The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (58 page)

Kerris’ back arched, arms flung
wide, glowing with unnatural light. The bolt pulled him off his feet, slowly,
ever so slowly lifting him off the ground and held him for a heartbeat in mid
air. And for Kirin, almost there but not quite, he could feel the sensation -
the heat and the cold, the numbness and the burning pain, held fast to the
ground by forces he had experienced once before, but that were his brother’s
life blood. In that burning, freezing, numbing, painful moment, everything
hushed, silenced, stilled, as if the elements held their collective breath.

The Scholar reached out and
touched him.

And the elements stuck back,
sending her literally flying backwards across the rock and into the path of the
Captain, and together they tumbled down the bluff and into blackness.

***

She awoke with a start, heart
thudding uncontrollably in her chest. It awoke the maidservant sleeping at her
feet, who rose silently to light an oil lamp near the bed. The light cast
everything with warmth and gold, but still the Empress shivered.

“Excellency” asked the servant
girl, a fine-boned ocelot from
Sahood.

“A dream, that is all,” whispered
Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu, and she clutched her embroidered coverlet up
to her throat. “A most terrible dream. I had been betrayed.”

“Betrayed? Excellency, no one
would betray you.”

Golden eyes flashed. “It was a
dream.”

“Shall I call for a diviner,
Excellency?”

“No. The star?”

The girl shuffled to the window,
for her skirts were thick and long. She peered out, then glanced back. “The
same, Excellency.”

The ebony head nodded. “My soul
is disquieted. I must pray.”

She made no move, knowing that to
do so would be to rob the servant of honor. The girl rushed to the bedside,
folding back the layers to allow the Empress to ease her tiny feet into the
slippers set there for her. With great care, the girl took the carefully folded
red kimonoh and slid in over the arms which were spread wide in waiting, and
she wrapped the sash several times, binding it at the back with a cinch. She
took the pair of satin pillows also laid carefully out, and dropped first one,
then the other onto the floor so the tiny slippered feet would not touch cold,
early-morning floor, lifting and laying each as the Empress made her way to her
prayer room, which had pillows galore for her feet, and every other part of
her.

The Empress turned and slid the
rice-paper wall to close herself off from all intrusion, and the maidservant
knelt on the floor obediently, lit a stick of incense and waited for a very
long time afterward.

***

We had but eight summers to our credit, and Father had decided it was
time to take us on a hunt. Now this was not a normal hunt, where fathers and
sons go out into the jungles to take down a bushbuck or gazelle or wild boar.
No, with the family Wynegarde-Grey, everything had to be perfect, larger than
life. An event.

The party was comprised of twenty or so attendants and fellow nobles of
other various royal houses. I cannot remember the details, although perhaps I
could if I put my mind to it long enough. We rode Imperial horses and in
palanquins and slept in tents that could house families, let alone kittens. Ate
the finest pheasant and gazelle and guinea fowl, all prepared by servants. It
took us weeks to arrive at the destination somewhere deep in the heart of
Hindaya
, and within seven hours, we had our trophy
– a one horned behemoth with skin like armor in plates across its flank.
It was an ugly creature, and I was confident that we had done our Kingdom a
favor in ridding it of such a beast. I had sent many arrows into its hide, but
Father delivered the killing blow. I had never seen such blood. I’m not sure
how it affected me. I will never know how it might have affected Kerris for he
was not there.

It was going on evening when we found him, playing with sticks at the
edge of a huge river. He had been completely unaware of our hunting success,
never being particularly concerned with the lessons of tooth and claw, sword or
bo. Father had initially been furious with him, but with Kerris, it is so
taxing to remain angry, especially when he had made what he thought was an
important discovery about the nature of river currents, so Father simply
laughed and scooped him up, allowing him to clamber up his back for a shoulder
ride back to the camp.

I had never been given a shoulder ride. Not back to the camp. Not
anywhere. That was not Father’s way. He was the Captain of the Queen’s Guard.
He commanded legions of men. He did not ‘give shoulder rides’ to kittens. I
understood this fact. Kerris never did.

