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LostEggs /
ANewDayDawnsIndex (Continued from Chariots of Fire) Azara found sleep and rest, once she was returned to her quarters relatively easy to come by. Her sleep was not dreamless, but the fragments of images were all of icy cold locations, of windswept mountains, and bays choked with ice. Such thoughts came in waves of sensation until she woke up, not in a sweat, but with a minor manifestation of her elemetnal imprint around her. It was not the full image of the Swan, but a few flakes of snow fell around her all the same. She lay quietly for a few moments, thinking about how this experience of the Divine might have felt strange and frightening, but instead felt perfectly natural. That was a relief; it was going to be hard enough to learn how to live in the Empire. She'd slept noticeably later than usual, and suddenly realized that what had awakened her was the muffled sound of the call to the dawn prayer, half-heard and now over. She got up then, stretched, and performed the ritual prayers as she always had. What direction should she face when she was in the Empire? she wondered as she climbed to her feet again. Perhaps she would have a chance to ask a scholar. Without really considering any alternative, she dressed in her brown working-out clothes, her hair tightly covered with a tied-on black scarf. She'd seen an enclosed courtyard from one of the hallways that should suit, and her dull, slightly over-weight practice swords had come with the rest. Prepared, then, she found the courtyard and improvised a mix of sword, unarmed combat, and acrobatic moves through the small paved space around the fountain. It was odd not have anyone directing her or offering a critique; she found herself running the competition's musical piece through her head and setting her work to that. Some time later, after ablutions, and breakfast, she found herself in the presence of both Eridus, the Ambassador, and Lady Kevarian. "The record search should be finished by the end of today," Eridus said, over green tea. "Lady Kevarian expressed interest, herself in the matter, and has helped with inquiries back in the Empire as well." Kevarian took this as her cue to speak. "The Bey wished to see you before giving his consent to your departure," Lady Kevarian said. "That time is now. While we could force the issue, and have you depart without the exit interview, it is not my job to disrupt an ally of the Empire unnecessarily. "Are you prepared, Azara?" Having put on the dress they had given her, and also her favorite dark-blue headscarf, the one with the copper beads attached to fringes at its ends, she certainly was. "Yes, thank you, my lady," she said. "Good," Kevarian said. "Then let us depart." Not too long later, the carriage that contained Azara and the Ambassador (Kevarian remained behind) was rumbling through the open gates, past the guards of the Palace Sublime. The Palace was the second largest building in Trepezund; only the magnificent domed Blue Mosque was larger. Another Mosque, the Sehzade Mosque, was not much smaller than the Palace, either. There was a small, private Mosque on the grounds of the Palace, a miniature of the Sehzade Mosque, with a slim minaret standing next to the small domed building. The palace however, was no miniature, a large, colannaded building in blue and red, shining in the sun. The carriage made its way to the front, where an honor guard of the Bey's soldiers awaited them. They gave a salute as Eridus exited, and he offered a hand to Azara to aid in her descent. "We will escort her to the Bey's presence," the head of the guards says. "Your presence is neither requested nor necessary, Ambassador." The guards turned to look at Azara. "Come this way," the Captain said, gesturing to Azara. It was not quite the tone of addressing the slave she had been, but it was not a request, either. "Oh," Azara said, smiling as if she hadn't noticed anything, "but I may need to ask the Ambassador questions, honored warrior. About the Empire and how things are done there. If he has to be sent for there, will be delays, maybe even displeasure. Surely there's a place inside where he can wait?" The guard was taken aback by this and glanced at the Ambassador, who rolled his shoulders and smiled silently. The guard waited a moment or two, and then sighed. "It would not do to displease the Bey," he said. "The both of you, please follow me." Eridus moved into lockstep beside Azara for the trip into the opulent palace. "Clever move. You're learning," he said to Azara. She said nothing, but the glance she gave him was humorous. The opulence of the palace, from the marble floors, to the fluted pillars, the geometric designs everywhere, was legendary. The reality was everything Azara might have imagined, and then some. The guard led Azara