The Forbidden City E-Book

Deborah A. Wolf

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The second book in The Dragon's Legacy, an epic fantasy series in the tradition of Guy Gavriel Kay and Jacqueline Carey. "A world of large-scale epic fantasy... This is a rare find and not to be missed." New York Times bestselling author Barb Hendee.Sulema Ja'Akari is an elite warrior, one of the desert people known as the Zeeranim. She is also the daughter of the Dragon King of Atualon, whose magic is the only thing that prevents the earth dragon from waking. Should the dragon end her sleep, their world will be destroyed.The Dragon King is dying. As heir to his throne Sulema must be trained to take his place, yet the more she learns, the less she trusts the sinister agendas that surround her. Knowing that her life hangs in the balance, Sulema seeks to return to the Zeera.Salvation may lie with her mother, Hafsa Azeina, who walks the dark and deadly pathways of the Dreaming Lands. To save her daughter, the dreamshifter will be forced to strike a pact with her greatest enemy, a huntress who would rather kill her than assist her.Upheaval stretches far beyond Atualon—to the forbidden city of Khanbul where the emperor rules with an iron hand. An elite cadre of rebel conspirators chafes beneath his rule and plots to overthrow him.Among them is Jian de Allyr, the half-dae prince born of a human mother and a twilight lord. If they are to challenge the emperor in his stronghold, however, Jian and his co-conspirators must secretly raise an army…

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map of The Dragon’s Legacy

Dramatis Personae

THE FORBIDDEN CITY

Hunted

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Sixty-One

Sixty-Two

Damned

APPENDICES

The Lands of the People

The People

Terms, Phrases, and Places of Interest

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE DRAGON’S LEGACY SAGA BY DEBORAH A. WOLF

The Dragon’s Legacy Saga

The Dragon’s Legacy

The Forbidden City

The Seared Lands (May 2019)

Daughter of the Midnight Sun

Split Feather

Broken Feather (September 2019)

TITAN BOOKS

THE FORBIDDEN CITY

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781785651106

Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785651120

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: May 2018

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2018 by Deborah A. Wolf. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This book is dedicated with love to

KRISTINE ALDEN,

the sister of my heart.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Ani (Istaza Ani): Youthmistress of the Zeerani prides. Though she has no children of her own, she loves her young charges fiercely.

Daru: A young Zeerani orphan, apprenticed to Hafsa Azeina. Born a weakling, Daru is keenly aware of the thin line that separates life from death.

Hafsa Azeina: Queen Consort of Atualon and foremost dreamshifter of the Zeeranim.

Hannei: Young warrior and best friend to Sulema, Hannei is everything a Ja’Akari should be: bold, beautiful, and honorable to the marrow of her bones.

Ismai: A Zeerani youth, Ismai wishes to break tradition and become Ja’Akari, though warrior status is reserved for females. Last surviving son of Nurati, First Mother among the Zeeranim.

Jian: A Daechen prince and Sen-Baradam of Sindan.

Leviathus: Son of Ka Atu, the Dragon King, Leviathus was born surdus, deaf to the magic of Atualon and thus unable to inherit his father’s throne. Leviathus is dedicated to his family, his people, and his king, and works tirelessly to maintain the stability of Atualon.

Sulema Ja’Akari: Ja’Akari warrior, daughter of Zeerani dreamshifter Hafsa Azeina and Ka Atu, the Dragon King of Atualon.

SUNDERED

The wind was born of a twilight lord, playing a seashell flute. Webbed fingers, strong and sure, danced across a smooth shell as they had once danced across the skin of a human girl. She had been delicate and sweet and all things good.

That girl was gone, just as the meat was gone from the shell, leaving only the memory of beauty and faint notes in the wind. But the sea was still the same, and the song was still the same, curling around his heart thick and slow as the magical fog that shrouded the Sorrowful Isles.

Born of sea and sand and the cries of a wounded heart, the wind danced in rage and longing across Nar Kabdaan, the waves of the Sundered Sea rousing to wrath and ruin as they cast themselves, again and again, upon the heartless shores at Bizhan. The waves were born, they struggled, and they died unmourned, one after another like soldiers caught in a dream of war.

The wind was heavy with salt, and the dreams of sea witches, and the tears of lost souls. It struck at the jagged rocks, tore at the sharp grasses like a madman tearing at his own hair. It howled like the voices of a thousand ice wolves buried in fear, forgotten to legend, lost, lost, lost.

The howling woke the half-kin child, because the song of wolves can never truly be forgotten by the offspring of man. The child rose, slipped from his bed, left his mother’s hearth behind, and stumbled down the rocky path to the sea.

The moons were faded, half empty.

Because he, too, could hear the howling of the wolves, could feel them singing in the shadows of his heart, the twilight lord put down his flute and swam to shore. He had broken so many laws already that one more could hardly matter.

And besides, he told himself as he slipped through the water, I wrote those laws. The things that dwell beneath fled from his shadow, and the Two Sisters veiled their faces as he lifted his sleek head above the waves. Eyes wide, the child had nearly reached the water, was so close that the fat little footprints filled with water as he passed, and glittered like abalone shells in the thin light. The wind tore at the veil, at weft and warp of land and magic. It howled and raged as did the storm in his heart, but the moons were thin and weak, and laws older than his held the barrier in place.

He could not pass. He could not…

But the child could.

Just as his dimpled little feet paused at the water’s edge, graceful as a mist-dancer poised on the edge of the world, a cry arose. The woman came striding down the path, calling for her child. The mist bowed and kissed her feet, clung to her thin robe in supplication, and gave way before her. Her eyes shone deep and dark as the pools of the dead, and the stars lit her brow like a crown. Slight and sharp as the sea-willow, she was his song of beauty, the very dream of majesty. Her hair was blacker than the shadows, and she ruled the dark wishes of his heart.

The child hesitated, looked back the way he had come, and fell on his fat little rump. His wide round eyes opened wider, and the fat baby mouth pursed into a fierce frown. Before he could make up his mind to cry, the woman scooped him up in her strong brown arms and held him close to her breast.

