The Seven-Petaled Shield
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….
*
Coming soon from DAW Books
HE
S
EVEN
-P
ETALED
S
HIELD
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.
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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.
PART ONE:
Tsorreh’s Gift
Chapter One
S
OARING 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 son?
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.