and the Ambassador through halls filled with jeweled scabbards, beautiful swords, polished shields, and ornately decorated firearms. The highlight of the hall was at the end of the hall, a rather large cannon, plated in silver and gold, gleaming in the sunlight coming down from one of the high windows. The guard led the pair to the end of the hall. Two side rooms were off to the left and right, and a large closed door ahead of them, carved out of some dark wood and the designs accented in silver. "The room here," the guard gestured to a side room, furnished and decorated with red walls, and gold leaf furniture, "should suit your needs, Ambassador. I will send a servant to your needs while Azara meets with the Bey." His eyes flickered to Azara as well as the Ambassador. Azara's spirits had been rather lowered by the displays of architectural and martial splendor, despite her efforts to not be too impressed with material things. They were, after all, things of the place she had always called home - things she would be leaving behind soon. "Thank you," she said, more or less to them both. Then she eyed the large door, unsure of whether she was supposed to be going through there, or somewhere else. The guard knocked on the Door once, and opened it. "Milord Bey, I present to you ..." he paused, looked at Azara and then looked within. "Azara the Dragon Blooded." The guard made a motion for Azara to head into the large, opulent meeting room. She gave him a slight shrug and a look that said, "I have no idea what to call me either," and went in. The room was a bulging quadrilateral in shape, a curving outward portion of the palace walls at the far end, with windows that looked out on one of the interior gardens. Standing in the light streaming through the windows, as if to dazzle her, was the Bey himself. He moved out of the light. "Welcome, Azara," he said. "I am glad we will have this chance to speak before you try and rush off to the Empire. "I am hoping," he moved to a large padded seat in front of a table with a large metal pot and two cups, "to convince you otherwise. Or at least to learn more about this ... blessed event." Her startled glance leaped from the floor to his face. He looked very different without his formal headdress, and his short, dark hair was visibly peppered with gray, unlike his beard. "I really do have to go, my lord," she said, almost as if reminding herself. She averted her gaze again and moved hesitantly toward the table, alert for clues to how to behave in these very unusual circumstances. Should she offer to pour the tea? Or was she a guest? The intent look on the Bey's face, as he looked fr0m Azara, to the tea, and back again, lasted a moment. He cleared his throat. "I do find tea to be a pleasant way to open a discussion. I know that the Imperials have their own ideas about tea, pale green brews with no strength, no fire. All delicacy and no steel." He caged his fingers together, and watched Azara intently. So, no servants then. She wondered if the Bey had ever actually poured tea himself. "I don't know about the Imperials' tea, my lord," she said, matter-of-factly picking up the teapot and preparing to pour, "but I've heard that tea is as necessary to talk as breathing is." She smiled a little, most of her attention on not spilling anything with the unfamiliar teapot. The Bey watched on, indulgently as Azara poured tea for the both of them. He took the cup once she was done with pouring for both. "It is good," he said after a sip. "It is good that you still remember who and what you are," he clarified, sipping the tea. "I wondered...how you felt, now, after that display, that revelation. "Can you believe some of my council suggested that you should be imprisoned or worse for doing what you did. They, especially the most pious, couched it in terms of suggestions, of course. But you did pose a conundrum. So I will ask you this carefully." His eyes regarded her. "How do you feel? What do you feel? Are you ... still human?" Azara listened soberly, and was plainly a little unhappy about the reactions the event had provoked in some men. At the last question, though - she didn't know whether to be shocked or appalled. "What else could I be?" she asked, disturbed. "I think I don't understand the question, my lord." "This whole business of manifesting the energies of a Dragon," the Bey said, waving his hand. "What the Dragon Blooded really are is something that have been debated in my councils, and my father's councils, and likely his father's in turn. We understand what magic is, but what you did. What you can do, and what they can do is more out of the tales of Jinni and Ifrits than mortal men. "So the question is ... do you still feel human, Azara?" "Oh, I do," she said positively, but with her brows knit in thought. "It never occurred to me to think