The twilight lord swam closer, drawn to her as the tide to the moons. Even as his feet touched the sandy shore, even as he shed the sea and his Issuq skin to stand naked in the starslight, yearning for her, hands and face pressed hard against the veil despite the pain, she turned. The waves broke over her feet. The wind sighed through the veil. Wind and water could pass through, but never his living flesh, nor hers, not till the end of Sundering.

The child of both worlds might pass, but his fat little fist was tangled in his mother’s hair, and in her heart, as well. The twilight lord looked into his son’s eyes—Issuq eyes, eyes of the sea. The boy stared back at him, quiet and solemn and brave as the sky.

Thou shalt not, he thought, and these laws were older than blood, deeper than bone. His heart bled through the veil easy as wind, quick as water, and left the flesh behind.

The woman looked down at the child and cried out, clutching him closer still as she stared blindly into the veil.

She cannot see me, he thought as he pressed harder. They cannot give her even that much. Her mouth moved. A blessing for him, or a curse? Perhaps a warning that he should never seek to steal the child. He could not say. Human mouths were such a mystery, and the words, being of the flesh, could not pass to him.

“I will not hurt you,” the twilight lord promised. “I will not seek to make him mine.” He lied, of course, but she would expect lies from one of the lords of twilight. Even from him.

Especially from him.

She turned her back to the sea and he cried out as grief pierced his heart. Then she paused. He saw the curve of her soft cheek and in that moment it seemed as if she had heard him. There was a quick flash of cold steel. Cradling the child in one arm, she held the other high. In her hand she held a short knife, and a lock of her midnight hair. The wind slapped at her, plastering the fabric to her lithe form. The child laughed with delight. She let the lock of hair fly from her fingers, and paused for another long moment.

Another heartbeat.

Another lifetime.

The wind wept sorrowfully through the veil, bearing the lock. He reached up and plucked it from the sky, the greatest treasure of two worlds. Then the woman walked away. Her steps were slow and seemed painful, as if she walked upon a knife’s edge. Yet she never faltered.

Soon she was gone.

He brought the tuft of hair to his face. Sunlight and moonslight and laughter beneath the stars. Webbed fingers closed, tight and trembling, around this last wisp of sky silk.

When the shell flute fell from his other hand, it hardly made a splash.

HUNTED

Cold rain fell from the leaves in fat droplets, chasing the rivulets of hot sweat as it trickled down her back.

Akari Sun Dragon rose screaming in the east, but try as he might those hot eyes would never penetrate this emerald gloom. The air was heavy—“thick as fish soup,” their father might have said—and Holuikhan fought the urge to suck air in through her mouth. Such would have meant her certain death. She flared her nostrils instead, taking her breath in delicately, lest the shadows she carried rise up and choke her.

The mouth of her bone pipe was close enough to kiss, if she were of an age to be thinking of such things. The leaves ahead whispered, and moved, then parted to reveal the face of her older sister. Anmei was the finest huntress in their village. She wore the forest as another woman might wear a dress. Her bright eyes flashed through the rain, and she pressed her three remaining fingers to her lips.

’Ware, she signaled. ’Ware poison.

Holuikhan clamped her teeth together, again minding her breathing.

Pig tracks, her sister signed, hand movements as graceful as a dance. Sow. Four young. Come. She turned away, becoming the forest again. Cupping her hands before her face, she puffed out her cheeks and blew. Air shrieked through the holes where her third fingers had been. A long, loud trill caused the world to go silent.

The forest shuddered as a clutch of chinmong burst from the undergrowth, heads bobbing and clawed hands held tight to their breasts. The alpha female tilted her head at Holuikhan. Red streaks like bloody handprints ran along the sides of its face, and its teeth were yellow-white as it hissed, crest rising and preparing to charge.

Another whistle came from the undergrowth. The raptor shook water from its feathers in protest, but stood down, and the clutch flowed around Holuikhan like deadly water as they brushed past her to range on ahead. Her lips parted in awe as they passed, so close she could hear their claws scrape against the tree roots, smell the strange spiced-meat musk of their feathers…

“Sssst!” Anmei hissed out loud. Her face was furious as it peered from her cloak of leaves. Holuikhan clamped her lips together again, shamed and a little frightened by her lapse. This might be her first real hunt, but the shadows she carried would not be forgiving.

Her sister signaled and the raptors spread out, trilling to one another as they searched for prey. Holuikhan’s fingers tightened on the bone pipe, a pretty thing with a belly full of death. Today, for the first time, she held the shadows in her hand. Today in the village a clutch of chinmong eggs was being tended by her younger sister. Some day…

The alpha female screamed, sighting prey. Anmei whistled through her beautiful, maimed hands, calling her raptors to the hunt.

Some day, Holuikhan promised herself for the millionth time, this would all be hers.

* * *

The chinmong had pinned a boar—a big boar, the biggest Holuikhan had ever seen—and her hands trembled to the beating of her heart as she raised the pipe to her lips. Bare toes dug into the thick tree roots as she leaned against the hoary trunk of a baobing, the better to steady her shot.

Though she made no sound, and though the thick black sap she had rubbed under her pits and upon her pulse-points should mask her scent, the sooty giant paused in his threats to the raptors and lifted his long, flat head. The oddly pink end of his snout twitched, round nostrils opening and closing like hungry little mouths as they tasted the air. Little red-rimmed eyes flashed in the rising mist and rolled toward her. He had caught her scent. The boar wheeled in her direction, ignoring the calls and feints of the big chinmong.

Time slowed, sloooowed. It seemed to Holuikhan that she could count every bristling black hair on the boar’s body, and could see the air shimmer around his heavy face as he gnashed his teeth.

I am death, he told her, quite plainly. I am coming for you.

I am ready, she answered from her heart. Her hands steadied. She drew in breath through her nostrils, exactly as she had practiced, and crossed her eyes a little bit as she sighted down the length of the pipe. Even as the boar charged, squealing, and the ground shuddered beneath his dagger feet, her lips almost—almost!—touched the knob end of her deadly little weapon, and she blew.

