Book Read Free

The Veiled Dragon h-12

Page 28

by Troy Denning


  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 sock- ets turned in the direction ofRuha 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 circum- scribed 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 outnum- bered 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 utter- ing 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 disap- pointed; 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 walk- ing. 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 other belt, then slammed its free fist into the pit other 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 other 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 iwcommand 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 meaning- less 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 tene- ment. In the corner other 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 sup- posed-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.

  Ruha caught him by the shoulder. "If that blade did not affect the corpses, it will not harm Cypress. He is also undead."

  "Thank you. I would feel most foolish." The mandarin gestured down the corridor. "Please to make most of sol- dier's sacrifice."

  Ruha turned down the hall and tried a dozen barred doors before the captured man finally stopped screaming.

  There was a brief silence; then the warrior behind

  Hsieh said, "Dead men follow us."

  "Cypress fears to destroy oil sack," Hsieh observed.

  "Otherwise, he sprays us with acid."

  "True, but I doubt he is willing to let us escape." Ruha started down the corridor again, judging they had less than forty paces before it ended in a windowless stone wall. "And we will soon run out of room. I fear the back of this building stands against Temple Hill."

  Hsieh caught Ruha by the shoulder. "You stop dead men. We find way out."

  Ruha glanced down the corridor at the long line of zombies. The closest was only ten paces away, but was slow and shambling. She nodded. As Hsieh's warrior began hacking at a door, the witch picked up a small stone lying among the refuse against the wall. She used it to scrape a line up both walls to within a few inches of the ceiling. She connected them with another line on the floor, then laid the rock upon it. The leading corpse was only two steps away.

  A muffled clamor sounded somewhere in the structure far above, presumably Cypress tearing the roof away. As much as Ruha wanted to glance at the ceiling, there was no time. She spoke the incantation other stone spell. The rock on the floor disappeared, then a shimmering gray wall formed between the three lines the witch had traced on the floor. The first corpse, a dark-haired cult member with an ugly skull wound, arrived at the barrier. He managed to push his head and one arm through before the magic wall turned as solid as granite. The zombie remained there, reaching for the witch's oil sack and moaning in the plain- tive, incoherent voice of a tormented spirit.

  Another crash reverberated down from above, this time followed by the clatter of falling rubble.

  "He is digging his way down through the building!"

  Ruha cried, spinning toward Hsieh.

  She completed the turn in time to see an iron bolt shoot through the breach Hsieh's man had hacked in the door. The dart buried its head in the opposite wall, and the muffled clatter of a bow crank sounded from inside the chamber. The warrior reached through the hole and lifted the crossbar off its supports.

  "Get on with you!" cried the man on the other side of the door. His voice sounded both fearful and old. "The next one won't miss!"

  Hsieh's soldier shoved the door open and stormed inside, yelling, 'You dare to attack Shou mandarin!"

  A heavy thud shook the building; then the ceiling began to crack and groan beneath a great weight. Ruha and Hsieh followed the warrior into a small, windowless shop filled with the cluttered shelves of an apothecary.

  The soldier was leaning over a chest-high counter, hold- ing his sword to the throat of a mousy, squint-eyed man.

  On the counter lay an empty crossbow and a crucible heating over the flame of an alcohol lamp.

  As soon as she saw the lamp's blue flame, Ruha's heart skipped a beat. If she could use such a hot fire to cast her most powerful sun spell, even Cypress would be helpless to defend himself. She stepped toward the apothecary, but Hsieh spoke before she could ask the old man if he had any brimstone.

  "Where is Number Two Exit?" Hsieh demanded, his gaze darting from one cramped corner to the next.

  "Isn't one."

  "What is this material?" Hsieh stepped to the outside wall and ran his fingers over the smooth, white-washed surface.

  "Wattle and daub," the apothecary answered.

  When the mandarin did not seem to understand, Ruha said, "A sort of mud plaster."

  The planks above their heads creaked, then began to pop and crack. The chandelier above the apothecary's counter started to swing, and Ruha looked up to see the exposed joist logs bowing directly over their heads. The dragon knew exactly where they were, and it took the witch only an instant to guess how. If the smell ofylang oil had led her to Hsieh earlier, then certainly the dragon, with his much larger nose, could track them by the same scent.

