Drakemaster, p.46
Drakemaster, page 46
At last, the ledge he had leapt from loomed above him. A series of hand and footholds brought him up, peering over the deserted launch platform.
The mountains echoed with cries and the ringing of bells. Bloodied corpses scattered the slopes, bristling with arrows, but many others ran, and a crowd pressed together in the heart of the valley where the central plaza held markings like a giant compass with too many rings. Above them, on the rim near the waterfalls, stood the invaders, raining down arrows, while the handful of warriors—most of them the kitemen Dailus had come to know—tried to shoot back.
The enemy soldiers spread out along the rim, not deep, but they did not need to be, a force of maybe two hundred men, well-armed. Between the waterfalls, the enclave of geomancers roused. Men hurried from the buildings that clung to the cliff face, gathering onto a balcony that seemed barely large enough to hold them.
To the right, where a viewing platform cut into the cliff, Dailus heard voices. A screen of flowering trees separated this official stage from the kitemen’s workshops and homes. He lifted his eyes to the kitemen’s pavilion where his things were kept—including the scroll.
Leaping up, Dailus ran across the short space and slithered down the stairs into the pavilion. He clung to the second pillar from the back and thrust his hand into the space between the rafters. Empty. The scroll was already gone.
Dailus reeled. Then he found his satchel and dragged it up onto his shoulder. What next?
The voices grew louder. Dailus dropped down into the grass beneath the flowering trees and peered up through the foliage. On the platform stood a handful of soldiers and a man in a long grey robe with a breastplate and helmet. “—such a nest of traitors, captain,” he was saying, then he shifted his gaze and inclined his head, as if in answer to a bow.
“I had not envisioned such a force, Minister.”
Dailus dug his fingers into the earth to keep himself grounded. Ming Lun’s voice. She moved nearer, her back to the Valley of the Sages.
Ming Lun. The knowledge struck him like a blow. The others had united to stop the weapon, if they could. He had even thought he had won her heart, but her heart had already been lost, to an emperor, a cause, a country. It seared him more sharply than her kiss.
The Minister replied, “We were already on the march, and the Mongols are not far behind us. I saw no need to divide our force. What are they doing down there, gathering themselves to slaughter?”
“They are a strange people, Minister. They wish to understand the world, but not to participate in it.”
“Which may explain why they refused to aid the Son of Heaven. We knew of them, of course, but not their precise location.” He smiled, a gracious expression that left Dailus more worried than before. “The emperor will hear of your service, Ming Lun.”
“My service is not yet done, Minister.” She lifted her hand, then drew down into a graceful bow and brought up the other hand with a flourish, as if presenting a ceremonial blade. On her palms for his approval, lay the scroll. “This document details the device, my lord Minister. It may aid you in your work.”
He settled it in the crook of his arm. “Indeed. You will wish to witness this. Come, turn around.” He gave a flourish of his hand in invitation. Slowly, she complied.
“It seems a loss, my lord, not to take advantage of their knowledge.”
“That is why we will not use fire, but stone and bamboo are resistant to flooding. As is bronze. I brought a portable firedrake, but it seems fitting to use the native devices.”
The earth gave a low rumble, and Dailus looked back. Near the waterfalls, the soldiers worked, placing the Sages’ incendiaries. On the balcony between the waterfalls, the gathered geomancers turned together. The balcony slid free of its cliffside and descended toward the village, the thin struts that supported it pivoting to guide the balcony downward until it occupied the middle section of the largest bridge. The geomancers scattered to either side, toward the stone pillars that surrounded the town. Andao, his hair growing in curly, stood out among them as he moved with another man in the direction of the tower. Again, the men stopped and turned. On the pillars between them, the bronze globe lanterns burst into glorious light. Between these markers, the geomancers spread their hands.
A whisper of movement drew Dailus’s attention, and Zhencai slipped up beside him, crouching beneath the trees. “I knew she was not to be trusted,” Zhencai breathed.
The words struck a shaft to Dailus’s heart. “What now?”
