“And did you see yourself wielding the ‘Long Fire,’ as you call it, in this dream?”
Again Jovann shook his head.
“Then what makes you so certain I will give over the secret of black powder to you?”
“You won’t give it to me,” Jovann replied. “You will give it to our father. And you will hope that, in the giving, he will welcome you home.”
Sunan rose so swiftly that Jovann drew himself halfway up, his fists clenched, his shoulders tensed. But Sunan took a deep breath and adjusted the cloak over his shoulders. His belly burned like a raging furnace, but he swallowed and suppressed the rising heat. “Eat well, brother,” he said. “Tomorrow you will be back to buffalo jerk and withered dates.”
He turned to the door, and his hand was already at the panel when Jovann’s voice arrested him with a word:
“Wait.”
Sunan didn’t turn, but he did pause. He could hear his brother gathering himself to speak something he did not wish to say.
“I saw a vision about you as well, Sunan. I’ve had it many times in the last year, and I came to tell you.”
Sunan did not reply. But his stillness betrayed his curiosity.
“In my vision,” Jovann persisted, “I saw you kneeling before a powerful shadow. And then it touched you, and you rose up. You rose up in the form of a dragon. A great fire-filled dragon, Sunan, such as the legends speak of! And you were mighty, and you were beautiful, and all who saw you trembled, even our father. You were terrible in the eyes of the Khla warriors, and you led them into battle.”
Sunan felt his heart racing as his brother’s words washed over him. He did not understand them, but they thrilled him. Thrilled him deeply, even enough to shroud the shame of that day and fill him with a brief, painful hope once more. He leaned against the door, suddenly weak with longing.
“But there was more.” Jovann hesitated, and it was with difficulty he continued. “I saw you fight. I saw you face a warrior armed only with a small knife. Beware this warrior, Sunan! Beware her, for she will be your undoing.”
“She?”
Sunan turned then and fixed his brother with a stare full of such hatred, it might have struck him dead upon the spot. But Jovann knelt with his eyes closed, his palms flat on the table before him, and sweat beaded his brow as he recalled his dream.
A shudder passed through Sunan. “So this is why you begged our father to let you come. Did you travel so far to insult me to my face?”
Jovann’s eyes flew wide. “No!” he cried. “No, to give you warning! It will come to pass, and I fear—”
But Sunan heard no more. He was out through the door and into the passage already. He knew if he remained even a moment longer he would surely murder his brother, there at his uncle’s table.
The old gatekeeper of the temple hated his job. He hated the tedium of it, hated the poor working conditions, hated that other gatekeepers of finer gates surrounding the Crown of the Moon looked down on him. He hated that his club foot prevented him from being a soldier, hated that his ugly face prevented him from being a lover. He hated the priests he served, hated the food he ate, hated the hours he kept. He was so deeply embedded in his hatred that he could never imagine leaving it for a different, less hateful life.
His one joy came every sunset in the form of the coal-children scuttling up the road from the mines to deliver their wares to the temple. The coal-children, ragged and huddled and wheezing with sickness, were all smaller than he. And they squeaked when kicked.
“You’re late,” the gatekeeper growled when, in response to a timid knock, he slid back the lookout hatch and gazed out on the little coal-girl weighed down by her burden. The sun had already set and the moon was not yet up, leaving only the small light of the outer lantern to illuminate her general outline. By this light alone the gatekeeper could make out no details beyond her fearful trembling.
But the trembling brought a grin to his lips, and he opened the gate, which groaned on its hinges as he drew it back. “Hurry up with you,” he said, beckoning. His smile grew as he watched the little girl make her way heavily through the entrance, her feet shuffling with each step. “Your fellows have been’n gone hours ago. What kept you, lazy scum?” And he put out a hand to seize the girl’s thin shoulder.
His cry was thin and high, and abruptly shut off. But the pain in his hand, where his index finger was twisted and drawn back at an angle that did not quite allow for a break—though a break would almost be welcome relief—did not cease, even as the grip pinching his throat in just the right place prevented his voice from escaping. He stared up into the shadowed face of the coal-girl who had suddenly grown, looming over him as he knelt cringing at her feet.
