"The Dragon Isles Chapter 02 Shana´dun" by Katherine Bates

Below the Plateau of Shana’dun:

Marn helped the girl up and handed her the last of his dried fruit as she started to dust herself off. She was smaller than he had thought she was, he had thought it just the position she had lain in that had made her seem petite. Older as well, he had thought her about fourteen or fifthteen at the most, but awake she looked at least twenty; fairly pretty too, but not beautiful, her features were to sharp for that and he found her black eyes unnerving somehow. Her figure was trim, curvaceous and strong she held an aura of inner strength about her. She ate slowly, like a mouse that isn’t quite sure of what they’ve been given, wondering whether it’s just a trap.

Oosix, a large Harris hawk, fluttered to Marn’s shoulder; instinctively, Marn stroked his chest feathers, giving his usual greeting silently to his old hunting partner. Oosix shuffled his feathers and looked the girl over with his sharp eyes,

‘Ask her name? You look like an idiot just standing here.’

Marn flicked a hand at Oosix, the hawk always had to interfere, Marn had forgotten why he even let the hawk stay with them.

‘Chros quisilics?’

Oosix rolled his eyes, ‘Common tongue boy, she can’t understand “Your name” in your eastern one.’

Marn sighed, that was why he kept Oosix, to remind him to use the common tongue. ‘Your name?’ he asked again, finding the common tongue of Elnoon difficult to form after using Heselra for so many years.

The girl looked up and rubbed the mud off from over her eye. ‘Tehal, like a cat’s tail, only spelt differently.’ Her voice was soft and quiet, but underneath there remained a power that gave Marn the shivers.

Oosix gave a call that made Marn flinch, the bird took no notice and preened his feathers, ‘Tail…’ he crooned softly, then his voice became its usual snappy self, ‘We are in trouble now, your fault this time, not mine, you wanted to stop and help, your curse.’

Marn swatted at Oosix again who glided off to talk to Dilwyn. Marn rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously and looked down at Tehal; she looked back with her dark pits of eyes and shuffled her feet. Feeling he should do something, Marn held out his hand stiffly.

‘Siysa Lusilisiwa, but most call me Marn.’

She frowned slightly but took his hand anyway, giving it a crushing shake. Marn winced slightly and took his hand away, he hadn’t expected her hand to be so powerful.

‘What do you want to do now?’ he asked, remembering to use the common tongue.

‘What is that meant to mean?’

‘Well, I can take you wherever home is, or you can specify a place.’

Tehal looked up at him and blinked slowly, taking time to decide. She stood up abruptly and held out a hand,

‘I think I’ll go back by myself, if you don’t mind. I’m very grateful for your help.’ Her manner was so uptight and cold that Marn felt his hands closing into fists. Forcing himself to calm down he put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her to a halt.

‘Where is home for you?’

She shook herself free of his grip and pushed past, heading up the hill, ‘Home is the Tormdarian temple, Shana’dun. You are welcome to come, but they won’t be best pleased, you’re a little early for Beltane.’

Marn watched her go and then shrugged to himself, letting his hair fall across his face. Dilwyn snorted in disbelief,

‘You’re going to let her go back there? After what happened?’

‘Well what could I have said? Anyway, it’s not my problem. Come along Dilwyn, Oosix, we’ve places to be.’

Oosix looked at the white stallion,

‘Since when did we have places to be?’

#

Shana’dun:

Her black eyes were wet with tears as she crawled to the back of the stall, pushing away the blackened timbers, uncovering what she sought. A large black Percheron, of nearly two metres to the shoulder, around 19hh, followed after her; his boulders of hooves soundless as he picked a way through the burnt wreckage of the stables. The rest of the temple was the same, a black husk, here and there was a fragment of a marble column, a crumbling wall. But it was destroyed; the temple of Shana’dun had been reduced to cinders.

The Percheron’s amber eyes turned sadly to the young woman who had been the only one to understand him at all. Her slim, petite form lay across the finely muscled body of her most beloved friend, a young mare, known as the Golden Girl for the hue of her coat, she had taught the young woman much about the magic of the world.

A sob went through Tehal, racking the delicate ribs and making her chest hurt. The stallion had liked the mare too as a friend; he had thought her a noble horse. It hurt him deeply that she had died this way, tapped within a stable whilst a fire destroyed everything. The Percheron stepped forward and lowered his head, rubbing his muzzle through the dark hair.

‘There was nothing anyone could do, Tehal; it was just one of those things.’

