by Daniel Fox
Praise for
DRAGON IN CHAINS
by Daniel Fox
“Fox captures the foggy mysteries of feudal China in exquisite style with this rich fantasy series opener…. Where many Western authors try and fail to capture the nuances of Chinese culture and mythology, this melodious tale quietly succeeds.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A rising star … With talent like Fox’s, the future of fantasy is in good hands.”
—Tanith Lee
“Intense passions and wild imagination transform the familiar fates of emperors, peasants, and dragons with extraordinary results…. A mythic China intimately imagined.”
—A. A. Attanasio
“Daniel Fox tackles his material (loosely based on the myths and history of Old China) with a combination of insight, innovation, and sheer command of language that transforms it…. Now I’m waiting for the next book, with all the impatience of a dedicated fan!”
—Locus
“Daniel Fox’s poetic prose … makes even the mundane seem marvelous…. Definitely a novel—and a series—that should be on every fantasy reader’s radar.”
—Fantasy Book Critic
BY DANIEL FOX
Dragon in Chains
Jade Man’s Skin
Moshui
THE BOOKS OF STONE AND WATER
Not much lies within my gift,
but this does.
This book is for you.
You know who you are.
Dragon’s Flight
one
Han flew, behind the dragon’s eyes.
HE DIDN’T ride her, no. His body was somewhere else, below, and she would eat it if she could. Eat him.
As it turned out, though, she couldn’t. She did try. But a little of him, the least little fragment of life that was himself sat somewhere within the enormity, the outrage, the cruelty of scale that was herself—and directed her just a touch, a veer away from what she most wanted, where she meant most harm.
HE HAD willfully cut her chains, and they were still bound together. That didn’t seem fair, even to him. She was enraged past measure to have this puny passenger abiding in her head. Her thoughts were storms, if those were thoughts, if he understood her at all: banked like clouds but dense like solid water, more violent than the typhoon, churning and crashing together, flaring with a vicious light that meant no good to him or his.
She knew where he stood, and what he had done. He had cut her free, and watched her destroy the impertinence of ships on her waters—a whole fleet in shatters now, all their crews drowned or swallowed or clinging helplessly, hopelessly to turbulent wreckage. She had relished that, but he could feel the hint of doubt in her now. Had it really been her choice? Or had he pushed her to it, his little insolent hands in her head, nudging her anger, using her …?
It was all for him now, that anger: a gift, his own. She brought it to him.
HE STOOD on the Forge, at the highest peak of that mountain-tip where it jutted from the strait, with the only people he cared about in the world: love and fear and respect, unequally divided. They all cared about the dragon, necessarily; they all feared her.
All his awareness was with her, in the air. In her mind, in her temper as she soared, as she spied, as she stooped like a hawk, like a queen condescending to pick out the petty ones she would destroy.
As it turned out, though, she couldn’t harm him, or anyone in his shadow.
Not here, not now. Not yet.
Not quite.
two
General Ping Wen had immortal longings in him.
He had godhood in his eye, and the Jade Throne should be his road there. He had reached, reached twice at once, both hands, the one with a blade and the other with a flag; but the blade had been turned aside somehow, and the flag had fetched no friends.
The boy who sat the throne, the young emperor ought to be dead in his own folly. A boatload of assassins had found him and pursued him, and absurdly failed to kill him. The boy was camped out in the mountains somewhere, sending impertinent messages. And conscripting native miners to be his bodyguard, apparently. It was a wild fancy, almost a madness. An opportunity too, of course, but Ping Wen lacked means just now to exploit it.
He should have had an army. He had sent the signal across the strait to Tunghai Wang, to summon his invasion. That might have made other difficulties, as Tunghai Wang meant to take the throne for himself; but one general’s claim was no better than another’s, once the legitimate boy was dead. Ping Wen could have managed his own ascension, here on what would be his own island. Except that the invasion had not come.
Had there been a dragon, rising in the strait? The astrologers were certain; reports from the coast were confused and contradictory. Which was a strange way around, but much of the world was turned contrary now. As witness, a loyal general aspired to his master’s throne and godhood, and thought it should be easy to achieve.
He thought he should have it by now. One way or the other. So many trained killers, and not one of them had reached the boy; so many shiploads of men, and not one of them had come ashore. A great fleet had been spotted, according to some. They were mostly those who claimed to have seen a dragon also, rising from the water and destroying all the boats. Others had seen a storm, no more than that, a darkness on the horizon.
Wilding or weather, he was almost sure that the invasion had been launched and met catastrophe. Almost. He couldn’t be certain until he saw the wreckage or heard from Tunghai Wang; but the generalissimo should have trusted the signal. Whether that man was now dead in the strait or still stranded on the other side, seeing the ruin of his hopes wash up on every beach, Ping Wen wasn’t able to guess.