“I know all about you,” she said. He could not discern her expression for the shadows, but he could hear the smile behind her words. “I see your life in your eyes, though we have never met. One of a too-large family, given less to eat than your brothers because of your deformity. Ran away to join the army, which would not have you, so you threw yourself upon the mercy of the priests. And mercy they granted you, but not too much, for one such as you can bear only so much of mercy. So here you sit, day in and day out, and you have coal enough to warm your feet, food enough to fill your belly, strong drink enough to poison your soul, and yet you will never, never breathe a word of thanks. Not to the priests, not to the goddess they serve. I know all about you, predator of the night, stalking the weak simply because they are weaker than you.”
She twisted his finger just a fraction more, and the gatekeeper choked with his need to scream. With just a little more pressure the girl brought him flat on his back and placed a foot on his throat.
“Leave the children alone,” she said.
And then she was gone, vanished into the darkness within the gate. The gatekeeper crawled away, murmuring prayers he’d heard the priests utter over the years and making signs to ward off evil spirits.
These signs did not work, however, for the next moment he looked into the glowing eyes of what must be a demon. It couldn’t be a cat, after all, for no cat would stare at him so intently before opening its mouth to say: “Lumé love me, but your breath does stink!”
Then the demon was gone after the girl, and the gatekeeper was left to pick up the remnants of his sanity.
For the most part the priests of the Crown of the Moon made a point to forget that the foundations of the holy temple of their goddess—the center of their religion—were laid by Chhayan hands many centuries ago. In fact, the worship of Anwar and Hulan was an inherited Chhayan practice, stolen and tweaked over two hundred years to suit Kitar sensibilities, but ultimately, at its roots, nothing more than the faith of nomadic barbarians.
It seemed fair enough to everyone concerned: conquer the country, conquer the religion. Make use of the best parts of both. And no one could argue that the priests of the Kitar—who didn’t have a national religion of their own beyond a vague ancestor-worship that was greatly out of fashion—had significantly improved their new faith with their own holy writs, ceremonies, sacrifices, and sacred days. Indeed, it had grown into such a popular religion that other surrounding nations, including Dong Min, Aja, and more, had taken it up and built temples of their own. Even the king of Nua-Pratut, a nation famed across the eastern Continent for its severe intellectualism, had ordered a few small shrines in honor of the Lordly Sun and Lady Moon put up in various cities . . . a concession the priests of the Crown of the Moon wore as a badge of pride.
It was all silly nonsense. Or almost all.
Sairu made her way through the twisting gardens and passages of the temple as confidently as though she had walked them dozens of times before. As confidently as though this were not the first time in all her life she had stepped beyond the boundaries of Manusbau Palace; as though her heart didn’t pound with a wild fury of liberation she tried her utmost to suppress because, really, she wasn’t free but about to enter a lifetime of servitude.
It didn’t matter. Not even her
encounter with that wretched gatekeeper could dampen her spirits, because she had known all along that wickedness prowled beyond the sanctity of Manusbau, and she was prepared to deal harshly with wickedness as necessary. She felt like a goshawk freed for the first time from the falconer’s wrist. And although she knew she would return immediately at first summoning, for the moment she could soar high and pretend she would fly on forever and never return.
She wore a simple brown robe and, depending on whom she passed, she assumed a different form within it. When she passed priests, she became a huddled coal-girl once more. When she passed servants, she drew herself up, puffed herself out, and became a slow, sedate, muttering priest of a low order. Thus no one stopped her, no one gave her a second glance, and she progressed deep into the Crown of the Moon.