The dart made scarcely a whisper as it left her pipe, the shadow of a shadow of a sound, but it was thunder in her heart as the world stopped.

With its fluff of red down the dart hovered, just at the end of her pipe. The boar floated mid-charge, head down, all four feet suspended above the dark earth like those of an oulo dancer. The forest held its breath.

Suddenly her dart buried itself in the pig’s shoulder. He skidded to a stop a hare’s jump from where Holuikhan stood, and screamed. He squealed like a man who had taken a spear to the gut, or like a woman who had found her only child drowned in the river. The sound pierced her heart, and tears welled in her eyes even as the boar staggered to one side.

“I am sorry,” she whispered, and she was.

The black giant turned heavily around, and in one final gesture of contempt he lowered his head and charged off in the one direction she wished he would not take. Though the pig should have fallen already—she had used the poison from a blue dart frog—Holuikhan could only stand and stare open-mouthed as he disappeared up the old mountain path.

The raptors, tempted beyond their training, screamed in unison and gave chase.

A heavy hand clapped over her shoulder. Holuikhan jumped and squeaked, a very unhunterlike sound. But Anmei just laughed.

Anmei was the prettiest girl in the village, in all the villages around Peichan. When she laughed like this, strong white teeth flashing in her dark face, a crown of ti leaves and her hunter’s cloak making her seem as if the forest itself had birthed her, Holuikhan thought she might rival the Huntress herself in beauty.

“Come,” she said out loud, the need for stealth long past. “Let us go collect your pig, little huntress.”

“If the clutch leaves anything but bones and hair.” Holuikhan sighed as she hopped down from the tree root. “Why did he run off like that? That poison was good. I tested it.”

Anmei shrugged. “He did not wish to die yet. A fine strong pig. His heart will give you courage.” She tapped at her own chest. Anmei’s first kill had been a young wyvern. She possessed the heart of a dragon.

“Yes, but did he have to choose that path?” Holuikhan shivered as she looked up the mountain. Even now the mists were rising with the day’s heat, mocking her.

“Surely you do not fear Cold Spirit Stream?” White teeth flashed, gentle mockery. Holuikhan shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She slid her pipe into its carrier at her belt, avoiding her sister’s gaze.

“The hunters never come this way, do they?”

“Of course not. Everyone knows there are ghosts up there. And you cannot eat a ghost, now, can you?”

Startled, Holuikhan met her sister’s eyes, and they both burst out laughing. The sound surprised her, and frightened the forest. When hunters laugh, blood has been spilled. All creatures know this. Then the fit passed.

“Fortunately,” Anmei went on, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, “ghosts cannot eat you, either. Come, come, we cannot just leave him there all alone. It is bad luck to be so… disrespectful.” She turned, the leaves of her cloak swirling about her, and disappeared after the pig.

There was nothing for it, then. Holuikhan sighed, steeled her heart, and started up the path to her doom.

* * *

The pig had fallen much further away than they had expected. They found him after Akari Sun Dragon had bid them farewell and the moons appeared to light their way. He had run through Cold Spirit Stream, up the mountain trail, down a wide and ancient cobblestone path that reeked of wyvern-mint as they trod upon it, and through the ugly ruins of a pair of mossy gateposts that sat like stone trolls in the children’s stories, guarding either side of the road and wickedly determined not to allow them to pass.

Holuikhan gave the gateposts a wide berth—and the side-eye—as she and Anmei crept past them, but they never moved. Not while she was watching them, anyway. The tracks they followed showed the pig’s great suffering—here he had fallen and dragged himself, there he had scuffled with the chinmong, leaving a mat of blood, hair, and raptor feathers to tell the tale. His steps were heavy and staggered, and his hind legs dragged at the last. Holuikhan wept to think she had caused such pain. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of one hand.

Such a baby, she chided herself. Crying over a pig.

“Ssst,” Anmei whispered, her voice as soft as mist, “never be ashamed to cry over an animal you have killed. If you cannot feel sorrow for taking a life, you should not be hunting.”

The tears came. Holuikhan allowed them to do so, and smiled at her sister’s back.

At the last her boar had fought off the alpha raptor—there was no mistaking those long green-and-red feathers—but he had gone down, and a wide smear of gore marked his final hiding place. A heavy curtain of vines, glossy leafed and heavy with green berries, had grown across the path. The pig had dragged himself through this green door.

Strangely, the chinmong milled about on the path hissing, trilling in distress, and refused to pass. Anmei hesitated at the vines, faint lines of worry creasing her brow. She flashed her palm outward, fingers spread.

Stay.

Holuikhan nodded. A girl should be wary of any place that raptors feared to tread.

Anmei stepped up to the vines, peering closely at the leaves, again at the berries, and craned her neck to look high at the branches from which they hung.

No itch leaf, she signed, no snakes. Safe. Come. She raised her hands to her mouth and whistled for the chinmong.

The alpha female tilted its head this way, and that way, then shook its feathers as if ridding itself of mites. Its scythe claws dug into the soft earth, and the message it sent was very clear.

Anmei whistled again, sharper. Louder. Her eyes flashed at the raptor’s defiance. The big female shook its feathers again, bobbed its head with a strange chick-like peep, then melted away into the forest. The others went with her.

Anmei blinked, and then blinked again.

Holuikhan’s mouth fell open. Chillflesh raised the hairs on her arms.

We go? she signed, already rising up on the balls of her feet, ready to run back across Cold Spirit Stream, up the mountain and back down again, all the way to their village without stopping. Raptors were never afraid, even when they should be.

Anmei hesitated and then firmed her mouth. No, she replied. Come. She pulled aside the vines and stepped through. Holuikhan, not being a raptor, did not have the courage to defy her sister, and so she followed.

It was as if the vines tried to hold her back. Almost before she had fought her way through, a hand clamped over her mouth and an arm snaked around her waist, pinning her arms. She was dragged from the path and behind a hoary old baobing tree, so surprised that at first she forgot to struggle. When she remembered, she tucked her chin to prevent a stranglehold, just as her sister had taught her.

Anmei! she thought, terrified.

Holuikhan kicked back, hard. Her heel collided with her captor’s shin, and she was rewarded with a pained grunt.

