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

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Winter water. But the only thing that beat the water was the earth and he cursed the Geomancy that ordered his life. Wind and water, sticks and stones. He sighed and cast his eyes over the winter water that had become the entire world. The Sherpa had called it the Icefall.

  Icefall. Brilliant name for it. Between the peaks of Shagar’mathah and her sister, Lhosheh’mathah, it looked like a great waterfall spilling from the roof of the world, one completely made of ice. Much of it was covered in snow, making the hike easier in some respects but more dangerous in others, as a smooth layer of white might be hiding the mouth of a deep crevasse. He was grateful for the whispering voices, guiding him from footfall to footfall. But at this height, the way was growing steep and one slip could be the end of a rather short, sad life. Quiz would miss him if it came to that but no one else would ever know or care. That would be a tragic, unfitting end to the legend of Kaidan, if not entirely inappropriate for Kerris the grey.

  So he stopped and sat on the ice, reaching into his pack to strap the Gowrain claws onto his boots. They were a rather marvelous invention – claws across the toes for digging into a forward surface and along the bottom of his soles for walking and climbing in this terrain. The mittens were similar, only he suspected they were made from a real Gowrain paw, one removed of flesh and bone. He strapped them across his forearms and prayed that he’d catch himself before he scratched his chin or rubbed his eyes. That would be problematic, all things considered.

  So he continued the climb – step, leap, leap, step up, up and up the Icefall of Shagar’mathah, listening to the voices with each step. His world shrank to the ice, the crevasses, the ridges and the climb. Before he realized it, it was noon - the sun high in the sky and the cloak warm around his neck. His breathing was becoming shallow, so he let the cloak drape from his shoulders and sat for a while, lifting the skin with the hot, sweet tea. It was perfectly refreshing and he hoped he’d paid the Sherpa enough. He wondered how far he could get before he lost his strength or the sun. He dug into the pack to pull out another strip of jerky. Shark flesh was not particularly tasty but it was oily and he knew the oil would be a necessary fuel. His body would be taxed soon enough with the climb and the cold and the thinning air.

  Another several hours along the Icefall and his arms and legs were beginning to burn. The sheets were so steep, so cracked and he found that he was literally climbing for much of it. But again, ice was merely frozen water and water was his friend, his ally. He had never been robbed by the water. He had never been wounded by the ice. Here, working the southside of the dragon that was Shagar’mathah, he had an ally in her skin and scales.

  Step, leap, leap, step up. Step, leap, leap, step up. Climb, hand over fist, foot over foot. Climb and ice and breath and step. He could feel the sweat running beneath his clothing and knew he was coming to the end of his strength.

  Clouds rolled in as the last of the light faded, and so he decided to stop for the night. He found an expanse of snow and filled his tea skin with it. Dug a hole, wrapped himself with the yak hide and the cloak and buried himself in the white, clutching the skin against his chest. He prayed his life would not end overnight in avalanche, toppling ice pinnacle or sudden crevasse. If it did, he prayed that it would be incorporated into his dreaming so he might never know. Dying in dreams was common for him.

  The snow drift was like a tomb so he called the winds and they responded, bringing with them the air to fill his lungs while he slept.

  And he slept and his dreams were filled with singing.

  ***

  Tremble.

  Take Care.

  As near a deep abyss,

  As near a valley,

  As one treading on a Tiger’s tail.

  As one treading on thin ice.

  “Utau, neko,” calls one down from above. “Utau!”

  He shook his head, closed his eyes. He was so very tired.

  An orange dropped down from above. An entire orange.

  Pity he didn’t have the strength to peel it.

  “Utau, neko!”

  He felt the air marshal itself beneath him, around him. He was grateful. He never really knew which way the air sided – with him or with the earth. It was capricious but right now, he would take it. He filled his chest with it, let it lift his head, open his eyes.

  “Utau?” he asked. His voice was like paper.

  “Hai! Utau!” And suddenly, for the first time in all the weeks he had been down here, someone above began to sing.

