With that, she turned. The crevice stretched before her, a yawning dark path; and the mist, so sentient, so full of hidden secrets and hidden malice, beckoned to her. She walked. That was what she was, after all: a Dream Walker.
And so the mist coiled over her head, swallowed her up, and concealed her forevermore from Sairu’s searching gaze.
“No!” Sairu clung to the wall and felt as though her hands clutched, not rock at all, but slimy skulls piled one on top of the other, mocking her with evil rictus grins. “No! Mistress, no! Come back!” Tears poured in torrents down her cheeks, and she felt the blackness of dragon poison scalding her skin with every tear. She would never reach her mistress now. The mist had devoured her. There was nothing left. Only that drop. That drop into nothing. There was only—
“Sairu, look at me.”
She heard Jovann calling to her up above. But that did not matter now. She had failed him too. She had lost his lady. She could not fulfill her vow to bring his bride safely home, to protect them both.
“All right. All right, stay where you are. I’m coming down.”
At this, she looked up and indeed saw Jovann’s legs swinging out over the gap, and then his body inching awkwardly down, finding handholds and footholds in the dream-substance of the cliff.
She clutched the rocks, which were no longer skulls but beds of slimy black moss crawling with slugs and spiders. She cared nothing for these nightmare images. They could not frighten her. “Go back,” she growled, and her voice was very like a dragon’s in that moment. “Go back, Jovann! Don’t be a fool.”
“Too late,” said he. The world of the Dream shook, and chunks of the cliff fell away, turning into screaming faces as they vanished in the swelling mist. Jovann slipped, and for a terrible moment she believed he would fall, she believed he would be lost as well. But, as though his gaining her side was a destiny neither one of them could forestall, he found his grip and continued to descend. “I’ve been a fool far too long,” he said. “But I intend to stop, right now.”
With a last scrambling effort, he drew alongside her, clutching the same black moss as she, and spiders crawled over his hands, biting and raising ugly welts. He did not look at them but turned to her as they hung together, suspended over their doom.
“Climb up,” he said.
Sairu shook her head. “I can’t. My mistress is lost.”
“But I am not. And I need you still.”
Her ears were too full of her pounding sorrow and the pulse of dragon poison. She could not hear what he said. She bowed her head into the dream substance, which had changed once more and was now formed of jagged black ice so freezing that it burned. “There’s nothing for me up there.” The mist by now had filled the crevice and reached up to touch her ankles. “There is nothing. I am nothing.”
But Jovann leaned closer to her, trying to look her in the eye, though she refused, turning away. “You are everything. Everything to me,” he said. “And if you will not climb up, neither will I. Do you understand?”
She did not. But some dull part of her heart wished her to understand, wished with such intensity of longing that even the poison she had breathed receded from her mind, receded from her vision just long enough that she could look at him.
She saw his heart in his eyes, and it was bright and warm even here as they clung to a wall of ice.
“Please, little miss. Come back with me.”
Through the mist, through the fear—across the Boundless and leagues beyond even the Realm of Dreams—the silver song of the wood thrush sang. And Sairu glimpsed once more that vision she had experienced the night Jovann put Hulan’s blossom in her hand. She glimpsed the woman she could never be, for she was a Golden Daughter. And she realized that of all the dreams, all the illusions of her life, she herself had been the deepest, most dreadful illusion of all. For she was not what she had always believed herself to be. And her desires were not those for which she had always striven.
The wood thrush sang, and its voice cut through the mist, the broken sky, the flames of the falling stars. It was a voice of living water, rushing, white, and cleansing. It washed over her soul.
“Won’t you return to me?”
Sairu’s gaze cleared. Tears splashed down her cheeks, but they were cleansing tears washing the smoke from her eyes. She saw Jovann beside her, his face full of so many things, not least of which was terror, not least of which was love. Drawing a breath that was both agony and relief, she released her hold on the jagged ice with one hand and slid her fingers on top of his.
“Follow me,” sang the wood thrush.
