Mystic Dragon

by Jason Denzel

  The next day, the winter chill gave way to a warm spring morning. The Woodsmith spent the better part of it outside his hut doing chores. He split firewood, cleaned debris off his thatch roof, and cleared the meadow immediately surrounding his house.

  With his chores complete, he brought out his onkai blades.

  Onkai.

  He’d never learned what the word meant. The teacher who’d given him the staves had only shared their names and showed him how to use them. He’d often wondered how a mountain village had come to revere such an unusual object. The villagers were supposedly known throughout the highlands for the unusual and versatile weapon. But those stories, along with the meaning behind their names, had died with the village.

  Lifting one of the metal blades, the Woodsmith examined it in the cool daylight. The metal was harder and lighter than iron, something he’d not seen before.

  Memories of his past flashed in his mind, but the Woodsmith purged them. The past was gone. Dwelling on it only brought suffering.

  He lost himself in the familiar fighting stances he’d been taught. Normally, working up a hard sweat helped him to avoid thinking too much, but today, despite all his efforts to not dwell, the pile of stacked stones he’d seen at the caravan lingered in his mind.

  Sitting Mother.

  Dangerous memories of his lover, his teachers, and even his long-lost childhood friend bubbled to the surface.

  “No!” he snarled to himself, and slammed the onkai into their sheaths.

  As the afternoon turned to evening, a light rainstorm dragged itself across the valley. Higher up the slopes there would be snow, but down here the early spring held enough sway to melt the snowfall into rain.

  The Woodsmith brought firewood into his cottage and set it into the simple hearth. When he’d first come to the meadow four years ago, he’d been wandering aimlessly. The blue oaks surrounding the open grassland had just felt right to him in a way he couldn’t explain. He decided it was as good a place as any to settle for a while.

  After nearly a week of building a campfire each night, he’d gathered stones to erect a hearth so that his fire could burn all day and night. The surrounding forest had no shortage of wood to keep it going. Around the hearth he built shelter in order to keep the sun and, later, the rain off him. His shelter grew into a hut and he kept building.

  The months turned to years. In time, the Woodsmith found the local trade routes and left goods in exchange for basic tools such as a hammer, cloth, sewing needles, and other scraps of metal. He hauled the stones himself from the nearby river, painstakingly carrying or dragging them the entire way. His hut wasn’t big. It was large enough for him to live comfortably.

  The peaceful rainstorm pattered outside, and the Woodsmith roasted his hare. The tumble of memories refused to stay away as he slowly turned the rabbit on its skewer over the fire. Its juices hissed on the log, filling the cabin with their smoky scent.

  If indeed the Woodsmith was being called by Sitting Mother, what did she want from him? He stared at the back of his hand. Red and purple blisters covered every inch. He had found contentment in being alone. He could never be around people again. Once, he’d allowed himself to hope that Sitting Mother could cure him where no other Mystic could. The Saint had turned out to be false. Yet here she was again, perhaps.

  He frowned. No. He had tried that once. Always, throughout his whole life, Mystics had disappointed him. He resolved his will and ate his rabbit.

  With his belly full, the Woodsmith brought out his old book. He still looked at it every night even though he’d memorized everything within. It was his one connection to somebody other than himself. He couldn’t read all the words, and no matter how he tried to guess or decipher their meanings, the mysteries within remained beyond his grasp. He wondered if, in some strange way, the songs and words in the book were trying to communicate with him. He turned to the page with the lyrics to his favorite song.

  The Woodsmith took a small bundle he kept near the hearth and withdrew his newest flute. Like all its predecessors, it had been carved from elderberry. It was as long as his forearm. He’d drilled the holes with careful precision, resulting in an instrument that was his finest yet.

  He examined his handiwork before lifting it to his lips. A single note filled the hut. He played more, experimenting with melodies he’d invented, by blowing into the flute and moving his fingers across the various holes until he discerned certain patterns that were pleasant to his ears.

