by Liz Williams
57
The plain was bright with snow, a glare that reflected from the sunless sky and dazzled the eyes. There were, perhaps, mountains in the distance, an indistinct line of high country that floated, mauve and gray and a pale dull red, above the distant snow. Whenever Zhu Irzh looked at it directly, however, it faded, a dream far away, like trying to see a star from the corner of the eye. He thought he had come here with others—there was a flickering memory of passing through a door, like an old movie reel—but now he was quite alone.
The snow was real enough, however, a thick icy crust which broke beneath his boots, gnawing at his ankles. Above, the sky was a light ethereal blue, the color of a bird’s egg. A few last fat flakes of snow still drifted down. He had no idea where he might be.
Zhu Irzh looked around him, turning in the snow. There was no one to be seen. He was on the crest of a low ridge, which looked out across the plains. As he stepped up over the ridge, Zhu Irzh saw something stretching out before him to the distant horizon. It was once more the Great Meridian, a path of energy. On either side of the bright path, a fire was burning. The voice of his own intuition spoke inside his mind, and it said: This is where you must go. Striding down the ridge, Zhu Irzh headed for the Meridian.
As he walked, he saw that a gate was beginning to raise itself along the Meridian. It started as a swirl in the air, a frosty glitter emerging from the ground and winding the frozen grass into its design. Within minutes the pillars of the gate were complete, hardening into a lacquered darkness the color of old blood. Along the horizon, clouds were building before the wind and the unseen sun faded as though a shadow passed across it. The pillars stretched high into the heavens, and now the lintel of the gate was building itself; each side putting out a tongue of air, which solidified, hardening to become the carved, curling roof.
The gate was fully made now, a finished and perfect structure, glowing against the bright air. Through it the light wavered, as does the air above a source of heat. It reared above him now, and as he gazed at it he saw with dim surprise that Mhara was standing on the other side.
INTERLUDE
The office worker was nearly ready to drop, snatching lungfuls of the inexplicably cold air as he swung around, dizzy in the grip of the demon’s powerful arms. Her roaring had deafened him. His ears had stopped bleeding now, but the rivulets of dried blood down each cheek itched. Why he should be aware of so small and irritating a thing at a time like this, he could not have said. The demon had taken him all over the Shaopeng district, waltzing her toy along. He kept trying to avert his head from her stale, hot breath.
He had long since ceased trying to keep upright: it was easier to let go and let her swing him about as she chose. He was fairly certain that his ankle was broken because he had felt the snap, a wet blow to his lower leg, but he could not feel much anymore. Dimly, he remembered that the demon had killed Chara before picking him up and dancing off with him. He hoped devoutly that she would tire of it soon, kill him too and then it would be done with and over. She did not seem to be tiring, however, and now he saw with despair that they were back at the upper end of Shaopeng. As they whirled along the center of the street, the demon’s feet striking sparks from the downtown rails, he felt a convulsive movement beneath them. At first he thought that it was the demon, throwing him around; he was too sick and giddy to think much of it, but then it came again and somewhere within his bruised brain the word “earthquake” reverberated. They had said that another quake was coming, some rumor that had been running rife in Shaopeng since the evening. It threw the demon off balance. She stumbled, and as she did so, she let him go, flinging him haphazardly from her.
He landed at the edge of the road, and with a dulled horror watched his hands sink into the surface of the pavement as they clawed frantically for a hold. The tremor had liquefied the road surface and it trembled and quivered beneath him. He dragged himself, half-swimming, across the pavement and pulled himself upright against a teetering awning. Gasping, his hand to his mouth, he glanced across the street and saw the demon poised on a shuddering shelf of roadway. Slowly, elegantly, she pointed one clawed foot forward and then dived, graceful as a swan, into the molten stone sea below her. The road closed silently over the gap caused by her passage. Unable to move, he grasped the pole of the awning like a man drowning and before his eyes the length of Shaopeng once again opened up and cracked from end to end.
58
Zhu Irzh shook himself. For a moment there, he had forgotten who he was. As ruffled as a cat rubbed up the wrong way, he turned to Mhara. “Where’s everyone else?”
