by Jeff Wheeler
Cuifen had a sweet smell about her. She still wore the robes of a concubine, but they were disheveled and dirty after the hike up the hill.
“How did you make it?” Bingmei asked them.
Liekou smelled different as well. Solemn, yet floral. “We went to the dragon sculpture as I said and found one of your men, the one-armed fellow, captured by the guards. The dragon was already following you at that point, and so we hid. I drew the sigil on Cuifen’s back to protect her from the fog. The fog itself hid us from our pursuers and from the dragons.”
Bingmei nodded in understanding. Liekou knew the protections. That made sense.
“Where are the others?” Liekou asked, looking around. “I found the one with the blowgun farther down the hill,” he said, nodding the way they’d come. “He’s dead.”
Bingmei saw Quion’s pack lying on the ground at the top of the hill. But there was no sign of the body.
Bingmei’s spirits lifted a little more. Could they have escaped after all?
She turned and walked toward the pagoda. That was when she noticed the phoenix carvings on the underside of the roof. She pushed on the door, and it opened, revealing the shadowy darkness within. Bodies were strewn all over the floor. Marenqo, Jidi Majia, Eomen, Mieshi, Rowen, Quion.
Still, her heart didn’t hurt. She stared at them in confusion, aware that she could smell each one of them. They weren’t dead—they were resting peacefully.
Bingmei hurried to Quion first and shook his shoulder.
His eyes fluttered open in startled surprise.
“Bingmei?” he asked, stifling a yawn.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Aftermath
Marenqo and Quion returned, carrying Jiaohua’s body up to the pagoda on the top of the hill. She had worried about their safety, but the Jingcha captain had served them faithfully, and she wanted to at least attempt to bring him back to life before abandoning the hill. The two men huffed and sweated after carrying the body uphill, and they brought it into the shade of the pagoda and set it at her feet.
There were no benches to sit on within the pagoda, all were outside, but the cool stone floor was a suitable resting place. The mixture of emotions within the confined space overwhelmed Bingmei’s senses. While everyone was relieved to be alive, Mieshi was tart with the worry of Damanhur’s capture. Liekou and Cuifen, huddling in a corner, smelled of the spring flowers of new love and the saffron of worry about the future. Jidi Majia was sadness and weariness. Rowen couldn’t even look at her, his emotions churning with the feelings of a jilted man. The only calm one in the bunch was Quion.
Bingmei realized that their emotions were distracting her. Crouching by Jiaohua’s body, she looked up at them, one by one. “Would you all leave, please, while I try this?”
She was their captain, the leader of a broken ensign. And so they obeyed, shuffling out into the late afternoon sky to leave her alone with the corpse.
Quion was the last to go, and before he stepped outside, she asked, “Quion, would you start a little fire? I need some ashes.”
He nodded as he stepped away.
After they were gone, and their smells with them, she breathed a little easier. She was still in awe that they hadn’t all died. It was the first time, to her knowledge, that anyone had survived the killing fog without the mark on their back. She believed it had something to do with the phoenix sigils engraved on the pagoda. When Muxidi had come for her in Sajinau, she’d been roused from sleep in time to escape her bedroom. She’d hidden within an iron urn that had the markings of the phoenix on it. Muxidi had passed the urn, unable to see her. Was that because of the night shadows, or was there a special protection that came with the mark of the phoenix?
There were always more questions than there were answers. She sighed, sad that the knowledge of the past had been lost. Or that Echion had deliberately destroyed it to maintain his power.
There was one more question that needed answering. Could she revive the dead herself? Her power had brought Echion and Xisi back to life. The dragons had brought Zhuyi back to life. Could she do the same with Jiaohua? What if it robbed him of his feelings too?
Before Quion and Marenqo had left to retrieve the body, she had borrowed Quion’s water flask to slake her thirst. Now she used it again. Uncorking the stopper, she poured a dash of water into her hand, enjoying the cooling sensation of it. She dabbed her finger in it and then looked down at Jiaohua’s body. His two souls were gone. Would she be able to summon them back?
She drew the sigil she’d drawn to raise the dragons. Nothing guided her hand this time. She felt no power flicker through her. The symbol she’d drawn began to evaporate slowly. She stared at it, willing Jiaohua to come back, but it evaporated without doing anything.
Disappointment wriggled within her stomach, but not surprise. It had felt different before. And she realized something was missing. Did it have to do with the stone sarcophagi within the Hall of Memory? Both Echion’s and Xisi’s bodies had been prepared for burial, something she couldn’t do for Jiaohua without any supplies.
She had one more idea to try. When she’d upset Echion, and he’d choked her, he had drawn three symbols on her forehead in blood, ash, and water.
Bingmei rose and went outside, shielding her eyes from the sun. She asked after Quion, and Marenqo pointed to some trees on the far side of the hill, the part that faced away from the palaces. She saw him in the trees, crouched over some twigs he’d gathered. She went to him and smiled in appreciation.
He’d managed to make a small fire.
