Swallowtail & Sword: The Scholar's Book of Story & Song (Tails from the Upper Kingdom 4)

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Dragon Tea.

  He dropped to his knees, dead before he hit the hummingbird floor.

  In the blink of an eye, she flung the second dagger across the room, sending another jaguar staggering backwards into the chimnea. Both jaguar and chimnea toppled to the ground sending live coals across the floor.

  The four remaining pulled their pitted, seasoned swords.

  Her body the blade.

  The four remaining, she reminded herself, were Qi Yi Jun mercenaries. She was Shadow.

  She turned and bolted out the doors.

  The moment her feet hit the verandah, she leapt straight up to grab the doorframe with her hands, swinging her legs as the jaguars came. She caught the head of the third man in her knees and let him take her as he ran, dropping her weight and snapping his neck with the fierce arc of her body before flinging him backwards into the oncoming rush. They shoved him to the side but by then, his sword was in her hand.

  She rolled to one knee and sliced the air with the blade. The three fanned out around her.

  A dagger appeared in one Qi Yi Jun hand. It flipped and was sent whipping thought the short distance only to be deflected by her steel with a ping. It clattered along the boards and slid under the railing, dropping off into the blackness of the Shimhali Valley far below. Slowly, the men began to walk toward her, spinning their swords like kenshi. Good for mercenaries. She was impressed.

  A ribbon of silk flicked past her face, dancing in the night breeze. She slipped a small red pouch from the folds of her silk, tossed it to the deck at their feet. With a cry, she sliced the sword down onto the pouch and it erupted in a flash of heat and flame, sending her back toward the railing and them back toward the house.

  In the blinding light, she turned to the mountainside and ran, her long stride taking her to the far railing in a heartbeat. Once there, she sprang, feeling the wind beneath her belly and the shale brush her fingertips but the crack of her tail brought her crashing to the burning deck, sending the sword over the side and causing stars to burst behind her eyes.

  There was pain but she was Shadow.

  She twisted.

  A jaguar was standing over her, flames dancing across his shoulders, his smoking boot on her cheetah’s tail. She snarled. It was bound to happen. Her tail was so very long.

  Savagely, she swung her leg, knocking his out from under him and she rolled but he fell upon her, his weight knocking the breath from her body. The verandah was on fire now from the fire powder and the tipped chimnea, the oils from the teak fueling the flames with their sickening fumes. There was heat but she was Shadow and fast. She pulled her feet to her chest and with a roar of breath, she sent the spikes of the jika-tabi into his belly. He bellowed and she heaved him over her head to crash through the railing. He followed the sword, dagger and Asmit Hannamansigh over the side.

  She never heard his howl end for the fifth was upon her, slicing his sword in an effort to sever head from neck. She flung herself backwards, suspended for a moment at the edge of the verandah, the cool night breeze nipping at her spine. All time slowed as the sword came. She saw the gorge, the Shimhali Valley, the Lake of Blue Herons. She moved with the speed of a falcon. Reaching back with her long arms, she grasped the deck edge and flipped backwards, her feet swinging up and connecting his chin with the tabis’ spikes. And with all of her strength, she pulled her arms down, carrying him up and over her body to follow his fellow over the side.

  No balance, she thought wildly as her legs swung in the open sky. Hand foot breath. No balance and she forced one elbow up and onto the flaming deck when suddenly, there was a hand at her throat. Soon, another as the last Qi Yi Jun mercenary hauled her from the brink, up so that her feet dangled over the edge. He pulled her close, snarled.

  His face was gone, charred from the firepowder; one eye milky, the pelt seared from his forehead, nose and cheeks. When he pulled back his lips, they cracked.

  “Die,” he growled and his thumbs pressed deep into the hollows of her throat. It was a death grip and she could feel the pressure building up behind her eyes once again. There was little strength in her legs and they flailed at his torso, scraping his chest and belly with the spikes but he felt nothing beyond the flames and the fury. She gripped his scorched forearms but he was a jaguar, stocky and strong and killing her.

