by Jeff Wheeler
She sat up and twisted her back until it popped, then did the same for her neck. The shade from the aspen leaves was pleasant, but she could see the sun directly overhead as she peeked upward. It was noon.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked him, seeing that he’d noticed her rise.
He shrugged. “Not too long. You were sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t want to wake you.”
She rose and shook the dead leaves off the blanket. “Thank you. I feel rested.”
“Do you want to keep going?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I haven’t gone through the forms in days.”
“Good. I like watching you do them.”
She’d offered to teach him before, but he’d always declined. He was a fisherman at heart, not a warrior. His calm demeanor and cleverness with knots and woodland skills had made him very useful to her ensign. But he’d never seen himself as a true part of it.
She quickly did a salute and began flowing through forms, a series of moves mimicking combat situations. It made her heart pump faster, invigorating her muscles and her mind. After doing several of the basic forms, she tried to remember the phoenix form that she’d done while she was a prisoner in Fusang. She could remember parts of it, but several gaps in her memory emerged. In Fusang, she had executed it perfectly, feeling a tingling of magic as she moved her body. She hadn’t felt the magic when she had done it in Sihui. Was there something about Fusang that had triggered it?
A little frustrated, she stopped her exercise, then retrieved her pack and slung it over her shoulder, pausing to strap the short sword to her waist. She thought about the Phoenix Blade, feeling its pull from a distance. The magic was tainted, but she still wished she had it. Whenever she held the Phoenix Blade, she felt whole. She’d need all the help she could get if she had to face her enemy before arriving at the shrine. Was Echion still searching for her, or had he unleashed his dragons from the Woliu to take up the hunt? Would he be lying in wait for her at the shrine, or was its location somehow hidden from him?
Quion readied his pack as well, but he carried the whittled staff in his hands. It looked nothing like the one she’d lost. At least not yet.
As they continued on their journey, trailed by the leopard, Quion asked her about the forms.
“What was the last one you did, Bingmei? That one looked really hard.”
“Because I struggled so much with it?” she asked dejectedly.
“Well, you did struggle with it.” He was unfailingly honest. “Did Kunmia teach it to you?”
Bingmei felt a pang of regret. If she’d accepted her destiny sooner, perhaps Kunmia would still be with them. But there was no fixing the past. Only the future was unmade.
“No. It’s a strange story, Quion.”
“I think we have time for strange stories,” he hinted.
She sighed. “Do you think our souls used to live before, Quion?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Do you think I’ll be born again as a fish? I don’t think I’d like that very much.”
“Human lives, I mean. The first time we went to Fusang, I kept feeling like I’d seen it before. It was so . . . familiar. And the same thing happened after Echion captured me and brought me back there. When I sat in the concubines’ garden, I felt as if I’d been there before. As if I’d sat on that very bench. And then . . . and then it felt like someone’s hand went over mine, and I drew a glyph on the stone.”
He gave her a sidelong look. “Do you know what you drew?”
She nodded. “It was the name Xisi. Echion’s queen. I don’t know how to write, Quion, but I knew it in that moment. Maybe it was knowledge I had in a past life. I felt like I should bring Xisi back. Every part of my mind rebelled against the thought. But my heart told me it was all right. And it was. Echion was going to kill me, but Xisi stopped him.”
“Why would she? She knows you’re the phoenix-chosen.”
“Yes. But the two of them really do hate each other. You’ve seen Mieshi and Damanhur argue. It was much worse than that. Echion and Xisi have known each other since they first became immortal. They made some pact together. Some bargain. They both would have preferred absolute power, but they couldn’t claim it alone.” She breathed out sharply. “I don’t remember everything they said. I was afraid for my life most of the time. But I did that form while I was their prisoner. As if I’d known it all my life. And doing it . . . summoned part of the phoenix’s power to me. Yet I can’t remember all of the steps now. And I don’t know why. My memory keeps betraying me.”