After taking a small burning stick, she said, “Smother the fire. We don’t want to reveal ourselves. The longer they think we’re dead, the better.” No doubt they’d come to retrieve the bodies, but she sensed the two dragons were at war with each other. With any luck, they’d spend enough time fighting for Bingmei and her group to put plenty of distance between themselves and Fusang. Part of her also wondered if the dragons would be allowed to check the phoenix pagoda for bodies. Would the same magic that had protected her and the others keep Echion and Xisi out?
Quion stamped it out with his boot and some dirt.
“Can I borrow your knife?” she asked, and he handed it to her.
Bingmei took the smoldering stick and the knife and brought them back to the pagoda. Once inside, she knelt by the body again. Three words—blood, water, spirit. She had the representations of each now. After blowing out the embers on the end of the burning stick, she ground the charred part into the stone floor to make ash. She pricked her forearm with the knife to make a little blood well up. The water flask still sat at her feet. She drew the symbols one by one, using the different substances as her ink.
Then she sat back on her haunches and watched, waiting patiently. Again, she felt nothing. Something was missing, and Jiaohua was still dead. He looked peaceful, but so did every victim of the fog. She pursed her lips, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, Jiaohua,” she whispered. “I failed you again. If there was a way . . . if I could bring you back, I would.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt something buzz inside her chest. It was a strange feeling of conviction, of rightness. Certainty. It began to build inside her, like small sticks catching fire.
I will teach you.
The words came as whispers. She felt a tingle go down her back, a comforting feeling that radiated deep inside her. She blinked, suddenly on the verge of tears. She smelled the cinnamon-porridge scent as love and tenderness swept over her. The same thing had happened, she realized, before she fell asleep on the roof of the pagoda.
“Are you . . . are you the phoenix?” Bingmei gasped.
She felt the little flame of conviction spurt stronger, crackling with life and energy.
Will you come to my quonsuun, Bingmei?
She knew at once what it was asking of her. Jidi Majia had told her of the phoenix’s quonsuun beyond the Death Wall. This was her chance to pledge herself to the phoenix. She had
n’t missed her chance after all. The old fears began to loom within her mind, but she remembered what she’d promised the phoenix in Fusang. The phoenix had indeed rescued her and released her from bondage. Would she keep her end of the bargain?
When she didn’t answer right away, it asked again: Will you come?
“Yes,” Bingmei said, bowing her head. “I will come.”
She felt a surge of joy in her heart, one so powerful it stunned her. The cinnamon smell engulfed her, and she had the sense that if she lifted her head and turned around, she would see her own mother there. The smell was that familiar. She felt an overpowering sense of love and acceptance for the phoenix.
The question came a third time.
Bingmei, will you come?
Why was the phoenix asking her again? Did it doubt her resolve after her previous actions? Of course it did. Bingmei had refused before.
A featherlight touch grazed her shoulders, making her shiver.
“I will,” Bingmei said in another choked whisper.
Her answer was accepted the third time. Immediately, her soul was unsheathed from her body, which slumped to the floor. Would her souls be taken there?
Her soul floated up through the roof of the pagoda, passing through it as a shadow. She hovered above the bulb atop the pagoda. Although she’d been even higher before, she’d been focused on her battle with the dragons. Now, she took in the dramatic view of the land to the north. The waterfalls crashing in the valley. The crags of mountains and the Death Wall looming in the distance.
Power pulsed within her, and her vision increased to that of an eagle. She saw beyond the Death Wall, saw a forested woodland filled with animals she’d never seen before, including enormous, white-pelted bears. Her vision stretched even farther, and she saw groves of trees covering the land. But what she sought lay beyond that. Farther and farther she saw, and it felt like she was flying.
She saw a series of mountains ahead, crowned with snow even in the summer, but before the mountains, there stretched a series of crags and ravines, with rivers running through the tunnels. It looked like a mountain had shattered, leaving behind tall, jagged columns of stone. Her gaze narrowed on one of the corridors—a vast canyon with steep walls and a river running through it, full of sediment. That was the canyon she needed to enter. Her ghost-self followed the twists and turns that led into the heart of the broken mountains, guided by some internal compass. At the end, she saw a final column, a broken cliff that towered above her. Atop it, fashioned out of stone from the rocky canyon itself, she saw a small shrine through the thick cover of trees. In the middle waited a stone sarcophagus.
On the sarcophagus was the effigy of the phoenix, carved by an expert hand, with plumage and beak and talons.
That was where she must go. And that was where she would die.
The vision closed, and she felt her soul sinking back through the roof, gently nestling back into her body. An overwhelming urge to sleep enveloped her, as it had before, but she heard the whispers again.
Your departure interrupted the ceremony that was supposed to happen at noon. They will open the Woliu at midnight instead. The creatures they summon from the Grave Kingdom will hunt you. Do what you must to escape. I will no longer protect you with the power of flight until you have found the empty tomb. Be vigilant, Bingmei. Their power grows. We will meet at last in the halls beyond the Grave Kingdom.
They gathered around her after she left the pagoda. The vision had sapped her strength, but the phoenix’s warning had encouraged her to push through the weakness. She smelled Marenqo’s disappointment when Jiaohua didn’t come outside with her.
