Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon

by Mary Fan

  No, no, no …

  My heart drums to the rhythm of kuai dian! kuai dian!, urging me to move faster. I dive underwater and force my eyes open. Light spills through the water in coppery shafts—enough for me to see his silhouetted form a few feet ahead. Dark blood swirls around him. I grab his motionless wrist, tug him toward me, and hook both arms under his shoulders, pressing his body to mine. Kicking hard, I pull him with me as I swim upward.

  My head breaks the lake’s surface. I gasp for air. Tai hangs limp in my arms, but I refuse to believe he’s dead. Water blasts from the propellers of one of the ships, spraying my face. I cough and look around frantically. Where should I go?

  Ships rise from the lake. They fly toward the cavern’s dark ceiling and knock into the floating lanterns. Mechanical dragons snake into the air, belching steam. A crack appears in the cavern’s ceiling, and a ray of sun pierces the shadows. More cut across the dark in jagged lines. Tiny pebbles, hardly bigger than grains of sand, rain down. The cracks turn to holes, which widen and widen to let in the dawn.

  The shattered rock slides harmlessly off the machines but stings my skin. I bow my head and squeeze my eyes. Several get into my mouth as I breathe hard, trying to sustain my strength. I can feel it fading all around me from the effort of staying above the surface with the weight of my sword on my back and Tai in my arms. But I won’t let go of either. One is all I have left of my father and the other …

  Even if Tai’s already dead, I can’t leave him here to sink into dark waters.

  He’s not dead … He can’t be …

  The rain of pebbles stops. I open my eyes to see that nearly the entire hollow mountain has vanished. The sky stretches above me, pale blue and streaked with clouds. Dawn’s first light glints off the tall masts and highlights the curved sails of Kang’s fleet. Mechanical dragons swim gracefully through the sky.

  The sight is at once magnificent and horrifying—a beautiful monster waking to destroy the world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  WILLING SPIRITS

  Water sloshes across my face. I’m sinking, and it’s taking more strength than I have to keep myself and Tai above the surface. I look around again, wondering if I can swim to a far shore before the automatons waiting along the near one can catch up.

  Though most of the armada has taken off, a few vehicles remain. These must be the ones that were too unfinished to function, with their skeletal hulls and their lack of sails. The nearest one is a bronze dragon with a circular door gaping open in its side. It looks complete, but must be missing some engine or another to have been left behind. Whatever the case, it’s far from the shore.

  I swim as hard as I can with Tai in my arms. With each flailing kick, I’m sure I’ll find myself towed under the lake by weariness. But I somehow make it without drowning.

  I drag myself into the giant machine and pull Tai in after me. Coughing and sputtering, I collapse beside him. My limbs feel as if they’re made of stone, but I force myself to sit up. Tai remains motionless, lying face-up where I left him. My eyes burn, and I don’t know if the wetness on my cheeks is from the lake or from tears.

  “Please …”

  I press my ear against his heart. A faint thump sends relief pouring through me. But it’s short-lived as I notice all the blood staining his tunic. I may have saved him from drowning, but I can’t stop the flow. He needs a doctor—no, a miracle.

  He’s as good as dead, and I can’t do anything about it.

  My sob reverberates against the dragon’s curved walls. My heart hurts so much I want to rip it out and throw it into the lake. If I could somehow siphon off part of my life to preserve his, I would.

  This isn’t over yet. The fight isn’t done—his heart still beats.

  Above, early rays gild what remains of the cavern walls.

  The walls … They’re gone. Tai said there was magic in them that kept him from passing through them in Yueshen form, and I recall how Suyin, instead of vanishing, flew to the passageway. But if the walls are gone, perhaps the spell is too …

  “Suyin!” I call for her because she’s the only one I know who might be able to reach us. “Help! It’s Tai—he’s hurt! Help! Somebody! Please … wo qiu ni …”

  A brilliant light shaped like a woman’s silhouette appears, hovering above the water just beyond the dragon’s doorway. For a moment, I think it’s Suyin, but the light dims to reveal Ibsituu, floating with a silvery halo surrounding her white clothing and wooden beads.