Quion was silent for a while, absorbing the information she’d given him.
“I don’t know if we have past lives or not, Bingmei, but Echion rules the Grave Kingdom. Maybe that’s why you connected with your lost memories in Fusang. Because it’s his city. That could explain why the memories aren’t as strong anymore.”
That made sense. The phoenix had also warned her that it would not come to her again until after she reached the shrine in the middle of the gorge. Perhaps her memories would be restored once it did.
Another memory surfaced in her mind, making her flush with embarrassment. Although she’d never been kissed, she remembered the pressure of someone else’s lips on hers. Someone she loved but did not now remember. The memory had come to her during a lesson with Kunmia Suun, when she’d wielded the Phoenix Blade one of the first times.
Later, as more partial memories began to come back to her, all from some other existence, and Rowen confirmed the same thing was happening to him, she had started to wonder if perhaps it was Rowen she’d kissed in that vision. If both of them had been reincarnated again and again to fight the dragon. If their connection was the type that had spanned lifetimes. But it didn’t matter now. She was unlikely to ever see him again. The thought pierced her with surprising pain, but she buried it.
“What’s wrong?”
Curse his sensitive nature!
She kept walking, plodding through the brush, dodging trees. Quion didn’t ask again, but she smelled his concern. Her cursed nose ensured she always knew what the people around her were feeling. Even Echion and Xisi. But she’d always been careful to keep her own emotions to herself. And while Quion was the one person she felt she could reveal herself to without fear of embarrassment, her cheeks heated at the thought of telling him about Rowen. About the kiss from her memory.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I see you don’t want to.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you tonight,” she said. “When it’s darker. It’s just . . . it would be difficult to talk about in the daylight.”
He gave her a confused look and shrugged his acceptance.
They continued to talk as they crossed the valley, staying clear of the river. With the looming walls of mountains all around them, the latter half of the day was spent within their shade. There were more and more boulders strewn across their path as they continued onward. One had crushed a tree, and only the skeletal remains of its branches could be seen, all bleached and stiff. It would make good firewood, should they dare.
She also heard and saw several waterfalls coming from the narrow valley between the mountains. Some were thin and subtle, others more powerful. The water tasted wonderful, and they stopped frequently to fill their flasks. Her legs ached after hiking all day through the rugged terrain, but her body felt better than it had in days. The tiny scabs on her hands and face were starting to itch, meaning the skin was renewing.
When they reached the convergence of the mountains, they saw that the river had carved a path through the rocks. Huge boulders lay amidst the water. The cliffs rose steeply on each side, shadow drowning out the fading light.
Bingmei stood at the river’s edge, staring into the gorge, feeling the tug and pull of the phoenix shrine deep within.
But she felt something else tugging at her, as if a chill breeze reached out and brushed against her soul.
She sensed death waiting inside the gorge.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Blighted Tree
She gazed into the chasm. The cliff faces were ragged, and boulders littered the shallows on each side. There were no paths to take on the sides of the river. The vertical walls came right out of the teal-colored water.
“So we have to go in there?” Quion said, tugging at the straps of his pack. He looked dubious about the safety of such an undertaking.
“The shrine is somewhere within this maze. I wonder how deep the water is.”
Marching to the edge of the water, Quion inserted the meiwood staff into the shallows. The staff went just a little way before hitting stone.
“Not deep, then,” Bingmei observed. The cliff faces on each side of the narrows had areas where the rock had sloughed off, leaving sharp edges. But the patterns on the stone also revealed that the river had once been higher.
“Shall we?” Quion suggested.
Bingmei nodded and was the first to plunge her boot into the water. The water didn’t even go to her knees. She’d feared it would be cold, like melted ice, but it was surprisingly mild. Her thick travel boots were a great protection to her legs. Quion entered behind her, wincing as if in anticipation of a shock of cold, but he grinned upon finding the water more pleasant than expected. The snow leopard waited on the shore, its tail swishing.