“I could not do it,” she announced. “I couldn’t bring him back. I can’t bring anyone back. But I had a vision.” She looked at Jidi Majia and saw his eyes widen with hope. “I know where to find the phoenix shrine beyond the Death Wall. This night, Echion and Xisi will open the Woliu, a rift between our world and the Grave Kingdom. He knows, or at least believes, that I survived. He will send minions to hunt for me.”
She sighed and looked at their worried faces. “Where I am going, there will be no return. I do not ask any of you to come with me. In fact, I think I must do this alone.” She took a deep breath, struggling to overcome her feelings of dread. “So I absolve you of your loyalty to me. I must go north. Whatever happens after I get there is still a mystery. You may go your separate ways or choose another to lead. But this I know. If we don’t leave this hill immediately, we’re all going to die. The phoenix won’t protect us a second time.”
She lifted Kunmia’s staff, which she’d brought outside with her. “Thank you for coming after me. I could not have escaped on my own. I will honor your sacrifice with my own. Thank you.”
Jidi Majia stepped forward immediately. “I’ll go with you, Bingmei. I have no hope of survival otherwise. I’ll go.”
Quion stuck his hands in his pockets and gave her a determined nod. He’d recovered his pack and looked ready to leave.
Marenqo’s lips pressed tightly together. He looked at the others, who were also exchanging glances.
Mieshi had a look of anguish on her face, but her eyes were fierce. “I go with you, Sister,” she said. That surprised Bingmei. But then, Kunmia had ingrained loyalty into all of them.
“Thank you,” Bingmei said, her voice choking.
Marenqo folded his arms. “If Quion is going, then I am going. At least there will be plenty to eat.”
“Do you know how to defeat Echion?” Liekou asked pointedly.
Bingmei shook her head no.
His lips pursed with indecision.
Cuifen gazed at Bingmei. “I think we should go with her,” she said to Liekou. “I don’t want to go back to Fusang. Ever. She’s our only chance.”
Liekou nodded, his decision made.
That left Rowen and Eomen. It would be painful if Rowen was there. His heart smelled like the aftermath of a fire, and his presence kept reminding her of what had been—and what could not be. He was broken inside, destroyed. Perhaps it would be better for him if he stayed away from her, but even so, she wanted him to come.
“I’ll go with you to the Death Wall,” he said. “But I won’t watch you die.”
It was enough. She gave him a respectful nod. “Let’s get as far away from here as we can.”
The stars overhead told her it was nearly midnight. This deep into the summer, it seemed as though it never got truly dark, that the sun was only hiding temporarily beneath the cover of jagged mountains. They walked across the hard-packed ice of the glacier. The edges were melting too quickly to be safe. By nightfall they were far enough from Fusang that they couldn’t see any of the lights from the palace in the distance.
But that changed at midnight.
“Look,” said Marenqo, who had paused to drink from his water flask.
They all turned, and Bingmei’s mouth fell open.
The sky was afire with colors. Greens and blues and violets danced across the sky in smoky ribbons. How could broken rainbows be painted in the sky at midnight? This must be the Woliu. The colors rippled and shifted, moving like clouds tousled by the wind. The beautiful display, completely silent, was breathtaking—yet it filled her with dread. The barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead had been breached. The display filled the entire skyline, and she wondered if the people in Sajinau, Wangfujing, or Sihui could see it, or if they were the lone spectators outside of Fusang.
A wolf began to howl in distress somewhere in the dark mountains surrounding the glacier. Another began to howl moments later. The sounds chilled her heart.
Even the animals dreaded what was coming.
Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds. Time itself may forget, but they are still unforgotten.
—Dawanjir proverb
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The New World
Climbing the ice-strewn mountains north of Fusang taxed their strength and endurance. They survived
on an endless supply of fish caught by Quion as well as some of the edible plants and flowers found in the desolate but majestic peaks. It was a frequent occurrence to see brooding white-headed eagles soaring overhead.
When night came again for the second time after leaving the lost palace, the sky once again lit up with the eerie rainbow-colored lights, which transfixed their eyes. The haunting display was a signal that something had irrevocably changed. But what that change was, they wouldn’t realize until the third day.
They continued to follow the glacier due north, the shortest distance to the Death Wall. Bingmei knew the scenery from the vision the phoenix had granted her. She’d shared most of the details with her ensign, especially about the strange animals she’d seen beyond the wall. Around midday they reached one of the places she’d seen in the vision—a convergence of glacial mountains that fed into a massive river.
They could hear it long before they reached it.
Coming down the icy slope of the mountain range, they found a fertile valley beneath them, carved up by the massive ice. The roar of distant waterfalls they’d heard since midmorning grew into a cacophonous chorus. Waterfalls rushed down the slopes of the mountains on each side of the valley, merging at a crescent-shaped rim of rock that crowned the edges of the valley and thundered into the canyons below. The river it created headed off in a westward direction, joined along the way by other rivulets and waterfalls to create the largest river she’d ever seen.
They paused at the sight of the valley, and as Bingmei looked at her companions’ faces, she saw the same awe that she felt. The view was incomprehensibly beautiful, with jagged mountain peaks all around, the colorful gorse and trees on the valley floor adding a delightful contrast.
