He would never forget the look in her eyes.
As he stumbled out the of the hut and fled through the dying figures of the lepers and their tomblike shelters, Sunan’s heart beat with such a horror as he had never before felt. Not horror at the sickness, or fear for his body or of potential suffering. Instead he felt the horror of love, something akin to possession.
The angel had looked into his eyes, and he had known that he would do anything for her. It was as though he had lost his very soul.
So he fled. He did not hear the man called Granddad call out to him, nor did he turn to see the child with the marred face watch him rush by. He avoided the phantom forms of other lepers and sought escape from their cursed valley. But though he might escape Lembu Rana, he would never again be free of that look in her endless eyes. That look of, he believed, beauty so pure and so powerful as to shame Hulan herself.
He gained the path out of the valley and collided with a leper there, a small huddling woman who could have broken beneath his careless hands. He caught her before she fell and set her right, realizing too late that he held in his hands the very living form of contagion. But his Pen-Chan breeding was strong, and he murmured apologies before hastening on his way, climbing up, out of the valley, into the dark of falling night beyond.
How far outside the city had he come? How far had he to walk to gain those docks where he had disembarked that very morning? It did not matter. He walked, his head bent, his tired feet crying out for rest, but his heart driving him onward. He believed he would never rest again, not now that he knew this angel on earth existed.
What a fool he was, he decided a good forty minutes later as he passed through the encampments and hastened toward the city walls. He had never been a lad to fall for a pretty face. Since his transference to Suthinnakor and the house of his uncle, he had had time for nothing but his studies, so intense was the regimen, so exacting were the requirements made of all true scholars. He had no time for fancies or vain, poetic ideals of romance.
Indeed, by the time he gained the city walls and passed unhindered through the gates, he had half convinced himself that the entire encounter had been his invention. Or not the encounter, but merely his reaction to it. That leaping of his heart and quickening of his pulse were not the signs and sensations of sudden love. Oh, no! These were merely the results of a long, tiring day without food, without drink, without rest. And the girl? Certainly she was pretty. But no face was so perfect, no form so sublime that at first sight a man of Sunan’s intellect and learning would lose his head completely!
He did not realize, as he made his way down the dark, winding streets of Lunthea Maly at night how many times he came close to his own demise. Thieves lurked in doorways, and murderers hunted in back alleys. These, upon first seeing a tall, slender man in once-fine robes making his way unwittingly through territory not his own, bared their teeth like so many wolves eager for the hunt.
Yet in the end, all of these turned aside, allowing Sunan to pass unmolested through their midst. For something about his face, some light too bright in the depths of his eye . . . they did not like. Thieves and murderers are cowards at heart, and they were none of them willing to face a man who might not prove so defenseless as he at first appeared.
So it was that Sunan came to the long dockyard of the city in one piece, his heart still beating a wild pace in his breast, but his mind composed under the stern intellectual restraint he had learned to practice years ago. He had found the girl of the vision. This was all that mattered. And he had fulfilled his blood oath by returning to the docks.
These docks were ghostly and not quite silent at night as Sunan walked up and down the shoreline. The ships in their moorings made many sounds, creaking, groaning, whispering to one another secrets of their various voyages. Sailors on watch patrolled the decks, keeping a wary eye out for sly forms and sly hands which might think a ship at rest a worthy trove to plunder.
The docks themselves crawled with rats. Sunan’s stomach heaved at the sight of them gathering here and there to collect refuse. Little lordlings of the night come out to gambol and play now that the human-folk had fled the darkness. Their eyes glinted in the light of ships’ lanterns, evil mimics of Hulan’s starry children in the sky above.
Sunan paced beneath the stars, gazing up as he went. He had come to the docks. Now what? What would become of him and this life he led that was no longer his own? What new service would they require without any offered explanation? Was this existence truly worth the price?
“But am I ready to die in order to be free?” he whispered to the unquiet dark. He knew that he was not. Not yet, anyway.