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she pushed herself away from the singed coat, ruined mane and eyes that would never see again. She stretched up her arms to the black war horse for comfort and buried her face in the long mane.

He gave comfort to her readily; he had watched Tehal grow up and they had a bond that none could break and had been forged at the beginning of the Tehal’s life.

Burying her head deeper in the coarse mane she struggled to keep her grief under control as she spoke.

‘But they left her! The cowards left her! No one even tried! I should have been here!’ She pushed herself away from the stallion and slammed her fist into nearest thing she could find that looked hard. The punch drew blood from her knuckles but Tehal couldn’t feel it, didn’t want to feel it.

Distressed, the horse pushed his head against hers again, the soft velvet of his muzzle rubbing against her cheek, calming her anger until she was ready to listen to what he had to say.

‘No one left her.’

He paused a moment and turned fiery eyes to the sobbing girl clinging to his mane. She looked back up at him and their eyes met. In the silence between them, she began to understand the meaning of his words.

‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked, rubbing away another tear as it ran down her face, half-afraid of the answer she would get back. There was something in the way the war horse looked that made Tehal want to howl out loud to the whole world and scream until she lost her voice. ‘Mercinar? What do you mean?’

The horse turned his head way from her sadly and closed his eyes, hanging his heavy head in sadness.

‘No one left her, because there was no one to leave her. By the time I got here everything had been destroyed. They are all gone, all of them. I’m sorry, Tehal. Truly, I am.’

She stared at him for a moment, and then shook her head, ‘No, it’s not true. Tell me it’s not true! Tell me it’s…’ Her words trailed off into a deep snarl as she leapt from the stall, grabbing the first thing that came to her hand, a long wooden pole, the brush head had broken off some weeks before, surprisingly it was unscathed.

She hit anything and everything, her aim never faltering. Doors, barely clinging on to solidarity, crumbled as she struck centre perfectly; walls, already half destroyed, lay in dusty piles as she struck out with the strongest kick she could remember. Everything fell before her. She saw nothing and heard nothing but her rage, her anger, and her grief.

And then she came upon the courtyard.

Four horses stood in the middle of the square under a cherry blossom tree; three were an identical grey colour with blue eyes, their riders all cloaked in grey with a yellow mark on the bottom right hand corner, six swords linked together, representing the sun. The other horse a larger grey brown, its rider seemingly more grey than the other three, though he wore no cloak; he looked to be a fairly old man with steel grey hair, and the most piercing of grey eyes.

The man frowned as his gaze came upon her and the other three horses started to move forwards. The rage drained from her; she knew those riders with their sun sword emblem; the Temple Guards, those that enforced the rules of the Tormder religion and dealt with runaways.

Tehal backed up, turning on her heel, this was not a good place to be when the whole temple had been burnt and she was the only one left. The pathways between the buildings started to fill up with grey horses and grey riders, the sun sword emblem clear in the light from the lowering sun, the yellow almost turning gold. She stopped, surrounded, and turned her attention to the only one of the riders who wasn’t part of the Temple Guards.

He never looked at her, only gestured to the Guards as they closed in around her. She looked at the pole in her hand, she could do some damage, but it wouldn’t be much and in the long run the outcome would be just the same. She let the first hand that reached out for her latch on, turning her head to catch a glimpse of Mercinar, running in the opposite direction; she dropped the pole, what was the point.

#

Below the Plateau of Shana’dun:

Dilwyn looked up as Oosix tilted his head, listening; Marn, slightly ahead, took no notice and continued to trudge on, head hung. Gathering his pace to a trot, the stallion pushed his head against Marn’s.

‘Someone’s calling,’ he told the sulking man, ‘They’re in trouble.’

‘I don’t care anymore.’

Dilwyn sighed and gave Oosix one of his looks that meant he’d given up. Oosix gave another back, daring the stallion. Dilwyn had no like for the hawk, and they tended to rub each other up, always getting on the wrong side of each other; this was one of those times. Snorting, he turned around, Oosix drew to a halt, mid-flight and went into a little dive as he turned around. Marn stopped,

‘Where are you going?’

Dilwyn snorted, ‘If you had been listening properly, then you would know.’

‘Listening to what?’

The stallion tossed his head in answer, ‘Stay here.’ Picking up speed, he refused to say anymore and left Marn to himself. Left by himself, Marn kicked a loose stone from under his foot and sat down on a large rock under the hawthorn that closed in about the pathway. Drawing out a heavy volume from his leather side bag, he sighed. The bag was modified from one that could fit onto a saddle, attaching a buckle and a long, wide strap, he wore it the whole time and carried all his essentials in it. He used to have the saddle as well, but Marn didn’t like using a saddle, it didn’t make for a good relationship between horse and rider.

