The Seven-Petaled Shield Read Online Free

wisdom guide you;
    May his Shield protect you.”
    She had never heard those words spoken aloud, could not remember ever having read them, and yet their power rang through her like silvered steel.
    The moment passed. Shorrenon kissed his wife and swung up on the dark mare. The horse pranced, pulling at the bit in eagerness.
    Shorrenon paused, looking back at the two women. “Take care of them,” he said to Zevaron. “And if–if you ride to battle while I’m gone, take the gray. He knows how to handle himself.”
    Tsorreh saw the leap of tension in Zevaron’s muscles, the almost painful earnestness as he vowed to do so. Ediva shivered as Shorrenon clattered away into the night. Tsorreh folded the sobbing girl in her arms.
    “Come now, sweetheart, you must not let your children see you like this. You must teach them hope.”
    “How can I do that, when there is none?” Ediva moaned. “He is gone,
te-ravah
! Oh, he is gone!”

Chapter Two
    W ITH a mixture of weariness and relief, Tsorreh returned to her bedchamber. Never before had she so desperately needed the solace of her own place. Unlike the suite belonging to her predecessor—a warren of interior rooms filled with ornate furnishings, age-darkened draperies, and the thick odors of incense and cosmetics—Tsorreh’s chamber was a single spacious room with a balcony overlooking one of the terraced mountainside gardens. From her first days in the palace, she had loved its light, airy feeling, its walls unadorned except for a small tapestry that her own mother had woven as a bride. The finely-spun wool was patterned in shades of cream, brown, and black. Her cat, a spotted desert-breed, lay curled on the bed.
    Otenneh was waiting. In the light cast by the bank of candles, wrinkles pleated the old servant’s cheeks and redness rimmed her eyes. Wordlessly, Tsorreh held out her arms. The top of Otenneh’s head barely reached her shoulders. Against the old woman’s trembling body, the bones frail as eggshells, Tsorreh felt the straightness of her own spine and the strength of her own arms.
    She held me in just this way on the night my mother died
, Tsorreh thought.
Now it is I who must hold her.
    Otenneh had accompanied Tsorreh’s mother, a princessof the Isarran royal line, when she came to Meklavar to wed a noble descendent of Khored. Khored’s heirs no longer ruled Meklavar, the throne having since passed to Maharrad’s family, but it had been a politically advantageous match, carrying with it the possibility of an alliance with Isarre. Tsorreh’s parents had been happy at first, but then her mother died in childbirth and her father had fallen fatally ill not long after. Now only Otenneh remained of Tsorreh’s childhood household.
    Tsorreh dozed off to Otenneh singing her favorite Isarran lullaby. She woke the next morning after only a few hours of broken sleep. Abruptly, with blood pounding in her ears, she jerked upright. The cat jumped off the bed with an aggrieved meow and stalked off in search of a mouse.
    She was alone and it was almost dawn. A milky light swept the eastern sky.
    Otenneh brought heated water, soap, and rose-scented oils, but Tsorreh took none of her usual pleasure in bathing. She allowed Otenneh to rebraid her hair in seven plaits tied together in back. From the carved chest, she took out clothing more befitting a
te-ravah
than the worn, blood-streaked tunic and pants of yesterday. She chose soft, warm colors like a harvest sunset; embroidery decorated the center panel of the tunic, worn over trousers of a darker shade.
    Tsorreh ate a quick breakfast and, taking two of her maid-attendants, went downstairs. A crowd had gathered in the street outside the palace, nobles and merchants, even craftspeople from the lower city. A deputation of traders from Denariya was already meeting with Maharrad. A pointless exercise, Tsorreh thought, for no one had the power to grant safe passage through the Gelonian lines.
    Below, in the lower market city,