The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng

by K. S. Villoso

  I must’ve laughed out loud, because Liosa suddenly looked up, her face bright.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping a stray tear from my eye. “This trip has just been more than I bargained for. I knew nothing about all of you—not a damn thing. And yet here you are. You’re all… real.”

  She must’ve thought I was offering to read again. She held the book out to me with such grace that I was startled. Gods, even without the use of her mental faculties, she made me feel awkward—me with all my muscle and bone and scars. Liosa still had so many years ahead of her. If she ever got her mind back…

  Would she love Thanh the way I do? Could she still love me? My son and I were shaped by my father alone. The idea that a family was a web was not a concept I was familiar with. A part of me longed to find out what it would feel like to shed myself of the oppressive weight, to wrap myself in the assurance that the world was more than my father’s creation. In Jin-Sayeng, family was everything, and yet my father and son were all I ever had.

  “We were his, so he thought our lives were his to shape however way he wanted it,” I said. “And it came at a cost. These things always come at a cost.” I got up. “I suppose there’s no sense in delaying this.” She gave a soft sound of protest as I walked to the door. There was a single guard there, half dozing. I prodded his shoulder, startling him, and asked if he could fetch Namra and Parrtha.

  It didn’t take them long to arrive. They were followed by Noerro and Anya. “We need to get that spell ready,” I greeted them.

  “I haven’t understated the risks, I hope,” the priestess said.

  “No, Namra. This is where you come in. You need to help Parrtha with the spell. You’re the one who studied in Dageis. You’ll be able to fill in his gaps of knowledge.”

  Namra’s face turned white. “With all due respect, Beloved Queen, it’s not that simple.”

  “Perhaps. We can only hope. The runes in my father’s study—all they do is trigger a mechanism, yes? Arrows. Real arrows. I’m guessing you’ve got people refilling those if they ever run out.” I glanced at Parrtha.

  “Warlord Yeshin has many servants,” Parrtha said. “I do not know them all—each of us only has a piece of the puzzle. But they’re there.”

  “It’s the shield spell that caused the damage in the first place. All that happened was that Parrtha didn’t cast it right, so I think the presence of another won’t affect the process at all. Namra—all you have to do is stay close and pre-emptively put up a spell from your end first. There’s the simple part. This is something you’re good at, you said.”

  Despite my words, she looked nervous. “I’m… competent enough,” she replied.

  “Competent enough to protect yourself, and the others?”

  She nodded. “I’m just not sure it’s something I want to toy with.”

  “Then I am begging you. Gods, Namra. Look at her. Tell me this isn’t worth the trouble. She has a chance. Why would I deny her the chance to be well once more?”

  She glanced at Liosa, who was tracing the dust on the windowpane while muttering softly to herself.

  “One life,” Namra managed. She shook her head without finishing the thought. “Inform your grandmother,” she told Noerro. “We’ll get started as soon as the moon rises.”

  The room imbued with spells in the estate was not in any sort of special chamber at all. Instead of one of the main bedrooms, Parrtha led us past the kitchens. Behind the massive stone stove, a spiral staircase led to a floor above. It was so narrow that only one person at a time would be able to fit through. I let the others go ahead and hung back, trying to convince Liosa to take the first step. The darkness frightened her.

  “We’ve got books there,” I said. “More storybooks. You’ll love it.” I mimed opening a page.

  Her forehead creased.

  “You’ll be safe. I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.” I felt my heart twist at my words. I was almost starting to believe it. She made one hesitant step, and then turned around to grab my hand. We made the climb slowly. As we reached the top floor, Namra gave me a look, as if understanding something that I didn’t yet.

  I frowned, trying to focus. We were in an attic, where various pieces of furniture were covered with white cloth and cobwebs. The dust was so thick I could feel it crawling into the crevices of my lungs.

  “The spells are in the vault over there,” Parrtha said. He made a line on the dusty floor with his finger. “Everyone who was not part of the spell the first time, walk to that far end. The rest, step over the line.”

