To Journey in the Year of the Tiger

by H. Leighton Dickson

  He slid from the mountain pony and began to gather up the reins of the Imperial horses when a young pair of hands touched his. Bright eyes smiled at him in the darkness.

  “I will help, sidi.”

  “Right. There you go then.”

  As he handed off the reins, Kerris noticed the Scholar, dismounting on wobbly legs. He swung around to grab her arms and steady her.

  “You alright, sidalady tigress?’

  “Oh, never been better.”

  “Well, you won’t be saying that tomorrow. Come on, Rodreigo, these beasts are tired. We can all use a soft, sweet bed right about now.”

  And without so much as a backward glance, he followed the youth deep into the ravine, leading the weary horses into the night.

  The gate swung open.

  “Welcome,” growled the tall figure, as he turned his back to them and disappeared into the shadows. “To Sha’Hadin.”

  Sha’Hadin

  The corridors of Sha’Hadin were carved stone.

  They were remarkable in fact, a tapestry of etchings that rivaled Pol’Lhasa for its detail. Almost every inch of wall space was carved with scenes and symbols, seeming to date from the time of the Ancestors or beyond. Fallon Waterford ran her fingers along the walls as she walked, as eager to stop and study as she was eager to see more but far too weary to do either. Oil lamps burned at regular intervals, providing welcome light and bathing everything in warm gold. The low minor tones of chanting echoed through the halls, underscoring the mood with sobriety and strength.

  The tall figure led them in silence. He had kept his back to them the entire time, his brown robes and tufted tail swaying behind him with each long stride. Kirin had grown accustomed to the futility of engaging him in conversation. Instead, he had focused his attention on the gloves. It seemed everyone in Sha’Hadin wore them in one form or another. Some wore only palm gloves, leaving fingers exposed. Workers, he assumed. Others, acolytes perhaps, wore gloves of fine linen, others of silky satin, and others of coarse dark wool. Their ‘host’, however, wore gloves of thickest leather, tanned and dyed and stitched with elaborate detail. He carried them behind his back like a headmaster.

  A pair of un-gloved hands had caught his attention. Silver ones, curling into fists as she walked. The Major seemed to be taking her failure rather personally. Or, perhaps, there was something else. He would have to speak with her some time soon.

  Acolytes and robed attendants scurried around them, not rushing but moving with an efficient grace. One attendant, an elder man with the silver hair and great wide hands of a lynx, had fallen in beside their host and was now speaking softly in his right ear.

  The tall man paused and with back still turned, he spoke.

  “This is Tiberius. He is arranging for several mugs of hot tea for any who wish. Your journey has been long and even in the worst of times, our home is open to all.” He paused. “You have with you both Alchemist and Scholar?”

  Kirin nodded. “Both.”

  “They shall accompany Tiberius to the Chamber of the Dead. There they can begin whatever preparations they may need make for tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “When benAramis dies.”

  Sherah al Shiva moved forward, her heavy, painted eyes boring holes between the man’s shoulder blades.

  “Do we have leave to open the body, sidi?”

  For the first time, he turned his head just enough for his bearded chin to be seen from the shadows of the hood. Kirin was surprised. He’d assumed he’d been dealing with a lion. He shook his head. This was no lion.

  “Why?”

  “To determine the cause of death, of course.”

  “I know the cause of death.”

  Now, it was Fallon Waterford who stepped forward, brows drawn, hands wringing like damp dishcloths.

  “Please, sidi, we - we mean no disrespect, but sometimes there are signs in the tissues and humors, signs which can help us confirm the truth.”

  “Or prove the lie,” Sherah purred.

  “Whatever their reasons, sidi,” said Kirin. “They have been sent by the Empress, in Her service and on Her order. Do you deny them their duty?”

  There was a heavy pause. The man sighed, took a deep breath.

  “Of course not. They have leave to open the body. Bodies. There are, after all, six. Now, Captain, Major, if you will kindly follow me. I shall take you to the Hall of the Seers.”

