by Dave Gross
“So you’re taking a hand in it this time?”
“So close to the ceremony, I dare not risk your life.”
“Getting sweet on me, are you?”
He shot me a warning glare, but it just made me laugh. Funny, I thought. Despite knowing he could end my life with a gesture, over the past year the one-armed bastard had grown on me. He wasn’t what I’d call a good guy, but he had his moments. In the end, he wasn’t half bad for an arrogant, drunken blowhard.
I thought of the boss. A lot of folks might have described him the way I saw Burning Cloud Devil, but it wasn’t the same. I realized I couldn’t picture how the boss’s face looked the last time I saw him. Had he shaved that little stripe on his chin? I couldn’t remember.
Anyway, despite sharing a few quirks, Burning Cloud Devil was nothing like my boss. No matter how chummy he got while singing or drinking, he was still the guy who smacked me in the chest once a month and promised to kill me if I didn’t do as he said. There was no mistaking him for a friend.
Yet the sorcerer had his moments, and I had the feeling he used to have them a lot more often. Spring Snow had loved him. With a girl like that, he couldn’t be all bad. Maybe things would have been different if she’d lived.
When the magic eyes returned, Burning Cloud Devil sat holding them one by one, nodding as he absorbed what they had seen. At last he said, “The nagas are here. I know the way.”
We shimmied down the rope and rappelled down a steep incline. My devil eyes made out the outline of the place all right, but the shadows drank up all the color. At the base of the slope was plenty of grit. Everything smelled moist and rotten. I took a step and felt a spongy patch beneath my foot.
Burning Cloud Devil drew Snow’s silver sword. He set the tip aglow and held it like a torch.
Pale roaches scattered at our feet. Burning Cloud Devil grimaced. “Filthy things.”
“Don’t be a baby.”
The wall beside us was covered in fungus of every color. Blue-veined clusters of pink glistened like exposed brains among hundreds of pale brown lumps that might have been the backs of shorn sheep. A lacy fungus shrank away as I brushed by. I heard it breathing.
“All right, this is pretty nasty.”
Following what he’d seen through his magic eyeballs, Burning Cloud Devil led the way down under stone waterfalls, over crumbling ridges, and across fields of white and yellow lime formations that looked like fried eggs. We leaped a narrow chasm, slid down a couple chimneys. We passed through pockets of cool air, only to feel a blast of steam from vents ahead. Where it was hot, green and purple slime thrived. Wherever it was cool, the fungus took over. The stuff grew bigger and weirder-looking the farther down we went.
A deafening screech sounded just around the bend.
The big knife in hand, I slid along the wall opposite the sound and peered across. At first I saw nothing move, but the sound came from a point only feet away. All I saw were a trio of fat mushrooms, each the size of a pig. Air shot out of a dozen fat sphincters across their bulging caps. The ear-splitting piping sliced into my brain.
“Hurry!” Burning Cloud Devil shouted and waved me forward.
I moved, cautious at first but faster as the floor leveled off. The cavern ceiling rose higher. Long black stalactites hung like fangs above us. There weren’t any stalagmites below. Instead, the muddy floor looked as though a drunken ox had run a plow through it.
A snake slipped through the wet field. Not a snake but a man lying on his back, pushing himself along with incredibly swift kicks. Had to be Python. I tensed to leap over him as he closed.
Burning Cloud Devil shouted. I was already in the air by the time I made out his words over the noise of the shrieking fungus.
“Above you!”
The man on the ground was the one I was meant to see. Something else skittered across the ceiling.
I twisted in midair. A bladed toe swept past my cheek. It would have cut me, but a powerful grip pulled me down by the skirt of my robe.
Thick arms looped around my waist and squeezed out my breath. I shot back with my spurs, but they hit only the hard stone ridges through which Python slithered. His serpentine approach wasn’t just eerie, it gave him good shelter.
Burning Cloud Devil shouted another word. Beneath me, Python’s body shuddered and his grip relaxed.
