She did so, fighting down fear that made her limbs weak, pulling Treaty from its case, and putting the eight crystal spheres into the padded area where the blade had rested. Then she ventured into the combination living room and dining area, assessing the situation that had developed because of her cowardice.
Probably under the cover of the smoke that still lingered in high corners of the room, the Dragon had advanced past Des, but he had gotten only as far as the area that paralleled the bathroom door. There Riprap blocked him. Blood ran from Riprap’s right knuckles, spotting the bare wooden floor; despite all the blood, the wound did not seem to have distracted the Dog.
Riprap had inserted himself bodily between Nissa and the Dragon, leaving Righteous Drum with several choices. He could retreat toward Des, hide in the bathroom, or back into the combination living and dining room.
Wisely, the Dragon had done this last. Des had moved forward to block his retreat from the apartment—and to intercept anyone else who might try to enter. He wore the Rooster’s Talon on his left hand, but his right was free, the length of his long arm above his knobby wrist adorned with a choice array of amulet bracelets.
Pearl wondered if the Dragon had known she was in the kitchen when he chose to retreat in that direction. She wondered whether that knowledge would have altered his decision. After all, there was Nissa, cowering like—well, a rabbit—behind Riprap. Why should the Dragon think an old woman, one whose weapons in their prior encounter had been words and wards, should offer him much in the way of threat?
Time to show him otherwise.
Treaty came smoothly from its sheath, the steel blade glimmering with different hues of silver-grey in the filtered sunlight that penetrated the mismatched curtains. As always, its weight rested easily in Pearl’s hands.
“Dragon,” she said, challenge in her voice, “you are surrounded. Why not surrender and do what you should have from the first? Talk with us. Tell us what brought you from your own land into this.”
“And why,” Nissa said, moving forward to stand alongside Riprap, an amulet bracelet ready in her hand, “you’re trying to steal our memories.”
“I seek not to steal, but to retrieve,” Righteous Drum said. “But rarely do thieves give back what they have taken willingly—and much less so when the stolen goods have become family heirlooms. I do not suppose that if I asked you to hand over what you so arrogantly call ‘your memories,’ then you would give them to me?”
“Certainly not!” Pearl snapped, and her defiance was echoed by the other three.
“Then I must take them!”
The Dragon had been standing loose-limbed but alert. With these words his stance changed. He held his arms bent at the elbows at an angle just shy of ninety degrees, and thrust slightly to the sides of his torso. His hands were held palms up, fingers curled and slightly clenched. It was an angry stance, filled with contained power.
Pearl concentrated on mentally sketching a series of characters learned long ago. Within a few breaths she could see the power shaping in Righteous Drum’s hands. Glancing at her three companions, she could see that, like her, each of them had activated some form of protective spell. Like her, the choices had been Winds, for coming in they had known they would need to deal with someone who would have a special relationship with dragons.
The Dragon was also protected. Pearl could see the faint, wispy coils of spirit dragons tracing a protective pattern around his body. No wonder Riprap’s knuckles were bloodied. He’d probably swung at the Dragon and his blow had met something far less yielding than the body of a slightly overweight, fifty-something scholar.
The wealth of protective spells also explained why Righteous Drum had not spread about more smoke or something even more deadly. At least for now, his opponents were shielded, but Pearl sensed this would not last. If this Dragon was anything like the Dragon of whom her father had told tales, if he was even anything like his exile descendant, then Righteous Drum would have long experience with the power of wind being used to counter that of dragons.
Pearl stood, knowing that Treaty would be useless for the moment, unless …
“Riprap, Nissa, Des … Toss out the strongest attack you have stored. Now!”
The two younger people responded blindly to the command in her voice. Des gave a thin smile, and threw the bracelet that was already in his hand. She and he had selected this spell together, for although it took a great deal of ch’i to work, it relied on neither dragons, nor winds, nor water—the last the element dragons are most likely to control.
There were triple crashes as carefully worked polymer clay became dust. Then three versions of the same dramatic sending rose: the Twins of Earth, the Twins of Sky, and the Twins of Hell.
