Drakemaster, p.54
Drakemaster, page 54
“For life,” said Dailus, “for freedom.”
He lunged, but Master Deng hooked the crossbow onto the rail and leapt over, then dropped lightly to the ground below, running for the upturned boat. Dailus grabbed the chipped stepstool and flung it over the side, knocking him down.
A soft and desperate sound turned Dailus around.
Bao Xing stood at the sighting tube, tracing it with her eyes, hands outspread and helpless. It would slide upward into place on that pivoting arm, locking with the one above to channel the Dark Lance’s fire through the gemstone in between. Could he even reach it? If he did, he would succeed only in burning to death. Ming Lun had been wrong—they could defeat the soldiers, and cross the lake of mercury. And yet she had been right as well: they could do all of that, and still not win. With the merciless precision of clockwork, the device ratcheted toward destruction and he had no idea how to stop it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Sensing the rush of wind as his assailant moved, Zhencai dropped to his hands beneath the slice of a blade, then kicked hard into the swordsman’s knee, sending him out of the fray. At his back, Ming Lun twisted in a dancer’s turn and carved her short blade into a soldier’s gut. For a moment, their eyes met, she grinned, and danced away. They had fought each other before, and now they would die together.
Another soldier thrust, and Zhencai caught the man’s arm across his shoulder, pivoting and wrenching back. Something popped, and the arm went limp in his grasp as he swept the soldier down. The maneuver left him facing the lake and the miniature landscape when an unmistakable body fell from the tower and tumbled into the dangerous light. Not dangerous yet, not until the clock struck one more time. When he offered to burn his monk’s paper for Yusen’s comfort, the Mongol turned him down, claiming he had given enough, but it was Yusen who gave everything.
Then the officer strode into view, shoving Andao before him. The young man collapsed and remained huddled on the ground.
A soldier interrupted Zhencai’s view and landed a solid blow at his hip, but with the flat of his blade. Zhencai twisted away, reclaiming his qi, searching for detachment. They fought, turned, met, and repelled each other, both breathing too hard. Was this the man who would slay a Shaolin?
Not far off, the officer leaned toward the island, shouting for the attention of someone who did not answer. His sword rested on Andao’s shoulder, ready at any moment to slice into his throat.
Zhencai had allowed Andao to follow him, to undertake this foolish quest. Andao did not even understand enough about Nirvana to welcome the chance to achieve it, and Zhencai could not help him.
The next soldier aimed a blow at his chest, and Zhencai barely responded in time to deflect the blade. The soldier’s fist around the hilt still slammed into him, crumpling his monk’s paper and digging in the sleeper’s gift, the ruby dark as her flowing blood. Zhencai gasped a breath, then found another. “Ming Lun!”
She spun about. “What?”
“This—they need it, for healing.” He pulled the stone from his hidden place.
“You trust me?” She dodged a blow with automatic ease.
“I trust your aim.”
Ming Lun gave a nod that might have been a bow. In a spin, she swept the stone from his hand and dropped low, sliding past the few remaining soldiers, and those already dazed.
“But you’re a lark like us!” The officer protested. He swung away from Andao, who suddenly rose to his knees and spread his hand, flinging something at the officer, scattering a handful of particles at the soldiers.
Did the boy’s brief time as a geomancer make him think he would win this war with dirt?
First one soldier, then another wailed and cursed and twisted, slapping themselves, losing their weapons. One of them stumbled out of the way of Zhencai’s attack, apparently without noticing as he flailed. The soldier’s skin was crawling with ants. Ants! Andao had summoned ants to be his army. Zhencai laughed aloud.
“Bao Xing!” Atop the tower, the woman turned, and Ming Lun paused. She took a deep breath. It was just like the bridge when she threw stones at him and Andao, only a little bit further. That was the past. In the present, she would only have one try.
“Catch!” And the red stone arced through the air toward Bao Xing, but the lady did not put out her hands.
Zhencai dropped his opponent, adding a sharp blow to the man’s neck.