“Bao Xing.”
The tower stood on a low rise outside the perimeter of lanterns and geomancers. None had emerged from it while Dailus watched, but he could see a few people moving at the top. Please God they had archers inside.
The bowl of the valley gave a low moan that echoed upward.
“Magic,” snarled one of the men on the platform—the Minister Ming Lun had recognized. “Now! Do it now!” He waved his arms.
Across the valley, the soldiers on the rim bunched together, then jogged away toward the ghost town, leaving tiny flames behind them. Curious: the Minister had said they would not use flames. Too late, Dailus understood, but his protest was lost in the explosion that followed, the stone of the waterfalls bursting outward and pelting the village below. People shrieked, and the entire valley rocked with the damage as more stone rumbled down the mountain slopes. The lake above rushed downward, sweeping away the buildings and stairs on the cliffside, tumbling the bodies of the dead and the living alike.
The rumble shook where Dailus and Zhencai crouched, and rocks bounced to crash among the kitemen’s houses and into the graveyard below. “Yusen’s down there. The tower is high—it’ll hold.”
Zhencai gave a nod, and the two men slid and scrambled downward. The earth still rumbled as water poured in, rushing the streets, slamming into the outermost houses. When the central stone came down, the village would vanish beneath the waters. Even now, cracks opened in the ramparts of stone where the geomancers’ palace had been. They had no time. When his feet hit the path and a shout behind him warned him they had been seen, Dailus hesitated—to run for the tower and the stable rock beyond meant safety. And for Yusen, trapped in the tomb, certain death whether by avalanche or drowning.
He ran on, Zhencai keeping pace despite his age and stature. A pair of soldiers scrambled down to meet them, and Zhencai sprang ahead, his extended leg slamming into the lead soldier before the man could throw his spear. “Go!” he shouted.
Dailus sprinted past, hearing the uff and smack of combat. At the Li tomb, an arm thrust into the gap above the slab. “Let me out! Please!”
The ground gave a heave, and Dailus stumbled as one of the grave markers shifted from its place.
A spear flew over his head as he went down, and he rolled, bringing up his little knife. The soldier lunged to reclaim his spear, but Zhencai moved faster, landing hard on the soldier’s back with a telltale crack of bone. Blood streamed from the soldier’s gaping mouth. Dailus clambered back up and snatched the soldier’s spear, a shaft set into an iron cap as long as his forearm with a wicked tip. Dailus jammed the tip between the slab and the tomb wall and heaved with all his might. The slab groaned against stone. The ground tremored again, and he worked with it, prying into the tomb. With a long, grating movement, the slab inched outward.
A cloth-wrapped stick tumbled out, then Yusen scrambled through the opening, barely big enough, even for him. His dark hair hung in limp matts, his blue del stained and spattered, his skin gone sallow. Collecting the bundle and hugging it to his chest, the Mongol swayed on his feet, leaning against the tomb as he tipped his face to the sky. Finally he looked down, then straightened immediately, his breath sucked in.
Dailus still crouched as he had finished, with the spear in his hands.
“Why?” the dwarf rasped. “So you could kill me yourself?”
“Because no man should die a prisoner.” Dailus turned away. The sight of his master in such a miserable state inspired nothing but pity. “Zhencai!”
The monk gave no sign of having heard. He paused between two soldiers, then lashed out at one with his fist. The man dodged, lifting his spear, but Zhencai caught the shaft and shoved it downward, planting the point as he swung his body around it and knocked the men down. He let go, dropping to his feet and sprinting back to Dailus. “The earth.”
“I feel it.” Beneath the ominous rumble of the water’s rise came a slither of something else, then a shock that tingled the hair at the back of his neck.
Two dozen yards below, one of the geomancers stood between two lantern pillars, his feet placed carefully on stone. Pulling, Andao had said of the sensation in the ghost village before they were attacked by kitemen. Dailus’s feet and knees trembled with the suction.
“They are gathering the qi—we must move!” Zhencai shouted above the rising moan.
