by eden Hudson
He stretched one arm over his head, fingertips grazing a dirt ceiling. With both arms out wide, he could just touch each wall.
The guai-ray bristled. Narrow passageways led to natural ambushes.
With no other options, however, Raijin started forward, one hand on the wall as a guide. For what felt like a short stretch of time, the slope of the passage led upward, then it began a slow descent. The tunnel turned subtly to the right, but it didn’t take any sudden turns.
Now and again, Raijin’s mind tried to wander to Koida, Misuru, or the death dreams, but the guai-ray senses snapped it back with every sound and variation in the air. He had yet to sense the electrical signature of any living thing, but the ray would not lower its hackles.
After a while, Raijin came to another opening in the dirt wall of the tunnel. It was slightly taller than the passage he was in, but narrower across the middle. Standing in its mouth, he could extend one arm fully, but the elbow of his other arm touched the wall. He walked into it a few steps. As he moved forward, the tunnel grew closer and closer on each side.
He shook his head. There was no telling how narrow the passage became the farther it went, and the thought of getting wedged in some tight shaft he couldn’t escape gripped his lungs like a fist.
He turned back and stepped out into the original larger passage.
The guai-ray senses shrieked out a warning.
Raijin ducked, feeling the breeze from a powerful blow as it sailed past his face. He launched a kick at his attacker, catching it in a flabby gut, but he could already feel a second creature leaping at him from the opposite side. Claws sliced through his throat, spilling lifeblood down his chest. He spun and laid into the creature with his fists and teeth.
He was going to die, but he wasn’t going to die alone.
Chapter Twelve
MORTAL LANDS
Youn Wha took the steps to the alchemy tower with delicate, ladylike steps, her son’s aggravated tread ringing on the stone stairs behind her.
“You issued a royal order in the name of the Rising Phoenix Emperor? I was gone less than a week. Do you plan on taking the throne as well, Mother? Should I name you the official regent in my absence and save you the trouble of maneuvering in the shadows while I’m gone?”
Youn Wha felt a stirring of amusement at the frustration in Yoichi’s voice.
“Treasured son, the loyalty you cultivated in your alchemists did not stretch as far as the devious eunuchs in the rooms below the alchemy tower. There are those among them who would have tried to sneak into the tower in spite of the deadly corruption flowing through it, thinking themselves wise enough to survive it. Your royal decree, however, put a stop to that.”
For the most part. The few who thought it worth the risk of imprisonment were now nothing more than powder in the Corpse Ash jar.
Cold fury radiated up the stairs behind her, but Yoichi held himself in check. She smirked to herself. He must want something.
They had hardly reached the top of the staircase when Yoichi proved her guess correct.
“Mother, your son wants to see your will done,” Yoichi said in the respectful filial tone of a dutiful son. “However, the second princess’s Ji Yu guardians killed the palace’s finest trackers so that I could not follow them. Give me Lao so that I can trace her steps and capture her.”
Youn Wha stood to the side of the tower’s trapdoor and tucked her arms demurely inside her sleeves, waiting for her dutiful son to open it for her.
When he didn’t move immediately, she prompted him. “Those who wish to be served must first learn to serve.”
With a petulant sigh, Yoichi shoved the door open. Its bang echoed through the deserted tower room.
Youn Wha climbed the final stairs and stepped into the room. The tables were covered in the same half-finished experiments, burnt-down braziers, and notes they had been covered in when their owners collapsed.
“While it is important that you kill the Shyong San brat to retain undisputed rule over the empire, she is no longer necessary for the ritual.” Youn Wha crossed the room and slipped between shelves into her son’s makeshift study.
A pool of water had grown beneath the ice coffin, and its every drip now had an echo as it seeped between the floorboards and hit the stone staircase below.
Yoichi frowned, tracing his pale fingertips across the melting ice. He pulled his fist back to his side, then slammed his palm into the slippery plane, tendrils of black Ro snaking out, searching for weaknesses.
“It’s still not penetrable,” he said.