  A huge crack echoed through the valley and she thought it was her neck but suddenly, the world lurched as burning beams shifted beneath his boots. The deck was collapsing under the flames and she realized that soon, both they and the verandah would be little more than charred remains on the Shimhali Valley floor.

  She had no fear of death. Death was, for an Alchemist, merely a change of state, and Alchemy was the study of change. But there was so much she had wanted to learn, so many areas of the Arts and the Gifts, Necromancy and the exchange of Life and Death and those caught in between, so she closed her eyes and grew quiet in the jaguar’s arms, summoning all her chi into a single, focused thought. Felt her hands move of their own accord, watched them slip the xiàn from the folds of her gloves and in two swift motions, it was around his neck. With the last of her strength she pulled it taut, feeling the lethal wire slide through pelt and flesh and cord and tendon, snagging only at the spine and windpipe in the center. Her hands grew warm, his head lilted to the side and they both collapsed to the deck.

  Which crumbled beneath them like coals.

  The jaguar disappeared, feeding their Mother, the Great Mountains. Her claws – strong and black – dug into the charred wood as she fought for balance but it was falling apart under the flames. She scrambled forward and forward again, her only goal now to get to the summerhouse but the heat and the smoke made it impossible. Not the house, she thought wildly, the mountain and with a deep breath that scorched her lungs, she lowered herself under the burning beams.

  Like a spider she crawled upside-down under the rafters, arms aching, thighs straining, grateful for the spikes in the jika-tabi now more than ever. Her gloves seared to the pelt of her palms but she kept on until her fingers brushed the rock beneath the summerhouse. She pulled herself in close as the verandah cracked once again and with a rush of burning timber, it tore free from the Moon Lily and plummeted like a stone to the blackness far below.

  She did not move, did not dare move as the threshold of the door and two remaining beams that jutted out over the gorge sizzled with flame. So she pressed herself into the rock and simply breathed, feeling the cool shale on her cheek and welcoming the stony embrace that was the mountain. Her arms were shaking, there was no strength left in her legs. Her world, which had once been hand, foot and breath, had shrunk to fingers and toes and those weakening by the moment.

  She could try to climb up. It was less than an arm’s reach but she didn’t trust her arms. She could try to climb down but she knew she would not make it, not after tonight. The easiest would be to let go and let the Valley take her. Asmit Hannamansingh had been right. She would go hungry tonight but the mountains would not.

  A hand reached down from the threshold of the summerhouse. A white striped hand, and then the voice.

  “Take it or jump. I won’t ask again.”

  She took it and with a powerful grip, Jet barraDunne pulled her from her prison on the mountain into mouth of the Moon Lily.

  She wanted to drop, to curl up in a tiny ball and hold herself until her nerves stopped their rebellion. Instead, she forced her legs to hold her and rose to her feet, began the slow, methodical process of unraveling the silks that bound her body, wrapping them loosely between palm and elbow. As she did, she kept her eyes fixed to the figure of the First Mage as he strode across a floor that was sizzling with coals and crackling with many small fires. He had exchanged his kimonoh for Alchemist’s robes of black and silver and he paused at the mercenary with the dagger in his chest. The man was slumped against one of the black-lacquered cabinets, clutching the hilt with bloody fingers. He looked up at the First Mage, pleading with every blink.

&nbs
p; “So messy,” said Jet.

  Swiftly, he snatched the dagger out of the chest and sent it back in with a chik. The jaguar twitched once and died.

  “The family will never allow me to keep the Moon Lily now,” he said. “But never fear. I believe there is another sister.”

  barraDunne nudged the body with his sandal and it slumped onto a mass of coals. While the mercenary’s clothes began to sizzle and burn, he bent to open the lacquered doors, unmindful of the flames.

  She watched him like a serpent but continued to remove the silks.

  “You may kill me,” she said after a moment.

  “I don’t need to,” he said. “You are already dead.”

  He plucked a second sakeh pot from the cabinet and set two tiny cups on the top. Carefully, as one would pour tea, he filled them and crossed the floor again, stepping over coals, flames and jaguars as he came.

