Snow in the Year of the Dragon

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Perhaps it was Kharma trying to take back what she had lost. Perhaps it was Dharma, staining him with the world of Necromancy and luring him with its unimaginable power. There was no turning back from such a road. He had died. Now he lived. He knew Sherah al Shiva would spend the rest of her life trying to elude her fate but ultimately, it was a futile quest. All cats died, few came back, yet he could count three men whom she had returned. Kerris Wynegarde-Grey, himself, and Yahn Nevye.

  Yahn Nevye, the man who spoke to owls and was afraid of heights. Nevye, who had betrayed them all and subsequently, turned his face to a hard destiny. Soldier, Seer and Alchemist, now firmly rooted in the North to raise up and train the untrainable. He could feel the brush of his mind from time to time, so now, curiosity piqued, he closed his eyes again and stretched out fingers of thought, reaching for the Blue Wolf and the Yellow Cat and their weary band of Oracles.

  It is not a

  peaceful

  touch.

  They are in the middle of a snowfield, in the path of a herd of stampeding reindeer. At least, he thinks they are reindeer. He’s not a northern cat and there are no animals that look like that in the south. He can see the snowfield and the reindeer and a terrified huddle of children and they are trying to make a shield but they are not strong enough or skilled enough for this level. He breathes deeply a cleansing breath and gathers the chi from all over the Palace and sends it to surround them like a soap bubble. Like a soap bubble made of iron and he shudders when the first animal hits but it stumbles off into the rushing herd. The children scream but the shield holds, the iron soap bubble that will keep them all safe for hours and for hours all he can think about is the soap bubble and keeping Yahn Nevye safe and Jalair Naransetseg safe he doesn’t wonder where his wife is he doesn’t care to track down hassassins in the palace he needs to keep the oracles safe for the good of all the kingdoms

  He opened his eyes, surprised to find sweat beading down his brow. The Room of Enlightened Shadows was a mess – cushions flung against the walls, parchment floating to the floors. There were no candles burning. In fact, he couldn’t see the lantern either, wondered if it was beneath the cushions and if so, how long it would take for the flames to catch.

  Leopards peered in from outside, as if prevented from entering by an unseen wall.

  He wondered if he made a Shield here too.

  Interesting.

  “Come in,” he said.

  They exchanged glances but did not enter.

  “Sahidi,” said one leopard. “You have been summoned to the War Room.”

  “What time is it?”

  “End of the last watch, sahidi.”

  Hm. Hours later. He may have made a Shield in the north after all.

  “Is it customary to be summoned to the War Room at the end of the last watch of the day?”

  They did not answer.

  “Where is my wife?”

  Again, they did not answer for they had no answer for him. They were merely messengers. Like dreams, Farsight and Vision, all simply pieces in a puzzle, threads in the cloak of the world. He wondered if there was anyone who could see it all.

  He released another long, cleansing breath, and rose to his feet.

  ***

  The Griffen’s door slid open with a thunk. Billowing white fabric was the only thing visible from the hatch.

  “Down the steps and bring nothing with you.”

  Solomon exchanged glances with Ward and Sengupta, touched the wire on the back of his neck.

  “So did you confirm with Spike Two, Kalgoorlie?” he asked.

  “Down the steps please and bring nothing with you.”

  “We are senior members of the International Sandman teams. I repeat, did you confirm?”

  “Spike Two confirmed the existence of Sleeplab Supervisor Seven Jeffery Anders Solomon but not the identities of Ward, Sengupta and Dell.”

  “They were colonists,” Solomon added. “Therefore not on the main lists. You many need to dig deeper into your records.”

  “Down the steps and bring nothing with you.”

  “We’ll come down now,” he said. “I just don’t want you to terminate anyone because you’re afraid, is all. Is THAT clear?”

  “Termination will occur if you do not exit the craft.”

  “Well then,” he said. “I’ll stay back with Dell.”

  “Right,” Ward hiked the Helliad rifle under her arm. “I’ll go first.”