  Fallon opened her mouth, thought better of it, and closed it quickly in a frown. Wrapping her arms around her ribs, she watched as the trio departed down yet another remarkably carved corridor, leaving the pair of them to their work. The attendant, the lynx Tiberius, was smiling at them.

  “Sidali, this way, if you please.”

  Sherah ran her tongue along a sharp, white feline tooth. “Of course.”

  “He knew their ranks,” sputtered Fallon as she trotted beside their guide. “We didn’t introduce ourselves, not here, not outside, not before. I know, ‘cause I was there. So, um, how did he know their ranks? How do you guys do that?”

  Tiberius turned, leaving with women with nothing to do but follow.

  ***

  The staircase was as treacherous as a high mountain pass. No guardrails were in place and the sides fell off into sheer blackness. Gone were the regular, welcome torches that had lined the walls of the monastery proper and a cold wind snatched at them, threatening to push them from the steps and send them plummeting seven levels to the stone below.

  Ursa had been grumbling for a very long time. The Captain was getting a headache.

  “We’re following a goat keeper, sir. I cannot believe they would let this happen. This man is lost and he will get us lost yet again. Look at him. He is almost swallowed by the darkness. I will not rush to catch him when he falls.”

  “Major, your voice causes an echo. Please stop.”

  “He sees with one eye, that is obvious when he talks. We are following an insolent, half-blind mongrel—“

  “Major, that’s enough.”

  “But Captain, your brother and I met him earlier. He sent us on the wrong path. I can assure you, he is simply the goat keeper.”

  Kirin sighed, pausing mid-step on the stairs to glance up at the figure receding into shadows. The temper, the arrogance, the breeding... Could he have been wrong?

  “Sidi, are you taking us to the seventh Seer, the one that yet lives?”

  “You shall make his acquaintance in the Hall of the Seers.”

  “You did not answer my question.”

  “I suppose I did not.”

  “Mongrels,” Ursa snorted. “We should kill them all.”

  Yes, he thought, I will have to speak to her very soon.

  When they finally reached the top of the stairs, a heavy door waited. It was clearly on the seventh and last level of the monastery and they could now see the many windows carved high in the stone. In daylight, the staircase was likely flooded with sunshine and cool breezes and in need of no candle or torch. But in the dead of night, those windows seemed only to suck away the faintest flickers of light that came near. It was impossible, even, to see stars.

  The man with gloved hands wrapped them around an iron clasp.

  “The Hall of the Seers.”

  As he pulled the great door open, a cold gust of air struck them, billowing the torches on either side of the frame. First Kirin, then Ursa, strode across the threshold and into the room. Save for the faltering hearth, several black earthen bowls and a single wavering candle, the room was empty.

  Large, cavernous, and completely empty.

  “Empty! This room is empty!” Ursa whirled, tail lashing, her pale eyes narrowed. “Captain, I was right! This man is a fool and we are all the more so to have been led by him, this, this keeper of goats!”

  Kirin said nothing, merely watched as the man brushed past them to kneel in front of the hearth, in front of the only flame of seven still burning. He watched as a strip of talon leather was
drawn from a deep pocket, the bells put to quiet lips, then both bells and leathers laid in the hearth’s smoldering ashes. They began to hiss and curl.

  “I think rather, a keeper of falcons,” said Kirin. “Sireth benAramis?”

  Facing the fire, the man nodded.

  “What? Who? Him?” Ursa was livid. “He said he was the goat keeper!”

  “She hears without hearing. She sees, but is more blind than I.”

  Slowly, Sireth benAramis unfolded his long legs and rose from the hearth, pulling himself to his full height to face the Captain. He lowered the hood and finally, Kirin could see the infamous scar.

  “Captain Wynegarde-Grey. I am honored.”

  The Seer inclined his head, but did not bow.

  Kirin did likewise, fighting back the rush of indignation. The man was living up to his reputation already. He could understand why this Confirmation had been hotly debated.

  “And I you. I apologize for missing your Confirmation.”

