Golden Daughter

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Instead the emperor nodded. He continued in the same quiet voice, “And you can do as this child of mine claims? You can find and interpret my dream?”

  Again the slave spoke. Sairu heard nothing but jabbering, like some weird, inarticulate beast. But she could see by the expression in the emperor’s eyes that he had no difficulty understanding what was being said to him. She realized with a start that the Anuk was unaffected by whatever spell ensorcelled Jovann.

  Jovann gloried momentarily in the renewed ability to understand his own voice. It took every ounce of his restraint to keep from making experimental noises, and he almost put a hand up to his face to see if he felt his own features once more. For it seemed to him that, as he knelt under the Anuk’s gaze, his face reverted back to what he had always known. He recalled suddenly the words spoken by Lord Dok-Kasemsan before the wretched imp was implanted in his eye.

  “Cast over him such shieldings that he will be unrecognizable to all who know him, all who seek him.”

  But the Anuk neither knew him nor had ever sought him. Unreliable spirit! Jovann felt a grin tugging the side of his mouth. Unreliable fey devil, obeying the letter of its master’s law and no more. A strange sympathy for the creature invading his brain filled Jovann. After all, it too was a slave.

  He realized that he was grinning and forced his mouth back into proper lines. The Anuk raised one eyebrow, but it was impossible to read feelings upon his solemn face. “I have told Dream Walkers and priests my dream before,” the emperor said. “They have gone seeking it in the Realm of Dreams and found nothing. No answer. No solution. Can you do any better?”

  Jovann bowed his head. “Great Emperor”—even now he could not bring himself to say Honored Emperor as he should, for while he did not hate, neither did he honor this man—“Great Emperor of Noorhitam upon whom Anwar and Hulan have shined with such favor; you and I, we live under the light of the same great Spheres. I swear by their celestial power that I will do all that is within my ability to find and interpret your dream. If it is the will of Anwar.”

  “If it is the will of Anwar,” the emperor echoed in acknowledgement. Then he told Jovann his dream:

  “Nightly, the same evil vision visits me in my sleep, disturbing my rest and wellbeing. In this vision I see Hulan, our Lady Moon. She is bound to a great round stone that shines of brilliant gold save that it is stained with blood. Her blood. And she bleeds from a thousand wounds. The blood of the moon runs red, staining the stone, staining the sky, covering all worlds in her pain. She screams. She weeps. I hear her voice in my head. And it is a voice of one alone. Utterly alone.”

  All those in the room stood transfixed as the emperor spoke. Each of them saw clearly in his mind the picture painted by the Anuk’s words. They saw the Lady Moon. They saw her pain. Each felt her loneliness as he stood isolated from his brethren.

  Sairu, positioned behind Jovann with her hands folded into her sleeves, gazed over his head into the face of the Anuk. As her emperor’s vision filled her mind, she felt a sickening shame at the lie she intended to tell. But what choice had she? She must set Jovann free, for he was the only one she knew who could travel into the Realms Beyond and seek her lost mistress. He was the only one who might be able to find Ay-Ibunda.

  The emperor continued, his words and demeanor as calm here in the public hall as, a few nights before in the privacy of his bedchamber, they had been manic. His was not a strong voice, but he spoke with presence.

  “As Lady Hulan’s blood runs streaming from the sky, it falls upon Manusbau. Upon my own palace. And all turns red with death. I see men approaching the palace walls, and in their arms they carry fire. This fire they hurl with tremendous force, and I see Manusbau crumble to dust beneath those flames.” The emperor blinked slowly, otherwise sitting perfectly still upon his throne. “This vision I see, Juong-Khla Jovann, and it pains me to witness it. So tell me, what does it mean? Is it a foretelling of the future? Is there anything to be done that may prevent these dreadful events from taking place? If you can see and discover the answer, I beg that you would tell me.”

  The whole court waited with bated breath. They waited, leaning toward the throne, their ears strained to catch the Chhayan slave’s next words.

  But words did not come. The slave knelt before the emperor, silent as stone.

