The Seven-Petaled Shield Read online

  In the howling tempest,

  an immense shape took form.

  At first, Zevaron thought it a trick of the rain, a sea-mirage. But no, something was there, insubstantial and wavering, mist condensing against the maelstrom of white and gray. He felt the thing in the sea, as if an unknown part of him, a sense that had lain sleeping all these years, now stirred.

  The water around the shape churned and boiled, adding steam to the tattered, whirling whiteness of the storm. Voices echoed on the wind. The ship’s timbers groaned.

  The upper part of the figure rose above the plunging waves, human and dragon and sea-beast all in one. The massive head lifted, a mane like tangled kelp streaming over the shoulders. A crest of knobbed, interlaced coral sprang from the overhanging brow, arching over the domed skull and down the spine. The skin, what Zevaron could see of it through the foam, was green and mottled gray, patterned with pale incrustations and plated scales that shone like mother-of-pearl. Its eyes were huge and lidless, made for peering through lightless depths.

  The monstrous fist descended, missing the Wave Dancer and passing instead through the maelstrom. A wall of water slammed into the ship. It surged over the deck. Timbers shrieked. The prow lifted, shuddering, reaching for the light. Zevaron staggered, thrown to his knees. Then the ship began to slip downward.

  Zevaron scrambled to his feet on the tilting deck. He raised his own fist.

  “NO!” he screamed. “YOU SHALL NOT HAVE THEM!”

  For an instant, time itself seemed to pause. Although the wind and rain continued, the sea scarcely moved, as if the waves were mere painted images. The ship hung suspended in its descent.

  The immense, distorted head swung around….

  ALSO BY DEBORAH J. ROSS:

  THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD

  SHANNIVAR*

  THE HEIR OF KHORED*

  *Coming soon from DAW Books

  THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD

  Book One

  Deborah J. Ross

  Copyright © 2013 by Deborah J. Ross.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-63558-2

  Cover art by Matthew Stawicki.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1624.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc..

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing, June 2013

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  –MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A

  For Marion Zimmer Bradley, friend and inspiration.

  By grace, all things are made,

  By judgment, all things are unmade.

  At the end of time, O Holy One,

  Deliver us into the hands of peace.

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Tsorreh’s Gift

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part II: Zevaron’s Escape

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part III: Tsorreh’s Test

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part IV: Zevaron’s Search

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  PART ONE:

  Tsorreh’s Gift

  Chapter One

  SOARING above the besieging army, the ancient citadel of Meklavar stood stark against the volcanic cliffside. The sun dipped toward the jagged western peaks, and still the city held fast against the Gelonian invaders.

  Tsorreh san-Khored paused along the top of the wall that surrounded the lower market city. Slender and honey-skinned, she looked more like her own servant than the young second wife of the lord of Meklavar. She’d thrown on her oldest clothes: a knee-length sleeveless vest over drawstring pants of faded cotton. Her hair, blue-black and long enough to reach her hips, was plaited into the usual seven braids, tied back, and covered with an old head cloth.

  Once she had stood here for the sheer joy of feeling the winds through the Var mountain pass, of looking beyond the city gates to the fields and gardens, the livestock pens and villages, imagining the wide world beyond. Now the stench of blood hung in the air. The grassy paddocks and gardens had been trampled beneath the jumble of men and beasts, fire and dust.

  Tsorreh lifted her gaze to the north, where the foothills tumbled down from rocky pastures to the Mher Seshola, the old name for the Sea of Desolation. On the day of her initiation as a woman, from her vantage in the topmost spire of the temple high above the city, she’d glimpsed a line of shimmering brightness along the northern horizon. No sane army, she had been taught, would brave those waters.

  No sane army? she repeated to herself. Then the Gelonian invaders must truly be madmen to have crossed it. They certainly fought with a singleness of purpose that swept through every defense Meklavar could rally. With every passing day, the fighting had become fiercer, more desperate. Although Meklavar overlooked the pass leading to the southern spice kingdoms, it had been built originally as a watchtower, not a fortress.

  Below, shadows deepened. Men darted between piles of fallen bodies and smoldering fires that sent up streamers of greasy smoke. Dark pools stained the earth. Here and there a fallen animal, a horse or Gelonian onager, thrashed pitifully until one of the men reached it. Other beasts wandered free, shying when approached. Great-winged carrion birds wheeled and circled above the battlefield.

  Horns rang out, echoing against the mountain. Tsorreh recognized them as Meklavaran, that throbbing tone.

  Retreat.

  The call sounded again. A Meklavaran banner caught the dying sun.

  As Tsorreh turned, the light shifted, staining the sky the color of blood. A shiver passed through her. She was not superstitious; she could read and write, both the sacred languages and the modern. The heavens themselves now seemed to mirror her fears.