Guesswork was for the credulous. When Ping Wen gambled, he did it on information. He had sent boats across the strait—manned by crews who did not believe in the dragon—to discover the true state of the rebels’ forces and their surviving leaders. Any honest general would have done the same. Ping Wen had contrived to slip a few trusted men into the boats, to carry a minimum of news to Tunghai Wang if they had the chance; but the generalissimo must be a damaged man now, if he was not entirely broken. In many ways, his disaster should play well for Ping Wen, even if it did leave the emperor alive and apparently unchallenged here on Taishu-island.
Any honest general, of course, would also be sending messages to his emperor, urging the young man back into the proper protection of his army, the governing care of his mother and her council. Ping Wen sent daily, while doing everything he could to cement his own authority in the palace and across the island. The emperor would have to come out of the hills eventually; when he did, he would find himself in a subtly different world. For a while.
A short while.
Ping Wen clapped his hands for a scribe, and began to dictate another letter.
three
Li Ton sometimes liked to sit and count his losses. It helped to keep his purpose sharp; it gave a focus to his abiding anger, which might have whittled him down into a sour madness else. It might have let him die as he had lately lived, as a freeboot pirate, scum. Which would have been the last and almost the worst of his losses, if he had let that happen. He had lost so much already; he could not, he dared not lose his immaculate revenge.
HE HAD BEEN a boy, and hopeful, and lost that. Well, but so did most men. Hope was not a likely survivor in the world.
HE HAD BEEN a good soldier, an officer, and respected by his men. He had lost that. On his ship he ruled by fear largely and bribery a little, as any pirate captain must. He called it discipline, of course. Soldiers too lived under discipline, which was not easy—but a soldier can always run away. For the most part, his had not. Even as a young man he had valued that respect, and lost
it.
HE HAD BEEN a man of rank, high rank, known and trusted at the court. He had lost that. Any general’s reputation shines only as brightly as his last battle, of course; any general can lose a battle for any number of reasons that are not his fault. Li Ton had lost an impossible battle and depended, perhaps gambled, on the emperor’s justice when he returned to the Hidden City.
He had lost.
HE HAD BEEN a man, a married man, a father; he had been a strong man, a whole man in his pride, marked only by the due scars of his service to the empire.
He had lost it all.
He had seen his wife and women executed, his children too.
His own skin he had seen emblazoned, treachery and cowardice writ large upon him, great black block characters tattooed with heavy needles while he struggled in his chains.
He had seen his manhood cut away, not by the skilled blades of the imperial castrators but the brute hack of an executioner. He might have died; he might have wished to die.
HE HAD lost that chance, and lost his country too: sent into exile, which meant a low and sordid death on some remote coast, broken and despairing and forgotten.
HE HAD LOST his name.
HE HAD found … no, he had been found by Jorgan and raised up into something again, some semblance of a man who mattered. He had worked, and fought, and won himself a ship and a crew, a way to live, eventually a path to vengeance.
And now, apparently, he had lost all that. Jorgan was dead, Li Ton’s ship was in the charge of the emperor’s forces, his last unexpected chance to influence the way of the world seemed to be gone. Sunk, with the rebels’ fleet.
ALSO, HE was an aging man and he had seen a great many terrible and wonderful things; many of them he simply didn’t remember anymore. It was his own life, and he was losing the record of it.
THIS, THOUGH. This he was determined not to lose: the day the dragon came.
She might have been the death of his last hope, but she was a great and an appalling mystery, and he had stood in the stench of her and looked into her eye, and he would not lose that. No.
THE BOY Han had cut his own chains, willfully, just when Li Ton was hopeful that he could control the dragon. Because Li Ton was hopeful, therefore the boy had cut the chains.
He should have died for that. Li Ton had lost count of the number of times that boy should have died and had not. At Li Ton’s own hands, most often. He was not a man who spared the weak or the guilty or the treacherous, and yet, for this boy he held his hand again and again.
Apparently, he was not alone.
They were on the Forge, Han had cut his chains, the dragon was free. There was nothing they could do but watch. She was like an emperor herself and all this petty world her court, the air her throne because it held her up; the sea her proper queendom because she soared above it. Until she dived, when all things were inverted: the sea her throne and the air her queendom, because she soared beneath it. Mortal man clung to that transitory skin between and was eaten, from above or beneath; or was broken, hurled from air to water; or was coldly left to perish in the desert vastness of the sea.
Oh, she was captivating: rapture in her liberty, beauty in her skin, deadly in her focus. Ferocity in her intent. She destroyed that fleet as Li Ton might have done himself, if he had chosen to, if he had been a dragon; and then—he thought—she came to destroy Han.
Li Ton took his first steps back down the path as soon as he realized that she was coming here. He thought they’d all be following him, tumbling down the slope in a desperate unavailing flight; but Han croaked at them—not in his usual voice, barely in a voice at all—“Tien, all of you, stay close.”
“I’m not leaving you.” That was the girl, Tien. “You come too. Come now …”
“No. Why run, where would you go? Stay close.”