  “Insolent dog,” growled the captain of the guard, stepping forward with the butt of his lance ready to clout the prisoner on the back of the head. “You will answer the Anuk when—”

  “Wait!” Sairu cried, moving swiftly to push aside the lance, much to the captain’s disgruntlement. “Wait, don’t touch him! I think . . . I think . . .” She approached Jovann, bending to gaze into his face. His eyes, though open, were vacant, staring into some great distance she could not perceive.

  Sairu looked round to her emperor and said, “Beloved Anuk, he is gone. He is dream-walking.”

  The two tall trees, their branches entwined, appeared before him, and thus the white emptiness was no longer empty, and he had a goal toward which to strive. And strive for it he did. Jovann had longed to see that gate again for what felt like ages though it was only a few months. He had longed to walk again in the shelter of the Grandmother Tree’s wide canopy. He heard the silver voice of the wood thrush calling, and he pursued it with all the force of his spirit, which felt so weak here in the nothing, but which was enough.

  The trees forming the gate reached out to receive him, and he passed under their twining branches, passed over their twining roots, and stepped through into the clearing and the wide, forever Wood.

  The Grandmother Tree stood before him. But Jovann drew a sharp breath at the sight. This tree was ancient and ageless and inalterable. In all the years of Jovann’s life, from the time he was a child first called from his body into the Between, he had never known the Grandmother Tree to suffer change. It was always tall, always strong, always thickly grown with greenery.

  Now it stood bare. Skeletal branches empty of all growth extended above Jovann’s head. And rather than the soft gold light that may or may not have been sunlight which Jovann had always seen falling through the green above, dappling the ground at his feet, there was nothing but heavy darkness. Not the darkness of night, for there were no stars. Not even the darkness of an overcast evening, for there were no clouds.

  This was just darkness.

  Though he wore no physical body, Jovann felt his heart beating hard. Hastily he assumed a form very like his mortal frame save that this one was uninjured. What a relief to feel his own face again! But the relief was nothing compared to the horror of seeing the Grandmother Tree stripped naked. Jovann approached. He saw that the green grass which had covered this clearing, gently draping over the Grandmother’s roots like a blanket, was withered away. There was nothing but dust, dry dust. No sign of fallen leaves to indicate that the Grandmother, for the first time in ages, had experienced a cycle of seasons. Instead Jovann had the distinct impression that the leaves, rather than turning and dropping, had been eaten away.

  “Grandmother,” Jovann said, bowing to the tree as he always did. This time, rather than feeling that the great tree answered him in a language he did not comprehend, he felt . . . nothing. No answer. No response. “Grandmother, do you sleep?” he asked.

  “She does not sleep,” said a voice in the branches and shadows above. “Nor is she dead as you fear. She is hiding.”

  Jovann looked up and saw the wood thrush, its wings folded and its body bent toward him, claws clinging to an empty bough. “Hiding?” Jovann repeated, his voice thin with anxiety. “From what?”

  “From the Greater Dark,” said the bird. “From the Dream which swiftly approaches.”

  Jovann looked down at the dust lightly covering the Grandmother’s roots. He realized it was very like the dust he had glimpsed when he and Cé Imral had approached the strange temple made of sound. It was the dust of the Dream.

  The bird flew on silent wings down from the branch. It seemed sudde
nly much larger than Jovann had ever realized, with a wingspan more like an eagle’s than a songbird’s. But when it landed at his feet it was still just a wood thrush.

  “You have come to find the dream of the Emperor of Noorhitam,” said the bird.

  “I—well, no,” Jovann hastily replied. “I did not intend to, anyway. He is, you see . . . I can’t . . .” He shuddered, for the Darkness above was cold, cold upon his spirit even if it was far from his mortal body. “I cannot aid my father’s enemy. My enemy.”

  The bird turned its head to one side so that it could better study Jovann with one bright eye. Or rather, not study him. For it seemed to Jovann, as he stood before that gaze, that the bird did not need to study but already knew him. Instead, as it looked upon him, it felt as though the bird willed Jovann to study himself.

  “The emperor’s dream,” said the songbird, “is but a small part of the whole. The whole dream, Jovann, belongs to your father and to your forefathers.”

