“Asha?” Priya’s voice was soft but clear, and very near.
Asha swallowed.
I take refuge in the Buddha.
The golden scales on her hand melted back into her smooth brown skin, and the claws slipped back into her soft fingertips.
No, not the Buddha. Or Shiva, or any god. I take refuge in the forests. I take refuge in the mountains. I take refuge in the harmony of all living things. I take refuge in the wind and the water, and the sun and the stars.
The dragon’s spirit fell quiet, nestling back down deep inside her, returning to its own refuge within her soul. She shivered in her own skin, still dripping from the harbor. Asha exhaled and looked at the frightened man. “Go back to your masters in Alexandria. Tell them what I did here. Tell them to repent what they have done. And tell them that I am coming.”
“Why? What do you want? Who are you?” He stumbled back another step.
“I’m the woman hunting you. I’m the woman who isn’t afraid of you. And I’m the woman you can’t hurt.” She reached up to push her hair back behind her golden ear and said, “I am Asha of Kathmandu.”
Epilogue: The Crossroads
Nadira saw him sitting on the little stone pillar at the crossroads, his legs dangling back and forth above the dusty road. The same old bronze greaves flashed on his shins, but the rest of his clothing was new. Brown trousers and jacket, white shirt, and a bronze gauntlet on his right arm. But then, he was always changing, always traveling, always restless. And yet somehow, after two thousand years, he still looked so young, so bright, so new.
She took her time. Her padded clothes and heavy armor chafed her shoulders and hips, and sweat ran freely down the small of her back. The helmet felt like it was cooking her head.
Overhead, enormous white clouds sailed across the deep blue sky casting gigantic shadows across the face of the earth. Thick shrubs lined the road, many of them dotted with red berries. Large brown hares chased each other across the road, darting in and out of sight. Huge red hawks glided across the sky.
When she finally stepped into the intersection of the Damascus highway and the country lane, she saw Gideon was beaming at her. That same smile.
He hopped down off the marker and held out his arms. “It’s been so long. It’s so wonderful to see you again, Nadira. How are you?”
She stopped short of his arms and pulled off her helmet. “Hot and sweaty. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you, of course. I heard about the siege at Constantia and I figured you’d be coming this way, sooner or later.” He glanced over his shoulder to the north. “The army passed by about four hours ago.”
Nadira nodded. She shuffled past him and sat down with her back against the little stone pillar he had been sitting on. It was slightly cooler there in the shadow of the bushes. “Why are you here, really?”
Gideon winked at her. “Can’t I just want to see you?”
She sighed and squinted up at him. “That? Again? Really?”
“Is it so wrong that I’m attracted to women my own age?”
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly as the humor around his eyes faded away. “All right then. I wanted to warn you. I met a woman a short while ago. She had an Osirian following her, and I dealt with him. But this woman, Asha, is very special, and she may be coming your way one day.”
“She’s already come and gone.” Nadira spat in the bushes and pulled her flask from her belt.
“Oh.” Gideon frowned. “Already? I suppose I lost track of time. Sorry. So you met her?”
“Yeah, I did.” Nadira took a drink.
“And she’s doing all right?”
Nadira laughed. “We killed a dragon together.”
“Did you really?” He squatted down beside her with a bit of boyish glee in his eyes. “A big one?”
“The biggest. We did hit a snag, though.” Nadira sighed and wiped the sweat from her face. “It possessed her. Asha. And I don’t just mean that ear of hers. The whole damned snake got inside her.”
“Oh no,” Gideon whispered.
“Oh yes. And what the hell is that thing?” Nadira pointed at the brass gauntlet on his right arm.
“It’s my sword,” he muttered, his eyes wandering the ground aimlessly. “Possessed? Did she change? Did you have to kill her?”
“No. Her little friend helped her get the beast under control.” Nadira took another drink and offered the flask to him. “For now.”
He waved the flask away. “That poor girl. Where is she now?”
“No idea. I mentioned the Aegyptians to her, so she might be heading for Alexandria.”
“With a dragon inside her? What about Lilith?!”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I told her about Lilith.” Nadira belched.
Gideon sighed and sat down beside her. “Nadira.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled it back to scratch roughly under her breast. He sighed and took back his hand. “Nadira, please. It breaks my heart to see you like this. We were so happy once. Do you even remember that? Do you remember what it means to be happy?”
Nadira fell very still and quiet, her eyes fixed on the horizon. “Yes, I remember. I remember everything. Every day, every touch. Every damned second of it.”
“But you’re still angry,” he said slowly.
“No.” She shook her head. “No, I’m not angry.”
“But you still don’t want me.”
“No.” She turned to look at him. “I don’t want anyone. I don’t want anything. Why would I? Everything ends.”
“You don’t. I don’t. We’re forever, you and me.”
“But love isn’t forever. Happiness isn’t forever. And I don’t like losing things. I’m tired of watching things break and fall apart.”
He frowned and looked away. “So no more things? No more me? No more love?”
She snorted. “Shut up, Gideon.” Nadira stood up, slapping the dust from her trousers. She rested her hand on the pommel of her saber and turned to look up the long road to the north.
