The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

  “You know nothing, old man. Had you been willing to let me take my child and go, no threat would have come against your house.” Such words sounded incongruous in Anna’s high-pitched child’s voice, but it was the only one available to him.

  In the back of her own mind, Anna cried out, but Kalami ignored her.

  “Do not waste your time with us,” he said. “Hung-Tse is falling. Isavalta will fall. I only want to take my daughter back to the Holy Island so we will be able to aid our own during the time that follows.”

  “Were you a living man, I might take your word,” said Lien softly. “But you are of the dead. You will drink up the life of this child, and then of any others who you touch. You will give all to the Old Witch because you cannot stop yourself. It is now your nature and your dictate.”

  “I have no dictate!” Kalami shouted. “Do not stand against me, Lien.”

  In response, Lien drew back his hand and tossed out a length of silken ribbon that shimmered in the moonlight. Kalami threw Anna to the ground before the stream, and the ribbon passed overhead. Her hands grasped the bloody stone and he heaved her to her feet so she could throw it hard. The effort made her scream, but the stone caught Lien squarely on the knee, knocking him off balance.

  Kalami took command of Anna and together they ran. The gate would be locked, but its slats were spaced to prevent a grown man from creeping through, not a slender child. Anna’s heart and lungs labored and her bare feet stung. Distantly, he felt her calling to him, wanting answers, wanting comfort, but there was no time for that now.

  A pair of hands seized Anna’s shoulders, jerking her off her feet. They turned her roughly around, and Kalami saw the bodyguard, Mae Shan, tall and angry in the moonlight.

  “It’s late for mischief, mistress,” she said coolly.

  Startled, Kalami’s control of Anna slipped for a moment. “Help me, Mae Shan,” she gasped, her tiny frame shaking. “I don’t know what’s happening. Lien Jinn tried to take Father away. Father …”

  “I’m taking you back into the house, mistress,” said Mae Shan. “It’s not safe for you to be out.”

  “No!” cried Anna, struggling in Mae Shan’s grip. But the bodyguard was evidently used to this, and she easily kept a firm hold of Anna while propelling her toward the house where a light appeared in the windows of the lower story.

  “Mae Shan, he’s going to try to take Father away,” said Anna. “Don’t let him do this. I won’t be able to get to the Holy Island.”

  Mae Shan said nothing, she just kept walking, her hands heavy on Anna’s shoulders.

  “You’re supposed to keep me safe!” wailed the child.

  “I am, mistress,” was all Mae Shan said.

  A reply, Kalami realized, he had been expecting. The guard was unimaginative, but she was steadfast. Anna would not reach her through such pleading.

  Hush, Anna, he told her. Be still. We must wait our chance.

  “What’s happening? Why are they afraid of you?” Anna whispered.

  Your guard does not understand, so she fears. Her uncle … Anna’s quick ears caught Lien’s footfall coming up behind. Her uncle seeks to curry favor with those now in power in Isavalta by delivering you to them.

  “But I thought the dowager …”

  The dowager is no more, Anna. Her son rules Isavalta now, along with his wife who is of Hastinapura. The name of the southern empire sent a chill through Anna’s mind and Kalami was pleased to feel it. She has clever sorcerers to aid her, and they will be very glad to make use of you.

  “I don’t want to go there,” murmured Anna.

  I will not let them take you, but we must be watchful and wait for our time to escape. Trust me, Anna, keep silent and let me help you when the time is right.

  He felt her acquiescence and let her, in turn, feel his pride and approval. So much, so strange, and so fast, especially for such a young child, and yet she was still ready and able to obey her father. There was obviously much to be said for Hung-Tse’s emphasis on filial piety.

  He did not dare let them enter the house. There would be locks there that no working of his, or Anna’s, could quickly undo. But the memories his daughter had shared with him showed him a way.

  The bodyguard who paced behind her with one hand on Anna’s shoulder carried a knife beneath her sash, and Anna knew exactly where.

  They reached the stone steps that led to the back door of the house. For one brief moment, Lien was in arm’s reach.

  Let me work, Anna, murmured Kalami to his daughter, and he made Anna shrink, just a little toward Mae Shan.

