Swallowtail & Sword: The Scholar's Book of Story & Song (Tails from the Upper Kingdom 4)

by H. Leighton Dickson

  “Clearly you have some experience with the Chi’Chen.” And the Provost tapped the sketches with a silver-tipped finger.

  “Did you kill him?” asked the Guru.

  “What?” she gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth. “No! No, I didn’t kill anyone! I found his body covered by vines in Old Parnum Hollow! No one goes there because it’s so dark and overgrown but I like it there. I saw the crows and found him!”

  “And dissected him,” finished the Guru.

  “Did you tell anyone?” asked the Provost.

  “Or was it your secret?” asked the Guru.

  “Can you keep a secret?” asked the Provost.

  “I…It…” She felt her mouth hanging open, knew her heart would burst from it soon enough. “It was my secret. I kept it from my parents and my sisters and their husbands. I even kept it from the mayor of Parnum’bah Falls…”

  She sighed. There was no strength in her body. She was a rag held underwater.

  “But I did bury him once I was done. I know he was an enemy and maybe a spy but he was dead and it only seemed right.”

  She sat back, swallowed her heart back down. It was thudding like Imperial hoofbeats on the Road to Enlightenment.

  The papers rustled some more.

  “Fallon Waterford, tigress and daughter of Sharan and Fayah Waterford,” began the Provost. “You are a most unusual girl.”

  She nodded, waiting for their pronouncement.

  “You are a danger to yourself and others,” said the Guru. “You have no respect for the property of other people. You think our people’s traditions are yours to bend and shape at your will. You know no boundaries. You follow no rules. There is no place that is safe from your insidious thoughts.”

  Humility, she thought. Contentment. Her father had been right. She would go back home a very different girl.

  “No place, except the University,” said the Provost.

  “Except the University,” repeated the Guru.

  “Then eventually, the Ministry of Communications and Letters.”

  “Or the War Council.”

  “Yes, yes. But perhaps, with a woman - the Diplomatic Corps? Negotiations with the Chi’Chen are the Empress’ first priority.”

  “Quite true, Juan. Quite true. Excellent choice.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, shaking her head. “What, what do you mean?”

  “We would like to offer you a position as a student here at the School of One Hundred Thoughts.”

  “I…”

  “You will start in first year with the rest of the students,” said the Guru. “But you will be under my tutelage directly. Any tigress who can do those exams without prior schooling has a rather remarkable mind and should be mentored in how best to use it, rather than left to knock old men down steps and destroy government property.”

  “I…”

  “In fact, there is an opening immediately, so if you are prepared to move into your residence, you may begin tomorrow. We will diagnose your understanding of the Imperial languages, where they originated and what they are used for in the different departments of the Empire.”

  “I… I don’t know what to say…”

  Navheen sat back.

  “For some reason, I find that hard to believe.”

  “Will you accept the invitation, sidala Waterford?” asked the Provost. “Or do you have other, more pressing offers?”

  “No, no, that’s good. Yep, really really quite fine. I think. Yep…”

  “Excellent. We will inform the Registrar of your decision. Ask him to direct you to the Yellow Duckling residence, care of Mistress of New Minds. She will find you a room. The Yellow Duckling has a marvelous view of Pol’Lhasa. After that, report to the Library of Ten Thousand Books. Mandelah will arrange for texts and supplies…”

  “Ten Thousand Books,” she breathed.

  “Welcome,” said Guru Navheen. “To the School of One Hundred Thoughts.”

  ***

  She stood at the top of the steps and clutched her journals, swept her emerald eyes down the Road of Enlightenment and up toward the towering Imperial palace of Pol’Lhasa. Her entire body was tingling, from the curve of her ears to the tip of her striped tail. So many thoughts, so many sensations. The world had suddenly come alive and she was certain she could see, hear and feel everything that was happening in the entire city. The shopkeeps and the markets, the soldiers and the horses. Cattle, roosters, tobacco and salt. Cobbled roads and flapping banners, bright silk and honeyed fruit. Students, moving, laughing, rushing to and from lectures and the library. Ten Thousand Books! She promised herself that she would read them - every last one. Her mind was bursting with ideas, with unspeakable sentences and unimaginable thoughts. One hundred thoughts, she reasoned. One Hundred Thoughts.

