by Jeff Wheeler
“Some water first.” He unhooked his flask, took a drink, and offered it to her.
The water reinvigorated them, and they continued through the woods, following the stream through the valley.
Then the snow leopard growled.
Bingmei and Quion froze when they heard a rustling in the trees. At first she thought it was an elk, but the disturbance was too big, and when she caught a glimpse of the creature’s pelt, it was white. A bear appeared in the trees, following the edge of the stream but coming directly toward them.
The scent of fear, hers and Quion’s, filled her nose.
“Let’s get out of its way,” Quion whispered.
Bingmei nodded. The bear was absolutely huge. It gave a yawning moan as it lumbered toward them. When they left the stream, heading deeper into the brush, it followed them, pawing away at low-hanging branches.
“I can’t run,” Bingmei said, wincing. The thought of jumping with the cricket filled her with agony.
The leopard snarled and slipped in front of them, hissing in warning. The huge ice bear yawned again, letting out another growl. Quion gripped the meiwood staff he’d been carving and stepped in front of Bingmei.
“A stick won’t hurt that thing,” she warned. She reached for her blade and drew it. The movement wrenched her side, causing a wave of dizziness.
Quion planted his boots and hefted the staff with both hands. “Get out of here. Go away. Rah!” He shook the staff, but the great beast was not in the least bit intimidated.
The snow leopard dropped low, its head swishing from side to side. It yowled a warning to the bear.
“Get out of here. Rah!” Quion shouted again.
The noise would attract the dragons. She could sense them still, coming their way with the light of the Woliu.
A sickening dread filled her. They were so close, so very close. If it were dawn, she’d be able to see their destination.
The beast scratched its long claws against a tree trunk, slicing stripes into the wood, and then started to lumber around the final tree separating them.
Quion jabbed the end of the staff right into the bear’s snout, yelling in challenge once more.
Its low growl came like a rumbling thunderhead. Bingmei knew it was going to charge. She didn’t have the strength to repel it, but she needed the strength.
She gripped the sword, which felt heavy in her hands.
A loud trilling suddenly rent the air, as if three dozen birds had started to sing at once. Bingmei glanced up, but she couldn’t see any of them. It sounded as if the birds were scolding the bear.
The huge beast cocked its head, listening, then turned and lumbered back to the stream.
Quion lowered the staff, breathing fast, his scent now mixed with that of cold sweat. She came up behind him, putting away her sword before placing a hand on his shoulder. The leopard continued to growl at the bear as it left them.
The sky brightened overhead as they continued walking. Behind them, the lights from the Woliu began to fade, but she could still sense the dragons, searching feverishly for their quarry. The sky felt charged with lightning.
Morning mist rose from the streams weaving through the crags in the valley, mixing with the lush green vegetation. Mist, trees, and pillared crags stretched before them in an endless scene.
But there was one pillar that caught her attention. It wasn’t the tallest, although it did loom over its two closest fellows. Trees grew from its sides and crowded the top. From her vantage point, the base of that column looked like the bleached face of a skull.
She knew in her heart it was the one.
Then she heard a voice whisper in her mind. It was like the one she’d heard after leaping from the Death Wall.
Welcome to Mudi, Sister. The garden of bones.
CHAPTER TEN
Mudi
They walked into the thick mist as they approached the skull-faced pillar. It cloaked their destination so completely they could no longer see it. Still, Bingmei felt it calling to her, drawing her in.
They walked arm in arm, and each step brought tugs of agony from her sutured wounds. The snow leopard was their scout, always a few steps ahead, leaping from rock to rock as the two of them clambered up and down the uneven ground. Sometimes she’d feel a dragon swoop low, and she’d freeze in place, gripping Quion’s arm to stop him. Once the threat had passed, they would continue on their way.
Each step brought them closer to their destination, but they were wary. Cautious.
The mist began to shrink, revealing patches of blue overhead. Soon they would be able to see the creatures that hunted them—and be seen by them too.