Each pair stood armed and armored, magnificent male and deadly female versions of the same warrior principle. Each was dressed in the elaborate costumes of a China of old, but the details varied according to appropriate symbology. The Twins of Earth wore shades of brown and bronze, and their dark hair was bound with strands of rough gems. The Twins of Sky wore white and pale blue, their attire embroidered with signs of clouds and the sun. The Twins of Hell had dark red skin. Although they were as strikingly beautiful as the others, there was something of the demon about them. Their teeth verged upon being fangs. Their eyes were burning red.
The Twins of Earth carried long swords and shields. The Twins of Sky bore bows and daggers. The Twins of Hell held balanced in two hands long, forked spears that in some versions of the Chinese hell—as in the latecomer Christian—demons used both to herd and to torment their miserable charges.
The triple pairs of Twins occupied the same demi-plane as that in which surged and swam the dragons that wreathed Righteous Drum, otherwise the small apartment might have been so crowded that none could move. Pearl was glad of this, for her plan demanded that she, at least, be able to move swiftly and freely.
The Twins knew for what reason they had been summoned, and there was no need for them to be given commands. The Twins of Sky shot forth arrows at the dragons that wreathed the space above Righteous Drum, while the Twins of Earth and Hell attacked those that protected the man’s lower reaches. Opaqued within the writhing spirit forms, Righteous Drum showed admirable poise as he continued to concentrate on whatever spell he had begun.
Pearl watched, a Tiger poised to spring. When a particularly well-aimed blow on the part of the female of the Twins of Hell left open a gap in Righteous Drum’s protections, she leapt forward. Treaty’s edge slipped through the gap in Righteous Drum’s arcane shield, and Pearl brought the flat of the blade against Righteous Drum’s arm and shoulder.
Her hope had been to disperse the contained ch’i he had been building before it could take whatever form he intended, but what her action actually did was send the spell forth before its time.
Four sharp-beaked firebirds with eyes and talons of wet ink sprang from their maker’s hands. Their flames were red-hot, tinged with yellow. The heat from these proved sufficient to consume the lesser winds that protected Nissa and Riprap, but the winds protecting Des and Pearl retained some protective force, although they were much diminished.
As the firebirds swallowed the winds, they transformed, becoming darts of yellow paper scribbled over with elaborate characters in green, yellow, white, green, the colors appropriate to each of the four who stood there: Tiger, Dog, Rooster, and Rabbit.
Pearl brought Treaty around in a rapid cut that should have reduced the dart that was heading for her to shreds, but Righteous Drum had learned from his encounter with Des and his Rooster’s Talon. This dart could dodge, and it did. Then it did something horribly clever, riding along the edge of Treaty’s blade, using the sword itself to penetrate the final shreds of Pearl’s failing defenses.
Once the dart was inside her winds, Pearl might as well have tried to parry falling rain. The yellow paper caught her across her face. There was a moment of silence, and then she felt herself being sucked outside of her body. Disembodied
Pearl watched in horror as her body staggered back a few steps, then collapsed, a puppet doll with its strings cut, onto the sofa.
Oddly, though, Pearl could still see, although the perspective was weirdly distorted, as if she looked out through the sides of a soap bubble. The angle of vision seemed nearly omniscient. She could as easily focus in on the remaining Twins as they fought the remaining guardian dragons as she could the struggles of her three companions.
From this peculiar perspective, Pearl watched as Nissa staggered back, yellow paper sinking into her face, green ink rewriting the text of her mind. Nissa stood staring down with some slight curiosity at a crystal globe that rested on the wooden floor where she had been standing. Then, her expression blank, she backed from the room and took a seat upon the edge of the Snake’s cot. There she folded her hands and waited.
These spells are more complex than the ones that took our allies before, Pearl thought. The Dragon obviously did not want us wandering about, shouting protests, wondering where we were. He has sought to paralyze us, then to separate our bodies and minds, but not our memories from our minds. How very interesting.
