by Unknown
“Not yet, not yet.” I gentled it, but I knew I could not contain it for long. The magic was strong but fleeting, like childhood itself.
Tonight was the night.
~o0o~
I stood on the cliff after sunset, in the star-dusted twilight, holding my kite. The wind whipped my hair across my face and the kite strained against my hold. I whispered the last words, the words of awakening.
The dragon came to life.
A fierce light leapt into its yellow eyes. Its hide rippled with silk and scales. It flexed its claws and opened its wings.
I flung myself onto its back. To my senses, its body flickered between warm solidity and a frightening, fragile lightness.
Then the dragon jumped into the air, and my stomach gave a lurch. I clung to its neck as it soared.
I reached out and touched the shell in its forehead, thinking about the boy I had found, the youth I had known. I thought of his golden voice. “Find him,” I whispered.
The dragon, great-hearted construct that it was, flapped its mighty wings. Ribbons blew back from its body.
The walls of Serenai flashed below us. A sea of lights illuminated the city, its streets unrolling like dark ribbons. The dragon climbed higher, rising up the walls of the citadel at the heart of Serenai. I could’ve reached out to touch the grey wall if I wasn’t holding on so tightly.
We exploded over the top, right above a sentinel’s head. He staggered back, fell on his rump.
As the dragon soared ever higher, I heard the warning shouts.
I craned my neck up, looking at the tallest tower of the cluster. How long before the warning went to the grey ladies, how long before they figured out what was going on, how long before they sent someone to secure the tower?
How long before the dragon’s speed and strength, heart and courage, given to it by children, gave out?
It had slowed, clawing its way up through air that had turned thick and murky as soup. I remembered the boy who’d saved his sister from the sea, and prayed that his courage and goodness would be enough.
We’d left all the other buildings far below us. The dragon hit the white walls of the tower and ran up it, its claws gouging stone. It found the sill and clung there, while I scrambled up and perched uncomfortably on the narrow ledge.
A small barred window stood in my way.
The last obstacle.
And behind it, a shadow.
“Kithri?” it whispered, in a voice so grey and tired I could’ve wept. I may have, but the wind lashed my tears away. “Is that you?”
“Yes. I’m here, Trell.” Finally. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
His slender hands clutched the bars, as if he needed their support to stay standing. His head was bowed. “The bars are made of oppression, Kithri. The whole chamber reeks of it.”
I drew back, horrified. Oppression. No wonder Trell was so worn, no wonder they’d been able to control him. Denrys and the other grey ladies were slowly leaching the life from him.
The dragon! My heart beat madly as I saw its eyes dimming. Oppression was draining its power away, too.
“Give me your knife, Kithri. Slip it between the bars and let me end this.”
“No.” I plucked Pella’s key from my bodice, gave it a desperate kiss, full of love and regret. “Stand back.”
For a moment, he didn’t move. Then his hands dropped, and he staggered back.
Please work. I took the key that would open a prison with no locks and pressed it against the bars.
Lights pinpricked the key, ran in flickering strings all over the bars. I held my breath as the bars wavered, bent, melted and disappeared.
She’d done it. Pella had done it.
I reached in through the opening. The chamber inside was small, dark, foul-smelling. The lingering traces of oppression cast a shadow over my soul.
My poor Trell. Hatred rushed through my blood; my fingers crooked into claws, as I imagined gouging out Denrys’ eyes. When had my former friend become so hard and cruel?
Instead I reached out to Trell and caught his hands in mine. His wrists were slender—like his voice, his body would forever be that of a boy’s.
Together we got him through the window opening. We sat on the ledge, and the dragon, still clinging, looked at us with eyes once again aflame.
Oh, I loved those children.
I pushed Trell onto the dragon’s back, then slid into place in front of him. He slumped against me, cheek on my shoulder.
“Now,” I told the dragon. “Fly us to the sea.”
The dragon let go of the sill. We plummeted.
The wind dragged away the shriek from my lips. Silk folded and bamboo bent alarmingly under us.
Behind me, Trell lifted his head and sang high and clear. The dragon solidified and flapped its wings, powerful muscles moving beneath us.
“Kithri...the birds...”
I looked, and there they were, a swarm of dark angry things, made of paper, fueled by the need to rip and rend.
Denrys’ work.
I laughed, high, shaky, relieved. “Roar,” I told the dragon. “Roar!”
The dragon’s eyes rolled in fierce delight. Its mouth opened.
It roared.
The sound echoed off the tower walls. It boomed through the night. It blasted the paperlings away, sent them tumbling end over end, scattering them.
Dark shadows, large as eagles, swooped down on us. The dragon exhaled flame, and burning paper rained down on the citadel walls.
I thanked the fire-making boy. Up we spiraled, out of the reach of arrows, and headed out to sea.
“Where are we going, Kithri?”
“There’s a ship waiting for us, with Nerrin and Dis and Mauris on it. It’ll take you far away. You’re free, Trell, you’re free.”
“You did it.” He sounded stunned. “You got all of us out. What will you do now, Kithri?”
The wind whipped my face. The moon sailed above us, the sea heaved and murmured below. I thought of Pella and of others like her. “I’ll do what I’ve always done, Trell.