And so, I followed them several paces behind, and the servants followed
me, and as we neared the camp, Kerris began pointing at the sky, claiming the
skies were calling him again. Now, he had talked about such things before, but
no one truly believed him. He always had such an active imagination. But that
evening, as the noble guests of the Wynegarde-Grey hunting party waved and
cheered Father’s return to camp, the skies began to thunder, and Kerris
released his hands from Father’s neck and raised them to the sky.

It was unlike anything anyone in the camp had ever seen, and other than
myself, would never see again. The lightning forked downward and split, just at
the point where Kerris’ small grey hands reached them, and both kitten and sire
were picked off the ground and flung wildly backwards into the trees. Myself,
and one of the servants also, were thrown, but we weren’t as close, so it was
only Father who died.

Kerris remained asleep for days. His mane – which had then been
longer and straighter than mine – was burnt short and given such texture
that it would never, could never be tamed again.

And now that I think about it, neither would he.

  
-an excerpt from the
journal ofKirin Wynegarde-Grey

***

Everything was so loud.

Too loud. His heart beating like
a war gong, the blood rushing through his ears, the breath entering and leaving
his body. The sound of weeping, the sound of arguing, the sound of whispers.
Too loud, for there was also the ringing.

He tried to sit up, to command
someone to stop the infernal noise, but long, strong hands pushed him back down
and he could not see, everything was black and loud and suddenly, a bitter
taste on his tongue, sharp and powdery and the world grew quiet once again and
he welcomed it.

***

Chancellor Angelino Devine
d’Fusillia Ho was worried.

It had been days. Five days to be
precise. Five days since the Empress had locked herself away in her prayer room
and had not come out. Five days of the Empress living on tea and incense alone.
Five days of lying to her many ministers, telling tales of weariness, of
travel, of schedules and appointments. He paced, back and forth, back and
forth, outside her chambers, weighing the indiscretion of bursting in on her
and demanding an explanation, against the very good likelihood that he would
lose his station, not to mention his head, if he did so.

He had not heard from Jet
barraDunne in weeks.

This was wrong, all wrong, and he
had been a fool to allow himself to be talked into it. The falcons of
Sha’Hadin
were all dead or gone,
cliff-side nests destroyed by some unnamed hand. Monks and priests and acolytes
had fled the monastery, and Yahn Nevye had done little to improve things there.
In fact, it seemed he had made the situation worse.

So,
Sha’Hadin
had no Seer.

Agara’tha
had no Mage.

Pol’Lhasa
had no Captain of the Guard.

And now, it seemed, the Kingdom
had no Empress.

Yes, he fumed under his breath.
He was right to be very, very worried.

As if on cue, the great gold and
blue door that signified her chambers’ entrance peeked open a crack and a
small, fine-boned handmaiden slipped out. She gasped as she was met by the
Chancellor – she had not been expecting him there, it was obvious - but
she composed herself well and bowed in a woman’s bow, with the knees and the
eyes. It was perfect.

“Sidi,”
she whispered.

“Where is she?” he demanded. “Why
has she withdrawn like this? This is unacceptable. Completely unacceptable!
There are decisions to be made. Treaties to be signed.Policies to be accepted.”

“She has been fasting,
sidi.
And meditating, She wishes to
speak with you now.”

“Naturally.” He huffed and
smoothed his robes. “Now?”

“If it pleases you,
sidi.”

“It pleases me.”

And Chancellor Angelino Devine de
Fusilia Ho swept into the most holy of holies, the sacred chambers of Empress
Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu.

***

It was noon before the Scholar
awakened.

In point of fact, it may have
been earlier, but she only sat up as the sun was zenith in the sky, and she
looked around, confounded.

The Alchemist was the first to
notice as her horse was following immediately behind the little cart, and like
so many months ago on the carapace of the Great Wall, she stepped off her
saddle and into the cart, the little pouch bobbing with her as she went.