“On their way,” the prince of Heaven said calmly.
“I don’t even remember becoming separated.”
“We weren’t. It’s just that none of us could see the others. But I could sense all of you, and that’s when I realized what had happened. Shai is bending in on itself, causing distortions. The damage that the goddess has done to the meridians is creating an echo in her temple.”
Zhu Irzh looked around at the frozen plain, the great gate.
“Where are we?”
“In Shai …” Mhara looked thoughtful. “When all this is over, it would benefit the Feng Shui Practitioners’ Guild to have this place thoroughly investigated. Shai contains much more than it appears.”
Zhu Irzh snorted. “If there’s a Guild left. If they haven’t been lynched by an angry mob.”
“There’ll certainly be an investigation,” Chen said, manifesting from apparently empty air. He was joined by Robin and Paravang Roche, who looked as gratifyingly baffled as Zhu Irzh himself, and finally Jhai, who snarled at the others and slunk to the demon’s side. He put a wary arm around her.
“Senditreya isn’t far away,” Mhara said. “She’ll sense intruders.” He stepped forward. “Detective Chen, this is something I must do. But I’ll need your help.”
Zhu Irzh thought that Robin was about to say something, but she closed her mouth and looked unhappy instead.
“All right,” Chen said, adding with a smile, “I’m not going to argue with the future Jade Emperor.”
“We have the ingredients for a spell,” Mhara said. “Something simple, and protective, and old. You five represent the elements—the demon here is fire, because he is from Hell. Robin is water, because she’s a woman. Paravang the dowser is earth, and you, Detective Chen—because you are a blade of the state—are metal. And Jhai is wood, the uncertain element.”
Chen nodded, and the demon thought he understood. “Together, we are the world,” Chen said.
“And even a goddess will find it a little hard to challenge the world,” Mhara remarked. “But her powers are waning. She’s going back to being the human she used to be, although she won’t be there yet. To fight her, I need to draw on powers that are latent in me, and I’ll need your strength to do that. Form a circle around me.”
Zhu Irzh unwound himself from Jhai and took one of her hands. Since the dowser and Robin were clearly balking, Chen stepped forward and took her other hand. Jhai growled at him, and tried to tug away, but her hand remained firmly clasped within Chen’s own.
“Jhai, be a good girl,” Zhu Irzh said, feeling ineffectual.
“Grrrr!” Jhai said, showing teeth, but she let herself be pulled into the circle all the same. Paravang Roche eyed the demon with loathing and came to stand next to Chen. Mhara stood in the middle, eyes closed, and to Zhu Irzh’s demonic sight he seemed suddenly insubstantial, shimmering against the frozen waste beyond. The ground rumbled and the great gate rang like a bell.
“She’s coming,” Mhara said. By now, the ground was shuddering so much that Zhu Irzh had difficulty keeping hold of the hands of Jhai and Robin. He was not sure whether the suddenly uncertain terrain was responsible for Mhara’s increasingly diffuse appearance, or whether the prince of Heaven was doing that all on his own.
The gate clanged, sending the circle staggering. Then it opened, to reveal the goddess’ chariot. The cattle had changed. They w
ere black and bloated, their sides mottled with bloody crimson bruises, and they stank of rotting meat. Their horns were all fire now, and sulphurous smoke streamed from their gaping mouths. Senditreya had changed, too. She was monstrous, but where the cattle were swollen, Senditreya was gaunt, her comfortable cowlike flesh gone. She was stripped down to a thin layer of skin over bone and her eyes bulged in their sockets. Her dress hung on her in heavy folds; her skeletal hands gripped the reins. She looked like an ancient, desiccated woman which, the demon realized, was exactly what she was. When she saw who was standing before her, she shrieked. Zhu Irzh saw Paravang Roche cower and quail, and could not blame him.
