Drakemaster, p.41
Drakemaster, page 41
A heap of metal fittings at a blackened patch of ground suggested some device that had gone up in flames. At each corner of the square, other distorted objects cast long and writhing shadows on the ground. Over the ruined well hung a bent frame absent of the pump it might have held. The streets radiating out had a pleasant symmetry, the broken houses marked with names and symbols like those on the ground. The bar patterns of the I Ching appeared here and there, smudged with soot and cracked by heat.
“Jian Ho.” Dailus rode up beside her, shivering a little. He needed another dose of his medicinal tea.
She raised her eyebrows, and he continued, “Jian Ho, my assistant in casting the firedrakes. He drew symbols like this. To protect me.” Dailus swallowed, his foreign skin as cracked as the ruins all around them. “The Mongols killed him for sorcery.”
“On the day you defended me.”
He nodded slightly, a ruffling of his pale hair. His satchel rested against his side, the scroll bound tightly to it, and he brought it closer with his arm. “The weapon did this, didn’t it. This is the power it has.”
“Is that what you think?” Two hundred people might have lived here, perhaps more in those ruined farms on the outskirts. The breadth of the plain around them stood vacant and gray, with nothing green or living outside of themselves, even after more than a hundred years. “The Mongols want it. They want to use it against us.”
“We have to destroy it before it can be used again.”
“Ride away with me,” she whispered. “Now, while they are all distracted. We cannot risk the Mongols learning how to make this happen. If Yusen ever sees that device and lives to tell of it, the khan will find a way. He is a scout, he remembers everything—you’ve seen that.”
Dailus worked his fingers into his hair, his expression bleak. He opened his mouth, then stopped.
Across the square with its mysterious symbols and melted bronze, a series of tilted steps lead to the base of an absent temple. Against the wall stood a ghost of darker gray, the image of a woman, her arm raised as if to shield her gaze, a shadow cast by an absent sun.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The world seemed frozen around Bao Xing, like ice which has been shattered and frozen again, arrested in an image of violence. With twilight, the steady breeze increased, rushing over stone and soil and howling through empty windows. Some of the walls carried shadows of people long gone—women bending over their work, children leaping, men carrying tools. Shadows too ordinary to be paintings, shadows the color of ash. Yusen sat his horse absolutely straight while Andao huddled on Zhencai’s mount.
“I do not know how to help him. We must go.” The old man’s poise eluded him now, as if he had taken on his apprentice’s wild energy.
“Where? How?” Yusen sounded as hollow and gray as the landscape around them. “This is the mountain Bao Xing saw, this is the valley between the two peaks. They fixed the circle on that device to remember what had happened here, not to lead us to the cause of it.”
The horses had drawn close together, heads lowered, as if the unearthly calm of the place weighed on them as well. All was gray and cracked, melted, ruined and dead. The Dark Lance struck here with indiscriminate fire, burning so fiercely that no life, even now, had ever returned. What if Yusen were right, and the fixed point that drew them here served only as the marker for a mass grave?
“Not every turn of the seasons brings new life.” Zhencai made the sign of blessing, his hand preternaturally steady, as if he made it so by the strength of his will in defiance of the flesh. He, too, had survived a slaughter to come here, believing together they could find a way to stop it, before they even knew what devastation the weapon could bring.
Bao Xing descended from a long line of astronomers. They had assisted in the construction and, marked the desolation all the way back in Kaifeng. Surely they did not want this to happen again.
“The Eternal Sky is not always benevolent,” Yusen said. “The monk is right. We should go, back the way we came.” He twitched his chin toward the distant wall where the ancestors of these absent villagers had once been interred. The villagers themselves had no descendents to honor them, none but this strange band. To burn incense here would only add to the layers of ash that guarded the dead. To think that her many-times grandfather had even a very small part—
“My cane…” she fumbled with the straps that held it and pulled the cane into her hand, shaking as if she, too, had breathed in mercury. “He said it was a map.”
His face lighting with sudden hope, Yusen caught the cane, his small hand steadying it between them. “Are you able to read it?”
Andao bent into himself, the heels of his hands pressing into his eyes, useless for finding their way. The effect of the weapon lingered here, overpowering him.