His lack of patience was showing itself once more.
“It will be in time,” Youn Wha told her son.
“In time, I could have captured Koida and dragged her back for execution.”
Her lips twisted into a scowl. “The Ro is your priority. Advancing to Bloom of Malignant Beauty. The girl is no longer necessary.”
Yoichi opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, cocking his ear almost imperceptibly toward the door. Had he heard something? Youn Wha listened intently, but heard nothing beyond the usual creaks and groans of the deserted alchemy tower. And the dripping.
“Apologies, Mother, but until the ice melts, our only access to the Ro is through the girl. She is my priority because doing your will is my priority. Please, allow your son to serve you.”
In spite of his obedient filial speech tone, his horrid purple eyes, so like his detestable father’s, flashed with pigheaded stubbornness. As his grandmaster, she could order him to drop this fool’s quest and force him to sit in silence watching the ice until it cracked, but then he would learn nothing. The only teacher a boy like Yoichi heard was that harsh master Failure.
“You will find in time that I am correct,” she said, “and by then it will be too late. I will not share with you what you could have taken for yourself.”
Yoichi bowed to her as if he could hear her past his own arrogance.
Youn Wha rolled her eyes and led him out of the makeshift study. The box, a long watertight metal casket, lay on the opposite side of the tower. She gave it a thump with her silken shoe. A sputter of sleepy grumbling came from within.
“Lao’s arm is far from regrown,” she told her son. “And although he wasn’t killed in his duel with the Ji Yu, his mind has degenerated another degree. I fear that he only has one or two regenerations remaining before he’s rubbish.”
Yoichi’s white brows twitched together, his eyes narrowing. No doubt he thought she was only making excuses to discourage him from taking Lao.
She pulled her hand from her sleeves, indicating that Yoichi should open it. He bent beside the box, undoing the catches. When her son threw the lid back, Lao sloshed the bright blue timony solution everywhere in his haste to cover his eyes from the harsh light from the windows. Too many years as an alchemist had destroyed Youn Wha’s sense of smell, but she saw Yoichi’s nose wrinkle at the sharp tang of the solution.
“That burning... kill the big orb... I sleep in the... eyes,” Lao muttered.
Youn Wha turned to her son.
“The leech is always muddled when he first comes out of the solution,” Yoichi said defiantly.
“Lao, manifest a weapon,” Youn Wha ordered, infusing her voice with annoyance.
The leech groaned, then raised his one remaining hand, blue droplets falling from it, and manifested a Double Crescent Knife. The Ro flickered between bloody red and toxic black.
“Point to your head,” she said.
The Double Crescent Knife sliced through his left nostril and into his cheek as he used the hand holding it to touch his forehead.
“Name all the people in this room.”
“This is called...the alchemy tower,” Lao said.
“Lao,” Yoichi said. “Are you hungry?”
Youn Wha scowled at her son.
Lao twisted his face toward the white-haired young man. “Ro...”
Yoichi caught Youn Wha’s gaze. “Lao, can you smell the second princess’s
crippled Ro?”
Solution sloshed as Lao nodded. He sniffed the air like a hound, head dipping senselessly, then sputtered and coughed as the blue liquid went into his lungs.
A glint of amusement sparkled in Yoichi’s plum-colored eyes at the sputtering.
“He retains enough of his mental capabilities to find her,” he said. “That is all your son requires of him, gracious Mother.”
Civility came so easy to him when he got what he wanted. In that way, he was much like his mother.
“Will you be leaving immediately?” she asked, her voice cold.
“Very soon,” he said. “My arrival in such a state caused a bit of a stir.”
For the first time since her son’s return, Youn Wha took in his ripped and muddy clothing and the scratches and bruises he should have been able to heal with Drinking from the Pool of Life. Bloody bandages torn from rough fabric were wrapped around his upper arm, throat, stomach, and calf.
“Why are you playing at being hurt?”