  I gape. “Are you Yueshen too?”

  She smiles warmly. “No. But I recently perfected a spell that allows my spirit to leave my body temporarily. It’s the one I was working on before you arrived at the temple—with all the strangeness in the spirit world, it seemed necessary. My physical self is still in Baiheshan.”

  I marvel at her abilities … I’ve only heard of people leaving their living bodies in legends before. Though I want to ask how she found us, I swat the question away as her gaze lands on Tai. She presses one hand against his forehead. Blue sparks dance from her fingertips.

  Tai’s eyelids flutter open. “Ibsituu?”

  “I’m here.” Her expression falls as she glances at his wound. “But your injury is beyond my ability to heal. Only the River Pearl’s magic can save you—you must tell us what you saw when you read Kang’s scroll about it.”

  Tai lets out a dry chuckle, which turns into a cough. “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?” I ask. “You used it on me—how did you do it?”

  He shakes his head.

  Ibsituu’s brow crinkles. “Come, Tai. This is no time to be coy.”

  “Sure, it is.” He looks like he’s trying to grin. “Now I get to take my secrets to my grave.”

  Ibsituu harrumphs. Her fingers flicker through the air, and Tai abruptly freezes in place. Magic glitters around his body, surrounding him in yellow and white flashes.

  I glance up at Ibsituu. “What did you do?”

  “I was tired of his jokes, so I froze him in time.”

  I stare at her.

  She smiles. “It was clear he wasn’t going to answer our questions, and none of us have time for his foolishness. My spell will keep his condition from worsening.” She twists her wrist, and his eyelids fall shut. “There. Now they won’t dry out while he waits.”

  “For what?”

  “For you to save him. Like I said, only the River Pearl can heal this wound. When the spell breaks, it will be as if only an instant has passed. We can worry about asking how he made it work then. The spell won’t last very long—not much longer than my astral projection—but at least it gives him a chance.”

  “How will I unfreeze him if you’re gone?”

  “The spell will wear off on its own—probably within the hour after I vanish.”

  I tap my fingers against my arms. “Kang has the River Pearl on board his flying ship. How am I supposed to get it alone?”

  “You are not alone—you have me.” She sits back on her heels. “I was drawn to this place by a great surge of dark magic, and when I arrived, I heard you calling. What happened?”

  I explain what we discovered, speaking so quickly my words nearly collide into each other. I tell her about the automaton army and the plans to seize the Emperor’s throne, and about how we concluded that Kang must be capturing spirits to power his machines, but that trap curses them to become something monstrous … Ligui.

  Ibsituu angles her mouth into a sardonic smile. “It appears Tai was safe from those traps for the same reason he was safe from Mowang’s: because he’s half human. The trait the Yueshen disdain him for is also what’s saved him from their fates.”

  I almost find that funny. “I don’t really like the Yueshen, but I don’t want them to suffer either. This has to stop.”

  She nods somberly. “It’s all coming together now. Since we last spoke, I learned that the Ligui were summoned by someone on Earth, creating a tether between our world and the realms beyond. But I couldn’t tra
ce the tether’s origins. All I knew for certain was that if it were severed, the Ligui would snap back to where they belong, and we would be free of them.”

  “That means Kang is the tether.”

  “Yes. The Ligui are bound to his life. To create the machines you spoke of, he would have had to force the spirits to behave as those machines would. The curse within the trap must force them to channel pure aggression and to move as one unit. That’s why the Ligui attack at random and often in great numbers. It’s also why some appear to be multiple creatures bound into one. They are not conscious beings.”

  That explains why their actions seemed so random. They had no purpose, no life—they were stripped of their souls, reduced to nothing but destructive instincts. “And they take the shapes of animals because they’ve forgotten who they are,” I muse aloud. “Does this mean they’re all damned?”

  Ibsituu spreads her hands. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so—the Heavenly Gatekeepers would not be so cruel as to damn souls that were cursed by another. I believe their lives end when they become Ligui, but their souls are kept from moving on by the tether. It’s possible that by slaying them, you were releasing them.”