“I can try,” she answered.
“It will take time. Even if we were safe here, there is nothing, to harvest or to shoot, and I would not trust the water.”
She saw worry pinch his brow—not the excitement that drove him during combat, or even the pain that flickered from his injuries, something deeper and more carefully hidden. “That’s why you didn’t want us to come this way.”
“This place is dead.” His dark hair stroked his shoulders as he shrugged. “There is nothing here for us, and this place makes us too exposed. I am a good scout and a poor general. We should not have come.”
“Then we go back, back to the valley outside, to follow the cliffs as you said.”
“With the tombs? What is better, to be inside where so many have died, or outside where their ancestors have been stolen? My people are nomads; we do not surround ourselves with relics.” His glance dropped to her throat, to the amulet she wore. A relic? Pressed flat and cleaned of char. What fire had he saved it from? She had assumed it was taken as booty during some raid on a foreign city, but what if it had some other story?
Relics and ancestors. She gave the cane a gentle movement, drawing his eyes back to her. “They made a pathway. My many-times grandfather and the others, they wanted the location to be known if it were needed. I believe there is a path, and that we will find it,when Andao has recovered. You brought us to the right place, to the very mountain—it’s not your fault that the place is—haunted.”
“The men who made this weapon had to know what it did, see the effects. Even if they aimed for an abandoned village, or told the people to leave.”
The oppressive weight of the place clearly affected him, too. People had obviously died here. When the buildings burned and fell, when the land flared into ash, the farmers had been home with their wives and families, the scholars had been studying, the shopkeepers settling accounts, the geomancers reading the earth for signs when they should have been reading the sky. Chang Mailou’s book spoke of an argument between those who felt the weapon should be dismantled, and those, like Dengho, committed to preserving it. Looking at the desolated town, Bao Xing thought she knew what had happened to the dissenters, and their families.
Her stomach knotted, and Bao Xing doubted she could eat anything even if they found food. The Dark Lance must be nearly circled, filling with its malevolent strength. “We cannot go back—there is no time.”
Yusen nodded, his thumb rubbing over a carving of trees.
“Perhaps they have found the trail.” Zhencai pointed.
Beyond the village, two dark shapes hurried away, obscured by dust, the sound of their hoofbeats barely audible beneath the howl of the rising wind.
“They’re trying to escape!” Yusen kicked his horse, cutting after them, but he reached the bank of the river and stopped, earth crumbling beneath his mount’s hooves as he tugged her back from the edge. Turning aside, he galloped back to where Ming Lun and Dailus must have crossed some time ago and plunged down the slope, then up on the other side, the horse’s hooves raising a cloud of ash.
Escape? Ming Lun stealing the man she maybe loved from the watchful eye of the man who claimed to own him. “So let them go!” Bao Xing called after him, and he halted so sharply his horse reared as he faced her across the ruined bridge.
“They have the plan! She is an imperial spy, she doesn’t care about him, she wants the weapon for the emperor! Or is it only power in the khan’s hands you fear?” His hair whipped around him, his eyes dark and yet blazing before he turned and galloped on.
“Do we follow?” Bao Xing wondered aloud.
Zhencai formed the sign of blessing. “I only know we cannot stay here.”
Replacing the cane, Bao Xing guided her horse more carefully down the bank to splash across the stream. Zhencai followed, setting his bare feet carefully as he lead Andao’s mount.
“If she is a spy, lady, then much would be explained.”
“She can’t want our people to die, any more than we do.”
The monk said, “Death is part of the cycle.”
“Look around you! There is no cycle, not here—this isn’t the middle of anything, this is the end.” They skirted the village and kept to the barren farmland. Far ahead now, a cloud of dust showed Yusen’s progress and another, larger one, that must be Ming Lun and Dailus. Bao Xing squinted after them, unsure what to hope for. Yusen claimed the dancer didn’t care about the drakemaster, but he might not be the best judge. As for Ming Lun being a spy, that sounded like Yusen’s usual suspicions. Yet he had so often been right.
