“Where is this woman?” said the Dragon. “You have seen her, and not long ago even by mortal time. She is not far from your thoughts. Where is she, boy?”
There was no good in denial now. Instead Sunan whispered, “I will not tell you.”
“Very well,” said the Dragon. He unfolded himself, standing tall above Sunan once more. He motioned quickly with one arm to Juong-Khla. “Kill him.”
The Tiger Chief hesitated for but a moment. Then he raised his dagger high.
“No!”
With a tigress’s roar and strength beyond all expectation, Sunan’s mother lunged out of the hands of those who would restrain her, flying at her husband as though she would tear him to ribbons with her bare hands. She never reached him, however. As Sunan watched, she rushed three steps and froze, her arms outstretched, her lips drawn back in a snarl. A terrible gasp rattled from her lungs.
She fell, face down. The hilt of Kosul’s knife protruded from her back.
For a moment all the worlds centered into one fixed space of time. A quiet, a still space filling the whole of Sunan’s head.
And then the fire burst forth.
With a cry that did nothing to express what surged through his heart, Sunan leapt to his feet. He spun in place and struck his father full in the jaw, knocking him flat both with the force of his arm and the surprise of such an unexpected blow. Sunan followed up the blow with a kick in his father’s ribcage, and he did not care that his foot struck armor and pain shot up through his leg. It may have been Kosul’s knife that dealt the blow, but Sunan’s hatred was for Juong-Khla alone.
He fell upon his father, pressing a knee into the great man’s sternum, striking his face again and again and again until his hands were stained with both his father’s blood and his own. Juong-Khla raised his arms to ward off the blows, but Sunan’s rage was too hot, too wild. Had he been stronger, he would have slaughtered his father then and there.
Instead he found himself caught by the back of his robe and lifted like a cat by the scruff, off his father, right off his feet. He was spun around so that he hung nose to nose with the Dragon himself, gazing into the everlasting infernos that served for his eyes.
“There, my little child,” the Dragon whispered in a voice that could almost have been a caress were it not so full of poison. “There, you are truly one of mine now, aren’t you?”
With those words the Dragon kissed Sunan, searing his forehead with his lips.
The cat, crouched in the shadows under the temple gate, watched all with wide, dilated eyes. He saw the Dragon take Sunan by the face, saw him lower his head, saw his hideous mouth descend. He knew then what was about to take place and breathed a prayer of protection, of grace: “Song Giver, shield us all!”
But there was no shield that anyone could discern. There was only rage.
Then dragon-fire.
Sunan felt the flames inside himself and recognized them as the truest, the deepest, the most vital part of all his being. He opened up his heart and let the hellish blaze in until his soul was consumed and his body had room for nothing else but fire. It spread through every vein, through every limb, bursting up through his neck and into his brain. It was too much to contain, so he opened his mouth and let the fire spill forth into the nightmarish mist and dust.
A man’s body cannot hold such heat. So, out of necessity, his body changed. He felt it, but the change seemed so right, so natural, so much more real than the former paltry form he had worn, that he did not care. Indeed he was glad of it. Even though it pained him—as every bone broke and re-knit itself into a new shape—he smiled and let more fire spill from his throat, from his gut.
He thought to himself, Now I am free!
And he heard the Dragon say, “Bow to me, child.”
He obeyed. He felt the great sweep of his wings, his new, enormous, leathery wings, through which pulses of lava-heat flowed so that he was as luminous as the opal stones of Hymlumé’s garden. But his glow, rather than illuminating, seemed to suck light and life from everything around him, feeding off it to increase his own flame, his own magnificence.
He bowed to the Dragon, and then he opened his mouth and spoke through the fangs and the flames: “Father!”
“Yes,” said the Dragon. “I am indeed your Father, and a truer Father you never before knew. So speak to me, son. Show me how deeply rooted is your loyalty.” The Dragon, still wearing the form of a man, reached out and took Sunan’s massive, scale-covered head between his hands, pulling his nose down so that they might gaze into one another’s eyes. “Where is the Dream Walker?”