I rolled away just in time to avoid another kick from above. Dark eyes glittered near the ceiling. Adder clung to the wet stone with iron claws on hands and heels. Dripping blades jutted from the toes of his slippers.
He kicked down at me, hanging from the claws of one hand. I blocked the first few shots before I got an idea.
I dropped the big knife. Instead of blocking the next kicks, I caught Adder by the ankles and pulled down hard. He hissed a warning to his brother, but Python lay dazed by Burning Cloud Devil’s spell. He stared, horrified, as Adder’s poisonous blades stabbed into his thigh and belly.
Adder tore into my head with his claws. I hoped they weren’t poisoned.
I hoisted a low punch up into his vitals. That took the squeak out of him. He leaped back, toe-blades snickering back into his slippers.
Adder hit the ground in a roll. I grabbed the big knife. He took one look back at me and ran, taking to the wall and ceiling as he fled.
Beside me, Python moaned. His face contorted in such pain that I drew the wings of Desna over my heart in thanks that he’d taken the dose, not me. I covered his mouth and cut his throat to put him out of his misery. Because I’m a soft touch.
“Go!” Burning Cloud Devil shouted over the din of the shrieking fungus. “Catch him before he can join the others.”
Keeping a sharp look ahead, I hustled across the wrinkled floor of the chamber and into another narrow passage. Two steps in, a blast of steam blew my robes up and drenched my trousers. Me it just tickled, but the heat stopped Burning Cloud Devil in his tracks.
I hesitated, unsure of whether to wait. Screw it, I decided. He was barely any help anyway.
The passage opened into a lopsided chamber full of mismatched furniture scattered among puddles and broken stalagmites. Not broken, I realized, but trimmed.
One large trunk of stone was hewed flat and covered with ledgers, scrolls, lighted candles, and a pyramid of human skulls. A tarnished throne, a moldy loveseat, and a stool made out of the foot of some enormous gray beast ringed the stone table. The rest were piled thick with carpets, furs, and tapestries probably meant to hang on a wall. Someone had built a cozy den in this cavern.
A drumroll distracted me for an instant, but I wasn’t fooled this time. I rolled forward onto the carpets as Adder’s blades swept through the space I’d just left.
Another man leaped out from behind one of the remaining stalagmites, not the direction of the drum. An oily sheen covered his skin. He reached toward me but paused when he saw the knife. The way he held his fingers closed in the shape of a snake’s head, I figured him for the one with the nerve strikes, Viper. He moved to the side, trying to put me between him and Adder. I moved with him to keep that from happening.
A third man emerged from a side passage. “Man” was a charitable term, considering his scaled black-and-yellow skin. His neck looked like an ogre had given him a good throttling and left the flesh bulging to the sides. Cobra.
But the drum sound didn’t come from him either. It grew louder.
Across the room, the body of an enormous snake emerged from a cloud of steam. Instead of a snake’s head, the naga had the face of a deformed giantess. From her ears and one nostril dangled golden rings and jewels. Thick folds of flesh hung like damp hair from her head. They stiffened and rose up in a high collar as she spotted me. She kept coming, yards and yards of scaled flesh scraping against the stone wall. At last her tail came out of the murk, its tip twisting a hand drum to whip the wo
oden balls from head to head.
I felt woozy, maybe from some magic of the drum. Or maybe it was just the steam finally getting to me. More likely it was the stress of keeping two eyes on four snakes. I shook my head to put it back in the fight.
I heard Adder’s claws scrape the ceiling. I snapped a couple of darts in his direction and heard them ping off the stone wall.
Viper took the cue to attack. He shrugged an arm at me. I stood my ground, since he was still ten or twelve steps away, but I felt a blow to my shoulder. My arm went limp. The big knife slipped out of my fingers.
Adder leaped down, but a fiery beam caught him on the way. He screamed and beat at his flaming clothes, missing me by inches as I stepped back. I dropped a heavy kick on the back of his neck. His body stopped flailing and just burned.
“Take Viper.” Burning Cloud Devil stood behind me, already casting another spell. Cobra rushed toward him but stopped in the center of the room, mesmerized by the wavering sigil that trailed the sorcerer’s fingers.