  The guard sang and sang in a strange but lilting voice, the Chi’Chen words filled with gaps and breaths but soon another joined in. The melody was different, using different scales and combinations of notes but soon he could hear it, follow it, project it. If only he knew the words.

  So very close. He took a deep breath.

  “Utau?” he called up, then sang a bar. “Utau?”

  “Hai! Hai! Utau, neko!”

  “Hai,” he said and smiled to himself. “Kerris utau.”

  The Empress would be pleased.

  And so, once again, with a voice like scratching paper, he began to sing.

  ***

  The morning, beautiful and cold.

  He’d slept until the sunrise in his little snow-dug cave and through the thick mantle of white, he could see light. It had snowed overnight so the digging took longer but it had been a warm nest to sleep in, and this high on the Roof of the World, cold was one of the many things that would seek to kill him. It was tempting to stay a little longer but he knew that the thin air would trick his mind in many ways. Waking was living, so he used his Gowrain mittens to dig out from under it, Slowly, methodically, he dug, careful not to cause the drift to buckle down on him and soon, he pushed himself free, the thin layer of ice cracking as he emerged like a chick from a shell. He rose to his feet and shook off the snow, stretching his arms over his head and filling his chest with thin, sharp air. He smiled once again at the sight of the Great Mountains bathed in the colours of dawn.

  Tea. He reached for the tea skin, fused to his coat.

  The temperature had dropped so much that the skin, the yak-hide and the cloak had become one. It was delicate work, peeling the tea skin from the coat but finally, it came and he shook it, pleased to hear water slosh inside. He lifted it to his lips, drank in long and deep. Melted snow had a certain taste – cold, blue and distinctly metallic but it was tea and his bones were dry. Drank it all, straining the leaves with his teeth. Refilled the skin with snow and tucked it inside the coat now, next to his heart.

  His filled his lungs with the air – thin and sharp but the element responded, pulling itself around him and giving him breath. He rolled out a strip of shark and chewed as he pulled the sticks – Black and Two. Winter Water once again. Odd. The sticks rarely pulled the same. It was an omen. Good or bad, he had no clue. He took another pouch from the pack, this one filled with ocean sand. He let it fall between his fingers, watched the way the wind took it, the way it danced, the pattern it made when it fell to the snow.

  Geomancy. His gift and his curse.

  The morning was grey, the clouds low and threatening. He was still in the middle of the Icefall, unable to see either peak of Shagar’mathah or her sister, so he called to the winter water, asked for its guidance once again and once again, he heard the elements whisper back. Move up, they said. Up and right, right toward Lhosheh’mathah, sister of the Virgin and the Valley of Silence.

  He prayed that the air would be as helpful and he turned, slung the pack across his back and resumed the climb.

  ***

  How the silkworm spreads

  Across the middle of the valley!

  Thick she spins her silk.

  The oriole in her flight

  Perches on the peak.

  Her song is filled with longing.

  ***

  Odd, he thought, how there were so few birds. No falcons or eagles, no kestrels or owls. Perhaps the Virgin guarded against birds as well as cats. Birds wer
e, after all, creatures of the air not the earth. Perhaps there was more of a rivalry than he thought. There was war in everything. The WuXhing proved it.

  Almost through the Valley of Silence, although it wasn’t an ordinary valley. High steep ice sheets, wide deep crevasses and rock slopes up all sides as far as his eye could see. It was silent, however – only the sound of the wind and the occasional crack as the ice split itself apart in its downward descent to the Fall. Most of his time was spent climbing down shallow crevasses that blocked his path, then back up again and he was grateful for the poor Gowrain who’d died to provide him the mittens and claws for his boots.

  He was also grateful for the grey sky for by noon, he was very hot. Once again, he sat, removing the pack and laying it at his feet. He pulled out the shark and the tea skin, savoured the melted snow on his tongue. He said a prayer of thanks to the air and the water, both of whom had kept him safe so far. He reached into his pack for a string of multi-coloured ribbon, and with another prayer, let it go. It lifted high, hovering a moment before whipping up and around and across the valley.