Keeping the spear, Dailus launched into motion, diagonally upward, toward the tower. They would never make it.
Behind him, he heard a muffled curse, and glanced back to find Yusen struggling to keep up. Zhencai caught the Mongol’s arm and pulled him along. The bridge at the chasm cracked and collapsed into the rising water even as they approached, forcing them uphill.
“You!” A Chinese voice, but the Mongolian answered: “Son of a snake! Guowei!”
On the platform high above, a group of faces peered down at them. One of them was Ming Lun’s, her hair still shimmering in the sun. Steal from a comrade, spy for an enemy, betray a village. Anything for the emperor.
Dailus turned away. “Come on!” He planted the butt end of the spear and leapt the chasm, then turned back to toss it to the others. Yusen caught the spear one-handed. Spear in hand, he looked up the long stair toward the platform where the Chinese minister glared down at him. Dailus did not know what lay between Mongol and Mandarin, but the swelling fury needed no further explanation—nor must he be foolish enough to stop for it.
Zhencai tapped the Mongol’s shoulder as he sprang past and leapt the gap, almost slipping, but catching himself, pitching forward to run up the other side. “Bao Xing.” He pointed toward the tower.
Yusen stumbled into motion, planting the spear and flying into the air over the gap, limbs flailing. He struck the ground hard on the other side, tumbling. He pulled himself up again, panting, the spear forgotten, the other bundle still clutched in his grip. He pressed a hand to his shoulder, wincing as he lurched after them.
The valley’s moan rose into a deafening sound that ached in Dailus’s teeth. Already, a dozen or so soldiers converged on the tower’s base.
“Yusen!” Bao Xing called out from the top of the tower, her silk sleeves fluttering.
Clenching his jaw, Yusen started forward. Almost immediately, he lurched sideways and nearly fell.
“Can you even fight like this?” Dailus blurted.
The Mongol shot him a deadly glance, his teeth framed in a snarl, but his eyes glazed with pain and fear. “She needs me.”
Dailus glanced up again, thinking. “Can you climb?”
Yusen’s brow furrowed, right hand still gripping the opposite shoulder. Dailus thought the Mongol might weep, an idea that stunned him more than anything else that day.
“I can,” Zhencai said. “Tell me the plan.” He strode forward, and the others followed as best they could.
“I have a cord, strong enough to hold me on a kite. If we tie off an end at the top of the tower, and one down low, she could slide down it.”
The monk put out his hand and took the coil. “This means you must guard.”
Dailus gave a nod. He glanced at Yusen, still uncertain. “If you go uphill—those trees should be strong enough. Zhencai will throw you the end, and you—”
“I understand,” the Mongol snapped, then he changed course up into the fields, angling toward the trees Dailus had indicated.
On guard. With a knife, a field of drying fabric and a packet of ginger tea? Then the last rampart of stone at the end of the valley cracked, and the two waterfalls became one, a monster roaring directly into the valley.
High on the rim, soldiers cheered. In the village, citizens screamed. And, in the narrow band between, the geomancers raised their arms. Like the standing pillar of water trapped in its little bronze bowl, the floor of the valley shivered, sang, and rose with a howl of stone, thrusting upward, scattering dirt and gravel. The pillar of earth gleamed with veins of ore and echoed with power as the geomancers raised their valley to the sky. What power they called upon, Dailus could not know, save to whisper a prayer as he watched the pillar thrust ever higher, taking the heart of the village and all of its inhabitants with it. Bands of metal wove through the stone, gleaming with inlaid characters, themselves forming even greater words wrought into the very earth itself. The geomancers had tamed their world, and now it obeyed them, just as Yusen’s horses raced to their master’s. Soldiers fell, shrieking into the collapsing tunnels and streams as the Valley of Sages rose once more into legend.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
For the moment, Dailus realized, Zhencai needed no guard at all: the miracle was enough to distract any reasonable man. As the pillar thrust upward, the water roared in around it, and the wall of the valley, where the waterfalls had been, crumbled inward, cracks streaking down the face of the naked stone; bits of buildings, wood, and bronze machinery tumbled after. The remaining bridges toppled, taking a few soldiers with them. More soldiers plunged into the cracks opening before them.