  This Jovann did not understand. He felt like he could if he tried, but he did not wish to. For some reason it frightened him. But he said, “I am not afraid of my father’s dream. It is a good dream. It is a dream of justice for my people.”

  “You have not seen your father’s dream,” said the songbird.

  “I have,” Jovann insisted. “You have shown it to me many times since I was a boy. I have seen the vision of my father setting fire to the Kitar emperor’s palace. I have seen myself standing before the emperor as he pleaded with me. I—”

  He stopped. He realized suddenly what he was saying. “The emperor. He begged me to interpret his dream.”

  “And thus a part, at least, of the vision has come to pass,” said the bird. “But there is much more. And the time has come for you to see the whole of it. To understand the choice laid before you. It is a fearful sight, and you will be much afraid. But I promise you this: As long as you walk with me, the dream itself cannot harm you. Are you ready?”

  Suddenly it was not a bird that stood before Jovann. Or not merely a bird. Jovann, staring down at that little space at his feet, realized that his vision, even here, could not encompass what was before him. Vision itself was not enough. Vision could only be confused, telling him one moment that he looked upon a bird, the next that he looked upon a great, golden lion of fierce aspect, possessing enormous claws that could decimate a kingdom in a single swipe. But no, not a lion; a lamb, a white, innocent lamb with all gentleness, all meekness in its gaze. No, not that either. It was neither bird nor lion nor lamb nor an animal of any kind. It was a tree rising up from the dust. A Katuru tree, perhaps, its leaves red like flames—but that was wrong as well. For those leaves weren’t merely like flames. They were flames, brighter and more brilliant than the fire in the depths of the opal stones given Jovann by the Lady Moon. And these flames licked up the whole of the tree, covered it from root to crown, and yet it was not consumed. The trunk and branches were white and pure and shining beneath the fire.

  And then all of these shapes, so strange and confused in his mind, gave way. Instead Jovann thought he perceived a form like a Man. More than that he could not say, for his senses failed him. He merely stood dumb and still, waiting for whatever words this Man might speak.

  “Walk with me, Jovann,” said the Man.

  They move through the Dream. But it is not the Dream as Jovann experienced it when he walked hand-in-hand with Lady Hariawan. There he had moved in a strange Other existence beyond Time, but his mortality had followed him and thus traces of Time followed as well. And so the Dream had been empty, formless, changing shape before his vision, but never true.

  Here there is no Time. And Jovann walks with the Man, not on the outer crust of the Dream but down into its depths, beneath those formless layers, into the heart of all. Into the truth of all. He is afraid, or he believes himself to be. But he does not realize yet what fear is.

  “Where are we?” he asks.

  “We walk in the Dream of your forefathers,” the Man replies. “And you will see it now in full.”

  At these words Jovann’s vision clears and he finds that he is surrounded. For a moment he believes the Man has abandoned him, but this is not true. The Man is still there, Jovann simply cannot see him. Instead his vision—or perhaps not his vision, for vision is not the same here in the Dream as it is in other worlds—is full of faces he knows.

  He sees his father, Juong-Khla, master of the Khla clan. But the face is not only his father’s. It is also his grandfather’s. And his great-grandfather’s. And more. Two hundred years’ worth of generations. And this forms the first circle.

  Beyond that circle there are more. Jovann recognizes them. He sees the chief of the Poas Clan, men of the Snake. All the chieftains of the Poas going back two hundred years. And they form the second circle. Beyond them, the Seh Clan, men of the Horse. And the Kondao Clan, and the Tonsey Clan, and the Sekiel Clan—all the clans of the Chhayan people, all the chieftains dreaming together an immense dream. Jovann sees them surrounding him. And he feels the pulse of their spirits.

  The ceremony begins.

  There are no words to describe what Jovann sees. Or if there are, Jovann will not speak them. Terrible are the rites performed, and perhaps they were never seen in the mortal world. But they are true here, and they are present, and they are ongoing. Throughout the generations these same black practices are worked in the hearts of every Chhayan chief. Soon the world surrounding Jovann drips with gore and the chieftains scream in pain. It is the pain of summoning.

