Precious Dragon

by Liz Williams

  Chen felt the build-up behind him, magical pressure with physical consequences. There was a hiss like a steam train and the air grew suddenly moist. Zhu Irzh was out of the compound, fighting his way through a group of panicking demons, and Chen followed. The hissing was growing louder. Someone—Chen thought, the First Lord of War—was bellowing incomprehensible orders through a megaphone but the troops were breaking rank, tanks and trucks gunning up and veering off every which way. Chen saw Zhu Irzh leap for a tank and hang onto a stanchion, he barely had time to think, Every demon for himself, when the tank swung around and Zhu Irzh reached out a hand and pulled him up. Chen clung on, balancing on the top of the tank tread and feeling the rumble of the machine below his feet. Then the tank was thundering across the desert towards the rocks.

  Chen and Zhu Irzh gripped the stanchion above their heads and tried not to fall off. But the tank was old, the treads threaded and laced with rust, and the vehicle lurched alarmingly from side to side. They were climbing now, heading up into the foothills. Chen took a look behind him and saw that the entire compound of the reactor was swathed in what looked like mist, a sparkling grey pall that must, he thought, be escaping steam. Around the compound spread a widening ring of vehicles, heading fast into the desert and beyond, above the mountains, flew a dragon larger than any Chen had ever seen, glimpsed bronze-green through the cloudscape. There was no sign of the forces of Heaven. He couldn’t blame them for keeping out of the way. After all, Hell seemed quite capable of destroying itself.

  The tank lurched again, reeling to one side like a town drunk. They were heading up between the huge boulders now, on a path that was itself strewn with rocks, and the tank’s passage was becoming increasingly uneven. Chen’s grip on the stanchion tightened just as the tank rolled over a boulder. It stopped, teetering.

  “Jump!” Chen cried. It was his turn to give the startled Zhu Irzh a shove off the tank tread. They hit the ground, rolling over and up as the tank tottered and became to topple. Dismayed shouts came from within. Chen and Zhu Irzh flung themselves down behind a rock just as the tank fell. And then the reactor blew.

  Chen covered his eyes but he could still see the reactor as it went up: a display on the magical part of his mind, distant but still vivid. There was a searing flash of white light as the compound was vaporised, then a ring of gleaming blackness rose from a gaping crater. This was not, Chen felt, the usual result of a nuclear explosion: this was something else, something magic-based. He found that he was crouching flat against the floor, shielding his head.

  Zhu Irzh raised himself cautiously up from the ground and peered over the top of the rock.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  “I know,” Chen replied. He joined Zhu Irzh and saw the crater with his actual sight. A ring of exploded tanks and trucks, a mass of twisted metal like some huge anarchic sculpture, littered the plain.

  “And that dragon’s coming back.” Zhu Irzh pointed in the opposite direction.

  Moments later there was the rattle of wings and something immense glided overhead.

  “What’s that?” Zhu Irzh asked, frowning. Chen looked in the direction of his pointing finger. A square of bright light was coming down from the sky, like a glowing elevator.

  “I don’t know,” Chen started to say. But then there was a kind of click inside his mind, like a switch being turned on. From the arrested expression on Zhu Irzh’s face, the demon had experienced a similar phenomenon. Upon Chen’s inner eye, there appeared the figure of a man: elderly, dressed in red, with a thin white beard.

  “It’s the Celestial Emperor,” Chen said. He had seen Mhara’s father once before, during a previous trip to Heaven. You do not easily forget the countenances of gods.

  The Celestial Emperor—visible both in Chen’s inner sight and the outer—waved a hand. A ripple passed across the blasted plain, and it changed: where the crater had stood, containing the remains of the nuclear plant, was a series of grassy hollows. Lily ponds lay at the bottom of each: an artfully constructed landscape. A ring of rosebushes now occupied the place of the twisted remnants of tanks.

  “Well, it’s very pretty,” Zhu Irzh said after a pause. “But it doesn’t really make things better, does it?”

  This so aptly expressed what Chen himself was feeling that he simply nodded.

  “One wonders if it’s still radioactive,” Zhu Irzh remarked. “I suppose not.”