Suddenly someone stood before him. He sucked in a quick breath but otherwise did not make a sound or a move.
“Did you find the girl?”
He did not recognize the voice. It was not the voice of Tu Domchu. But then, having seen Tu Domchu’s disguises, he did not doubt that the Crouching Shadow could disguise his voice with equal ease. One way or the other, Sunan knew that he spoke to a Crouching Shadow, and he hastened to give his report.
“I found her,” he said. The light of the nearest lantern was too far away to reveal the features of the face before him. He could see nothing more than a large, broad-shouldered form, and he sensed strength and purpose. “I found her. She is in—”
“Do not tell me. I am watched,” said the Crouching Shadow, and there was the faintest trace of fear in his voice. “Take this.”
Something was pressed into Sunan’s hand. Something cold and long and unfamiliar. It took him some moments to realize what he held: a knife. “What is this?” he asked, although, with a sickening drop of his stomach, he knew the answer to his question already. “What would you have me do?”
“Kill her,” said the Crouching Shadow, “or we are all dead men.”
Jovann wanted to knock his head against the wall at his back. Repeatedly. He wanted to knock harder and harder and harder until his whole skull rattled and broke, and the thing inside it slithered out, leaving him in peace.
Instead he sat in his chains, perfectly rigid and upright, breathing deep. He had seen the warriors of the Khla clan sit in just this way before and after a battle, clearing their minds, focusing their energies, driving back the bloodlust that could so quickly overwhelm a warrior’s heart and leave his soul open to madness. Jovann himself, as a boy, had practiced this meditation before and after a good hunt, though he knew that the killing of animals for food was quite unlike the killing of men for honor.
The lantern burned low in its base of oil. The flame, gone red with sickly waning, made the corpse lying in chains at Jovann’s side so much ghastlier. He shivered where he sat, and once more forced himself to concentrate on his breathing.
My father did not know me!
This thought, too strong and too close to panic, destroyed the tentative equilibrium he had achieved, and Jovann, though he had not moved, found himself dizzy with sickness. Something in his brain shifted, something that should not be there. Whatever it was, it had so changed his outward appearance that Juong-Khla—so miraculously appearing in this underground cell, far, far, far from the Chhayan plains where last Jovann had seen him—had not recognized his son and heir.
“It’s a dream,” Jovann whispered. “It’s a nightmare.”
What else could it be? How else could he explain the warping of his body into the form of another? How else could he explain the sensation of looking down at his own hands and seeing someone else’s? How else could he account for his father and two warriors of the Khla clan stepping out of thin air and back into it again? It must be a nightmare!
“But no,” Jovann admitted, squeezing his eyes tighter shut. “You have walked in the Dream. You have witnessed the nightmares of many men. You know this is real.”
If only he could sleep. If only he could step out of his body and return to the Wood, return to the Grandmother Tree and the serenity of endless green life surrounding. But he had been unable to
leave his body behind and walk in other worlds ever since he was dragged through the gates of Daramuti and on down the Khir Road. He had heard no silver voice calling to him on the edge of sleep. He had seen no path opening beneath his feet.
He was trapped in the nightmare of mortal reality, and that nightmare grew ever worse.
The thing in his brain throbbed, aggravated. Jovann knew it wanted out. If only he could give it that wish! But he didn’t know how, so it battered about in his consciousness. His temples throbbed, and the base of his neck felt like an iron rod had been shoved up into his head. If he relaxed and simply permitted the imp to exist in his head without a fight, the pain would go away. This he knew, yet he could not help himself. Over and over again he tried to push it from his mind. And so the thing grew ever angrier and caused still more pain. At last even the meditation of his forefathers proved impossible, and Jovann put his hands to his head, clutching at his hair.
A gentle voice, speaking with command, whispered in the back of his memory.
“Your pain is here. Beneath my hand. Feel it here beneath my hand.”