  I think back to my days with the Dailan Guard. No matter how many we destroyed, whatever infernal source forms them seemed bottomless. “How are there so many? I know destroying the machines releases them, but Kang couldn’t have had so many machines destroyed, could he?”

  “His magic must not be strong enough to hold them forever, and the ones that escape become the creatures we’ve faced. They wander aimlessly as smaller groups until they’re near enough to a swarm to be drawn in. You mentioned that a dozen spirits emerged from each automaton. That must mean his ships take hundreds, if not thousands. And he has to keep replenishing his machines with new spirits. I suspect that most are spirits of the dead rather than Yueshen.” Ibsituu purses her lips. “Mowang captured the Yueshen because he knew someone was using them to develop a dark magic that could rival his own. Like me, he sensed the shadow over the land, and like me, he couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. He was, in a way, protecting them, though in his mind, he was depriving an unknown rival of a fuel source.”

  “So by freeing them, we actually put them in worse danger.” If Tai were conscious, he’d surely laugh. I almost want to. After all we went through to rescue the Yueshen from the Courts of Hell, it turned out that doing so risked sending them to a worse fate.

  But none of this talk about the mechanics of Kang’s evil has helped me figure out how to stop it.

  “Can you fly me to the armada?” I ask.

  “I’m afraid not.” Ibsituu sighs. “I can cast spells, but otherwise, I cannot interact with the physical world, and casting a spell to give you flight would require different skills from the ones I currently posess—just as you may be talented with a sword but not a crossbow.”

  A silver light appears above the lake’s center, materializing into Yueshen. Suyin stands at the front, and dozens of Yueshen men and women cluster around her, their long robes flowing. “Tai!” She whips her gaze around. “What happened to the fleet?”

  “Suyin!” I wave.

  She glances at me and vanishes. An instant later, she appears before me. Her eyes flick to Tai. “What happened to my cousin?”

  “He tried to confront Kang. Ibsituu cast a spell to keep him from getting worse, but only the River Pearl can heal him.”

  “I should have known Tai would do something foolish,” she scoffs.

  My nostrils flare at her callousness. “Why you—”

  “We’re worried about him too.” Ibsituu cuts me off and gives me a meaningful look.

  I frown and try to figure out what I missed. Suyin certainly doesn’t look concerned. Yet she did return for him, I suppose.

  Suyin tosses her head. “Anyway, I delivered the message to the Emperor then gathered my people so we could destroy the machines and free any more of our kind trapped in them. Where did they go?”

  I gesture toward the sky. “They left.”

  “Then we’ll find them.”

  “Wait!” I exclaim before she can blink out. “Tai was in his Yueshen form when he confronted Kang, and Kang was human. Tai passed right through him.”

  Suyin arches her brows. “That can’t be.”

  Ibsituu faces Suyin. “And who are you to declare what magic can and can’t do? I know of a spell that can shield a human from the touch of any spirit—living or dead. Considering what Kang was working with, he certainly would have cast it on himself. Otherwise, the very Ligui he created would have killed him years ago.”

  Suyin frowns. “So none of us can kill him?”

  “One of us can.” Ibsituu shifts her gaze to me.

  I lift my chin. “Get me to his ship, and I’ll bring him down. Can you … transport me there?”

  “No,” Suyin scoffs. “That would take more strength than any of us possesses.”

  “Possess …” I turn to Ibsituu. “This machine was built to be powered by spirits—living or dead.”

  “Now there’s an idea.” Ibsituu pans her gaze around the mechanical dragon’s metal interior. “Kang bound unwilling ones because it’s easier to control than to persuade. But that doesn’t mean willing beings couldn’t move it.”

  Suyin lets out a high laugh. “You must be delusional! I just escaped from one of those traps—why would I return?”

  “If you’d let me finish, you’d understand.” Ibsituu crosses her arms. “You were cursed because Kang forced you. A willing spirit, one who consciously entered a machine, would not face the same torments. We would only need to listen when we heard the machine’s commands. And I say ‘we’ because I, too, am currently in spirit form and will happily possess this machine to get Anlei to Kang. But I cannot do it alone. Neither can Anlei confront Kang unassisted.”