Ming Lun’s mouth opened, her brows the image of fury, then Bao Xing pinched up the edges of her gown and raised her skirt as a lady never should. She made a basket of silk, and the gem winked as it landed.
***
Utterly confused, Dailus watched as Bao Xing scooped the ruby from her skirt. “If only we could change it, instead of destroying it. Master Deng told Guowei to change the focus.”
“Because it killed the soldier—it struck here in the cavern when he had it wrong instead of transmitting through the map to the world.” But she didn’t mean to burn Yusen’s corpse to ashes, did she? If they didn’t figure out how to stop the machine, the rest of her world would be in ashes in any case.
“Red is the color of joy, they did not make this machine to kill, they made it to heal.” She rolled the gem between her fingers, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “If I could touch it, I could align a different star, a more auspicious one.”
“Right now, lady, we need to stop it. We don’t have time to make things better.” Brave words, given that he hadn’t even worked out how to touch the mechanisms without dying. Would he preserve the device just so they had an outside chance of saving Yusen—whatever was left of him? Even if he broke the Golden Serpent, the dragon lever remained locked until the gears rotated all the way through the firing cycle.
Dailus leaned in close to the controls before them, the array of knobs and levers that altered focus and direction, enabling the device to aim at different locations on the map below. The thin gold lines that connected them all. The circle of radiant energy, the Golden Serpent. Ironic that so much gold sat within a great lake of its enemy, quicksilver. Quicksilver! He dropped to his knees, staring at the lake. But the lake, too was part of the serpent, and he could not touch it—not with his hands.
Dailus grabbed Guowei’s sword, the slender blade so sharp it cut a lady’s gown. He clutched the dead man’s sleeve and sliced off the excess fabric, letting the arm flop back onto the floor, the sword clattering beside it.
“What are you doing?” Bao Xing watched him curiously.
“You said you can chose a different star, lady. Get ready to do it.”
“But—”
He was already running down the stairs, sleeve in hand. A pair of dead soldiers lay on the bank, still smelling faintly of burnt meat. What a time for his sense of smell to return. Before him spread the mirror-surface of the deadly lake, the quicksilver that had nearly been the death of him already. He held his breath as he leaned in and scooped the silken sleeve through the mercury, letting it fill. He carried the heavy pouch back up the stairs. His knees trembled, but he forced himself to keep going. The machine ticked overhead, the chime now a slender two prongs of the gear short of its moment. Another tick.
Dailus sprang up the last few steps, stumbling over one of the bodies and sliding in a slick of blood. The red gemstone lay on the floor where Yusen knelt until he’d been thrown over the side. Bao Xing was nowhere in sight, but a line of tiny footprints limned in blood led to the final stairs, the narrow way to the instruments over his head. “Lady!”
“Here! I am ready.”
He pinched the bottom of the silk between his fingers, mercury sliding over them, coating them in silver as he poured the liquid along every golden thread he could see. It oozed thickly down among the dials, filling the engraved characters that labeled them and dropping among the gears below. Thick and silver like the blood of heaven. For a moment it merely rested, bubbles on the surface, then the gold curled and peeled up into the globes of mercury, just as they had when he gilded the khan’s greatest firedrake. The humming all around him died to nothing.
Had he broken the serpent? He found one of the dropped knives and tapped a gear. No sparks, no frisson of power.
A final click and the sighting tube pivoted as the gears shifted. “Now, lady! Do it now!”
Dailus grabbed the knob that controlled elevation and cranked it back, then pulled the lever that Guowei employed to draw the focus of the huge device. For a moment, he trembled, not from the mercury that poisoned him nor from the power that hummed in the machine—but from the power that rested in his own hands. He once more commanded a weapon that could bring down walls and cities, a weapon that could incinerate an army and ruin a land for centuries, a weapon more terrible than anything short of the seven seals which God would break to unleash the apocalypse.