Quion looked up, and she smelled his disappointment. “I’d hoped the mist would last longer. We’d better hide.”
Bingmei agreed, and they slid into a thick copse of trees nestled atop boulders. The roots were exposed, stretching around the large stones until they pierced the rocky ground. Bingmei and Quion parted the foliage at the base of the trees and sank into a bed of crushed rock. The leopard joined them, its eyes alert.
Grateful for some rest, Bingmei leaned against Quion and raked her fingers through the gravel. Soon the impression of dragons became even stronger. They swarmed the skies overhead, relentless in their search.
“He’s persistent as the tide,” Bingmei said with a little chuckle.
Quion turned his head to look at her. “He is that,” he agreed. “But it is more like a toothache.”
They waited, listening to the breeze rustle the branches overhead. She kept clawing at the gravel just to distract herself. Then she felt a root buried in the rock. Turning her attention to it, she dug away the loose stones to look at it.
It wasn’t a root. It was a bone.
Bingmei stared at it, feeling a sickening sensation in the pit of her stomach. The garden of bones. That’s what the voice had whispered to her.
Her fingers closed around it, and she lifted it up for Quion to see.
“Doesn’t look like an animal bone,” he said softly.
“Help me dig through this,” she said, scooting away from him. They dug through the loose gravel together and found more remains, including a skull. A human skull. A tarnished helmet lay nearby, the straps long since decomposed.
Quion picked up the helmet. The metal had corroded, and parts were flaking off, but it hadn’t rusted because it wasn’t made of iron. There was a dent in the side. He shot her a look. “This is the first sign of humans we’ve seen since crossing the Death Wall,” he said. “Besides the grove, I mean.”
For someone had planted those meiwood trees, many years ago.
She held out her hands, and he placed the helmet in them.
An image flashed through her mind the instant the metal touched her flesh, accompanied by a cacophony of battle sounds. She jerked her hand away, and the helmet fell to the stones.
“What’s wrong?” asked Quion.
A compulsion came over her, and she reached out again to touch the helmet. On the brow of the armor, she saw faded lines, the carvings of an armor smith. When her finger traced them, she heard the noises of battle again, saw the helmet as it had been in the past.
A phoenix was carved on the brow.
Bingmei looked up, her hand still fixed on the helmet, and gasped at what she saw. There was no sign of Quion. No sign of the abandoned ruins.
Everywhere she looked, warriors fought with meiwood weapons, ensign warriors dressed in pale and dark robes and armored soldiers. Their robe color seemed to indicate their allegiance, for the dark-robed monks were fighting with the soldiers. Some of the ensign warriors leaped high in the air, displaying power beyond mortal abilities; others dealt dianxue blows that killed with a single touch. As she watched, she saw souls slip out of bodies, rising from the corpses in a harvest.
Followings the souls’ journey upward, she glanced up and saw dragons fighting phoenixes in the sky, some lunging into the soldiers on the ground to destroy them with claws and jaws. It was a s
cene of devastation. The dragons were winning. Shrieks from the massive birds filled the air as they dropped, one by one. And she realized that their bones were also buried in this shattered valley.
Understanding seeped into her, from the same intelligence that had spoken to her moments before. She was seeing the fall of the phoenix’s empire. The last retreat as her allies fell. This was when darkness had fallen on the world.
The smells of defeat and despair soured in her nose as she watched the destruction of the forces belonging to the phoenix. She saw the dead arrayed before her, atop a great, broad mountain tundra. Pennants flapped helplessly in the breeze. The dead faces lay still. Eventually even the moans of the dying quieted. A great silence fell over the battlefield.
And then she saw Echion, his cape in tatters, dragging a spear behind him. His face was ashen with exhaustion, but she recognized his horrible stench. He had commanded the slaughter. He walked through the field of the dead, looking for something.
A body.