  Lien set his foot upon the stair. Kalami twisted Anna in her guard’s grip and she snatched at the knife. Mae Shan shouted. Lien turned.

  Kalami moved Anna’s arms and plunged the knife deep into Lien’s belly.

  Lien’s eyes widened in surprise, as the blood fountained out, spattering Anna and Mae Shan with bitter warmth. He did not pause to wrench the knife free again. While Mae Shan stood frozen, Kalami ducked Anna beneath her arms and ran, holding out her hands and arms that dripped red with Lien’s life blood. Here was all the power he needed to make their escape.

  In the back of her own mind, Anna was screaming. Terror poured through her in waves as he made them race back toward the trees, toward the stream, before the blood dried and hardened and became useless.

  Anna, Anna, calm yourself. Calm yourself. I need your help.

  But the child would not be calm and Kalami realized this much he would have to do himself. For him to cross back into the Land of Death and Spirit should be a fairly simple matter, what would be difficult was bringing Anna with him.

  Listening to his young daughter scream in the back of her own mind, Kalami ran. He could not hear clearly, but there did not seem to be any footfalls behind him yet, and the brook was ahead, rippling in the light of the sinking moon. He paused Anna and on the bottom of her bare feet he smeared Lien’s cooling blood.

  Do not fight me, Anna. I need your magics.

  But Anna had grown no more coherent, and now he heard running, he heard shouts to wake the house. Mae Shan was on her way.

  Kalami steeled himself and reached. He reached into Anna’s blood, and into her bones. He reached out through her skin and senses. He stretched the whole of himself, deep within and far without. He made her run, leaving bloody footprints on the grass, lifting her bloody hands to the wind, panting out the words of the spell like a frantic prayer.

  “Beyond life there is a forest. Within the forest there is a river. At the end of the river is another shore. On the other shore, there waits the home of Valin Kalami. Breath and blood, carry Anna Kalami to the river. Jukka and Keiji carry Anna Kalami to the river’s end. My heart’s blood, my breath, my life, carry Anna Kalami to the home of Valin Kalami.”

  Anna’s feet hit the running water, stumbling and skidding over the stones. Weak and disoriented, she was no longer able to keep Kalami from loosening the depths of her power. As mortal blood mixed with water, water’s song, and words, Anna’s power came flooding to the surface to be worked into the needed shape, to join the stream with the river Life that flowed through the Shifting Lands.

  “Beyond life there is a forest,” Kalami threw the words out joyfully, full of night and power and freedom. As the spell began again, the bodyguard charged through the grove like one of night’s own demons.

  Mae Shan! Anna would have cried the name aloud if she could.

  Mae Shan lunged forward, but it was too late. The garden split open like a rotted fruit, and they were on another shore.

  Anna vanished and Mae Shan stared openmouthed in a night gone suddenly silent. It was only gradually she was able to hear the chattering of the stream again. Training made her want to search the banks, to beat the trees and bushes looking for the fugitive, but she knew that would be futile. Wherever Kalami had taken Anna, the child was beyond Mae Shan’s reach.

  She had failed.

  The realization crashed down on her. Mae Shan stagger
ed. The solemn little girl was gone, lost to the possession of a restless ghost, and Mae Shan who had sworn to protect her with life and breath stood here, gaping like a fish. She should not have fallen asleep. She should have known even Uncle Lien’s house could be breached …

  Thinking of Uncle Lien turned Mae Shan around and she ran back to the house.

  He was still alive when she reached him. Auntie crouched beside him, trying to stanch the blood with her bare hands, tears pouring from her eyes. The blood that oozed from his wound was dark and sluggish now. His eyes were bright with pain and his breathing was far too fast as his body tried to work muscles that had been torn by Anna’s attack.

  No. Not Anna’s. Kalami’s. It was Kalami that did this, never Tsan Nu … Anna.

  Mae Shan rolled him out of the puddle that had formed and tore at his sash.

  “You must get help. Who can we summon?” she asked breathlessly. She wrestled his jacket free and folded it, pressing it hard against the great well in his belly.

