Raising Fire

by James Bennett

  The Great Khan rolled his eyes at Master Polo, who tittered in that way of his, even before the scribe had a chance to translate. Polo, of course, would know the Tiaoyue as Il Patto. Or possibly just as the English Pact, a name people currently whispered, or so Jia had heard, in every tavern across Europe. The mandarins claimed that the mysterious contract was already fast becoming a rumour, destined to become the secret of the age just as its founders had intended …

  Thinking of the lessons ahead of her, days spent with the sage at her side, she mustered a boldness she didn’t feel.

  “I miss my herd,” she said. Her voice was smaller than the blossoms floating on the pool. “I miss—”

  “We have all made sacrifices,” the Great Khan said and took a sip of tea. His words were consoling, but his face was not, as he looked down upon this all-but-orphan in his care, this pale, pretty waif, who was adrift and utterly miserable in paradise. “Your parents have made the greatest sacrifice of all. You must honour them, Jia. While they sleep, we will build a heaven on earth. I see no reason to cry, little one.”

  Nevertheless, tears burned in Jia’s eyes. She knew that they must shine like pearls, betraying her sorrow to everyone present. Mocking the strength that she had promised to show the Great Khan, her parting oath to Ziyou and Ye. As Kublai poured more tea, his grip threatening to break the handle, and Polo found something interesting to look at in the sky, the white-haired sage who in truth was a fairy said,

  “My Khan, if I may?”

  The Khan grunted. Von Hart bowed, taking this as royal assent. When he spoke, he turned to face Jia.

  “As Master Kung teaches, the heart of the wise should resemble a mirror, which reflects every object without being sullied.” When Jia met his eyes, the envoy hastened his words. “But you are young and yet to grow wise, Jia Jing. In this, I will give you three gifts. My time, a tale and a choice. Do you accept?”

  “If the Khan deems your gifts fitting,” she said, pointedly aloof. But when the Khan simply grunted again and sipped his tea, Jia bristled, unable to contain a rush of hostility. “I am sure he paid handsomely for all of them!”

  “Jia Jing!” The Great Kublai spluttered over his cup, wheezing as he sat forward.

  Von Hart held up a palm.

  “Be at peace, Oh Wise and Merciful Ruler of the Northern Plains and All Zhongguo from the Great Wall to the Southern Seas.” As the Khan flushed with pleasure at this somewhat excessive address, the envoy followed up his flattery with a smooth piece of business acumen. “But perhaps the child is right. And to be frank, my tale would be better served by an example. If it please you, we should conclude our dealings here, out in the open, for all to see.”

  And now the Khan flushed a deeper shade, shifting his bulk and coughing behind his hand, revealing that he was all too aware of the little trap of decorum into which he had fallen.

  “Think no more of it,” he said and clapped his hands.

  Out of the trees at the edge of the terrace, a team of six servants emerged wrestling a large, unwieldy and angular object. As they came closer, Jia realised that the object was a mirror, framed in some kind of dark wood, perhaps mahogany, perhaps teak. Unlike the mirrors dotted around the palace, the frame, an octagonal border at least a foot thick, bore no carvings of any kind, no dragons, no phoenix, no symbols for health and prosperity, no warnings against vanity. The lack of decoration surprised her—the artisans in Xanadu would have painted the flowers if the Khan had let them—but any calls for modesty, in this case, would have been unnecessary. The mirror was so dirty, the glass was black, betraying the artefact’s untold age.

  Grunting, the servants clunked the mirror down, clods of filth and dust falling to the flagstones. The huge frame rested on its stand in the middle of the terrace, the top of the thing looming two or three feet over Von Hart’s head—and a great deal more over Jia’s. Apart from its size and the dirt that covered it, she found nothing more remarkable about the antique, and threw the envoy a puzzled, and vaguely triumphant, look.

  “This was your price?”

  Von Hart wasn’t listening to her. It was clear that the white-haired sage did not share her indifference, gazing at the mirror in evident awe, a hand trembling out, the tips of his fingers stroking the frame as one might stroke a beloved cat.

