SHIANG

by C. F. Iggulden

  Lord Canis pressed the stone and his hand hard against Bosin’s chest. Tellius saw him smile, as if he had returned to a lover. There was something deeply unpleasant in the expression and Tellius raised his hand to call out in warning, to stop whatever he was seeing. It was too late.

  There was a thump in the air that seemed to sweep past all those watching, as if just for an instant the room had rippled like water. The effect on Bosin was immediate. Hondo and Je stepped close in astonishment as colour flooded through the big man on the table. As they watched with open mouths, the swelling around his face and neck fell back, while his flesh lost the waxen yellow look it had worn before. The wounds on his chest had been raw and pink, standing in mounds above the skin. They sank back and closed. Hondo leaned right in, unable to believe what he was seeing.

  They were all startled when Bosin suddenly groaned, the first noise he had made since the process had begun. Lord Canis took the stone away from him then and removed the fastenings that bound it to his hand and wrist. He flexed his hand in obvious relief as soon as he could. The man looked weary and Tellius understood it had cost him something as well.

  ‘Thank you, my lord. Is it … done?’

  He assumed that was the second question Canis heard more than any other, but the man nodded without any of his previous irritation. He seemed spent somehow, washed out and weary. The bearer of the Canis Stone would endure hope and grief whenever he was called, Tellius thought. Still, he remembered the story of the man’s daughter. That might be the third question he was asked, but Tellius decided he would not. Some things were too terrible.

  ‘I will return to my carriage now, sir,’ Lord Canis said.

  Tellius bowed to him and led the way back to the street side of the estate house. The carriage waited, the driver wordless. Tellius wondered if he too was one of those who had been healed by the stone. The idea made him shudder.

  By the time Tellius returned, Bosin was sitting up, shaking his head as if he’d been punched, and was trying to gather his thoughts. Tellius saw the man crack his neck and suddenly stand. He had not realised quite how large Bosin was. It was not just a matter of height, but width and depth. There were slabs of muscles there that Tellius had never seen on any anatomical chart. The stomach stood out to a surprising degree, though there was no fat on the man.

  Bosin shook his head again, then again, looking more like a dog with an itch in its ear it could not shake. He made a growling sound to himself as he did so, then rubbed his chest with his clenched fists.

  ‘There is a man in Darien who carries the personal family sword of the Yuan,’ Tellius began. ‘By that proof, your king is dead. My name is Androvanus Yuan-Tellius and I command you to defend my city.’

  Bosin looked down at the man who addressed him, then across at Hondo and Je. They stood as men might stand while a tiger pads through the room. He nodded. His thoughts cleared, becoming chill and simple.

  ‘Is he telling the truth, Hondo?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Hondo replied.

  ‘Where is the other twin?’

  ‘Dead,’ Hondo said.

  Bosin took that in.

  ‘I see.’

  He frowned for a moment, as if he could not quite understand his thoughts. After a while, he shrugged.

  ‘I will need a sword,’ he said.

  Hondo watched the man he had found more irritating than anyone he had ever known. There was a solemnity to Bosin he had never seen before. Hondo felt a sense of having done something terrible, that he could not take back.

  Gabriel felt the air thump and gasped at the power of it. The citizens of Darien had not run from that gate. No, they had gathered. Having guns seemed to lend them an unnatural confidence, so that they leaned from every window and peered round every corner Gabriel could see, pouring on shot after shot. As far as he could tell, Thomas was holding them off well enough and Sanjin – he walked with death, so that his sword blurred. Yet if Gabriel understood anything at all of the stones, it was that the ocean could be drained to nothing. He felt a nagging sense of doubt, but he strangled it and pressed forward towards the stone he sensed closer than all the rest, closer still with every step. He opened his arms to welcome whoever would stand against them, striding ahead of Thomas and Sanjin and the trail of burned and dying that stretched right back to the gate.

  Lord Bracken walked out onto the street, his face stern. Two dogs trotted at his side, their attention on the maelstrom around the three men of Shiang.

  ‘Do you see him, Thomas?’ Gabriel called, pointing.

