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

THE THRONE - TIN-TSU

INCENSE CLOAKED the air in a thin haze, sweet and earthy, yet not cloying. Tin-Tsu found the scent comforting. It reminded him of daily prayers in the mountain temple of Ten-Fan-Het. He would likely never see that spiritual sanctuary again — the aroma of the incense as close as he would come.

He knelt on a cushion, his head bowed down to touch the cold marble floor of the palace temple. Once the seat of the faith for all within the palace, the circular chamber and its tall stained-glass windows, had been permanently reserved to illuminate the prayers of the royal family and its guests for nearly a century. The large chamber held twelve massive stone columns to support the height of the domed ceiling and boasted a wide balcony encircling its circumference. While it once accommodated hundreds of worshipers in the past, now Tin-Tsu alone raised his head from the floor where he bent in supplication to his god. His eyes focused on the altar, an ornately carved marble edifice on a raised dais. A simple green silk banner draped the altar, a bowl of water with trimmed flower heads resting in the center of the fabric. Nine granite statues lined a recessed cavity behind the dais, each depicting one of Ni-Kam-Djen's prophets.

Prayer beads wrapped around Tin-Tsu's left hand. He rolled one from his thumb to his forefinger, counting the last of the eighty-one repetitions of the ancient twenty-one-line prayer. The monks of the Ten-Fan-Het temple had not taught him that prayer until three years after ascending from novice to priest. Not until he proved himself pure enough to carry the words within him. Reciting The Prayer of Turning needed to be earned. Not all priests were worthy to utter its lines. The high priest selected only those deemed most capable of fulfilling the duty of recitation.

His father sent him to the Ten-Fan-Het temple because it stood farthest from the capital in the most remote northern region of the Daeshen Dominion. The temple did not rest in that inaccessible mountain valley to keep the world at bay, but to keep the temple priests from the world. A little known sect lived within the temple, its members practicing their one ritual in secret. Those who passed the training and the choosing became reciters of twenty-one lines of holy scripture, the only remaining fragments of a nine-thousand-line prayer lost in the fog of antiquity — a dark echo of a forgotten world. The priests of the Djen-Kyru sect believed that the continual recitation of those twenty-one sacred lines kept the world turning, maintained the balance of good and evil, and were all that held darkness back from overwhelming the whole of Onaia. A prayer recited constantly, one priest to the next, in a continuous petition of protection to Ni-Kam-Djen, The True God, for nearly three thousand years.

Tin-Tsu had been part of those millennia of unceasing prayer, reciting the words while counting repetitions against lapis lazuli beads held before his heart. He wondered if his own reiterations added to those of his brethren so far away in the mountains, or whether he had been forever severed from that lineage of prayer holders diligently keeping the world in balance through the embodiment of their faith. He would have liked to ask High Priest Toyan-Wen that question. He always enjoyed debating theology with the high priest. Their last conversation revolved less around matters of doctrine than the religious implications of his departure from the temple. He looked down at the prayer beads in his hand as he thought of that day.

Four Weeks Ago

The mountain valley rolled to the limits of sight, disappearing into the mist and curve of the horizon, a jagged blanket cast haphazardly over the sleeping form of Onaia. Tin-Tsu watched as a pair of eagles coasted through the air in an uninterpretable mating ritual, vanishing into the clouds, gray mist roiling with the passage of their wings. He stood atop the temple watchtower, his prayer beads clasped between his palms. High Priest Toyan-Wen stood beside him, hands resting on the crenellations of the tower parapet. Shorter than Tin-Tsu, his clean-shaven face displayed fewer wrinkles than one might expect for a man of eighty years.