  “We could find out,” Chen said. He was conscious of the urge to go down and see for himself what the Celestial Emperor was really up to. Appalling, to discover that you had as little respect for Heaven as for Hell.

  “I want to find out what’s happened to Jhai,” Zhu Irzh said.

  “And Miss Qi. And Pin.” Chen did not know what had befallen the people closer to the site of the blast, but even given the peculiar theological ramifications of their locale, he still hoped that no one they knew had been down there. He set off down the hill at a rapid pace, accompanied by Zhu Irzh.

  The question as to what had happened to Jhai and Miss Qi was answered as they reached the bottom of the slope. Chen heard someone call his name and looked up to see the two women picking their way between the boulders.

  “There you are,” Jhai said. She pointed to where the crater had stood. “Did you do that?”

  “No. It was my grand-dad.”

  Jhai gave the demon an odd look. “I see. For some reason, I get the impression that you are not being sarcastic.”

  “I’m not. His spirit showed up. Had a fight with the Emperor. Fell into the reactor and it blew.”

  “Shhh!” Miss Qi said. “The Celestial Emperor is speaking.”

  “… preparing for the annexation of Hell,” the Celestial Emperor was saying. He had a remote, reedy voice, Chen remembered, like the worst kind of priest, all piety and no substance. Above, the great dragon still glided, circling the rim of the mountains. “Now that the power source of Hell is destroyed, it only remains for us to banish the remaining demons.”

  “What?” said Zhu Irzh. “Banish them where? There are billions of us!”

  “… another realm will be designated, for demons—the place of the existing Earth. Those humans who die will therefore remain upon the Earth itself. Meanwhile, Heaven will expand and—”

  “I think,” Chen said to Miss Qi, “That your Emperor might, in fact, have gone completely mad.”

  Miss Qi said nothing. She stared numbly at the glowing figure before them on the plain. Jhai gave her a nudge. “Job offer’s still open.”

  But they were not, it seemed the only ones to disagree. From the sky, a great booming voice spoke out. Chen, watching the glowing figure, thought that it took the Emperor by surprise: he seemed to start.

  “You shall not!” it said.

  “It’s that dragon,” Jhai exclaimed, shading her hand with her eyes.

  “I should remind you, o my lord dragon,” the Celestial Emperor said icily, “That my word is the law of the worlds.”

  “And I should remind you,” the dragon replied, “That your word is law up until the point of the death of a living being. According to ancient law, if anyone should take such issue with your word that they would die to gainsay it, your power will wither.”

  “This has never happened,” the Emperor said, with contempt.

  “Obviously not,” the dragon roared. “But is this right? To wage war on another empire upon a pretext, and when it tears itself apart, to saunter in and take the spoils? To cut off Heaven from the millions of human souls who choose to live rightly and still will have no reward? Do you think that is just?”

  “Humans who live rightly have still not succeeded in making right of their world,” the Emperor retorted. “Let Heaven secede from the Three Realms, let us live in our own way in peace.”

  “This is not why Heaven was created!” the dragon said. “As an exclusive paradise for those who disdain to take further trouble.”

  “Perhaps not,” the Emperor replied. “But it is what Heaven wil
l become.”

  Zhu Irzh leaned towards Chen. “Bit like a golf club,” he whispered. Chen nodded.

  “But you do agree,” the dragon said, “that the old law still stands? That if a living being should give its life in protest at your word, then that word and all the ones that follow it will become no more than dust on the wind?”

  “I agree,” the Emperor said, very sourly, after a very long pause.

  “No choice,” Zhu Irzh said in Chen’s ear. “That law was a binding spell.”

  “Then I will choose death,” the dragon said, triumphantly. “My death, to void your word!”

  “Ah!” the Emperor said, “But you cannot. You are no longer living! I have been informed of recent events. You died, and were reincarnated in Hell, a little boy. You might have changed shape, but you are still a denizen of Hell and as such, no longer a living being.”

  “A technicality!” the dragon said, but Chen could tell it was rattled.

  “But still true. And there is none other here—look around you. All you will see are immortals, or demons. So unless there is a living one to speak—”

  “Oh shit,” Zhu Irzh said, and he looked at Chen.

