#bkhk

Rasya stood straight, her back to the crowd in the glen, her golden chain-clad shoulder barely touching that of Kiril Agripov. She felt him shift his feet slightly and smirked that she could, at least, remain soldier-still during this ceremony even if she could not best him in the dagger ring. 

Rasya Sidorova and Kiril Agripov had been rivals since the day they had first disturbed the dust of the training grounds. She six, he seven, they had jostled each other to be the first to reach the rack of wooden swords. Kiril tripped her and gripped a hilt in triumph; Rasya scrambled to her feet and kicked him in the back of the knee, sending him tumbling into the rack. Wooden swords and staves rained upon him. Kiril struggled out of the mass and made to launch himself at her when Rurik Volkovy, the blademaster of Honeydawn, snatched him and Rasya by the collars. He smashed their heads together and sent them weaving away to lap the inner wall. They ran and ran and ran, around and around, until the sun was high and both could barely drag sobbing breaths into their tiny bodies. Then Rurik let them drink stale, gritty water from a trough and sent them home. They walked, or rather staggered, on opposite sides of the road, hatred crackling between them all the long way home. 

Fifteen years later that hatred crackled still. Fifteen years of splitting one another’s arrows from fletching to flint, of slashing up each other’s livery in dual-dagger dance, of crossing swords with such bloodthirsty fervor that spectators gasped and screamed in real fear, as if Rasya and Kiril fought to the death. They were of such close-matched skill that it drove Rasya nearly mad. 

Now, finally, came her time to prove herself the superior beacon of Zoriya’s light. Kiril may be a breath quicker with a dagger (some days) but she, Rasya, had the sweeter heart. She stood strong with her feet set in the earth, her left hand resting on the hilt of her glittering sword, the red thorn-rayed sun of her father’s house blazing on her breast. A close observer may have noticed a small nick on her surcoat just below her left shoulder, the barest splitting of the shimmery silver-white threads, where Kiril had marked his victory in their (forbidden) morning bout. But she would win that much back from him and more, when she was the last to return to Ilyis Andel, having stayed away longest to win more and more (the most!) hearts back from black despair and into the hope and light of Zoriya Three-Eyed’s gaze. 

“Young warriors,” began Gavril Korolev, his commanding voice bringing her instantly to the present, “today is the culmination of your years of training. Today you receive your shield, your own emblem, and as you venture forth into the world it shall go before you and mark your deeds with the light of Zoriya…”

Kiril flicked his eyes to one side, where Rasya Sidorova stood ramrod-straight and still as a stripling too frightened to raise his sword in his first fight. 

“...that you represent Our Lady of the Dawn, the Rose of the Sun, and that all you do must point to the hope on which she shines her rays…”

Behind them stood the other three warriors who would be receiving their shields today: Roksana, as slender and graceful as the bow she drew so well; Aleksei, whose blinding quickness gave the lie to his hulking frame; and Dunya, kind and average in all but intelligence, where she lacked. None approached him in skill, none but Rasya, and she would soon fall to the world. She thought hope was a light thing, the fool, when he knew it to be a burden that most were too weak to carry. Well, he would carry it for those pathetic weaklings, and return to Inyis Andel straight-backed and strong under it, while Rasya, if she returned at all, would come back shattered and despairing. 

“...and, above all, remember in your heart-of-hearts that you bear this shield for the protection of others before yourself, for the…”

Kiril had chosen a stooping hawk for his emblem. Roksana’s device was to be an arrow in singing flight above three pointed trees, Aleksei had chosen a rampant bear holding a quarterstaff, and Dunya a stump with reaching roots. (“For the hope that it may yet grow again,” she had said, and stubbornly refused to choose anything else.”

Rasya Sidorova had taken her father’s symbol, the sun with its rays like thorny branches, but turned it gold instead of red, and in the center she placed a berry which somehow seemed to be bursting ripe even in the simple lines of a shield-device, and was a purple so dark it was nearly black. (“For sweetness,” said Rasya; “there is strength in sweetness.”)