They had crossed beyond the village moving toward a flattened farmhouse when Bao Xing said, almost apologetically, “She is no spy, or she would have known you cannot take a Mongol’s horses without a fight.”
Zhencai gave a little huff of agreement.
“Something’s wrong,” Andao muttered. “It all feels so wrong.”
Startled by the sound of his voice, Bao Xing reined closer. “What is it?”
“Pulling, from the east.”
The direction they were riding. Bao Xing looked ahead. Ming Lun had chosen the shortest route to the ridges of the rising summit, perhaps hoping to be lost among them. A series of jagged stones thrust up there, shadowing the riders beneath as Yusen gained on them. At the top of the ridge a bright light flared, enormous and glowing. Bao Xing’s mouth went dry.
“Is that the Dark Lance?” Zhencai breathed behind her.
“No! It can’t be!” If it were, Yusen rode directly beneath its glowing, terrible eye. The ground rumbled, shaking loose the stones at the top of the broken wall.
The distant cloud of dust shimmered with startling light and clarity, the two horses suddenly visible as they passed into the beam. Two horses. No riders. Ming Lun hadn’t ridden away at all.
“Where are they?” she called above the rumbling.
“There!” Zhencai pointed. Two small figures hurried down the road back into the gap. Rather, one of them hurried, the other stumbled to a halt.
A shadow swept the ground before her, and Bao Xing looked up. Overhead soared a pale, flickering shape. Her horse reared, and Bao Xing fell as the thing swooped. She covered her head, remembering every story she had ever heard about hungry ghosts and ancestors torn from their tombs. Heat flared to one side, and fire blossomed on the ground nearby, then snuffed out. Whatever flew above her rained orbs of fire.
“Bao Xing!” Andao waved his arms. He, too, had been thrown and now knelt by a rock as the shadow rushed overhead again, spewing bouts of flame.
Between them, Zhencai sat cross-legged, prayer beads in hand, eyes closed.
Bao Xing stumbled then crawled until Andao’s hands reached out and pulled her into the hollow by the stone.
“This ground is safe, solid.” The young man held her, both of them trembling. “Master, please!”
The monk paid no heed.
Beyond, the fireballs landed nearer and nearer to Zhencai. One of them brushed past his bald head, and he flinched as a red welt appeared against his skin. Andao clenched his jaw, then broke free of Bao Xing and started to scramble toward his master. Before he got there, Dailus loomed up, grabbed the monk’s arm and dragged him down.
Another fireball smacked the ground, sending up plumes of smoke from the spot where Zhencai had been.
“What do they smell like?” Dailus shouted as Zhencai shook off his hands. The others stared as the drakemaster folded himself into their hollow. “The fireballs, the incendiaries, do they smell like Kaifeng?”
Bao Xing forced herself to breath deeper, one hand pressed over her thundering heart, trapping the amulet. That stinging, acrid scent, unlike a natural fire.
“They do,” Andao replied.
“They’re not ghosts, they’re—machines, sails of some kind, they’re launching incendiary devices.” His jade eyes shone bright.
Another shadow slipped beneath the ghosts, and Ming Lun dropped down beside him. “Idiot! We could have been gone.”
“And they could have been dead,” he shot back. “Did you see those things?”
“Ghosts.” Bao Xing peered upward. Along the ridge, the two ghosts soared back, but two more soared out, flickering with light, and she ducked back again as fire streaked down the sky. “Where’s Yusen?”
Andao replied, “He changed course when the fires started falling, riding toward the slope, but I don’t know where he is now.” He scrambled out to the ruined wall nearby and looked around. “The horses are running wild, toward the far side. He’s not with them. “ A fireball cracked into the wall, and he shrieked, swatting at flames on his clothes. He dropped full-length onto the ground and smothered the flames as he scrambled back to join them.
“Ghosts can’t be stopped, but men with devices can,” Dailus said. “If I can get up that ridge—”
“I’ll go.” Ming Lun leapt to her feet before the others could say a word. She ran lightly in an erratic course, and the ghosts, swinging in wide circles, dropped their fires short or long of her.
