by Claire Luana
“Careful,” the boy said. “He don’t like people much.”
The dog, floating in a fog of bliss, let the man pet its wiry head.
“Wow,” the boy said. “He don’t let most folks get near ‘im.”
The man smiled warmly. “I have a way with animals. I am staying in a building near here. I could get you some food, some clean water to wash up in. Would you like that?”
The boy eyed the man, scrunching up his dirty face in contemplation. He looked at his dog, who continued to wag its tail in lazy arcs.
“I am hungry.”
“Let’s fix that,” the man said.
The man led the boy through the maze of rubble towards the empty warehouse building that served as his base of operations outside the citadel.
“What kinda food ya got?” the boy asked.
“Some apples, some rice, pickled fish. Nothing fancy.”
But from the widening of the boy’s eyes, the man knew this sounded very fancy indeed. “In here,” he said, pushing aside a door hanging on one iron hinge.
The inside of the warehouse was dark; it took a moment for the man’s eyes to adjust to the dim light.
The boy looked around at the empty interior. He turned back to the man. “Where’s—”
The boy fell silent when he saw the dagger in the man’s hand, its ebony hilt inlaid with a pastoral scene of ivory. In a flash, the man slit the boy’s throat, catching his body as it slumped, lowering it to the floor.
The boy’s eyes held a look of betrayal as his lifeblood pumped out of his arteries, mingling hot and metallic with the dust of the warehouse floor.
“You should be thanking me,” the man said. “It’s only going to get worse.”
The dog had shaken off its pleasure-induced fog and snarled at him, baring its sharp white canines. Its hackles stood along the ridge of its skinny back.
“I have plans for you as well, my friend.” The man smiled gleefully, his spirits buoyed by the afternoon’s events. He dipped his fingers in the boy’s blood and began chanting, pulling on the dark twisted magic of the tengu. He directed it at the dog, wrapping it around the creature in cords of blackest evil.
The dog’s ferocious barks turned to whimpers as the magic sunk into its flesh, immobilizing it, beginning to twist it into something new.
The man took the blood on his fingers and smeared it on the dog’s forehead, drawing the symbol his master had taught him, completing the dog’s transformation from mortal beast to demon.
He stood with a satisfied smile, admiring his creation. The dog had quadrupled in size, its limbs growing into long distended arms with curving claws. Its skin blackened and cracked, its brindle coat hanging off it in patches. The head was truly monstrous, filled with yellowed fangs and bulbous dead eyes.
The man licked the rest of the boy’s blood off his fingers. Yes, this would do just fine. He may need the heirs to free Tsuki and Taiyo, but their companions were expendable. Might as well make their trip a bit more eventful.
He grinned.
CHAPTER 14
The group flew silently in a loose formation. Colum flew in front on one of the golden eagles borrowed from the sunburners. Hiro and Daarco followed, and Kai and Emi brought up the rear, their koumori giving the eagles a wide berth. The night was warm and cloying, the unnatural heat a reminder of the importance of their mission.
“Are you excited to go home?” Kai asked Quitsu while leaning forward in the koumori saddle so her voice wouldn’t be carried away by the wind.
“Nervous,” he said. “But excited.” Quitsu, strapped into the harness before her, had learned to tolerate flying. Barely.
“Why nervous?”
“The seishen elder is the wisest creature I’ve ever encountered,” Quitsu called back. “But also the most enigmatic. After being alive for several millennia, it doesn’t have patience for trivial matters.”
“How could two tengu trying to destroy the burners be a trivial matter? It’s tied to the burners through the seishen. Without burners, there would be no seishen. It’d be…out of a job, right?”
“Maybe it’s ready for retirement,” Quitsu quipped. “I hope I’m wrong. It may want to help us. All I am saying is it’s old. And…”
“Unpredictable?” she said.
“Unpredictable,” he agreed. “Be ready to convince it that it has to help us.”
Kai swallowed. Convince the thousand-year-old ornery seishen to see things her way. No problem.
