Five Kingdoms

by T. A. Miles

  The spirit or avatar watched him, as if patiently eyeing prey. Shirisae began considering the method and order of her impending attacks against the centaurs and potentially this spirit as well. It was then that Xu Liang straightened, and took steps toward the pass. Thoughts of battle halted, and Shirisae very nearly commanded Kirlothden toward the mystic, to spare whatever form of ambush would befall him in the pass. She didn’t know what held her still, but she found herself staring, watching motionless as Xu Liang walked beneath the spirit’s gaze and into its transparent form.

  Shirisae took in a breath and held it, looking to the tops of the rocks to either side of the corridor, then back at Xu Liang, who was intact and safe. Nothing had happened.

  The spirit stood and leaped into the air, spreading wings while its immense size pared down in flight, becoming no greater than a mountain cat while it rejoined the physical form it had been hiding near the top of the rocks. She said nothing, but only cast a peculiar smile down upon the pass and the man who had stepped within it before scaling the cliff wall and disappearing from view.

  The sound of the centaurs’ horn followed.

  “Into the pass!” Fu Ran shouted.

  “Go, Taya!” Tarfan barked.

  His niece snapped Blue Crane’s reins, though the animal was in motion as if it required no encouragement. The gray steed went quickly to its master, pausing so that Xu Liang might resume his place in the saddle, and it was the mystic who led their flight, followed immediately by four of his guards. Guang Ci lingered as an unspoken debate over who would protect the rear ensued.

  “All of you, go ahead,” Tristus said. “Let me handle it.”

  Shirisae did not hesitate, guiding her mount after Xu Liang, anticipating that further danger may await at the opposite end of the pass. Guang Ci quickly followed after her, and she caught a glimpse of white in the corner of her vision when she dared look back, stating that Alere had agreed with Tristus’ undisclosed plan. Whether or not Fu Ran was as easily convinced that the knight had a plan at all, he must have come. Within moments there came the solemn tolling of the Dawn Blade. A golden light colored the mist as it reflected off the walls of the passage, and the sound of bleating and moaning centaurs followed.

  The peculiar bodies of the centaurs were hurled back from the pass and into one another, as they were assailed by the sound and light of Dawnfire. Many of them tumbled awkwardly, if not damagingly over the earth and into trees. Many others were quick to recover, or avoided the brunt of the spear’s force.

  Tristus looked quickly over his shoulder to see his friends still making their way down the length of the pass. In so doing, he noticed fragments of the rock face sliding over itself, sand and bits of rock sprinkling onto the floor of the corridor. It did not take an exaggerated imagination to determine that the tremendous tolling of the Dawn Blade had potentially been responsible.

  He turned his attention to the forest. The centaur raiders approached with alarming ferocity. Taking Dawnfire in both hands, he braced himself atop Sylvashen to defend. The first beast that came at him was struck a heavy blow to its collar region, which sent it reeling to the side. The next received the reversal of the strike, aided in momentum by Sylvashen’s sudden turn of protest. The shaft cracked a bone, which was not discouragement enough for his assailant. Tristus brought the butt of the spear up to meet either chin or neck—he couldn’t notice which was struck, only that the centaur was knocked back. He jabbed at a third, which agilely maneuvered out of range and to the side. Tristus swung Dawnfire after it, sweeping the spear low, then bringing it high. Blood trailed the long head of the spear while he continued to bring the weapon upward, chancing another rotation of the weapon. In those moments, Dawnfire became light as air, and seemed to wield itself. The shaft rolled over his fingers and hand, trailing itself with its own golden glow, which formed a spinning disk. The disk floated just with the spear, as if it had made itself a shield, but in the very instant the rotation slowed or stopped, the disk was released. The magic rang off its source when Tristus lowered it and brought it under control. A wheel of light moved against the earth and all in its path. Once more, centaurs were thrown back, sparing Tristus the moments it would take them to recover and regroup for further attack.

  Behind him, rocks were filtering downward, pelting the path like a burst of driving rain. He glanced over his shoulder, seeing that the last of their company was approaching the opposite end. In front of him, the centaurs were pulling their animal forms back onto all fours. He guided Sylvashen into the pass, and bid him run.

  With nothing save a narrow path aligned in front of him, the steed ran as if it were given free rein of Heaven’s pastures. Tristus leaned himself forward in the saddle, one hand gripping the reins while the other clutched the Dawn Blade. Above the beating of Sylvashen’s hooves upon the stone floor, he heard the clatter of a veritable herd filing into the narrow space. Ahead of him, he saw Gai Ping staged with a bow. Within an instant, the elder’s arrow was arcing over Tristus’ head. He heard an inhuman cry of agitation or pain, followed by the collision of a body against stone. Chancing a glance over his shoulder, he witnessed centaurs bounding over their fallen.

  Tristus gave his focus solely to the exit ahead of him. Sylvashen sprinted for it with strength that didn’t allow Tristus to doubt. He foresaw them soon shooting through the other side of the pass…enraged centaurs attempting to follow them out. Even if another confrontation persuaded them to turn back for the time being, he suspected they would merely make their way through the pass later and attempt to catch their company in the night. He determined to make it more difficult for the centaurs, and drew back on Sylvashen’s reins.

