Epic: Legends of Fantasy

by John Joseph Adams

  “You’re dead,” Dai-Yu whispered. “The Annals say you died in the Imperial Palace.”

  “We cannot die,” the first voice said. “We became something else.”

  “It does not matter,” said the second voice. “She must choose.”

  “You’re crazy,” Dai-Yu said, trying to deny the fear that clenched her chest. “Go away. I wasn’t born to choose anything.”

  The first voice laughed. The sound echoed on and on under the lacquered ceiling, taking strength from the walls. “Do you truly think so?”

  And Dai-Yu, shocked, saw that the birthmark in her hand glowed red, like maple leaves, like the lanterns of New Year’s Eve. “No,” she whispered.

  “This is the choice laid before you.” The first voice was the drawl of a large feline, one that would toy with its prey until exhaustion brought death. Tiger. “When we founded the Empire three hundred years ago, we argued over what would keep it together.”

  “Duty,” Crane said. “Homage to one’s ancestors, and respect of the law. Those are the things that will make us last.”

  “Man knows no duty,” Tiger said, breathing into the room the humid smell of jungles. “Man knows no respect. Only fear will keep the Empire intact. Fear of our neighbours to unite us. Fear of death and chaos to keep us from crumbling.”

  Dai-Yu, poised near the open window, said, “This is...” a philosophers’ argument, she wanted to say. Children’s words, without meaning. It’s not ideas that will keep us together, that will keep the Hsiung Nu from our frontiers.

  Crane whispered, “It is no game. The loser will renounce. No longer shall he guide the destiny of the Empire.”

  “Because you decide anything? What about the Emperor? What about the Imperial Court?”

  A dry bout of laughter, from Crane. “Everyone listens to their ancestors, child. We cannot die. We still rule. Now choose.”

  Dai-Yu stared, trying to see their faces through the darkness. “I know nothing.” They were each as vast and terrible, both as unfathomable. “This is ridiculous. Just find someone else.”

  “There is no-one else.” The shadows behind Crane drew the darker hint of wings the colour of obsidian. “Choose.”

  “I can’t,” Dai-Yu whispered, the words forced out of her before she could think.

  In the darkness, she could feel their combined gaze, assessing her, judging her. The hollow in her stomach would not go away.

  “Very well,” Crane said. “You are not ready.”

  “Think on it,” Tiger whispered. “We will come back.”

  There was no noise when they left, but Dai-Yu could breathe more easily; she no longer had the sense that every word she said was being set apart and weighed.

  The shadows returned to those of the wives’ quarters.

  She could not stop shaking. What did they think she was, to be embroiled in their vast, unknowable games? She was human. She had a husband, and soon would have children of her own. She was no prophet, no wise woman.

  All she wanted was to sleep, and to forget. To forget that they had ever been there, or that they would ever return.

  In silence she moved through the house, her sandals making no noise on the slats of the floor. She was almost at the door of her own room when something stopped her.

  She could not have told what. Like with the beggar, it was a sense that something was more real than it ought to have been.

  The door to the nursery was ajar, as it had been earlier in the evening. And yet...

  Gently, Dai-Yu slid the door open, then entered the room. Through the gaps in the shutters fell the white light of the moon, tracing the outlines of three beds.

  Dai-Yu could feel nothing. Not even fear, nor anger. She moved towards the furthest bed, where Pao, the youngest son, was sleeping.

  A ray of light lay across his face, throwing into relief what they had done to him. There were scars, like claw-marks: three swipes on each cheek, bleeding in the white light.

  And it was a claw-swipe, too, that had opened his chest, laying the heart bare amidst its cage of ribs.

  The wind whispered, in Tiger’s voice: A reminder, Dai-Yu. Until we return.

  She screamed, then: a sound torn out of her lungs that echoed throughout the house, a scream of rage and grief and despair. It woke the other two boys, who huddled in their beds, their faces frozen in shock. It summoned the servants, and then her husband and his first wife.