His handsome face shifted to a veneer of grim determination. “The murderess and her rebel band ambushed me. My men were killed in the battle. I fought her, but she fled, using Water Lily trickery.”
“My trick?” Lao wondered sluggishly. “But I didn’t teach her...”
“To paint her as a rebel warrior will endear contrary hearts to her cause,” Youn Wha said. “There is nothing the Living Blades love more than a violent leader.”
“Then the murderess stood back while her band of Water Lily agents and savages attacked me and my men,” Yoichi said. “When I challenged her, she ran like a coward. My fastest riders will be sent out to the farthest reaches of the empire with notices of a reward for her capture.”
“And if someone in these far reaches does manage to capture her, Heroic Rising Phoenix Emperor, to whom will they bring word?” Youn Wha asked, icy derision belying her servile speech tone. “I’m told his highness will be gone.”
This hardly gave Yoichi the pause she was hoping.
“Have you killed all the eunuchs?”
She tapped her chin with one long nail, thinking back. “Only a handful.”
“Those old frauds should have some spell or construct they claim can notify me over a great distance.” A cruel smirk touched his lips. “That should keep them sweating blood and scrambling to discredit every treasure-hungry villager who arrives with a girl in a cage while I’m gone.”
Youn Wha’s lips stretched into a smile as well. She could never stay angry with her son for long. He may have inherited a troublesome portion of his boorish sire’s impulsiveness, but his clever cruelty had come from her.
Chapter Thirteen
LAND OF IMMORTALS
The wind and rain battered Raijin’s face as he turned into the storm, skating easily from cloud to cloud. A rainsilk blindfold covered his eyes, but he could feel his opponent’s nearness, could almost see her, a negative space where the rain and wind were not.
He sent out a peal of thunder to deafen her to his approach, then leapt closer. His feet touched down on cloud, chilly and wet.
Her burning star-iron sword sliced raindrops in half with a steaming hiss as it shot toward his face. Raijin summoned a sword of pale jade ice as tall as he was. The weapons met with a clang and crackle.
He grinned.
“I know you didn’t hear me coming,” he said, pulling back and whirling the ice blade over his shoulders in Shaping the Glacier, catching a strike from behind. “That just leaves me to assume you removed your blindfold, which means I win.”
The Dragon inhaled deeply, her nose caressing the back of his neck and sending a shiver down his spine. He whirled, ice sword flashing out in Lightning Cracks the Mountain, but she was already gone.
“I didn’t need to see,” Ha-Koi said into his ear. “I could smell you a mile off. Your dirty tricks stink like a cheating thunder god.”
He ignored the sound of her voice and felt out the void in the storm once more, wheeling his ice blade in an Icy Wind Splits the Sky overhand arc. The Dragon’s star-iron sword sizzled as it slammed against its frozen counterpart. The Thunderer leapt and dodged and whirled, sword flashing in the Storm and Stream style he’d taught Ha-Koi, but she met him strike for strike in her own burgeoning style, the Winged Serpent. Lightning built in the clouds beneath their feet, the electricity making the hair on Raijin’s arms stand up.
Then she tripped, stepping into a less solid place in the cloud by the sound of her startled gasp. Raijin grabbed for the sound of her voice to catch her before she fell.
His hand sliced through open air.
Razor-sharp talons pressed to his throat, and the star-iron sword lay across his groin and gut. A burning arm wrapped around him, her heat radiating into his back.
“You spoke of my dirty tricks,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips.
She twined her body around him like a fiery serpent. “You always fall for the distressed shout.”
“Hearing you in danger kills my ability to reason. For a thin moment, I forget that you can manipulate the ear. And that you’re a cheater.”
Ha-Koi squeezed his throat with her talons just enough to draw beads of blood.
“Admit defeat,” she purred.
With a flare of his immortal energy, the ice blade disappeared. Raijin whipped off the blindfold and pushed her star-iron sword away. He slid his arms around his new wife, pulling her close as he buried his face in her damp hair. She burned like an ember even in the mist and wetness of the storm, and her scent sizzled like tongues of flame in his head.