“Sssst,” her sister hissed into her ear.

When the shock passed and Holuikhan was able to stop flailing, the hand against her mouth eased up, and the arm around her waist loosened.

Yes, Holuikhan signed, still breathing hard through her nose. Yes, okay.

Anmei released her hold and stepped back. Her eyes were as round and white as the big moon, and Holuikhan’s stomach dropped. Anmei was never afraid, even when the raptors were.

Then she heard it, a cry that rose up on the winds even as the moons rose over the hunters, the baobing, and the stream of the drowned dead. It was the cry of a human child. Abruptly Holuikhan’s feet dragged her forward, all unwilling. Her hands pressed against the rough bark, and she peeked around the trunk of the tree—though she willed none of these things to happen.

Stop! Anmei gestured sharply, but it was too late.

When Holuikhan’s mind finally spoke to her of the things her eyes were seeing, she clutched at the ancient tree. It stood at the very edge of a great clearing, ringed with round stone buildings, empty-eyed and crushed like old skulls. Baobing had grown around and into the structures, their roots reclaiming thatch and stone and wood, but not one had ventured into the clearing at the center. Nothing grew there; not tree nor fern nor blade of grass, and Holuikhan knew deep in her heart that nothing from the forest ever ventured forth to peer into the old stone well.

Until now.

It was the perfect setting for a nightmare. A ring of—of things—crouched and swayed around the outer edges of the clearing. Manlike and naked, pale-skinned, glitter-eyed, and their limbs shone bright and hard as a night-widow’s carapace in the moonslight. They swayed like grasses in the breeze, though there was none to be felt, and they sang in voices high and brittle.

That was not the worst of it. A smaller ring of creatures flowed back and forth around the well…

Witching well, she thought. Oh sweet Akari, that is a witching well…

These beings, though almost manlike in their bearing and posture, were less human than the baobing, less human than the pig she had hunted, or the old stone houses. They had extra arms, two sets apiece—corpse arms, she thought, sewn to their bodies as her mother might sew an extra pocket onto an apron. These arms dangled and twitched and moved as of their own accord as the not-men chanted and shuffled round and round in a terrible dance.

The worst of all was a man—or perhaps he had been a man once, when the baobing was a sapling and Cold Spirit Spring was sweet and pure, and bore a kinder name. Tall and proud and still as shadows beneath a dying moon, he was broad of shoulder and narrow at the waist, like the emperor’s own soldiers. Something about him, some compelling air, made a part of her that was almost old enough to think of kissing wish that she might creep closer for a better look. The rest of her, the best parts of her, wanted to run screaming into the night.

Her sister’s hand closed warm and steady upon her shoulder.

“Let us go,” she breathed into Holuikhan’s ear, quiet as flower petals on a spring morn. She gave a little tug. “Sister, come away.”

Holuikhan meant to, she did. Her fingers let go their hold of the tree’s rough bark and she prepared to push away, to melt into the forest with her sister, and never return to this place again. Then the man of nightmares raised his face to the pale moons. He wore a mask of leather scraps and jagged metal and shattered things, and he raised up both arms, as if in prayer. In one hand, the man of nightmares held a weapon, a wicked thing with a half-moon blade.

In his other he held a babe.

Newborn, or close to it, the poor thing kicked its tiny legs and wailed, piteous cries beneath the pitiless moons. Quicker than thought the blade flashed, up and down. The babe screamed, the shuffling priests chanted louder, and the bug-men chittered like soldier beetles scenting blood.

Up, down, the blade flashed, glittering in the moonslight like the bug-men’s eyes, and it seemed to Holuikhan that it laughed. Up, down, and the babe stopped shrieking, stopped kicking, stopped. The man of nightmares—

I know you, she thought, Nightmare Man.

—brought the tiny, limp body to his mouth, and…

Holuikhan screamed. It was a tiny sound, scarcely a breath, but its echo in her heart was vast. It was this that the Nightmare Man heard. It was this sound that made him look up, mouth dripping, and smile.

“Get her,” he growled in a voice as sweet and deadly as mad honey. “Bring her to me. Bring her to me!” The priests stopped their dancing, the bug-men stopped their singing, and as one they turned toward her.

“Go!” Anmei shouted. She tore Holuikhan away from the tree and flung her into the forest, back the way they had come. “Go!” she screamed, and she drew the knife from its sheath at her hip.

“Anmei,” Holuikhan cried out. “Anmei, no!”

“Run!” Anmei screamed, even as the first of the bug-men leapt. “Sister, run!”

She ran.

ONE

“Go on.” Xienpei handed him a long bundle draped in yellow silk with a heavy red fringe along its edge. She flashed her teeth in the new light, mocking his hesitation. “It will not bite you. Not today, at any rate.”

He took the bundle and tugged away the silk, letting it fall upon the floor even as his mouth fell open.

“A sword?”

“A sword, Daechen Jian. It is a virgin blade, still warm from its maker’s fires, so take care you do not blood it yet.” She took back the weapon, still in its plain lacquered scabbard, and belted it at his waist. “Here, keep this cord tied just so, lest the emperor’s soldiers take offense. No blade is to be drawn during the Napua, and no blood spilled. Some idiot always does, and some always is, and if you are that idiot I will leave you to rot in the dungeons. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes…?”

“Yes, Yendaeshi.” Jian suppressed an impatient sigh and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. His yendaeshi could keep him in his rooms all day, if she was of a mind, and he desperately wished to be free of her, if only for a few hours. “Will the others…?”

“Today the yellow Daechen will walk among us armed. Akari willing, you will not cut yourselves shaving. I assumed you would wish to give your dammati their blades, so the servants will be by later with ten more blades for you.”

“Sixteen.” Jian kept his face still. “Sixteen have sworn their blood to me.”

Xienpei blinked. “Indeed?”

He said nothing. The remaining half-dozen of his bloodsworn would have to accept their blades later. He would make amends to them in private.

“Sixteen it is, then.” She flashed her jeweled smile again, teeth sharp and hungry. “You have been busy, boy.” Jian let the insult slide past.