  Move, said the winter water.

  “In a moment,” he said.

  His legs were weary and so he sat a little longer, debated reaching in for another strip of shark, when a crack echoed from above.

  The mountain was laughing.

  “Damn,” he said. “Right. Move.”

  He bolted to his feet as snow blew up in a jagged line down the Valley of Silence. The ice was moving through the field, splitting from beneath the Fall as if with a katanah. He grabbed his pack and ran, leaping as ice and snow puffed up like a backwards avalanche. The Valley of Silence carved herself a new crevasse and he leapt first one way then the other but it was so fast, so steep, targeting him like a bolt of forked lightning.

  The Valley of Silence boomed with thunder now as above him, sheets of pinnacle ice gave way. Shagar’mathah was seeking to pin him between his beloved elements but he was fast and flung the pack, throwing himself onto a smooth ice shelf as the pinnacle shattered beside him. He lunged but the Valley roared, shuddering as she tore herself in two and suddenly, the shelf disappeared from beneath his knees. He plummeted straight down, somehow managing to catch the sheer side with the Gowrain claws and carving deep ruts in the ice as he went. Snow blasted his face, biting him with thousands of tiny teeth, but he jabbed with the boot claws as well, finally sliding to a precarious halt, clinging like a spider to a cliff of sheer ice. The snow shelf that had been under him continued down, down, down, banging and shattering into a hundred shards as it went. He held fast until the roar died away, leaving him on the side of the crevasse by bear claws and feline will.

  He pressed himself into the ice, waiting for his trembling to slow and for his chest to fill once again with air. He glanced up. The ledge was a good six cat lengths but that was nothing compared to the darkening blue expanse that was below.

  “Winter water,” he said. “I am yours and always have been. From now on, I will listen whenever you whisper, whenever you call. Please let me scale your beautiful ribs and I will never take you for granted again.”

  The winter water said nothing, so tentatively he peeled his hand from the side, reached up and plunged the claws into the ice. Nothing. His opposite foot next, stabbing the wall and pushing himself up. Hand and foot, breath and claw, he slowly, deliberately scaled the freezing face, whispering prayers to the elements as he climbed.

  There was a shadow above him and he looked up. On the very edge of the crevasse, he could see his pack teetering over the brink.

  “No,” he pleaded. “Oh please, no! Nononono!”

  He watched with a heavy heart as it toppled and fell, sailing past him and bouncing off shelves of blue ice to disappear into the darkness.

  He leaned his forehead against the new wall, tail lashing at his own stupidity before hauling himself up, claw over claw, onto the snow. He sat for a long moment, shaking his head and waiting for his limbs to quiet. His pack was gone, along with his picks, a rope, extra tunic and shark. No shark. At least he had the tea.

  Caught in the foot of the crevasse at the base of the Valley of Silence, the prayer ribbons fluttered in the breeze.

  He shook his head, could hear the mountain laughing. Prayers to the wrong elements, he realized, but he’d be damned before he prayed to the earth.

  Probably what the earth was hoping.

  With another grunt, he pushed himself to his feet and continued on up toward the face of the mountain.

  ***

  Before the east was bright,

  I was down, down, upside down;

  I was in a room upside down,

  And there was one from the court calling me.

  He couldn’t hear them anymore, not even his friend Bo, the one who was teaching him the language. Bo had been gone for days. Weeks. Months. Maybe he had never had a friend named Bo. Maybe he had imagined everything, here in the land between life and death. It wouldn’t surprise him, but then again, few things surprised him. Life had always been a mystery.

  He couldn’t sing. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move arms or legs or tail or eyelids anymore. The earth had beaten him. The earth had won. He could die in this pit and no one would know, no one would care. At some point, they would drag his dead body out and toss it in a fire and both Upper and Eastern Kingdoms would see the last of the sad grey cat called Kerris Balthashane Wynegarde-Grey.