The mist overwhelmed them both. Sairu, clutching Jovann’s hand in hers, closed her eyes. The wall was gone. All was gone. Nothing surrounded them on all sides, and yet, at the same time, everything. She felt no fear, though she wondered if she should. The end, after all, is also the beginning. And beginnings are far more frightening than endings, for anything can happen, anything at all.
But she felt Jovann holding her tight, and she heard the song of the wood thrush all around her. The song itself seemed to take on substance and shape. Solid shape which, as it appeared through the mist, was more substantial than any Dream. Even as she had felt it once before, a rush of timelessness swept over and through her. She believed herself surrounded by the high walls of a strange and beautiful building, simply built compared with the grandeur of Manusbau, but perfect in proportion and symmetry. Above her head a shining light appeared, a light more brilliant and beautiful even than Hulan’s luminous glow. Sairu raised her face to that light and felt the radiance of hope, true hope, fall upon her like water, like song, bathing her in its glow. She glimpsed a lantern of delicate work hanging in high rafters above.
Then Sairu knelt in a dark patch of overgrown earth surrounded by broken foundation stones. She blinked up at Jovann, who knelt facing her. She smelled the stench of rotten eggs and heard a final screech of rockets, the last of the Chhayan’s Long Fire weapons, though she did not know it then.
“Are we back?” Jovann gasped, squeezing her hands so hard that she feared he might break them. “Are we out of the Dream?”
Sairu, her hair falling in her face, laughed a small, gasping, unbelieving laugh. She pressed Jovann’s hands to her heart. “We’re home!” she cried. “We’re home, Jovann!”
But he did not meet her enthusiasm. She saw a shadow like coming death sweep across his features. He stood, pulling his hands from hers, staring out across the grounds of the Crown of the Moon, which burned with rocket-fire in patches of fetid destruction. But his gaze saw none of these things, fixed as it was upon one dreadful sight.
Sairu, turning where she knelt, saw a cluster of Chhayan prisoners, bound by their hands and necks, marched at lance point to line up along the wall. Archers stood by, readying their arrows for execution.
The archers were Hari men; Sairu recognized them by their bowl-shaped helmets, from the center of which long tufts of black horsehair hung down their backs. They were the emperor’s foremost artillery brigade and had manned the walls of Manusbau and the temple during the night’s attack. Many of their number had been lost in the Long Fire blasts. Several of those lining up in formation now, she saw in the lantern light as she approached, were maimed from the explosions they’d faced.
But though their flesh gaped with wounds and their skin bubbled with burns, they held themselves proudly. And even those who had not the strength to draw their weapons stood shoulder to shoulder with their brethren as they prepared the night’s final volley.
The Chhayan captives, by contrast, looked like those who had just awakened from an evil dream. Though they were strong men clad in teeth-studded armor, they staggered in their bindings and looked around with rolling eyes as though they did not know quite where they were. Only a few seemed to see the formation of the archers across the courtyard, and recognizing their coming death, gathered themselves and stood like warriors. For Chhayans, though considered barbaric among the nations, were no cowar
ds.
Jovann was a few steps ahead of Sairu, hurtling himself toward the scene. He recognized each man now being arranged to face his doom. The chief of Poas, the chief of Seh—all the clan leaders and their seconds. Only the Khla clan was unrepresented. For a Chhayan chief never retreats, and so these men had stood their ground, still pursuing the fight with their seconds—sons or brothers—at their sides, even after all their warriors were dead or fled.
And now, as the Kitar soldiers used their lances to roughly push them against a vine-draped wall, the Chhayan leaders gazed into the future of their clans’ destruction, of the Chhayan scattering. They gazed into the death of their dream.
The Hari clan leader, his arm bloodied and hanging limply at his side, shouted a command to his men. “Ready!”
The Hari archers nocked arrows to their bows.
“No! Stop!” Jovann cried, and Sairu watched in horror as he flung himself into the space between the archers and the condemned men. The sky overhead was red, and it was impossible to say whether it glowed with reflected light of the many fires blazing along the walls of Manusbau, or with the coming of near dawn . . . or with the staining remnant blood of Hulan. However it was, Jovann’s face was cast in an ugly, leering light, and he looked quite mad in his desperation.