  As the cool noon sun drew high overhead, she turned to study the university’s winged rooftops, the pillared courts, the bronze medallions stamped in plaster. One Hundred Thoughts. It didn’t matter that there were so few tigers here. She was here so now at least they had One.

  Scholar in the Court of the Empress. One day, she told herself, that would be her title. Fallon Waterford, Scholar in the Court of the Empress.

  She heard her name and turned to see her parents, waving at her from the road.

  Her heart soared inside her, along with the realization that it was unlikely that she would ever see them again. She loved them so very much.

  Clutching her journals to her chest, she ran down the steps to meet them.

  On Summit Temple

  Tonight I stay at the Summit Temple

  Here I could pluck the stars with my hand

  I dare not speak aloud in the silence

  For fear of disturbing the dwellers of heaven

  The Kiss of Shagar’mathah

  Cusp: Year of the Ox/Year of the Tiger

  Sun and stars laughing

  Monkeys sing to blue oceans

  Dreams are mountains climbed

  Bright Yang shines on the earth below,

  Majestic he blazes on high.

  But the Yang cannot be trusted;

  His light is easily lost.

  He sets himself to crush the Yin;

  Keeps her from her lover, the Earth.

  The earth was trying to kill him. It always had been, if he was honest. It was his kharma. Bad kharma. It was closing in all around him, cold and wet and black, as timeless as a mountain. It didn’t have to go anywhere, not like wind or water. It didn’t exhaust itself like fire or rust like metal, it didn’t grow up into something completely different from seeds to trees like wood. No, the earth killed simply by being the earth, by pressing down everything in its path and turning all things into ash and dust and dirt and mud. Just as it was killing him now.

  But he refused to give in, not to its intimidation nor to the tremors that threatened to consume him. Not when he was so close, so very close, and he closed his eyes tightly, wrapped his arms around his knees and continued to sing. They liked his singing, he knew. They would drop bits of fruit and half-eaten pastries when he would finish and he was convinced that it was the only thing that had kept him alive for this long. Weeks now, he reckoned, in this accursed Chi’Chen pit but still, he was alive, he was fed and the earth hadn’t managed to kill him quite yet.

  It was raining up above so the water level was rising in the pit. Rising now to cover his tail, his backside and his legs up to his ankles. The blackness was rising also, the despair that lived with him every day since he’d summoned the lightning. The day he’d killed his father and lost his honour. He should just let the earth take him but he was as stubborn as a mountain pony and life and women were too sweet to give up.

  And so he squeezed his knees, ignored the water creeping up his trousers, ignored the earth pressing in on him from all sides, and sang.

  Someone was nudging him.

  He opened one eye.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re singing.” The old face smiled, showing a
n appalling lack of teeth. “In your sleep.”

  “I do that on occasion,” he said.

  “Every night,” said the old face.

  Kerris yawned and sat up, grateful for the yak-hide coat he’d bought in Luo’khala. He shook the snow from his night-blue cloak and stretched his arms out to the very tips of his claws. His pillow grumbled and lifted its shaggy head, blinking at him with sleepy eyes.

  “Sorry Quiz,” he said. “Singing again.”

  The pony grumbled a second time and pushed up onto his sturdy feet, shook the snow from his coat. Kerris grinned and looked back at the old Sherpa.

  “Is there tea?”

  “No.”

  “Can you make some?”

  “Sure.”

  And the old face disappeared out of his line of vision. It wasn’t yet dawn but the sky was purple. The moon and the stars gleamed off the dark silhouette that was the Great Mountains.

  The Great Mountains. He hated the Great Mountains. But to be honest, he had to admit they were beautiful. Only a two-day trek now from home, although what he was doing home after swimming in the Hindayan Ocean was a mystery.

  Quiz nudged him from behind, grumbled again. The grey lion reached a hand back, dug it into the pony’s forelock, gave the forehead a good scratch. He pulled a strip of dried shark from his pocket, bit off a corner before passing the rest back to his friend.

