The Clockwork Dragon

by James R. Hannibal

  Ghost’s hood had fallen. A leaf was caught in her hair, a tangle of thorny vine on her sleeve.

  As Laohu alighted in the brush, Jack reached out a hand. “Come with us.”

  Ghost took a step toward him.

  The look in her eyes made Jack curl his fingers back. “But we do it our way. This is a rescue, not revenge.”

  She lifted her hood into place and let Jack pull her up onto Laohu’s back. “Sure. Whatever you say, yeah?”

  Laohu curled his snout around to give Jack a skeptical growl.

  Danger, boy.

  Much danger.

  Ghost wasted no time in proving the dragon right.

  She held Jack tight as they soared down the mountainside, pressing her chin into the crux between his neck and shoulder. “I can’t look.”

  But Jack knew Ghost would never be frightened by something so mundane as flying bareback on a speeding dragon. Cautiously, he let go with one hand and checked the right pocket of his leather jacket, only to find that space already occupied by the thief’s searching fingers. He laughed. “I don’t have them, so you can quit looking.” Expecting an ambush at the camp, Jack had entrusted both the sphere and the Bridge to Liu Fai. “Besides, you can’t use the Bridge anymore, Ghost. It’s killing you.”

  “Like I care, yeah? I was just keeping warm.”

  “Right. Sure.”

  They avoided roads and hugged the treetops, for obvious reasons, and nearing midday, the trees gave way to a long, glassy lake. Laohu dipped down to soar an inch above the water and let his tail skim the surface, leaving a trail of steam. Seconds before they reached the shore, he shot out a burst of fire. Jack shouted with delight as they ripped through the flames.

  Hours later, as the sun dipped down below the western hills, Liu Fai pointed. “There!” He turned Meilin toward a green pyramid near the meeting of an isolated mountain range and a wandering river. “See how the land between the Weihe River and the mountains curves into the shape of a dragon? The emerald tomb of the emperor, twice as wide as the Pyramid of Giza, forms the eye.”

  By emerald, Jack assumed he meant the evergreens that grew all over the pyramid. A sprawling complex of walls and gardens surrounded the mound, but he saw no obvious entrance. He circled Laohu in a holding pattern. “So how do we get in?”

  Dailan had told Jack that without knowledge of Shi Lu’s secret passage, his little team would have to enter the tomb the old-fashioned way, through a gate sealed for more than two thousand years. But when Liu Fai pointed out its location, Jack realized the situation was far more difficult.

  “That’s a modern building. With armed guards.” Men in black uniforms milled about, carrying what appeared to be rifles.

  Liu Fai did not seem surprised. “Our people have known about this site for countless generations, Jack. Did you think our archeologists would not secure the entrance?”

  He had a fair point.

  “What about the secret passage?” asked Sadie, eyes boring into Ghost. Jack could tell she was listening for more than the thief’s verbal reply.

  “Gall never told me.”

  Sadie glanced at Jack with a look that told him Ghost was telling the truth.

  He nodded. “It’s all right.” His gaze shifted to Liu Fai and Meilin. Smoke trailed from the tree dragon’s nostrils. “I have a plan.”

  As the sunset became twilight, they landed in a maze of sculpted hedges near the secure facility. Jack dismounted and appraised his four dragons, crammed awkwardly together among the bushes. He couldn’t hang on to them much longer, not all of them. “It’s time.”

  Laohu came forward, bending his golden head close to Jack’s.

  Miss the boy.

  “I’ll miss you too. But if you return to the long wushi compound, I’ll come and visit you.” He shrugged. “Assuming I survive.”

  The dragon made the slightest bow and backed silently into the maze.

  Fight well.

  Biyu followed, with Sadie trailing her fingers along the dragon’s scales as she went.

  “Don’t let ’em go,” whispered Ghost. “A dragon’s pretty useful in a pinch, innit?”

  Liu Fai knelt beside her, building a stack of ice balls. “A tomb means tight spaces. They might get stuck or trapped.”

  “The big ones, maybe. But the blue one’s plenty small.”