My arm still felt numb, so I hurled two more darts at Viper and ran after them. He bent like rubber, dodging the steel blades. He wasn’t strong, but he deflected my strikes just enough to put them out of line.
Another fiery ray shot out, this time from the direction of the naga. She caught us both in the flame. She clearly didn’t give a damn about Viper.
The fire didn’t hurt me none. While the naga’s minion howled, I tipped her a wink. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
I spared a glance back at Burning Cloud Devil and Cobra. The sorcerer had his man locked up in some kind of charm. Cobra’s neck swelled out in a brilliant yellow snake’s hood, his fanged mouth open to reveal a flickering forked tongue. He swayed to the sorcerer’s silent tune.
Viper and I kept trading shots. I caught his on my arms or shins. He dodged and deflected mine. I was stronger and a little faster, but he had both arms and would get past me soon. Before that happened, the naga blew us another deadly kiss. This one was made of lightning.
We both felt that one, our bodies wracked with spasms. All the hairs on my body sprang out in quivering needles. Viper felt it more than I did. I smelled his cooking flesh, its sizzle louder than his angry hiss. To speed him on his way, I whirled around and put a spur in his ear. His eyes filled with blood. Our dance was over, and he fell smoking to the damp cavern floor.
Desna smiled on me then, because the electric jolt brought my arm back to life. I flexed my arms and felt all the power of my infernal muscles return.
The naga uttered another spell. Behind me, Burning Cloud Devil repeated it. I’d heard the boss do the same thing months and months ago—he was countering her spell.
Sure enough, whatever magic she had on the tip of her tongue dribbled away.
That was my cue.
While the magicians babbled at each other, I dashed forward. By the time I reached the naga, I had summoned all my energy into the desire to strike her.
The blow was immense. A wave of soundless force washed over me. I perceived every scale upon the naga’s body, smelled every subtlety of her reptile musk, felt every vein beneath her flesh, could even taste her sweat upon the steamy air.
The silence passed in an instant, and I heard her last breath rattle out. I withdrew my hands and saw their white imprints on her flesh. Her lifeless body collapsed to the cavern floor with a sound of so much chainmail.
The big smile creased my face so big it hurt. I turned to make some quip to Burning Cloud Devil, expecting to see him chanting away over the body of his foe.
Instead I saw the inflamed face and open hood of Cobra only a few feet away.
His spittle struck my face before I could even think to dodge. The venom seared my eyes, stabbing deep into my brain. I let out a hellish howl and threw myself to the floor.
“Watch out!” cried Burning Cloud Devil, far too late.
I thrashed and scraped at my eyes, trying to wash them in any poor puddle I could find on the floor. Water didn’t help. It only made the pain worse.
A blast of fire burst over me, lifting me off the ground a few inches. Another followed before I could get up to my knees. With the second blast, hot gobbets of Cobra showered down on me.
The concussion scrambled my mind as the flames washed away the sting. For a long time I blinked and slapped myself, trying to bring the world back into focus, but it was no good.
I was blind as a mole.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Floating Mountains
In the light of dawn, I saw my own trepidation reflected on the faces of my companions. With each distant bird call and unexpected agitation of the hanging vines through which we forged, we knew the oni might attack.
Shadows concealed the floor of the narrow passage, but the cloud-reflected light colored the omnipresent mist and imbued the surrounding flora with a semblance of human flesh. The valley air was humid and startlingly warm for so early in the year. Despite our proximity to a complex of steam caverns beneath the Seething Hills, I suspected the uncanny climate to be another effect of the same strange power that held the Flying Mountains aloft.
From a distance, the tops of the titanic pillars appeared to be islands floating among the clouds. Their twisted fingers of quartz-sandstone defied the principles of geology and gravity, yet there they stood trailing thousand-yard lengths of vines teeming with pale flowers where no natural plant could eke out enough sunlight to survive.