Dailus stood again in the place of God. Last time, outside the gates of Kaifeng, he stood there blind, wanting only the chance to go home, not thinking of the homes he would ruin and the lives that he would end. He swallowed hard. Did he trust himself to choose wisely? Would his aim, just as before, be true? Somewhere on the map below lay the village where those two boys played, and his straw blessing moved in the breeze to bring them his good wishes. Somewhere near Yusen’s left foot, if he did not miss his guess.
Overhead, the device thrummed in a lowering pitch, making the hairs rise on Dailus’s neck, setting his teeth and bones aching—the same sound that marked the blast of yellow light that slew the soldier.
“It’s still going to fire,” Bao Xing called from overhead. “You’ve aimed it at the Mongols, Dailus—you must make it stop! Even with the right star, we don’t know what it might do!”
“Not at the Mongols,” he said under his breath, “just the one.”
“Stop!” She cried again, then he heard the patter of her feet as she ran for the stairs.
He needed three hands and another handspan of reach. Snatching the gem, he darted toward the array as it shifted slowly into place, the higher tubes and mirrors re-aligned at Bao Xing’s command from the instruments above. He spun a circle, and Zhencai’s prayer beads clinked at his hip. Taking the loop from his belt, Dailus moved to the rail nearest the map.
Doubling the string of beads, he reached up and caught the beads over one of the protrusions. Using the beads for balance, Dailus stepped up to the top rail, then he leaned out and barely kissed the end of the tube, grabbing the yellow gem in his teeth. The tube shifted upward and he stuffed the ruby in the socket as the tube elevated above him. The tube notched together with the array that brought down the stars. The prayer beads slid free.
Dailus wavered on the rail. Bao Xing caught his arm and yanked him to his knees on the platform as the chime struck a single pure note that echoed in the cavern. The great device buzzed. From above came a roar like an avalanche, then a bolt so bright they had to look away. The broad circle of light aimed straight for Yusen’s fallen body, sprawled across the heart of the territory the Mandarins would burn. The image glowed beneath Dailus’s eyelids as he prayed: Yusen pinned in a circle of brilliant crimson light that flared and died away.
From the display down below came the tinkle of tiny instruments. Dailus blinked open his eyes, peering downward. A parade of mechanical figures emerged along one of the broad rings. They danced with the sound of bells and the striking of a miniature drum, joyously celebrating the Hour of the Dog. The dragon dial moved as well, and the lever dropped open, preparing the machine to be re-set and fired again. The machine’s ominous hum died away, leaving them in silence.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Bao Xing gripped Dailus’s arm, letting her fingers dig in. “What have you done? I know he wounded you, but could you not let him die in peace? There was more to him than what he did to you.”
He winced, but lay his hand over hers. His fingers dripped with gold-flecked globes of mercury. “Lady, I hope—I pray—we are both redeemed today.” He swallowed, his pale throat working. “You chose an auspicious star, and the stone it focused through was red.”
The healing stone Zhencai had from the sleeper, the stone Ming Lun tossed up to her too late, or so she thought. She let go of him, but he kept her hand a moment longer, and she noticed she was trembling. “Your hands,” she whispered. “The mercury.”
“It can harm me no more than it already has, lady.” He withdrew his touch and flicked away the drops to spin and strike upon the floor, silver on crimson.
He rose to his knees, while she crawled to the rail, staring down. Bao Xing held her breath, expecting to see a shadow burned into the landscape where Yusen had been, a small shadow that failed to capture the outsized truth of him. He lay there still, unburnt, curled on his side, blood pooled around him.
“There’s a boat,” whispered Dailus. “On the far side.”
She nodded faintly, and stumbled to the stairs, too shaky to stand. Just as when she was a child in her father’s tower, she sat and bumped down the steps, then hurried, clinging to the sides of the tower to steady herself. She stopped short at the view across the lake where she and Ming Lun shared tea with Master Deng. Dailus clattered down behind her, his long limbs made the more awkward by the poison that moved through him, then he, too, stared.
In the comfortable alcove, a bamboo forest grew from the carpet, with the soldiers trapped inside, staying well back from the new-grown stalks. Andao and Ming Lun worked over Zhencai, who sat on the floor between them, allowing them to staunch his blood.