The book was ‘The Way of the Green’, or Eool Zich ric eool Lusca in Heselra, sometime referred to as Kin, the language Marn had grown up with as a child. The whole book was written in Heselra, Marn didn’t know many other people who could read Heselra; in most of Elnoon it was a taboo subject, Heselra was not recognised, and only the Rivermark tribe Marn had belonged to used it as their main language.

Eool Zich ric eool Lusca was the only thing Marn’s father had left behind for him. He wasn’t quite sure what some things referred to, such as winging and displaying; but you could say it was his bible, it was the code he lived by. It had everything in it, from how to hunt in the correct way, to how to talk to the animals and how to fight as a man and other animals.

His fingers lingered over the immaculate cover, yet he left it shut; Marn could tell it was an old book, but just how old he didn’t know. He knew the answers he was searching for weren’t in there. What do you do with a girl you’ve found and has no home to go to? He would just have to go out on a wing and follow his gut instinct.

His ears, their sensitivity increased by the magic he often used, caught the sound of hooves on stones from ahead in the path. At first he though it was Dilwyn come back, but then he noticed that there was more than one set of hooves, it sounded like a few. Grabbing his bag from the floor, he darted into hawthorn behind him on a slight slope and hid as much as he could with his black hair, fair skin and green clothes in the bare, skeleton like branches.

Looking up, he saw the thick legs of dapple grey horses as about six thundered past, kicking loose stones in every direction. The end of one grey cloak came into view but that was all he saw of the riders. Behind the horses came large, sandy coloured, padded feet with large retractable claws. They swept the stones aside purposefully, not wishing to tread on them. Marn swallowed the fear growing inside of him and closed his eyes for a moment; lions and horses together, it just wasn’t natural, especially not here in the Moors.

Opening his eyes again he was just in time to see a large stone topple over the edge and clatter through the dry brush towards him. It hit him on the side of the head and he fell back, caught by the branches and then dropped again as the broke. Barely conscious and with pain flooding his head he clutched for something to hold onto. His palm snagged on a thick branch, a thorn driving itself deep into the flesh, it barely registered as he tried to tighten his grip and keep awake.

He looked down.

The river lay below, about ten feet down, not too bad a drop, but the bottom looked nasty. He wondered why he hadn’t heard the river from above, and then realised it was slow moving here, so slow it almost looked still. He looked up and closed his eyes, pushing with his feet against the crumbling earth that he lay on. He had to get back up that slope.

#

Tehal dropped to the floor and felt the soft dust under her fingers. Her eyes were still closed and she was reluctant to open them, the last time she’d opened them she’d been confronted with a multitude of Temple Guards all intent on getting information out of her that she didn’t have. Mercinar put his head down and ruffled her hair,

‘How are you?’

‘Not so good, my back hurts.’

‘I can imagine. We need to find somewhere safe.

Tehal sighed, ‘I know.’

Opening her eyes on the harsh sunlight she pushed herself up, shuddering as pain ran across the whip marks on her back. A brief flash of anger passed her over, but she pushed it away, now was not the time to form grudges against the Temple Guards. Dilwyn seemed uncomftable,

‘I don’t understand where he’s gone, he should be here.’

‘Are you sure he’d stay here, it doesn’t look like it.’

The stallion snorted in answer: of course he would have stayed here. Mercinar looked around the small area; he didn’t like the look of this place. You couldn’t see the path in either direction, and the thick vegetation that lined the sides of the paths made entrapment all too possible.

‘Tehal, I think we should leave, this isn’t a good place to be.’

Dilwyn turned to the Percheron, surprised, for such a large horse he seemed worried and frightened, not at all like the legends of him said; but he could see his point of view. Nodding energetically, he made as if to go back up the path. Tehal paid no attention and closed her eyes, raising her head slightly. The sun warmed her skin as a light breeze battled to cool it, and the tip of her nose tingled as she breathed in the cold air. She was silent for quite a while, and when she spoke, her voice was hoarse, rasping in her throat, making her eyes water; though Mercinar wasn’t sure what that was due to.

‘He’s here somewhere, I can sense it; there’s something else too.’ Her face twitched momentarily, ‘Temple Guards!’

Eyes open she leapt into the nearest hawthorn hedge to her right, urging the horses to depart back up the hill, telling Oosix they wouldn’t be too friendly to hawks for a while after what had just happened. They left on her command, trusting her to hide and be safe.