  Everyone shuffled to do as he asked. He limped towards the other end, making a circle in the air with his fingers. Runes on the wall began to glow.

  “Queen Talyien, please bring her forward.”

  I took Liosa’s hand again. “Book?” she asked.

  “Soon,” I promised, hating myself for lying.

  “Mistress Mage—” Parrtha began.

  “I have a name,” Namra said, a touch irritated, which was the closest I’ve ever seen her to angry.

  “Please get ready. You ah—need to cast it a breath faster than I can.”

  “How long will your spell take?”

  “Ten breaths.”

  “That’s ridiculously long.”

  “I told you I wasn’t very good. What mage would agree to work in Jin-Sayeng? They decapitate us out here.”

  “He’s scared of decapitations and chooses to work for Warlord Yeshin,” I sighed. “Great. I’m starting to question this man’s capability.”

  “I told you,” Namra smirked.

  Liosa squeezed my hand. “Let’s not waste another moment,” I said. “Cast your spells now.”

  One moment. Two. I found myself turning to Liosa, my mother, and looking into her eyes, not a shred of recognition between us. Before I could think about it any further, the spells struck us and I felt that familiar sensation, that blackness engulfing me. I struggled to breathe.

  I opened my eyes. I was sitting on a sofa in a foggy room. Liosa sat on another across from me, her hands folded on her lap. There was a puzzled look on her face.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Who are you?” she replied.

  I opened my mouth. “You—” I began. “You’re… here.”

  She pressed her lips together in a gesture that reminded me of Peneira. “I am, yes. What kind of a question is that?”

  I wanted to laugh. I didn’t. “Then it must’ve worked.”

  “What worked?”

  “The spell. Parrtha’s spell. He…” I looked around again, my eyes blurring for a moment. “But where are we? We should be back in that attic.”

  “You are not making any sense.”

  I cleared my throat. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “What an absurd question.”

  “Cooperate with me, Liosa. I don’t want to spend an eternity in this… wherever the hell we are.”

  “If you insist on being so nosy,” Liosa sniffed. “I was having an argument with my husband.”

  “I… see. What were you fighting about?”

  She huffed. “Oh, I can’t even recall now. My husband is an incredibly moody man. Every little thing sets him off… a picture frame at the wrong angle, mud tracks where they shouldn’t be. I was threatening to march back home to my mother if he didn’t mellow down even just a little bit, the cantankerous old git.”

  I nearly choked on my spit. “You told him what?”

  “And of course he lost his temper and started throwing things, and I stomped out with the baby and…” Her face tightened. “I had a baby,” she suddenly said, as if just recalling for the first time. “A little girl. Where is she?”

  I stared at her, unable to reply.

  My silence seemed to irritate her. “I just had her in my arms!” She sat up, glancing around the bleak whiteness of our surroundings. “Did you take her? You must have!”

  “No.”

  “You shouldn’t lie. Do
you know who my husband is?”

  “Warlord Yeshin.”

  “And that name doesn’t make you quiver where you stand?” She gave me a smug smile. “No, you do know. I can see it in your eyes. You should be frightened! My husband is the most powerful man in all of Jin-Sayeng. You know he defeated the Ikessars, don’t you? Oh, he was just pretending they have a truce—I admit I couldn’t understand exactly why, but they said the child I was carrying would be queen if she was a girl and she was. You really haven’t seen her?”

  I shook my head.

  “Help me find her. She’s going to be queen someday, you know.”

  “What,” I said slowly, “does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means she’s going to help us rule the world.”

  I tried hard to pretend the detachment in her voice didn’t make my skin crawl. I got up, and she followed me into the fog. I couldn’t tell if we were indoors or outdoors; it almost felt like we were in a void, that we could keep walking on and on and never hit the end of anything. No walls, no destination.

