The Veiled Dragon

by Denning, Troy

  The witch lashed down into the black murk, and her dagger sliced harmlessly through air. The cinch strap around her horse’s belly popped loudly; then her saddle came loose. Ruha felt herself slipping down her mount’s flank and grabbed for the ylang oil. The cobblestones slammed into her shoulder, and her body went rigid with pain. She bounced head over heels, feet still caught in her stirrups, and came to a rest, her head spinning.

  The darkness around her exploded with clapping hooves and confused voices, both Shou and Elversian. A pair of steel horseshoes grazed Ruha’s leg; then a horse screamed and crashed to the street. The witch found her saddle horn. She untied the oil sack and kicked free of her stirrups. A sharp point tangled briefly in the thick cloth of her aba, then pushed through and bit deep into her side.

  For a moment, Ruha was too confused to realize what had happened. Then she felt a fiery sting and warm, wet blood spilling down her stomach. She screamed and rolled away, lashing out with her jambiya.

  The blade dragged. Something hot and sticky poured over her hand, and a rich, coppery smell filled her nostrils. The witch flipped her wrist and brought her weapon back to inflict the famous T-shaped wound that made the curved daggers so dangerous, but her foe had already vanished into the darkness.

  Ruha pulled the ylang oil closer and clutched it to her breast. A clamorous clash of steel rang out behind her as the Shou turned to meet their cult pursuers. The witch weaved her dagger through the darkness in a blind defense pattern, but a stinging anguish was spreading outward from her wound, and her arm would not move swiftly. The oil sack felt warm and sticky against her breast, but she knew by its smell that the fluid was only her own blood. Had any ylang oil spilled, she would surely have been nauseated by its sick-sweet smell.

  “Ruha?” Hsieh’s voice sounded shaky and weak.

  “Here, Minister.” Ruha heard someone step to her side; then a small Shou hand took her beneath her dagger arm. When it began to pull her up, she asked, “They did not steal your oil sack, did they?”

  The hand suddenly loosened its grasp, and Hsieh’s voice hissed, “I thought you had the oil.”

  Ruha did not hesitate; she swung her arm up backward and drove the tip of her jambiya deep into the imposter’s torso. The hand opened entirely and a haggish scream filled the witch’s ear. She scrambled to her feet and stumbled away as fast as she could, clutching the ylang oil to her breast and slashing her dagger blindly through darkness. After a few steps, the witch sniffed a familiar scent. The odor was fresher and not quite as cloying as the ylang oil she had smelled in Prince Tang’s spice refinery, but there could be no doubting it. She turned slightly off her course and followed the fragrance toward its source.

  A moment later, the witch stepped into the sunlight and found herself staring at Hsieh’s blood-spattered back. The mandarin reeked of ylang oil and still carried his burst sack over his shoulder, and in his hand he held the dark knight’s black sword. Ahead of him, the shadowy sorceress was groaning feebly and staggering through the deserted market plaza toward a looming, black-winged shape.

  * * * **

  After a hundred tries, Tang managed a flawless hurl. Flying sideways, the golden necklace hit Yanseldara’s staff, and the heavy amulet at the end whipped around and swung over its own chain. The choker slid down the shaft and stopped at the red-glowing pommel, which hung over Tang and his mother’s heads like a strange, ruby-flamed chandelier. The prince carefully pulled his rope taut, then walked around the ingot island to twine the line more securely about the shaft.

  “This no time to stretch legs, Brave Prince.” Lady Feng positioned herself directly beneath the staff. “Pull!”

  Tang climbed to the center of the island and hauled on the rope. The staff popped free and plummeted straight toward the head of the Third Virtuous Concubine, who stepped aside and plucked it from the air without allowing the topaz to strike the ingots. Before the prince could comment on her catch, she slipped the rope off the shaft, then took a small bundle from her mahogany chest and started down the slope.

  Tang gathered up his rope and empty waterskin and followed. “The passage is long one, Esteemed Mother. It would be better if you also had air.”

  “Cypress does not provide prisoners with sacks for air.” She opened her bundle and sat at the edge of the water. “But not to worry. With you doing work, I do not need breath.”