  “So it’s true,” he said, in barely a whisper. “The Eight Hand Mirror has endured. I hardly dared believe otherwise, but …”

  “There is nothing beyond the power of the Dragon Throne, Master Von Hart.” The Khan, puffed up by the fairy’s flattery and presently enjoying some of his own, leant back on the poolside wall. “I realise that your tutelage does not come cheap and I imagine you thought your price impossible. As I said, I do not promise what I cannot deliver. Some weeks ago, one of my raiding parties discovered the relic in an island shrine off the coast of Japan. What the Shogunate will not give, we will take, yes?”

  The Khan laughed. Von Hart merely smiled, without taking his eyes off the mirror.

  “It’s an old mirror,” Jia said, too mystified to mock.

  “Or perhaps a door,” the envoy murmured, mostly to himself. “A door without a key. The Eight Hand Mirror is one of our oldest trinkets, child, left behind by my people when they departed this world, abandoning us to our fate. I have travelled many leagues to find it.”

  Jia sniffed. “Forgive me, but it does not look like much to me. It looks like you lack skill in bargaining, to be fair. And it certainly doesn’t look like a tale, which is what you offered me.”

  Von Hart shook his head, his hand falling from the frame. As he turned to face her, a sly expression stole across his features, once again drawing her into the orbit of his confidence.

  “Very well. Then here is my tale,” he said, and with no more ceremony, began. “In the days of the Yellow Emperor, lord of the old gods of Zhongguo, the world of mirrors and the world of men were as one. Two worlds, with two peoples, both quite different from the other. The old gods had fashioned the humans from the earth, but the mirror children, it is said, were shaped by the Xian, which most call the Fay in my part of the world.”

  Jia narrowed her eyes. Was the envoy making fun of her? Everyone knew that the worlds of Remnants and humans were different, a division based on fear, yes, but also on origin. The old gods had made the humans and when the old gods fell, becoming the Xian, these debased powers had created the Remnants—it wasn’t hard to see the allegory in Von Hart’s tale. Or that he wasn’t just telling it for entertainment. The arrival of the Eight Hand Mirror, a convenient prop for his story, struck Jia, at that moment, as a touch too rehearsed. Was this tale simply for her benefit? A way to make her accept her new circumstances? He hadn’t lied outright; of this, she was naturally sure. All the same, insincerity wafted on the breeze, making her ears twitch. She listened to the rest of Von Hart’s tale in bunch-shouldered, knowing unease.

  “Both kingdoms, the human and the specular, lived in harmony. The mirror, you see, is simply a metaphor. Figurative.” Jia snorted to show that she wasn’t stupid—at least the envoy admitted it—but he went on regardless. “A symbol to show that an object and its reflection are two wildly different things. Sadly, in time, a war broke out. There were many reasons why, not least the departure of the Xian into the Dark Frontier, to distant shores across the gulfs of infinity, but at its roots, the tale tells us that the humans and the mirror children could no longer share the world in peace. Thus, they say that the armies of men gathered and trapped the Xian’s wayward creations in a mirror kingdom, thereby binding them in a cage of reflections and forcing them to repeat all the actions of men. They stripped these creatures of their magic powers and reduced them to slavish dreams, ghosts of their former selves, forever locked behind glass.”

  There was a silence. The metaphor was clearer now, or so Jia thought. Locked behind glass. Surely this meant the Tiaoyue? The English Pact and the Sleep?

  Ghosts of their former selves …

  Imprisoned.

>   “It is said that when one looks through the glass and sees the bitterest truth,” Von Hart continued, “on that day, the mirror will break.”

  At first, Jia didn’t realise that the tale had ended. She expected the envoy to go on, thinking that there would be more. Instead, to cover for the fact that she had grown curious, rapt even, she let out a sigh, wilfully jaded.

  “You mean me, don’t you? You mean us. The Remnants.”

  Von Hart put a finger to his lips, but he was smiling, as cheerful as a canary.

  “Shhh. We cannot speak of such things as freely as we once did.”

  It was the first time that she had felt any warmth towards him. Her own smile, playing at the corners of her mouth, evaporated as his tone turned serious, harsh even.

  “And now to your choice,” he said. “Will you turn away or look into the mirror? I must warn you, I offer you this but once and once only. And once you have chosen, the consequences are entirely yours. There can be no going back.”

  “Master Von Hart,” she told him, quite plainly, “I looked into your mirror and all I saw was dirt.”