  “Drink now,” he said.

  Her knees could barely hold her but her will was strong. She took the cup gingerly, with the tips of her fingers.

  His moon-white eyes swept the living space, the smouldering embers that once was a deck.

  “You are Shiva, goddess of destruction.” He looked at her. “And Aegypshan, yes? As beautiful as the sun. What is the name of your sun god?”

  “Rah,” she breathed. She prayed he did not see the tremors in her cup. “He is Rah.”

  He smiled.

  “Of course. Rah al Shiva. No. Sh’Rah al Shiva, or Sherah, so you won’t forget your death.”

  And he raised the tiny cup.

  “A drink to the birth of Shadow.”

  The remaining silks were tattered across her lithe body. She turned her golden eyes on him.

  “After you,” she said.

  His smiled broadened. Slowly, he turned the cup upside down and spilled its contents on the hummingbird floor. Smoke rose from the puddle as it ate through the wood.

  “You are my match. Shadow to my Moon.”

  He tossed the cup out over the threshold, took hers and did likewise. Lifted a white striped finger to stroke her chin, let it linger before drawing it downwards to her throat. He studied the tattered silks between her breasts.

  “It is dawn. Lie with me,” he said. “You have already removed most of your clothing. I will delight in removing the rest. I will bind your wounds, perhaps create new ones. Darkness and light, pleasure and pain, I will give and take and pay you so much more than you had dreamed…”

  It is your only power over them, the tigress had said. Use it. Wield it like a sword.

  She held up her handful of silk, let it fall like a ribbon to the floor.

  He grinned as she took his wrist, wrapped it once, twice, binding it in silk. Made a knot, pulled it tight.

  “Magnificent,” he breathed. “I am stupefied by your imagination. Who knows? With your stamina and my instincts, perhaps we will become the most powerful Alchemists in the Kingdom. I already have the Empress’ ear.”

  He has no honour and neither do you.

  He grabbed her wrist now and leaned in, his mouth barely a kiss away. He smelled of smoke and sakeh and secrets.

  “What do you know of lions?”

  “Nothing,” she lied.

  “Then I will teach you.”

  Sun Ghanem would be proud.

  “Of course.” She smiled, golden eyes gleaming. “But another time. Like your wife, I am the mistress of my fate.”

  And she slipped away from him as oil through fingers and in three long cheetah’s strides, she was at the threshold, leaping into the sunrise like an eagle from a peak. Swiftly, she twisted to catch the ribbon of silks as they unraveled from her palm and as she did so, she caught a glimpse of the First Mage bracing himself against the lintel of the summerhouse, becoming her anchor in her dive off the mountain. The silks snapped taut and she swung like a pendulum, striking the cliff side with her jika-tabis and taking the impact in her bones, but whole. She loosed the last of the silk and was swallowed in a heartbeat, becoming one with the Shadow in the breast of their Mother, the Great Mountains.

  The last thing she heard was his laughter, echoing down from the Moon Lily. She smiled to herself and began her descent into the Shimhali Valley, from the end of all nights to the morning.

  In the Palace of Infinite Peace

  Infinite longing for you

  In the Palace of Infinite Peace

  Infinite longing,

  Memories of you for so long,

  When will these campaigns at the passes

  come to an end?

  I gaze toward windswept clouds,

  News of you cut off,

  Through the mountain storms

  And armies.

  Return letters do not arrive;

  In vain do I keep myself pure,

  Afraid to see if this face – since we parted –

  Is still like the one when we first met.

  Infinite longing,

  Pressing the heart.

  Thunder and Avalanche

  Year of the Boar

  A broken heart and

  Grieving brow cut deeper than

  The steel of arrows

  There are times in a man’s life when the days are too rich and the air too sweet. Times when the prize comes at a cost and comradeship is thicker than blood. Times when the battles are so fierce, the losses so steep that when they are ended, it is like falling into the arms of Heaven and even the sleep is bliss. Those days a man can, and should, savour every moment for he knows they cannot last. But while he lives them – for good or ill – he lives.