“Trees?” Dailus called.
Andao looked up with a shy smile. “Power doesn’t have to kill.” Then his smile fled, replaced by something stern, something of the look of Zhencai. “I found three ways out including the path we took in getting here, but there are no weaknesses in the stone, Dailus. The geomancers reinforced it with words and minerals of strength, just as we saw in the corridors and on the platform when they fled to the sky. They meant for it to last forever. I’m sorry.”
However Dailus replied, Bao Xing did not hear. She rounded the island to the far side where a bowl-shaped leather boat lay upside down on the stone. She grabbed its rim and struggled to lift or turn it. The world blurred around her, and she blinked fiercely, the boat sliding from her grip. She knelt to try again, then Dailus knelt beside her, easily rolling the craft onto its bottom and pushing it onto the lake. He held the boat with one hand, and offered her the other, helping her inside.
Silently together, they made the short crossing to the miniature landscape beyond.
***
The smell of burning flesh always brought him home. A white glow surrounded him, the sky too bright—had the fire dazzled his eyes, or was it the glow of the white felt gers themselves? And then he knew. He drifted in the great Eternal Sky. Pain pulsed through his body, but surely that, too, would soon be ended. The light turned red as it consumed him, sweeping him with a tingle of power like the coming of a storm. The pain overwhelmed him, and his mind rushed to darkness.
When he returned, the smell of burning flesh had diminished. Faces formed in the white, and he knew that he, too, had been caught in the burning gers—the whiteness was the felt above him, falling to smother him, and the red was the light of the fires that devoured his family. Voices filtered through, the angry voices of the soldiers, then quiet voices, close by, his skin shivered with the memory of pain, and with the stroke of ghostly hands.
“Mother?” His tongue felt stiff, his own language foreign, as if he had been speaking too long in other tongues. She answered, but he could not hear her.
“I was dreaming as we died,” he told her. “I dreamed that I sat in the ger of the khan. I was his guest, and we ate a great feast, with dancing and music.” A man’s voice thrummed after his own, too deep to belong to one of his brothers, but they were all dead, now. Munkjar chopped off his father’s head. He had seen that, hadn’t he? Munkjar carrying away his father’s head.
“I saw the most beautiful woman in the world, and I married her.” He laughed, remembering his wedding day, marveling at it, her face once more before him, radiant. “She married me. She was wise and kind, like the breeze of summer that tells you to move the herds into fields of flowers. You would have been so proud.”
He caught his breath, and his joy turned sour. “I wanted to honor you, to honor our name.” His voice felt hoarse from the flames.
“I was cruel. I hurt her. I hurt so many people.” His ribs felt too tight, his lungs seared. “I was such a coward, scared of everything.”
His father sounded worried, his mother distraught, but he had to tell them the truth. They had to know that, even in his dreams, he was no worthy son.
“I stole a man from his home and made him my slave. Everything I had was earned by him. I just—I wanted to honor you.” His voice nearly failed him, and he forced himself to say the last of it, the worst of it. “You would be ashamed of me, if I had lived that dream.”
He thought for a moment that he saw his dream-bride, that she was holding him and easing his pain. And he wept as he thanked the Eternal Sky for bringing her back, one last time.
***
Dailus broke off his translation, wiping a hand over his face. “It’s too much! I can’t—I shouldn’t even hear this.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Bao Xing cradled Yusen in her lap, holding him close against her heart. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you.”
“No!” Dailus pushed away, standing in the plains of the miniature world, stained with Yusen’s blood. Glow worms crept across the scenery, whole and healed. A tiny pagoda rolled by his foot and he kicked it hard across the mountains to splash into the lake with a silvery sheen.
Back on shore, Ming Lun stood watching, waiting. Dailus stared back at her. He had forgiven her, hadn’t he? He had forgiven her when they fought, when she wouldn’t kill him and he kissed her, half in desperation, half in lust, for who could blame him then, in the moment of battle? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
