She lay in darkness.
Through the darkness she heard two more thunderclaps. She heard more screams and many voices weeping. But she could not place the sounds or make her brain understand them.
From her head shot a pain that seemed to mass at her shoulder then spread more slowly down her arms, down through her stomach, down to the very soles of her feet. She wished to crawl out of her own skin but could not find the strength to do so. Therefore she lay still, enduring the pain, not through any fortitude of spirit but because she did not know what else to do.
At last she opened her eyes.
Daylight met her gaze, which surprised her. She’d expected more darkness. The air was still thick with dust and smoke, but the sun pierced through and lit upon the rubble around her. Lit upon the face not a foot from hers.
An old face, repulsive to look upon, so deformed as it was by infection. Blood poured from his mouth and nose. He would not die of his leprosy, for a hundred small wounds covered his body, the nails and bits of sharp iron which seemed to have burst upon him, burrowing into his flesh. The ruined walls of the hut lay around and on top of him, and these must have crushed his brittle bones.
But his eyes shone. The pain had gone from them. Though dark clouds gathered across his vision, there was a light deep down inside. He was blind now, so near to death, and yet he seemed to gaze directly into Sairu’s soul.
“Even here,” he said, his voice reaching out to her across that small space between them. “Even here it finds us. The angel of mercy, mercy . . . mercy . . .”
Sairu stared into the face of a dead man. The most hideous face she had ever seen. And she wept for the Granddad of Lembu Rana. Why, she wondered with a sad, sickening pity, must these people, cursed to suffer so much, now be made to suffer even more?
How long she lay there she could not guess. She slipped from consciousness again, and when she woke, her thoughts were full of driving terror. My mistress! My mistress! But Lady Hariawan was gone. Sairu could feel the loss of her in the very air she breathed. She had failed. She had failed!
“No.” She growled like an animal and, fighting the pain, struggled to get her arms under her body, struggled to push against the heaviness weighing her down. But she had lost too much blood. Her muscles trembled, useless as a tiny babe’s. Tears poured down her face again, this time tears of fury. “No!”
Suddenly she believed one of the Dara come to earth knelt before her in the form of a shining, radiant man. His skin was white and luminous, his hair like morning light, and his eyes were twin suns, so bright, so brilliant, so full of fire as they were.
“Dragon’s teeth!” the angel cursed, and she thought she recognized the voice though she could not place it. Weight began to lift from her body, from her shoulder. She breathed more easily. But the relief was short-lived when the sharpness piercing her shoulder suddenly increased. She cried out weakly.
“Sorry! Oh, so sorry, my girl!” the golden voice exclaimed. “I thought I had more time. I thought I would reach you. But we stepped beyond Time, I fear, and it was devilish hard returning. Cursed paths! Cursed lies!”
Sairu lost consciousness.
From the shadow of Tu Domchu other shadows fled. For even here on lowly docks of the city in the depths of an overcast, moonless night, there could be no shadow more dreadful than that which spread behind the tall figure of the assassin standing on the edge of the ocean.
Tu Domchu waited for a lie.
He knew it would be a lie. He knew already that the plan had failed, that the poor fool who was their last hope had not succeeded in killing the girl who was their last dread. He knew that she had been taken. None among his brethren had been able to gather any specific word, any final information that would close the matter once and for all.
But it did not matter. Tu Domchu knew. And young Sunan would come crawling back to him, his dagger sticky with blood from some piglet or rabbit no doubt, and claim to have done as he was told.
Perhaps Tu Domchu would not wait for the lie to be spoken. Perhaps he would put an end to Kasemsan’s miserable nephew before he could dishonor his tongue and shame the House of Dok one last time. Perhaps Tu Domchu owed his old friend Kasemsan that much at least.
But no. That was not the way of the Crouching Shadows. They were swift to enact their justice, but they would wait until they knew for certain that it was justice. Tu Domchu could not kill for a lie not yet spoken. He must wait. He must hear it first.