  “Not for long,” said Jack. He checked on the building, where a guard was fumbling with a set of keys, preparing to lock the steel doors for the night. The air sparked at Jack’s palm. “You ready, Xiaoquan?”

  The water dragon clamped his jaws shut like a dog refusing to take his pill.

  Jack frowned. “Look. I need you—the steamy you—and Liu Fai is making you a stack of icy treats so you can go back to normal when it’s over.”

  Xiaoquan considered the pile of ice balls, and lowered his head, relenting. He opened his mouth, deep blue tongue lolling out. Fire sprouted from Jack’s hand.

  The explosion of lithe little water dragon into balloon-like steam dragon set off a cracking and crunching of hedges that Jack had not foreseen. Their cover was instantly blown. Three guards came rushing their way.

  “Go!” said Jack, grabbing his sister’s hand.

  Xiaoquan braced his wings against the bushes and blew a billowing mass of white fog at the building. Meilin added a storm of smoke and ash, and the two whirled together into a rolling smoke screen.

  Jack ran, pulling Sadie along, and when Ghost or Liu Fai began to drift off course, he reached out a hand to reel them in. The shouting of the guards gave him all the sight he needed. Blue-gray echoes defined the angles and contours of the facility, with the brightest portion guiding him to the steel doors like a harbor lighthouse. He ushered the others inside and threw the lock.

  “That won’t hold them,” whispered Liu Fai. “They have the key.”

  Jack sparked a flame in his hand and pressed it against the steel. The lock glowed red. But try as he might, he could not pump in enough heat to melt it.

  Child of flame and child of ice

  Must join to win the maiden’s life.

  Jack blinked. He nodded at the door. “Your turn.”

  Liu Fai took his meaning and poured out frost. There was a crackling within the lock, then a tiny clink.

  Jack checked the bolt. Jammed. “That oughta hold ’em for a while.”

  “Um . . . guys?” Sadie had wandered a few feet ahead, to a stairwell of pitted black stone, as broad as the building. The whole facility seemed to be nothing but a cap for those steps.

  Jack walked slowly to his sister’s side, wary of whatever had drained the color from her cheeks. Below, he saw a sealed gateway with aged copper doors. A rounded lattice of red-glazed stone on either side gave the entire thing the look of a near-perfect circle.

  Sadie took hold of his wrist. “There are things poking through the lattice. White things.”

  A small fireball appeared in Jack’s free hand. He added fuel to make it brighter, and he felt Sadie’s grip tighten. “Those white things are hands,” he said, unable to raise his voice above a whisper, “dozens of skeletal hands.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  LIU FAI FOUND A flashlight on a rack of equipment, and Jack doused his fireball.

  Ghost strolled past them. “Great plan, yeah? Now we’re trapped between a tomb and armed guards. How long before they cut through Frosty’s broken lock and arrest us?”

  “Don’t call him Frosty,” said Sadie. “He doesn’t like it.”

  A gridwork of stakes and strings marked the dirt walls on either side of the staircase, and the floor at the bottom was littered with tools—signs of archeological work, still ongoing.

  Sadie kept staring at the bony hands reaching through the lattice. “Why haven’t they done anything about the skeletons?”

  “They could not simply pull the arms through.” Liu Fai steered her away, toward the center of the gate, and crouched down in front of her. “It is unwise to disturb the rest of the dead.”<
br />
  “They were trying to get out,” said Jack.

  “ ’Course they were trying to get out.” Ghost pursed her lips at him. “They’d been locked up with a dead king in a tomb filled with traps.”

  “The question is,” said Liu Fai, “how do we get in?”

  Jack examined the seal on the gate—a square copper plate, perhaps a meter on each side, with a slightly smaller square in the middle, made of a black alloy he could not identify. The black square was cut into seven angular pieces that fit together, each with a peg sticking out. “Is this a puzzle?”

  “That is a chin-chiao pan,” said Liu Fai, pushing Jack aside to get a better look. “You would call it a ‘tangram’ or ‘seven-piece puzzle’ in English. To solve it, one must slide the pieces around in two dimensions, making a chin-chiao pan the ideal face for a—”

  “Combination lock,” said Sadie, finishing for him.