  The Woodsmith played for a while trying to get the harmony that he worked on each night. Finally, he found it. He swayed to his own music, a soft melancholy sound that reflected his mood.

  With the tune drifting in his hut and his ears, he sang:

  “Listen Once,

  Hear Me thrice.

  From stars to shore,

  Across paradise.

  I cry, I call, I plea.

  My lost one,

  Come Back to Me.

  Come Back to Me.”

  He glanced at the book. Checking the words that he’d long ago memorized.

  Listen now,

  Hear me true.

  Out of the mountains,

  From beyond the sea.

  Awake, my Sim.

  Come back to me.

  Come back to me.

  A chill ran up his spine. He had never seen those words before. The flute drifted away from his lips. He blinked his eyes to clear them and peered at the page again.

  They stared back at him, as real as the book they were printed in.

  Awake, my Sim.

  Firelight cast a warm glow across the angular runes on the page. His heart thundered. What was happening? Was his mind slipping already? Perhaps he’d been too isolated for too long.

  “Leave me alone,” the Woodsmith growled, his voice barely audible to his own ears. His throat cracked with disuse.

  Carefully setting the flute aside, he stood and drew Memory from its sheath. He also grabbed a makeshift torch and lit it from the hearth.

  Outside, the rain fell steadily, fat drops that plunked into muddy puddles. The Woodsmith held the torch in one hand and his onkai in the other. The torch sputtered and hissed.

  He peered into the gloom, searching every shadow. There was nothing out there, yet why did he feel he wasn’t alone? He returned to his hut and placed the torch in his fire.

  There on his hearth, impossibly, stood a pile of stones shaped like Sitting Mother.

  * * *

  He waited until the rain passed the next day. The Woodsmith gathered the provisions he’d need for a longer journey than usual. He didn’t have much, but over time he’d collected more than he could carry in a sack. He packed food, an assortment of herbs, his two canteens of water, and extra cloth and rope.

  As he shouldered his pack and readied his onkai staves he glanced at The Book of Songs and wondered whether to bring it. It had been with him all these years, but now he felt as though it had betrayed him. He hadn’t revisited its pages since the night before. He itched to open it and see whether the words remained changed, but he was afraid. He hesitated a heartbeat, then left the hut and the book, not knowing if he’d ever return.

  It took him three days to find the clearing. It surprised him how easily he found it, even after all these years. It was the same as he’d remembered it, although with far less snow. It was the place he and his teacher had fought the wivan. The place he’d watched his mentor die. There were other details that he noticed now, too, that his younger self hadn’t noticed before. The ground was sloped, angled to give the high ground to the laghart. The sky opened directly above him, and the nearby cave sloped deeper into the mountainside than he recalled. The Woodsmith approached the place where he’d buried his teacher. He’d marked it, along with the other grave he’d dug that day, with large rocks. Aside from those stones, nothing differentiated the graves from any other patch of dirt outside the cave.

  Setting his onkai blades aside, he knelt and touched his forehea
d to the ground at the base of the grave.

  He missed her.

  The hours passed, the afternoon wore on, and the Woodsmith wondered why he’d come here. He knew he needed answers. He needed to understand what was happening with Sitting Mother, yet a part of him knew that this was only the first place he needed to visit.

  His teacher had always been the one to tell him where to go next. She’d always known. She’d never hesitated, even when their destination so clearly led her toward death. He still wondered why and how she’d been so certain of her own death, and why she’d gone forward with it. Perhaps she’d seen purpose to her death. Or maybe, he thought with grim reflection, his youth and inexperience elevated the perception of her confidence and competency in his mind to be more than she actually possessed.

  Even so, the Woodsmith wished she were here now to guide him. He found himself foolishly hoping for a sign of where to go next. He wanted assurances that he hadn’t lost his mind. More than anything else though, he wanted to know his purpose. He might be alive, but he drifted through his days like the shades of his brother and the others that lay at his feet.

  Why are you moping? his long-dead brother whispered to him across time and death. You know where you need to go next. Get moving, tyke.