  Lady Feng began to breathe quick and shallow, forcing her body to absorb as much extra air as possible.

  Tang sat at her feet and tied her ankles together. “What of your spellbook?”

  “Even small amount of water ruins it.”

  “Your chest is waterproof.”

  Lady Feng glowered at him. “You already pull too much. Spellbook is safe enough here, with my other treasure.” She snatched the rope from his hand, then untied the jewelry he had used to weight the end. She tossed the necklace on the ingot pile. “With all my treasure.”

  Tang sighed, resigning himself to a return trip after Lady Feng recovered her senses and wanted her spellbook. He snatched his rope back, finished binding his mother’s ankles, and fastened the other end of the line to his waist. The prince filled his waterskin with air and tied it around his neck, then helped the Third Virtuous Concubine seal her mouth with a gag of waxed silk. She picked up Yanseldara’s staff, and soon they were in the water. Tang helped her out into the lake and swam over to where the treasure vault’s ceiling sloped down to meet the water.

  “Are you ready, Esteemed Mother?”

  Lady Feng took a few more breaths through her nose, then nodded and mumbled something that might have been, “No dawdling.”

  She plugged her nostrils, and Tang dove beneath the surface, dragging the Third Virtuous Concubine behind him. The light from the glowing spirit gem in Yanseldara’s staff illuminated the watery cavern in shimmering scarlet light, revealing a huge, winding passage that was not so much a single corridor as a confluence of smaller tunnels arriving from all directions. Despite the labyrinthine appearance, there was no doubt about which passage Cypress used; even if the other tunnels had been large enough to hold him, his stony scales had scoured hundreds of shallow furrows along the proper route.

  Although Tang could not be certain, the trip out of the treasure chamber seemed to go much faster than it had coming in. A slight current carried him forward even when he did nothing, while the light from the spirit gem made it much easier to find handholds. The prince drew himself yards at a pull, and he had just drawn his second breath from the air skin when the first brown hints of bog rot began to cloud the water. The rope grew slack as Lady Feng drifted toward him.

  Tang glanced back and saw his mother’s pop-eyed stare locked on his kicking heels. Her waxed gag and nostril plugs remained in place, but her cheeks were puffed-out and her face was crimson with the desire for breath. She scowled and waved him forward, then clamped her free hand over her mouth and nose.

  The prince looked ahead and pulled through the passage with renewed vigor. To his dismay, the water did not grow any murkier. The gentle current that had been pushing them forward died away. He started to worry that he had somehow lost his way, but that could not be. They had passed no side tunnels large enough to hold Cypress, and the walls in this passage still showed the deep scouring marks left by the dragon’s scales.

  Tang began to sense a dark presence ahead. For a moment, he feared it was their foe swimming up the passage; then he saw a curtain of gray stone at the end of the tunnel: Cypress had blocked the exit. The prince did not waste any of his precious breath lamenting the dragon’s foresight. He simply pulled himself to the boulder, then turned to take Yanseldara’s staff from his mother so he could search for gaps around the edges.

  Lady Feng’s pop-eye was fluttering in its socket. Her cheeks were no longer puffed out and her face had turned more purple than crimson. Though she still held her free hand clamped over her mouth, a small stream of bubbles was rising from between her fingers. Tang knew she had pulled her gag
aside to expel her breath and was struggling not to fill her lungs with water. Only one gulp of air remained in the air skin. The prince’s own lungs were burning with the desire for another breath, but he pushed the sack toward his mother’s mouth.

  Lady Feng caught his arm. Her squinty eye rolled forward and looked Tang up and down, and the Third Virtuous Concubine smiled. She shook her head and pushed the air skin back toward the prince’s mouth, then pointed from his lips to hers.

  Tang nodded and expelled his breath, then sucked the last of the air from the skin. He held it in his lungs only a moment before placing his mouth over his mother’s and blowing a long gasp into her lungs. It was the third time the air had been used, and he did not know how much good it would do her, but he hoped that it would at least reduce the temptation to open her mouth.