Bingmei lay unseen amongst the dead. Until he saw her. His gaze fixed on her, and he began to stride forward purposefully, his scent full of murder. She looked down and saw the Phoenix Blade in her hand. There was blood on her arm, but it wasn’t her arm.
“I’ve won,” Echion told her. “The world is mine to rule. It was never meant for mercy. Only justice.”
She felt her lips moving, although she was not consciously speaking.
“You cannot prevent the Reckoning, Echion. Your decision invoked it. You can only delay it now.” It was a woman’s voice, familiar and not familiar.
“And so I will,” he said with disdain and plunged the spear into her chest. Bingmei felt all her strength gush out of her. She lay on her back, unable to breathe. And then she felt Echion’s boot crush her wrist. He pried the Phoenix Blade from her fingers.
“With this,” she heard him say, his voice growing fainter, as if buried within a tunnel, “I will know when you’ve chosen a new servant. And I will hunt down your daughters before they ever find your corpse.”
Bingmei felt the soul leave its body—a strange slippery feeling she’d experienced more times than any mortal should.
She awoke from the trance, still touching the tarnished helmet.
The air felt sweet and clear as she breathed it in. Remnants of the magic still swirled inside her, and she could sense the remains of the fallen warriors all around them, hidden beneath the shattered rock. They’d been dead for thousands of years. The land itself was as broken as they were, the mountain split into the strange, haunting columns of stone.
Echion had taken the Phoenix Blade. He’d enchanted it so he could always find it, and he’d used it to draw the disciples of the phoenix to him, one at a time. The sword had called to them, at it had always called to her, and he’d killed them before they could have a chance to defeat him.
Bingmei’s nose had saved her.
“What did you see?” Quion asked her, his eyes narrowing with concern. “You kept shuddering. I thought you were going to die again.”
She looked back at him. A sense of desperation filled her. “We have to get there, Quion. We have to hurry.”
“What about the dragons?”
She’d seen them slaughter her kind. The memory made her heart ache.
“We can’t climb the pillar at night, Quion. We have to get there today. We have to leave now.”
Gritting her teeth with determination, Bingmei gripped Quion’s arm and climbed over rocks and scrub. As they moved toward their destination, she sensed the sleeping dead beneath their boots. The magic still whispered to her, and she sensed there was a power capable of awakening them. One that required a deeper, stronger magic than the resurrection spell she’d tried—and failed—to use on Jiaohua. She didn’t know how she knew, only that she did.
They walked from tree to tree, copse to copse, slinking through the woods to get closer to the final pillar without revealing themselves. She felt drawn to it with an urgency she scarcely understood.
Her mind kept flitting back to her vision of the battle. The dragon had broken the balance of power. Once mercy and justice had both ruled the world. Once there had been true balance. But the dragon had destroyed it in his quest for personal power.
Bingmei knew she had to set it right.
It was a worthy ideal for which to give her life.
A dragon cry sounded overhead, and she feared they’d been discovered. They both pressed against the trees, hearts racing. Sickening fear struck them both. Then a copper-colored dragon with amber stripes raced over them, missing them completely. Once it flew past, they hurried to the next shelter, the leopard padding after them. The sun was starting its downward trek. Daylight would soon leave, giving them some additional protection but increasing the difficulty of their mission.
They finally reached the base of the pillar leading up to the phoenix shrine. The yellow siskin trilled from a branch, as if to welcome them.
“There it is again,” Quion said, gesturing toward the little bird.
Bingmei looked at the siskin and then at the trees and envied its gift of flight. There were many trees growing in the cracks and fissures lining the pillar. They would offer them concealment as they climbed, but it would be a difficult voyage. Her weakness and loss of blood were sure to hinder her.
“You’ll use the cricket,” she told Quion. When he started to shake his head, she said, “If I used it, I wouldn’t be able to help you. But you can jump to a secure place and use your ropes to lift me up.”