Wriggling under the branches of thorns, she hardly noticed the scratches she gained, the deep lash marks in her back were giving her enough trouble. She looked down at her feet as something brushed against it. Marn. As carefully as she could, she pushed herself down the slope to where he lay. His hand was still clasped round the bramble, but he’d found a more secure place to lie before falling unconscious. She taped his cheek gently and watched his eyes open. She hoped she hadn’t looked that demonic when she’d woken. He closed his eyes quickly when he figured out who she was. She taped him again; nothing. She hit him; grumbling, he opened his eyes.

‘Listen to me, Marn. There is a load of Temple Guards coming this way, and if we’re not careful they’ll find, and kill, us. Now, pay attention. You see that rock there? Focus on it, don’t think of anything else, whatever happens. Just focus.’

Marn, his head spinning from being hit by the rock, nodded and looked at the culprit of his headache. Not so difficult to focus on really; if only his head and hand would stop hurting so much. Tehal lay on the slope just above, glancing behind her she could see the river below; she didn’t like this hiding place, it was too closed in. Taking deep breath, she waited for the Temple Guards.

The click of shod hooves on stone made their presence known, it was the only sound until their soft whispering that passed for speech became audible though the hawthorn and over the heather.

Tehal let her breath come slow and shallow, almost inaudible. The Guards came closer, she could feel the vibrations in the earth, the quiet rattle of the stones and dry twigs.

The first hoof landed on the small clearing above them. For a moment it seemed the rider had halted his horse, but then the next leg came down and it continued on. Looking up, she saw the yellow insignia of Tormder. It was only stitched to the right side of their grey cloaks and it gave Tehal all the conformation she needed, no one even dare wear the mark of Tormder in yellow unless they were an initiated Temple Guard. It had to be them.

She looked away, this was no time to be caught, she’d seen what they’d done to monks who tried to escape the temple; he own experience was that pleasant either. It made her feel sick at the slightest thought. The lead rider stopped at the corner on the path above her, in the quiet she could hear the leather boots creak in protest as he turned round in his saddle.

His mind brushed against her as t swept through the area. She shivered slightly in the hawthorn, his mind was so vast and powerful.

‘Where are you?’ his mind asked, ‘I felt you somewhere. Let me see you, you cannot hide from us.’

Tehal was almost tempted to jump out there and then, let them kill her for running from the temple. But she held her cool, holding her mind steady and placing her secondary barriers up. She felt the Temple Guard snap to attention as he did so. Bad move.

‘You hid well, my friend, but you cannot hide for long.’

Swallowing her fear internally, she reached out with her mind back to, she’d just have to see how it went. ‘Indeed, Sir, I have been trained in your ways.’

She knew the Guard would be uncomftable with this, but it was the best she could think of at short notice. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded.

‘At the bridge that crosses below the waterfall. I like to stay hidden, so I move my mind. As I said, I am trained in your ways.’ Above she sensed his horse move restlessly.

‘Are you one of us?

‘Aye, Sir. That I am.’ This was not necessarily lying, she was part of the temple of Tormder, as were they, it just happened they were of a different rank. The Temple Guard relaxed slightly, settling down.

‘Well then, as you cannot lie to me, I think I should tell you of our hunt. We seek a child of the temple from Shana’dun. We believe she was taken by a man with black hair and a white horse, we guess him to be about thirty.’

‘Thirty!’ The thought broke through to both of them unexpectedly. Tehal glanced down sharply and saw Marn close his eyes in despair, he’d blown it now. Making a mental note to give Marn a good sharp punch, she carried on as if the outburst had been hers.

‘Thirty? I saw a younger man just this morning pass across the bridge towards Alpaca with a white horse. But I suppose it cannot be.’

‘This morning? To Alpaca? We must be gone. If you see either of them again, inform us at once. Truth of Tormder!’

‘Tormder’s Truth.’ She echoed and sighed in relief as the turned their mounts and set a good pace back down the hillside. She turned to Marn and held out her hand to him. ‘Give me your hand, Marn.’

Looking up with blurry eyes he put his hand in hers clumsily and let go of the hawthorn branch. Struggling with the weight and loose earth underfoot, Tehal dragged him up onto the path. Almost about to say thank-you, Marn fell back as her fist landed on his jaw.

‘Idiot.’ She hissed at him, but she sighed as soon as she saw the bruise starting form on his head and the deep gash in his palm. ‘Come on, I’ll get that cleaned up and see to your head. Then we have to talk.’

He frowned but nodded, massaging his jaw with his good hand; that had really hurt.