  We are rangers, his teacher said, her voice crisscrossing his brother’s. We do what we always do. We move, and we survive.

  The Woodsmith growled. “There’s—” He coughed, and had to wet his throat. “There’s nowhere left to go,” he managed. The voice that emerged from his throat matched the rocks around him. “I kill everyone I love.”

  Out of the mountains, a new voice said in his mind, from beyond the sea. Awake, my Sim. Come back to me.

  The strange words he’d seen in The Book of Songs.

  The Woodsmith’s hands trembled as he stood. There was nothing for him here. He turned his face to the northeast. It was time to return.

  * * *

  He crested the summit of the mountain he’d not climbed for four years and noticed how little it had changed. The same bushes grew nearby; the same mountain goat—or one of its descendants—stared lazily at him with the same curious expression. The same stunning view greeted him.

  Time had become a strange concept to the Woodsmith. The seasons seemed longer. The years stretched. And while that meant that stars lingered longer on clear evenings, it also meant that loneliness settled into his bones until it was as familiar to him as his callused fingers. To the Woodsmith, it was a lifetime ago since he’d stood in this same spot.

  But not everything was exactly the same on the summit as it had been. The most obvious change was the lesser amounts of snow. At these altitudes, it would be impossible to eliminate it entirely, even in the warmest summer months. But today, only the most stubborn patches remained. Overconfident tufts of grass had sprouted—much to the delight of the goat, the Woodsmith was sure. The mountain had awoken where before it had slept.

  He turned his attention to the cliffside where a scattering of stones lay.

  He set his onkai staves aside and lifted one of the larger rocks. Small flecks of faded white paint covered its surface. He was surprised to find the stones remained, and hadn’t been tumbled down the mountainside by weather or animals.

  One by one he piled rocks atop one another. He used both the old white-flecked stones as well as newer ones, forming a vaguely pyramid-shaped pile. Once the base was formed, he made adjustments, giving his creation more definition. At last he set the capstone and stepped back to examine his work.

  The stack wasn’t exactly the same as the one he’d seen before, but it created the vague impression of a meditating person sitting cross-legged on the ground.

  “You called me,” he said to the cairn. “So I’m here. What do you want?”

  Nothing, save for the wind, answered.

  “I’m rotting!” he snarled. “And they’re all dead. Everyone!”

  The goat bleated nearby. The Woodsmith ignored it.

  “Where were you when Bith Yab was dragged from his home? When Rochella’s throat was torn out? When Swiko used the last of her energy to touch my face and urge me to see you? Huh? Where were you then?”

  Speaking those names aloud for the first time in years tore his heart open. Rage burned in him, a furnace hungering for fuel.

  “Last time I came here for them,” he went on. “Their ghosts haunt me every day. But today, I’m here to tell you to leave me alone.”

  He summoned his memories of Dane, of Rochella, and of Swiko, who all smiled at him, filling him with crushing love. It hurt, to think of them so directly, all at once. All of them had died in front of his eyes. Now he had to kill them again.

  He collapsed to his knees. The hard stone bit into his flesh. “Good-bye,” he said, to all of them, tears welling.

  The wind danced across the summit. The Woodsmith inhaled the cold.

  “Sim,” said a voice, and this time it was very real.

  A wave of heat rose up the Woodsmith’s spine. He lifted his face toward the direction of the voice and bit back a curse. It was the same cairn as before, but somehow, more than that. A woman’s face, ancient and formed of silvery wind, raced across the uppermost stones. Flowing hair blew across her face. She was both young and old all at once. Her face shifted, from that of a young girl, to a beautiful woman, to an old crone, ever changing, but always stunning to behold.

  “Release your burdens,” she said.

  A gentle pressure touched his shoulder, as if weight from a hand. When he glanced, there was nothing.

  “Look within yourself, and find the way.”

  A murky shimmer played across his vision. The Woodsmith turned to it. A path of silvery light stretched before him, down the mountain, across the valley, and vanished into the west, as clear and real as the stones before him. In that moment, he knew, without doubt, that he had to follow it.