  The stallion wanted to run, above anything—it virtually demanded that freedom. But we must all play our part when we’re needed, Sylvashen, Tristus said silently to the animal. He tightened his grip on the reins and continued to pull back, using vocal command to expedite the process of convincing the young horse to obey.

  When at last Sylvashen broke from his hard run, settling himself into a less breaking speed, Tristus guided the animal around so that his flanks were to either end of the corridor. He heard Tarfan and Fu Ran protest from the safer end, but ignored their urges for him to continue to run. Looking in the direction of the oncoming centaurs, Tristus began rotating Dawnfire, generating its glow.

  The centaurs had been virtually crashing through the corridor, like a dark wave. Seeing his movements, individuals began to slow, though some drove harder toward him. Tristus raised the Dawn Blade, continuing to spin it. The long spear had only just enough room to perform the task. With care over the small amount of clearance the corridor allowed, Tristus brought the spinning disk of golden fire to shoulder level at its center, then let it go.

  The light raced down the natural passage, tolling its war cry. Centaurs were brought down, and so were heavy sheets of rock and earth. The clear side was near. Tristus aimed Sylvashen for his allies and allowed the horse to run out of the way of danger. The sound of falling rocks grew quite abrasive, sharply cracking against each other and the walls. Tristus passed through the exit, trailed by plumes of dust that mingled aggressively with the mist. When he slowed Sylvashen again and turned to face the passage, there no longer was one. Rocks had filled the space enough that the opposite end was not visible and perhaps not accessible without a hard climb.

  “Of all the feather-brained schemes!” Tarfan bellowed from his shared seat upon Shirisae’s mount. “You might have killed yourself—and the horse!”

  Tristus smiled, partly from the lingering exhilaration. When he’d collected enough breath, he said, “Sylvashen ran as if carried by angels.”

  “Angels again! The boy must have been hit on the head with a rock!”

  Tristus shook his head with some mild amusement while Tarfan blustered.

  “You did well,” Shirisae said to him, then moved away from him, carrying the complaining
dwarf with her.

  Alere came afterward. He aligned Breigh beside Sylvashen so that they could view the remains of the pass side-by-side. “We should take advantage of what time this may have bought by making ground to the mountains.”

  “Do you think the centaurs will persist?” Tristus asked. A part of him did not believe they would, though a part of him was also envisioning their numbers hopping over the landslide with the ease of mountain goats.

  “I cannot say,” Alere admitted. And then, “It’s better to be safe.”

  “I would never argue that with you, my friend,” Tristus replied, and with no signs of the centaurs immediately pursuing, they made their way toward the others.

  Into Sheng Fan

  The setting sun smeared burning tones of coral and red around the sparse patterns of the forest while the incessant mist caught the shifting light of day. If the centaurs knew of a way to quickly come across the woods apart from the now ruined pass, they did not seem to have taken it. As well, the forest guardian had not appeared again.

  Shirisae did not believe that she was any form of a god, but merely a creature with some magical capabilities. She suspected the intent was to trap them, for whatever her ultimate purpose may have been. That the creature set down her own rules and then adhered to them in allowing the group to pass seemed eccentricity. Or it may have been that she had no interest in entanglement with the centaurs, who also had seemed disinterested in a conflict with her. Shirisae noted that the man-beasts had waited for the guardian to leave before attacking.

  “Does our passage mean that you’re doomed?” Taya was asking their mystic.

  The question drew Shirisae’s interest at once, and she looked to Xu Liang for his answer.

  “It was a riddle,” answered the man who was growing more enigmatic to her by the day.

  Tarfan made an unconvinced sound from behind her. “A riddle, you say?”

  “Yes,” Xu Liang replied. “And the answer was none of us and therefore all of us.”

  The dwarf’s next vocalization was of confusion more than comprehension, though he eventually said. “It was…aye.”

  “Would you explain that?” Shirisae asked, though her tone came out somewhat insistently.

  Xu Liang calmly obliged. “None of us would have been considered forsaken, unless we approached the pass. The very act of doing so would condemn us, which meant that at that point whomever approached would be forsaken and allowed to pass.”

  “But, even under that logic, wouldn’t one who was not condemned before approaching have set into motion the closing of the pass?”

  “The conditions that were put forth negated the consequences,” Xu Liang said. He closed his eyes for a moment, and sat upon Blue Crane exuding confidence that seemed to have gathered about him and embedded in the very fabric of his robes, and the fiber of his hair. Logic was his craft, tempered with patience and augmented by daring. He learned because he believed that all things could be learned and he would not back away from what seemed impossible to comprehend. This was Shirisae’s most recent assessment of him. She felt certain that she would have a new layer before they’d arrived at his homeland.

  “You are either right,” Alere put in from behind them, “or you are doomed.”

  “You put a fine point on things, elf,” Tarfan told him. “Finer than most care for.”

  Shirisae found herself still dissatisfied, and asked, “If the solution to her riddle was so simple, it seems that it could be solved accidentally, which would mean that no one was in jeopardy to start.”