  “Jiān Damaris Ward and Linguist Persis Sengupta are coming out now,” he said. “Do NOT terminate.”

  For her part, Sengupta drew a deep breath and followed the jiān out, ducking her head under the low door hatch.

  There was no sound for the longest of times until voices and a clang on the hull.

  His heart was thudding in his chest. Odd how the thought of meeting other people once filled him with excitement and hope. Now, the excitement was replaced by dread, and the only hope was that of survival.

  He looked down at Dell. The zoologist was not looking good and he wondered if there was actually something toxic in the saliva of the ‘roos. He hoped the medics in Kalgoorlie had the vax to help.

  Clanging from the hatch now and he glanced up to see figures in white polyclad armour tromping up the steps. Bones, Kerris had called them. An army of bones. It was fitting for a dead civilization to dress themselves in bones.

  “You were ordered to exit the craft,” said one. He couldn’t even see the face behind the screen. “Why have you not exited the craft?”

  “I’m a doctor,” he said. “And Dell here is my patient. I couldn’t very well leave him behind, now could I?”

  There were three and the Griffen made tight quarters for them.

  “What is the condition of the injured party?”

  “He got bit by one of those kangaroos,” he said. “The ones that run like raptors.”

  One looked down at the zoologist and Solomon could hear the tinny hiss as they communicated between themselves. A click as a device popped out of the arm and symbols began to flash across a narrow screen.

  “Can you help me get him to your infirmary?”

  “Beta 22 confirmed,” said the solider. “Reedy?”

  “So?” asked Solomon. “The infirmary?”

  The screen folded back inside the arm and a second device sprang out.

  “Wait,” said Solomon. “What are you doing?”

  A spray shot from the arm, covering Dell’s entire head in liquid that immediately cooled into a clear film sac. It stuck to his features like a vacuum and made his face look like a desiccated skull.

  “Don’t do that,” said Solomon. “That’s not—”

  The soldier swung his other arm and fired, blood filling the sac but protecting the Griffen.

  “Shit!” shouted Solomon. “Shit! What? NO!”

  And he lunged but the second soldier swung toward him now and fired a different device and Solomon was thrown backwards except he wasn’t. He was thrown so far backwards, but frozen at one point and all the world expanded along the line drawn between the impact in the front of his chest and all the way back and pain came in twisting waves as he was thrown farther and farther and farther back, held fast by the point and Dell’s head was in a bloody sac and the kangaroos with their teeth and Ward’s weary smile and the universe was expanding and collapsing at the same time and in the wink of an eye, it was gone.

  discipline

  They ate as much of the tsaa buga as they could fit in their stomachs that night. They also buried more under rocks and snow and stripped several of the pelts to make blankets. Two, they carved for Sev and Zorig to carry. Doshan the Brave led aSiffh as the young stallion dragged two carcasses behind him and carried a third across his back.

  Now, they sat at the foothills of the mountains once again, Balmataar muttering to himself while prodding the evening fire with a long bone. Setse cradled a young girl, singing songs of childhood and memory. Sad songs for the most part, and Nevye wondered if
dogs ever celebrated. They were a hard people, he had realized, made so because of their hard lives.

  “I can’t do it, Shar,” said Doshan. “I can’t see it like you.”

  He smiled. The boy had asked to make fire and Nevye had been trying to teach him. It was difficult, for his years of training were taken for granted. Difficult to go back to the time when all was broken bones and emptiness.

  “Emptiness,” he said. “Yes, emptiness. That might help. Doshan, close your eyes.”

  The boy obeyed. Nevye removed his gloves and took the small wiry hands, pressed them between his own, immediately seeing Doshan’s young life in the gar. A mother afraid, a father despising. An older brother with large fists, an older sister with biting tongue. Convulsions and visions and dreams of a gar of his own, dreams of food and water and blankets and sunshine.

  Sunshine, Nevye thought. Catch the sunshine, Doshan. Feel the sunshine, feel the warmth of the sun, how it makes your pelt tingle. See the tingle as sparks, blow on them with the wind of your mind, see them fan and catch in the darkness. See the light, call the light, will the light turn into heat and then flame…

  “Doshan,” he said. “Look.”