  “Dai-Yu?” En-Lai, her husband, said. He was shaking her, but she could not answer him; she could not banish the image of the dead boy in his bed. The more he insisted, the more she withdrew within herself, until she hovered at the edge of a chasm in her mind, knowing that if she fell into it there would be no return.

  “Lin Dai-Yu,” another voice said.

  She looked up. This was the district magistrate, with his jade robes of office and his velvet cap. Three militiamen had taken position at the entrance of the room, their staffs at the ready.

  “What happened here?” The magistrate’s face was stern.

  “That slut killed my boy,” the first wife said, quivering with anger.

  Dai-Yu, still struggling to remain focused, could only shake her head. No no no. Not I. He did that.

  The magistrate looked at her, his grey gaze expressionless. She looked back.

  The magistrate’s gaze moved to the bed, then back to Dai-Yu. “No. It could not have been her. What weapon would she have used?” He raised Dai-Yu’s hands, displayed their shorn nails. “See,” he said. “These are not claws.”

  “Then who did this?” En-Lai demanded in anger, and grief.

  The magistrate’s gaze rested on the servants for a moment. “Who indeed.” And now his look was trained on the first wife, and on the long, lacquered fingernails that were her pride. Each of them was protected by an elegant bronze sheath—a sheath that tapered to a sharp, clawlike point.

  The first wife was still standing near Dai-Yu, ready to accuse her again. Her gaze met the magistrate’s, and her face pinched in anger. “You accuse me?” she said, drawing herself to her full height. “Of killing my own son?”

  The magistrate smiled without joy. “I have seen mothers do worse than that.”

  “No,” Dai-Yu whispered, understanding that the nightmare was not over. But no-one was listening to her.

  “You’re making a mistake,” En-Lai said, as the militiamen came into the room, and bound the first wife’s wrists. “That accusation is ludicrous.”

  Dai-Yu found her voice from some remote place. “This wasn’t done by human hands.”

  The magistrate turned to her. The light falling on his robes bleached them white for a moment, like a coat of feathers; a moment only, but in that moment Dai-Yu looked into his eyes, and saw the ageless, malicious gaze of Crane.

  No.

  “The law must be honoured,” the magistrate said, with a tight smile, and they were not his words, but something far older, far more vicious. “A crime cannot go unpunished. We will find out the truth.”

  Tiger’s voice in her mind, endlessly whispering its promise: A reminder, Dai-Yu. Until we return.

  Crane’s voice: A crime cannot go unpunished.

  A dead boy in his bed, his face slashed, his chest yawning with the heart inside.

  The first wife, struggling as they dragged her out of the room, screaming, calling them names. In vain.

  The chasm in Dai-Yu’s mind opened wider, and she tumbled into the darkness, screaming all the while.

  Her husband En-Lai, seeing her face go slack, shook her again, but she no longer had speech.

  The doctor, summoned to the scene, found the body of the boy, the husband protesting his wife’s innocence, and Dai-Yu standing tall and straight, yet silent.

  He listened to the voice of her heart, but could find nothing wrong. In the end, he prescribed a calming brew to En-Lai, whose sickness he could understand, then left the house, glad to be away from Dai-Yu’s stare.

  The first wife admitted to the murder
of her son under torture, and was executed.

  En-Lai had Dai-Yu moved to a dark room at the back of the house, where two very old servants tended her. For seven years she spoke little, only dwindled away, the skin over her bones as translucent as rice paper, the gestures she made more and more sluggish.

  In the end, she caught the lung sickness, and died.

  Thus ended her first life.

  Interlude: Tenth Court of Hell

  The soul comes before the Wheel for its first rebirth. But the Lady does not move. Her hands are empty.

  “Why?” the soul asks, and its voice is a mere whisper.

  “You cannot drink. You must remember,” the Lady says. Her face is emotionless. “You must answer them.”

  The soul’s face is indistinct; if it had any expression, it would be anger. “Never,” it says.

  “You have no choice.” The Lady’s yellow sleeves billow in the wind, beckoning the soul onwards. “Come, child. There is another life awaiting you.”