  A tremendous splintering filled the room as five huge talons pierced the ceiling. The apothecary wailed and dropped to his knees behind the counter, and Hsieh shoved his warrior toward the outside wall.

  "Kick hole."

  The claws began to rip through planks of thick wood as if they were made of paper. Hsieh's soldier sheathed his sword and stepped back to get a running start, and Ruha leaned over the counter to look at the cowering apothe- cary.

  "Have you brimstone?" When the man only looked at her with terrified eyes, she yelled, "Brimstone powder-now!"

  The dragon's fist closed around a joist log and started to tug. The beam, a rough-hewn pine trunk as thick as an ogre's leg, groaned and bowed, but it would not break-at least not easily. Hsieh's man charged across the room, then picked up both feet and attacked with a flying, two- legged stomp kick. The daub cracked beneath his heels, and he crashed through the wall to disappear outside.

  The apothecary shoved an open bottle of yellow powder onto the counter and ducked out of sight again. Ruha grabbed the lamp from beneath the crucible and pulled the wick stopper. The cloth was still saturated with alco- hol, so the flame continued to burn as she poured the fuel into the brimstone bottle.

  A deep, rumbling grunt shook the shop. The joist log snapped with a mighty crack, and the ceiling sagged beneath Cypress's weight. The dragon tore a handful of wood away, creating a hole twice the size of a door.

  Hsieh stepped to Ruha's side. "You must come now!"

  "In a moment." Holding the saturated brimstone in one hand and the flickering lamp wick in the other, Ruha turned to face Cypress. "First I must stop the dragon."

  "That will not be so easy as you think!" Cypress's voice boomed through the empty hole as loud as thunder. J have learned to be wary of you.

  The dragon's second sentence tolled through Ruha's head like a striking bell, shattering her concentration

  She tried to summon the incantation of her most power- ful sun spell, but could not.

  Did you think I had to see your eyes to attack your mind? The words echoed back and forth through Ruha's head, building on each other, growing louder and sharper with every reverberation. Any contact will do.

  Ruha tried to bring the flickering wick to the brim- stone bottle, but her body did not seem to hear her wishes. Her
hands remained a foot apart, shaking with the memory of what she had intended, yet unable to obey.

  The wick in her hand sputtered and smoked darkly as it ran out of alcohol and began to consume itself instead.

  "Why do you wait?" Hsieh demanded. "Cast spell!"

  The sound of cracking wood filled the chamber once again, and the ceiling sagged almost to their heads as the dragon lay on the floor above. When Ruha did not move,

  Hsieh apparently realized what was wrong. He pulled a lasal leaf from his pocket and slipped it between her lips.

  The witch allowed it to fall from her mouth; if they were to have any chance of escaping the dragon, she could not allow a lasal haze to cloud her mind.

  Hsieh watched the leaf flutter to the floor, then pulled his dagger from its sheath.

  "So sorry, Lady Witch." He cut the rope hanging over her shoulder and took the sack of oil. "Must not let dragon have ylang oil."

  The dragon's withered hand came through the hole and snaked toward the witch. The mandarin quickly stepped away, then turned and threw himself through the opening in the wall.

  Cypress's talons stopped a foot short of Ruha, and the din assailing her head quieted to a dull roar. The lamp wick hissed and flickered and began to shrink. The witch considered trying to resist the dragon's mind attack, but he was too powerful to defeat. Instead, she let all her defenses down, envisioning her mind as the great hall of an empty Heartlands castle, where even the slightest sound reverberated like a drum.

  What is happening to you? Cypress demanded. Where is the oil?

  Ruha made no reply, allowing the dragon's words to crash through her mind with such force they shattered the walls of the hall she had envisioned.

  The ruse worked. Cypress's hand suddenly pulled away, and the cacophony in Ruha's mind quieted as he sniffed out the ylang oil. Her hand obeyed when she tried to move it; even the dragon could not focus his attention in two different places at once. She pushed the bottom of the wick into the mixture of brimstone and alcohol. The flame quickly returned to its steady blue gleam, but the witch forced herself not to think about her sun spell. The dragon was still inside her head, and he would feel the effort of summoning the incantation from her memory.

 

‹ Prev