  Before there was a streak of dawn in the east,

  I was down, down, upside down;

  I was pulled from a room upside down,

  And there was one from the court with orders for me.

  It was long and lost, this place between life and death and he wondered if monks walked this road in their meditations. The air surrounded him, embraced him, lifted him now almost like ropes or arms and if his eyes could open, he would probably see their odd faces – some pink like Bo, some grey like Ki, some black like Migu, but all flat with little slit noses and wide smiling mouths. They were talking, nudging him, pouring water into his mouth but it wouldn’t stay. He’d been upside down for far too long. Nothing would stay.

  His garden was fenced with branches of stone,

  And I, hopeless fellow, stand in awe.

  I cannot fix the time of night;

  If I don’t rise early, I am sure to be late.

  He opened his eyes when they stopped dragging him, which he supposed is what they wanted. They were at the base of a staircase carved into the rock and he couldn’t see the end of it. They were very high up in the mountains but he could see water, great water. He smiled. Water was his friend.

  Like Bo.

  The guard smiled when he saw Kerris’ wandering eyes and he offered the water again. The lion opened his mouth, tried desperately to swallow. Most came back out but some stayed. A good start, all things considered.

  There was an entire troop of monkeys with him, swords and spears pointed and ready. As if a dead lion could hurt them. As if a dead lion could fight.

  “Kerisu, you kaidan o noboru,” said Bo and he gestured to the stairs. “Kaidan o noboru.”

  Bo had been teaching him Chi’Chen from his position as prisoner guard, high above the little pit and over the days, weeks, months, lifetime, Kerris had learned some words. These, however, were unfamiliar.

  “Kaidan?” he panted. His tongue was as thick and dry as a snake. “What’s Kaidan?”

  The Chi’Chen guard made motions with his hands, placed one on top of the other. Pointed first at the steps, then the cat.

  “Kaidan,” he said. “Kerisu, kaidan.”

  “Kaidan,” said Kerris. “Stairs. Climb. Change. Go up. Go to heaven. Go to hell. I don’t care, Bo. Watashi wa kinishinai.”

  “No,” said Bo. “You must care, Kerisu. The Kaidan will save you.”

  “I’m dead already.”

  “Not yet. Look.”

  And the monkey reached down to take Kerris’ hand, turned it over and pressed the pads of his hands
. Grey claws slid out and suddenly, the guards exploded behind them. They shook their spears, they shrieked with fury but the pink-faced monkey whirled on them and shrieked right back and they grew wary but quiet. Bo turned back to the lion in a puddle at the foot of the steps.

  “Kerisu must be kaidan o noboru.” He leaned in. Kerris could see the quick brown eyes, so unnatural yet so warm. “You make kaidan and you live.”

  He’d been in a bloody pit for days, weeks, months, a lifetime. How could he climb those bloody stairs?

  If I don’t rise early, the song went. If he didn’t climb…

  “Make kaidan,” repeated Kerris and slowly, he turned his head to the first step. “Be the bloody kaidan…”

  Climb.

  ***

  The winds were like nothing he had been expecting and he stared up at the steep cliff face, shoulders sagging. A pick ax and rope had been in his pack, which was currently at the bottom of the Valley of Silence’s newest crevasse. While the Gowrain claws would help him up, a rope would have been the easiest, safest way back down and for the first time, the possibility of failure crossed his mind.

  Unless, of course, he didn’t come back.

  That, he thought mildly, might be an acceptable option.

  And so he stood in his yak-hide coat, wrapped in his cloak at the base of the face of Lhosheh’mathah, Shagar’mathah’s sister. He could see the Virgin peak from here, could see the ridge he would have walked, the ‘steps’ he would have scaled to reach the summit. But he would have to climb this wall of blue ice before dark, sleep deep in the snow overnight and set off at sunrise for the peak. It might work. Then again, he might die.