After several hours, the Misty Forest came into view below them, a deep swath of green frosted with soft white clouds.
Colum’s eagle banked to the left along the edge of the mist, losing altitude until it landed in a wide clearing with a flourish of wings. The rest followed, landing about the clearing. The koumori and eagles couldn’t navigate in the mist, so they would continue on foot.
The air was cooler here, almost crisp, and Kai drank it in deeply. The forest felt alive, buzzing with energy. Perhaps the false gods’ stranglehold on the world wasn’t as strong here.
Trees stretched above them like green sentinels, tall hemlock and cypress, broad-leafed oaks and maples. The scent of pine colored the air, mingling with the loamy smell of soil. Kai sat still for a moment listening to the sounds of birds, the swishing of insect wings—simply enjoying the presence of the forest around her.
“Kai and Emi, I’d fly your koumori into the neighboring clearing to the east of here. The eagles and koumori won’t want to stick around each other, so if we separate them, we’re more likely to find them where we left them when we get back,” Colum said.
Quitsu, eager to be unstrapped from the harness, let out an audible groan. But Colum’s suggestion made sense.
Emi raised an eyebrow to Kai, a silent question.
Kai nodded. “We’ll rendezvous here.”
Kai and Emi quickly found a suitable clearing within a few minutes’ walking distance of where the eagles had landed. Their koumori dropped onto the forest floor and Kai let Quitsu loose. He hopped to the ground and danced around like a pup, bucking and stretching wildly.
Kai and Emi laughed, unbuckling the harnesses and saddles from the koumori. The animals would have to roam free for a few days, and so it wasn’t fair to make them wear the harnesses.
They stacked the equipment neatly under the swooping emerald boughs of a large tree, covering the pile of leather with dead branches and leaves. Hopefully, that would keep the harnesses out of the rain and free from the eyes of roving thieves. Not that Kai thought that this forest would have any of either. It hadn’t rained in months, and from what she knew of the Misty Forest, it had few inhabitants. The forest was a wild place that still belonged to the earth.
They shouldered their packs and strapped their weapons on. Kai had brought her jade-pommeled knife (a gift from Nanase) and a short sword. Emi had two wicked-looking knives peeking out of her boots and a portable rimankyu bow slung through her pack.
“Colum,” Emi said as they set off towards the others, ducking around branches and tree trunks. “You trust him?”
“For now,” Kai said. “I asked Master Vita about him before we left. Whether we could trust him. He seemed to think we could.”
“Based on what?”
“Colum used to work for the citadel. Master Vita said he didn’t like the man at first; apparently, he was just as offensive back then as he is now. Perhaps more so.”
“Hard to imagine,” Emi muttered.
“But Master Vita said he won him over. He was widely traveled and had a keen mind. He quickly worked his way up under Queen Isia’s reign. My grandmother.”
“All that proves is that he’s crafty and ambitious. Which doesn’t tell us he can be trusted on this mission. Or in general,” Emi pointed out.
“He said he wants to help us,” Kai said. “He wasn’t lying. My necklace would have told me. And Master Vita told me that before King Ozora started the Gleaming to test all female babies, Colum led covert missions into Kita to
rescue girls with moonburning ability before they were found by the sunburners. He’s rough around the edges…but I think he means well.”
Emi was silent, her dark eyes thoughtful.
“You can still keep an eye on him,” Kai said.
“Good,” Emi said quietly. Kai eyed her friend sideways. Emi’s burns had healed well, though the left side of her face remained scarred. A portion of her ear was missing, and her eyebrow was gone, never to regrow. These blemishes did little to dull Emi’s beauty, however, her buoyant silver hair, her voluptuous figure—curvy despite hard angles of muscle. What Kai missed, though, was her friend’s indomitable spirit and wit; that had felt so dim since Maaya had died. Maybe Emi needed this mission, too.
“What about Daarco? Do you think it’s a smart idea to have him along?” Emi asked.
Quitsu, trotting along between them, chuffed a dark laugh. “What could go wrong?”