“I’ll find the children who have the gift. I’ll find them, teach them, then set them free.”
A Drink of Deadly Wine
by Michael Spence & Elisabeth Waters
Marion always said that if you didn’t send in your bio, she would make something up. You would think that I would be able to nag Michael into providing his, but so far no luck. So: Michael has spent the last year imprisoned in the body of a Terracotta Warrior as the exhibition traveled from Minneapolis (his home) to San Francisco. He communicated with me telepathically so we could collaborate on this story. So even though his online friends cannot fathom how he can have failed to see a single episode of Game of Thrones, there is a logical explanation.
This is another story in the “Treasures of Albion” series, although this time the treasure is Chinese. This happened before, with “Daughter of Heaven” in SWORD AND SORCERESS 23. That was the year both the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts had the exhibit “Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty.” Both Michael and I appear to be susceptible to Chinese art.
If you practice an unwanted task long enough, someone had once told Laurel, eventually a new perspective—perhaps even enlightenment—will click into place. That had never happened to her, and it certainly wasn’t going to happen now.
Hush, she told herself as she prepared her calligraphy tools and sat down, cross-legged, before her writing table. It wouldn’t do to be seen grumbling by one’s teacher, even if technically one did outrank him.
This was as frustrating as it could be for an academic, she told herself. Appointed to the imperial court of China as the Guardian of the Scholar’s Pin, she was expected to be a Scholar. Well, wasn’t she? Back home in Albion, she was the youngest student ever to pass her Senior Ordeal and graduate as a full-fledged mage, a Senior Thaumaturge. She had even learned to speak fluent Mandarin there. That sounded like suf
ficient qualification for a scholar, no?
No. Not here in China. Here she was barely literate. The imperial civil service exam featured twenty thousand Chinese characters, and after three years she had yet to master even a fraction of them.
She pulled her hair back, twisted and pinned it with a decorative comb (the Scholar’s Pin was safely in its box in the corner of her workroom). Weng-xiou, the Emperor’s master calligrapher, smiled at her as she removed paper, ink stick, inkstone, and brushes from their case and set them beside the bowl of water on the table. After placing some water in the depression in the stone, she ground some ink from the stick and mixed it with the water.
A true scholar must master the Four Arts. Laurel would have to play something more complex than “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” on the guqin, a seven-stringed instrument that made her think of a dulcimer that had been put on the rack. She would have to be competent at the game of weiqi, which she had learned as “Go” and been slaughtered at the few times she’d played it back home. She would have to learn painting—if only I had taken that as my required art course at the College of Wizardry! But no, I had to insist on needlework...
And finally there was calligraphy. Here we go, for the five hundredth try: “The Thousand-Character Essay.”
She took the brush delicately yet firmly under Weng-xiou’s approving eye, dipped it in the ink, and touched it to the paper—
Click.
Under the brush, the line took form. It began as a tentative search for direction, then swelled to an enthusiastic boldness before swooping into a tight curve, ending up as a hair-thin swirl of the utmost gentility. And thus it happened, thought Laurel. The divine breath touched the body of clay, “and man became a living soul—”
“If I might interrupt such concentration,” murmured Weng-xiou, his voice heavy with irony, “that does not resemble any of the Thousand Characters. What are you doing?”
Laurel lifted the brush from the paper and said, wonder in her voice, “I was thinking that when the ink from the brush meets the paper, it’s like creating life. An observer sees only black marks. But they express energy, emotion…even character, really.” She chuckled, imagining her brother, Stephen, saying, They don’t call them “characters” for nothing. “I wonder if you could measure a person’s virtue by the way he writes?”
The Emperor’s master calligrapher paused. “Many pardons, O Daughter. I mistook your contemplation for frivolity with the brush. It seems you have grasped a core truth of what we are doing here: Expression is expression, in this medium no less than any other. And the expression of a mind represents and displays the life that exists in that mind.”
The sound of a throat clearing drew their attention to the doorway, where a messenger stood. “Most respected Daughter of Heaven, you asked to be told when the Archer next appeared.”
Laurel rinsed her brush and laid it carefully to dry. “Indeed I did. Master, if you would be so kind as to allow me to continue at another time?”
“But of course, O Daughter,” Weng-xiou replied, rising and bowing briefly to her. This time, when he said, “I would be pleased,” his tone suggested that perhaps he finally glimpsed a reward for his patience. He smiled and took his leave.
Laurel arose and went to a map on the wall of what she had declared to be her workroom. Two identical maps depicted the capital city and its environs, but one had a rather random assortment of different colored pins, while the second bore a pattern of yellow pins. Each pin identified a site where a statue wearing ancient military armor had been spotted; from each pin a string led to the margin of the map and an image drawn by a witness at that location. Each image showed a soldier wearing what appeared to be garb typical of the army of Qin Shi-huang, the First Emperor. Several military personnel she had consulted in the Emperor’s court had identified the figure as an archer, although it bore no weapons.
The pins traced a path from the outskirts, where the statue was first seen, in toward the Forbidden City, the home of the Emperor and his court.
Her home.