The ground still trembled beneath his feet, but Dailus shook himself into motion. A ring of water surrounded the sage’s pillar, eating into the remaining earth of the valley itself. It crumbled toward the graveyard opposite, the terraced farms and the hillside of the astronomical tower where he stood. As he ran toward the tower, the edge of stone below broke away, tumbling into the frothing water. A few bodies slid down with it. Another body slid toward it, stirred, and pushed upward, lanky arms flailing. Andao!
Dailus ran into the lines of laundry. He yanked up the tall stake at the far end and ran back, flinging it ahead of him to rattle down the slope then grabbing the lower pole as the rope with its washing sailed by.
Andao struggled to his hands and knees as the end of the laundry skittered past him, grabbed the rope, and pulled himself onward. He needed only a few steps to find his footing. Dailus hurried ahead, pointing toward the tower, and their paths converged, Andao slowing to match him.
Tears streamed down Andao’s face, and he smeared them away to no avail. “Master Wei pushed me. When the great work began, he—” Andao choked in a breath. “Master Wei saw Zhencai and Yusen. I revealed the wrong attachment.” He nearly fell, then, but Dailus steadied him, and they shared a glance. Andao’s half-smile shone through the tears. “I failed him.”
“Could you do that?” Dailus pointed up at the stone pillar that shadowed their way.
“It’s taken them a hundred years to lay the work for that.” Andao took another long sigh. “She’s still in the tower?”
Four soldiers remained at the base of the tower, pounding on its door with a stone baluster from the nearest bridge. More worked their way down from the valley’s rim toward the stand of trees where Yusen waited.
“Zhencai is climbing the back of it. We need to draw off the soldiers. I have no weapons, nothing—not even the scroll any more. All I have is tea.”
Andao brightened in spite of his tears. “You have tea? What’s in it?”
“How should I know?”
Andao stuck out his hand expectantly, and Dailus pulled out the pouch of tea. “They’ve seen us.” The tower door cracked beneath the soldier’s onslaught and someone shouted inside, followed by the clash of weapons. But two soldiers broke off and headed toward them, raising their spears.
“This is very fertile ground,” Andao remarked. “Let’s hope for the best.” He turned—another of those precise movements as if the direction he faced were critical, then opened the tea pouch and tossed it into the wind. A spear flew toward them, and Dailus leapt aside—into a lush and growing mound of vegetation. “Thorns would be better—or bamboo,” Andao remarked.
Dailus handed over the bamboo tube that once contained his ointment, then picked up the spear as the soldier rushed him, knife drawn.
Dailus spun the spear, knocking the man in the side and sending him sprawling.
Andao pivoted again, holding the empty bamboo tube, then sank to his knees. Passing him, Dailus lunged forward to finish the assault and the soldier stirred to rise from the unsteady ground. Before the soldier could get his feet under him, he shrieked and his back bent as if the effort of rising proved too much. Blood blossomed all over his body, stains on his trousers and arms, then shoots of green pierced straight through his flesh. The soldier’s body jerked and shifted as the bamboo swelled and mounted skyward, shredding the impaled man in a welter of gore.
“Holy Father!” Dailus scrambled back from the dead man, feeling sick, but he had no time for awe or horror. Using the spear as a prop to move faster, Dailus sprang up the slope and scrambled onto the solid stone of the tower’s base. Four other soldiers, running ahead to aid their fellow, scattered, screaming. Bamboo struck upward through their feet, tainted by the poisonous Thunder God Vine. They writhed and howled, but hung dead in moments, pinned by the fast-growing shoots.
When the man at the door turned, Dailus whacked his head with the spear and sent him to his knees, but caught the man’s shoulder before he could fall onto the deadly earth, settling him to the step. No one deserved that.