  The path sang him a voiceless song, one that pulled his true self from the deep shadows of his own fear. The Woodsmith faded and Sim opened his heart for the first time in four years.

  Come back to me.

  TWENTY

  THE MAN WITH NO FUTURE

  Two Months Before Crow Tallin

  Shevia struggled to stay awake as the hypnotic sway of the carriage lulled her to sleep. She forced her eyes open, hoping Master Bhairatonix had not noticed her momentary lapse in consciousness. She kept her expression blank and hands folded on her lap but dug her nails into her skin. The brief flash of pain was good, mostly because it was all she knew recently. Most days, she just wanted to sleep.

  Bhairatonix sat straight backed on the opposite side of the small carriage, his immensely tall frame filling the entire space. He gazed past the orange and black beads shading the window to the city outside. Shevia didn’t think he’d noticed her nodding off. It took all of her will not to yawn.

  “What do you see out there?” Bhairatonix asked, jolting Shevia to wakefulness. Her eyelids had been getting heavier again until he spoke. Shevia was almost glad for the conversation because it would keep her awake.

  Almost.

  Bhairatonix nodded to the bead-covered window beside her.

  Shevia pulled the beads aside. The first thing she noticed was the brightness. The midday sun revealed the bustling capital of Yin-Aab, with its sloped tile-roofed buildings and clean-swept streets that rose in tiers up the side of Jagacrawn, the Titan Mountain, like ivy crawling up a manor home. Along the road, commoners knelt with their foreheads pressed to the dirt. Bhairatonix had made no secret of his presence in the city. Those who lived here knew exactly who sat within the lacquered carriage.

  Some of the prostrated people in the street peeked up as the carriage rumbled past them. One of them was a shirtless, malnourished boy, no older than four years old. The boy’s mother, who was perhaps Shevia’s age, nineteen, quickly pushed his head back down. It staggered Shevia to see somebody her age as a mother. The very thought of having children was as distant and strange to her as
the moon.

  Scattered throughout the crowd were other figures that sent a shiver through Shevia. In recent years there’d been an influx of Unclaimed imported from other countries, mostly Moth. Some of the noble houses had apparently overcome the stigma of housing those kinds of people in order to force them into labor. Shevia thought little of it. It didn’t concern her.

  A familiar figure walked ahead of the carriage, close enough for Shevia to see if she leaned. It was her brother Tibron. Her heart surged with warmth for him. He and her other brothers had been one of the reasons Bhairatonix had come to Yin-Aab. They’d returned from whatever training they’d received to be rangers and were now in the employ of the High Mystic. Shevia had nothing to be grateful or happy about in her life, but being reunited with them—especially Tibron—was as close to joy as she could imagine.

  “Well?” Bhairatonix prompted.

  The High Mystic’s voice crushed whatever tiny seed of happiness had tried to germinate in her heart. “I see the greatest city in Qin,” Shevia said.

  “Don’t conceal your thoughts from me.”

  Shevia quickly lowered her gaze and then glanced out the window again, hoping to find an answer that would satisfy him. They were in the Shallows, one of the commoner districts, heading toward the outskirts of the city. Soon the buildings and well-maintained roads would fade and give way to the tightly regulated rice-farming district. Behind the nearby buildings, Shevia could discern the Circus and Noble districts rising up the side of Jagacrawn.

  “I see wealth and power,” Shevia said. “The might of Qin’s nobles is impressive and—”

  “I will not ask you again for the truth,” Bhairatonix said.

  “I see freedom!” Shevia blurted in a rush. She hated that her fear of her master overrode her sense of self-preservation. “The commoners groveling in the street may have destitute lives, but they are free to live their lives as they wish.”

  “Interesting,” Bhairatonix said after a moment. “And does the freedom of a rice farmer—a person who is forbidden to leave his homestead for more than a full day, and who will never rise above his station—appeal to you? I believe that same farmer could not even imagine the life you lead as my apprentice. Do you not have gratitude to me for raising you from a merchant-scholar family to where you are now?”