“Don’t break the circle!” he heard Chen cry. But the goddess charged. At the very edge of the circle, no more than a few feet from Chen and Jhai, the cattle stopped and tossed their heads. Mhara, by now, was no more than a glowing being of light, radiating outward. The snow beneath Zhu Irzh’s boots hissed and melted, he felt warmth on his skin. The goddess reached into the depths of the chariot and produced a whip of fire, which she launched into the circle. Zhu Irzh felt a bolt of heat travel down his arm: he gasped, but kept tight hold of Jhai’s hand. Mhara seized the whip by its flaming end and jerked it out of the goddess’ hands: it fell sizzling into the snow. The cattle stamped and roared. Mhara sent a thunderbolt out of the circle: Zhu Irzh glimpsed a bloody, glowing hand from the center of the light. It struck Senditreya in the abdomen, and raced down the sides of the chariot. The goddess staggered, but did not succumb. She raised her hand, spoke a word, and a whirling tornado of snow rose up around the circle, seeping into it like a thousand icy needles. The demon heard Robin cry out as the snow lashed her face; her grip on his hand tightened into pain. And then the petals of thousand-flower were falling all around them and Mhara’s form glowed more brightly.
The goddess closed her eyes and seemed to shrink within herself. For a fleeting instant, Zhu Irzh thought this signaled her defeat, but he soon realized that Senditreya was only mustering her forces. She reached out a hand and flicked the left-hand cow on its hindquarters. The beast bellowed as if stung by a gadfly and stamped its foot. Immediately, the earth cracked and split. Above Zhu Irzh, the sky itself shuddered: he thought then that it was no more than illusion, and it was the ceiling of Shai itself that was shaking. The cow stamped again, and then a third time, and the ground rippled up like a tsunami. The circle broke. Zhu Irzh was flung sideways, sprawling against Robin. Mhara was hurled to the ground and lay still. The light that had surrounded him faded and was gone. A gaping crack, several feet across, reached from the cow’s hoof to just beyond his body.
Senditreya leaped down from the chariot and strode past Zhu Irzh. She picked up the handle of the whip from where it had fallen into the snow and, once more, fire lashed forth. She brought the whip down on Mhara’s unconscious form, leaving a long, bloody groove in his side.
“No!” Robin cried. She was on her feet before Zhu Irzh could stop her. She grasped the goddess by a bony arm, but Senditreya flicked her contemptuously away as though Robin were nothing more than a bothersome insect. Robin flew into a snowbank and did not rise again. With a sinking dismay, Zhu Irzh noted that her head lay at an odd angle. There was no sign of Jhai. Chen was again standing, beginning to chant a spell, but his voice was in rags; he had been winded by the fall. The goddess lashed down with the whip once more.
Zhu Irzh knew that he had little chance against a vengeful deity, and when it came to it, whose side was he on, anyway? But then again, Senditreya presumably wasn’t very popular with Hell right now, and perhaps some capital could be gained if he were the one to bring her down—but as he was debating the rights and wrongs of the issue, there was a howl of pure fury from behind.
“You fucking cow!” Paravang Roche ran over the snowbank with remarkable speed and launched himself at his goddess. She was too startled to react as he hit her. The dowser’s momentum carried them both into the crack, which closed behind them with a reverberating shockwave. Zhu Irzh blinked. Senditreya was gone. The chariot still stood, with two mild-eyed white cattle in its traces. Above them, reached the high vault of Shai. As Zhu Irzh watched, it began to collapse.
Shai seemed to have retreated, and it was so cold, as cold as the void between the stars. It struck through to the demon’s bones and beyond, freezing blood and sinew, welding his tongue to the roof of his mouth, his eyes transfixed, the damp warm air in his lungs turned to ice. Then he felt a single note, very sweet and clear, ring through the whole world. Ice that he was, it seemed to shatter him, break him soundlessly apart so that he spun into pieces, fragments of muscle and glassy bone flying in all directions, followed by an unwinding spool of blood. From a distant place, he watched his blood unravel, a dull silver thread bursting into droplets, and he followed it, all the way across the world, higher and higher and then falling like rain. As each drop fell, it impacted on the iron ground and it was as though all the weight of the world descended. Then he was through, seeping beneath the surface of the earth, the presence of pain, dispersal and then the familiar stretched, dreadful sense of the world itself, spinning ponderously on its axis, one face toward the hearth of the sun, the other touched by the dark and the cold, and the city on the edge of the world just coming into day. Instinctively, he gathered his fragmented senses and pulled toward the bright line of the sun, to where the Great Meridian ran in a fluttering path of fire beneath the city, and his tigress was waiting.
