by Dave Gross
“Just do it.”
I met the murmur of my students with what I hoped was a forbidding glare. Their gazes returned to their pages.
Unable to contain my anxiety, I paced the length of the library steps. It was far too short a distance to sustain an illusion of serenity. I wished to get away, to contemplate the meaning of what I had just witnessed in solitude. But there was no way to depart without causing a greater stir.
A figure flew up from the direction of the Plum Court to scurry across the lower eaves of the Shrine of Irori. It was impossible to discern his identity once he entered the twilight shadows, but the muscular silhouette looked familiar. I caught only a glimpse of him as he dropped inside the walls of the Peach Court, but it was enough to confirm my suspicion that it was Kwan who invaded the royal refuge.
“Continue your exercises.” I walked toward the Peach Court gate with as much nonchalance as I could feign.
“But Brother, we will be late—”
“Do not stop until I return.” My patience dissolved. I dashed forward, hand on the hilt of the Shadowless Sword.
With the sword’s invigoration, my step was lighter than a snowflake. I leaped to the top of the wall, crouched a moment, and leaped again to the edge of the shrine’s roof. Beneath the point where Kwan had dropped stood a rectangular building. Passing it on my previous visit I had thought it abandoned. From within its walls I heard panel doors closing and voices rising in anger.
I dropped to the ground and knelt by the building, my ear against the wall. The first voice I recognized was that of the royal eunuch.
“—bold as to take the bait. The princess is beyond your reach. Not even Master Li will complain of your death when I reveal your true identity.”
“I am no assassin,” said Kwan.
Jade Tiger’s fan popped. I wet my finger and pushed a hole through the paper window. One of the guards blocked my view of the proceedings, so I dared to cut a larger opening with the Shadowless Sword. The blade was so swift and keen that it was the work of a silent instant, and I returned the weapon to its sheath.
“In that case, you are a spy. You cannot deny that you have infiltrated Dragon Temple by deception.” He moved beyond the obstructing shoulder of the guard, prowling back and forth on the far side of the room.
“Not to kill the princess.”
“And yet you were present moments before the assassin arrived.”
“I was there to stop him.”
“So you knew there would be an attempt on her life.”
“Of course,” said Kwan. “For too long, Quain has kept the Dragon Ceremony for itself. It is only just that the Dragon’s wish be shared among the Successor States.”
“And if not shared, then stolen?”
“Not if that meant any harm should come to Princess Lanfen.”
Jade Tiger scoffed. “I am to believe that a prince of Lingshen can be trusted to defend his enemy’s daughter?”
“You are not a man. You understand nothing of such things.”
The affront stirred a ripple across the faces of the guards. Tiger only smiled and fanned his face.
“I need not kill you. If I inform Master Li of your intrusion, he will cast you out.”
“More likely he will assign me clerical duties in the Persimmon Court.”
“Indeed,” said Jade Tiger. He understood as well as I that Kwan referred to my earlier trespass and undeserved reward. The eunuch fluttered the fan, causing the image of the angry tiger to tremble as if with rage. “Dragon Temple teems with puzzles, and I shall deal with each in turn. Your treachery stands revealed, Prince Tengfei. Defend your life!”
Jade Tiger pointed his fan at Kwan—I could not think of him as Prince Tengfei. The guards closed in, the points of their spears forming a contracting spiral. Unarmed, Kwan stood trapped in the middle.
The spearheads licked at his face. Kwan dropped to his knees, reaching up to grasp two spears. He pulled blades a few inches out of line and shoved the spears back at their attackers. Two of the guards released their weapons, clutching bloodied faces. Kwan tossed up the spears and caught them mid-shaft.
The guards attacked again. Kwan leaped high and dropped down on the necks of two spears, breaking off their heads. The guards cast down their broken weapons.
Jade Tiger snapped his fan and uttered a few harsh syllables: “Tiger Prowl, Crane Dive!”
The unarmed guards stepped forward in low stances, their hands curled for tiger strikes. Behind them, the spearmen held their blades over Kwan’s head. He could not leap without throwing himself into their razor-sharp edges.
The unarmed guards attacked first. Kwan held the spears against his ribs, threatening the attackers in front and rear. He kicked to strike the prowling tigers.
The spearmen pressed down, lowering the ceiling of blades.
Kwan shifted his grip and thrust his spears, striking two of the guards in the thigh. He could as easily have gutted them both, but he held back, reluctant to slay royal guards. I knew just how he felt.
The guards drove Kwan lower with their spears. He flattened himself on the floor, turning his stolen spears parallel to his body, and rolled under their feet. Two leaped over him rather than be tripped, and Kwan escaped the deadly circle.
Behind Kwan, Jade Tiger slipped darts from his sleeve into a slot in his fan’s frame.
“Kwan, beware!” I called out.
The eunuch turned to the aperture in the window. His green eyes locked with mine, and for an instant I felt a pulse of vertigo. I snapped out of his hypnotic gaze just in time to evade the darts that shot through the window and past the space my head had just occupied.
Through another window flew Kwan, spears in hand. Without hesitation, he let the weapons fall to the ground and leaped up to the roof. I followed his example.