He stood up and rested his hand on her shoulder. “There must be something for you. Something more than haunting Damascus and wading across battlefields. It’s a big world out there.”
Nadira shrugged his hand off. “I did like the dragon. It scared me. I’d never seen anything like it before. And for a minute, I really thought it might kill me. It was terrifying. And I felt…”
“Alive,” Gideon said.
“Alive.” Nadira nodded. “Do you think there are more dragons out there?”
“Probably. And other things stranger than dragons. Who knows?”
“You’ve never been?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been as far east as Ming. But there’s a lot more out there. Hundreds of islands to the south and the east.”
“Where you’ve never been?”
“Never.”
Nadira smiled. She unhooked her sword from her belt and rested it on her shoulder. “Then maybe when this business in Constantia is over, I’ll take a little walk to the east and see if I can find some more dragons to slay.” She started walking away, and over her shoulder she said, “What about you?”
“I thought I might head back to Alexandria. It’s probably time for me to clean out that nest of vipers again anyway,” he said.
She paused. “You like her? Asha?” She looked back at him.
He grinned. “Take care of yourself, Nadira.”
She dragged her sleeve across her nose and sniffed. “You too, old man.” And she walked away, smiling.
Book Two
The City of the Gods
Chapter 1
Dragon
Asha stood in the loud, dusty street and looked up at the strange temple of ancient stone and polished wood, and she wondered how long it would take her to destroy it. The sun hung low in the western sky above Alexandria and the spring breeze grew colder through her long, unfettered hair.
“You’re certain this is what you wish to do?” aske
d Priya.
Asha exhaled slowly and looked at her friend. “Yes.”
The little nun smiled and adjusted the red cloth tied across her eyes, and leaned on her tall staff with its jangling brass rings set into the top. “I admit that this will undoubtedly make the world a better place. These Osirian people are dangerous. Their weapons are unholy. Their acts, unforgivable.”
“I’m glad we still agree. Sometimes I think your compassion goes too far.” Asha looked back toward the doors of the temple, which were guarded by half a dozen men in green robes, each wearing two or three belts laden with knives and other, stranger weapons. As she studied them, she noticed a middle-aged gentleman and a very young woman crossing the street to approach the temple steps.
There was nothing remarkable about the man, but the girl had skin the color of snow and hair the color of blood. She wore a rustling dress of black silk with a black scarf tied over the top of her head, and her eyes were hidden by a pair of glasses with blue lenses.
“I’m not concerned for these Sons of Osiris,” Priya was saying. “And I don’t care about their godless temple. What I do care about is you. You’ve never done anything like this before. This is different from fighting a lone man or stopping a crime. This is violence on a much larger scale. You could lose control. You could lose yourself. I could lose you.”
Asha looked back at the nun. “I won’t let that happen. I promise.”
“I’m going to hold you to that promise,” Priya said. “Jagdish and I will be terribly sad and lonely if you become a monster.” The sleepy mongoose poked his whiskers out from behind the curtain of Priya’s flowing black hair as he clung to her shoulder. He squeaked, and then huddled back down against the nun’s neck. “And it doesn’t need to be now. We’ve only just arrived. We can wait and see what there is to be seen of this place and what goes on here. Learn more. Think more. Perhaps even find another way, if another way exists.”
“No. No waiting. We crossed an empire to find this place, to stop these men. I don’t want to know more about them. I don’t want to understand them,” Asha said, her gaze shifting back to the pale girl in the black dress on the temple steps. “They murder the innocent, and they enslave the souls of the dead. I don’t want to wait and let them hurt one more person while I stand by, doing nothing.”
The nun touched her shoulder. “It’s all right. I understand.”
“You shouldn’t be here when I do it. It won’t be safe,” Asha said. “I’ll take you back to the hotel.”
“No, I want to be here,” Priya said. “In case you need me.”
“I won’t.”
“Still.” The nun smiled and headed across the street, her staff jingling softly with each step, her long unbound hair festooned with white lotus blossoms fluttering in the cool Aegyptian breeze.
Asha watched her companion move gracefully through the foot traffic and the beasts of burden and the mechanical wagons spewing steam, and the nun reached the shadows of a sheltered alleyway without incident. The evening surge of merchants and porters, mercenaries and priests, mothers and children flowed around her, full of zebras and camels and huge spotted deer called sivatheras.
But the traffic slowly thinned as the sun went down, and the noise faded bit by bit. Asha turned back to the Temple of Osiris and she tried to look at it dispassionately, wondering how heavy and thick the stone walls of the lower fortress might be, and how strong the wooden beams of the upper pagoda might be.
How much power will it take to destroy something like this?
How much strength?
How much of the dragon?
There was no way to know, and no way to guess. But it had to be done.
All of it then.
She glanced one last time at the doors of the temple where the Aegyptian man and the strange girl in black were speaking to the guards.
I wonder. Could she be one of them? No, she doesn’t look anything like them. Then, could she be a prisoner? A slave? Are they taking her in there, never to let her leave? Well, she won’t be among them for much longer. She’ll be free soon.