  “Ah yes. The price for peace with the Chi’Chen.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, then, for coming now.” His good eye glittered in the firelight. “The journey is not an easy one from Pol’Lhasa to Sha’Hadin. Nor I fear, a necessary one. Nonetheless, your people will be well cared for here, until you decide it is time to leave.”

  He turned to Ursa, with a faint trace of a smile.

  “And I thank you, Major, for pointing out some of my more obvious shortcomings. I wonder if, with all those daggers, you wouldn’t care to take a stab at the other, less obvious ones?”

  To her credit, Ursa held her tongue. If he had been anyone else, she would have gutted him.

  Kirin folded his hands behind his back.

  “You fear the journey is unnecessary? Why?”

  “What has been killing us for six nights now, cannot be stopped by soldier nor sword. Nor, I’m afraid, by all the books or brilliant imaginings of a Scholar. And I, for one, place no trust in the Black Arts of a Necromancer.”

  “There are many who might say the same of the Gifts of Farsight and Vision.”

  “Indeed, Captain, that is true. I, however, am not one of them.”

  With a dramatic swirl of his robes, he moved away from the hearth, toward a small, open window in the wall.

  “There is a saying in Sha’Hadin,” he began, “That Time is little more than an old woman’s knitting. A ball of yarn on one end and on the other, a scarf. Or a pair of slippers. Or socks. It doesn’t really matter, for every time she knits, she makes something different. But you see, she always works with the same ball of yarn.”

  He reached down to the stone floor, scooping into his hand a mouse that had been scurrying for cover. Again, Kirin was surprised. He hadn’t even seen it moving.

  “Alchemists would seek to change the scarf, or the slippers, or the socks, for change is the very nature of Alchemy. They would attempt to change its color or its composition. They would pull it apart, stitch by stitch, until the thing was completely unraveled in a tangled up ball on the floor. And then they would claim success for they would have indeed succeeded in determining her methods and her patterns. They would be very, very pleased. The woman, however, would not be so similarly inclined...”

  The mouse was scrambling over his fingers now, across his gloved palm, and he rotated his hand to keep it moving.

  “Those with the Gift of Vision much prefer to study the yarn before it passes through the needles.”

  And with a flick of his wrist, he sent the mouse sailing into the air, tumbling and twisting in its arc to the ceiling.

  A speckled blur streaked through the open window, snatching the mouse in midair with a jingle of bells. The falcon swept through the room, crying in her shrill, sharp voice, circling the Major before coming to rest on the Seer’s shoulder. She dropped the dead mouse into his palm.

  “Pah,” Ursa scowled. “Theatrics.”

  “Sometimes.”

  The Captain stepped forward, his hands still firmly clasped behind his back.

  “You said earlier that you knew what was killing the Council of Seven. Tell me.”

  Sireth looked at him, his head cocked like the bird on his shoulder, and for the first time, it was obvious the blindness in his left eye.

  “That which has caused the deaths of my dearest friends?” He sighed. “Terror, Captain. It is Terror.”

  ***

  “Terror? Oh, Sherah, are you sure?”

  The Alchemist stopped her strange humming, but did not look up from her work.

  “It is obvious. Look at the faces. Look at the claws. They died screaming in fear.”

  Fallon Waterford cast her eyes downwards once again, at the wrinkled old faces twisted into grisly caricatures. It broke her heart to think that such wise and noble men died in such terrible ways. She had always believed that death would come, no - should come, with some measure of dignity to the aged. But, as she had begun the first of her investigations, that belief had been torn from her and it stung like a scorpion.

  “You’re probably right. Yeah, you’re right. But still...”

  She turned back to the table, to the long, polished lens that was suspended over a glass plate. Her tongue peeked out between her lips as she peered at the smear of blood she had drawn.

  “But why? I mean, there must be a physical cause. The hearts must have seized, or humors ruptured inside their skulls – but all the same way at the same time six nights running no that doesn’t make sense at all now, does it? And still...”

  “Here. See?”

  Sherah straightened up from the body, her black silk sleeves pushed up to her elbows, her long arms thick with blood. She turned toward the Scholar.