  “I should stay,” began Auntie. “You are faster …”

  “I don’t know anyone!” snapped back Mae Shan, forgetting manners and piety together. “Go!”

  Auntie rose to her feet and dashed across the yard on bare feet, running for the gate. Mae Shan bent low over her uncle. The jacket was already soaked through, leaving her hands sticky with his blood. “Uncle, what can I get you? Have you a spell …”

  Froth bubbled around Uncle Lien’s lips. “No,” he rasped. “The Last One is waiting. I am to go with him.”

  “No, Uncle.” An unfamiliar wildness filled Mae Shan. “I need you. He’s taken her from the world. How am I to find her without you?”

  The light in Lien’s eyes faded and Mae Shan pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stop the cry, but for a moment, the old sorcerer rallied.

  “My sash …” he murmured. Keeping one hand on her useless bandage, Mae Shan laid the broad black sash in her uncle’s outstretched hand.

  “Get me on my side,” he whispered.

  Mae Shan bit down all protests and rolled him so he could face the sash, and the blood, and his niece.

  “Cai Yun,” he breathed as the blood began to flow anew and he coughed, his chest heaving and spasming and yet more froth dripping down into his scant beard. Mae Shan was sure this must be the end, but with a groan, Lien reached out a trembling hand to his own blood where it spilled onto the grass. He trailed his fingers in the blood that smelled of iron and the sea. Lien touched his bloody fingers to his sash, tracing crude characters, writing some message to the gods. At the same time, he began to sing. His voice was high and broken and the words were meaningless to Mae Shan. But he seemed to gain strength through the singing, his eyes becoming clearer and his tremors easing. Maybe she would tie the bespelled sash around his waist and he would heal himself. Maybe he summoned another sorcerer to his side, or placated the Last One. He was a great sorcerer. He would not leave her alone.

  Slowly, clumsily, Lien tied a knot in the sash. He coughed out one breath over it and pulled the ends tight.

  “Mae …” he coughed again.

  “I am here, Uncle.”

  He coughed again, pain racking him and more blood pouring onto the ground. It smelled foul, and Mae Shan knew his bowels had been punctured. He was going to die. If not now, then later after days of lingering, painful infection. Mae Shan felt as if her heart were crushed.

  “Take this to my boat at the river’s edge,” Uncle Lien said so softly Mae Shan had to bend close to his mouth to hear. “You will know it by the signs painted blue on its side. Tie this sash to the mast and raise the sail, then undo the knot I have tied. The boat will sail you to Isavalta through the Shifting Lands. Speak my name in the court. You will find help. Do not …” His eyes lost their focus, but he spoke on, ever fainter while the tremors took his hands. “Do not leave the boat once you begin your journey. Invite no one on board with you. Give nothing away, accept nothing you are given. Believe nothing you see in the Shifting Lands … Pray, Niece, pray to Heaven you get through. I see the future here and Heaven must tremble at it … he must not keep hold of her. They must not be able to use her.”

  “I swear, Uncle,” said Mae Shan.

  But Uncle Lien had no more words for her. His eyes closed, and all his body went slack. In a moment, his eyes opened for the final time, still and staring, and Mae Shan knew the Last One had taken charge of him. Lien would now have his name written in the final records and all his deeds tallied. In three days, he would be led to Heaven so the gods could choose his next life.

  Mae Shan’s mind felt numb, but oddly clear. With deliberate care she lifted up her uncle’s body and carried it to the scroll room, laying it out straight, folding his hands in an attitude of prayer and repose, mopping up the filth as best she could. Whispering apologies to her ancestors, she took the white silk lineages down from the walls and covered him over. She had no other shroud. She would not have her auntie return and find him left abandoned in the garden without reverence or regard.

  She lit the incense from the charcoal in the covered brazier that still smoldered beside the altar. She touched her forehead to the floor five times, trying hard to pray, but her hollow heart refused to fill with any such words in this room where just a few hours before Uncle Lien had helped her mourn for lost Wei Lin.

  Where was Auntie? When would she come back? Was she delayed in the streets? Did she believe there was still hope, or had she felt his spirit fly away?