  Lady Feng accepted the gift, then pushed Yanseldara’s staff into his hand and pulled his dagger from his belt. Tang scowled in confusion. Before he realized what she was doing, the Third Virtuous Concubine grabbed his free arm and drew the blade across his empty palm. As blood clouded around his fingers, she opened her mouth and spoke. Water rushed into her lungs, and her body began to convulse instantly as it instinctively tried to cough. Horrified at the sight of what he took to be his mother’s fast-approaching death, the prince reached out to draw her close.

  Lady Feng pushed him away and pointed at the bloody cloud in the water beside them. To Tang’s surprise, it was coalescing into the shape of a man’s head.

  Suddenly, the Third Virtuous Concubine threw her arms around the prince’s neck. A series of powerful convulsions racked her chest; then her body went limp and her lips fell open. Tang clamped his hand over her mouth and tried not to think of the terrible burning in his own chest.

  When the prince turned back to the crimson head, he was amazed to see the familiar grim face of General Fui D’hang floating in the water beside him.

  Fui’s head tipped forward, as though bowing, and floated toward a small side passage. Tang jammed Yanseldara’s staff into his belt, then grabbed a handhold and pulled himself after the loyal general.

  * * * **

  Cypress stood in the heart of the sunlit plaza, towering high above a sea of tent-roofed stalls. His empty eye sockets turned in the direction of Ruha and Hsieh. The dozens of lances and arrows hanging from his thick scales hinted at the fight Vaerana’s Maces had put up before—before what? The witch had no way to guess whether the dragon had killed the Lady Constable and all her men, or had simply discovered the ruse and flown away.

  Save for the groaning shadow-sorceress and the meat animals clucking and snorting inside their cages, the market was silent and deserted, with bolts of cloth strewn through the narrow lanes and dried legumes spilling onto the ground from open sacks. Ox wagons and pushcarts sat abandoned upon the road that circumscribed the plaza, and all the buildings that fronted it had their windows shuttered and barred against the impending acid storm. On the far side of the bazaar, almost directly behind the dragon, loomed a handsome building of marble pillars and arched entranceways that could only be Elversult Hall.

  The clang of steel against steel still rang from the darkness at Ruha’s back, but it seemed wiser to risk that battle than to venture into the open with the dragon. The witch reached for Hsieh’s shoulder, then groaned sharply as her bleeding wound protested with lances of pain. She settled for the mandarin’s arm and pulled him into the blackness after her.

  They took no more than two steps before Cypress’s deep-voiced incantation rumbled across the marketplace. The sunlight burned the magical darkness into ash, which fell to the ground and spread a grimy layer of soot over the many corpses—Shou, cult, and horse—piled atop the cobblestones. Five blood-covered Shou were bouncing between three and four attackers each, striking as often with a driving elbow or flying foot as with whirling blades. The street beyond was clear as far as the intersection, but beyond that it remained thickly choked with refugees.

  The cobblestones trembled with the heavy thud of the dragon’s step. Seemingly oblivious to his wounds, Hsieh leapt a mangled horse and charged toward his outnumbered men.

  “Stay close, Lady Ruha!”

  The witch clenched her teeth against the pain in her side and circled the dead beast, shuddering with fear each time she felt the ground tremble with Cypress’s heavy step. Hsieh reached the battle and swung his sword at the nearest cult member. The man raised a long-handled axe to parry. The minister’s dark blade passed through both weapon and armor with no more effect than a shadow. The instant the black sliver touched the fellow’s skin, however, it grew as solid as steel and cleaved him down the center.

  After that, Hsieh wielded his weapon as though it were black lightning, felling one, then two, three, and four more enemies in as many eye blinks. The remaining Shou quickly seized the advantage and began to slay their attackers.

  Ruha was beginning to have visions of turning the remarkable weapon against Cypress when the last cult member fell. The witch stepped over a Shou corpse and rushed to follow Hsieh toward the intersection; then she heard the dragon’s voice rumbling with another magic invocation. She scooped a handful of bloody pebbles off the street and turned, hurling them at her foe and uttering her briefest stone spell.