“My pain is here,” he whispered, pressing his hands flat on either side of his head. He concentrated all his focus on the sensations of his palms and fingertips, and he felt the pain shift beneath them. He drew them down, whispering as he did so, “My pain is here. In my hands. I feel it in my hands.”
He heard her voice in his memory, drowning out even the scurrying of the imp.
“Hold your pain in the palms of your hands.”
The cell door creaked.
Jovann looked up, expecting to see the prison-keeper, hoping perhaps someone had realized that Lord Dok-Kasemsan was dead and had come to remove the corpse. He had sat far too long now in this chamber beside the dead man’s body. Even the sight of the prison-keeper’s ugly face would be welcome.
But it wasn’t the prison-keeper peering into the red-lit room. It was Sairu.
“By Hulan’s shining crown! Is that you, little miss?” Jovann exclaimed, surging up onto his knees, his pain momentarily forgotten. Then he cursed more bitterly, “Anwar blight it!” because he heard with his own ears how his words turned to gibberish the moment they left his mouth.
Sairu stared in at him, and without her smile she seemed strange to him. But he knew it was she, especially when the orange cat, her constant companion, appeared at her feet. She looked down at the cat, which purred and flicked its tail. “Are you certain?” she asked.
The cat blinked up at her then trotted into the chamber, stepping daintily around piles of musty straw. It sat in front of Jovann and stared at him in a manner most disconcerting. Jovann ignored the beast as best he could and addressed himself to Sairu. “I know you can’t see me,” he said, cringing at the horror his voice became in his own ears, like a madman’s chatter. “I know you can’t hear me. But please, please, know who I am! You’re smart. You’re clever. You see what others miss. See who I am!”
She crossed the cell more slowly than the cat and stood with the dying lamp above her head. She carried a small lantern of her own, a bamboo frame housing a single thick candle. The light was bright from the rice-paper wick, and she held it high to illuminate as much of the cell and the prisoner as she could. But the corpse lying so near drew her attention away from him, and he saw her cheek twitch at the sight of it, though he could not read the emotion.
Sairu, avoiding coming into contact with Jovann, knelt beside the dead man, putting her lantern close to his face. This was rigid and horrible with death, which seemed to have brought no peace to Lord Kasemsan’s suffering. His beauty had long since deserted him, and there was little left of the elegant Pen-Chan scholar who had come to dine in the presence of the empress some six months previous. Jovann, though he had spent many hours now with the dead man as his only companion, could not bear the sight and looked away.
But Sairu, though her hand trembled, reached out and took the corpse by the chin, turning the head this way and that. Then she looked at Jovann, or rather, at the mask so cleverly concealing Jovann’s form and being.
The cat growled in his throat, then said rather loudly, “Mrrreaaaa!”
“If that is true,” said Sairu, narrowing her eyes, “then it is a very good disguise indeed.”
“Disguise? Yes!” Jovann cried, leaning toward her and putting out a chained hand. “Please, little miss, you know who I am. You know it!”
She remained kneeling beside the corpse but sat back on her heels, studying him. Then she said in a soft, questioning voice, “Do you still think of Umeer’s daughter?”
He did not speak. His eyes widened, and his heart beat harder in his breast as he recalled the lovely face which, in memory, had been his comfort over the last hellish months of his existence. Sairu studied his expression. She watched the emotions playing across features unfamiliar, reading there everything he could tell her.
Then she turned to the cat. “You’re right. It is he.”
“And you can break the spell,” said the cat. “I know about these things. There are certain spells that can only be broken by . . . by . . .” He hesitated, suddenly embarrassed.
“If,” said Sairu, who had seen her fair share of romantic operas and heard many a recitation of fanciful poetry, “you are going to tell me that it only requires true love’s first kiss, you had better think again. I am not bringing my mistress here, and you can put the idea out of your mind.”
