The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Episodes 1-3 of 7)

THE THRONE - KAO-RHEE

SILK SLIPPERS slammed against marble as they ran, followed by two pairs of leather boots, hard heels cracking against mottled stone. Kao-Rhee, prime councilor to the Daeshen ascendancy, ran along the hall toward the high tahn's bedchamber, two young guardians close behind him.

Kao-Rhee brushed a hand through his thinning and disheveled hair. The guardians trailing him had woken him from sleep moments before, each babbling over the other about an attempted murder of the high tahn, of pools of blood, and night-slayers dressed as sentinels. He had asked if the tahn lived, and they had only nodded.

Kao-Rhee would have rushed after them in his nightclothes had not his ever-thoughtful wife handed him a robe. He tightened the silken belt around his waist as he approached the four sentinels standing watch outside the high tahn's bedchamber. Where had these men been when needed? How had night-slayers been able to enter the high tahn's chambers? How had the palace guard not prevented this? He would determine the answers to his questions and hold those responsible to account.

He saw a body near the door to the high tahn's room, a puddle of blood from the wound in the dead man's throat staining the marble floor. The hilt of a dagger still protruded from the man's neck. Kao-Rhee grimaced and braced for what he expected to see beyond the threshold.

The sentinels standing guard parted and opened the door to the bedchamber as he approached. A bright haze of light assaulted his vision and arrested his motion. The infrequent glow of the lanterns lining the palace halls had not prepared his eyes for the blazing light of the seven oil lamps lit around the sleeping chamber's perimeter. A wall of odor stabbed at his nostrils, and he raised his palm to cover his nose against the scent of blood and urine and feces. In all, four dead bodies littered the floor of the room, their bowels released with the untethering of their inner spark. Liquid continents of red-black blood congealed along the floor around the bodies, a strange map of death, inked in an intermittent hand.

Four living men occupied the room among the dead. The high tahn, Tin-Tsu, sat at the edge of his canopied bed. Blood soaked his gown where he held his abdomen. Cuts marked his forearms and hands. He looked weary, but very much alive. The tall and always worried-looking High Commander Nedag-Tong of the palace guards stood beside the bed. His sub-commander, Tonken-Wu, stood a respectful distance behind him. Blood caked the sub-commander's uniform, a still oozing cut slicing down his right cheek. To the other side of the bed stood Tigan Rhog-Kan, his arms crossed over his bearlike chest.

"Are you wounded, my tahn?" Kao-Rhee bent briefly at the waist, executing the customary bow as he spoke.

"A cut in my side, some scratches to my arms. Nothing serious." The high tahn gave a wan smile.

"Has the palace physician been sent for?" Kao-Rhee turned to the high commander.

"Yes," the high commander replied. "A runner has been dispatched."

"I inspected the wounds myself," Tigan Rhog-Kan added. "The high tahn is in no danger."

"What happened here?" Kao-Rhee cautiously stepped around a puddle of blood, directing his query to the warden commander.

"I was just explaining to the tigan what seems to have transpired." High Commander Nedag-Tong clasped his hands behind his back.

Kao-Rhee noted the phrasing of the response. Nedag-Tong always couched his replies in ambiguity.

"Sub-commander Tonken-Wu saved my life." high Tahn Tin-Tsu nodded toward the sub-commander.

Kao-Rhee examined the warden. The youngest ever promoted to sub-commander, if he remembered correctly. Efficient, if somewhat unimaginative. Kao-Rhee appraised the man as honest, possibly too much so.