Challenging Lessons is back story from “The Rys Chronicles” series. It is the telling of a crucial episode in the relationship of the Rys Queen Onja to her ward, Shan, that takes place over four hundred years before the events that take place in “The Rys Chronicles.”

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The presence of the humans was thick in the Jingten Valley . Shan could feel them in his homeland. Their bodies touched his sensitive mind with the energy of their short lives. If he applied himself, he could even feel the pumping pulse of their hearts and understand their thoughts in all their languages. 

It was the height of the tribute season and tribal delegations were approaching the city of Jingten , or departing, and one last straggling tribe was just coming through the mountains.

This morning Shan watched a delegation as it entered the city. It was the Zenglawa King with a sampling of wives and retainers and three dozen warriors to guard his wagons laden with gold, jewels, food and other goods of fine crafting.

Jingten with its blue stone buildings and copper roofs accepted the Zenglawa caravan like the bored host of a tedious party. The caravans came every year. They were supposed to come. For centuries, the tribes had brought their gifts to Onja, their Queen, their Goddess.

For a hundred years now, Shan had stood upon the balconies of Onja’s Keep and watched the humans come into the city of the rys. He could see over the city from the heights of the massive Keep. Its receding tiers of dark stone lorded over the city in stark contrast to the residential architecture of the rest of Jingten. The city was old, built to last, and the buildings were accented with stained glass windows in colors from tender lavenders to bold red. The homes and buildings set gracefully amid the manicured hedges and ancient trees in dignified permanence.

The sharp-edged Keep, however, jutted up from the shore of Lake Nin and dominated the cityscape like a bear rolling on flowers. A high stone wall contained its yards and metal gates where ornate birds locked claws guarded the entrance with enchanted wrought iron. The Keep announced the power of the Queen and declared that none should ever dare to challenge her authority.

Shan loved Queen Onja. She had been his caretaker and teacher, and she was more than that now. Onja spared him loneliness. A gulf separated Shan from the rest of his kind. He possessed powers far beyond the typical rys. Indeed, his talent was special enough for Onja to have taken him into her arms as a rysling, orphaned and bereft of kin.

He took his eyes off the approaching caravan and focused on the soft lamb’s wool tunic in his hands. He gathered the fine fabric that had come from the loom of some unknown but skilled lowland woman and pulled the tunic over his head. He slipped his long blue arms into the sleeves and slid the tunic down his smooth blue chest.

Shan ran his fingers through his short black hair to unrumple it after putting on his shirt. He grabbed his green suede jacket that was draped over the balcony railing and tossed it on without buttoning it. He took a half step toward the open balcony doors but then paused to admire the morning sun on the mountains that surrounded the Jingten Valley . Gold and pink glowed from the snowy peaks of the Rysamand Mountains . The gentle early autumn sunrise could not soften the harsh towering mountains that were beautiful yet always cold.

Shan took a deep breath and let his senses caress the mountain tops. He loved the Rysamand, as all rys did. This was their world, the Rystavalla, and it gave them life and it fueled their magic.

White curtains twinkling with silver threads covered the balcony doorway. A burst of breeze billowed the curtains around Shan as he entered the bedchamber of Queen Onja. Opposite the balcony doors was a huge four-post bed. Its great carved pillars of bedposts rose to a canopy draped with blue velvet. Pine cones and birds were carved into the wood, twining and climbing up the posts with the vivacious energy of a happy spring day.

In a white gown and robe, Onja reposed against her gold threaded pillows. Far older than a thousand winters, she looked cold yet beautiful. Her blue skin, unblemished and perfect, was the same shade as the blue stone mountains that ruled her realm as surely as she did. Long white hair flowed from her head over her pillows, and a choker necklace of diamonds, each cut with one hundred and one facets, held her strong blue neck.

Onja opened her eyes—black eyes, dark as the abyss of knowledge that was her mind. Shan approached her bedside and she sat up. Her robe fell from her left shoulder, exposing that corner of her lovely physique. Shan plopped confidently into the bed and touched her bare shoulder.

“It will be a good day at court today,” Onja said.

Shan reclined alongside her legs. He put his hands behind his head and said, “I do not want to go. I want to go hiking.”

Before she could admonish him, which he saw coming, Shan grinned. “Come with me, Onja. The mountains are lonely without you,” he said.

A fond smile came to her lips. “You are young, Shan, and once I explored the land with equal relish, but I no longer need to. I can feel the Rysamand beneath my feet even from here,” she said.

Shan sighed and said that he would miss her, but then Onja’s kindness slipped from her face. “You are still holding court with me,” she said. “Do not let yourself become bored with it. I am teaching you an important lesson if you would pay attention.”

Her subtle anger poked Shan, and he sat up. He had not meant to provoke her displeasure. She was his teacher, and no other being in the world had the knowledge to offer that she did. He would mind his lessons, as she bid him.

“Yes, Onja,” he said.

The rys Queen got out of the bed and she let her robe slip across Shan’s knees as she went by him. Her gown was open in the back, sewn together in a V at the small of her back, and Shan focused on the distracting skin revealed by her sleepwear. Onja was a tall striking rys, and her physical presence enhanced her aura of power. NEXT PAGE >>>