  I turned to Liosa. She moved differently—a shadow of her mother, with a skip in her every step. I wonder if she noticed she had aged, and whether there was any wisdom in breaking the truth to her.

  “I have to say,” she blurted out. “If you are hiding something from me—”

  I noticed shadows in the distance. “Over there,” I said.

  We started running. The shapes became more distinct, and I heard voices, but they sounded muffled, like they were coming from behind a door. We reached yet another expanse. The fog swirled around us, retreating momentarily to reveal an empty field before surrounding us once more.

  “Where is Yeshin?” Liosa grumbled. “This must be his fault. He has been dabbling with—I don’t know what, but he has all these strange people walking in and out of the castle at all times. I told him he needs to go to the temples to ask the gods to forgive his blasphemies and he just laughed at me, the absurd old man.”

  “I’m surprised he lets you talk like that.”

  “Oh, I am sure he does not hear half of what I say. He is hard of hearing already, though you will never get him to admit it.”

  “How… old is Warlord Yeshin, exactly?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “He’s in his sixties, I think. Seventies?”

  “You don’t even know.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “And you married him. Willingly.”

  Liosa made a sound in the back of her throat, the kind that told me she had heard the question before. “And why not?” she asked. “I am a grown woman. I can make my own choices.”

  “But you were—”

  “A child? Who are you, my mother?”

  “That’s—”

  “You do not seem to be deaf. What part did you miss about my husband? He rules Oren-yaro, the strongest province in Jin-Sayeng—an army of noble warriors at his beck and call, and loyal generals who will stop at nothing to protect him. The seers have prophesied that his blood will be the blood that will rule the land.”

  I stopped mid-step to turn to her. “Surely you know of his history.”

  “That he was married to my mother?” Liosa asked. “Insignificant details. It does not make him my father, so wipe that distaste from your face. My father is a meek, weak-willed man, and my mother would have done the family a huge favour if she had never returned to him. I would not have had to take matters into my own hands then. Oh, I have no doubt you are now judging me obscene, just like my own mother. I care very little about what people think. Marrying Yeshin has put me one step closer to becoming the most powerful woman in all the land, and I have him wrapped around my little finger, so what does that make me?”

  “And your daughter…”

  “A necessary inconvenience to seal the deal,” she said, frowning now. “Most women will have to bear one sooner or later. I simply chose to make it so that my labour yields more than a mewling brat on my breast. How many women get the chance to be mother to a queen? My own mother should’ve understood what seizing an opportunity meant.”

  “You don’t seem overly concerned about your child.”

  She snorted. “You must be blind. She will be queen someday—of course I am concerned. If something unpleasant has happened to the whelp, I suppose I just have to get down and make another. Yeshin is not too old, I hope, and there are plenty of nursemaids out there.”

  “You make marriage and children sound wooden.”

  She laughed. “Wooden. Listen to yourself! A woman your age should know better! Marriage is a strategic move, a thing that gives you a chance to position yourself better in the world, and nothing more.”

  “But love…”

  I was starting to amuse her now. I could see it in her eyes. “Love,” she repeated with glee. “Love is a complication. Tell me you do not believe in such a ridiculous notion. You must have a family yourself. You look old enough. Are you the kind of fool who married for love?”

  I smiled in deference, not wanting to argue. “I have a son.”

  “And a husband, I hope?”

  I gave a small nod.

  “Do you love him?” Her eyes brightened when I hesitated; her youth was suddenly all too clear. This was not the same woman whose hand I was holding in the attic.

  “Let me guess!” she continued, clapping. “You mourn the idea that marriage could bring so little solace. The world is not quite what they promised, is it? Why, you must love another! Just like my old mother! I should tell you how her decision to go back to that brought suffering to our lives. They said when she was married to Yeshin that we lived in a nice, big house, and she would send money and all manner of clothes and toys for me. Even my poor old father lived in luxury! But I remember nothing, of course. All I know is what happened after… the filthy hovels we hid in, the hunger, the fear of Yeshin hunting us down during the war! We would be dead if I had not seduced the old man. I am the only reason he left my family alone afterwards.”

