Ring of Five Dragons

1 Owl Sixteen yearsa lifetimelater, Bartta, now a small, dark, hunched figure not unlike a lorg, found herself on the same path. The sky was cloudless, of a blue so achingly rich it bore the appearance of fresh lacquer. The sun was in its waning hours, magnified by the atmosphere, so that its curious purple spot seemed like the pupil of an eye. Miina's Eye, the Ramahan believed, that saw and recorded everything. Borne upon the air was the scent of the kuello-firs, and when Bartta's sandals crunched the brown needles she felt again that tiny shiver of recognition of things apart. In an instant the afternoon she had killed the lorg came rushing back to her. She paused, looking for the dry gully and the large flat rock of a golden hue under which, years ago, she had found the lorg. Bartta wore the long, persimmon-colored robes of raw silk reserved for the konara, senior priestesses of the Dea Cretan, the Ramahan High Council. In the old days, before the coming of the V'ornn, the Ramahan were ruled by one woman: Mother. That was her title, which she inherited as a child, when her name was taken from her forever. At that time, the Ramahan had been made up of equal numbers of women and menif such a thing could be imagined! The men had been purged after their innate greed led to the loss of The Pearl, the Sorcerous Rappa had been destroyed, and the Dea Cretan was formed to ensure that the violence that had engulfed the Order would never again occur, that the sorcery that had been inextricably bound into Ramahan society was carefully weeded out, strand by strand. As Bartta moved along the path she was immersed in a halo of myrrh, oils of clove, and clary-sage, the incense she burned when she prayed. These spices gave her strength of conviction and clarity of thought. She tapped her forefinger against her tin, unpainted lips. Where was that rock? She was close to it, she knew that much. The passage of time and the vagaries of her memory caused her to walk past it twice. Each time, however, her Ramahan training compelled her to turn around, and at last she recognized the rock, whose golden color flashed only here and there beneath a dull layer of shale dust and kuellofir needles. Lifting the hem of her robes, she half slid down the slope into the gully, picked her way carefully across the loose shale and the odd tufts of yellow wrygrass that had sprung up. Over the years, a geological eruption had warped and scarred the depression .The rock now lay like a kind of bridge across what appeared to be a fissure in the gully bed. She bent to touch the cool, rough golden skin of that rock, stirring even after all this time with images of the lorg. She cursed heartily. That lorg had certainly been an evil omen. Three days after its death Giyan had been captured in a raid, taken to Axis Tyr to be the slave of the V'ornn. That was sixteen years ago, and never a word from her since. She had heard stories, many times, about the regent's Kundalan mistress. Giyan was sharing her bed with a V'ornn! How could she? It was unimaginable! Thinking of the dreaded V'ornn, Bartta shuddered. That is when she heard the soundtiny, indistinct, echoey. She turned back, looked around the perimeter of the gully. Nothing stirred save the shivering tops of the graceful kuello-firs. The sound came again, tricking down her spine like a rivulet of ice water. On her knees, she peered into the fissure. Darkness greeted her beyond the silver of opening between rock and shale bed. "Hello?" she called in a voice as quavery as if it were underwater. "Hello?" A sound, neither human nor animal but somewhere in between, came to her. It made her jerk erect, her scalp prickling eerily. She backed up, stumbling a little, righted herself, then turned to flee aLustbader, Eric is the author of 'Ring of Five Dragons' with ISBN 9780812572339 and ISBN 0812572335.