  3. Wen-Min Empire, 343-631 years after the Founding

  Thus, in every life, Dai-Yu was born knowing everything, from her first birth to her last. No more childhoods of innocence, no more days free from fear. In every life, she dreaded that Tiger and Crane would come back and ask the question.

  They did not always come, but, when they did, they destroyed everything. Tiger killed her family. Crane had them arrested, or aroused in them the desire to fight on the border: they took up the swords of soldiers, and came back wounded and silent, or not at all.

  A reminder, Tiger said.

  Think of the Empire, Crane whispered. Can you leave it to crumble because of a caprice?

  And they had been right—they were everywhere: in the eyes of merchants in the marketplace; in the faces of priests as they said their devotions; in the judges and clerks at the tribunal, passing through all of them like dark, beating shadows.

  She could not escape.

  But she would not yield.

  4. Shunliu (Wen-Min Empire), 650 years after the Founding

  When she was fourteen, Yi-Sen, who had once been Dai-Yu, was given in marriage to Zheng Lei, first clerk of the tribunal in Shunliu.

  She had two sons, and obsessively watched each of them in his cradle. And when the hot storms of summer came, she moved to the nursery and spent the nights watching over her children.

  Her husband Lei had his own quarters, but servants’ gossip did reach him, in the end.

  He asked her into his study one night. Yi-Sen came hesitantly, tiptoeing past the shelves crammed with books—her husband’s study was his preserve, a scholar’s haven in which women had no place.

  Lei was sitting at his reading table, which was bare save for a writing brush and a lantern. He raised his gaze to her. “You must be wondering why I’ve asked you here.”

  “Yes,” Yi-Sen said. Bluntness, her parents had told her more than once, was no quality for a woman. But even an army of tutors had not been able to take it out of her.

  “Sit down,” Lei said.

  She pulled over a chair, and sat before him, waiting for him to speak. At last he said, “Yi-Sen. I’m no fool. What do you fear?”

  Her heart missed a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t toy with me. I’ve seen the way you watch shadows. Men guilty of some unpunished offence look the same when the militia passes their way.”

  “I—” Yi-Sen hesitated. She had kept the secret of her past lives, of the mark in her hand, like a miser hoards his gold and jade.

  In Lei’s eyes was nothing but a mild curiosity.

  “You won’t believe me,” she said.

  “I’m a scholar. Let me be the judge of what to believe.”

  “My name is Dai-Yu,” she said. “I was born in the year three hundred and one. I am the child of the promise.”

  It all came spilling out of her, then, the stories of Tiger and Crane, of the boy dead in his bed, the gaping wound in his chest, of the other dead in her past.

  Lei’s grey eyes watched her, judged her, just as Tiger’s and Crane’s eyes had. He said, finally, “I would like to believe you’ve invented all of this.”

  “But you don’t?” Yi-Sen asked. She had expected many things, but not that.

  Lei said, slowly, “You can’t read. You’re no scholar. And yet...yet you’ve told me things from the past. Details that are true. I’ve read them in books.”

  “I didn’t learn them,” Yi-Sen said. “I remember. Always.”

  His gaze was on her, and did not waver. “I believe you do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s not an easy fate. Nor an easy choice.”

  “You don’t understand,” Yi-Sen said. “Why should I choose? Why should I grant anything to them?” Her voice was rising, spinning out of control: she heard herself say the words from a faraway place. “They bring nothing but pain and sorrow.”

  “The Founders lived in a harsh time. I’m not excusing them,” Lei added, raising a hand to check her. “I’m just giving you information to understand them.”

  “I don’t. They’re not human.”

  “Not any more,” Lei said. “There are tales about the things that do not die, that keep ageing, that never descend into Hell. They’re not pleasant stories.” He rose, came behind her. His arm settled around her shoulders. She rose in turn, faced him in silence.

  “Yi-Sen...This is where I’ll fail you. I’m a minor scholar, not a warrior or a conjuror. I can’t help you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. No-one can stand against them, can they?”

