The Shining City (v5) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Estavia-Sarayi

  Chapter 2 - The Young God

  Chapter 3 - The Wild Lands

  Chapter 4 - Distant Lands

  Chapter 5 - Councils

  Chapter 6 - The Protector of Anavatan

  Chapter 7 - The Northern Trisect

  Chapter 8 - Abayon and Delon

  Chapter 9 - The Aqueduct

  Chapter 10 - Seers

  Chapter 11 - The Dark Place

  Chapter 12 - Gerek-Hisar

  Chapter 13 - The Northern Market

  Chapter 14 - The Crossing

  Chapter 15 - The Cistern

  Chapter 16 - The Mountain Ridge

  Chapter 17 - The God of Creation and Destruction

  Chapter 18 - Hisaro-Sarayi

  DAW Fantasy Novels by FIONA PATTON

  The Warriors of Estavia:

  THE SILVER LAKE (Book One)

  THE GOLDEN TOWER (Book Two)

  THE SHINING CITY (Book Three)

  The Novels of the Branion Realm:

  THE STONE PRINCE

  THE PAINTER KNIGHT

  THE GRANITE SHIELD

  THE GOLDEN SWORD

  Copyright © 2011 by Fiona Patton.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Map by Alan Marion.

  DAW Books Collectors No. 1544

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47911-7

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing, April 2011

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my little brother Alexander Bernard Potter for flying pirate ships.

  And to my great-nephew Alexander Brian Schauer for flying pirate ships to come.

  1

  Estavia-Sarayi

  “The first of the Gods to rise, fully realized from the waters of Gol-Beyaz, was Incasa, God of Prophecy, created by the earliest needs of the people to know: will our harvest be bountiful, will our children grown up strong, and will our labors be successful.

  “Under Incasa’s care the needs of the people changed to: make the harvest bountiful, keep our children strong, and bless our labors with success. Havo, God of the Seasons, Oristo, God of the Hearth, Usara, God of Healing, and Ystazia, God of the Arts, arose with this change.

  “When the Gods built the shining city of Anavatan for the people, Estavia, God of Battles, came into being as their needs changed once again to: protect our bounteous harvest, our strong children, and our successful labors.

  “The God of Creation and Destruction was formed in answer to new changes, but in the early days of Its being no one knew for certain what those changes were, not even the young God Itself. Those days were fraught with tension and confusion.”

  —The Chronicles of Anavatan: City of the Gods. Book

  twenty-eight: The Age of Creation and Destruction.

  By: Ihsan, First Scribe to Ystazia, God of the Arts

  “Feed them, clothe them, and teach them, but don’t expect them to go where you want them to once they’re grown. Children are more stubborn than donkeys. That’s why you need a lot of them to make sure there’s someone left behind to tend the bar.

  “Gods are no different.”

  —Niklon, owner of the Kedi-Meyhane Inn and Tavern,

  Western Dockside Precinct

  GOL-BEYAZ LAKE SHIMMERED in the moonlight. As its silvery glow reflected in the hundreds of market fountains, courtyard pools, and tiled reservoirs across Anavatan, the God of Prophecy rose from the waves until He towered above the skyline. His snow-white gaze took note of every unbound spirit flickering in every glittering pool. Alone, each one was no more than a tiny spark of possibility, but together they could destroy a city.

  Or create a God.

  Six years ago, Incasa had manipulated just such a gathering to bring the God-child, Hisar, into being. Three young street thieves—Brax, Spar, and Graize—caught in the crossfire of Its birth, had become Its protectors and Its teachers, standing by Its side as It took Its first steps toward adulthood. Incasa had manipulated that also. Now, with a new gathering of spirits arising from a cavernous darkness and the enemies of Anavatan massing on every front, it was time for Hisar and Its three companions to take the field in the roles Incasa had prepared for them: as Champions of the Gods’ Shining City.

  Two of them, Brax and Spar were well on their way. Brax, at twenty-one, was already a fully ordained ghazi-priest of Estavia, and Spar, despite his stubborn refusal to bend to anyone’s authority save his own, was carving out his destiny as a powerful seer in the service of Hisar Itself. Only Graize remained unconvinced, but Incasa was not concerned. Long ago, a delicate prophecy of hope and companionship had been born as two figures standing on a snow-capped mountain ridge. It was finally time to bring that prophecy into being—to set their feet on the path that would lead them there at last.

  The God of Prophecy turned His pale gaze inward, seeing both rain and fog on the horizon. Rain was the dominion of Havo, wielded by the Harvest God to create growth and life, but fog belonged to Incasa. Opaque and unknowable, it was the most ancient symbol of prophecy. It masked the future, and because of that, it made it malleable; and Incasa was the God of Malleable.

  Reaching out, He caught up each and every prophecy that had formed Hisar. Weaving them together with the events that would soon engulf His city, He fashioned them into a single vision of water echoing in a cavernous darkness and cast it into the future where two powerful and subtle prophets would be sure to see it: one willing, the other unwilling, but both unable to resist it. That was the way of prophets, He mused. They were like cats crouched before a tiny hole in the sand. Eventually, they had to stick a paw in it. It’s what they were.