  “It could be interpreted that way, Shirisae,” Xu Liang admitted.

  His lack of arrogance startled her. It may have been that she was still searching for some evidence that would justify her early assessment of him. If that were true, she suspected it was her lingering pride in the matter. She had been very quick making determinations about her allies before they could be considered allies. Her judgments and decisions had been hastened by what she believed the Phoenix had told her. Even though she had made an effort to reconsider—and had let her ideas on Tristus go—when it came to Xu Liang, she still found herself struggling to relinquish her pride, even as she willingly observed and discovered new facets of him. When met with contradiction, her instinct was to become aggressive, and stubborn. Not even family was excluded when the fire of her defiance sought to consume and overtake.

  Tristus’ gentle voice distracted her from her thoughts while he made his own contribution to the topic. “It may have been the creature’s intention to have us lose ourselves to debate, amongst one another and within ourselves. By that we all would have indeed been lost to a void, held to inaction while we argued, or perhaps she believed we would turn against each other.”

  “Maybe she only wanted to delay us until the centaurs arrived,” Fu Ran suggested.

  All of that may have been true, but Shirisae no longer cared. The forest guardian was behind them now, and it was Xu Liang who had stepped forward to guide them. Her mother’s trust had not been misplaced, and neither was hers. Whatever awaited them in Sheng Fan, the power of the Phoenix would be present to aid in rectifying it.

  The ground underfoot gradually became less treacherous. The cold air remained dry and what snow drifted was as dust settling upon neglected shelves. The oddities of the valley remained in the valley while they ascended into the foothills of a mountain range that was shared with the northern parts of Sheng Fan. There appeared one last significant recess of the terrain before entering the main body of hills and mountains.

  Fu Ran sighed, reining in at the top of a steep ledge that overlooked a large meadow of tall and hearty pale flowers. On the opposite side lay the mountains that would carry them across the border between Aer and Sheng Fan. “This is as far as I’d better go.”

  “There was no need for you to come this far,” Xu Liang told the former guard.

  “I wanted to,” Fu Ran said, looking at the land below them, frowning more thoughtfully than he usually did. He was a man of action, first and foremost. It required significant circumstances to put him into a more meditative state.

  Xu Liang decided to give him time to gather his thoughts. The others moved around them, toward the meadow to set up camp as the sun slowly dropped beneath the horizon. The tranquility was lulling, but also unsettling.

  “Shouldn’t you at least wait until morning?” Xu Liang asked, interrupting the calm and whatever ruminations passed across Fu Ran’s consciousness. He hoped that his former guard would agree with the suggestion.

  “The moon will be up tonight,” the giant replied, sufficiently quelling that hope. “The clouds are moving off. I’ll be fine making my way back, especially if I stay on the high ground and out of the valley region. I don’t want to keep Pride waiting too much longer. After the last time, Yvain might just leave me stranded.”

  Though disappointed, Xu Liang nodded. “I wish you and your captain all the happiness and prosperity there is to be had in this world, Fu Ran. I’m glad that you have found your place at last.”

  The former guard took Xu Liang suddenly by the shoulder of his robe and pulled him half off his horse, into a crushing embrace. Xu Liang was too alarmed to feel the intended warmth until Fu Ran put him back in the saddle of Blue Crane. The giant’s large hand stayed on Xu Liang’s shoulder until he was certain his former master was balanced again. Then he said, “Farewell, my brother.”

  “Thank you,” Xu Liang answered, and both were left to wonder at the reply as Fu Ran turned about and headed back toward the sea. Xu Liang watched his childhood friend depart for only a few moments, then looked to the east and felt the evening breeze on his face, pushing gently through his long hair. Home was so close.

  Shirisae found herself distracted with watching the separation of master and former guard. They were both silhouetted in the setting sun, the landscape behind them a tangled nest of sharp branches
and gauzy air glazed pink beneath the early evening sky. While Fu Ran moved off and, in the passing of his shadow behind Xu Liang, flares of sunlight aligned off the mystic’s shoulder, she thought of all that was behind them. It was Xu Liang who had shifted the course of all of their lives, and he had done so with the seeming ease of one tracing their hand through water. Except that she had witnessed and knew that none of it had been easy in actuality, only on reflection. The reality of his motion had in fact been more related to the push of the surf against land—something of deceptive mass against an immovable barrier. But it was not immovable, and eventually the water had its way, and shaped the land.

  He was a curious example of a human.

  She felt a tap at her thigh and looked down at Taya. “What is it?”

  “We’re setting up camp here,” the young dwarf woman said. “If you’re finished staring.”

  Shirisae’s brow rose while a partial smile formed at the edge of her lips. Worded by a dwarf, many simple things seemed absurd.

  That was when Tristus said, “He is quite beautiful.”

  Shirisae glanced over her shoulder at him, smiling fuller while she watched him sorting through the packs that had been hauled off of the yak. “So are you, for a human.”

  “There’s no time for flirting, children,” said the youngest member of their group, with her small hands folded neatly against her hips.

  “I’ll be along,” Shirisae assured Taya.