As I lit upon the roof’s edge, Kwan looked at me from the opposite end. His body glistened with the sweat of his recent triumph over half the royal guard, a reminder of how far he exceeded me in strength and vigor. If Jade Tiger’s accusation were true, Kwan exceeded me in rank as well. Prince Tengfei: I recognized the name from the documents I had transcribed. It was that of the eighth son of the king of Lingshen, foremost rival to Quain among the Successor States.
There was a message in Kwan’s stony expression: Tell no one.
If Kwan had lied to the eunuch—if he did intend to harm the princess—I decided I would spend my life to thwart him. I fixed that vow upon my face and returned his gaze.
Kwan’s muscles coiled like those of a predator ready to pounce. Yet when he leaped, he leaped away. He took two steps upon the Peach Court wall and vanished to the south.
I heard the clamor of the guards emerging from the building below and fled in the opposite direction.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Five Nagas
Burning Cloud Devil waited for more than a day in the snow for me to return from the mountain hideout. He told me he’d sent more of his invisible eyeballs inside for a look, but I knew the Monkey King popped them into his mouth as soon as they arrived. The rest of the time the self-proclaimed demigod—it seemed the Monkey King had a pretty high opinion of himself—told tall tales as we drank the last of the gangsters’ wine.
The more we drank, the more ridiculous his stories became, and the less I could be sure of what happened since I entered the mountain refuge. At the same time, I believed his crazy stories more and more.
For example, he claimed his staff could reach all the way to heaven. Once he’d used it to tip the world to create the seasons. He cheated demons at dice and released the Cloud Horses from their heavenly pastures. When the gods sent Irori to capture him, he slipped away and took a piss on the Gates of Heaven and Hell.
So maybe I didn’t believe every word he said, but some of it soun
ded pretty good at the time. It was, after all, a lot of wine.
After a long delirium, I woke with what felt like the filth of a hundred summer sewers crammed into my skull. The Monkey King was gone, and the survivors of his visit treated me like unwelcome royalty. I waved off the supplicants, but they pressed packages of food and gold into my arms. I couldn’t imagine ever eating again, but who doesn’t like free gold? When I stumbled out into the blinding light, they kowtowed and thanked the gods as they saw the back of me.
Burning Cloud Devil hopped up the moment he heard me crunching through the snow.
“You live!”
“Not so loud.” I cradled my head.
“The Twin White Palms,” he whispered. “Did you—?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I moaned. “Now shut up already. You’ll start an avalanche.”
Sure, I hadn’t killed anyone, but I was certain that I now knew the Twin White Palms. We’d talked about it at some point, me and the Monkey King.
My goddamned big brother.
I chuckled at the thought. Gremlins pounded nails inside my skull, but my mirth unsettled Burning Cloud Devil. At least he stopped pestering me for the time it took us to climb down the mountain. Maybe he was getting a little scared of me. That could be useful, but I couldn’t think of exactly how to use it just yet.
When I woke the next morning, the interrogation began with hot tea and an accusation.
“You did not kill the Monkey King.”
“No,” I admitted. “But I could have. He just sat there and let me have a shot.”
“And you did not take it?”
“Nah. I could feel my ki, though, just the way you described. It would have killed him.”
Burning Cloud Devil grumbled and lifted his beard on his wrist. “Perhaps it is just as well you did not try. Still, I need to know you have mastered the Twin White Palms. Only with my ultimate technique can you prevail against the Celestial Dragon.”
“And then you’ll let me back into my regular body.”
“As agreed in our compact,” he said.
I still couldn’t look at food, but the hot tea was loosening the screws in my skull. “No demigods. No paladins or priests. Definitely no women. Whoever I fight, make sure he’s got it coming. Give me a real son of a bitch.”
“How about a son of a snake?”
“Go on.”
It was his turn to be coy. Burning Cloud Devil spun out his story a little at a time. Over the next few weeks, he told me so many stories of the southern land of Nagajor that I suspected he’d invented half of them on the fly. Even if one in ten were true, he convinced me the world would be well rid of the snake goddesses and their fanatic worshipers.
Among the worst were a group of spies known as the Five Fangs.
Three of the gang were monks of an outfit called the Order of the Poisoned Fang. They were more or less human but still devoted to their naga matriarchs. Each took the name of a snake representing his variation on a serpentine fighting style called Ular Tangan.
Python was a wrestler known for strangling high mucky-mucks in foreign kingdoms. Adder concealed poisoned blades in his shoes, and his specialty was neutralizing guards. Viper was their kidnapper. His nerve strikes could paralyze or activate toxins in the body of his foe. From what Burning Cloud Devil had heard, these guys were all great fighters, but I wasn’t worried about them.
The other two were another story. Cobra was some kind of half-human, half-serpent aberration. He was the most venomous of the gang. His double spears injected four different kinds of poison, and like me he had a reputation as a biter.
The real prize, the monster serpent who’d get my special whammy, had no name that Burning Cloud Devil had ever heard. What he did know was that she threw powerful magic. When he told me she was mother to the others, even though they were a bunch of snakes, I hoped he was speaking poetically.