  “I know,” Kerris said. “Hindaya was much warmer. Look at all that ice. What am I thinking, Quiz? We should just find some tigers and head back south. Going home is pointless. I’ll only leave again anyway.”

  Quiz didn’t answer. His mouth was occupied with the shark.

  Kerris reached into his pocket, pulled a pair of sticks tied with red thread.

  Black and Two. Water. Winter water.

  “Right.” Kerris stood up, stretched again, grabbing his pack and turning to look at his pony. “You’ll stay here. These Sherpi ponies need a boss. They’re lazy.”

  Quiz ambled off toward three ponies. They looked at him with terrified eyes and let him take first choice of the rabbits.

  Kerris gazed around at the little camp. Just him and the Sherpa and his little family. One old wife and several grandkittens. At least, he thought they were grandkittens. The Sherpa and his wife looked as old as his mother but then again, life in the Mountains was hard. They were clouded leopards – small and marbled with pink noses that made them look friendly. The kittens were adorable and terribly shy. He smiled at them and they ducked behind their travelling hut.

  “Hello,” he said to the woman. “So your husband was making tea.”

  “Tea, yes,” said the grandmother. She was chewing on the end of a corncob pipe, but it wasn’t lit. Just chewing. The kittens peered at him from under a woolen flap.

  “Is there breakfast?”

  “Breakfast?”

  She smiled at him. She had less teeth than her husband. Perhaps from chewing on the pipe.

  “Yes, you know, that food you eat first thing in the morning?” he offered. “Roasted rabbit? Dumplings? Wontons? No?”

  She smiled, nodded.

  “Rice?” He thought a moment. “Cāmalah?”

  “Yes, cāmalah. Rice.” And she turned, chattered to one of the kittens, who disappeared under the flap.

  Kerris dropped his pack and took a seat by the early morning fire. He had only asked them to take him as far as Shagar’mathah, Virgin Empress of the Earth and here he was so they owed him nothing, not even rice. Still, tea would be nice before he began his climb this morning.

  He took a deep breath, looked out over the way. Ice and snow, rock and sky. The entire horizon line was ice and snow, rock and sky, and as he sat down here beneath it all, he began to wonder what in the Kingdom he was thinking. He could hear the ice talking, whispering as it crept down from the mountain. Glacier ice, he knew, and moving rather quickly. Crossing that might be the most dangerous part of the climb.

  Winter water.

  Someone nudged his arm.

  He turned to see a young boy, holding up a tin cup filled with curry and sticky rice. Chopsticks peeked out the top.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The boy smiled at him, showing a gap in his own teeth and Kerris hoped it was due to his youth, not poor diet or corncob pipes.

  He took the cup, began to dig in with the sticks. The boy was still smiling and his sister peered out from behind his back, her yellow eyes the biggest things in the world.

  “Yes?” he asked them. “Do you want some rice?”

  “Hajurabubā says you are Kaidan,” said the boy. The girl squealed, pressed her face into his back.

  Kerris grinned. Myth Kaidan, Legend Kaidan. Hero to all the people of the Kingdom. His stories got bigger, his achievements more miraculous with every telling.

  “Ah, Kaidan,” said Kerris. “Isn’t he just a story?”

  “No, sidi!” said the boy. “He is a spirit! Hajurabubā says only Kaidan would try to climb Chomoh’lungmah.”

  “Chomoh’lungmah?”

  The boy gestured to the massive peak behind him.

  “Ah yes, Shagar’mathah, the virgin peak. Oh, sorry. Bad language for little ears.”

  The kittens giggled.

  “You climb Chomoh’lungmah?” asked the boy.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Kerris and he lowered the chopsticks, still chewing as he looked out over the icy slope, the twin peaks that were the Virgin and her sister. “Why indeed? That’s a very good question. Why do I want to climb Shagar’mathah, Mountain of the Goddesss, Empress of the Earth?”

  The ice whispered, wooing him to come. The air sang, calling him her lover. The Mountain, however, was a different story, calling him an entirely different name.