  Chen thought of Inari. He thought of the city, of Earth, teeming with millions of hapless souls, some of them fairly dreadful, it’s true, but most just trying to do their best and get by. He thought of Earth roaming with thousands of hungry ghosts, swarming with dispossessed demons, of the Night Harbour closed down and proper access to the other realms suddenly denied. Earth would be a hell, far more so than anything Hell had produced so far for itself.

  One living being. Chen stepped forward.

  “You can’t,” Zhu Irzh said.

  Chen opened his mouth to speak. And as he did so, he heard, with bemusement, the dragon say, “Oh grandma.” He looked up, and saw something small and huddled hurtling through the air, from a gleaming platform high above the clouds. The body of an old lady, falling.

  58

  He did not see her hit the ground. Chen and Zhu Irzh watched as the dragon dived, a flurry and glitter of wings and then a surge of dust as it landed.

  Zhu Irzh said, “What was that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” Chen murmured, but as he spoke he saw again with inner sight: the shining presence of the Celestial Emperor, turning with a snarl of fury and then the great spread of the dragon’s wings shivering, folding, diminishing—until a little figure was standing in the dust and Chen recognised it.

  “It’s Mrs Pa’s grandson,” he said. “It’s Precious Dragon.”

  “Aptly bloody named,” Zhu Irzh said, after a moment, and Chen could only agree. The Emperor raised a hand and Chen felt the surge of a spell, an incantation he had only ever encountered once before: the conjuring of a thunderbolt. The Emperor’s hand flickered but the air was empty.

  “He can’t do it,” Miss Qi said, stunned.

  “Just as well,” Chen remarked. “That was aimed at the child. Or whatever he is.”

  “He is the Dragon King,” Miss Qi said. “The Emperor of Heaven just tried to kill the Dragon King.”

  “Former Emperor of Heaven,” Jhai said. She pointed. A battalion of the unicorn cavalry was floating down from the sky. They surrounded the Emperor briefly, and then they were floating up again, as serenely as if they had been gliding through the skies of Heaven itself. The Emperor was gone. Further across the plain, however, so were the small boy and the small crumpled body beside which he stood.

  Miss Qi turned to Jhai. “I think I’ll take you up on the job offer, if that’s still all right with you.”

  “Fine. You’re on the payroll as of now.” Jhai hesitated. “All we have to do is get back to Earth.”

  That, thought Chen, was likely to be their biggest problem. But in this, he was wrong.

  “Zhu Irzh!” A harsh voice, easily recognisable. Chen and the demon looked up to see a tank coming towards them. On it, somewhat battered and dusty, sat a canopy and beneath that, stood the First Lord of War and Zhu Irzh’s mother. “What are you doing here?” Mrs Zhu demanded.

  “There was an issue. With the Ministry of Lust.”

  “Never mind that,” Mrs Zhu said. “This family is allied to the Ministry of War now.”

  “Now that the Emperor’s gone,” Chen said, “I suppose the Imperial connection with Lust is no longer an issue either.”

  “Lust will be rebuilt,” Mrs Zhu said. “But it will be under our control.”

  “Hang on,” Zhu Irzh said. “What do you mean by ‘our’?”

  “We,” Mrs Zhu said grandly, “Are the Emperor now. Since Erdzhe and I are to be married.”

  Chen had often wondered if there was anything in any of the worlds that was capable of rendering Zhu Irzh speechless and now he had found it. It wasn’t the only thing, either. Jhai stepped forward.

  “Mrs Zhu, what a pleasure. Allow me to introduce myself. Jhai Tserai. I’m Zhu Irzh’s fiancée.”

  “What?” said Zhu Irzh.

  An expression of what might, in a less icy countenance, be described as delight crossed Mrs Zhu’s features, a faint thawing. “Why, I’ve heard of you. A very old family.” Not Chinese, the expression seemed to say, but never mind. It was clear to Chen that Mrs Zhu was dynasty building.

  “Wait a minute,” said Zhu Irzh.

  “But this is wonderful news,” Mrs Zhu said to her son, with unaccustomed syrup. “I’m so pleased you’ve decided to settle down.”

  “And congratulations on your own fiancé’s appointment,” Jhai said, warmly. Mrs Zhu wasn’t the only one. Jhai had seen a chance to mend relations with Hell and she was grasping it with both professionally-manicured hands.