So he stood on the docks of the city, watching the moored ships rocking in the waves like so many cradles. They reminded him, very briefly, of cradles in his own past. Cradles which had held his children, children he had not seen for many years, who were probably long since grown and gone on their way in the world. Or dead. They might all be dead.
What did it matter? Soon this whole world would be dead. He had failed. His order had failed. They were doomed, every one of them, to pass through the fire and beyond the gates to the Netherworld. And more fire.
But before then he would kill Sunan for speaking his lie. He would send the wretch before him into the flames and, in that, take a final satisfaction.
A footstep behind him. Tu Domchu recognized it at once, for he never forgot the tread of any man. So the liar approached. Domchu did not turn but remained where he stood, staring out to sea. He wished Hulan were out tonight. He should have liked for her to see what he would do even now in her name. Even though all was lost.
“Tu Domchu,” said the voice of Sunan.
Only—and Domchu frowned at this thought—it was not quite his voice anymore. Sunan’s voice had always been laced with bitterness, with envy, with anger. Despite all his intelligence, all his learning and his poise, it had only ever been a weak voice.
But the voice Domchu heard behind him was not weak. Indeed, it was stronger by far than any man’s voice he had ever before heard.
Domchu turned slowly, disguising his surprise. The light from a near lantern shone upon Sunan as he approached, and Domchu saw that his clothes were burned about the edges, and he smelled of smoke. He drew nearer along the docks, his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, but there was nothing submissive, nothing cowardly about his stance. His pace was firm and quick, and he looked very like a tiger stalking its prey.
“Kasemsan’s kin,” Domchu said. “Did you kill the Dream Walker?”
“No,” said Sunan. He raised his head as he spoke the one word. He was so close now that even with only the lantern for illumination Domchu could see the whites of his eyes.
But suddenly they were no longer white. They burned searing red.
“No, I did not kill the Dream Walker, Tu Domchu,” Sunan said, and fire glowed in his mouth. “And I will no longer permit you or any of your kind to command me!”
Those words were the last Tu Domchu ever heard. And even they were swallowed up at the end by a dreadful roar and burst of flame that issued from Sunan’s throat, from the furnace in his gut, and overwhelmed Domchu and all that strip of dock. Flames leapt up rigging into sails, and soon bells were sounded, alarms were raised, and men ran like mad demons through the night, which was suddenly bright as day, seeking to douse the fire before it spread to every ship at port.
Come dawn the next day, the ashes of what had once been Tu Domchu had been kicked and crushed under so many feet that they would never be found.
Somewhere lost in the dark, Sairu wandered. She was not afraid, though she wondered if perhaps she should be. It was difficult to fear here, for she could see nothing frightening, and she felt only softness and smelled only dew-tipped grass.
Far away but drawing ever nearer, she heard a sweet, a rich voice singing.
“Beyond the Final Water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling,
When you hear my voice beyond the darkened veil,
Won’t you return to me?”
She liked the voice and turned toward it, pursuing it without haste through the dark.
Then she was com
ing to.
She found herself lying in soft grass. She knew by the smell, even before she opened her eyes, that she was far from the Valley of Suffering. The stench of death and, more recently, of rotting eggs was gone. The air was clear in her lungs.
Something rumbled in her ear. She opened one eye and found herself looking into the cat’s face, which was wreathed in a smug cat smile.
“Monster,” she breathed.
“Good morning,” said he.
“Morning?”
“Yes. You’ve slept the night away. Feeling better?”
She did not answer but sat up instead. She felt pain stab through her shoulder and arm, but it wasn’t as sharp as she might have expected. Craning her neck to inspect the wound, she discovered bloodstains on her leper’s garments, but these were dried. When she reached around tentatively to explore her shoulder with her fingertips, she discovered that it had been bound up tight by skilled hands.
She glanced sideways at the cat. The cat purred and went on smiling. When she rose unsteadily to her feet, however, he also stood, his tail lashing. “Are you sure you’re quite ready to be up and about?”