The Hari clan leader snarled at him. “Who are you to interfere with the Anuk’s justice?” he demanded.
“I am Juong-Khla Jovann,” Jovann declared, and the Chhayan chieftains behind him stared at him in surprise. For Jovann wore the outer robes of a Kitar noble, though his voice and accent were Chhayan. And Juong-Khla? Could this truly be the son of the Tiger chief? Had he come to die with them?
But Jovann continued: “I am appointed minister to the Anuk Anwar, ambassador for the Chhayan people. And I demand that these, the clan chieftains of my nation, be brought before the emperor himself, not killed behind a wall like thieves and murderers.”
“They are Chhayan,” said the Hari clan leader, who had lost many good men in blasts of fire and metal that night. “They are thieves and murderers. And if you are who you claim then you are no better than the rest of these dog-men.” He raised his hand, which clutched an evil-looking hare-fork arrow like a battle standard. “Prepare!” he cried, and the Hari archers, their arrows nocked, drew back their strings and took aim.
Sairu did not stop to think or consider. She was standing protectively in front of Jovann before she had quite realized what she intended to do. When she spoke, her voice high but strangely fierce, it was a voice all those gathered could recognize, Chhayan and Kitar alike. It was the voice of a warrior. Sairu shouted:
“I am Masayi Sairu, daughter of the Anuk Anwar, Imperial Glory of Noorhitam, the beloved Son of the Sun. This man is, as he has declared, the Anuk’s minister, the Dream Walker who visited our emperor’s dream and relieved him of his suffering. You will take us and these Chhayan chieftains to the Anuk. The Anuk alone will declare judgment.”
The archers hesitated. Several lowered their weapons, though their leader had not yet given command and stood still with his arm upraised, trembling with weakness and loss of blood. The Hari clan leader met Sairu’s gaze, and his will clashed against hers there under the spreading glow of dawn.
And Sairu, believing she recognized something in that man’s eye, wondered suddenly if his name was Umeer.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Sairu’s heart sank with dread at the reverberating rumble of the Besur’s voice. She turned at his approach, watching him, in company with a veritable army of priests, making his way down the paths from Hulan’s Throne.
The Besur wore his ceremonial robes and the headdress fashioned in mimicry of Chendu’s crown. He had wondered that night, when he saw the young dragon blazing in the sky above and witnessed the explosions along the wall, if his end had come. Then he, along with all the rest of the world, had felt the strange Silencing. Gazing up at the sky, he had seen—though not with his eyes, for mortal eyes cannot perceive such things—the blood of the Lady Moon spilling through the clouds. He had seen the dimming of the stars and then watched comets streak through the night as though plummeting to final destruction.
He had decided then that his death was upon him. And if he was going to die, he would die in splendor as befit the high priest of Hulan. So he was a magnificent sight indeed as he strode, flushed and puffing, into the ring of lantern light around the archers and the prisoners. His gaze flickered momentarily to Sairu and Jovann, and she saw the sneer on his mouth. But he addressed himself to the Hari clan leader. “Do you intend, sir, to spill blood on this sacred ground?”
The Hari clan leader, awed at the vision of the enormous priest and his towering headdress, lowered his arm. At that signal, the archers stood down, turning as one unit to watch and wait for their next command. The Hari clan leader bowed to the Besur. “These men are the chieftains of the barbarians who set upon our emperor’s walls and desecrated your own temple grounds. We must spill their blood to—”
“That girl is Masayi!” the Besur roared, sweeping a richly embroidered sleeve as he pointed at Sairu. “She is a princess, favorite of the Anuk Anwar. Do you have any idea the trouble that will rain down upon my head should the Imperial Glory learn that she died here within the holy confines of the Crown of the Moon? Do you have any idea the hassle I will be forced to contend with, cleaning up after your stupid mistake?”
It was not, perhaps, the most heartfelt defense ever made. But it was sincere, and it was offered in the high priest’s most profound bellow. Sairu, her breath caught in her lungs, held perfectly still, watching the face of the Hari clan leader. She could feel the tension in Jovann behind her, and the still greater tension among the Chhayan chieftains.