  “You can look again, if you wish,” he replied. “Or you can walk away, believing whatever you want to believe. Believing that you have seen an old mirror, a fairy’s fancy. Nothing more.”

  Her lips took on a wry slant.

  Is this a game? Is he testing me?

  She glanced at the Khan, but he was simply watching, apparently as mystified as she was. Who could guess at the intention of fairies? So, happy to play along, she said, “And what, may I ask, lies in your mirror?”

  “Why,” he said, “your heart’s desire, of course.”

  Jia sighed, her shoulders falling, defeated by his absurdity.

  “Very well then,” she said, echoing his sombre words. “Astound me.”

  Von Hart walked over to the mirror. With a shrug that informed her that there were no tricks here, no special incantations or complicated ritual, he waved one alabaster hand before the glass. Just look. And so Jia looked again. This time, on closer inspection, she found that she was no longer looking at a dirt-encrusted surface, an archaic silver disc buried under filth, but that the glass itself was black, as smooth, as lustrous as obsidian—or as deep as a well. As she drew closer to the mirror, she realised that the Great Kublai and Master Polo had noticed the change too, both of them shooting to their feet, the tea tray rattling, their mouths hanging open. The little scribe forgot all about his duties as a servant and leapt into the nearest bush.

  Von Hart withdrew to the edge of the frame as Jia advanced. Standing before the glass, she waved a hand. Then she glanced behind her at the Khan and the merchant, at the garden beyond them. Then she frowned at Von Hart.

  “None of us are in the mirror. It only reflects the trees around us. How?”

  “It is not that kind of mirror,” Von Hart said. “Look.”

  Jia looked. At first she thought that the coiling mist was a combination of her recent tears and the afternoon sunlight, an illusion captured in the glass, but then the mist gradually parted and she found herself looking into a deep, dark space. Even though the flagstones warmed her hooves as she stood in the shadow of the Khan’s palace, she was gazing into a yawning cavern, black and measureless, and a vast flat space before her that she took for a sunless sea, without waves, without so much as a ripple on its surface.

  Pulled by a string of awe, her petulance forgotten, Jia moved in a trance towards the mirror. Von Hart stood beside the frame, watching her, his strange eyes glittering.

  “The Eight Hand Mirror answers the desire of the one who stands before it,” the envoy said. “And you can see them, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” she told him. And she could. Ziyou and Ye lay upon the dark shore, their faint green shapes recumbent and curled around each other, their haunches relaxed, their manes covering their eyes. Their bellies rose and fell with their slumbering breaths.

  Catching sight of the unfolding vision, Master Polo took a step back, almost tumbling into the pool. He jabbed out a finger at the fairy.

  “And that’s where the Remnants belong,” he said, visibly shuddering inside his tunic despite the heat of the day. “You said so yourself, Von Hart. Our worlds can never be one.”

  But it was the girl who replied.

  “That, Master Polo, is a lie.”

  FOUR

  Paris. The City of Light. Ben came wheeling down from the night, his wings spread to embrace her. Montmartre twinkled and shone, a mound of jewels above the weave of streets. The Eiffel Tower was a lighthouse in the dark, a spotlight beaming from its crown of steel ingenuity. Ben swept across its path, coasting over La Chapelle, rattling the trains on the elevated Métro line. A minute later, his passage stole the hats from late-night shoppers in the Square André-Tollet. He banked, following the river of the boulevard. By the time anyone looked up, questioning the sudden gust, he was already gone, out of sight.

  Paris might be the City of Light, but she harboured pools of darkness too, the broad parks like lakes of tar at this late hour. It was darkness he sought now—reluctantly, urgently—the labyrinthine arteries of Père Lachaise cemetery, a city within the city. A city of the dead.

  Last year, the threat had arisen from darkness and death, from whispering ghosts and buried tombs. A cemetery struck him as a good place to dig for information. Besides, the one who resided here—the one who lingered—was always open to a bargain. At least, he had been two hundred years ago, at the end of the French Revolution. Ben was banking on the fact that the Remnant’s appetites lingered too, along with his curiosity. His—and the February cold filled him at the thought—spies.