“I would like to get dressed now,” he said. “By your leave, Yendaeshi.”

“Of course,” she nodded, still smiling. “I will have the lashai deliver those swords to you presently. Enjoy the festival while you can, Daechen Jian.”

* * *

When Jian had finished bathing, the ever-present lashai bound his hair up into a prince’s knot and strapped him into a set of yellow lacquered armor. It was lighter than the practice armor to which he had grown used, and newer. It fit him well, though they had to loosen the shoulder straps and the waist was uncomfortably loose. Still, he imagined that he cut a fine and imposing figure, and hoped—not for the first time—that his mother might see him.

She had always loved the festival of flowers, and surely would not pass by this opportunity to pay him a visit. Though the Daechen were discouraged from associating with former friends and family, it was not expressly forbidden.

Jian emerged from the bathing chamber pressed, dressed, and eager to go. He allowed one lashai to belt the bright new sword at his waist, even as there was a knock at the door. Three of the servants entered, bearing the swords for his dammati, and laid them out upon the bed.

There were twenty-two of them.

* * *

The Gate of the Iron Fist had been thrown wide, and the bloodstone path scrubbed till it shone. Though none but the daeborn would be allowed to pass through into the heart of Khanbul, the Forbidden City, it seemed as if every man, woman, and child of Sindan had turned out on this day to cram into Supplicant’s Square, hoping to receive the emperor’s blessing.

It had been years since the emperor himself had come down from his palaces to bless the people, but there was always hope.

The two gigantic stone warriors flanked the gate. The golden one stood, helmeted, arm upraised, while the red warrior knelt bareheaded across the gap, jeweled tears on his face. They were as bedecked with flowers as any of Khanbul’s finest citizens. Ropes and necklaces and blankets of flowers had been draped upon the stone giants until it seemed as if their frozen tableau was not a scene of bloody victory and defeat at all, but of romantic love between two great warriors. Perhaps the kneeling man was proposing marriage to the other.

Jian smiled on the inside, and wished them well.

The moat was filled with flowers, so that it seemed as if a person could walk across it. The water was thick with food wrappers and lost hair-ribbons, as well. Here and there a blossom had tucked itself into the wall, between the blades of the vanquished—carried there by the wind, perhaps, or tossed down from on high. Jian watched as a village youth in plain brown farmer’s garb snatched the crown from a girl’s hair and, laughing, sent it sailing out across the perfumed waters, to land with a splash and a ripple. The girl squealed and punched him on the shoulder, and they shared a laugh.

Jian wished them well, too, though he had more in common now with the stone giants than he did with the village people.

“They look so plain,” Perri remarked. His eyes flashed yellow in the hot midsun. “Were we ever like them?”

“Yes,” Jian answered, and touched the still-unfamiliar sword at his waist. “And no.”

“You are starting to sound like Xienpei,” Perri complained. “We are, but we are not. It is always, always this way… except when it is not. The cat is both dead and…”

“Shut up,” Jian advised, “or I will toss you into the moat for the zhilla.”

“As you say, Sen-Baradam.” Perri bowed, laughing. “Though I do not think they would thank you for such a meager feast.”

“You are kind of bony.” Jian stepped onto the Path of Righteousness, setting himself even more apart from the common folk. None but the booted feet of the daeborn were allowed upon the blood-red road.

“Some of these skulls are new,” Perri whispered. “Where do you think they get them?”

Jian averted his eyes from the clean white bone. “Not from the Daechen,” he said.

One could always hope.

A commotion drew their attention. A girl—a pretty girl with a long face, wrapped in red and pink silks like a plum blossom—was leaning far over the moat. A pair of her friends laughed as they held the edges of her robes to keep her from falling into the bloom-laden water. Her tongue stuck comically out of one side of her mouth as she dragged a crown of blue lilies from her hair and flung it as if she were playing ring-toss in the gardens.

Perri started forward. “She should not do that.” His brow furrowed with concern.

It was a lucky toss. The crown of flowers caught a gust of wind and was carried up and over the wide waters. It sailed high and far, arcing down at last to touch the very walls of the Forbidden City, and was caught upon the hilt of a sword.

The girl was transformed. In triumph, she had become a warrior. She shouted, fists in the air, a shout that turned quickly to a high squeal as the fabric of her robe tore. Then there was a weeping sound, a sound that would echo in Jian’s dreams for many nights to come. The girl fell forward, toppling down the bank and into the water with a soft splash.

Her friends tumbled like wheat beneath the scythe, laughing.

A pair of guards who had been chatting at the foot of the golden stone giant shouted and ran for the girl, waving their arms. Perri turned to Jian, yellow eyes round as an owl’s, mouth open as if he would ask his Sen-Baradam to save the girl.

But it was too late, all of them were too late.

Even as the girl struggled to her feet, raising her skirts with both hands and spitting out a mouthful of wet hair, the waters of the moat rippled. One of the guards flung himself belly down on the upper bank and shouted, red-faced with the effort. His voice was lost in the roar of the crowd. The girl set one foot upon the shore and reached for his outstretched hands.

A fountain of bubbles and ink erupted some distance from the girl, and the many-ridged shell of a zhilla broke the surface of the water, fouling the flowers and the hair-ribbons of lost girls. It rolled so that the creature’s bony hood appeared, drawing back so that its mouth and mass of writhing red tentacles were exposed. The thing hissed and spat. Flat silvery eyes as big as shields flashed in the sunlight as it focused on its prey.

Jian opened his mouth, and perhaps he shouted. It seemed as if every person in Sindan was shouting at that moment, and the noise was deafening. The girl lunged forward, and her fingertips brushed those of the guard, but it had been too late for her since the moment she had tumbled into the water.

The zhilla’s longer tentacles found her. They touched the foot that was still in the water and curled upward, sliding around her calf and up her skirts like a lover’s caress, and she screamed. They all did. Even the emperor’s own guard cried out as the girl’s hand slid from his grasp, as she gasped and jerked when the zhilla’s venom bit into her.

She slipped beneath the waters, lost to them all.