Sairu did not respond to this but spoke sharply. “Which way to Lembu Rana?”
The cat’s ears went back. But he turned and pointed with his pink nose, and she saw that they lay quite near to the road she had followed several times now between the city and the leper village. Moving stiffly at first but finding her strength with each stride, Sairu made her way to the road and followed it back to the valley.
If the Valley of Suffering was a place of horror, the horror had increased tenfold that day. Five craters marked sites where huts had once stood, and destruction spread around each one in a blackened radius. The poor denizens of the valley picked their way through rubble, searching for loved ones, searching for the remains of their meager belongings. The sound of weeping, never a stranger to Lembu Rana, rose up in greater chorus than ever.
It looked as though a dragon had struck.
Sairu picked her way down the path, the cat trailing at her feet. She would not allow herself to think of Lady Hariawan. Not yet. If she did she might panic, and she could not afford to panic. Any chance of finding her mistress depended on Sairu’s keeping her head, gathering what information she could, and making the coolest possible decisions.
She saw a large party of lepers moving toward her. None of them paid her any heed, and when she stepped aside, they continued past her to a quiet corner of their valley, a corner where many small mounds lined up side by side, each marked with a small, unmarked but carefully placed stone. Two of the lepers, men who might once have been strong, carried a bundle between them. Sairu knew at once, without being told, that it was the Granddad. She knew by the weeping, the moaning of every man, woman, and child in that procession. He had been related by blood to none and yet, by virtue of his disease, he had become beloved grandfather to all.
She felt tears welling in her own eyes as she watched the sorry procession pass by. She searched for the child she had saved but did not see her. Perhaps she was tucked away in some secret corner, alone with her misery, alone with her loss.
Turning away from the sight, Sairu continued on into the village. But she had made only a few paces before her foot touched something that brought her up short and staring down at that which lay before her.
It was a Chhayan warrior. A man whose face would be etched upon her memory for the rest of her life, following her even unto her deathbed.
A man whose life she had taken.
In the near distance behind her Sairu heard a chant rising up, sustained by many trembling, tear-filled voices. A Kitar burial chant, a prayer of rest and safe travels through the Netherworld. And every voice was united in love.
Feeling the cat’s eyes upon her, Sairu knelt beside the dead Chhayan. His eyes were open and staring. He lay at a grotesque angle, one hand still pressed over the gutting wound she had dealt him. Sairu, calm and quiet, with deep respect, heaved him onto his back and placed both his hands across his chest. How cold and stiff he was, this man who had the day before set upon her mistress with such evil intent.
The Kitar prayer filled the air of Lembu Rana. Sairu looked down at the Chhayan, feeling sad, suddenly, that she knew none of the chants or prayers his own people would offer him in her place.
Hardly knowing what she did, she placed her hands on his forehead. She did not know any Chhayan prayers, so she whispered what she did know:
“Go to sleep, go to sleep,
My good boy, go to sleep.
Where did the songbird go?
Beyond the mountains of the sun.
Beyond the gardens of the moon.
Where did the Dara go?
Beyond the Final Water’s waves
To sing before the mighty throne.
Go to sleep, go to sleep,
My good boy, go to sleep.”
As she sang the lullaby it seemed to her that far away—in a tree above the valley, perhaps—a bird sang, joining its lilting voice with hers. And so she did not make this final benediction for her fallen enemy alone. She and the bird together sang his passing song. And her mind filled suddenly with a vision which she did not doubt was truth: a humble Chhayan mother hunched over in a skin-covered gurta as it rumbled across the plains. In her arms she held a baby—a child who would grow into a vicious wolf of his pack but who, for the moment at least, was her own little pup, her own darling, the delight of her eyes. And she crooned her lullaby to that child there at the beginning of his life.
It seemed to Sairu then that perhaps this man—this stranger she had slain whose name she would never know—would rest. That perhaps his ears, even in death, would discern the final strains of his mother’s song. Thus the circle of life and death was made complete.
