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In his mind, Shan felt an ugly silence instead of her words. He was afraid of what he had done. He had never before dreamed of performing such a thoughtless action counter to the will of Onja. But as he watched the wives of Telender help the third woman to sit up, Shan could not regret his action. The two women rubbed the hands of the tormented third wife and they loosened her yellow headdress and neck scarf.

Onja commanded the Zenglawa out. They took their dead and left the treasure. Telender never looked at his Queen. His eyes were fixed on the blood that he had spilled.

When the door wardens shut out the reduced and retreating Zenglawa, the throne room still reeled with tragic energy.

Now Shan turned and looked up at Onja. Determined to be bold, he demanded, “What was the lesson, Onja?”

Bitterness clamped the face of the Queen. Without speaking, she descended from her throne and brushed by Shan as if he was an ornamental shrub that needed pruning.

Shan said, “Onja, I forgot myself. I did not mean to anger you.”

She did not respond and continued across her bloodied throne room. To be ignored by her panicked Shan. He must set right his intrusive blunder. He tried to apologize to her again, but he was forced to silence. Shan’s skin became hot and a spell that heated and moved the air pushed him against the steps to the throne. Onja passed through the doors and they slammed shut behind her, pulled hard by her magic instead of the rys door wardens.

Her temper was no secret to Shan, but he had never goaded her to such displeased rejection before. Stunned, Shan slowly got up from the steps. His impulse was to go after Onja and continue attempting to apologize, but the throne room doors confronted Shan like two slaps to the face, and his initial desire to apologize slipped toward disregard. He could be angry too. He had told her he did not want to attend court today.

And then she tries to entertain me with that sick display, he thought, becoming disgusted.

His distaste suddenly felt right. Just because rys were superior did not mean that cruelty was correct. The woman flopping like a broken puppet sank teeth into Shan’s memory. With certainty, Shan knew that Telender would never be quite right again. And why? Because Onja had meant for this forced butchery to be some kind of lesson.

Over the next two days, Onja continued to receive her tribute from the remaining tribes. The horrors inflicted upon the Zenglawa had quickly spread among the other delegations, and Onja was greeted by thoroughly subservient Kings with trembling entourages. Without being prompted, each tribe voluntarily declared that more tribute would be brought the next year.

Shan did not join the Queen for these final audiences of the tribute season. He skulked around the Keep and was surprised how good it felt to be separated from Onja. She had always been so close with her voice whispering. The peace found in his own thoughts was therapeutic.

After the last tribe delivered its tribute and departed Jingten, an enchanted quiet settled on the valley. The frosts of the deepening autumn called for winter. Every winter secluded Jingten from the human world and left the magic rys at peace in their alpine realm. Snow, cold, and blizzard winds could not kill a rys although most of them stuck to the domestic comforts of Jingten.

Onja sought Shan out in this quiet time at the cusp of winter when she no longer had her human subjects to preside over. She found him on a walkway along the top of the high wall that enclosed the Keep’s courtyard. He was leaning an elbow on the ramparts and staring across Lake Nin .

Shan did not look up as Onja came toward him. In his mind’s eye he saw how her navy blue dress looked almost black beneath the steely overcast sky and how the cold wind toyed temptingly with the ends of her white hair.

Shan wished he could quell his excitement over her arrival. Would she apologize or should he?

“You can stop avoiding me,” was Onja’s greeting.

“Has your anger passed, Onja?” Shan said, keeping his eyes on the lake.

She surprised him by saying yes.

Shan faced her now. Onja was close to him and to be inside the aura of her power again felt good.

“My Queen, I should not have interfered,” he said.

Onja seemed to resist her urge to chastise him and said simply that it had not been the reaction that she had expected. “But did you see the lesson, Shan?” she added.

He confessed that he had not, so Onja explained that she needed to show the humans her power from time to time. If she grew lazy and lenient, then the humans would always drift from obedience. They needed to be reminded every other generation or so that she was their Goddess and they would do as she bid them.

“Getting someone to kill on your order is a tremendous statement of power,” Onja concluded.

Shan did not disagree with her opinion, but asked, “Did you have to be so harsh? They were afraid of you and the woman’s suffering was so unnecessary.” Even as he spoke, he felt again the raw plaintive misery of the human emotions that had battered him.

Onja exhaled and was condescending in her frustration. “Shan, what do you care about the killing? Humans kill each other all the time. Telender has sent others to war and death in stupid conflicts motivated by greed or a trifling insult that pricked his honor,” Onja said. Then with a kinder maternal tone, she added, “Shan, do not pity the humans. Telender would put that woman to death if he even imagined she committed an indiscretion.”

Shan thought on this. Telender had not resisted the order to kill very long, and he had voluntarily killed two men without being asked.

Yes, the humans are wicked, Shan was forced to admit. But not always. Those people had cared for each other, and Shan had seen into Telender’s soul in his moment of murder and witnessed how the foul act had scratched his sanity. NEXT PAGE >>>