The surface of the moat ceased churning. The guard who had tried to save her was helped to his feet by his companion, who seemed to be yelling at him. They arrested the girl’s friends as the crowd milled about, filling the space where they had stood, even as the flowers and ribbons and feast-day trash floated back to cover the place where the girl had died.

“Ah,” Perri said, and he closed his eyes.

A low chuckle caught their attention. It was Naruteo, and he twisted his face into an ugly grin at Jian’s look.

“Looks like sushi for dinner again, hey?” He laughed. “How many girls have you eaten, sea-thing child? Were they as delicious as that one?”

Perri grabbed Jian’s wrist. Only then did he realize he had grasped the hilt of his sword.

“He wants you to draw,” Perri whispered. “Look there, Sen-Baradam, he has set a trap for you.” And indeed, five or six of Naruteo’s bloodsworn had emerged from the crowd and watched Jian with hungry looks on their faces.

Blood thundered in his ears and Jian clenched his fist next to the hilt of his sword. “I cannot blood my blade in his belly,” he remarked. “The blood of a coward would ruin this fine weapon.”

A fist of guards approached, perhaps scenting trouble between the young Daechen. Naruteo’s bloodsworn melted away. Naruteo himself bowed mockingly and turned from the scene, but not without a parting shot.

“We shall see,” he told Jian. “We shall discover whose blood runs yellow and whose blood runs red, tomorrow at our Inseeing.” And he walked away, laughing. The crowd parted before him, and closed behind him, leaving no indication of his passing.

A crown of flowers hung upon the wall of swords, wilting in the hot sun.

Already forgotten.

* * *

The door opened a crack. There was no sound, but the hallway beyond was brightly lit. Jian could not help it. He flinched.

“It is time, Daechen Jian.”

He rolled from the woven mat, and on the third effort made it upright. He stood in a puddle of light, blinking away tears and trying not to let his legs shake too much. If his knees gave out he would fall, and if he fell they would just make him stand again. He was not sure he could find the strength.

For days without count he had been down here, in the dark and the cold and the quiet. At first there had been a pallet of straw and a basin for washing, but those comforts had been taken from him. For a while there had been food and water, and then there had been water. Then there was nothing but his heartbeat, and the dark.

“Drink.” A figure, dark and blurred, moved between him and the burning light. A cup was pressed to his lips. It felt cool and hard, and smelled of mint. “Drink.”

He thought of the winnowing, of the pain that had raged through him, and boys who fell screaming to die in their own shit and vomit. He thought of the wagons, and the greasy dark smoke. He thought of his mother, sitting alone by the fire at night, wondering what had become of him.

He drank. It was tea, nothing more, and it scalded his tongue.

Another shadow fell across his face. “Do not flinch.” It was Xienpei. He flinched. “Do not show pain, Daechen Jian, for if you do I will know it. Your failure is mine. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Yendaeshi.” He did not.

Then he was seized from every side. Strong hands clamped on his arms, his legs, his ankles. His limbs were stretched out like a skin for scraping, and he was bound into a frame. The door opened wider, and Jian bit his lips to keep from crying out as a mass of shadows split apart to become a pair of lashai bearing arms full of blackthorn vines. Blackthorn was used to scourge the worst criminals, rapists, and murderers, and those who stole from the emperor. The barbed thorns would tear flesh from bone, and if a criminal survived the lashing—few did—they would inevitably die as the wounds fell to rot.

“Sssst, little one,” Xienpei hissed into his ear. “Be strong, now.”

He jerked involuntarily at the ropes when the lashai moved behind him, and again when one of them touched his wrist. As the lashai pinched his flesh hard between thumb and forefinger, he took a deep breath, resolved to show no pain, no fear, no matter what they might do. Whatever they had planned for him, it would be gentle compared to the wrath of Xienpei if he were to fail.

Daechen Jian still had lessons to learn.

When the first thorn pierced his flesh, he grunted and ground his teeth together. It hurt, it hurt, but as he sucked the ragged air between his teeth Jian decided that he could bear it.

By the time the fourth thorn was pressed against his skin, the first had begun to burn. They had started at his wrist, and by the time they reached his shoulder, Jian was twitching uncontrollably and had bitten his tongue so that he was drooling blood. A scream curled in his gut and pushed its way up and into his mouth. He knew he could not stop it.

“If you cry out, Daechen Jian, I will kill your dammati. One bloodsworn for every sound.” Xienpei’s breath smelled of cinnamon and honey. “And if you faint, if you fail…”

The scream caught in his ribs.

“…I know where your mother lives, Tsun-ju Jian.”

The scream became a growl, and the growl a snarl. He turned his face to hers and stared hard into those bright eyes. Another thorn tore through the skin on his back, and he bared his fangs at her.

“Yes,” she hissed. “Yessss.”

The blackthorn vine curled around his wrist and draped across his arm, around the side of his neck, around his waist and down the inside of one leg. The vine itself was heavy, and warm, and dragged at the thorns embedded in his flesh as if it were a living thing that wished him harm. By the time they started at his other wrist, the pain was a tongue of flame that licked across the surface of every thought and danced to the tune of his heartbeat. He snarled with each new wound, and with each tug at the vine, and bared his teeth whenever any of the shadows loomed too near. The world shrank to a pinpoint of light, and shadow, and pain.

“Good boy,” Xienpei crooned as the last thorn tore through his skin. “Good boy.”

He drew in long, shuddering breaths, and rolled his shoulders this way and that. The vine dragged at his hide. It itched and burned and stung. They bound him so tightly that he could feel it tear whenever he took a deep breath, so he tried panting through his clenched teeth. It helped, a little.

He had not cried out, and he had not fainted.

He had won.

Xienpei tugged at the vine, and laughed as he threw his head back.

“He is ready.”

Poles were thrust through rings set into the heavy frame, and thick-set lashai of a type Jian had never seen hoisted him into the air like a pig bound for slaughter. He swayed with the movement, and the pain sang to him, and blood flowed down his arms and back as they carried and dragged him from his cell and into the harsh, cold light. They banged the frame into the door, and into the wall, and dropped the back half against some stairs, and every time they did this Jian would growl, and the lashai would laugh. Eventually they tired of this game. He was hauled at last into a wide circular chamber, and the frame thumped onto the floor.

