Chapter 11: Stone

I reached Gershon around two months later. It was a city far to the west of the Empire, and very close to one of its major ports: Urathan. But whereas Urathon was a bustling metropolis of different people & immigrants from other parts of the world, Gershon was almost exclusively settled by people of Chin ancestry. The conquest of Chin was one of the major achievements of the fifth Emperor, and part of his stated mandate to spread prann across land and sea. It was a difficult campaign: for although the prann gave the Empire’s troops an unmistakeable advantage, the lands of the Chin and the then extent lands of the Empire we separated by the mighty Makalu mountains: amongst the highest in the known world. But once the Empire established a foothold, dominion came quick. It took the reigns of five more Emperors to pacify and then fold that vast kingdom into the Empire, but the forces of Chera (& the liberal policies of its Emperors) prevailed. The people of Chin had also been encouraged to spread throughout the Empire, and Gershon was once such town that had a huge settlement.

In fact, if I could remember my lineages lessons right, the Jiyo family was originally from Chin. The first Jiyo had somehow pleased the seventh (or was it the eighth?) Emperor, and had been awarded the Blessed stone as a reward, instantly elevating them to the upper reaches of the Empire. The people of Chin were much fairer than the Cheras, with a pointed nose and more distinct features, and much less body hair amongst men (a constant source of amusement amongst the theatre artists, for many of the cruder plays compared the Chin men to muscled women), but the Jiyo family had intermarried into the Cheras so much that most Jiyo looked like the people of Hind.

Lady Sukanu was one such example: by looking at her, one could never even see her Chin roots. Perhaps in the slant of her eye? She was looking at me now with a smile, her eyes crinkling, as she welcomed me into the Jiyo home, and bade me sit next to her.

That was a surprise. So I wasn’t here in the role of a Shield. Nobody asked a Shield to sit beside them.

“Utore,” she started. “The Jiyo are one of the premier families of the Empire. The story of how we rose the ranks of the Emperor’s court are long and frankly some of it is invention after the fact, but one thing has remained constant: we have always had the Blessing with us. We would like that fact to still continue.”

“When Uncha gave you the Stone, many in the family considered it a grave mistake. I have to confess,” she added, “I was in that group. I had you investigated—and I’ll be blunt here—when I discovered your disability, I thought it was one of the worst days for the family. But we kept tabs on you just in case.”

She paused then, as if to let me speak. I honestly had no clue what to reply.

“I ... don’t understand Mistress.” I finally confessed.

I could feel her touching the prann then, her presence a vibrant green, and almost in reaction I went into the trance myself.

Through the prann, she spoke. Let us play she sent. It was hard to communicate through the prann, you didn’t speak in words, but simple concepts, and even saying that much must have taxed her. Immediately, I could feel several point sources of prann around us in the room & a click from the door. They had locked us in, but for what?

Then, within half a breath, what seemed like thousands of arrows came at us from every corner.

Later, I counted the arrows in my mindspace and realized that it couldn’t have been a thousand, but that is what it felt like then. Out of the blue, my prann sense went haywire. There were two breaths of panic, after which training set in hard and I immersed myself deeper in the prann, perhaps as deep as I had ever gone. She meant to kill me, was my first thought, but then in the next half-breath, I was confused.

She was in the room with me. What manner of attack was this? I could still feel her in the prann, starting to move—probably to avoid a bunch of these arrows—but then everything else went away and I just focused on those threatening point sources.