“Lembu Rana,” said Sunan. His voice was not his own any more but a deep and smoldering growl. “The Valley of Suffering.”
Juong-Khla, though his head rang and his nose flowed with blood from his son’s blows, pushed himself up onto his elbows. He stared in horror at the monster that had been his own offspring, and he hated it more than he ever had before. But when he heard what it said, he turned to his men and cried, “Go! Go at once! Take your weapons with you, for she will be guarded!”
Chakra, Kosul, and five others hastened to obey their leader’s orders, eager to escape the sight of the Dragon and his new, terrible child. They vanished from the temple, leaving behind the chanting, the fire, the smoke.
The Dragon stood still with his hands clutching Sunan’s hideous face, and he smiled and crooned as though to a newborn. “My pretty son! My pretty, darling son!”
Sunan bowed his head, making reverence to the Greater Dark which had birthed him to this new death-in-life. And he did not turn, not even once, to look upon the dead body of his mother.
Three lepers blocked the path down to Lembu Rana, moving slowly, painfully, and taking up the whole space. Sairu, running too fast to stop, careened into them, pushing and pressing her way through, uttering no apologies, not even when one of them fell, for she had not the breath and her instinct was driving her too hard. She did not hear the curses they shouted at her or care that disease-ridden hands struck her as she passed. She proceeded without a thought down into the village and through the maze of huts.
He hasn’t killed. He hasn’t killed! she told herself over and over, the face of the stranger vivid in her mind. But even if he had not, who could say if someone else had come with him to this vile place? Even now Lady Hariawan might lie bleeding . . .
No. No, no, no! It was not so. She would not let it be so.
The child seated outside the hut drew back in fear at the sight of Sairu’s slim form bearing down upon her. But Sairu paid no heed, ducking into the hut and staring at what she could not yet believe.
Lady Hariawan sat just as she had left her. Alive. Upright. Hands folded, breathing in gentle, shallow rhythm. Beyond her, almost lost in the shadows, was a knife embedded in the wall. A knife that had never found its mark.
“My mistress!” Sairu gasped, collapsing on her knees before her and taking her hands in her own. Lady Hariawan did not open her eyes, but her brow creased with a thin frown line. “My mistress, are you unhurt? Are you whole?”
“Unhand me, Sairu,” said Lady Hariawan in her softest, gentlest voice, her eyes still closed. “You’re pinching me.”
Sairu obeyed immediately. Her eyes ran over her mistress’s body from head to toe, seeking any sign of injury and, if not injury, any sign of change. She discovered nothing. To all appearances, Lady Hariawan was as she had ever been.
And yet could Sairu dare to distrust her own instincts? They had never before betrayed her.
She bent over suddenly, breathing hard. The stitch in her side became unbearable now that her run was complete and her mistress alive. Indeed, she wondered how she could have covered that distance between the Crown of the Moon and this wretched hovel in so little time with scarcely a pause. The adrenaline which had fueled her gave out, and she thought she might collapse into a dead faint. Instead she bowed her head to the ground, pressing it there before Lady Hariawan’s crossed legs, like a supplicant before an alta
r. She gasped for breath, closing her eyes, allowing the dizziness in her head to whirl, overwhelm, then ebb.
While she thus crouched, a small, secret thought whispered in the very back of her brain, behind her anxiety, behind her sense of duty, behind even her instinct.
Jovann is alive.
But she could not think about this. Not now.
A few minutes passed before she could make herself sit up again, and even then her head felt light and a bit unnatural—as though it were someone else’s head stuck onto her body—and she would have given much just then to exchange it for another. She pushed slowly upright and found Lady Hariawan studying her with expressionless eyes.
“We must go,” Sairu said. “We must leave this place.”
“Yes,” said Lady Hariawan. “I will leave soon, I believe.”