  Mrs Zhu looked frostily gratified. “Why, thank you. Irzh. Now. About your grandfather’s heart.”

  “Right. We gave it back to him. He took on the Emperor of Hell, they went into the reactor together. That was why it blew.”

  “So,” the First Lord of War said. His lizard voice hissed out across the plain, sibilance sending sand skittering over the ridges and ripples. “A new Emperor in Hell and a new one in Heaven.”

  “We don’t know who that will be yet,” Mrs Zhu said.

  “I think I do,” Chen said. His mind went back to a little half-ruined temple on the outskirts of Singapore Three, a calm young man, and the ghost of a girl. Mhara was next in line and Heaven was known to be highly traditional. “He’s got rather different views about the relationship between Heaven and Earth.” Thank God. Literally.

  “Hell is in disarray,” the First Lord said. “We need to return.”

  “You’re going up?” Chen asked. “If so, we’ll hitch a ride.”

  It seemed that the order had already been given, because Hell’s troops were beginning to rise, the tattered remnants of trucks and other vehicles lurching up from the floor of the plain and drifting upwards into the clouds. Chen was looking around for Pin H’siao, but the spirit was nowhere to be seen.

  “Come on,” Zhu Irzh said in his ear. “Looks like we’re leaving. Including my fiancée.” Chen could not tell whether the demon was displeased or not. Jhai and her new bodyguard were already taking their place in one of the trucks that were forming a disorderly queue behind the First Lord’s tank. Zhu Irzh swung up and Chen followed him. The truck started to rise.

  59

  The reactor was gone. Pin could not believe it. He and the other demons came back down from the rocks and wandered around the little pools, the gentle hollows, the lilies. The reactor had been hideous but at least it had produced something, it had been useful, and this pretty landscape was not. He was at a complete loss. Everyone seemed to feel the same way; no one was saying very much. He came over the crest of one of the hills and looked down, and his heart gave a jump.

  Mai was kneeling in the middle of the hollow, by the side of one of the lily pools, and in front of her was a little boy. As Pin started to hasten down the side of the hill, the child reached out a grave hand and touched Mai’s bent head. She shimmered a
nd began to fade.

  “Wait!” Pin cried. Mai had done so much for him, given up so much for him, that he could not bear to think of her going before he had a chance to say thank you. But as he reached the floor of the hollow, Mai was gone.

  “Mai!”

  The child looked up and Pin saw that his eyes were completely blank and dark, like looking into empty space. For a moment, he looked like something else entirely, but Pin could not have said what it was.

  Then the child blinked and the world changed.

  They were somewhere else. The place had the familiar smell of the dressing room: powder and the musty odour of the ceremonial costumes, mingled with sweat and cheap perfume. Pin thought that he was sitting on the edge of one of the divans on which the actors rested, but it was too dark to see properly. He felt heavy and hot. He raised a hand and it seemed incredibly weighty. He smelled of meat and there was a weird thumping in his chest, a whistle as he breathed in. It took him a minute to realise that he was back in his own body.

  There was a brief flare as someone lit a lamp. He blinked up into the red draperies. The little boy came to sit beside him, swinging his legs against the bed. Pin looked around him wonderingly at the seedy comfort of the dressing room.

  “I’m back,” he said. “This the Opera, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” the child answered. “I have brought you home. You should never have been in Hell. Is this where you want to be?”

  Pin shrugged. “I don’t know any more. In Hell—it wasn’t so bad. There were more opportunities, that’s for sure. At least I had some dignity.” He looked down at the small figure next to him. Now, the child’s eyes caught the lamplight and held it, burning a smoky yellow somewhere far within. They reminded him of the demon’s.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” the child said.

  “Sure.”

  “Go to the temple of the Son of the Emperor of Heaven. It’s now the Emperor’s own temple. Say that I sent you and give them this.” He placed something in Pin’s hand. Pin looked down: he held a shining bronze-green scale, like the wingcase of a beetle. “Things are changing. You’ll find they have opportunities. I think that Hell might be rebuilding, too. They’ll want people who know how things worked. And Pin, your mother is there. She’s still looking after you, you know, as best she can. She saved you from the kuei. She wants you to take this chance.”