Two days earlier, an herbalist and his son had warned us of a roaming band of oni-led monsters in the region. They had spied enormous footprints and found the remains of a camp they estimated included at least half a dozen of the grotesque oni sometimes mistakenly called ogres for their physical resemblance to those unintelligent brutes, as well as twice as many goblins and other fell creatures. The perspicacious herbalists abandoned their mission and turned back with empty baskets. Master Wu dispensed a few coins in thanks for their report.
As we entered the Valley of Flying Mountains, my companions gasped as they felt their weapons tremble. Master Li explained that the surrounding mountains radiated a magnetic force. Spread so widely, the invisible power served to stabilize the colossal pillars but was not so great as to steal away the weapon of an attentive monk.
Curiously, I felt no such drag upon the Shadowless Sword. Whatever rare metal formed its thin blade had to be nonferrous. An interesting quality, I decided, but not so urgent as to demand immediate study.
Master Li returned from a conference beside the royal palanquin, where I glimpsed the delicate hand of the princess upon the window curtain. Jade Tiger remained mounted upon his fabulous white steed, whose magical origin I had long suspected. While I too could conjure a steed, I knew better than to presume to ride while my brothers walked.
Day and night, the eunuch and the princess remained surrounded by their twenty royal guards. I noticed no sign of injury among them and imagined that Master Li had applied his healing touch to those injured in their confrontation with Prince Tengfei. If so, I wondered whether Jade Tiger had revealed the true identity of First Brother Kwan.
A return to the historical chronicle in the Cherry Court scriptorium confirmed that the name Tengfei was that of the eighth son of King Huang of Lingshen. Unfortunately, the only other information I could uncover about the prince concerned his birth and majority celebrations, the years of which coincided with Kwan’s apparent age.
The record of his father, King Huang, was more extensive. Among the sixteen nations that once composed the vast empire of Lung Wa, Lingshen vied with Po Li and Quain for dominance. While these three had avoided full-scale war for over three decades, border skirmishes and intrigue were not exceptions but the rule.
Huang’s generals regularly alleged that the eunuchs of Quain’s King Wen plotted the assassinations of his sons. The princes stood accused of leading their troop
s into Quain territory under the guise of brigands. Their deaths caused only a brief lull in hostilities. After Huang returned the heads of King Wen’s ambassadors, only an unprecedented diplomatic effort by Quain’s eunuchs averted outright warfare.
None of these records mentioned the participation of Prince Tengfei in such actions, but the absence of his name did not imply a lack of ambition—nor a lack of desire to avenge his siblings. In the months we had spent as brothers and rivals, he had demonstrated a talent for both combat and guile. It required no great leap of imagination to see him as an agent dedicated to disrupting the Dragon Ceremony that enriched his nation’s rival.
And yet I was now certain it was Kwan’s voice I had overheard speaking with the princess before the assassination attempt in the Peach Court garden. If Kwan—or rather Tengfei—meant to kill Princess Lanfen, then he had already enjoyed the opportunity. That she still lived suggested Kwan’s true motive was to gain access to the Dragon Ceremony.
The music of Princess Lanfen’s enchanted guqin came unbidden to my mind. I could not discount the possibility that Kwan had spoken the truth to Jade Tiger, that he would defend the princess with his life. Whether he did so of his own accord or as a result of the guqin’s magic remained to be seen.
The same question applied to me. After stooping to the use of a few minor divinations, I felt sure that I was free of magical charms, but the nature of enchantment rendered me unable to diagnose my condition with surety. A powerful enchantment could cloud my mind into thinking I had cast spells that I had not, or into believing the results of my divinations were the opposite of the true findings.
No matter how I desired to see Kwan as a villain, it was equally likely we remained merely rivals, as we had been since the day we first met. Whether by magic or by nature, we both felt devotion to the same woman. Logically, he should be my ally, not my adversary. Nevertheless, the safety of the princess was in question. Both as a disciple of Dragon Temple and as a gentleman of Cheliax, I was bound to exhaust all avenues of defense—even if one of them amounted to betraying Brother Kwan’s secret to our masters.