  Kirin pushed open the flaps of the tent and stepped out into the rocks. It was cold this morning and he could see his breath in front of his face like a mist. It had been a long winter and a cold spring, so it was not surprising. There was still snow on much of the ground. This high in the mountains, the snow would stay for most of the year, a wintery cloak on the nape of their mother, the Great Mountains.

  Most of the soldiers were still rising but a small band of leopards huddled around the fire. They followed him with their eyes as he picked his way to the head of the gorge. In a moment, he would sit with them and enjoy a light breakfast after tea. They needed to know he was still one of them, even though his rank had changed. He would make sure Ursa did the same, although he suspected they would be happier if she didn’t. They were afraid of her, just a little.

  Further up he could see men standing guard over the sleeping tents, soldiers with swords and spears, bows and cannons. Cannons. He marveled at the need for such an arsenal but then again, they were guarding against the Thunder. Against the Avalanche. Dragons, bears and behemoths could not even come close to the Thunder and Avalanche.

  He picked his way over the rocks to gaze out over the Khali Ghandak Gorge. It was a valley deep in the Great Mountains and he cast his eyes to the west. Dhowla’girih the Beautiful, covered in snow and rising out of the valley like a lily-white fang. To the east, Anna’purananna, the Goddess of Winter; wide, proud and defiant. In the summer, the gorge ran with glacier waters but now it was merely a valley of snow and stones, the scrub only beginning to hint at new life. Firs and thick pines grew up the steep slopes and in the distance, the Great Mountains shone purple in the morning sun.

  “Are you ready, Captain?” came a voice and he turned to see Middle Captain Liam al’Massay-Carr stepping toward him over the rocks.

  “Captain,” Kirin repeated, turning the word over on his tongue. He shook his head. It still hadn’t found a home there.

  “Captain of the Empress’ Personal Guard, no less.”

  “No more either.”

  “Not even twenty summers and you’re the ranking officer here.” He reached out to tug the new sash at Kirin’s waist. “Layering up the gold, I see.”

  Kirin looked down at the new addition to his uniform. It was a beautiful weave of Imperial gold threads, given to him by the Empress herself. It still smelled of her. Lotus, he thought. The scent of lotus and orange.


  “So, how did he die?” asked Liam.

  “Who? The Captain?”

  “That is what we’re talking about, Kirin. That’s why we’re here. To get you a Captain’s horse. A gold one if memory serves.”

  A Captain’s horse, plucked from the Thunder and Avalanche.

  “I don’t know the details, Liam,” he started. “But it had something to do with his liver.”

  “I think Ho poisoned him,” said Liam and he rocked on his heels. “A few drops of Dragon Tea in his cup and poof, blackened liver, dead Captain.”

  “Don’t speak too loudly,” said Kirin under his breath. “Tang-St. John won’t approve.”

  “He doesn’t approve of me anyway, Kirin,” grinned his friend. “I’m only here because I need a horse too. I’m not a Captain yet.”

  “One day, Liam. Regardless, it’s an honour to choose a horse from the Avalanche.”

  “It’s only an honour if you survive them.”

  Together, the two men turned their eyes back to the gorge, followed the rugged winding river basin as it disappeared into the mountains. The Léi Shēng Imperial Preserve, where the Avalanche lived.

  “I can’t imagine them wintering in that,” said Kirin. “That’s harsh for any animal.”

  “Only the strongest survive,” said Liam. “And we climb on top of them, tell them to go this way or that with only a little stick of metal between their teeth.”

  “Do you think they know that they can kill us with one blow?”

  “By Ho’s fluffy buttocks, I hope not.”

  Kirin grinned. Liam and his colourful cursing.

  “So,” Kirin said. “You are to be married?”

  “I wondered if you’d heard that.”

  “You didn’t tell me last night and I’m certain there’s been no letter at home informing me of such news.”

  The young lion smiled at the ground.

  “It’s all very sudden,” he said. “Her name is Anasuya Spring-Walters. She’s a lovely, lovely girl. Daughter of the Second Magistrate of Cal’Cathah.”