  The boy opened his eyes. A tiny spark was causing wisps of smoke. But it was only a spark and it died the moment the boy laid eyes on it.

  “It’s a start,” said Nevye.

  “So,” said Zorig. “Are you a tngri, cat?”

  He looked up.

  “I don’t know,” Nevye grinned. “Why?”

  “No Chanyu can do what you can do. I can’t believe it’s just because you are a cat.”

  “The Chanyu can do what I can do,” he said. “Setse is more powerful than you know.”

  The old man looked over at her, looked back.

  “Hard to believe that too,” he said. “Has she been trained?”

  “No,” said the jaguar. “But Khan Sumalbaykhan wishes the Oracles to be trained now, to strengthen the People of all the Lands.”

  “Against the Ancestors,” said Zorig.

  “Against the Ancestors,” said Nevye.

  “But the Ancestors are gone,” said Zorig. “How can there be any left?”

  “The Star of Five Tails brought them back,” he said. “I’ve seen their weapons. I’ve spoken with those who have fought them.”

  Zorig shook his head, turned to look at Doshan. A tiny spark flared, then died again.

  “Well done, boy,” said Zorig. “Let me try that now…”

  Nevye rose to his feet, slipping the gloves over his hands once again. That was what they needed, these Oracles, a place where they trained together and encouraged each other. The school could not come soon enough.

  He crossed the rocks to Setse. She did not look up, merely hugged the child tighter.

  “Setse,” he began.

  “I don’t know who I am,” she moaned.

  “Setse, come with me.”

  “I don’t know who I am. I left my husband and lost my baby.”

  He sighed.

  “You are not Houlun,” he said. “You are Jalair Naransetseg, Granddaughter of the Blue Wolf.”

  “Blue Wolf, Yellow Cat.”

  “Blue Wolf, Yellow Cat,” he repeated. “Please come with me. Silence has found our school.”

  “You are only saying that to please me,” she said.

  “Setse, no.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she growled. “Don’t look at me. Go away and leave me alone.”

  He studied her for a moment, followed the dark chi back to Balmataar and the long bone. He was twisting a lock of his own hair around it, affixing a smaller, splintered bone to the leg like a hook. It reminded him of the bonestick of the Needle and Storm on the plains of Tevd. The young man smiled at him. It was not a pretty sight.

  “Where did you get that bone?” Nevye asked.

  Balm shrugged. “Tsaa buga.”

  “Not that one, the little one.”

  “Oh, this…” He lifted it to admire the shape, the sharp shattered end. “I took it from what was left of the woman with the baby.”

  “Necromancy is a dangerous path, Balmataar,” growled Nevye. “I would not tread it if I were you.”

  “You are not me, cat.”

  There was a voice in his blood and he knew it was the bonestick. Take me, it whispered to him. Take me and use me to thwart this runt of a boy. It is only fitting and the Oracles will be better for the loss.

  He’d been dead three times, brought back twice by the power of Necromancy. He had owed a terrible debt, but surely that had been paid by love and honour. Surely it had.

  Kill him, the stick said. Kill him and take back what he is stealing from you.

  On the wind, Silence dropped something at his feet. He bent to pick it up, rolled it over in his hand. It was a lump of wax with a wick.

  He felt a name form on his tongue, tasted it into sounds, syllables, history.

  “Everyone, rise,” he said to the huddled group. “Silence has found our home. Tonight we sleep in Tsaparang.”

  “Tsaparang?” said Setse, and she pushed up from the rock. “Silence has found our school?”

  “I told you he would. Now rise up, Oracles. We have still an hour of light. Up, up into the mountains now.”

  “I’m so happy, Shar,” she said and her blue eye sparkled in the twilight. He wondered if she remembered what she had said earlier. He wondered if she had even said it. Perhaps Balm and the bonestick were already more powerful than he knew.