  The rocks streaked straight into Cypress’s empty eyes, striking with a loud, sharp crackle. The dragon’s head snapped back; then a spray of bone shards and shattered scales erupted from the back of his skull. He roared, spraying a fine black mist into the air, and then began to shake his head.

  Ruha turned to follow Hsieh. She was not disappointed; it would take a hundred such attacks to destroy Cypress, but at least she had interrupted the dragon’s spell—or so she thought, until a corpse’s lukewarm hand caught her by the ankle.

  Ruha twisted to avoid landing on the ylang oil and came down on her wounded side. The impact drove spikes of pain deep into her body. The witch found herself struggling for breath, and she knew she was dangerously close to blacking out. The corpse grabbed hold with its second hand and dragged itself forward. She looked down and saw that her attacker was the dead Shou over which she had stepped earlier. She tried to kick free, but it felt no pain from her blows and would not let go.

  Hsieh appeared at Ruha’s side and brought his sword down across the corpse’s shoulders. The dark blade passed over the zombie’s body like a shadow, causing no harm at all. The mandarin’s narrow eyes grew as round as saucers; then the arms of a dead cultist grabbed him from behind and hurled him to the ground.

  The cobblestones shuddered as Cypress resumed walking. Ruha craned her neck and saw that she and Hsieh were not the only ones in dire circumstances. The dragon had animated all the corpses in the street. Though the zombies were slow and clumsy, they were pressing the Shou survivors by virtue of their numbers alone.

  Ruha’s attacker grabbed hold of her belt, then slammed its free fist into the pit of her stomach. She tried to scream in pain, but the blow had driven her breath away, and she could do no more than grunt. The zombie raised its fist to strike again. She released the oil sack and deflected the punch with her forearm. In the same motion, the witch drove the heel of her free hand into the side of her attacker’s head and heard the temple snap. Pushing with all the strength in her legs, she rolled onto her side and threw the dead Shou off.

  Ruha grabbed the oil sack and leapt up. As she turned to flee, the dragon’s huge shadow fell over her body. She sprinted for the intersection. The pain in her side was excruciating, but she managed to ignore it and rush forward at a pace that would have made a hare-hound proud. She kept expecting Cypress to say something, to command her to stop or at least to taunt her, but he held his tongue. Ruha found the silence even more alarming than the hiss of his lungs filling to spray acid. The dragon was thinking of only one thing: killing her. To comment on his intentions would have been a meaningless waste of breath.

  The street trembled again, and Ruha knew she had no hope of outrunning her pursuer. She summoned a
wind spell to mind and darted toward the street side, then heard the whoosh of the dragon’s huge talons slicing through the air behind her. The witch forced herself not to look toward her pursuer’s face; the last time she met his gaze, he had nearly taken over her mind.

  Ruha angled toward the entrance to the nearest tenement. In the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Cypress’s other huge claw sweeping down to pluck her up. She slammed her feet against the street and managed to slow herself, allowing the black hand to sweep past without catching her. Then, feeling like a spiny iguana dodging a hungry Bedine boy, she darted forward again.

  The tenement was barely three paces away. Ruha took a deep breath, then uttered her wind spell and exhaled. A ferocious gust of air howled from her lips, blasting the heavy oaken door into splinters. The witch rushed blindly into the building’s deep-shadowed interior. Three paces inside, she stumbled over a step and slammed face first into a wooden staircase.

  Ruha gathered herself together and spun around, then barely leapt aside in time to prevent Hsieh’s dark sword from piercing her heart. The mandarin stumbled over the same stair as the witch, but managed to recover more gracefully by picking up his feet and landing two steps up the stairwell. Behind him came two of his men, who also displayed their incredible agility by managing to catch each other when they also tripped over the step. The witch did not know how any of them had escaped the zombies—in a manner similar to how she had, she supposed—but she was glad for the company.

  “Where now?” Hsieh squinted at Ruha with his uncovered eye.

  “I do not know.”

  Ruha stepped around the stairwell and ran down a broad, dirty corridor toward the back of the building. As Hsieh and his men moved to follow, Cypress’s hand burst through the doorway and caught the last one in line. The warrior howled in pain, and Hsieh raised his sword to charge the doorway.