She had studied maps of its layout earlier that same evening and committed them to memory according to the techniques Princess Safiya had ingrained in her since she first joined the Golden Daughters. The central building of the sprawling temple was the magnificent Hulan’s Throne, which towered above the rest and rivaled even the Emperor’s own abode in Manusbau for glory. The thin moon rising in the deepening sky looked sallow as she gleamed down upon the marvelous edifice built in her honor. It was a bit sad, Sairu thought as she hurried along her way, climbing the garden paths up to Hulan’s Throne.
Something on wings fluttered before her face, startling her as it darted on down the hill. Surprised, Sairu turned to look after it and found her attention suddenly arrested by something she should have passed by without a glance. It seemed to her that the wan moon shone suddenly a little brighter and struck a stone so that it must catch her eye. She looked down into a small garden valley set apart from the rest of the gardens by its unkempt appearance. Weeds grew thick, and trees spread untamed limbs crawling with parasitic vines. No reflecting pool lay in sight to catch the moon’s smile as she passed overhead.
Instead, all that lay in the midst of this wreckage were large white stones. Foundation stones, Sairu thought, thickly crusted with black fungus so that she would have missed them had not the moon shone upon them just so and made them shine.
In the shadows of the vine-draped trees, a bird sang suddenly. Its silver voice rose, the sound of moonlight itself.
Sairu was transfixed like a spotted fawn caught suddenly in the hunter’s torchlight. She stood thus for no more than a moment, but in that moment felt a sudden rush of timelessness stretching out from those stones below, reaching up to touch her face. She thought she saw a tall building, of humble work compared to the temple yet boasting two great sets of doors swung open, one facing east, the other west. Between them, high in the rafters, hung a lantern filled with light more brilliant than the sun and the moon combined.
For that moment, as the beauty of the songbird’s voice washed over her, Sairu thought she heard the glory of eternal music.
Then it was gone.
She stood on the darkened path, breathing in the perfume of the priests’ fine garden, black-cherry and golden-pear blossoms in full bloom. Below her lay only an untidy patch of earth and ruts and weeds with a few half-buried stones jutting up from forgotten darkness.
Sairu had been prepared all her life to encounter wickedness. But no one had prepared her for what she had just witnessed, and she could not make it fit within her realm of understanding or expectation. Her brow creasing in a small frown even as her mouth forced a smile, she hastened on her way, determined . . . well, not to forget what she had glimpsed, but merely to think upon it later.
Now she must hurry on and meet her new master.
The Besur, High Priest of the Crown of the Moon, sat in an inner chamber within Hulan’s Throne and waited. Patience was, after all, one of the Twelve Mighty Virtues. And should not a high priest be well versed in all virtues, mighty or otherwise?
One nervous finger tapped out the passage of time on the arm of his chair as he tried to remember Brother Yaru’s exact words. Did the old fool receive an approval from the Golden Mother? He had implied as much, but Brother Yaru was not as sharp as he had once been. The Besur’s finger increased its tempo, and he cursed himself for not sending a younger priest. But then, whom could he trust more than Brother Yaru, simple though the man might be?
“I should have gone myself,” he muttered.
His voice caused a slight stirring across the room. The Besur raised his gaze quickly, startled by the movement. She had been so still. So very still. Three days now, and she scarcely did more than breathe on her own. She moved when they moved her, sat where they placed her, ate what they put in her mouth; otherwise she might have been no more alive than a wooden puppet.
But when he spoke, he thought she tilted her head to one side. The jeweled pendants on her headdress swung slightly even now. But her eyes remained closed, her hands quiet in her lap.
It was no use, the Besur thought. They could not wait, not with her in this state. Rumor would spread, if not from the priests themselves then from the temple slaves. And the Besur hated to order deaths, especially when the crime was no greater than a little gossip. No, they must make arrangements quickly, with or without—
A soft knock at the door. It must be Brother Yaru come to explain himself. The Besur glanced again at the still form across the room then hurried to answer the door. Not a task he was used to doing for himself, surrounded as he always was by slaves. But no slave could be permitted this far into Hulan’s Throne.
The door whispered in its grooves as he slid it back. The passage beyond the chamber was lit by a single lantern, light enough to tell him that the figure he now faced was not Brother Yaru.