“Apologies, but from here, it feels as if I won,” he said.
The dark, sweet sound of her laughter prickled along the surface of his skin and twisted his guts into knots. Her talons shrank to simple fingernails as she rubbed her face against his chest.
“Take care, Thunderer, or all the immortals will see that the protector of the heavens has hot blood in his veins.”
Raijin laughed. “More likely they’ll tell one another that crafty Ha-Koi magicked up a duplicate of her frigid husband, this one with passion where the original only has ice.”
“I would burn them all if they dared to slander my frigid husband like that.” Her tone was lighthearted, her black dragon’s fangs flashing in a smile, but as she spoke, her talons reemerged, digging into his shoulders.
He had watched Ha-Koi fight for control over her nature continuously from the day she had asked him to train her. The temptation to give in waxed and waned, disappearing for a time only to return with more intensity later. He knew that struggle intimately and wished often that he could shoulder it for her, but every day she fought, she grew more powerful and more beautiful. To take that from her would have been to rob her of what she could become.
He pressed his lips to hers and conjured a shroud of mist to hide them from prying eyes. After centuries spent slowly circling one another, first as enemies, then as master and student, to finally be on equal footing in marriage was a joy. He wouldn’t miss an opportunity to show Ha-Koi how hot the blood in his veins boiled when he was with her.
Some time later, he sensed a change in the storm. Voids in the falling rain. Too many to be a coincidence.
Ha-Koi’s violet eyes met his, silently questioning.
“We aren’t alone,” he told her in a low voice.
Raijin jumped up, sending out a thunderclap of Ro that shook his rib cage and blasted the mist away.
The shock wave threw the gathering army of immortals and akane from their feet, many of them tumbling backward. Those who kept their stances immediately pressed forward again, closing in from every direction.
Standing tall in their midst was Ha-Koi’s sister, Misuru, her wine-dark eyes glittering with delight as she shouted them on.
“No law has yet been broken, Whisperer,” Raijin called to her. “Desist now and you will be allowed to bring your grievances to a peaceful trial.”
“I don’t submit to your law or your authority, Thunderer.” Misu
ru’s smile revealed rows of needlelike teeth as she summoned her Thousand-Blade Sword of Lashing Tongues. “Your reign has come to an end. Surrender now or be destroyed.”
Raijin sent immortal energy flowing to his hands, manifesting his icy blade once more.
Misuru’s eyes shifted over his shoulder to Ha-Koi, her brows twitching downward in confusion.
Taking advantage of her momentary hesitation, Raijin shot toward Misuru like a lightning bolt.
Before he could land a single blow, however, Ha-Koi leapt over him with an ear-shattering shriek, launching herself into the battle. The Dragon’s eyes flashed molten white as she unleashed the fiery chaos she had held in check for centuries.
AS HE CLIMBED TO HIS feet, Raijin shook off the death dream, his hair throwing icy water from the downpour.
He was growing adept at finding his way from the center of the cavern to the arching wall. His feet moved with confidence, certain there was little or nothing to trip over in the stone floor of this prison, and his hand found the smooth trail he had worn into the dirt over the course of his many passes. It felt like only a matter of minutes passed as he navigated the tunnel branching off the main cavern and returned to the narrowing passage where he had last died.
He slowed to a cautious prowl, the guai-ray senses reaching out for the slightest pulse of electrical activity that would indicate the approach of the tunnel akane. He had managed to kill one, but the single-minded focus required to tear the first akane apart had meant ignoring the second while it tore him apart.
Not a wise strategy if he had a limited number of times he would be allowed to return to the rainfall at the bottom of the cavern, but for the time being, Raijin couldn’t see any other options.
The guai-ray, on the other hand, was in its element, hunting the passages for rival beasts it could destroy, proving its superiority over the mindless akane. For once, it had free rein to do what came naturally—spill blood. To the demon beast, death was as cheap as life, and hardly more than a minor inconvenience even when permanent.