  “Because she doesn’t want me to, that’s why. Because she’s the Empress of the earth and I hate the earth and the earth hates me. Because I need to beat her, not from a Chi’Chen pit but from her summit. I need to prove that I can win. Perhaps it’s just ego and the need to prove myself to myself because it’s about the only thing I can do.” He shrugged. “That’s about it, really.”

  “Did you weally wide a dwagon to da moon?” asked the little girl and he thought she was the most adorable thing he had ever seen. She wanted a story and Kerris was the Kingdom’s best storyteller.

  He glanced from his left to his right, kept his voice deliberately low.

  “To the moon, and back again,” he said, delighting in the squeals and small clapping hands. “On a great star dragon. They are like ice, only not as cold. Or slippery.”

  The Sherpa and his wife returned, passed him a skin flask.

  “Tea,” he said. “Hot and sweet.”

  “Thank you, sidi,” Kerris answered, gobbling up the last of the rice and handing the cup back to the boy. “I think I’ll get my start now before the sunrise.”

  The Sherpa nodded as Kerris climbed to his feet.

  “Beware the Icefall,” said the old man. “None make it past the Icefall.”

  “I believe it,” said Kerris. “But not me. The ice won’t try to kill me.”

  “He’s Kaidan,” said the boy proudly.

  “It’s the rock I’m worried about.”

  “Chomoh’lungmah is big rock,” said the Sherpa. “But you have yak boots and yak coat.”

  “And these,” Kerris reached down to his pack, lifted a set of claws that jingled at the back. “Gowrain claws. I’ve straps for my boots and I have some stitched into leather mittens. That should give me extra traction if I need it.”

  “You’ll need it.”

  He grinned, dug in his pocket.

  “For your payment…”

  “No, sidi,” said the old man. “Our honour to assist Kaidan woo the virgin.”

  “Still.”

  Kerris opened his palm. There were coins, jewels, shark teeth, and several large pearls. The largest pearl, he plucked, slipped it back into his pocket.

  �
��That one’s for the Empress,” he said. “But for your lovely ladies…”

  He presented both old woman and young girl with a pearl and a ruby. The woman grinned her toothless grin and nodded. The kitten hugged it to her chest.

  “For you, young sidalord clouded leopard,” and he poured several teeth into the boy’s palm. “Fangs of the Leviathan, killed in the ocean of Hindaya not two months ago.”

  “Leviathan fangs,” cooed the boy, yellow eyes gleaming like the sun.

  “And for you, esteemed sidi, all the coins I have left.”

  And he emptied his palm into the old man’s.

  “If I live, I can find more. If I don’t, I won’t be needing them.”

  “You live,” said the old man.

  “Nothing can kill Kaidan,” said the boy.

  Kerris smiled, hoping that were true.

  “Take care of my pony, please,” he said as he hiked his pack over his back, wrapped the cloak around his neck and struck off on the path of the first step – the Icefall of Shagar’mathah.

  ***

  The Empress’ hosts swept along

  As though flying, as though winged

  Like the River, Like the Wall,

  Steady as a mountain,

  Flowing onward like a stream,

  Rank on rank, in precise order,

  Immeasurable, unassailable;

  Mighty, they march across her land.

  ***

  He couldn’t believe the ice.

  In fact, he could believe it, but it was like no ice he had ever seen or set foot on before. Ice piled in blocks the size of a hut, others in pinnacles – fangs twice his height and width, others standing in walls like the mountains themselves. Crevasses as long as a river that sliced through the white as if made by giant blades. His yak-hide boots were effective, however, and he moved across the broken sheets with a steady rhythm, listening to the ice as it whispered and moaned.

  Step here, it said. Not here. To the right now, more right. Over this. Around that. Not there.

  And he followed its voice. It always paid to listen when the elements chose to speak. Soon, he was a good way up, marveling at the view back down the icefield to where the Sherpa’s caravan was a tiny dark dot against the rocks. The brilliant moon was now far across the western sky and the east was growing brighter with the approach of dawn. Pink and purple and yellow now as the sun began to sweep the night away with her golden brooms. Good thing too, he thought. The sheets higher up were deeply cracked and he wondered how many cats had slipped through and if so, where they had gone.