  Thomas nodded and Sanjin too turned to focus on the stranger. Gabriel could sense a sort of purple presence in the man. He had a stone. He actually wore one. Somewhere … there, on his right arm, under a sleeve. Whoever the man was, his arrogance had brought him to the front. Gabriel smiled, feeling his heart beat faster. Power called to power. Perhaps he had been drawn to them, as they had been called across mountain, forest and plain to Darien.

  ‘Be wary, brother,’ Thomas called. ‘He carries a stone.’

  Gabriel dipped his head. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the thing as a hole in the darkness. It looked a little like the golden eye that had dragged them all forth from the grey land. Yet whoever the man was, he merely wore a stone. The men of Shiang actually were one.

  ‘Take him,’ Gabriel ordered. ‘Before others come.’

  He saw Sanjin grimace at being given an order, but they stepped forward together. Ahead of them, the man watched without fear and Gabriel felt a chill come to the base of his stomach. The dogs watched them come and he realised they should have run, from the heat that licked around Sanjin, from the strange movement of air around Thomas, from the fact that Gabriel was a predator, with their deaths written in his every step. Yet they stood their ground. One moment they were walking alongside their master, then at a signal Gabriel did not see, they sprang, coming at him in silence.

  Sanjin burned one where it ran; Thomas rammed air down the throat of the other, so that it spun end over end, choking. The man who commanded them inclined his head. He was separated from Gabriel by no more than thirty paces or so, the distance across the road. He did not seem afraid, not then. Gabriel was pleased to see that. If the man had run, they would have had to chase him. Gabriel wanted him to come close enough for them to snatch the stone from his dead body. It was an ache in him, like a sweetness in his mouth as he stalked forward.

  Lord Bracken folded his arms, which allowed him to rest one hand on the stone of his family, that had remained as symbol and writ of their authority for centuries. Other families had artefacts of great power, like the Regis shield, or the Herne box. Perhaps every family of the Twelve had once owned both a stone and an artefact. Over time, the strong had separated from the weak. The Sallets had risen to stand at the right hand of kings, while the Aeris family had become generals and officers for the city, their vote worth almost nothing in council. He knew Forza, Woodville and Saracen had only their stones. Whatever wonder of the world that had gone with it had been lost, or stolen, or destroyed.

  Bracken smiled at the three swordsmen approaching him. The house of Bracken had only the one stone as well. The difference was that they knew what it was and how to use it.

  From behind him, the street filled with hounds. Hundreds and hundreds of them poured around their master and arrowed in at the three swordsmen. They came in deathly silence, without a single bark or growl. Bracken chuckled at the expressions of the foreign mages who had dared to come into Darien, who thought the city was just a plum to be plucked from a branch.

  ‘Tear them to pieces,’ he said softly, though his voice reached them all.

  The stone pulsed on his forearm. As one, his dogs began to howl. Those in front accelerated, scrambling to tear and savage the three men.

  They were met with fire, and air, and iron. Gabriel moved, his sword already a blur as it took the head off the first dog to reach him. The problem was the sheer number of them. He heard Sanjin swearing
as the man tried to focus. Dogs evoked an almost childish fear in the three of them, as swordsmen could never have done. Both Sanjin and Gabriel hesitated, unsure. It fell to Thomas to keep them back, yellow teeth straining inches from Sanjin’s face as he steadied himself. He raised a hand as if to stroke the struggling animals leaping and straining, trying to reach him.

  ‘Sanjin,’ Gabriel snapped.

  He was rewarded by a bloom of heat washing over him, as well as a stench of burning fur. Gabriel nodded as a ring of fire spread out, consuming the hounds as fast as they could race in. Animals could scream, it seemed. Gabriel put down half a dozen as they reached him, though half were already blind and burned, driven insane and beyond even their master’s control. Gabriel took note as the worst wounded animals lost that peculiar drive that forced them in, so that they wandered off, backs curved and tails tucked up between their legs. The man who was their master was driving them all.