  Tsorreh hurried down from the wall, a pair of maid-attendants at her heels. The outer gates opened to admit a stream of men and beasts. Soldiers supported their stumbling comrades. Riderless horses snorted, white-eyed, and many others carried limp bodies slung over their backs.

  Maharrad, Tsorreh’s royal husband, clattered by on his white horse, surrounded by his bodyguard. Along with the other women, she stood back to let them pass. The smells of blood and dust rolled over her like an invisible tide. So many hurt, so many she knew.

  Zevaron, where is Zevaron? Where is my so
n?

  Tsorreh’s heart hammered in her ears, but she knew her duty. She pushed forward, directing the wounded to the areas she had prepared for them. The city’s physicians and healer-women began sorting which soldiers needed immediate care and which could wait. Tsorreh sent her maid-attendants to help. Two of them looked panic-stricken, but the third hastened to her work. Tsorreh remembered that the girl’s father had been outside, on the battlefield. Where he was now, she did not know.

  The gates were barred again, for everyone who was able to get to safety had already done so. The way was cleared to transport the wounded to shelters and temporary hospitals.

  Although fear threatened to swallow her up, Tsorreh forced herself to attend to her work. Before her lay a rider whose horse had been cut down beneath him. He was Zevaron’s age, barely a man. The splinters of his thigh bone pierced his blood-soaked breeches. He was almost fainting from pain. His lower lip had been bitten through. Not daring to touch the wound, she called for a physician. When the healer arrived, she saw in his face that there was little hope for the young rider.

  After the first wave of men, Tsorreh’s ears went deaf with the piteous cries of the wounded. She reeled with the stench of slashed intestines and the coppery reek of blood. Once she thought she heard her husband’s voice, shouting commands.

  Zevaron, where is Zevaron?

  He was a man now, for all his fourteen years. Like his fathers before him, he had stood in the seven-fold light of the temple and chanted the words of the te-Ketav, the most revered of all Meklavaran scriptures. Since the time he could lift a wooden practice sword, he had trained for this day, trained to be the strong and faithful second to his older brother. In ordinary times, he would have had years more to harden into his full strength. These were not ordinary times.

  Zevaron must be alive. She could not bear it otherwise. He would come to her when his duties permitted. The Most Holy would not let him die.

  The next man in the row was an officer, an older man. He sat upright in the dust, insisting he was all right. His skin was gray in the failing light. When he tried to stand, his legs buckled beneath him. Tsorreh coaxed him to lie down on a pallet. She took one of his hands in hers, holding it as if she could hold him to life. Pain flickered like lightning across his face.

  Her fortitude crumbled. “Zevaron,” she said to him, hearing the urgency in her own voice. “Have you seen ravot Zevaron?”

  He smiled and died. His palm between her fingers was still warm, but she felt the change, the sudden stillness. She pressed his eyelids, but they wouldn’t stay shut.

  Tsorreh stood up just as a commotion erupted at the gates. Through the mass of soldiers and townsfolk, she glimpsed a plumed Gelonian helmet. The soldier rode in a chariot pulled by a large, cream-colored onager. The beast’s mane had been shorn and its lower legs and tail wrapped in striped cloth.

  Muttering, people stepped away to let the chariot pass. By the pennons streaming from the standard—one of Gelonian blue and purple, the other green for truce—this must be an emissary from Thessar, the commander and son of the Gelonian king. He most likely carried a demand for the city’s surrender.

  A short time later, the emissary headed back to the gates. This time, Tsorreh got a better look at him, his cloak thrown back to reveal pale arms, his muscles flexing as he handled rein and whip. She saw nothing of his features, only the discipline of his upright posture.

  “Te-ravah.” A boy, one of Maharrad’s aides, bowed to Tsorreh. He could not have been more than nine or ten, but his face, smeared with greasy smoke, looked haggard. His eyes were glassy. “The te-ravot has requested your presence in council.”

  “I thank you for bringing this message to me,” she replied formally. Then, “Child, what is your name?” There were so many names she would never know. She wanted to be able to thank this one boy.

  “Benerod.”

  Named for one of the brothers of Khored of Blessed Memory.

  “Yours is an ancient and honorable name.” When she smiled, her face felt stiff with dried tears. “You bear it well.”

  The boy’s cheeks turned dusky. He ducked his head. “I almost forgot. I am to tell you that ravot Zevaron is unhurt.”

  Thank you, she prayed in relief. Oh, thank you.

  “Come,” she said to the boy, “walk with me now, and tell me of your part in the great battle, that it may be written down and remembered.”

  Together they made their way through the sloping streets of the market city. People filled the broad central avenue, hurrying to make use of the last light of the day. Scattered lanterns marked inns or shops, although many of the smaller streets lay dark.