“Who are you?” the Besur demanded. “Do I know you?”
“We haven’t met, Honored Besur, no fear,” said a bright young voice. The next moment the low hood was thrown back, and the Besur drew himself up in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” he growled. “Women are not permitted within the sanctity of Hulan’s Throne!”
“Which seems odd when one recalls that Hulan herself is thought to be female,” said the girl with a cheerful grin. Then she looked around the Besur’s ample girth, spied the quiet one seated across the room, and raised a wry eyebrow. “No women at all, Honored Besur?”
“Get out! Get out at once, before I summon the guards!”
“I’ll go if you wish it,” said she. “But will you look at this first?” With that, she raised her arm and drew back the long sleeve of her garment, revealing her left wrist for the Besur’s inspection. He saw, scarred there, the contours of a small carnation.
Sairu had been branded thus the day she entered the Masayi. Her agonized cries at the pain of it had been nothing to her irritation when, days later, she had noticed that the applied burn was crooked. She’d marched straight away to Princess Safiya and demanded it be done over again.
“A brand cannot be undone,” Princess Safiya had replied. “Besides, it is your own fault for flinching from the iron.”
Shamed, Sairu then looked upon her crooked mark as a badge of weakness rather than the honor it was meant to be. But it had motivated her to excel. To never flinch again.
Crooked or not, the mark was recognized by the Besur. His eyes rounded and filled suddenly with respect as he looked anew at the young woman before him. “Golden Daughter!” he exclaimed and, rather to Sairu’s surprise, made a sign of reverence. “I had given up hope of your coming.”
“Of course I came, Honored Besur,” Sairu replied, grinning still and enjoying herself perhaps more than she ought. She had studied the Besur many times over the years, a man of great dignity bordering on pomposity, who believed in the sacredness of his traditions, if not in his religion. From the time she was a child attending ceremonies and observing fasts, Sairu wondered what use there was in clinging to a faith that even the High Priest himself did not believe.
Thus Sairu had lost her faith. And been left a little hollow without it.
But this did not mean she must lose the pur
pose for which she’d been trained, honed, and sharpened throughout the years. So she made a returning sign of reverence, adding a deep bow. “May I meet my new master?” she asked.
As soon as she spoke, she realized her error. Rising from her bow, she looked, not at the Besur, but across the room at the young woman sitting so quietly. And she knew immediately that this was to be her charge, her assignment.
A mistress, not a master at all! Such a thing was unheard of among the Golden Daughters.
“Allow me to present the lady Hariawan,” said the Besur, leading her across the room to stand before the low cushioned chair upon which the young woman sat. A brazier of coal—no doubt hauled up from the mines by little coal-children—burned near her left elbow, casting her face half in warm light, half in deep shadow. Even in that strange glow, Sairu could see that the lady was very beautiful, like a painted statue or one of Empress Timiran’s hand-crafted dolls.
Hariawan, Sairu knew, was not the lady’s name, not her birth name anyway. It was merely an indication of her heritage. She was from the Hari Tribe of the Awan Clan, selected from among the other girls of her tribe to be the clan’s temple tribute. Sairu inwardly shuddered at this. Everyone knew what sort of opulent yet simultaneously wretched lives temple-tribute girls lived. The world beyond Manusbau and the Masayi was full of wickedness, even within the temple walls.
Why then was she called lady? And why would she require a Golden Daughter’s services?
She’s a Dream Walker, Sairu thought, and her heart raced in her breast. She had not realized women were capable of such power.
The Besur bowed before the motionless young woman and spoke to her in a voice of surprising gentleness. “My lady?” he said. “My lady, do you hear me? This is . . . forgive me, Revered Daughter, what is your name?”
Sairu smiled and, rather than answering, stepped before Lady Hariawan herself and went down upon her knees. She took the lady’s hands in hers, startled at how cold they were, and gazed up into that immobile face, her eyes narrowing as she studied what she could see of it beneath the heavy shadow.