  Rising up above the waves until He hovered in a shaft of silvery moonlight, Incasa passed one last glance across Anavatan. To His unfathomable gaze, the lines of responsibility and obligation forged between the Gods and their sworn followers crisscrossed the city like bands of fire, but here and there, a new signature was steadily growing. The unsworn were beginning to turn their attention toward the young God of Creation and Destruction, and It was beginning to turn Its attention toward them.

  Incasa nodded to Himself. Hisar was almost ready to take the field as well. As a thin tendril of fog whispered along the Bogazi-Isik Strait to the north, and rain clouds began to gather to the south, He returned to the depths of Gol-Beyaz with a satisfied expression.

  Across the city, Hisar crouched in the shadows of a dilapidated warehouse, remaining absolutely still until It was certain that Incasa was gone. Then, shaking out the wings of Its dragonfly seeming in a shower of iridescent brilliance, It returned Its own gaze to a crude figure of a tower etched into the base of the wall. Changing to His golden seeming, Hisar traced the outline, feeling the faintest thread of power trickle back to It through His fingertips. The tower. His symbol.

  He shivered with pleasure.

  The tower figures had been cropping up all over Anavatan in the last few weeks, scratc
hed into the shadowy recesses of the Dockside Precinct wharfs or on the worn sides of the great wooden vats in the Tannery Precinct. Seeking them out had become Hisar’s favorite nighttime game. He’d found them on roof tiles and on windowsills, on awning poles and on doorjambs. Many were carved into the undersides of the dozens of loose cobblestones that littered the streets, some tucked right up against the walls of hostels and camis across the city. This night He’d even found one scratched onto a pebble and tossed into the main fountain before the Derneke-Mahalle Citadel itself. Accompanying each one was a tiny seed of power that sparkled against His fingertips like fire. It made Him hungry and a little frantic, driving Him out into the darkness to find them, night after night.

  Now He rubbed the side of His face against the carved figure, feeling it tingle against His cheek before an accompanying buzz deep within His chest caused Him to snap His luminescent gaze around to the south. Spar was awake.

  Returning to the dragonfly-seeming, It leaped joyously into the air and, with a whirl of wings, headed for Estavia-Sarayi.

  Standing on top of the Battle God’s armory tower, a blond-haired youth wearing the blue tunic of Cyan Infantry Company stood, staring out past Estavia-Sarayi’s temple walls to the sleeping city beyond. A large red dog pressed against his side, and he stroked its ears fondly before returning his attention to the streets below. This was his favorite time of night: after the merchants and artisans had laid down their tools and before the bakers and fishmongers had taken up theirs. When everyone else was wrapped in dreams, he could be alone with his own.

  Earlier that night, a dream of a mountain path rising out of the fog and water sparkling in a cavernous darkness had awakened him. He’d lain on his small pallet for several moments, staring out the latticed window, before rising. Then, moving as quietly as possible so as not to awaken his abayon sleeping in the next room, he’d thrown on an old tunic and headed outside, the dog padding silently behind him.

  A faint tingling whispered through his body, and he lifted his face to the spring air as a fluttering of wings against his cheek heralded the arrival of Hisar. Words echoed in his mind.

  Do the Gods dream, Spar?

  The question echoed in his mind and he frowned. “I don’t know, Hisar,” he answered aloud. “You’re nearly a God. Do you dream?”

  The fluttering coalesced into a male close to his own age of fifteen, with golden honey-colored skin, almond-shaped gray eyes fashioned to resemble Graize’s eyes, blond hair much like Spar’s own only streaked with silver, and features modeled on Brax. As the dog woofed a greeting, Hisar hovered in midair for a moment, then, as Spar set a red ceramic bead on a leather cord about His neck, His bare feet touched the battlements with a faint slap of nearly physical flesh against stone.

  “Yes,” He answered, wrapping power about Himself until He’d fashioned a golden tunic similar to Spar’s.

  “What do you dream about?”

  “Lots of things. A flock of white birds with teeth like knives flying north, a flock of brown birds that spit flaming arrows from their mouths flying south, horses made of grass joined with horses made of mist, and both sweeping east. Water sparkling in darkness and a snow-capped mountain path disappearing into the fog.”

  Hisar cocked His head to one side. “They’re symbols, right?” He asked, His tone pitched to reflect His body’s age. “Prophetic symbols?”

  Spar nodded. “The birds are probably symbols of our enemies. The white birds are the warships of King Pyrros of Skiros and the brown birds are the warships of Duc Bryv of Volinsk.”

  “And the horses are the Yuruk nomads of the Berbat-Dunya wild lands and the Petchan hill people of the Gurney-Dag Mountains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why couldn’t I just see them like that?” Hisar demanded. “Why do I have to waste time with birds that aren’t birds and horses that aren’t horses?”

  Spar gave a dismissive shrug. “Because prophecy is more than just seeing things. It’s the odds and probabilities of the future interpreted by our own experiences. Have you ever seen a fleet of foreign warships in full sail?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you expect to know what they are if they show up in your prophecy? You have seen a flock of white birds. Maybe when you actually see the ships, they’ll become ships.