  As the oracles rose to their aching feet, he spared a glance at Balmataar. The boy was gone, merely a shrinking silhouette among the snow of the foothills.

  Kill him and take back what he is stealing from you.

  “Not today,” he said aloud, but his thoughts said something else entirely.

  ***

  Twisting and pulling, the world in all its infinite darkness exploding in a big bang of light and colour and he is being pulled from within to the surface and he doesn’t want to go. The darkness is far better than the colour of the blood. Blood in the sac, blood in the Griffen, blood in the center of the world and as he rises from the dark, there is a sound that is almost as bad.

  It is the sound of a man screaming.

  Solomon opened his eyes as the quiet settled onto his bones.

  The room was white and brightly lit – disturbing for someone coming out of a gut-wrenching, stomach-churning state, and he lay very still as the room spun for several long moments. There was the hum of podlights, the sharp tang of ozone and he flexed one wrist, not surprised to find it fixed to the table where he lay. It was rather like his welcome to the Shenandoah complex of Celine ‘Cece’ Carr months ago. At least this time, he was clothed.

  New jumpsuit – dark and rather sleek as compared to the old grimy brown one he had been wearing for thousands of years. New footwear too, and he wondered if any of it had VS or sensors to track him. It would be a smart thing, all things considered, in this new world of paranoia and fear.

  Armand Dell’s blood spraying inside the film sac.

  He wanted to scream again. He wanted to rip out of this bed and kill every person on this God-forsaken base. He wanted to curl up and die as memories of the hapless, idealistic zoologist played through his brain over and over and over. The man had defended Kerris and Fallon to his exclusion, and now he was dead, blood sprayed inside a film sac to keep the goddamn plane clean.

  His breath was coming in ragged gasps so he closed his eyes, tried to rein in his fury but the horror was worse than the rats of Kandersteg. Those were animals. These were people. Humans killing humans like they had for millennia. Nothing was different. Nothing had changed. He clenched his jaws, desperate to taste blood, his own blood, prove that he was alive. It was wrong and he cursed the fact that, less than a year ago, he had woken up. Not for the first time, he wished he hadn’t.

  Inhale deep, exhale slow; inhale deep, exhale slow. Still, it took a long time before his breathing returned to anything remotely nor
mal and finally above his head, he heard the ping of a monitor. A MVS Ring began to rise out of the arms of the bed and he watched it curve gracefully before meeting in the middle with a seamless click. It’s hum was as familiar as the Griffen’s engine, and it purred its way down his legs, then back up to his head, before returning to default over his belly. It was an old model but in working order, and he could read through the screen to the symbols on the other side.

  He wondered if it was voice sensitive.

  “All clear,” he said aloud. “The patient is awake and alert and ready for discharge.”

  “MDID?” said the Ring. Its voice was smooth and artificial, like electric cream.

  “Solomon, Jeffery Anders. SLS7554b37Q.”

  “Passcode?”

  “Tango9931.”

  “Version?”

  Version. He swallowed, mind temporarily blank.

  “Version?” the Ring repeated.

  Version? He knew the version but it was gone from his tongue like a snowflake, hiding in his brain like a child with a stolen cookie.

  “Seeker 4!” he snapped. Funny, how little things jogged a very old memory.

  “MDID confirmed. Patient discharge confirmed. Welcome to Dreamtime, Dr. Solomon.”

  And the Ring hummed again, retracting into the arms of the bed and the wrist braces clicked open. Slowly he swung his legs and sat up, rubbing his chest and looking around the room.

  Dreamtime. It was a better name than SuperPit Sandfield SleepLab 3. A beautiful name for a horrible place. Dell would have loved it.

  The infimary was empty and clean with beds in neat, orderly rows. Behind him, a wall of plex overlooked a makeshift garden. Green mugla, yellow witchetty bushes, red soil and blue blue sky, the expanse was flat and unending, and he wondered if it were real or a well-maintained ArcEye system. If the latter, then technology had certainly fared better here than in NorAm, where everything was dirty, bronzed and held together by bits of rusted wire.