Her elegant hands felt the
Scholar’s forehead, her cheek, her throat. She peered into the great emerald
eyes, which seemed to be peering right back. She smiled.

“How are you feeling, little
sister?” she asked softly and Fallon blinked a great wide blink, making an odd
gesture with her mouth as she did so.

“FINE!” she shouted. “JUST…CAN
YOU KEEP IT DOWN A LITTLE?”

The Alchemist smiled again.

“WHY IS EVERYTHING SO LOUD?!”

The little cart rattled to a
halt, and suddenly, there were several faces peering in on her, nestled as she
was between the canteens of water and bags of rice. The Seer hopped from his
horse, clambered up to sit on the side of the cart, reached for and took her
hand in his.

“
Khalilah,
you are with us.”

“YES! WHY WOULDN’T I BE?”

She saw the Captain ride into view
and he studied her, brow dark. She thought he looked very tired. “It goes
away,” he seemed to be telling the others. “It was like that for me for how
long? Two days?”

“TWO DAYS? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING
ABOUT?”

The Alchemist laid a hand on
Fallon’s knee. “You needn’t shout, little sister. We can hear you.”

“OKAY!”

The tigress looked around her.
She was indeed in the cart, which was being pulled by one of the desert horses,
and they had taken the fabric from one of the tents and constructed a covering
for her to keep her from the direct sun. The terrain was somehow different than
before, flatter, more golden, and she wondered how long she had been riding
like this and why.

So she asked.

“HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN RIDING LIKE
THIS, AND WHY?”

The faces exchanged looks with
each other. It did not look like a good thing.

“You have been asleep for five
days, little sister,”
purred the
Alchemist. “Nothing would rouse you.”

“OH!” She tried to remember but
it was just out of reach. There was simply too much noise inside her head.

“But you are well, now,
Khalilah.
You are back with us.” The
Seer squeezed her hand, and it seemed that tears were welling in his eyes. She
wondered how the blind one could cry.

She noticed her hand.

“OH…” And again, the looks
exchanged. Ursa was in view now, riding the grey. Fallon thought that was good,
but that her hand now looked remarkably similar to both horse and rider.

She pulled it from the Seer’s
grip.

It was white.

In fact, it looked as if she had
pulled on a white striped glove, for the orange started somewhere just beyond
her wrist. She glanced at the other hand, stunned to find the same strange
sight.

She glanced up at the faces. “MY
HANDS? WHAT’S HAPPENED TO MY HANDS? WHY ARE THEY WHITE LIKE THIS?”

The Alchemist reached down,
pulled the shift away from her feet. White feet. Like stockings, returning to
orange just past the ankles. And her tail, white stripes alternating with
black, melding into orange somewhere halfway. She began to have difficulty
breathing.

“UM, UM, OH MOTHER, IS THIS A
DREAM? WHAT HAS HAPPENED? PLEASE, SOMEBODY TELL ME!”

There was a terrible silence. No
one would look at her. Finally, the Captain prodded his horse closer.

“You were struck by the
lightning,
sidala.
You are very lucky
to be alive.”

She did not shout this time. “The
lightning…?” And much to everyone’s amazement, a huge smile split her face. “OH
yes, the lightning! It was wonderful! He just reached out into the sky and
called it down. He didn’t use words, of course. At least, I don’t think he did.
Just caught it with his hands and everything went so so very white… then
black…”

She was giddy from the memory,
and she clapped her hands, then winced. “
Ai…
too loud…” She put her hands to her head, pressing them into her hair. She
paused, frowned, scrunched up her fingers. Again and yet again, the looks
between the others. She nabbed a lock, pulling it up to her eyes.

White.

“…mother…” she whispered.

The Alchemist reached out and
stroked her head. “It is not all white, little sister. There is much orange and
some black. But there is white.”

“It…it feels weird.”

“It ripples. Like white water
over rocks.”

“It looks lovely,” assured the
Seer. “Different, but lovely.”