Remembering now, Kiril almost snorted, but stopped himself in time. Gavril Korolev, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bramble, had finished his exhortations and was coming to the important part of the ceremony- the bestowing of the shields. 

“...and all in the sight of Zoriya Three-Eyed,” he intoned. He beckoned to an attendant beside him, who held out a round shield covered in a white cloth. In one motion, so smooth that neither Rasya nor Kiril could quite catch how he did it, Gavril took the shield and left the cloth draped over the attendant’s outstretched arms. He turned the device towards the graduates and the crowd- a bronze stump whose roots spread over a green field. 

“Dunya Morosova,” he called, and Rasya and Kiril stepped each to one side to allow Dunya to pass between them. Stocky for an eladrin and pale-haired, Dunya wore her greatsword across her back. She received her shield, bowed her head to Gavril, then went to the High Priestess at his side, Anfisa Ierona, who slid a ring onto the middle finger of Dunya’s right hand and kissed it. Dunya bowed to the priestess and turned to the crowd. She raised her open right hand, palm inward so that the ring winked at the crowd, and raised her left hand clenched behind the shield; the bronze device shone in the sun. Then Dunya placed her right hand on her left breast and brought the shield down in front of her chest. 

The crowd cheered.

“Roksana Kiseleva,” boomed Gavril Korolev as Dunya went to stand to the side. He presented Roksana with a twilight blue kite shield, its a shining silver arrow slicing over the three blue-black trees. Roksana received her shield and her ring, displayed them as Dunya had done, and went to stand beside her before the cheering crowd. 

Aleksei Genadiv’s black bear brandished its staff on a golden tower shield, nearly as tall as he, but he raised it with ease and the crowd was still roaring as he took his place beside Roksana. His normally stoic expression flickered with a slight smile. 

Rasya and Kiril stood, still as statues, waiting to hear whose name Gavril would call next, thus designating the remaining graduate as unofficial best in year. In the brief silence after the crowd’s roar faded, Rasya heard Kiril’s breath stop, at almost the same moment as hers.

“Rasya Sidorova!”

Rasya stepped forward mechanically, her blood heating in her veins. She could feel Kiril’s smirk, that supercilious bantam. She took her shield. The High Priestess slid the ring onto her finger- three moonstones set side by side in a gold band- and Rasya bowed her head to hide her blazing eyes. She was furious with Gavril, could he not see that Kiril’s heart was rotten, that he practically stank with his disdain for those trapped outside Zoriya’s light? 

She raised her shield and ring. The glen rang with the shouts of the crowd, but their adulation did not touch Rasya’s heart. She went to stand beside Aleksei. 

She could not watch Kiril’s shielding; instead she let her gaze wander around the glen. The grass burst with flowers of all colors, waving and dancing around the feet of the eladrin crowd, with not a single petal in danger of getting bruised. The trees surrounding the glen had strong, straight old trunks of vibrant red-brown and leaves bright as summer, rustling and singing in the soft wind. Behind the Knight Commander and the High Priestess, a small brook tumbled down from a hillock and circled the western half of the glen before wandering off into the forest. 

Rasya’s gaze drifted to the crowd itself. There was her mother Irina and her younger sister Vasha. Vasha was to be a scholar, learning under the Senexi of the Honeydawn Court, but Rasya would be sent away on her journeying before Vasha’s ceremony. Her father Sidor Illarion was behind her, she knew, forming an impressive line with his fellow senior Bramble Knights. She had not looked at him before taking her place, she realized with a pang. She had meant to, to share the moment with him. But she had been too angry about Kiril. 

Her father knew of their rivalry. Nearly everyone in Ilyis Andel did; how could he not? 

“Competition is good, Roshenka,” he had said some time recently, “but only insofar as it makes you a better Bramble Knight. The goal is to serve Zoriya, my daughter, not to pound Kiril Agripov into the dirt.” 

“It may serve Zoriya for him to be so pounded,” Rasya had suggested, and her father had laughed. 

“Unlikely,” he had said, still smiling, and then grew serious. “Roshenka, do not close your eyes to Zoriya’s will in hopes of attaining your own.” 

“Yes, Father,” she had promised.