  The Greater Dark appears in their midst. The Dragon.

  “You are abandoned by your god, by your goddess,” the Dragon says. “You are abandoned by your celestial parents.”

  “We are abandoned!” the chieftains cry, their dream roaring throughout years of mortal lives.

  “You must have revenge,” the Dragon says.

  “Revenge! Revenge! We must have revenge!” cry the chieftains, spitting blood from their sliced lips.

  “Revenge,” says the Dragon, and fire fills his mouth. “Sweet revenge.”

  Jovann sees, rising up from the circle, rising up like a new sun, a Gold Gong suspended in darkness. Beneath the gong the Chhayan warlords move, carrying fire in their hearts, fire in their eyes. Jovann sees the palace of the Kitar emperor, even as he has seen before. But this time the whole of the vision presents itself before him, not the partial images he has viewed all his life. And he sees that it is not the Long Fire that sets the walls of Manusbau ablaze as he has always believed. It is the searing hatred of his father, of his father’s father. It is the hatred of all the Chhayan people.

  It is not justice he sees, tearing down those walls, destroying all in red flame. It is fury. It is madness. It is rage-fueled vengeance.

  Jovann tears his gaze away from the horror, looking instead up to the Gold Gong. And now he sees what the emperor described to him. He sees Hulan, and he knows it is she, though her form is not one he can fully perceive. She is bound to the gong, and she bleeds from a thousand wounds. He hears her crying out into the Darkness, into the Dream:

  “If I but knew my fault!”

  The Dragon, on black wings as vast as worlds, is before her. And he laughs in the face of her agony.

  No. No, no. It cannot be. This is not the truth Jovann has known and believed. This cannot be the truth of his father’s dream! Jovann opens his mouth. He screams.

  The Dragon turns.

  The Dragon, who is not bound to Time as mortals or even immortals are. The Dragon who exists in the Darkness, in the depths of the Dream.

  The Dragon turns and looks straight at Jovann.

  “Wait! He is coming awake.”

  Jovann heard Sairu’s voice through the haze of his mind, and he blinked several times in an effort to see her, to find her. He could feel her near to him, though how he knew it was she he could not say. She was close. He reached out for her and felt her catch his hand.

  At that touch he opened his eyes. Sairu knelt befor
e him, holding his hand in both of hers. He had never seen her face so anxious. Where was the smile that was her mask? It was gone, ineffective to hide her fear.

  “Jovann?” she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “Jovann, are you all right?”

  He blinked again. Then he looked down at his hand clasped in hers. He saw that smoke was rising from his arm, from his body. He shuddered, and his stomach turned sickeningly at the smell of sulfur on his skin. But he did not burn. Like the Katuru tree, he did not burn.

  “Jovann?” Sairu asked again, and he met her gaze.

  “I’m all right, little miss,” he said, though as he spoke, the words came out all wrong, all twisted. The imp, after all, was still firmly lodged in his brain.

  But even the gibberish on his lips eased her fears. Sairu let go his hand and stood. Jovann saw that he was once more in the emperor’s throne room.

  Sairu addressed herself to the emperor. “Beloved Anuk, he has returned,” she said.

  The emperor leaned forward on his throne, gripping the inlaid arms with tense hands. His eyes were bright. “And have you seen my dream, Dream Walker?” he asked, and not even his assumed courtly calm could disguise the tremor in his voice. “Did you find it?”

  Jovann lifted his face to the emperor’s. He had vowed never to kneel before this man, and here he was, upon his knees. Yet it was not he who made the supplication.

  “I saw your dream, Great Emperor,” Jovann said.

  Though Sairu continued to hear only the imp’s garbling, the emperor understood him well enough. A light shone in the Anuk’s eyes, a desperate, hungry light. “Can you tell me what it means?” he asked.

  Thus, even as the songbird had warned him, Jovann found himself faced with a choice. Would he support his father’s dream now that he had seen it in its entirety? The images of those bloody rites played through his memory, and the imp in his head screamed and hid its face from them. He saw again the flayed and dripping gore. He saw again the Greater Dark. He saw Hulan bound to the Gold Gong.