Asha closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, preparing for the dragon, and searching for a memory to call it forth. She had so many memories to choose from. The doctor who tortured the people of India and Rajasthan, the foolish parents who neglected their children, the spouses who beat each other, the landowners who reduced their workers to starving slaves, the murderers, the thieves, and on and on. She kept a vast gallery of human monsters and atrocities in the back of her mind, each one bright and hideous, and each one able to inspire some degree of rage in her heart.
But now, she reached all the way back to the first evil, the very first vision of hateful cruelty in her mind. It was the image of a beautiful youth lying on a table, his chest carefully opened and his blood dripping slowly onto the floor. The surgical knives were arrayed nearby with the lenses, powders, and razors. The doctors were coming toward her, leaving the room, leaving the youth alone on the table, his face still contorted in his final moments of agony.
She had asked them, Why didn’t you save him?
And they had answered, Because we didn’t want to.
Asha felt her skin burning, her heart pounding, and her brains searing as the tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. She curled her hands into fists and clenched her teeth as her lips rippled in a silent snarl.
The dragon awoke.
The soul of the great golden dragon, which slept deep down within her own fragile spirit and flesh, opened its ruby eyes and opened its golden maw, and from within her own heart, the beast roared.
Asha opened her eyes and saw the change begin. Her smooth brown skin rippled with golden scales that shone in the late day sun. Her fingertips grew longer and thinner, becoming deadly scarlet claws. She felt the warm pulses running down her skin as she traded her human flesh for dragon armor. Her spine throbbed as her slender whip of a tail erupted from her back and began to coil and lash the dusty ground behind her, tossing her pale yellow sari left and right.
All around her, men and women cried out in fear and surprise and she could sense them running away. Horses and zebras whickered and screamed before racing down the road. A nearby sivathera drawing a stately little coach reared up on its hind legs, bellowing and snorting, and it too thundered off down the street.
Yes, run away. Run away, all of you. And keep running.
A terrible heat rose in her chest, scorching her throat as she exhaled, and she saw the air around her nostrils shimmering like a watery mirage on the horizon. Asha pressed her hands to her forehead, knowing what would come next, but still afraid. She’d never let it go this far before.
From her temples where the golden scales met her thick black hair, two small mounds rose, and rose, and went on rising. The dragon’s horns were angular and ridged, and they curved gently back and forth through the air before finally tightening into ruby-tipped points.
Asha straightened up and stretched her back and arms, feeling the mass of her golden armor and the power in her legs. Her horned skull weighed heavily on her neck, and her lashing tail tugged her hips left and right. It was all awkward and new, all so much stranger than just the scales and claws that she usually released, but now with the dragon awake and raging within her breast, the strangeness felt natural and right.
This is what is needed. This will consume the evil.
I will consume the evil.
I will… devour… everything…
She looked up at the temple again as a crimson veil passed over her eyes. The world became a flat landscape of dark reds and light reds, punctuated by the sharp white figures of people and animals.
But through it all, she held on to the image of the youth on the table, and the doctors who had laughed as they walked away from his dead body, and hadn’t cared whether their patient had lived or died.
He was mine. My first.
They killed him.
I stood by. I watched them do it. And I did nothing.
Never again.
Asha dashed forward, ignoring the cries of the fleeing people and beasts all around her, and she sank her claws into the stone wall of the temple. The ancient blocks cracked apart and when she yanked her claws out the entire corner of the temple crashed down into the road, hurling up a massive cloud of dust that swallowed the street and everyone still in it.
She surged forward again and leapt high onto the side of the temple, and then leapt again all the way up to the top of the stone fortress where the grand wooden pagoda began. She had seen such buildings before in Ming, and while it did strike her as wholly out of place in this western city, it held no other fascination for her. She smashed the wooden columns, the panels, and the planks, driving her armored fists through beams as thick as ancient trees.
Asha ran back and forth, and climbed higher and higher, tearing, breaking, and rending everything in reach. She burst through walls and leapt straight up, exploding through ceilings and floors. From time to time she saw the flash of a frightened face or the bright light of a drawn seireiken, but they were all as slow as insects trapped in amber. She raced by them all, her mind bent only on the next thing she could drive her ruby claws into and tear to pieces.
Somewhere deep inside the temple, surrounded by splintered beams and collapsing walls, Asha stopped. The entire building was keening and moaning.
It’s dying. This place is dying. Soon it will fall and take all of its vermin with it. All of the killers and slave drivers. They’ll all be dead soon.
Asha ran back toward the outer wall, her tail lashing at the remains of the pillars, her claws shredding everything within reach. She burst through the last wall and leapt out into the cool evening air high above the city street, and fell. She crashed down onto the stone lip at the top of the lower fortress, and then slid down the sloping wall, smashing out the ancient blocks as she descended toward the street.
By the time her feet touched the ground, Asha was exhausted. Her arms and legs were aching, and her back was throbbing from the constant writhing of her tail. As she straightened up, she saw through the swirling clouds of dust to the slender white outline of a woman with the smaller white shape of a mongoose on her shoulder in the alley across the street.
Chimera The Complete Duet Page 24