“At once.” Sairu got to her feet and began moving about the hut, collecting the few bits of belongings they owned, which were few enough. She left the knife in the wall, untouched. But she caught up an extra cloak for her mistress, a pair of shoes, the lamps, a nearly empty oil jar, and a sack to store them all in. This sack she quickly filled while her head spun with ideas of new hideouts, most of which she discarded the moment they sprang to mind. Was there a safe place in all this nation? In all the world? Was there a single slice of ground where one might lay one’s head and sleep protected?
She could think of none. But this did not mean they could remain. What was it Madame Safiya had always taught her? “Begin to act, and the plan will come. Wait to act, and the plan will wait as well.”
“Now, my mistress,” Sairu said, slinging the sack over one shoulder and holding out her free hand to Lady Hariawan, who took it limply. Huffing with exasperation, Sairu caught her by the wrist and, with a tug, pulled her to her feet. “We must get away. Quickly!”
They ducked their heads and stepped from the darkness of the hut into the brilliant afternoon light which seemed to take on a dirty film as it sank into the valley. Sairu stood blinking against the glare, trying to force her eyes to adjust more quickly than they could. Holding Lady Hariawan’s arm, she took a single step.
There was a screech like some otherworldly demon dying. The world went dark. Following just upon the heels of the screech came a noise like a thunderclap fallen to earth.
The sound itself seemed to knock Sairu from her feet. But it wasn’t over. Six more screeches and six more thunderclaps followed in quick succession, each louder and more earth-shattering than the last. Sairu had the presence of mind to throw herself across her mistress, shielding Lady Hariawan with her own body. Something rained down atop her like hailstones. Her eyes squeezed shut, she did not realize at first that it was dirt, thrown up into the sky by some tremendous force and falling back to land with thick thuds.
Her ears filled with a dull droning buzz, and she wondered if she had gone deaf. With her eyes closed, all senses were lost to her save for her sense of smell. Seeking to reclaim the breath knocked from her lungs, she gasped and inhaled a stench like rotten eggs that made her stomach heave. All she could do for those long moments was hold her lady, pressing her down into the dirt, praying to any powers who might be listening to protect them from the falling debris.
Then came the screaming.
The return of her hearing, though horrible, encouraged Sairu to open her eyes and see what had become of the world around her. She saw smoke rising from a blackened hole where once had stood a hut. The poor lepers fled from the destruction, and even those on the edges of the village scrambled over one another in their efforts to escape. The stronger assisted the weaker—the old carried by the young, the young supported by the old.
And Sairu heard words in the screams. “A dragon! A dragon has come!”
Sairu did not believe in dragons. But she did believe in distractions. Her quick mind, even in the midst of chaos, drew connections of combined logic and intuition. Someone was coming for her mistress. Not the Crouching Shadows. No, for they would never so boldly announce their presence but would slide and slink through shadows like adders in the night.
These, then, were the Chhayans. The Order of the Greater Dark.
“Come, mistress!” Sairu hissed and hauled both herself and her lady back onto their feet. She pressed a hand into Lady Hariawan’s shoulders, causing her to bend double, and, with a presence of mind that she half-hated in that moment of rising panic, she forced her steps into the limping stride of a leper, taking shelter once more in their disguise. Despite the limp, they moved at a great pace so that they were halfway across the village when the next series of explosions tore the air, shook the ground, and sent them sprawling again.
Sairu clamped her hands over her mistress’s ears as though she could somehow protect her from the destructive clash of sounds that had already happened. Her own ears rang again, the screams of the lepers fading into a forever distance once more. But this time she pulled herself upright much sooner, staring into the roiling smoke and raining mud, into the mayhem of terror.
She saw two figures approaching. Tall, purposeful figures moving without fear. She could not see their faces through the smoke. She saw only the outlines of their broad shoulders, of their horned helmets, of their enormous, cruelly curving swords.
For a moment she thought she could hide. For a moment she believed they could not know who her mistress was, disguised in her leper’s rags.