  Fifteen feet off the ground, Ben extended his will, a cerebral push from bestial to human—and he was a man in a dark-scaled suit dropping from the sky. Thud. Despite his caution, masonry buckled, some vault or other cracking under his weight, his reduced tonnage trailing him like an echo, a ripple of inertial mass. He kicked grit from his toes, throwing off the chiding of the graves.

  Sorry about that, bones. You see, I’m the third-generation spawn of a long-extinct mythical lizard and something bright and slimy that squirmed inside a glass alembic. This human form is just a disguise, a clever way to move from A to B. You could say I’m a glorified guard dog …

  Ben snorted to himself in the gloom. He was long past the point of kidding himself.

  All around, the silhouettes of mausoleums and tombs marched off down the tree-lined lanes of the Avenue Circulaire. The cemetery was closed, of course, but he would have to watch out for patrols. He didn’t want any trouble. Père Lachaise, the largest boneyard in the city, was a daily draw for thousands of tourists, come to pay their respects and marvel at the graves of novelist and poet, dancer and scientist, composer and painter, surgeon, activist and rock star. There were no lamps to light his way, only the moon and his serpentine vision, which kicked in now, his retinas shining like coins. Dust and the scent of decay drifted to his nostrils, mingling with flowers dying and dead. Reverence hung in the atmosphere. Carved faces watched him as he padded into the murk, winged angels and bearded busts, all silent, mossy and grey.

  But not everything here was asleep. Not everything here was at rest.

  He reached the Monument aux Morts and stood before the famous tableau, the angular edifice shaped, ironically enough, to resemble an Egyptian mastaba. Weeping figures flanked the centrepiece—a large rhomboid doorway leading into dark. A man and a woman, both naked and pale under the moon, stood on either side of the egress, their limestone backs turned to him, the woman’s hand draped on the man’s shoulder, perhaps reassuring him as they prepared to enter the place where, in the end, all must enter.

  Including Ben. He crouched, flexing his legs, and leapt up onto the ledge between the statues. Few knew that the monument wasn’t just for show. The shadowed doorway led down into the catacombs that snaked under Paris, a labyrinth of dust and bones. Even the Remnant who dwelt here couldn’t claim to have reached the en
d of every stairway, every tunnel, and he was nine hundred years old …

  A few steps and Ben reached the iron gate barring his way. Most would have been lost in the gloom, but Ben could see well enough, the soft radiance thrown by his gaze picking out the heavy padlock and chain. Padlocks and chains meant little to him. Unlike the small symbol etched on the gate.

  It was one of the old ones, all right. Not as old as wyrm tongue, perhaps, but archaic and forgotten all the same. The symbol belonged to one of the Five Families of the vampyri and marked this place as a Maison du Demi Vivant, a House of the Half Living. The Families were gone now, of course, fast asleep in a box somewhere, dreaming their long dark dreams through night and through day.

  A thump, a kick, and the gate was scrap metal at his feet. To hell with manners. Du Sang would either answer him or not. Fuck the ancient customs. This wasn’t 1793.

  Grit crunched underfoot. Ben trudged down steps and into a chamber, alcoves on either side of him, filled with the splintered remains of coffins and pale jags of bone. The musty smell was stronger here, lichen and rot. Things squirmed and skittered in the dark, disturbed by his presence. Worms and rats. The least of my worries. On the far side of the chamber he made out a brick archway, a curtain of cobwebs fluttering across it. He tore through the veil (his severed hand was all but renewed now, the skin a little red from the wound) and stale air whispered around him, wafting from the depths beyond. Was it his imagination or did he hear a word in the draught? A dry, soft breath, chill on his flesh.

  Benjurigan …

  Yes. He was expected. Of course he was. The creature that made this pit his home had eyes everywhere. Ben couldn’t hope to catch him unawares.

  He pressed on, his shoulders brushing the corridor walls, which sloped gently downwards. Embrasures in the vaults above let in shafts of moonlight, but he could already see that he was in a gallery of some kind. He passed paintings as he went, rendered in the Romantic style, the images slowing his steps. It struck him that the series of paintings looked so modern because someone hadn’t wanted to forget the old tale. Lord knows no human would find this story in a book, for either children or grown-ups. All the same, he had to tear shrouds of cobwebs away from the frames to confirm what he was looking at.