  “But I doubt it.” Spar turned his gaze to the south before Hisar could voice another protest. “Do you remember the map I showed you? The one in the Citadel?”

  “Yes.” In the last nine months, Spar and Hisar had visited much of the city’s Western Trisect, showing the young God to the people and showing them to Him.

  “King Pyrros has taken the islands south of Gol-Beyaz in the Deniz-Hadi Sea.”

  Hisar nodded. “He’s Panos of Amatus’ father. She’s a powerful seer. I remember watching Panos speak prophecy with Prince Illan at Cvet Tower in Volinsk. Her abilities are very strong.”

  “Yes. Pyrros is waiting for word from Volinsk to send his fleet of white birds against our southern watchtower of Anahtar-Hisar.”

  “But you told me that Anahtar-Hisar couldn’t be taken.”

  “It can’t. A third of our own fleet’s down there to defend it. But that’s a third that won’t be berthed at Anavatan when the ice on the northern Deniz-Siya Sea melts and the Volinski ships—your brown birds—sail against the city. They’re the real threat, but if we bring our entire fleet north, King Pyrros will attack the south. He’s there to split our forces and make us weak.”

  “And the Yuruk and the Petchans?”

  “The same. They’ve made an alliance with Volinsk for trade and livestock and access to the silver lake once Volinsk has defeated us.”

  “But we have the Gods and Their Wall,” Hisar pointed out.

  As one, they turned to the western skyline. From this distance, the most ancient and formidable of Anavatan’s defenses, cradling the city’s landward side, seemed little more than a faint indigo glow, but Spar knew that the God-Wall’s ten-foot-thick, thirty-foot-high stones were topped by the power of the Gods. It raised its protection another forty feet, shielding the people from both physical and metaphysical enemies alike. The wall’s stone parapets dropped sharply as it left Anavatan, snaking along the western shore of Gol-Beyaz to become little more than an anchor for the Gods’ power at its end. This allowed the villagers along its length to reach to the western fields and pasturelands while still maintaining the Gods’ formidable protection.

  “The God-Wall will not hold.”

  Spar shook his head. Years ago Illan of Volinsk, a powerful seer and enemy of Anavatan had sent Spar these words to rattle him and make him doubt his own abilities. But Spar had won through, and in the last six years he’d traveled the wall’s entire length with his adopted abayon, Kemal and Yashar of Estavia-Sarayi’s Cyan Infantry Company. He’d stood on it, slept on it, and dreamed of it, but he’d never taken it for granted. The tiniest of the wild land spirits had worked their way through it once before when he’d been nine years old and living on the streets of the city’s Dockside Precinct. They’d become a swarm of destructive power that had sucked out the life of everything in their path. If they could get through, so could other things. Bigger things. He knew the wall was not impregnable. Of all the people of Anavatan, he knew it best. He didn’t need some foreign enemy to remind him of it. But the God-Wall was not his problem.

  As he returned his attention to the present, he saw Hisar watching him patiently and gave a cynical snort in response to the young God’s point.

  “The wall’s only strong if the Gods are strong,” he countered. “And the Gods are only strong if the people are strong.”

  “But the people are behind the wall and the Gods,” Hisar answered, a smug expression on His face. “So they are strong.”

  “The wall has gates, so the wall is vulnerable. The Gods have distractions and agendas of Their own, so the Gods are vulnerable. And the people are . . .” Spar shrugged again. “People. Physical. We’re always
vulnerable.” He swept an arm toward Gol-Beyaz, glittering with the power of a thousand silver lights in the moonlight. “Anavatan needs free access for travel and trade, so it’s vulnerable to the seaward sides. That’s why there’s two fleets coming from the north and the south.”

  “But there are three watchtowers to the north, and two to the south,” Hisar insisted. “Aren’t they enough?”

  “They would be if we were fighting one side at a time. There’re only so many Warriors to hold the line and so many Gods to stand beside them. That’s why you’re dreaming of birds and horses. They’re going to come at us from all three sides at once.”

  “But we’ll repel them?”

  Spar turned a somber expression on the young God. “I don’t know.”

  Hisar’s golden brows drew down to meet in a vee at the bridge of His nose, much as He’d seen Spar’s draw down in the past. “But you’re a seer; can’t you see it?”

  “No. There’s dozens of possible futures forming up right now; hundreds of dozens. The future’s like the weather: it changes all the time. No one can see who’ll win through yet, not Estavia’s Sable Company seers, not even the Oracles of Incasa. Maybe Incasa can, I dunno,” Spar added. “He hasn’t said.”

  “The people of Anavatan are sure of it even though they have no prophecy. I’ve heard them say so in the marketplaces,” Hisar countered.

  “The people believe in the strength of the Gods and the Warriors of Estavia. It’s enough for them, but it’s not the same thing.”

  “So the only thing you people—you seers—do know—the only thing any of you can actually see—is the threat?” Hisar shook His head, His golden hair flying about His face with the movement. “What good is that?”