilinged foyer outside what he recognized as the palace temple. A man and a woman in opulently embroidered robes of red and gold waited not far away. The bride and the man who could only be the zhan.

  “You need not be nervous.” The zhan smiled at his bride. “The priests will tell us what to say.”

  “I am not nervous.” The bride straightened her shoulders. “I am excited.”

  “Ah.” The zhan smiled. “Maybe I did not recognize it because I am so nervous.”

  “You need not be nervous.” The bride smoothed non-existent wrinkles in the fabric of her silken robes. “It is only a ceremony. It will be over soon.”

  “It is not the ceremony that worries me. It is what comes afterward.” The zhan’s smile faded.

  “Ah.” The bride bit her lip. “I refuse to be nervous about what comes after. I choose to be excited.”

  “You are not a former priest.” The zhan looked toward the door of the main temple chamber, guests assembled along two sides of an aisle leading to the altar at the head of the room. He sighed.

  “If I were a former priest, I should think I would be even more excited.” The bride looked at her future husband with a slight concern showing in her eyes.

  “Very true.” The zhan laughed lightly. “However, I suspect I shall be more nervous tomorrow morning. We will have children soon, I hope. And I am even less prepared for that than for ruling a nation.”

  “Allow me to worry about our future children so that you may worry about the future of our dominion.” The bride placed her arm out parallel to the ground and bent at the elbow.

  “A more than equitable bargain.” The zhan took her arm as the bells of the temple began to ring.

  “The first of many, we may hope.” The bride smiled at the zhan, who returned the gesture.

  Ondromead watched the zhan lead his bride through the archway of the vestibule and into the temple. The buzzing in his mind told him he had more yet to witness. He hoped it would be brief and, for the sake of the zhan, relatively painless.

  He waited a moment for the gawking servants and attendants to pass through to the temple entrance before sneaking out behind them. If he needed to observe this death, he would do it from a vantage point where he could see what happened. And hopefully, he could find a place where he might spot Hashel in the crowd. Certainly the boy would try to find him at the wedding. Assuming he still roamed the palace halls and had not been arrested or injured or worse. The ideas of what might constitute worse caused him to hurry his steps. After sliding past an inattentive guard, he found a set of stairs that led to the balcony level. It took a moment to navigate the guards stationed on the balcony and find a place by one of the statues of a prophet from which to watch the ceremony.

  Fortunately, Shen wedding ceremonies tended toward ostentation and length. He had more than sufficient time to scan the crowd of guests below and search for a sign of Hashel. He listened with minimal interest as the bride and groom exchanged a series of vows and the priest read long and tedious passages from the Kam-Dju. As the priest droned on, Ondromead looked around the temple, eyes searching for a small, familiar face. How had he let go of the boy? If something happened to the child, he had only himself to blame. Himself and whatever force worked to toss him about the palace — a leaf caught in a storm it could never hope to control.

  He sighed in frustration. He saw Hashel nowhere. Even as he convinced himself that he still had until he fell asleep that evening to find the boy, he wondered how he had come to care so much about one life among all the lives he had seen in all the years. How was it that the boy’s life commanded his attention when no one else’s ever had? Could the boy be special in some way? Might that be why he could be transported with Ondromead each night when no others had ever been?

  Ondromead found the sensations accompanying concern for the boy disconcerting. Painful even. He understood now, in a way he had not before, how the lives of those he observed could be shaped by their caring for others. The things they did. The things they endured. Simply to be with someone or to spare someone pain and suffering. It opened a door of knowledge previously closed to him, a portal through which he could glimpse an even larger world of shared concern and companionship. It pained him to think of losing the boy, but his heart swelled at finally feeling something of what he had witnessed for so long.

  A commotion arose near the back of the crowded temple below. He had been so ensconced in his thoughts that he had not noticed the priest holding the wine, about to hand it to the zhan. It would happen soon, then. He raised his eyes above and found a small hatch in the dome of the temple opened to darkness. He knew a man with a bow sting pulled tight to his cheek stood in the shadows beyond it.

  The noise below rose again, and he looked toward it. A guard chased someone through the crowd, but he could not tell whom.

  A cry brought his eyes toward the altar. He blinked in surprise at what he saw. Events did not transpire as he had predicted.

  To contin
ue reading the Witness story arena follow this link.

  To continue reading Ondromead’s storyline follow this link.

  THE SEER

  KELLATRA

  A WARM afternoon breeze chilled sweat-damp skin, flesh puckering in small mounds against the shift in temperature. Kellatra drew the back of her tooth-marked hand across her damp forehead and tried to slow her breath. She stared up at the black-gray clouds of the sky and threw an arm over naked breasts, more to keep insects from them than out of modesty. Rankarus lay beside her on the blanket in the grass of the wooded clearing, breathing as heavily as she.

  They began their false argument an hour previous, departing into the woods in a declared effort to resolve their differences. They had long ago learned that the children demanded to accompany them if they said they were going to hunt for food or simply to have some time alone. However, if they appeared to be upset with one another, Luntadus and Lantili had no desire to be near them. Fortunately, neither child noticed the rucksack with a blanket that Rankarus had carried over his shoulder. She doubted that Abananthus and Jadaloo were as oblivious to their diversion as the children, but she also did not doubt they appreciated it. Neither, she suspected, really desired to be in a nearby tent when she and her husband rutted like wild animals.

  They had been much like wild animals — devouring each other’s mouths, tearing at clothes, and scratching flesh. They’d begun to make so much noise that they took to biting each other’s hands to keep from scaring away the wildlife of the forest, or calling the attention of their children and friends in the nearby camp. It had been so long since they had touched each other that the desire between them exploded once given release. Now they lay beneath the slate gray sky, letting their skin cool and their lungs calm.

  She rolled on her side, placing her head on Rankarus’s chest and swinging her leg over his groin. He placed his arms around her and held her tight, nuzzling his nose into her hair and breathing deeply as he always did after their loving.