that they were anything but magicians or sorcerors," she admitted. "From what they say, however, they hold that certain families have been blessed many times, over many generations, with these powers. And that the powers are granted by their 'Dragons' as a blessing to those who are somehow worthy. It seems they worship these Dragons as if they were gods," she noted disapprovingly. "In short, my lord, what they say tells me that the term 'Dragon Blooded' really means 'of a bloodline blessed by the Dragons,' not that they are dragons themselves." "They are infidels in the sense that they offer these Dragons worship," the Bey agreed. "It is nonsense, of course, any such intermediary power like the Dragons must be like the Djinn, or the Ifrit. Individually powerful, of course, perhaps more powerful than mortal man. But a God? No." The Bey shook his head. He followed this with a long, satisfactory, drink of his cup of tea. The Bey looked reflective. Azara nodded agreement with these sentiments, concealing her relief that he was taking this information so calmly. Others, she suspected, might not be so sanguine. "May it be that, in a year and a day, you feel the same way. If I cannot persuade you to come, I ask that you come, every year, on the anniversary of your victory, and tell me a tale of these Dragon Blooded, and the glories you have accomplished. "Will you do this for me, Azara?" "I can promise to try, my lord," she said earnestly. "It may not be possible to come every year - if I have to travel a very long distance, or if the Dwimmerlaik attack again ..." "Do it," The Bey said fiercely. "You were born here, or were raised here. I don't believe what I've been told that you were abandoned here as a baby, that you really belong with the Empire. You're a daughter of my realm. You won the Tricathelon. No matter how talented a Dragon Blooded is, if you're not from here, you couldn't possibly have won." The conviction in the Bey's voice was absolute, like a pillar of faith. "And you are going forth among the infidels. It would be good for you, and for us, to return here and again, where you came from. "Swear that you will, and I will not oppose your departure. You won't have to get the Ambassador sitting and eating Lokumu to come here and argue for your release." His vehemence made her blush, though she couldn't have said why. Daring to raise her eyes to his face again, she said, "I do swear that I will try to return here every year, on this anniversary, my lord." This seemed to satisfy the Bey. "It will be good to see you, on a yearly basis. I can tell you who has won the Tricathelon, and you can tell me of the doings of the Empire, from the perspective of someone from outside of it." He sipped his tea for a moment. "I have no doubt that the Ambassador sometimes thinks less of us. But he is not one of us. You are." He sipped his tea again and fell into quiet. His eyes, however, watched and observed Azara with the care that it was said he had for his flock of peacocks, or the other creatures of his menagerie. Azara calmed again, though her face still felt a bit warm. Casting about for something to say, she offered, "They tell me that the powers sometimes skip a generation, or more, and not everyone from the bloodlines is so blessed, as they call it. I expect that must be difficult for those who aren't," she added reflectively, thinking with sympathy of how those who weren't 'worthy' must feel. "I can imagine that the Empire doesn't talk about these ones who are not, as you say, blessed in their bloodlines. I can't imagine they let them out of their Gossamer World much, or else the myth of their power and blessings would be put to paid. Does make you wonder how these things wind up getting picked, or don't. "No matter," the Bey waved a hand casually. "It is all Glory for The One. And I will not tarry you any further, little one." He smiled. "We have an arrangement, and a deal, and you can go forward thereby. I am sure you will succeed, and return to tell me of it." He put down his tea cup, half empty, and looked on Azara with pride. "Finish your tea, and you may take your leave of us." She sipped her tea once more, stared into the dregs for a moment, and set the cup aside. Getting to her feet, she hesitated for a moment, then bowed deeply. "Thank you for your faith in me, my lord," she said quietly. "I will strive to show the Empire that not every strength comes from these 'blessings.'" Protocol required that she back out of the room with her eyes lowered to the floor; having no idea how Imperials navigated that issue, Azara followed what she knew, letting herself out the door without looking as gracefully as if she did this every day of the week. Azara's grace appeared to have satisfied the Bey, as he did not comment, or stop Azara fr0m making it to the door, and out of it again, and