The Hari clan leader bowed again. “As you wish, Honored Besur,” he said.
The blast of dragon fire had blackened the walls and floors of the emperor’s throne room. And yet, though it was a sad and fearful sight, the splendor of that chamber remained undimmed. Anwar’s morning light, clear and clean following the red sunrise, poured gently through the windows, touching the blackened places with gentle fingers as though wishing to heal, to help. Soldiers in armor stood on the fringes of the chamber, exhausted from the night’s battle yet standing firm with weapons ready, prepared to serve their Anuk until they dropped dead of exhaustion. But they kept their distance from the emperor himself, who had ordered them to stand back.
A sunbeam fell upon the head of the Anuk Anwar, who sat halfway up the dais stairs, holding the crumpled body of Princess Safiya, his sister, in his arms.
Sairu, marching with Jovann and the Chhayan prisoners, Kitar lances pointed at their backs, cried out at the sight and forgot the peril behind her. She sprang forward, crossing the hall in a few strides, and climbed the stair to the emperor. She did not address him, did not bow or even mumble the sacred greetings. She reached out, saying in a child’s whimper, “Mother! Mother! Golden Mother!” and took Princess Safiya’s hands in hers.
Half of the Golden Mother’s face was unrecognizable, blackened beyond humanity. And yet, impossibly, her remaining eye blinked open and gazed with strange clarity up at Sairu. The life in her was slipping away, but for a moment she held on. “Sairu?” she gasped.
“I’m here! I’m here, dear Mother.”
Safiya struggled to find words through her pain. Her ruined body convulsed in her brother’s arms. Sairu, seeing the urgency in her eye, bent over her, putting her ear close to the Golden Mother’s mouth.
The princess, drawing one last agonized breath and letting it go in a whisper of sound, said: “You were born to make . . . life.”
Weeping, Sairu drew back. She put out a trembling hand, stained with dragon’s blood, and closed Princess Safiya’s eye. The Anuk shuddered with sobs of his own and, though he was her emperor and her father, Sairu reached out and touched his face in comfort. The Anuk shook his head but leaned into her hand. He spoke in an incoherent tumble of words. “She saved me. They always do
. The Golden Daughters. She was the best, our father’s pride. And she saved me.”
For a tiny space of time they were not Anuk and Masayi. They were a brother and a niece mourning the loss of one well loved.
Then suddenly the emperor stood. He was not a tall man, but his grief made him dreadful in the eyes of those clustered on the blackened floor below, from the Chhayan prisoners to the Besur himself. All trembled, and the Hari men made deep reverence at his feet. The emperor’s gaze passed over each man in turn. Then he addressed himself to the Hari clan leader. “The night is won?” he demanded.
“The night is won, Beloved Anuk,” the clan leader said, bowing once more. “Where the Chhayans expected to surprise us, we surprised them instead. They were bottled up in the dungeons below the temple and they were repulsed at our walls. Your warlords pursued them through the streets of Lunthea Maly, chased them out to the lands beyond. Save for these,” and he indicated the chieftains in their bindings. “These are their leaders, who would not stand down. We took them alive, and I beg leave, Imperial Glory, to execute them even now, here at your feet.” The bloodlust was in his eye and in his voice, and it was so compelling that even Sairu, crouched over the body of the slain princess, felt her heart move, and she would almost have voiced her support.
But Jovann stepped forward. He moved from shadows into the light of Anwar, which shone upon his face, revealing there a reflection of the horrors and the wonders he had glimpsed in the world beyond the Dream. There were tears in his eyes, not of fear but of deep regret. He bowed to the Anuk, saying:
“Honored Emperor, these men are guilty of treason against your glorious person, against the empire of Noorhitam. But I would beg that you hear the truth. They acted in hatred, but the hatred was fueled and fed by dragon poison. They have lived all their lives under an evil influence, the same influence under which I myself have lived and breathed since the day I was born. And though their deeds are wicked, not one of these men has committed an act as heinous as my own.”
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