“Please come in,” she said to the messenger. “Who has seen the Archer this time? And where?”
A different voice sounded, with echoes that could not be entirely accounted for by the room’s acoustics. “A great many people, I fear,” it said. “The court is by no means deserted this day.” The messenger, who had not spoken, took a few timid steps into the workroom. Laurel’s eyes widened as, behind him, another figure entered. He bore himself as a soldier would, at once suggesting both complete competence and unmixed humility. Indeed, he was the very model of an former era’s fighting man...if the model were made of clay.
For clay he undeniably was. The material was the same that Laurel had seen used for roof tiles and water pipes, called “baked earth” by many. Normally such material was a reddish-brown color, but the figure who stood at the doorway also held a tinge of green, reminding Laurel of the stains that marred her clothing after unruly childhood evenings spent outdoors.
She imagined her brother Stephen’s voice chuckling: They say soldiers aren’t born, they’re made. Now I believe it. If there was a possible pun in any situation, Stephen would find it. She had to remind herself not to throw things at him when they chatted through the scrying mirror. While she didn’t believe in the automatic “seven years’ bad luck”—that depended on the composition and provenance of the mirror—she was no gambler.
The other voice, with the strange echoes, spoke again. “The worthy emissary says you are the Daughter of Heaven, and a wizard. If this humble servant may be bold enough to request a few moments of the Daughter’s time, it would be most appreciated.”
Laurel motioned to the messenger, who was inching his way out the door, and indicated that he should stay. Nervously he obeyed, taking up station just inside the door, ready to bolt. To the clay soldier she motioned toward two chairs by a small round table and said, “Can you sit down?” Inwardly she cringed. Who do I think this is, Jacob Marley? No, wait, it’s a legitimate question.
At the other’s nod she said, “Please do, then. And let us not stand on ceremony. I grant that you are a humble servant and I honor you for it. But you are yourself, and it will save us time if you speak directly. Is that understood?” Again the soldier nodded. “Very well. I realize that formal court etiquette has its routines, but I gather you have urgent business that has brought you here. Let us get to it. Would you like tea?”
“No, thank you, my lady. This humb—I am proof against liquids, but have no taste for them.”
Nor would court dignity be served by the sloshing noises that would result, she realized. Ah, well. At least some etiquette had been upheld. “How may you and I serve the Son of Heaven?”
“You see,” the archer began, “that this armor does not match the garb of the warriors standing outside your residence. That is because...I...represent a different era in your history. Nor am I the only one of my kind. There are—”
Laurel held up a hand. “There are thousands of your fellows buried with the First Emperor, near the city of Xi’an, which was Chang’an.” She had thought the sculpted warrior’s face incapable of displaying emotion, but the look of surprise showed otherwise.
Deciding not to attempt to explain an archeological dig to someone for whom her ancient history was his very recent past, she said simply, “These soldiers, which those in the court refer to as the ‘terracotta army,’ were discovered years ago, and some of them have been recently brought here so that the Son of Heaven might have them in the Imperial Palace.”
The Archer looked alarmed. “They are actually here, in the home of the Son of Heaven?”
“They are in a workshop between the west gate and the watchtower south of it. Why?”
“Someone is tampering with them,” the Archer said gravely. “I am a shaman; I was appointed to guard over the rest of the warriors, and thus I know when several of them have been cut off from the rest. There are three that I cannot contact: a light infantryman; a ch
arioteer, and—”
“—a cavalryman,” Laurel sighed. “They’re on the other map.” Rising, she led him to the wall where the maps were fastened side by side. “You’re the map with the yellow pins.”
“I see,” he said. “You were tracing my journey here. But they,” he frowned at the other map, “appear to be wandering aimlessly.”
“While it’s true that they do not appear to have a destination,” Laurel agreed, “they have been sighted at various points in the city outside the gates. The cavalryman keeps taking horses, and I assure you their owners are not happy. The Fist of Heaven has been dealing with them.”
“Trying to deal with them.” A new voice came from the doorway. “So far I’m a step behind the warriors—especially the one who takes horses—and for some odd reason I can’t seem to persuade the subjects of the Son of Heaven that having their horses appropriated by clay soldiers of the First Emperor is an honor.”
“Have some tea,” Laurel said.
“That would be most welcome,” the Fist of Heaven said, crossing to the chairs. Over his shoulder he said to the messenger still standing next to the door, “You may go.” The man left the room perhaps a bit more quickly than etiquette required. Laurel poured tea for both herself and her fellow Guardian and sat next to him. Both of them watched the Archer studying the map that showed the wanderings of the other warriors.
“And yesterday,” the Fist sighed, “some idiot shipped up a chariot they found. The unloaded it from the train, turned their back for what they all swear was just a few minutes—”
“—which they would swear had it been a few hours, but may still be true,” Laurel said. “I take it the charioteer now has something to drive?”
“He seems to be out of practice. It’s thoroughly tangled in some bushes in the east park, and he’s nowhere to be found.” He took another sip of tea and looked at the figure still studying the map. “Archer, can you find the missing warriors?”
The Archer turned and looked at him steadily. “By what right do you command me?”