  I turned away from her, gazing out at the fog.

  “This new man of yours,” she pressed on. “Is he at least a lord or something?”

  “He doesn’t have anything,” I found myself replying.

  She laughed. “And you, a royal! I can tell from the way you carry yourself. Well—I am sure you do not need me to tell you he is just using you. I may be young, but I am not blind to the way the world works. You would give yourself away for nothing?”

  I walked a little faster.

  “Tell me about him,” she said, trying to catch up to me. Her curiosity seemed at odds with her demeanour.

  “Let’s just try to get out of here.”

  “Ah hah! Did I hit a sore spot?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. “There’s not much to say. He is a good man from a good family, and he deserves better than me.” My gaze settled on her, long enough to make her uncomfortable.

  “Such a complication,” she repeated.

  “Like the child you’ve lost?” I asked. “No, don’t say anything. I’m sure she’s just leverage to keep you in this cushy position. Most powerful woman in all the land, you say.” I walked past her, not wanting to see the look on her face. I didn’t know which of the three was the worst: that my mother died giving birth to me, that she was a madwoman, or that she was as cold to the idea of motherhood as the iron railings of Oka Shto on a winter’s day.

  “That’s a rotten thing to accuse me of,” she said to my back.

  Before I could answer, I heard the voices again. They were louder now, like my ear was suddenly pressed against that door. And they were screaming.

  I tore into a dense blanket of fog and finally found what appeared to be a mirror imbued directly onto the ground. I recognized the attic and saw Namra standing in the corner. Anya was there, too. I called to them, tapping the mirror with my hands. They couldn’t hear me.

  Liosa appeared impassively beside me. “Interesting,” she said. “My husband has a number of these t
hings hidden in the castle. Are those your companions?”

  “You don’t remember them?” I asked.

  “Why should I?”

  I turned my attention back to the mirror. The screaming was coming from…

  “No,” I breathed as I saw what appeared to be Liosa’s hunched figure in the far corner. I glanced at the woman beside me. Two of them. The Liosa that was with me didn’t seem to recognize the one in the mirror.

  “Just like that girl to go and get herself mixed up in every single issue in the bloody kingdom,” I heard a voice call out. I saw the bulk of a man appear at the stairway, sword drawn. Lord General Ozo. He turned his head to one side, past where the mirror could see. “Ah,” he said. “Hand that one over to me.”

  “Oren-yaro scum!” Noerro cried as he lunged at Ozo.

  The general killed him with a single stroke that opened him up from the head to the hip. Blood sprayed Ozo’s face.

  As Noerro’s battered body writhed in the corner, Ozo turned towards Anya. “This one is Yuebek’s.”

  “Not anymore,” Namra said.

  “Since when?”

  “Since she failed to—”

  Ozo struck Anya without warning. She shrieked, managing to draw her sword. In the same instant, Namra cast a spell, which Ozo simply dodged. I found myself screaming, too, smashing the mirror with my fists as I called Ozo’s name. It did nothing. I watched in horror as he turned on Anya a second time and slid his sword into her belly.

  She spat blood, staring at him with wide eyes. “Fucking—” she started. He pulled the sword and stepped aside as her body slumped forward in a pool of blood.

  “The queen won’t like this,” Namra gasped.

  “The queen should know better than to trust turncoats,” Ozo said.

  “With all due respect, Lord Ozo, but aren’t you involved with Prince Yuebek, too?”

  Ozo ignored her as he looked at the Liosa that was in the attic with them. She was huddled in the furthest corner now, hands on her eyes. Ozo stared down at her, and for a moment, I thought he was going to kill her, too. Instead, he placed a hand on her quivering head in a gesture that was almost affectionate. Then he turned to something in the corner, to a figure I couldn’t see. Liosa blocked my sight. But I could tell from the way Ozo’s expression flickered that it was my body.