“I don’t trust him,” Kai admitted. “But Hiro begged me to give him one last chance.”
“Give him a chance to do what, stab us in the back while we’re sleeping and defenseless?”
“Exactly,” Kai said. “Though he seems more like the stab-you-in-the-front type so he can gloat about his revenge.”
“Even better.”
“Maybe we can give him to the seishen elder as an offering,” Kai suggested with a wry grin.
“Like the elder would take him!” Emi said. “We couldn’t pay someone to take him.”
Kai sighed. “We shouldn’t make fun. The man is emotionally damaged.”
Emi snorted. “Cry me a river. We’re all emotionally damaged. Name me one person who doesn’t have a parent who died in the war and I’ll do a dance for you.”
“I can’t think of anyone,” Kai said. “Which is a shame because I would love to see you dance in the middle of the forest.”
“You’re missing out,” Emi said. “I’ve got moves.” She made a lewd motion with her hips.
Kai laughed out loud, the noise echoing throughout the forest. “I wasn’t talking about that kind of dancing.”
“Speaking of,” Emi dropped her voice conspiratorially, moving closer to Kai. “Hiro? How are…things?” She waggled her eyebrows. “Eh?”
Kai’s face colored. “Uh…”
“Ahem.” Someone cleared their throat in front of them. Kai started, pulling up short.
Hiro stood in front of them, his thick arms crossed.
Kai’s already-red face turned scarlet. How much had he heard?
“You two are making such a racket, the whole forest can hear. Not to mention you were so busy gossiping that I could have murdered you and you wouldn’t have noticed!”
“Sorry, Dad,” Emi said, strolling past Hiro and bumping him with her hip.
Kai bit her lip, trying to hold back a smile but failing. “We’ll be more careful,” she said, linking her arm with his and pulling him towards the clearing where the others waited.
“You two ready to move?” Colum asked, leaning on his staff.
“Where are we headed?” Hiro asked, surveying the uniform green of the forest around them.
“The seishen elder lives in an island city in the middle of the Misty Forest,” Colum said. “As long as we take a straight path at a good pace, we should be there in two to three days’ walk.” He slung his pack over his shoulders.
“I should hope we take a straight path,” Kai said, raising her eyebrow. “I thought you knew the way.” Though the hazy tangle of trees and the blanket of ferns and underbrush did look identical whatever direction she looked. She could hardly identify the clearing she and Emi had just emerged from. How would they ever find the koumori again? She sighed. One problem at a time.
“I do know the way, and Quitsu and Ryu can help, too. But the forest…” He hesitated. “The forest is old. It doesn’t like visitors.”
Daarco scoffed and took a pull from a flask that appeared from his pocket. “Forests don’t have opinions.”
“Be careful, sunburner,” Colum said. “This one does. I’d show it the proper respect, or it’ll put ya in your place. This forest is filled with mysteries and dangers. Lose focus for a moment, and the ground will open up beneath you, swallowing you whole. Or the trees will move, obscuring your path until you lose all sense of where you are and go mad trying to find your way out. Or malicious spirits will take the form of your loved ones and lure you to a grisly death. The forest is as devious as it is old.”
“Superstitious nonsense,” Daarco muttered.
“Let’s get moving in whatever direction you think is right,” Kai interrupted, trying to ignore Colum’s chilling warnings. “We’re losing moonlight.”
Colum set a quick pace, moving through the forest like water down a riverbed. Where he silently flowed through the trees, the rest of them tangled with dense underbrush and errant branches. He had seemed unflappable in Kyuden, but here, Kai saw—with more than a little envy—he was truly at ease.
The mist was thick, curling around branches and tree trunks like smoke from a bonfire. Emi threw up two bright orbs of moonlight, maintaining them while they walked. The moonlight cast strange shadows on the trees closest to them, failing to penetrate any deeper into the forest.
Emi and Daarco fell into an uneasy alliance over their mutual dislike of the woods, serenading their group with increasingly-creative expletives whenever a limb or stray spiderweb confounded one of them.