We took our time walking along the base of the Wall of Heaven. Burning Cloud Devil didn’t summon his flying fireball once. Instead he kept casting his bunch of spells every morning and night, most of them not on either of us. When I asked, he said he was consulting the local spirits, learning where to find the nagas, who moved from lair to lair as they perpetrated various intrigues against the Kingdom of Quain. Still, all the spells he was casting seemed a lot of work for that.
I had a feeling the real reason we dawdled was that Burning Cloud Devil enjoyed the first blush of spring. Snow still dusted the peaks, but the rivers overflowed and loosened the frozen soil. After a while, the smell of earth and fresh water finally cleared my head of the hangover from Hell.
Traffic returned along the roads and waterways, most of it military patrols and security caravans hoping to reach their destinations before the weather improved enough for the bandits to come out and play. We avoided the first few, but when the provisions ran out we traded a gold bar for as much food and wine as I could carry. These days, that was a lot.
Burning Cloud Devil grumbled that I’d paid too much. “Some thief you are, giving our money to soldiers.”
I ignored the “our money” bit. I was surprised that he’d remembered how I got along before working for the boss. We traveled in silence so often that I forgot just how much idle chit-chat we exchanged in the drowsy hour before sleep.
Didn’t matter. Burning Cloud Devil might think he knew everything, but he couldn’t figure me out worth a damn. I explained it in simple terms.
“When I’m broke, I steal. When I’m flush, I spread the wealth. Back in Cheliax, that’s what we call the economy.”
“You speak like a eunuch.”
While I wasn’t proud of every nook and knob of my new shape, I hadn’t lost the vital bits. I was still a man, and if Burning Cloud Devil wanted to make something of it—
The sorcerer saw my hackles rise and lifted his hand for peace. “You mentioned economy. In Quain, the eunuchs dispense the royal treasury. Only those with no hope of passing their wealth to a son can be trusted with the king’s wealth. I meant nothing more than that.”
I relaxed. “All right then.”
“It is different in other countries. Most eunuchs in Lingshen work as prostitutes, and in Po Li they are known for their powerful magic. Certain sorcerers achieve their arcane power by self-castration, sacrificing their masculine essence to achieve balance between—”
I glanced down. “You didn’t ...?”
“No! I bargained with the Ministers of Hell for my powers.”
“You just seemed to know a lot about eunuchs.”
He loosened his sash. “If you want to see—”
“I really don’t. Hey! Hey! Don’t do that. By the way, Spring Snow spoke to me again.”
Burning Cloud Devil’s face darkened. He re-tightened his sash—which is a good trick when you have only one arm—and hastened his pace.
“Third time, actually,” I said. “I think she likes me.”
He whirled to face me. “You said nothing of this earlier.”
“What was the point? You didn’t believe me the first time.”
“I don’t believe it this time, either.” He turned away and resumed our march.
I hefted the overloaded pack on my shoulders and followed.
“I think she knows this Monkey character. He gave me the message this time.”
“The Monkey King is a notorious trickster. You have been duped.”
“Yeah, but before that I saw her at the cemetery. She looked the same as when I saw her at the House of Silks. She said—”
“It does not matter what she said. It was not her. Even if Spring Snow did wish to communicate with you, another entity could alter her message. You are beguiled by illusion. It is child’s play to manipulate one such as you.”
Digs like that were beginning to spoil my serenity. Maybe
I’m not a wizard like the boss or a sorcerer like Burning Cloud Devil, but I’m no chump either. “Who’d want to do that?”
“The Celestial Dragon, obviously. It knows we are coming. It fears the Twin White Palms.”
“All right, then why does it send me these visions? Why doesn’t she go straight to you?”
“My mind is not as malleable as yours, devil. I am not deceived by illusions of my lost love.”
Again with the digs, but I heard real sorrow in his voice. “So you have seen her?”
His step slowed for a few paces. “No.”
After a few minutes, he picked up his feet and leaned into a good clip. Maybe compared to his, my mind was malleable. But I could still tell when he was lying.
By the time we reached the Seething Hills, Burning Cloud Devil regained his cheerful disposition. Somewhere nearby was a complex of caverns fed by hot streams. According to the spirits Burning Cloud Devil contacted, the cold-blooded naga had wintered there.
I followed the one-armed sorcerer all over the hills, which were already thick and green with new life. The plants grew fast so close to the warm caverns. Steam rose up from narrow ravines and sputtering blowholes. Now and then we stopped, and Burning Cloud Devil peered around to get his bearings.
“It has been so long,” he said. “I don’t remember which opening leads to the lair of the Four-Waters Turtle.”
I gestured toward a jutting shelf of rock. “Why not take a peek?”
“We must not disturb the Turtle. He sleeps late into the spring and wakes with a great hunger. Not even the Five would dare intrude into his sunless lake.”
“Big turtle, huh?”
He gave me a meaningful nod, and we kept up the search. At last he cast a spell near a slick granite chimney and said, “Aha!”
“What ‘aha’?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he sent his magic eyes down the hole. While they did our spying, we gathered material for rope.
“Why aren’t we flying down?” I braided a few tough vines together.
“I preserve my magic for the fight.”