  Gabriel advanced on him, though he had to wait when he felt the air thin. Thomas pushed through dozens of the dogs, flinching from their snarling faces even as he choked them with sharp gestures, or broke their backs, so that they fell to crawl away. He shuddered as he did it, though Sanjin was grinning as he swept them aside in flame. The fear of that fire showed in all their eyes, but their master’s control was too great and the animals kept coming.

  Gabriel saw the man take a step towards him, then another. The Darien lord raised his hands and the entire sky went dark. Gabriel looked up at the noise of birds. These did not come in silence, but shrieked as they fell.

  ‘Thomas!’ Gabriel called in rising panic.

  He had dogs coming at him below and what looked like crows above. They began to fall as Sanjin dragged flame through them. The air filled with an appalling stink of burned feathers to go with the fur and blood and faeces on the ground. Birds fell by the thousand, but Gabriel had to flinch as some beaked and clawed thing raked his face and tore a gash from his forehead to his nose. He heard Sanjin cry out in pain, howling. Black feathers rained down through streamers of fire. The air was thick with wings.

  Gabriel turned his head without taking his eyes off the Darien lord.

  ‘Thomas? Sanjin? Protect me and I will take his head. He controls them all. Make me a path and I can reach him and stop whatever he is doing.’

  He felt blood dripping down his face as he spoke and dashed another bird away as it clawed at his hair. Crows were carrion birds, with long black beaks and cruel claws. They were both strong and clever, and it seemed there was no end to them. Despite the heat and the shield of air, all three of them were bleeding and furious.

  ‘On my mark, then …’ Thomas called. ‘Ready … mark!’

  A path opened in the pack and the sky above. Thomas went down in the same moment, struck or bitten and curling as he fell. Sanjin sent a blast of fire along the edges and then he too yelled in pain as something reached him.

  Gabriel went forward, fast as a shadow, towards the man who wore a stone. He hungered for it as he raced over the stone road, his sword ready for a single blow that would bring the storm to ash and feather and mindless hounds.

  He did not see the thing he struck. It lay across the road as a filmy barrier without substance or thickness. Gabriel ran hard into it and felt it give before him, but hold. He looked left and right to where two bronze staffs rested on clawed feet, like enormous candlesticks. Men in blue livery stood to attention there, with fear on their faces at the violence of moments before.

  Quick as thought, Gabriel struck whatever protected the lord of wolves and crows. His sword rebounded with such violence it almost broke his wrist, as if he had struck a wall. Yet he’d felt it move when he’d run full tilt into it, he was certain. He saw the men on either side of the road grin at one another, relieved the Hart Blue Border had held.

  Gabriel hesitated, suddenly unsure of himself. He heard Thomas snarling like one of the dogs, struggling back to his feet. The path he and Sanjin had forced open had closed once again, so that Gabriel stood in a sea of the animals, barely kept from his flesh. He killed with abandon, but there were too many of them. Without Thomas, he would have been brought down, his throat torn out.

  ‘What is happening?’ Sanjin demanded. ‘Kill him and be done with this!’

  ‘I can’t reach him,’ Gabriel roared back. ‘There is some sort of barrier. An artefact.’

  In his anger, he put out his bare hand and pressed his fingers into it. He saw the Darien lord smile grimly at him beyond, but he might as well have stood in Shiang.

  ‘We are the stone, brother,’ Thomas called to him. There was desperation in him and he was bleeding from a dozen wounds. ‘Go through it, or we are done.’

  Gabriel leaned against the barrier he could not see. He reached out to it and summoned the ocean that lay within him. It was there, driven deep, but of such an essence as to make a man immortal. He took up the Yuan sword and this time when he touched it to the barrier, it cut through. There was a sound like a bell or glass breaking, and it was gone. One step brought him to the astonished lord. Gabriel took Bracken’s throat in his hands and crushed it, letting him fall. At his back, the cacophony of snarls and howling ceased and the hounds fell still.

  Above them, crows reversed their dives and clattered away as one, so that winter sunshine fell across the street once more, after an unnatural darkness. Gabriel smiled. He reached down and took hold of the Bracken Stone, ripping it free. He saw it was set in gold and bound to the man’s wrist with leather and golden discs, like coins. Lord Ran would be fascinated, Gabriel thought.