Des and Riprap had fared better than Pearl and Nissa. Riprap’s spell appeared to not have “taken,” for when the yellow dart came home to its target, he tore it from his face. For a moment he stood, confused, yellow ink running against his dark skin. Then the confusion passed and Pearl had the satisfaction of seeing the big man move, not to spring upon their enemy, but to draw a fresh protective amulet from his wrist and renew his defenses.
The one true combat veteran of the lot of us, Pearl thought. I shouldn’t be surprised that he reacts so intelligently.
Des’s protective shield of winds had been weakened, but not entirely broken. He quickly enhanced it with a second spell. This, chosen at random, was not very powerful, but it was enough to blow back the spell that sought his memory. The Twins and guardian dragons had done for each other. They faded to wherever sendings reside, leaving a curious stillness behind them.
Into that stillness, Righteous Drum, the Dragon, spoke. “You have used your most powerful spells, and I still stand untouched. Two more of your number are in my crystals. Why not quietly surrender? You will not know that you have lost anything. I give you my sworn word that I will make certain that your bodies are returned to someplace safe—Pearl Bright’s residence will do, I am sure—before you come out of my haze.”
“Then,” Des said bitterly, “we resume our lives, our brains scrabbling to create whatever bridges they can to justify our lost memories?”
“That is correct.”
Riprap was staring down at the piece of yellow paper he’d ripped from his face, his brow furrowed with concentration.
“I’m not much at reading Chinese characters yet, but I spent a fair amount of time studying the first spell—the one Foster threw at me, the one that didn’t hit. This spell isn’t complete. Pearl didn’t fail as entirely as you want us to believe, did she, Righteous Drum? She interrupted your spell. I’m betting we’re not the only ones who have used our most powerful spells.”
“Do you want to test that theory hand to hand, spell to spell?” Righteous Drum hissed, sounding rather like his daughter at that moment, for all that the timbre of his voice remained low and menacing.
“I think I must,” Riprap said, his fingers running down the bracelets on his arm. Pearl knew he had marked their edges with different textures so he could read their class—if not precisely which spell was which—by touch. “Losing my memory of the Dog probably wouldn’t change me much, but Pearl and Des? They’ve shaped their whole lives around living up to their heritage. Maybe they’ll end up like that Albert Yu, a sort of weird parody of themselves, but maybe they’ll end up like Foster, who’s practically a zombie, for all he moves and thinks.”
Riprap’s fingers had come to rest on a bracelet while he talked, and now he stripped it off, flinging it to the floor at Righteous Drum’s feet. Pearl saw the manifestation of Wriggling Snakes. The small spectral reptiles began twining up Righteous Drum’s legs, both inside and outside his pants legs.
Riprap didn’t wait to see how effective the distraction would be, but surged forward, almost roaring with bottled-up tension. He didn’t have a weapon, but his big hands were weapons in themselves.
Righteous Drum responded by invoking another dragon spell, this one offensive, not defensive. A dragon with scales the color of iron ore and a rather grouchy look in its mud-brown eyes appeared. It launched itself at Riprap, stopping him in midstride with a slam of its body into his. Riprap’s new protective spell was enough to save him from gross injury, but not sufficient to keep the summoned dragon from wrapping its coils around his body.
Pearl wondered if Riprap could see the fearsome monster that now coiled around him, breathing a sour miasma into his face, or if he was wrestling blind. She wondered, too, how long Riprap’s protective spell could protect him from breathing the tainted air, and what effect the taint would have. She didn’t think it would be mortally poisonous, but certainly the effect would not be pleasant.
Meanwhile, Des had not wasted the opening Riprap’s attack had given him. He threw a bracelet directly at Righteous Drum, and Pearl saw the form of one of the least traditionally named spells—Gertie’s Garter—wrapping its bindings around Righteous Drum’s upper body, restricting his arms, as Riprap’s snakes were doing his legs. Spell cast, Des moved forward, his Rooster’s Talon poised to block any possible thrown spells, his right hand fumbling to slide another bracelet free for use.