But Lady Hariawan, as though sensing their approach, sat up suddenly. And the rag covering her head and hair fell away, revealing her face scarred with the hand-shaped burn but still as lovely and serene as Hulan on a midwinter’s night. As though she moved in a world just beyond Sairu’s reach, she stood, and the ugliness of her surroundings, of her disguise, seemed to melt away around her, unable to shield her beauty or her majesty.
The two Chhayan warriors saw her. They turned toward her, their footsteps crushing the remains of broken huts, dead fires, and the limbs of the nameless fallen, heedless of all they destroyed, fixed as they were upon their purpose.
Another explosion filled the air, and it set something afire in Sairu’s spirit. She was up in an instant, her two blades drawn from her sleeves. She could not hear her own voice, but she felt her throat constricting in a vicious cry as she launched herself at the warriors. They, surprised, lifted their blades to defend themselves, but too late. Before they realized what was come upon them, one fell with a slash wound across his face, and the other felt something bite between the grooves of his leather armor, sinking between his ribs.
Sairu, her body braced, leaned up against the warrior, her shoulder pressed into his chest, her face upturned to his. Now she could see him—more than a shadow, more than a formless nemesis. A man, suspended on the end of her knife. A man who had not seen her coming. Horror filled his eyes, and a deathly grayness stained his cheeks. His mouth twisted, and he stared down upon her, seeing perhaps some merciless angel.
With a cry Sairu withdrew her blade. The warrior fell, convulsing. Though her ears remained deaf to all other sounds, she heard him moaning.
And she saw the dead faces of Idrus and the slavers lying at her feet.
“He’s not dead.” She spoke aloud, though no one heard her in that place. “He’s not dead.”
A movement drew her eye. Lady Hariawan floated like the ghosts of those mothers who die giving birth, who spend eternity guiding men’s souls to the afterlife. She approached the fallen figure of the warrior, standing opposite Sairu. Sairu raised her staring eyes to her mistress’s face.
Lady Hariawan—more awake, perhaps, than Sairu had ever before seen her—smiled.
Another screech and a thunderclap, this one close, knocked both of them to the ground beside the warrior. Sairu covered her ears, feeling the hilts of her knives pressing against her temples, and wished an insane wish that the warrior had stuck her on the end of his sword. Before her heart was ready her body moved, forcing her up, forcing her to reach across the fallen man and grab her mistress’s hand.
; She heard a shriek, a child’s voice.
Though she knew she should not—though she knew she should allow no distractions to draw her eye—Sairu looked over her shoulder into the black smoke rising. It cleared just enough, and she saw a hut, its rotted thatch roof set ablaze and billowing black smoke. A little girl, her coverings gone, revealing a disgusting face missing part of its jaw, ran. But she did not run to escape. She ran straight through the door into that burning shack, and Sairu heard her crying, “Granddad! Granddad!”
The roof sagged. The flames roared. It would cave in at any moment.
Sairu was in motion before thoughts reached her brain. She sprang across that distance, which seemed so vast but was probably but a few yards. Like the wind she flew and was through the doorway mere moments after the child. She could not see for the smoke, but her hands caught at something, and she drew it to her. It was the child, still screaming.
The roof above groaned, and burning embers fell like rain upon Sairu, upon the little girl. Nearly tripping over her own feet, Sairu dragged the child back outside into the foul but breathable air. The child kicked and struck her with useless fists, shrieking, “Granddad! Granddad is in there!”
Sairu gazed down into that so-wretched face. Her heart quivered with loathing.
Then, dropping the girl, she turned and sprang back into the shack. She covered her nose and mouth with her arm, and her eyes roved the shadows which were now so dreadfully illuminated even through the smoke. She saw the old man, the old leper.
She saw his body riddled with bits of iron. With nails. He looked up at her, his eyes, staring out through the rags that wrapped his face, filled with pain. Sairu took a lunging step toward him.
The roof groaned a last time and collapsed in a roar of fire and ash.
Something pierced her shoulder. Something sharp that wouldn’t budge.
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