  “It would take an equal to resist them. But there is no-one in Wen-Min who has their power. Yet I would stand by your side, if need be.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why would you go to such trouble?”

  He spun her round to face him. “Haven’t you guessed?” His voice was mild, seemingly emotionless, but a bare quiver betrayed him.

  “No,” Yi-Sen said. “No. Please don’t. They—they take everything I love. They use it against me.”

  “You said it yourself. No-one can stand against them. If that’s the case, then nothing truly matters.”

  She raised her hand, traced the outline of his face, both familiar yet utterly alien to her. “I won’t lie to you,” she said, softly. “It matters to me. To know I’m not alone.”

  “You’ll never be alone again. I promise.”

  She stared away from him, knowing this was a promise he could not keep. “Tell me. What would you choose, if you had to?”

  “Neither,” Lei said. “And yet how we need them, to keep us together. Duty. Fear. But what they have become... Can you choose between the storms and the flood?”

  She had no answer.

  After a while, he moved away to extinguish the lantern. “I’ll look in my books. I may find some things in the old Annals, something you can use against them.”

  Although she did not believe he would find anything, Yi-Sen nodded. “You’re a good man.”

  He gave a bitter laugh. “No. I know all my flaws. Do not flatter me.”

  “I don’t flatter,” she protested, but he was already leading her away from the reading table.

  “Come,” he said. “For this night at least, let us forget them.”

  5. Shunliu (Wen-Min Empire), 657 years after the Founding

  Yi-Sen stood on the highest floor of the house, watching the streets go up in flames. Peach blossoms fell everywhere like rain, and she wondered whether she saw truly, or only mistook embers for flowers.

  A shadow fell across the doorway. “Dai-Yu,” a deep voice said.

  Crane. She did not turn around. She knew what he had come for. “That’s not my name.”

  “It was your first name. It is your true one.” Crane came closer to her. He smelled old, like dead books, the same smell the magistrate had had, all those years ago. “Your husband is dead, Dai-Yu.”

  She had known it as soon as she heard his voice. But still, cold flared in her chest, then spread to ev
ery part of her until she felt nothing any more. “And his blood is on your hands. You sent him to defend the tribunal, knowing the mob would kill him.”

  “He only did his duty,” Crane said, his voice heavy with malice. “He was first clerk of the tribunal. He had to bar the mob’s entry, to stop the riots.”

  “He chose nothing,” she said. “He was your toy.”

  “Had you chosen, he would still be alive.”

  Rage filled her. “If I had chosen? Did you think to force my hand? Did you think I would tell you that you were in the right, and Tiger wrong?”

  Beady eyes shone in the shadows: amused, perhaps. “It is time to choose. Your husband is dead. Will you leave your children to inherit this world, this mad world where rioters can take everything away from you?”

  “Do you think I care?” she asked, softly.

  Softer footsteps echoed under the ceiling of the room. She heard Tiger’s voice behind her. “Your husband is dead, Dai-Yu. Do you wish to meet the same fate?”

  She said nothing. There was no longer room in her for fear. Below her, the city glowed red with fire, resounded with the cries of the mob as they lynched every clerk they could find.

  “Choose,” Tiger said.

  Crane’s hand on her shoulder tightened its grip. “Choose.”

  Storms and floods, Lei had said. How can you choose between them?

  Choose.

  Lei was dead, trampled by the mob, all because he had fallen in love with her. She could have wept, but it was not what she needed. She needed to fuel her rage. She needed to gather her courage.

  “I told you,” she said. “I won’t choose. I won’t let you force me.”

  “You have nowhere to go,” Crane said.

  “Give us our answer,” Tiger added.

  No escape. There was no escape from them, not ever.

  But there was a place where neither of them could go.

  “Find someone else,” Yi-Sen said. And, before she could lose her courage, she leapt in one fluid gesture from the open window.

  It was only three floors, but her fall seemed to have no end. When she did land, splayed like a puppeteer’s broken doll, pain spread everywhere, in her arms, in her chest, through her heart. Her face was turned towards the sky, and the peach blossoms fell over her like rain.