“Come on,” Quion said to the beast. “You crossed the Death Wall. You can wet your feet.”
The two of them started to walk a little ways, and Quion kept looking back. The giant cat gave a low growl and entered the stream after them. Its silvery fur glistened when it was wet, reminding her of the way it had glowed in that grove of trees.
As they advanced through the narrows, Bingmei stumbled occasionally on the uneven rocks beneath the surface. The staff Quion gripped helped steady him. Occasionally, they reached a pocket of deeper water—the highest reached Bingmei’s waist—but most of it remained shallow. The current’s pull was gentle, although they occasionally hit eddies and whitewater stretches.
As the sun set behind them, she wondered if there would be any place for them to find shelter for the night. A cave perhaps, higher on the cliff wall? They encountered no trees in the narrows for the first part of their journey. The river twisted and turned in abrupt angles, sometimes rent by a giant boulder that had crashed down from above. But not long after sunset, one of the bends revealed a small copse of shadowed aspen, at least four or five trees growing from a bit of earth displaced by a landslide. Past the trees, they heard a waterfall and saw more plant growth on a shelf of rock that contained a few fallen timbers. Dusk had descended on them slowly, but it was getting darker quickly now.
“Maybe we should camp here for the night,” Bingmei suggested.
There was only a little strip of moist sand before the rocks, and they both found their beds to be painful and hard. Quion tried to catch some fish but was unsuccessful. They ate from their stores, sparingly, and drank enough water to fill their bellies. The snow leopard nestled atop the crown of rocks and laid its head on its paws. Music from the lapping waterfall lulled them all to sleep.
As they awoke with the dawn, a rock jabbed painfully in Bingmei’s ribs. Sleep had been tenuous, but she felt moderately rested. Quion fed some of his rations to his pet, and then they both rose and entered the river again.
They’d gone a ways before finding a huge boulder blocking the path. Water gushed around it on both sides, but the force of the current and the narrowness of the gap made it impossible to cross from either side.
At least, impossible for anyone who did not have the meiwood cricket. Bingmei and Quion made it over, with difficulty, for she had to pull Quion up with the rope, the leopard cradled in his arms.
The rest of the afternoon was a monotonous, difficult slog through the chill water. By the time a path opened up along the wall to their right, their knees and ankles were tired from the constant pressure of the rocks beneath the surface of the river. Bingmei investigated it and saw it would be an easy climb. She wouldn’t even need to use the cricket.
“Do you think we can go that way?” Quion asked her.
She stared at it for a while, but she didn’t know. She only knew the shrine lay in that general direction.
“I think we should,” she finally said.
Grateful to be out of the water, they clambered up to the narrow path and began to follow it—until they reached a dead end. A wide grotto opened up beneath them with a pool of silver water. The pool had been shrinking over time, a fact revealed by the watermarks along the stone.
Out of the middle of the silver pond grew a tree with silver bark. It had blue leaves, unlike anything Bingmei had seen before.
“Look at that,” she whispered in awe, staring at it.
“I’ve never seen a tree with blue leaves before,” Quion said.
Nor had she seen a tree growing out of the middle of a pond. It didn’t make sense, especially given there were no other plants.
“Look . . . the leaves are rustling!” Quion said, pointing. “I don’t feel a breeze.”
Bingmei walked down the rounded slope to get a closer look. The water looked silver, she realized, because it reflected the walls of the stone grotto. Something about the tree drew her closer.
She heard the snow leopard growl.
“I wonder what kind of tree it is,” Quion said. He shuffled down the side of the basin as well. The snow leopard stayed put.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Bingmei said in fascination.
“I wonder if it has any fruit?” Quion said. He came to the edge of the water, his gaze intent.
Bingmei continued to circle the tree, wondering how it survived with so little light. Yes, the grotto was open to the sun, but cliffs surrounded it on all sides. How had it come to be so tall? It was probably three times her size. The branches didn’t sway, but the leaves wriggled. She gazed more closely.