  “I’m more than a match for him!” I bite out.

  Ibsituu cocks her brow. “I meant that he will be guarded.”

  Right … Kang would never leave himself alone and vulnerable. I’m not delusional enough to think I could cut down an army of automatons to reach him.

  “We came prepared to fight.” Suyin gestures at her people. “We will destroy whatever stands in our way.”

  “But remember, only Anlei can kill Kang.” Ibsituu holds out her hand. “Will you join me in carrying her to our common enemy?”

  Suyin purses her lips.

  My heart pounds. “We don’t have much time. If we don’t leave now, we might not catch up.” I find my eyes drawn toward Tai, still lying frozen at my feet, and silently add, And the spell might wear off before I have a chance to get the River Pearl … which means he’ll die.

  Suyin throws me a haughty look and vanishes.

  “Suyin!”

  Before I can say anything else, she reappears, accompanied by the other Yueshen, who form a shimmering wall of people behind her.

  One of them—an older man with a graying topknot—turns to her. “This is the human girl, my lady? Are you sure she can destroy Kang?”

  “Are you questioning me?” Though he’s taller than her, Suyin manages to look down at him nonetheless. She whirls toward Ibsituu. “Tell us what we must do.”

  From the outside, the round window before me looks like the dragon’s right eye. I gaze down at the controls beneath it. Though the mass of colored buttons, flashing lights, and bronze levers appears chaotic, a closer look tells me they’re not so different from the ones I used on the ship I flew with Tai.

  My heart quickens at the thought of him. He’s still lying on the floor in the center of the dragon—there wasn’t exactly a bed nearby, and I wasn’t about to leave him behind.

  I sense the living presence of the spirits around me. Ibsituu, Suyin, the Yueshen warriors—they’re in the walls, the floors, the controls. They’re the soul of this artificial beast.

  I rev up the engines. If I understood Ibsituu correctly, that will also send a command to the spirits inside the dragon, an
d some combination of their movements and the machinery will cause the vehicle to activate.

  I push a lever, commanding the dragon to rise, and twist the speed dial to maximum. I only hope I’ll be able to catch up to Kang.

  The dragon roars to life. Machinery whirs and magic crackles as it rises, carried on the backs of the spirits possessing it. Though I’m the only one standing behind these controls, I’m not alone. Once we get close enough to Kang’s ship for me to board, Ibsituu, Suyin, and a half-dozen Yueshen she selected will emerge from the walls and join me in the fight. The rest will continue propelling the dragon and use it to keep the other ships in the fleet from assisting Kang.

  The cavern and landscape outside streak into a blur of color—brown and green bronzed by the rising sun. Moments later, I’m in the sky.

  The dragon stabilizes, hovering steadily in a sea of clouds. Ahead, I spot Kang’s armada flying in the direction of the sun—eastward toward the capital. I’m surprised it’s near enough to be within eyeshot.

  I steer the dragon toward the flying fleet. Though it’s been hours since I last rested or ate, I’ve never felt less tired. The dragon picks up speed, though I haven’t touched the controls—the spirits must have seen the fleet as I did and sped up the pursuit. The machine now has a will of its own.

  Outside the window, the dragon’s enormous bronze jaws open. A fireball shoots out from between them, blasting toward the fleet. It hits one of the smaller ships at the armada’s rear, and flames consume the vessel’s sail. I watch it burn. That’s one less to worry about. The dragon fires again, but misses widely. I spot a joystick and give it an experimental twist. The dragon’s head—the part of the vehicle I’m standing in—jerks abruptly, and I nearly lose my balance. I tug the joystick more gently and align the dragon’s jaws with the next closest ship.

  Yellow fire streams from the machine. The Yueshen don’t seem to need my command to know what to do.

  Cannons protrude from the vessels ahead. One of Kang’s dragons twists to face me. Realizing it means to attack, I seize the wheel and turn it hard. The blast impacts the side of my vehicle, sending me flying into the wall.