“Is all this fresh air troubling you?” Kai teased Emi.
“It’s not natural, all these trees,” Emi said, starting and swatting at a beetle that buzzed past her face in a wild arc.
“It’s completely natural,” Kai said. “That’s kind of the point.”
“Give me a hot bath and a cold sake any day,” Emi said. “Over dirt and deer crap.”
Kai laughed. “Nature has more to offer than dirt. But a cold sake does sound pretty good right now.”
And though she put on a lighthearted face, Kai didn’t blame them. This was no ordinary forest. Time and again, she could have sworn that she caught glimpses of movement in the corner of her eye. But it seemed that whenever she whirled her head to see what moved in the mist, it was gone.
The day dawned, visible only by a lightening of the mist above them and a warming of the air. They couldn’t see the sky or the sun, though Kai knew it was there. Hiro and Daarco took turns lighting their path, burning miniature suns above them.
Colum called a halt at what seemed like midmorning.
“Might as well make camp here,” he said. “Get some shut-eye.”
The novelty of the trip had long since worn off. Everything hurt, but most of all, her feet ached. New boots had not been a good idea.
Kai sat down on the soft ground and unlaced her right boot, pulling it off. She winced as she pulled her sock from her foot and it came away bloody at the heel.
Colum and Hiro both approached, Hiro looking concerned, Colum looking amused.
“New boots?” Colum said, examining the one she had removed.
“I know, I know,” she said.
“I have something to cover it,” Colum said, standing and heading back to his pack.
“I’m not much of a healer,” Hiro said, “but I can cauterize it.”
She grimaced but nodded her assent. He scrunched his brow, her foot in his hands. She felt a warmth and hissed as it grew into a sharp heat. But thankfully, it was over quickly.
Colum returned with some soft cloth that was tacky on one side. Kai dressed her wound and put her sock and boot back on. It would work.
“Now that that crisis is over, can we eat?” Daarco said, scowling. His eyes were red-rimmed and his words were slurred.
Kai suppressed her irritation but nodded.
They arrayed themselves in a loose circle on the ground and munched on hard cheese and dried meat.
“Are we on track?” Daarco asked Colum.
“Anxious to reach our destination?” Colum asked.
“Anxious to get th
is ridiculous field trip over with,” Daarco muttered.
“Worried you will run out of whatever you keep in that flask?” Emi asked with mock sweetness.
“It’s the only way I can stand your company, burner,” he retorted.
“We’d need something a lot stronger than that to stand your company, burner,” Emi spat back.
Daarco growled.
Kai sighed. Daarco would run out of sun whiskey at some point on the trip. She wasn’t sure whether that would make him more or less pleasant. Perhaps keeping him drunk was the best option.
“So,” Hiro said, rubbing his hands together, trying to break the tension. “Colum, how did you find yourself visiting the seishen elder last time?”
“It was many years ago,” Colum said. “I was a young entrepreneu—”
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” Emi muttered.
Colum continued, unfazed. “I heard rumors of an ancient city floating in a lake. Sounded like a great opportunity for a profit.”
“You went to rob the seishen’s city?” Kai asked, incredulous.
“I didn’t know it belonged to the seishen,” Colum said. “The fellow who told me about it was hazy on the details. Thought it was deserted. And what good would ancient treasure do sitting ‘round in an old city? It would do me much more good.” He flashed his white teeth in a grin.
Hiro shook his head. “How did you get out alive?”
“There was some bargaining…a riddle, I think. Promises never to return on punishment of death, and such.” Colum waved a hand dismissively. “’Twas a few years back.”
“This would have been an important fact to share when you volunteered to guide us,” Kai said, pursing her lips. “If the seishen elder has a grudge against you, we can’t risk being guilty by association. This is too important!”
“I didn’t plan on accompanying you…into the city,” Colum said. “I thought I would just lead you there and… wait outside.”
Kai ground her teeth. “Very heroic.”