  Mae Shan went around to all the windows and doors and flung them wide open so that the wind would blow any malignant spirits through the house and they would not be trapped inside to work evil with the blood and bones of her uncle. Auntie Cai Yun would see this and know what had happened.

  I am sorry, Aunt. I cannot wait for your return. One more wrong. One more time she must choose duty over blood, and Goddess of Mercy, there was so much blood …

  Stop this, she ordered herself. Realign your heart and your fool head. You heard what Uncle Lien said, and your duty is still before you.

  But neither head nor heart would clear for such urgings. She picked up the knotted sash and her spear. Staring at the blood for a long moment, another slow thought formed and she went upstairs and reclaimed her bow and arrows. Her knife she left where it had fallen in the grass outside. She could not bear to touch the thing again.

  Such a soldier, such a guard. Perhaps the Phoenix meant me to die with the rest. Perhaps I should use that knife to make the last apology for my uselessness.

  Even as she thought those words, she realized she might have done so, but Uncle Lien had laid a charge upon her.

  She had to try. She could not do otherwise.

  She shut the gate firmly behind her as she left the garden, with the idea that if there were any remaining spells of protection in the walls, that might help them hold. There was still no sign of Auntie.

  Praying for the dead and apologizing to the living, Mae Shan headed down to the river. Dawn was coming up, staining the water pink and gold and outlining the boats and barges running as fast they could away from disaster, and perhaps toward more disaster yet.

  Uncle Lien’s boat still waited at the end of the dock, all rigged and ready. Mae Shan was a little surprised. She would have thought this far too tempting a target for a thief or refugee to pass by. Perhaps those who had come down here to make their escape knew it belonged to a sorcerer, and a pirate, who might be able to track them down no matter how far they went.

  The boat itself was a small, shallow thing, with a mainmast and a bowsprit, seemingly made for short trips up and down the river. The gunwales had been painted with blue symbols in some writing she could not read, any more than she could understand the spell-song Uncle Lien had formed with his last breaths.

  She clambered aboard. The rocking of the deck beneath her feet felt instantly familiar, but at the same time she was at a loss. This vessel was very different from the flat-bottomed barge that she had helped her
father and brother pole up to market and back home. She had never learned to handle any other sort of vessel. As a soldier, it had been presumed that should she need to go anywhere by water, there would be sailors to transport her where she might need to go.

  Calling on old memories of Huaxing’s wharfs and docks, she undid the lashing on the sails and then the mooring on the boat. She found the pole and pushed off from the dock into the river’s current. Then she angled the steering oar to take the boat out toward the middle of the river. The wind caught her skin, drying tears she did not realize she had shed and bringing the scents of water and garbage, and very faintly, the smell of smoke.

  The boat slid into the stronger current near the middle of the river, and Mae Shan drifted, feeling the weight of Uncle Lien’s sash in her sleeve.

  She could escape this now. She could pole herself home, find her family. Their village had stood flood, famine, and disaster before. It had seen emperors and empires rise and fall again. Surely she’d be safe there.

  Before those thoughts could take a more tenacious hold, Mae Shan found the main line to hoist the sail. She hauled on it, lashing it around a block she assumed was there for the purpose. The snow-white canvas caught the wind and drew taut. The golden dawn light showed her that the canvas was not just plain white cloth. Woven into its surface, white on white, were patterns and symbols she could scarcely make out.

  Standing and staring did not seem a luxury she should take right now. Mae Shan pulled out the sash and tied one end to the mast. With fingers made warm by her work, she undid the knot Uncle Lien had tied so tightly. Then she stood on the bench by the steering oar, pointed her gaze down the river, gripped the oar shaft, and waited.

  Mae Shan had heard of the Land of Death and Spirit, but as she had no magic about her, she had no expectations of crossing it until the Last One led her to Heaven. She knew stories, of course. Everyone knew the tales about sages and clever children dealing with monsters who had emerged from the Shifting Lands. Her brothers and sisters told other stories about those monsters, who also ate those foolish sages and children who turned out to be impious, or not so clever after all. There were stories told around the fire or the stove at night, of ghosts and possessions, betrayed loves, or heroes who took their battles beyond the bounds of the world, right up to the shores of Heaven.