out of his presence entirely. Outside in the hall, her first priority was to collect the Ambassador and go. Since she had to leave, she wanted to do it quickly. With all the new things she would have to see and learn, it might be easier to be tranquil about this sudden change. The Ambassador proved to be where the guard had left him, the red-walled room with all the gold leaf furniture. He was looking at a codex of some kind, but closed it with a relief look on his face when he saw Azara come in. "No last minute rescues necessary?" Eridus said. abandoning the book, and pot of tea and tea cup. "Or do we need to hurry before he changes his mind?" "No," Azara said, half-wishing that she'd been wise enough to imagine she might need help, instead of just trying to prevent the officious guard fr0m offending the Empire. "But I'm not sure about everyone else here," she added. "So I think leaving soonest would be a good idea." "Then we get you out of the jurisdiction soonest," Eridus said. An hour and a half later, Azara was in a carriage with the Ambassador, and with Lady Kevarian, heading to an old hillside fort near the city. It mostly wasn't used anymore for any real defensive purposes, more of a monument to an earlier era of history than a modern defensive structure. Azara watched the familiar landscape pass by, holding on to the basket the servants had found for her to carry her things in, then turned to her companions when they started speaking. "We're going to bring you through this Door," Kevarian said, "because the Door you saw in the Embassy is not one that the Bey knows about, and it opens to an inconvenient portion of the Staircase. This Door we are going through opens right into the Threshold, and so it's a short walk fr0m there to the Empire. So, we do what the Bey expects, instead of revealing our hand. "Speaking of revelations," Kevarian said. "I have news about finding out who your parents were." "You did?" Eridus said. "Why didn't you say before?" "I only learned some of the details," Kevarian says. She looked at Azara. "Do you want to hear what I have of it, now? Or perhaps once you are settled on the far end of our journey?" "Oh, I would like to know now, please," Azara said eagerly. Kevarian regarded Azara for a moment and then she nodded. "Very well." She pulled out a folder and opened it. She took something out and handed it to Azara. It looked like a miniature painting of a woman who appeared a few years older than Azara, but the resemblance was otherwise clear. A similar nose, the setting and color of the eyes. The same intensity of look Azara had seen in herself when allowed to see herself in a mirror. Eridus craned his neck to look at the image, too. "Ledaal Miste Scriptor," Kevarian says. "Theological scholar and researcher of Monotheistic Gossamer world cultures. She was last seen east of the capital when the Dwimmerlaik came through and invaded. I have a letter that she sent to her mother, Ledaal Eunice, that she was in the early stages of pregnancy but wished to continue her work at Aaron's Peak. Contact was lost with her during the early stages of the last Dwimmerlaik War." "A scholar," Azara murmured, fascinated. "And the father?" Eridus said. "Miste was considered not of high rank, herself the child of Dynasts who manifested as a Dragon Blooded. She was thus married to a Dynast, Ledaal Josiah. He did not accompany his wife on her expedition. He was injured during the War, and now manages a small farm north of Arjuf. He's alive, Azara." "Oh!" Azara said, looking at Kevarian with a mix of astonishment, hope, and concern. "Can we be - are you really certain of this? Is there some divination that can be done? Or," she faltered, "have you already done that? Is that how you know these things, when you were here in Trepezund today?" "I spent enough time in your presence today to have your psychic signature," Kevarian replied. "Matching it to Miste was merely a matter of contacting a cousin in the records portion of House Ledaal and asking permission to access the imprint they had of Miste. The correspondence of the match, combined with the resemblance, satisfies me. It satisfies your grandmother, too," she said to Azara. "We are also officially related. We are seventh cousins, twice removed on my mother's side, and on your mother's side. I believe our relation on our paternal sides exists but is more distant than that." "That is a fair amount of certainty," Eridus said, glancing at Azara. "You will remember that you can choose what House you join. That is what her Glory mandated." "Of course," Kevarian said. "Although House Ledaal hopes that you will take your place as your mother's heir, and your grandmother hopes so in particular," she added. She looked outside the window. "And it would appear we have arrived at our destination." continue from 10/10 |