  They reached the King’s Stairs, which led to the terraced upper city, called the meklat in the old parlance, and the citadel. At the bottom, the steps were wide enough for ten men to walk abreast, but they narrowed as they rose.

  Set at the top of the stairs beneath a soaring arch, the wooden gates were weathered to the gray of the surrounding stone. The arch came to a tapered point, so that Tsorreh often felt as if she were passing beneath a pair of praying hands. In times of peace, the entrance always stood open and lit, even at night. Now only a scattering of torches illuminated the gates.

  Tsorreh climbed into the shadows, the boy at her heels.

  * * *

  True night had fallen by the time Tsorreh hurried into the chamber that had once served as feasting hall and throne room, but now was used by the war council. It lay within the citadel, the tall, multi-storied edifice that dominated the upper city. During the day, air and light reached all the principal chambers through a series of mirrored vents. The art of making such things had been lost, yet their splendor endured, the seamless, fine-grained stone walls, the exquisitely carved furnishings, and above it all, the window of leaded glass depicting Khored’s Shield. From noon to dusk, a shaft of brilliance transformed the colored glass into a luminous tapestry. Each petal glowed with its own symbolic color, six in all, around a heart of shimmering gold. Now night quenched the Shield and ordinary oil lamps provided a diffuse, flickering light for the meeting.

  Maharrad bent to the map spread over the table that had been drawn up before his age-blackened cedar throne. His robe, snowy wool stitched with gold and black, the colors of his house, seemed to weigh heavily on him. There was more silver than ebony in his beard.

  Shorrenon, elder son and heir, child of Maharrad’s first wife, sat at his father’s right hand. He was tall and well-built, with broad shoulders and dark, intelligent eyes. He still wore his armored breastplate.

  Maharrad’s general and his most trusted advisors ringed the table, as well as members of four of the six great houses founded by Khored’s brothers. It was from the lands of these nobles that the Meklavaran army had been drawn. The most senior patriarchs occupied the few chairs, and the rest stood.

  The lines of the remaining two brothers of Khored were broken, and other families had come to power in their place. Some said that the current struggle with Cinath, the Ar-King of Gelon, had begun with the disappearance of one of the heirs, which weakened Meklavar’s magical defenses. Others insisted there was nothing supernatural, only Cinath’s human ambition. Unlike his forefathers, Cinath did not content himself with harassing his neighbors and the occasional unsuccessful foray into the northern steppes. He seemed determined to conquer the entire known world.

  Tsorreh knew some of her husband’s advisors: the white-bearded scholar who had been her own tutor, the head of the city masons and representative of the craft houses, and the cleric who was her paternal grandfather’s chosen successor as chief priest of the temple. She had less acquaintance with the officers. As she drew near, she saw the ash on their faces and smelled the dust and the sour miasma of despair.

  Zevaron stood a pace behind the general, a somber man named Isarod. Her son’s gaze flickered to Tsorreh. In her belly, a knot loosened.

  He looked unhurt but weary. He’d tied back his hair like a soldier’s and braided it with
leather strips dyed in the colors of his house. Since the beginning of the siege, such tokens had become the custom, so that a man could be identified and returned to his family, even if his body was unrecognizable.

  Maharrad looked up from the scroll. The vellum curled tightly, as if unwilling to yield to the weight of his hand. The casing lay beside it, tied with blue and purple cords.

  At his gesture, Tsorreh took her usual place behind him. She sank down on her straight, narrow chair, wishing she could draw its unyielding strength into her own flesh.

  “The Gelon have consolidated their position outside the walls,” General Isarod said. He was a wiry man, as tough as the bones of the mountains. “Even now, they throw up new earthworks.”

  Zevaron stirred, bowing first to his father and then to Shorrenon. “If I may suggest a way to increase the defense of our walls?” he said with a trace of diffidence. “We have taken in many herdsmen who fled here as the Gelon drew near. They are not fighters but are skilled with the sling. It is their principal defense of their flocks against wolves and scavenger birds.”

  “The young ravot speaks wisely,” the scholar Eavonen said, using the traditional word for prince. His reedy voice hesitated between each phrase as if he were turning it around on his tongue. “In the annals of Hosarion, we read, And it came to pass, when the stone-drake drew nigh, that Hosarian went out to meet it. And fear smote the bones of Hosarion and he trembled. But Xianna his betrothed said to him, Let not thy courage fail thee, for when a lion came nigh to thy flock and seized a kid-goat, didst thou not smite the lion, and deliver the kid-goat from the mouth of the lion? Even so shall thou now prevail.”

  Shorrenon suppressed a scowl, but Maharrad listened with an expression of slightly distracted patience. Tsorreh found herself smiling to hear scripture recited in the middle of a war council. This was, after all, the traditional Meklavaran form of scholarly discussion, beginning with an exhaustive survey of historical references and commentary by learned sages.