Her duty done though her heart remained troubled, Sairu rose. She must now return to her true task. Her mistress was in peril, and she did not know how much time she had to find her before . . . what? Some terrible fate she could not imagine would take place! Her eyes, still tear-rimmed, roved hither and yon, searching for some sign. Searching for some clue.
She spotted something unusual lying half-hidden beneath the dead body of the Chhayan.
Sairu knelt and, trying to disturb the fallen as little as possible, removed an arrow from beneath him. She knew that it was one of his. It was like no arrow she had ever before seen. Attached to the shaft was a tube of bamboo tied up at both ends. A small lead stone weighted the arrow near the feathered end, presumably to increase the range.
Sairu broke the bamboo tube in half. Out poured an evil black powder. And bits of sharp iron. And nails.
The cat approached, sniffed the powder, and hissed at the scent. “What is that?”
“Long Fire,” Sairu responded at once. For she recalled hearing Princess Safiya speak, only once, on weapons of this kind that had been seen in the hands of Pen-Chan warriors. A hundred years ago a Kitar emperor had sought to expand his empire by plucking the ripe fruit that was the Nua-Pratut nation. But his warriors, marching in armored ranks, had fallen before a weapon of such power, such destructive force as they had never before faced. The Pen-Chans were creative indeed and most unwilling to be taken into the Kitar fold. No one had dared assault their tiny nation since—no one besides raiding Chhayans, of course, who everyone knew would attack anything that moved.
But now the Chhayans wielded the Long Fire.
Across Sairu’s soul flashed a thought: The end of the worlds has come.
She shook this aside quickly and rose, tucking the remains of the arrow into her robes and scuffing the black powder into the dirt with one foot. This done, she turned to Monster. “Can you find my Lady Hariawan? Do you know where they have taken her?”
He blinked once, considering. Then he said, “I know where they have taken her. But I do not think I could find it again on my own.” Hastily he told her all that he had seen—the temple built of sound in the Realm of Dreams. The wasteland. The C
hhayans.
And the Dragon.
When he had finished, Sairu stood a long moment in silence. Then she said, “I do not believe in dragons.”
“It’s time you started,” said the cat.
Sairu did not answer. She drew three deep breaths. Then she said, “You cannot lead me to this place?”
The cat shook his head. “I followed the Chhayans when I last went. And they used a Path I would not use again. Certainly not on my own.”
“In that case we must find some other means to reach . . . to reach this Ay-Ibunda.” Sairu turned and, gathering her robes in both hands, ignoring the pain in her shoulder as best she could, started back up the path out of the Valley. Her gaze was fixed, her jaw set with a grim purpose as a plan took shape in her mind.
“Where are we going?” the cat demanded, hastening after her. “You have a look about you, and I’m not sure I like it. What is this new scheme you are hatching?”
“We are going to interpret the emperor’s dream,” said Sairu.
The Anuk Anwar slouched in his throne, eyeing his court from behind a gilt fan. None of those gathered in the vast throne room of Manusbau paid any attention to his glowering. For one thing, his throne—ebony wood inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl murals depicting Anwar and Hulan—was set on a dais so high above the rest of the room that any man wishing to address his emperor would be obliged to tilt his head back to quite an uncomfortable degree simply to make eye contact.
Besides, the emperor was really necessary only to sign those documents his viziers placed beneath his hand and to generally make it known to the public at large that he still lived. Otherwise, there was little for him to do but sulk.
And sulk he did. Back when he was only a prince (ten years ago now), he could entertain himself either at sport with his brothers or at courting one of his several wives whenever and however he wished. If only, he considered with a melancholy sigh, if only his father had lived longer, postponing his son’s ascension to the dubious honor of being the Lordly Sun’s chosen favorite! He’d been much better suited to the indulgent life of a prince than he was to the stuffy court rooms and official duties required of Noorhitam’s Anuk. It was all too boring and too hateful. He sighed again, bemoaning his glorious lot.