He looked at her and then up at the stones. “All right,” he finally said. “The leopard will have to stay behind,” he said, shooting it a fond glance, “but I think that’s a good plan. Do you remember the knot I taught you?”
“I think so. Let me practice it.”
He removed his pack and produced one of his ropes. She took the end and wrapped it around herself, using the special knot he’d shown her. After proving she remembered it, she handed the rope back to Quion.
“Good. I’m glad you remembered it. This is going to be a difficult climb, Bingmei. Are you sure you shouldn’t take the cricket? Just in case?”
“We have to get up there quickly,” she said. “We can rest once we’re there.”
Her rest, she knew, would be permanent. She was so very weary. Death did not sound so frightening anymore.
Quion nodded. Then he pulled out another rope before setting his pack in the bush. “I think it will be easier if I don’t have to carry that too. When I get up there, I’ll throw down two ropes. Tie one to my pack and the other to yourself. I’ll haul it up after I’ve got you up.”
Bingmei wanted to remind him that they wouldn’t need to bring the packs. She wouldn’t need hers, and he’d have no reason to stay in the shrine once she was dead. Had he forgotten that? Or was he still denying what would happen to her? She slipped off her pack and left it on the ground.
He rubbed his hands together, then loosened his shoulders. She reached into her pocket and produced the meiwood cricket.
“Be careful,” she told him, placing it in his palm.
He looked at it, then at the trees higher up the face of the pillar. He took a deep breath and rubbed the cricket with his thumb. She felt the magic stir, and he leaped up, making it easily to the stand of trees. As he landed, she sensed a ripple of magic, a silent crack of thunder, hearing it with senses beyond her natural ones.
He landed with a terrible cracking noise.
“Quion!” she shouted. “Get off that one!”
She saw him look around quickly. The tree bent, and pieces of stone came tumbling down.
The tree he’d landed on broke free of the mountain, its roots too shallow to support much weight. She dived to the side as she watched the tree plummet toward her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Immortal Words
The tree crashed on the boulders nearby. Limbs snapped off on impact, scattering around the boulders and filling the air with the sweet smell
of sap. Bingmei crouched, protecting her head with her arms, and as she rose, she bumped one of the branches with her head. Bits of bark dropped from her clothes. If she hadn’t moved, the tree would have broken her as well.
Worry blazing in her heart, she looked up and found Quion dangling from another branch, hanging over the void. Thankfully, he’d chosen a well-anchored tree. She watched as he swung his legs over the branch and carefully edged his way to the trunk. Relief enveloped her, but only for a moment. Their presence at the rock had triggered something.
Once Quion was secured, he quickly tied the rope to the trunk of the tree.
“Are you all right?” he called down to her.
Am I all right? she thought with disbelief. He was the one who had almost fallen.
After brushing more chips of wood off her arms, she waved up at him. The snow leopard yowled at her from another boulder and then hissed at the tree, which had fallen so close to both of them.
Quion let the rope tumble down to the bottom of the pillar. Bingmei glanced skyward, wondering how long they had until the Woliu appeared, and quickly tied the rope around her waist using the knot she’d been taught. Quion pulled up the slack, secured it to the trunk, and started to pull.
The rope bit into her sides, inflaming the pain of her cuts. She used her legs and feet to keep the wall of the pillar in front of her and tried to help pull herself up, but her strength failed almost immediately. As Quion continued to pull, she gazed up at him and the steep face of the column. It would be so much easier if she had access to the phoenix’s powers, but she’d been told it would not happen again until she reached the temple.
Finally, the pressure eased as she reached the first group of trees. Sweat dripped down the sides of Quion’s face. He rubbed his arms and gazed up the flank of the pillar.
“Where to next?” he asked, studying the broken edges of rock.
“There’s a single tree right there,” she said, pointing. “Looks like the roots are gripping into the stone. I wish there were more, but it’s halfway to the top.”
He nodded thoughtfully, studying it. “There’s a crack running from that piece next to it. I think the tree is wedged inside. A good place.”