Bao Xing took in the faces of her companions—Dailus’s excitement, almost straining toward the danger; Andao’s confusion; Zhencai’s flash of anger followed by the impassive face of meditation and the quiet drone of prayer. “What if he is dead?” she whispered.
“Then you are free of him,” Dailus answered grimly. “And so am I.”
The amulet burrowed into her palm. Free. Widowed of the husband she never wanted, and yet… he was not without honor, nor without compassion. He kept them fed in the mountains, he rescued Dailus when the mine overseers would have killed him. She did not want him to die before she knew who he was, who he might have been without the khan’s taunting and Munkjar looming over his life. He had brought her the stars when she thought she had lost them, brought her words when she longed for them, and let her practice her poor embroidery on the flesh he so despised. He taught her the freedom of a horse’s hooves.
“The ghosts are going home,” Andao said. “I think I can walk there.”
Zhencai broke off his prayers and opened his eyes. “You would follow a ghost to its tomb.”
“I would follow the way to find the truth.”
“I did not ask for a student.”
Their eyes met, then Andao said, “I could not have asked for a more patient master.” After searching the ground, he stepped out from the hollow, his bare feet sinking a little in the dry earth. He had gone only a few paces when Zhencai rose to follow.
“Can you do this, drakemaster?” Bao Xing asked.
“Slowly. And you? You’ve lost your cane.”
She nodded. “It ran off with my horse. Together, then.”
He took her hand on his elbow, and they stood up together, balancing each other, and walked toward the ridge. Andao chose a path more carefully than Ming Lun had, but still it curved across the field to meet the rising wall beyond. He backtracked and moved forward again. Zhencai paced after him like a walking meditation. Sunset lent the glow of life to the dead world around them, then, half-way up the ridge, a single lamp shone. They walked the unsteady ground, then an increasingly solid, narrow track up the slope. A spatter of blood marked the stones, and Bao Xing caught her breath. Dailus gave her a glance, speculative, then paused. “Look down,” he told her.
Below, the careful, shuffling trail of Andao’s steps showed clearly, pale white against the gray of the dead earth, forming the character that meant the ground, that which went beneath. “The ghosts and the fires weren’t magic.”
Bao Xing merely shook her head and pressed onward until they came into the circle of the light. On a long rod, a man held a glowing lantern, a sphere of bronze pierced by many tiny lights. He lifted this over Andao’s head and turned it to see him from all angles, but the light never spilled a drop of oil nor blew out in the breeze. Magic again?
Two others stood behind him, one with a hand atop Yusen’s head, his other hand gripping a knife that kept her husband in his place. Even kneeling with his hands bound, a trickle of blood crossing his cheek, the Mongol lost none of his ferocity. His dark eyes found hers, and Bao Xing found herself smiling.
From behind a standing stone, Ming Lun emerged, accompanied by a few others.
“It is as you said.” The man with the lantern bowed to Andao. “Please forgive our harsh welcome. Usually, the flying ghosts are enough to deter our rare visitors. But this is the first time we have a visitor who is also our kin. Come inside.” He led them behind the stone, and into such a valley of wonders that an entire library would be needed to capture it. The sight so amazed her that Bao Xing did not even look at the sky.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
“My dear God,” Dailus breathed.
They emerged from a narrow passage into a valley still lit by the setting sun. Sloping tiled roofs and pillars surrounded a series of courtyards where strange equipment stuck out of wells, and symbols etched the stones. From a ledge a little higher, two men wearing sails of white sprang into the air above this village, and their sails carried them in a spiral to a field down below. Two waterfalls streamed over the cliff at one of the narrow ends, framing a series of buildings clinging to the wall with carved and painted wooden props that looked too thin to support them. The pair of rivers spilled down into the valley, merging and driving a series of waterwheels at the heart of the village. From one of those mill yards, sparks flickered as the wheel turned—grinding? striking? The resonance of bronze echoed all around him. Opposite the village, terraces carved the entire mountainside into a series of gardens, fields, and farmyards full of chickens. On a pinnacle just below the sheltering wall, stood a square tower topped with devices he could barely make out. One of the terraces held dozens of frames of fabric that flickered in the breeze. People moved among them, hanging more and taking others down.