Jovann frowned, glancing from her to the cat, who was growling. “I would—I would never presume to—”
She put up a warning hand and shot him a stern look to silence the babble. She addressed herself to the cat once more. “Well, Monster? What else have you to say?”
“I wasn’t actually thinking of Lady Hariawan,” said the cat. “In fact, I rather thought—”
“You had best tell me a practical solution to this dilemma, cat, before I lose my patience.”
The cat put his ears back at her. But he answered grudgingly, “No one has to kiss anyone. You simply need to call him by his true name.”
“Juong-Khla Jovann?”
“Yes?” said Jovann.
“No,” said the cat. Then, “Lumé love me, if only Imraldera were here! She’d know how to help you better than I. You must see him, my girl. You must look at him and see him, not this outer form. You must see the real Jovann underneath, and you must call him by his name. His true name. The name which means who he is. Do you understand?”
Sairu blinked coldly at the cat.
“Or you could kiss him.”
“Listen, Monster, I do not have time for games and—”
Sairu stopped. The air in that subterranean chamber was cold and dank, but a sudden wave of ice passed over her heart, colder by far. The lantern hanging from the ceiling extinguished, and the sphere of light cast by the lantern in her hand became the whole world for a moment, a world containing life, death, sickness, hope, and all the other things of which worlds are made.
But Sairu felt none of that. Instead she felt a deathly hand close over her heart. And her instincts, so highly tuned, screamed suddenly in her mind.
My mistress!
“I should not have left her,” Sairu whispered. “She’s in danger.”
She was on her feet in an instant, her lantern swinging wildly as she darted across the cell to the door. “Where are you going?” the cat cried and sprang after her. Both vanished, and the cell, which had been horrible before, plunged now into utter blackness save for the tiniest crack of sickly light slipping through the still-open cell door.
Jovann sat in the dark beside his dead companion. The silence was as heavy as the weight of stone and earth above his head. As heavy as his spirit.
At last he muttered, perhaps for dead Kasemsan’s benefit, “Anwar blight that girl!” But the words came out mangled and unintelligible even in his own ears.
On his way back out of the city Sunan stopped at a small fire pit off the roadside, half-hidden behind a crumbling wall, where
a man of indeterminate age cooked dumplings filled with indeterminate ingredients. Sunan bought three without quite realizing he’d done so. His body was weak, his limbs trembling from hunger, and he couldn’t remember if he’d eaten a bite the whole of the long day previous.
So, with the strange dagger secured tightly to his left arm, hidden within the sleeves of his robe, he purchased the dumplings then hastened on down the road with them clutched to his breast as though he’d committed some villainous act. A darkened doorway offered shelter, and Sunan tucked himself into it to eat his meal, furtively staring out from the shadows at all those passing by. There were not many yet, for the morning had not fully broken. But already, here and there, sellers and buyers and purveyors of various businesses emerged from their houses, huts, and hovels. The flowing life’s blood of Lunthea Maly, hastening in endless circulation through the beastly city which was, many said, the very center of the world.
Sunan took a bite of the first dumpling, and a bursting sensation of ginger filled his palate. With it came a still more overwhelming burst of shame.
He stood frozen, unable to swallow, his tongue burning, his eyes watering, facing the truth of what he was on his way to do.
Murder.
Not murder. Assassination, another side of his mind whispered. But even in the privacy of his mind it was such a sarcastic, such a bitter comment that Sunan almost wondered if it was the imp in his head speaking and not his own thought at all. But the imp had withdrawn into a far deeper corner of Sunan’s consciousness and crouched there, growling, but otherwise inactive.
Sunan was alone with his thoughts. His guilt and his shame.
You could refuse. Throw away the dagger and walk on in the opposite direction.
He forced his jaw to work. Chewed, swallowed, and took another bite.
If you do that, they’ll kill you before the day is done.
He felt the dumpling settle like a hard lump in the pit of his stomach. But his body cried out for more, so he ate. The ginger nearly made him sick, but he ate, because what else could he do?
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