59
Jhai finally managed to get a hold of herself as the ceiling fell in. She had blurred, uncertain memories of a snowy plain, other people, a mad goddess, but none of it was clear. There was the taste of blood in her mouth and her spine ached at the base. Coughing, she dodged falling masonry, struggling to find the demon and get clear. There was a searing crunch from the doorway as the lintel began to give way. The front of Shai was subsiding, sinking slowly and gracefully in upon itself. She still had no idea how she had come to be here in the first place. Then the floor heaved and Jhai was knocked to her hands and knees. The lintel cracked with a shotgun report, bringing a shower of dust and plaster down upon her head. Jhai could not see; the chalky dust saturated her nose and throat. She coughed and gagged, knowing that she ought to get up and run. She could feel her devic nature surging back in defense. It occurred to her to wonder where she would end up when she died. She thought she knew.
As the doorframe fell inward, however, she felt herself seized, wrenched free and thrust out onto the steps. Frantically, she rolled clear. Behind her, the front of Shai fell in. Jhai lay on the shaking steps, gasping in long breaths of the dust-smothered air. Then, as swiftly as it had come, the tremor stopped. She remained there for a minute and then, retching, got to her feet and rubbed the dust from her eyes.
The morning sun was a pale coin above Wuan Chih, rising up through the mist, and somewhere a bird was singing, a nightingale in the uprooted trees along Shaopeng. Jhai took a step toward the ruin. All four walls of Shai had come down, along with the dome. The ground still shuddered with the aftershock. Detective Inspector Chen was standing by her side, his round face pasty with dust, like a pie, as he gaped up at the wreckage.
“Well,” Zhu Irzh remarked from her other side. “Happy Day of the Dead, eh?”
INTERLUDE
The Great Meridian had settled uneasily back into its appointed track, but it would be a while before the tremors ceased entirely. Shaopeng Street had been split straight down the center, and the tram rails had been swallowed by the gaping crack. Most of the shops and chophouses were damaged, either reduced to piles of mortar or leaning unsteadily against one another.
Along Step Street, the shacks had collapsed like a row of dominoes and at least one demon lounge was now buried beneath the mass of buildings that had slid down the hill. The wall of Ghenret harbor had been breached and the water level had risen over the sea sluices and flooded back into the Jhenrai canal and over its banks, placing the go-downs and warehouses in several feet of brackish tide.<
br />
Shai was a true ruin now.
The outlying suburbs of Orichay and Bharulay had suffered considerably, slipping down the muddy hills on which they had been built. Much of Bharulay—compartment blocks, warehouses and the tram station—had ended up on top of the mining works, sealing the entrance to the hills of Wuan Chih. The rest of the shattered Eregeng Trade House had fallen into the streets beneath, squashing the Second National Bank underneath it.
The roof of the Pellucid Island Opera House had fallen in, and back in Ghenret the foundations of Paugeng had slipped, causing the tower to list. From a distance, it appeared as if the home of the Tserais had put its ear to the ground to listen. Robin’s lab was crushed beneath it.
A later estimate put the death toll at nine thousand, and the city was generally considered to have got off lightly. Three thousand or more were missing, among them a well-known and reclusive poet, gone without trace.
60
When they finally reached Paugeng through the wrecked streets, they found that its great plexiglass wall had been shattered by the quake, letting in the night and the dusty wind. The tower was listing even further, and from the looks of things, it would not be long before it followed so many of the city’s taller buildings, and collapsed. No one had got around to putting any warning tape on it: there was just too much destruction. Zhu Irzh thought of the boys in the port, with their icon of Jhai. If they could see their goddess now, he thought … He hoped they were still alive. Soon, the looting would begin, though from what he’d witnessed along Shaopeng, it already had.
“Surprised to find yourself back here?” the demon asked.
“Since you ask, yes.” Jhai rose up from where she had been sitting on a block of fallen concrete, trying to reach her mother on the cellphone. She winced. “I feel as though I’ve run a marathon.”