Jian was in a cool, dark room. The air was dry and held a strange smell, like the fungus that grew on rotting logs, or old seaweed, or tea that had begun to go bad. He wondered, between the waves of bright agony, why they had brought him to this empty place. Then the hulking lashai grabbed the frame, and dragged him around, and he saw.

The bodies of three young girls, just shy of womanhood and as much the same as sisters, sat in three high-backed wooden chairs, facing him. Their small feet dangled a hand span from the floor, and their small hands were folded quietly before them.

Their skin was pale; frost pale, sand pale, drowned-in-cold-water pale. A vine of flowering thorn laced in and among and around them. It sat upon the brow of the first sister, coiled around her head like a maiden-chain. Long thorns had pierced her ears, and dried blood fanned down her neck and across her shoulders, shocking against the white nightdress. The vine was bound around the eyes of the second girl like a sleeping mask, so that she wept a sad and sorry trail of tears. It was wrapped around the mouth of the third sister, piercing her tongue and lips and cheeks, holding her mouth open in a long and silent scream.

Jian wondered if this was to be his fate—left to starve and bleed out, his corpse put on display as a warning to others.

Then the dead girls stirred. As one they turned their ravaged faces toward him. The bound-mouth girl hissed through her wicked gag, and Jian found himself twisting, pulling against his bindings regardless of the pain, like a small creature caught in a trap and facing the knife. When they spoke it was with one voice, a sound that pierced and tore at the air just as the thorns pierced and tore at his flesh.

“What is it, Sweetling?” the blind girl asked. “What has they brought us? Is it beautiful?”

“Can you hear its heart beating?” the deaf girl said. She groped for her sister’s hand and, finding it, squeezed. “Is it squealing? Does it fear us?”

“Aaaaaahhhhhh,” the pierced-tongue girl hissed. Her breath rattled and knacked through the blackthorn like a long-dead wind. “Aaaaaahhhhhhh.”

Jian stared in horror at the three as they twisted and writhed against their cruel bindings, straining to see, to hear, to taste his fear. They were insane, of that he was certain. Their little feet dangled like dead things. The girl with a mouth full of death smiled at him, horribly, and though her mouth cracked and tore, there was no blood.

They are dead, he thought. Soon I will join them.

The notion held surprisingly little fear. His mother was his only family, and she would never know. His dammati would be too busy looking after themselves to mourn overmuch. Xienpei would be furious at his failure, but what more could she do to him? Even pain was not so bad, once he grew used to it. Shaking away the remnants of his fear, he let the pain sink into his skin like sunlight, and drank the stink of his own degradation, letting it nourish him as if it were sweet water.

“He thinks he knows fear,” the first sister said, “but he has not yet heard the drums of war. He will.”

“He thinks he knows pain,” the second sister said, “but he has not yet seen the face of despair. He will. He will.”

“Aaaaaah,” the third sister rattled. “Aaah aaah aaaahhhh.”

“Does he pass?” The voice of Xienpei whispered forth from the shadows, weedy and weak. “Will he do?”

The girls twitched and shook like fish too long in the net, and hissed in unison.

“There is mercy in his voice. There is kindness in his eyes. He tastes of fear, of fear, of human fear. Take it away, away, away. Cleanse it of the human filth.”

“Does he pass?” Her voice was closer now, and Jian shuddered as anticipation ripped through his skin. “Will he do?”

“Strip him, flense him! Flay him, cleanse him! Tear from him the hopes of the past, that he may face the sins of the future with the heart of a child. He will pass. He will do. If he lives. If he lives.” Their voices rose to a mad howl as they chanted in unison.

“Three words thrice shall stay the prince,

“Three names twice shall slay him.

“Three drops once shall bind his heart

“Lest that heart betray him.”

Three dead girls strained and strove against their wicked bindings even as hands laid hold of the vines that were wrapped and twisted and bound round Jian’s body, and ripped them away from his flesh.

Something in Jian’s core tore free.

It used his pain and anger, his fear and fury to shred through the last soft bits of his soul. It reared its head within him, and it roared. It was the roar of the ocean, the song of the sea-thing’s child, the cry of a wounded predator. It jerked and strained at the bonds that held him, and pierced the girls with hot and angry eyes, and urged him to kill. Kill. Tear and rend and savage until the walls ran with blood, till the floor was slick with gore and offal and his ears filled with the screams of his enemies. Until he was the only living thing in this room, this city, this empire.

The second vine was torn from his flesh, and the beast roared with Jian’s mouth. It howled, it sang a song of death and darkness between the stars. The screaming, bloodied muscles of his back bunched, and he strained so that something in his shoulder popped in a flush of wet heat.

The frame shattered.

Chunks and splinters of wood flew in every direction. One corner went end-over-end and struck the blind sister in the temple. It laid her skin open to the bone, and though she did not bleed, she turned her eyeless face toward him and bared her teeth in a mad death’s-mask grin, daring him to make an end of it if he could.

The silver-furred beast that had been Jian staggered forward a few steps, raised himself up on his hind legs, bellowing a challenge. Snarling as his gaze fell on the dead things in front of him, the Issuq shook away the last trace of pain from his transformation and crouched low, preparing to spring upon his enemies and make an end to them.

Pain exploded in his head, the stars between the darkness blinding him.

He fell. He fell forever.

* * *

Jian woke as he landed on a pallet of straw. His teeth clicked together and his arms flopped like a doll’s, waking one shoulder to red agony. He thrashed about like a headless chicken for the space of a dozen heartbeats, until the receding backs of the lashai made sense—and the ceiling over his head, and the bedding beneath him. Never had a straw pallet seemed so soft, or a room so bright and welcoming as these cramped quarters. He was in the Yellow Palace, and the Yellow Palace was in the Forbidden City.

He was weak, and the fear had returned, and he was in more pain than he had ever imagined, back when he was just a boy. He was in one piece, however, stitched and salved and pieced back together like an abused toy, but alive.