  “Correct. A chin-chiao pan has infinite solutions. The pieces may form any shape one can imagine, and only one will open the lock.”

  An alarming clank sounded above.

  Ghost glanced up the stairs. “The guards have gone to work on the doors, yeah?” She rolled her eyes at the others. “Rank amateurs, the lot of ya. Now it’s a race. We’ve gotta open our door before they open theirs.”

  “I told you,” said Liu Fai. “This lock is unsolvable. To even begin, we would need the key—a drawing, or perhaps an object. A silhouette of the desired shape.”

  “A silhouette.” Jack patted his pockets until he found the horse that Dailan had given him.

  You’ll know when the time comes.

  He held the black jade carving up beside the seal, and he could see how the same general shape might be made from the squares and triangles. “This is it. Dailan gave us the key.”

  Another clank. Jack saw more depth in the noise than before, more movement. “The doors are failing. We have to go.” He stepped aside, giving Liu Fai room to work. “Can you solve it?”

  “In China, chin-chiao pan are used in mathematics competitions.” Liu Fai cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, as if walking into a boxing ring. “And I hold the record for all of Hubei province.” He took hold of a peg, sharply sliding a triangular piece aside, and added under his breath, “Not that my father ever noticed.”

  Several triangles, a square, and a rhombus—Liu Fai slid them all out to the limits of their tracks and began building the horse, piece by piece. The shapes could shift, rotate, and switch from one track to another, allowing too many configurations for Jack’s comfort.

  Clank. The guards shouted to one another outside. Jack couldn’t understand what they were saying, but he could tell there were more than three. They had brought in reinforcements.

  “Any time now, yeah?” urged Ghost as Liu Fai shifted two small triangles into place. He changed his mind and replaced them with the square. “Quiet, thief. Let me work.”

  The shouts grew louder, and with a final bang, the doors swung wide. Lights flipped on.

  “Got it!” Liu Fai threw his hands up, as if signaling a judge to stop a clock.

  Jack heard a sound like water flowing. The left side of the gate swung inward. He cast one more worried look at the skeletal hands and then shoved his ragtag rescue squad into the tomb.

  They grunted all together, pushing the heavy copper door closed again.

  “How do we lock it?” asked Ghost.

  The door answered with the distinctive shink, whir, shink of the puzzle returning to its locked configuration. Jack let go and stepped back. “We’re safe.”

  Liu Fai’s flashlight gave a ghostly glow to the skeletons piled against the lattice. He picked up a torn section of clothing. There were claw marks down the center. “Safe is precisely the wrong word.”

  “Shhh.” Jack raised a finger. “The guards are coming down the stairs. What are they saying?”

  Liu Fai pressed an ear to the door. “One of them swears he saw the tomb closing. Another says he is imagining things, that they should leave well enough alone.”

  Jack noted a third voice, harsher than the others. “What about that guy?”

  “He is their lieutenant,” said Liu Fai, turning to meet Jack’s eye. “He says it does not matter if thieves entered the tomb, because they will never come out again.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  JACK AND THE OTHERS wandered deeper into the tomb, following a wide pathway of the same pitted black stone used for the stairway. Soon, the sharp scent of fuel reached Jack’s nostrils. He traced its wavering green line to a brazier as tall as Sadie. “Hang on a sec.” He opened his palm and concentrated on making a spark. “I think I found the light switch.”

  “Wait.” Liu Fai held up a hand. “You might set off a trap, or alert Gall.”

  “Or both, yeah?” added Ghost.

  Jack rolled his eyes. “The whole place is a trap. And Gall knows we’re coming. Relax. It’s just one torch.” The argument gave Jack the little boost of adrenaline he needed to spark a fireball. He tossed it in, and with a hefty whoomp, orange flames leaped up. The fire crackled. Aside from that, there were no other sounds. “See? Nothing happened.”

  Whoomp . . . Whoomp . . . Whoomp, whoomp, whoomp. More flames sprang from dozens of braziers along a sloping path leading off into the distance.

  “Just one torch, yeah?” said Ghost.

  “I . . . How did they . . . ?” Jack flopped his arms. “Sorry.”

  Sadie walked out in front of him. “I like it.”