“Those aren’t leaves,” she said. She blinked, trying to understand why her body had tensed with fear. And then the truth struck her. “They’re insects.”
She heard a splashing sound and saw Quion had stepped into the pool. He’d left the staff behind. The snow leopard growled again, louder. It padded down to the edge of the water and started pacing, its tail lashing with a frantic urgency.
“Quion, don’t,” Bingmei warned.
He ignored her, his eyes fixed on the tree. She saw him stumble on something beneath the water, but he still moved forward, his hand reaching out for the tree.
A single blue butterfly fluttered down from one of the branches, zigzagging through the air in a light, carefree manner. She watched it, mesmerized by its motion. A sickening feeling came into her stomach.
The snow leopard hissed, startling Bingmei. She blinked, noticing that several more of the blue butterflies were flitting about.
Quion was at the base of the silver trunk now, reaching up toward the branches.
“Quion. Quion!”
Could he hear her? She smelled his euphoria, the scent of bliss and tranquility, but it was too sweet. Too fragrant, as if it were concealing something rancid.
“Quion! Back away. Now!”
He was oblivious to her words. She saw one of the tiny blue butterflies light on his hair. Another landed on his wrist. She saw him reach up into the tree, as if to pick a piece of fruit, but instead his fingers pinched around one of the blue butterflies. He licked his lips.
Bingmei panicked.
This wasn’t normal. The tree wasn’t natural. She groped for the meiwood cricket in her pocket, summoned its power, and leaped across the pond to land beside him.
As soon as her boots splashed into the water, she felt an overwhelming urge to eat from the tree’s fruit.
“Get back! Back!” she begged, grabbing his arms and pulling him away. Fighting the powerful compulsion as she did so.
“No! No, Bingmei!” His face contorted with rage. He strained against her, trying to put the insect into his mouth. She kneed him in the stomach and smacked his
hand, and he dropped the wriggling thing. His eyes went crazed as he bent over from her painful blow. He closed his hand into a fist and swung it at her jaw.
Bingmei blocked the blow, but he snaked an arm around her waist and threw her backward into the water. Pain instantly pierced her body. Although the water was shallow, she’d landed on some sharp rocks. She pulled one of them away, but by the feel of it, she could tell it wasn’t a stone at all—it was the bleached skull of some animal. The sticks poking her were bones.
Horror washed over her, and the enchantment lost any remaining hold on her. Her fear of the place, of what it was doing to her friend, had disintegrated it.
Quion had already lunged back toward the tree, but she couldn’t let him eat one of the insects. She knew what had happened to the others who’d fallen prey to the tree, because she held the results in her hand. Bingmei charged him again, grabbing his pack straps and yanking him backward. He turned on her in a fit of rage and backhanded her in the face, his knuckles striking her cheekbone hard. The blow dizzied her, and he shoved her down into the water, his hands fastening around her neck. She heard the leopard yowl just before her head went under, Quion’s fingernails digging into her skin.
What was he doing? This was Quion, her best friend! Only it wasn’t—the Quion she knew would never hurt her. Some cursed magic was at work here. Bingmei brought the heel of her hand up to his chin, striking hard, and flipped him over her so that he landed with a huge splash in the pond.
He grabbed one of the skulls and tried to smash her in the head with it. He smelled like one of the Qiangdao, all murder and rage and spoiled meat. It horrified her.
Bingmei’s reflexes saved her life. She dodged back, then did a double kick into his face. She watched as blood bloomed from his nose, and he slumped into the water unconscious.
Water dripped from her own face as she staggered, swaying with confusion. Then she marched up to him, grabbed his wrist, and began dragging him out of the pool. Her insides writhed with dread, and then, to her horror, she saw the tree sway. The butterflies all took flight at once, revealing the bleached-bone bark of the leafless trunk.