  In her hands, was a heart.

  Fallon swallowed, but as always, curiosity got the better of her.

  “Yes. Pale. Constricted. Like every fiber has been squeezed together by a fist. Are they all the same?”

  “I shall tell you that soon, Scholar.”

  “And the lungs?”

  “The same.”

  “And the fingers and toes, they’re black as pitch. It’s like, like...”

  “Frostbite.”

  Fallon shook her head.

  “How can this happen? Can this even happen? I mean, this is physically impossible, really.” She pushed away from her table, letting her hands fall to her lap with a sigh. “There are no problems with the blood, other than the usual anemia of age. No signs of plague, no disease, no creatures–“

  “Creatures?” The Alchemist eyed her. “You mean poisons.”

  “No. I mean creatures. Sometimes, if people get very ill, you can see creatures in their blood. Very small, so small in fact that you wouldn’t even notice them if you didn’t have a glass like this. Sometimes, the creatures are given by flies, or mosquitoes, or bad water. Sometimes, the creatures live in the tissues. The liver is particularly susceptible. Hmm, we’d better check the livers...”

  She pouted, grabbed a book, began flipping the pages.

  Sherah stared at her for a long moment, before shaking her head. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, the ends tipped in red.

  “Creatures. You are very amusing, Scholar.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I have pretty markings too...”

  “You do.”

  Fallon sighed and closed her book, sweeping her eyes across her little table. Almost every inch of it was covered in books. Textbooks, workbooks, and most especially notebooks, journals that had been with her since her childhood. While her sisters had been learning practical skills, those of sewing and mending and cooking, she had been out in the jungle with her journals, observing the leaves, the trees, the insects. She had catalogued everything she had ever seen and her books were filled with sketches. Once, when she had been in her eighth summer, she had found the body of dead monkey, a Chi’Chen scout most likely and she had dissected it in secret. Within those notebooks and journals, she revealed everything.

  The Alchemist’s table was simi
larly cluttered but with things other than books. There were jars of phosphorous and vials of ammonium. Sacks of animal remains were strewn about along with tiny boxes of jewels and odd, powdery rock. Spilling from a saddlebag, were silks, crusted in blood and labeled in ink. And candles. Many, many candles. It all smelled of incense, Fallon thought, like strange, exotic incense. Almost like the Alchemist, herself, strange and exotic. And perhaps, just a little bit frightening.

  Then there was that pouch...

  She pushed herself from the table, with its books and sketches and crossed over to the red satin pouch. It floated like a poppyseed on the breeze. She threw a glance in Sherah’s direction before raising her hand and poking it with a finger. It bobbed at the end of its unusual tether. With a frown, she tried again, pushing it gently downwards with her palm, only to have it float back up when her hand moved away.

  “Um, Sherah, what, um, what exactly is in this?”

  “Souls.”

  It took her a moment to close her mouth.

  “Oh.”

  She tiptoed back to her table, trying not to hear the sucking, cracking sounds as the Aegypshan dug into yet another chest cavity.

  “You may have him if you wish,” said Sherah after a moment.

  “Him who? The‘dead guy’ him? Well, I don’t really think there’s enough room in my bags for a dead guy, even if he has over one hundred summers to his credit. Pretty remarkable, isn’t it? I mean, look at the white fur on his head, whiter even than the peaks of Kathandu. And his pelt, its so soft and wrinkly, like a comfortable pair of woolies. People look so wonderful when they’re old, don’t you agree, like the mountains? But really I don’t think—“

  “I meant the grey lion.”

  “Oh.”

  It had come so unexpectedly. All Fallon could say was “Oh.”

  And again. “Oh.”

  “I have no designs on him. I shall leave him to you.”

  “I don’t understand...”

  The Alchemist paused to look up from her investigations. Her painted eyes narrowed and a crooked, almost wicked smile slid across her face. She ran bloody fingers through her black hair, and stretched out her arms, arching her long back like a drawn bow. She yawned.