Righteous Drum ignored the approaching Rooster, reciting a sequence of what had to have sounded like nonsense to Riprap, and probably to Des. Pearl, however, recognized the sequence as what she had been taught to call a Purity Hand, and groaned, knowing that in a moment both Wriggling Snakes and Gertie’s Garter would have been consigned to oblivion. Then what would Righteous Drum do? To this point his desire to steal his victim’s memories had made him take care not to harm their bodies, but how long would that constraint last?
He might decide that tracking down and assaulting Des’s heir would be easier than dealing with Des himself. Would he have the means to know where the power passed?
Then Pearl caught a glimpse of something so interesting that she was distracted from these unhappy thoughts and even from the battle in front of her.
The kitchen window was sliding open. When it was open about eighteen inches, a slim hand gripped the sill. A moment later, Brenda Morris pulled herself in, carefully lowering herself onto the kitchen counter. Her face was drawn and an aura of bleak tragedy lit her dark brown eyes.
Brenda looked like someone who felt she had very little left to lose, and who was spoiling for a fight. Suddenly Pearl’s soul, abstracted as it was, experienced a sensation curiously like hope.
27
Brenda’s knees were shaking as she rested her weight on the counter of a narrow, poorly lit kitchen. Climbing across the open air that separated the window from the rickety wooden staircase was an experience she suspected would haunt her nightmares, but it had been necessary. She’d had a bad time, though, hoping the window wouldn’t jam, hoping that if it did, she could get it open.
It had been both unlocked and slightly open, and she’d balanced over a nasty drop, while she forced the window far enough open that she could pull herself across and in.
Those gymnastics lessons weren’t a complete waste of time, she thought. But I don’t think I can ever tell Mom just how useful they turned out to be.
The air in the cramped kitchen smelled of sulfur and of something else that made Brenda want to cough and rub her eyes. She restrained the impulse. Given what she already knew about the situation, even a cough could be fatal.
From outside the kitchen she could hear Riprap grunting as if under some intense strain, and someone else chanting in Chinese. That was all she could hear, and the relative quiet bothered her more than any manner of commotion could have done. Was she too late? She saw Treaty’s ca
se lying on the kitchen counter, but the sword itself was gone. Then, as she lowered herself to the floor and ventured forward, Brenda saw Treaty itself fallen to the boards of the outer room, just behind a man dressed rather tastelessly in a yellow button-down shirt and khaki trousers.
Righteous Drum, the Dragon, she realized. He came back or maybe even was here when they came in. Everything’s gone to hell!
Then Brenda saw what rested in Treaty’s case in place of the long sword: eight crystal spheres, each containing the likeness of an animal. Eight of the Thirteen Orphans—or at least their memories. This was what Pearl and the others had come to find, and that at least they had succeeded in doing.
Maybe everything isn’t quite gone to hell, Brenda amended, following what she was sure was a pack-rattish impulse, and stuffing the crystals into a variety of pockets.
They felt heavier than they should have, each one heavier than the one before.
I guess this is what they mean by the weight of responsibility, Brenda thought, and stepped out into the larger room.
Des and Righteous Drum were circling each other. Brenda could see by the faint glow that haloed them that each had at least one protective spell in place, and that they were trying to find ways to penetrate the other’s defenses.
Riprap was tearing at open air that glowed pale yellow in the dying remnants of the All Green spell Brenda had cast in the park. He looked as if something was squeezing the breath out of him, and he was trying to pull it loose.
Pearl sat limply on the worn sofa. Nissa could be glimpsed seated in an almost identical attitude on the edge of a cot in the farther right of the two bedrooms. The absolute lack of interest they showed in the struggles going on before them told Brenda that the Dragon was ahead in this match. Two down, two to go, and both Riprap and Des were visibly fading.
Suddenly, everything she had been through in the last couple of days came to a head. Brenda privately thought of herself as a “firebrand”—one of the possible translations of her name—for far longer than she had thought of herself as a Rat. She didn’t exactly have a temper, but she hated bullies. That hatred was one of the things that had drawn her into student government.
Thirteen Orphans Page 41