Jian, he thought. I am Jian. A boy, not a monster. It was a dream, nothing more, a dream born of pain and fear…

“You made it.”

Jian turned his head, spurring torn muscles to fresh waves of bright pain. Perri lay on his cot, hands folded over his chest, very still.

“How—” He spat dried blood, and tried again. “How many?”

“Just you and me, so far. You and me.”

“Are you okay?”

“No.” Perri turned his head slowly. Jian saw that the far side of his face was swaddled in bandages, and that a bright flower of red blossomed where his eye would be. “You?”

“I am alive.” I am Jian. “What happened to you?”

“Same as you, I guess. They put my eye out when I cried. I guess you did not cry.”

“No,” Jian said… “No.”

“I will never cry again. It hurts too much.”

“I am sorry,” Jian offered lamely. Then he blurted out, “Good thing you did not piss yourself, I guess.”

Perri’s mouth dropped open and they stared at each other for a long moment. Jian felt his face flush red and hot.

Then his friend burst into laughter, and Jian could not help but join him. They laughed until their bones turned to water and the air burned their lungs. Until it seemed they would die of it.

TWO

Akari Sun Dragon launched himself into the sky, and the world caught fire.

As the heat of morning kissed the slumbering land a fine mist rose from the sea, to veil the blushing face of Sajani Earth Dragon. It rolled across the outer lands, black and rich, freshly tilled and eagerly waiting the farmer’s seeds. It rose up in the streets like an army of ghosts, undeterred by moat and wall and gate, dancing into silent battle with itself, falling and rising and falling again.

Like a war play put on by a troupe of fools.

Sulema stood high above the city and watched it come to life. The mist could not reach her, any more than the poverty and hunger of the lower ramparts might. Any more than the desert’s thirst.

I am the Heart of the Dragon, she reminded herself, willing her blood and bone to believe it so. I’ve come to this city that I might learn to sing the dragon to sleep, and save the world… She stretched her arms out to either side, allowing the fine spider silk of her gown to billow like wings. I am the world’s only hope for survival, and the dragon’s song courses through my veins. My heart is so light in my breast that it seems as if I might float away with the mist, if not for the crown I wear upon my brow, weighing me down with all the duty of—

The wind blew grit into her eyes.

Sulema ignored it.

Her braids, fashioned by a woman of Atualon and much too tight, pulled at her scalp.

She ignored them.

Her nose itched.

Not even a warrior of the Zeera, trained to discipline since childhood, might ignore an itching nose. Sulema broke free from her pose and scratched. Her shoulders ached, and the small of her back, and the ridiculous golden sandals were torturing her feet.

Daughter of the Dragon, a faint voice sneered. It was her true voice, deep in her warrior’s heart where neither the magics of her father nor his shadowmancer could touch her. Such horseshit.

“Your Radiance, please,” Cassandre implored for the umpteenth time. “Please hold still.”

“Are you nearly finished?” Sulema sounded petulant, even to herself, as she sighed and resumed her “Most Royal Pose,” though the moment was lost. “My neck hurts.”

“A royal pain in the neck.”

“Excuse me?” She tried to glare at the artist without moving.

Standing at her place by the door, Saskia laughed. An Atualonian guard would not laugh, Sulema thought. She had insisted that if she was to be plagued by an arrogance of guards, they would be known as Divasguard and be styled after Sajani—not golden and cold like the Draiksguard. Then again, a well-disciplined Atualonian guard would have left when I told her to leave, not shadow me night and day like… well, like a shadow. She would not admit, perhaps not even to herself, that the Zeerani warrior’s defiance came as a relief. It was well and good to dream of wielding great power, but not that long ago Sulema had been mucking churra pits. She was not yet ready to rule the world, or even this small corner of it.

Still, she had an image to maintain.

“Pain in the neck?”

“I was suggesting that a massage might be in order later, ne Atu,” the master painter said, her face bland, her charcoals scratching furiously across the sheet of parchment in an attempt to capture an image of the king’s daughter before she moved again. “A good massage works wonders for a… pain in the neck. Please do not scowl, your Radiance.”

Sulema scowled, and at length Cassandre put down her tools. “Well,” she said, “I suppose I have enough to work with, after all. Would you like to see, your Radiance?”

“Do not call me ‘your Radiance’,” Sulema snapped. At the other woman’s crestfallen look, and Saskia’s disapproving glare, she added, “Please. ‘Sulema’ is fine.

“I am sorry,” she continued after a moment. “I just… I do not feel well.” Where was Loremaster Rothfaust’s apprentice with her medicines? Her shoulder had gone numb and cold, and that black tingly sensation was crawling down her arm again. She tried not to think of the fact that the loremaster’s medicines were not working as quickly, or as well, as they had in the beginning.

Sulema tried not to touch the pale skin where she had been bitten by the reaver, or notice that a patch half the size of her palm was cool and hard to the touch.

Come to think of it, I spend a lot of time trying not to think these days. Shaking her head to clear it, she stepped down from the short pedestal and walked over to view Cassandre’s sketches.

She had never seen a drawing of herself before, and did not know what to expect. She knew what she looked like, or close enough. The water in a well bucket often spoke to her of a girl with an unruly orange frizz the shade of unripened dates—or had until she earned the warrior’s braids. Her spotted skin was too pale for the desert sun.

Honey and a sprinkling of spice, Mattu Halfmask had said.

Everyone told her she shared her mother’s eyes, hard and golden as a hawk’s. She had never cared to reflect overlong upon these things, being more concerned about her seat and the aim of her bow. Thus the image of her own face was a shock to her when she peered over Cassandre’s shoulder.

She gasped aloud. There she stood, as real as if Cassandre had stolen her shadow-self and pressed it onto paper, staring out across the jagged lines of a hastily sketched Atualon. The breeze had caught in her hair and she remembered brushing it back from her face. The fabric of the gown was so skillfully wrought in just a few short strokes that she had to touch it… No, the fabric did not feel as soft as the artist had made it look.

“Oh,” she breathed. “What magic is this?”

Cassandre went still all over, her eyes sharp. “Magic? Why do you ask?”