  The braziers illuminated an underground park. Shrubs made of green opal lined the path, with flowers of many-colored jasper. The columns supporting the roof were carved to look like oaks. Conical jade pines dotted the landscape between—a forest of flickering shadows that faded to darkness on both sides.

  In the distance, Jack could see the occasional arched footbridge, implying that a stream meandered through the stone trees. “What is this place?”

  “A shendao.” Liu Fai walked beside him. “A spirit way. If this is anything like the tombs of later dynasties, this road should lead us north to the central mausoleum.”

  Interspersed among the bushes were statues, like the terra-cotta soldiers Jack had seen on TV. These still had vibrant color in their paint—red, yellow, purple, and green, with flesh-colored faces and a hint of rose in their cheeks. The soldiers were not alone. There were women in silk gowns, ministers in round hats, and animals of all kinds. A few of the figures stood well off the path, as if wandering in the woods.

  “Look at this one.” Sadie had found a creature made of silver, rather than pottery—something between a tiger and a Doberman.

  “We call that a pixiu,” said Liu Fai, nodding at the tiger-dog-thing. “They have guarded the wealth of homes and tombs for thousands of years, farther back than even the Qin dynasty.”

  “He’s cute,” said Sadie.

  Jack did not agree. He would have preferred a tiger-dog-thing that guards tombs to be made of pottery like the rest of the animals. The creature’s silver claws and fangs looked sharp. “What’s that in its mouth?”

  Liu Fai cautiously touched a white ball trapped behind the statue’s fangs. It moved freely. “The ball represents the wishes of the statue’s master, fiercely guarded.”

  Sadie tried to get closer, but Jack held her back. His eyes drifted down to the claws, curled back and raised above the black pavers. There were three, exactly like the rips in the cloth Liu Fai had found beside the skeletons. “Let’s . . . keep going.”

  They had a long march ahead to reach the next section of the tomb, marked by a two-tiered gateway with tiled roofs. The wicked look of that pixiu statue made Jack nervous. He took the lead, guarding every step. Any paver might shift beneath his weight and bring arrows flying or a boulder crashing down. More than once, he thought he saw a statue out in the jade woods creep closer.

  Eventually, his imaginings became reality.

  The sound began softly in the distance. Scritch, scritch. Jack cou
ld see it with his tracker senses—catlike footfalls on the hard stones, bearing the sheen of a metallic ring. He glanced back, checking on the pixiu, and his mouth went dry.

  The silver statue no longer stood on its pedestal.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  SCRITCH. SCRITCH. THE METALLIC footfalls quickened.

  “We have to move,” said Jack in a hoarse whisper, reaching back for his sister. When the others failed to react, he shouted the command. “I said, ‘Move!’ ”

  Dragging his sister, Jack ran straight between the flaming braziers, hoping the path and the light might somehow protect them.

  Liu Fai caught up to them. “What about traps?”

  “We’ve already set one off!”

  Scritch, scritchety Scritch, scritchety.

  Whatever was hunting them had picked up its pace, galloping beside them through the trees. The shiny tracks, appearing and fading in Jack’s mind, curved toward the path.

  Scritch, scritchety Scritch, scritchety . . .

  The sound went away.

  “Down!”

  Jack yanked his sister to the floor as the creature went soaring over them, claws extended. It clipped a jade pine, and tumbled into the shadows on the other side of the path.

  “Enough of this, yeah?” said Ghost.

  Zzap.

  She vanished in a rippling blast wave.

  Jack dropped his forehead into his palm and peered over at Liu Fai with one eye. “Seriously? You had one job.” That wasn’t true, but it sounded good.

  Liu Fai lay on the pavers, patting his pockets and looking stricken.

  Ghost had taken the Einstein-Rosen Bridge—and probably the Mind.

  “Forget it.” Jack pulled Sadie to her feet and started running again. “She’s a thief. It’s what she does.”

  The stream that meandered through the dark stone woods crossed the path ahead. Beyond the footbridge, Jack could see the two-tiered gateway. A stone wall extended from both sides. “If we can make it to that gate,” he shouted, “maybe we’ll live!”

  “So much for that idea,” panted Liu Fai, pointing.