The dragon swooped low over the islet and Han was utterly motionless then, utterly straining. They were wrestling together, the dragon and the boy, on some ground that Li Ton could neither see nor reach.
Li Ton struggled only to stay upright. She was a dragon; it seemed as impossible to stand as it was impossible to run. What could any mortal doings matter, in the face of this? Her face?
He felt the gaze of her, impersonal and exacting. She looked at him, assessed him, dismissed him. Her frenzy seemed to be over, but he thought she would eat him regardless. Sooner or later. She was here for Han; the rest of them were incidental.
His doom, their collective doom came spiraling slowly down from her sky-throne to settle on the peak. Massive and dreadful, too dreadfully close. One great foot landed squarely on the furnace, where wood and charcoal still glowed furiously hot; she didn’t seem to notice.
She was of a size to blot out the sun, a temple on a mountaintop. She drew awe from them, as a temple might, and demanded terror as a god might, visiting a temple. If those two together were not worship, Li Ton thought they came sufficiently close.
Worship, of course, was not sufficient for her. Not today.
She overhung them, menacing and beautiful. Unnameable colors shifted on her scales in sunlight, in the deep green dark of her eyes. Those eyes were captivating, in the worst way; a man could lose himself in that gaze. Briefly.
Her tail broke trees on the forest slope. He could hear their snapping, and the sudden flurried protest of the birds. That made him realize how quiet the world was, else. The fire had been a raucous thing, hissing and crackling; with that stamped out, he could hear his own tense breathing, the girl’s too and her uncle’s. The dragon that was so much larger, that could contain them all within the hollow of her armpit, he couldn’t hear her breath at all. Perhaps she didn’t breathe. What would an immortal need with air?
No matter. Her mouth held a more immediate interest now. What she would need with food was a question too, but that didn’t stop her swallowing men.
She reached her long neck down and the reek of her overswept them all, sea sludge and salt decay. He might have gagged if he hadn’t been so in thrall to the moment, and to her.
Her mouth opened. Her gape was vivid and immense. She had colors in her throat if you could see that far, if you could look past the teeth and tongue. Courage is often pretense; it was still possible to pretend—if only to himself—that he was a courageous man, when in truth he was only at the limits of what he could feel.
It wasn’t him she reached for, yet. Perhaps that made it easier.
He was impressed with Han, a little, because the boy still didn’t move. He was still fighting her, apparently. Or else he had lost all control, all contact with his body. Perhaps he only wanted her to get on with it, one quick lunge, one snap and gone …
SHE DID lunge, she did snap.
SHE MISSED him.
Her head slammed forward like a snake in its certainty, and slid aside like a drunk man’s fist that cannot find its aim.
She reared back, hissing, very like a snake; and the boy stood before her, very small, and said, “Don’t. Not that. I think you’ve eaten me already, as much as matters.”
The dragon must have disagreed. She tried again and missed again, and was seemingly as baffled as Li Ton. The boy apparently had some control over her, some access to her mind, even with the chains cut. That was strange—but he did still wear the iron cuffs and collar, even if the links hung loose that used to bind them all together. All that iron was etched with characters of control. They must still hold some measure of potency. And the boy was his, and—
No. The boy was not his. If anything, they were all the dragon’s.
He thought they were talking, the dragon and the boy; he could hear it in the silence between them, in the stillness.
He thought perhaps he could hear a promise of safety, for this little time at least, in the slow iron creaking of the dragon’s skin as she settled more heavily onto the rock, like a creature intending not after all to slay and go. He had attended enough parleys in the field, he could tell when the immediate threat went away and the serious talki
ng began.
How do you talk to, how do you parley with a dragon? Li Ton couldn’t imagine what was happening in the boy’s head, or in hers.
Slowly, boldly, Li Ton took one step back up the path, and then another. He was ashamed now to be the one farthest from the dragon. It had been the wise move, even the strong move in its moment; now it was wrong.
They were all exhausted. The boy was in the worst case, but there was nothing he could do for the boy just now. The girl and the doctor were both of them unused to hard labor, and to the fear and shock of war. He had been made for it, once. Then he was unmade, unmanned, in the emperor’s punishment rooms; then he had been made again. He had laid muscle over damage, mind over muscle. He could work himself until he fell, and he very seldom fell.
The doctor was squatting on his haunches like a man at his uttermost limit, very close to falling. The girl was torn between caring for her uncle and running to the boy. While Li Ton would have claimed command anyway, he did think that he had earned it, if only by being stronger. Or more experienced, or right. He wouldn’t say wiser, even now, but he did think he was right.
He went to them, to the doctor largely, and said, “Can you stand?”
To nobody’s surprise, it was the girl who answered. “Of course he can stand, if he needs to,” meaning I will help him if you give me reason, meaning I would rather stay here, meaning I would rather be closer to Han. All too obviously she expected him to order them away, back to the boat if they could get there, if the dragon would let them go.