  He turned to his companions and saw how spattered in their own blood they were, how weary and dazed. Gabriel tutted. Plans changed, he thought, turning to the men in blue livery.

  ‘You – where is your master’s home?’

  They gaped at him and he killed one in a blur. Still they shook their heads, so that he raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  ‘Really? So loyal?’

  Another turned to run and Gabriel swept his legs out before he could take more than a pace, so that he fell, white with pain, as blood pooled under him. Moving deliberately slowly, Gabriel advanced on him.

  ‘The Bracken estate is just over there – not a hundred yards down this road, my lord. No one is inside, not now anyway.’

  The man looked down at the broken figure of Lord Bracken. One of the dogs had returned to sniff the man. It growled as Gabriel glanced at it, but the animating drive wasn’t there any longer. It was just a dog nuzzling the hand of its dead master.

  ‘Show me,’ Gabriel said.

  The Bracken Stone was warm against his hand. It felt almost alive.

  20

  Stone

  Hondo came to a halt at the sight of the Sallet Greens waiting in the yard. He remembered only too well the one he had encountered at the Red Inn. To see three of them turning to watch him was an uncomfortable experience. One still bore the mark of a sword where Hondo had dug the tip into the knee joint. That one watched him with particular intensity, he thought with satisfaction.

  ‘We had six once, but some were damaged a couple of years back,’ Tellius said.

  He would have said more, but Lady Sallet came out then with the captain of her guards. Though her sleeves were white and a long skirt reached almost to the ground, she wore a shimmering green panel across her chest, like fish scales, though each piece was layered in iron and enamel. Tellius knew it would withstand a pistol shot. He had tested it himself. Men trooped beside her from whatever barracks lay beyond a great door, so that a hundred and twenty of them took station facing the gate to the street, ready to protect their mistress and the city.

  Hondo frowned as he saw the way some of the men moved. To his eye, it was as if they carried a banner with ‘Mazer steps’ picked out on it. They had clearly been trained in techniques and methods that were guarded as faithfully as anything in Shiang. Hondo caught Tellius watching him.

  ‘It was within the scope of my orders to make an end to anyo
ne you had taught,’ Hondo said.

  Tellius raised his head a fraction.

  ‘I see. And are those orders behind you, Master Hondo?’

  ‘If you say so, they are,’ Hondo replied. ‘Though if you would have me defend my city, I will need a blade.’

  It was hard for Hondo not to smile at the tension in those ranks when three swords were brought out, carried by a single house servant with less than perfect respect. Hondo’s gaze was drawn to his own scabbard and hilt in black and orange, as it would have been to a daughter, looking for any signs of ill-use or improper care. He ignored those around him as he accepted the sword and felt the familiar weight. He knew that blade as well as his own hands and, despite all that had happened, he felt his spirits lift with its return. He did not respond to any of the fools who let their own hands creep towards hilts as he did so, ready to draw if he made a move against their master or mistress. Whatever training they’d had, they could not have stopped him.

  ‘So. Are you ready, Master Hondo?’ Tellius said. ‘Master Je?’

  The old man seemed to be amused, though his expression was a little manic. Hondo bowed to him.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I have given you my oath. Of course, if there is no royal sword, I will not consider myself bound by our agreement.’

  ‘Yes you will,’ Tellius said.

  Hondo showed none of the surprise he felt. The man was correct. His oath stood, even if he had been fooled, or lied to. Shiang’s history was full of stories illustrating that exact point.

  Before he could reply, Bosin came out. He had the same physical presence as before, so that laughter died and grown men shrank back, preferring not to challenge this particular warrior.

  Bosin wore his own trousers and boots, with a new shirt and mail under a chest-plate. Steel armour encased his arms and legs, making him clank as he walked. It looked uncomfortable. Bosin did not call out or grin as he sighted Hondo and the twin, nor comment on any part of the forces waiting to go out to defend the city. The fact that he did not made Hondo breathe in sadness.