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

THE SEER - KELLATRA

A CHILL night breeze carried the scents of dying hearth fires, horse droppings in the street, and early summer flowers from a box beneath the windowsill. Kellatra stood at the window of her bedchamber and breathed deeply, as much to take in the fragrances of the night air as to cleanse the palate of her mind. She appreciated the discordant combination of aromas. She considered them an immeasurable improvement over the odors that used to fill the air day and night before the town raised the taxes necessary to finally bury the refuse canals that ran alongside the streets. Her husband, Rankarus, had believed the expense to be a waste of time and coin. She had assured him that more sanitary roads meant a tidier inn, which translated into less work and more patrons and increased profit. Her predictions proved correct and, as usual, he now feigned support for the idea from the first.

She turned from the window to the sound of her husband's gentle snoring in the bed nearby. His arms stretched over his head, his mouth hanging open, he appeared oddly childlike, and she experienced an upwelling of emotion as she gazed at him. Ten years, two children, a bustling inn, and even when he looked foolish in sleep, she marveled at their love. No one had told her that this love might grow like an oak tree planted in their hearts, gaining strength and size with each passing year.

Rankarus snorted and rolled over as though responding to Kellatra's thoughts. She turned back to the street, jealous at her husband's easy slumber, wondering if she should wake him to see the new star shining above the rooftops of the small town. She had been dreaming of the star when she woke to see it in the sky outside the window. It frightened her, witnessing reality bending to the details of the dream. She wondered if Rankarus dreamed the dream. He said he did not. He called it a form of mob delusion, like people believing they saw monsters in the shadowed woods surrounding the town because others claimed to have seen the mysterious creatures lurking between the trees. She had shared her experience of the dream with him, but he seemed unconcerned. "Suggestion," he had said. She had heard others speak of the dream and had one similar herself. Nothing to cause worry. She worked too hard, was all. Then he had kissed her and taken her apron and made her play with the children for an hour while he tended to the patrons of the inn that day. She had not bothered telling him that the dream came every night. She pondered what other aspects of the dream would impinge upon the world in subsequent evenings.

Kellatra stared at the star again, squinting to see it more clearly, its brilliant blood-red hue set against a sea-wash of lesser lights, giving the night sky a mesmerizing quality. Her mind and senses expanded in a peaceful wave as she contemplated the new star. What could it mean? Could it be proof of this new god? Would the old gods also break their eternity of silence? As a devout Pashist, she had chosen her own personal deity among the pantheon as the focus of her daily worship. Some changed their primary god frequently, often with a life passage — as when transitioning from childhood to adulthood, or with marriage, or the birth of a child, or upon the death of a loved one — aligning themselves with the god most appropriate to their needs. Kellatra chose Dori, the goddess of justice, at the age of nine and had never reconsidered the decision. Might her goddess now be planning a similar move to express her will in the world? Would all the gods step forward now? These questions brought another to her mind. Might not even the god of the neighboring warring dominions arise to speak to his followers, urging them to once more conquer the realm and extinguish the other faiths in a new Great Dominion?

A more important question came to her: Why now? Thousands of years of silence and a god suddenly speaks to the world? What had changed? And in changing, what would continue to alter?

A soft whistle drew her attention from the heavens back to the street. A man in a long, gray cloak looked up at her from beneath her window. It took her a moment to shift her mind and recognize the face beneath the cowl. Menanthus. Her father's closest friend. She had not seen him since ... since a long time. Her heart beat faster at the sight of the salt-haired man. What could he be doing here in the town of Nahan Kana, in the Punderra Dominion, so far from the City of Leaves in the Juparti Dominion? How had he found her? He extended an arm, pointing around the back of the inn.

Kellatra glanced at Rankarus in the bed and hoped he would not wake. She grabbed a woolen blanket from a nearby chair and wrapped it around her shoulders before quietly slipping through the door of the bedroom and into the hall. Her bare feet made little noise along the old floorboards and the stairs to the ground floor. She walked in silence through the darkened main chamber of the inn, down the narrow passage leading to the kitchen, and past the counter and cutting boards to the back door. She lifted the door brace, her hand resting on the handle as she calmed her mind and sought a place of inner stillness ... in case.

When she opened the door, Menanthus stood before her. She had not seen him in more than ten years, but his face bespoke hardships that suggested twice that number had passed. He had possessed two ears when she saw him last. Now his head held only one. He shifted his stance in the moonlight, the new star above his gray cowl, the chickens in the nearby coop clucking at the disturbance of his arrival, the pigs in the pen grunting in their sleep.

"I am sorry." The old man's voice sounded weary and filled with regret.

"How did you find me?" Kellatra felt the urge to invite him in and offer him wine and a meal. She ignored it.

"Effort and luck." Menanthus glanced behind him to the empty alley at the back of the inn.

"Why have you sought me out?" Kellatra had hoped to never see this man again. Neither he nor anyone else from the time she had known him.

"I had no choice." Menanthus licked his lips in obvious unease.

"We always have choices." Kellatra heard the harshness in her voice, a part of her marveling at how long-dead emotions could so easily re-bloom in one's heart with the bright light of memory and the water of regret.

"I had nowhere else to turn." Menanthus looked behind his shoulder again. "And I have no time." He pulled a leather-wrapped parcel from beneath the folds of his cloak. He extended the mysterious package toward Kellatra with shaking hands.

"What is it?" Kellatra did not raise her own hands to accept the object.

"Do not open it." The bundle trembled in the old man's grasp. "Do not show it to anyone. I will come back for it."

"I want nothing to do with this." Kellatra stepped back, grabbing the edge of the door, preparing to close it.

"I defended you." Menanthus's anger rose in his voice. "I was the only one to support you. Even your own father did not stand for you."

Kellatra hesitated. The truth of the words gave her pause. She did owe him a debt. Possibly her life.

"How long?"

"A few days. No more." Menanthus extended his hands again.

As Kellatra accepted the package into her palms, she realized the leather wrapping concealed a small wooden box.

"Thank you." Menanthus nodded his gratitude and turned without another word, fleeing around the corner of the inn and back into the shadows of the night.

Kellatra stared after the man for a moment. Then she looked up and down the alley to reassure herself that none of her neighbors had risen from their beds to their windows, roused by voices in the night. She took one quick last look at the new star hovering above the awning of the adjacent house, then closed the door and leaned back against its black lacquered timbers. She held the leather-bound box away from her body as though it might attack her.

What was in the box that brought Menanthus out of the shadows of her past to her doorstep in the middle of the night? And could it be coincidence that both he and the star arrived on the same evening at nearly the same time? She wished she could run upstairs and rouse Rankarus, show him the box, and recount the cryptic conversation with the old man from her life before they met. But to do so meant telling him the truth. That, she could not do.

Instead, she opened the trap door to the rootcellar, pausing with each squeal of the hinges. She lit a lantern that hung onthe kitchen wall and carefully climbed down the ladder into the musty darkness.She hid the mysterious box beneath one of the slate stones lining the floor ofthe subterranean storeroom. Then she mounted the ladder out of the cellar,closed the hatch, blew out the lantern, wiped the dust from her bare feet withan old rag, returned upstairs to her room, and slid into bed beside herhusband. She draped her arm around his midriff and listened to him snore,knowing she would never return to sleep that night, as much for the excitementthe old man's arrival sent buzzing through her head, as for the fear that sleepwould once more bring the dream and that waking again might summon more of thatdream to life.